Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop – Advanced Techniques and Useful Tips

Secret techniques and top tips of Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop.

Guide to Secret Techniques

Please note: all credit goes to Ax-now!

Introduction

Hi I decided to list, classify and explain the advanced techniques (useful or not) and other tips to know when playing in a high difficulty level.

To make it easier I tried to give a name and a note ☆ to each technique:

  • (☆☆☆) Very important: a technique or a tip to know and learn imperatively.
  • (☆☆) Important: useful technique or tip.
  • (☆) Good to know: an interesting technique or tip but not necessarily useful every time.
  • (No stars): techniques not really useful, just for flexing.

These notes are my opinion after using these techniques during my playing time, you are free to think differently.

Wall Nading ☆☆☆

Wall nading is a technique that consists of shooting the top of a wall with the grenade launcher, this technique is very useful when you are in a closed place and you had no shooting windows.

This allows us to shoot very close to you without inflicting damage on you.

Also very useful to save a friend from a bad situation without inflicting damage.

It’s a technique that requires a lot of training and good reflex in real situation, also a good knowledge of the AOE of grenade launcher

There is another technique if you need to shoot close to you Dodge nading ☆☆☆ consists in shooting close to us then doing a dodgeroll in the opposite direction so as not to take explosion damage.

Body Push ☆☆☆

Body push consists of pushing aliens like an american footballer. You can only use this trick on Drone, Ubers and Boomers.

On drones, this has the effect of applying a kind of mini stun but be careful not to do it too long, it lasts a very short time and does not function if the drone has started launched an attack, so ineffective against a horde.

For Ubers you can body push them while cutting them with chainsaw. And for Boomers you could body push them at any time once they started to get fat.

Note: you could body push without risking to take damage if you stun before, and of course all aliens that inflict contatce damage cannot be body push.

Melee Stun ☆☆☆

Melee attack is very powerful and is often under rated by inexperienced AS RD players.

Indeed, the melee produces a very nice stun, can also interrupt the attacks of some aliens and does not make friendly fire, which makes it very useful as a support tool.

There are three different melee attacks and it always takes place in the same order.

  • Punch.
  • Kick (more rang).
  • Double punch (AOE damage).

Melee can also be used to save time. Indeed the stun is long enough to allow you to make a weapon swap just front of an alien. It is even so long that if you have a chainsaw, you could switch weapons to grab your chainsaw and charge it before the drone is time to attack you.

There is a very powerful combo to perma stun Ubers aliens with the attack and the shotgun vindicator of the officers. You must insert a melee attack after each vindicator shoot, with the right tempo they won’t be able to touch you 🙂

Fast Ammo Binding ☆☆

Fast ammo binding is a command that lets you drop pack ammo very quickly while keeping your primary weapon active, allowing you to keep shooting.

If you want to use this technique you must always put ammo packs in weapon slot 2, because it will not work if ammo are in slot 1.

  • Bind “KEY” “asw_ActivateSecondary”

Dodge Taking Ammo ☆☆☆

It consists in taking ammo during your rolldodge.

In Alien swarm there is not really cancel animation so that why your character will be stopped after your roll with this technique.

But, the quick reload bar starts when you press the action button [E], so before the supposed taking ammo animation.

It also makes your movements a little more unpredictable for aliens, which is much more interesting than taking ammo then doing a rolldodge.

This trick is very useful when you no longer have any grenade launcher or minigun ammo.

Note: you can combo Fast ammo binding + Dodge taking ammo, very useful when playing SW (specialist weapon).

Barrel Jump ☆

Barrel jump is a trick that allows access to areas normally not accessible. I call it barrel jump because it is often done using a barrel but can actually do other decorative objects, it’s just extremely easy to do with a barrel.

To achieve it you have to get the correct distance from the barrel / object and do a dodgeroll without touching directional keys.

Example on Rydberg reactor:

FM Optimize ☆☆☆

Officers have one of the most powerful extra equipment, fire mines (FM). It is not always easy to place them well.

Optimize FM’s by placing them lengthwise in tight spots or corridors, so that the aliens go through them as long as possible (perfect for covering back).

In general an FM placed in the length is always more efficient than an FM placed in the width, except from exceptional cases such as large area to cover, in this case if a FM laying wide will be more interesting.

Fire Nade Rebound ☆

Fire nade (vindicator alt fire) are able to rebound on a certain obstacle is it has the right inclination, that you oppose yourself at the right distance and that you aim in the right place.

Overall it looks like this:

I know my skills on paint exceeds everything.

It is very useful to prefire some spawn or to reach inaccessible biomass (like the biomass after the bridge on Bonus mission 2 for example).

Note: if a fire nade is close to you you could push it with melee attack.

Once you have understood and assimilated this mechanic, you just need to be creative with your Fire nade.

Fail Reload Cancel ☆☆☆

This technique is quite simple but nevertheless very useful. When you failed to do your fast reload or you started a reload by mistake you could cancel the overheating effect or simply the relaod started.

For that you just have to swap the weapon twice very quickly.

Note: with this technique you could also cancel the overheating of the heavy rifle Alt fire.

Crouch Tapping ☆☆☆

Crouch tapping consists of squatting without moving while shooting small bursts. Is very useful on the Minigun because it has a very large distribution of bullets.

indeed this allows you to keep a fairly good precision while not reducing too much the dps.

Tapping in general reduces the consumption of ammo, very interesting when we know the SW (specialist weapon) often has the obligation to drop ammo packs for other players.

Note: tapping must be used permanently on the tesla cannon to save ammo).

Crouch in general reduce bullets dispersion but is not efficient is you moving, but crouching and moving is useful on the Minigun as it keeps your Mini ready to fire.

Crouch work on:

  • Minigun
  • Deagle
  • Devastator
  • Heavy rifle

Drop Weapons / Extras ☆☆☆

Drop weapons or extras item a mechanic to know and used when you wanted to optimize your gameplay. An ally infected by a parasite? > drop ECA (electric charge armor). As a jaeger who no longer has any ammo in his gl and no ammo pack around? > drop your gl. You are Bastille and Faith in your team no longer have a medgun? > drop your medgun brief, you understood.

Here are the commands for that:

  • Bind “KEY” “asw_dropextra”.
  • Bind “KEY” “asw_drop”.

You can also find these options in key settings.

ECA Rescuer ☆☆☆

ECA (electric charge armor) is a very interesting extras items, it has three different effects. On activation it triggers an electric explosion who produces big AOE stun (it is this effect that will interest us here) It gradually destroys the parasites that are infecting a marine. Greatly reduces damage received for 12 seconds, last this time no parasite can infect you.

When an elder is rushed by a horde of drones and he risks dying without you having time to help him with your weapon you could perform what I call “ECA rescuer”.

You stuck to your ally then immediately activated your ECA, it will stun and interrupt all the attacks around him which will give him time to replace and kill these attackers.

It consumes you one charge ECA of course but it saves lives.

Reloading Cover ☆☆☆

it’s a basic principle, never relaod / empty your clip at the same time as your ally. And cover these when this one reload.

For that there is a very nice command which displays the ammo under marines, it saves you from looking and searching in the HUD bar at the bottom.

  • rd_ammo_under_marine 1
  • rd_ammo_counter_under_marine 1

There is also the Nading refresh☆☆☆ this consists in not shooting all at the same time so that there is always less one player with a grenade launcher ready to fire.

The goal and the same, not to have to reload at the same time.

Block Spawns ☆

You can block spawns in different ways, mobile decoration objects (like barrels), weapons / ammo pack, extras items, sentry turrets or even with your own body.

You just have to find the place where you placed or placed your equipment.

Example: on Landing zone you can place the welder item just in front of the ventilation grid on the ground in the hacking room before the bridge to prevent drones from coming out.

Smart TK ☆☆

If an ally becomes infected by parasite and there is no way to save him (no medic, no ECA to drop him), it is more interesting to kill him let her agonize.

In fact, if it dies from the parasites it will explode and release lots of these little cute sh*t everywhere, while if you killed him yourself there will be no parasite released.

Dodge WASD ☆☆☆

Dodge WASD or dodge without rolldodge is to move to perfection. With this trick you could control whole alien hordes and saved a lot of time for reload or other action, moving and changing direction burtally forces the aliens to recalculate your trajectory moreover, the alien attacks are not targeted and are perfectly escivable only use WASD (or ZQSD for frenchy).

Perfectly master the movements in Alien swarm and also, if it’s not more important than knowing how to kill the aliens.

There are so many ways to drive drones crazy just by moving.

Here is an example:

Flexing Techniques (No Stars)

Punching Nade

I think this is the most useful technique of all these not really useful tricks.

Just after throwing an Ice nade or Hand nade (does not work with Gas nades) you must hit it with a melee punch, but be careful you have to be very fast for it to work.

It’s very hard to realize that’s why I think this technique is not really useful.

This will send your nade much further and with very high speed.

Self nading

Self nading consists of shooting you over with a gl (grenade launcher) while still moving north (if you don’t walk towards the north you will take your nade).

Which will give the impression that your marine is throwing this gl nade over his shoulder.

GL nade punch

You can combine the two previous techniques to make the GL nade punch.

Shoot yourself then place your crossair at the bottom of the screen very quickly and melee punch your gl nade.

Very fun to do when one does not commit suicide after failing. x)

One Last Word

There are several techniques that I am not explained such as the Drone boost or Inclined wall climb because I consider that they are not really useful for team play.

I could have placed them in the flexing category but I think it’s better like this.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 15057 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices.

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