Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed Ecto Edition – Tips and Tricks

As a Ghost, your goal is to bring the haunt meter to 100% and survive the last seconds of the game. You have 4 lives (possibly more on Samhain). 3 of your lives are connected to your Rifts. Rifts are portals stored in artifacts throughout each map. These artifacts are in (numerous) predetermined locations in a set of artifact items such as books and relics. You can see these artifacts in your ghost view by holding right click on PC. The Ghostbusters will destroy your lives when they capture you in traps or destroy your rifts.

To increase your haunt meter there are a handful of things you can do. Each location has its individual haunt meter in the top left corner of the UI. These locations haunt meter will increase the global haunt meter by 25% when you fully haunt it. To fully haunt a location, you can loiter in a location and the haunt meter will go up. You can also possess objects and it will increase the rate that a location gets haunted. You can see arrows underneath which show the rate of haunt increase in, this rate/meter increase with more items possessed in a given room/location.

You can also increase your global haunt meter by scaring civilians. Civilians are worth 5% of the global haunt meter. Each civilian has stages of fear. An orange near full bar civilian will generally take one basic attack to send them red and flee the arena. You can perform a “crit scare” by possessing an object and hitting Q or the “Notice me” notification in the right middle side of your screen to get their attention and then basic attack. This will do more scare damage than a regular basic attack.

Civilians will get more frightened as the match progresses, it’s worth your while to target civilians near fear on your way to and from objectives.

As one piece of your general gameplay loop, you will haunt items in a location and move to the next. You will cycle a few chosen locations and continue building haunt in these locations until full. Civilians in these areas fear will grow quickly and you will take them out with crit scares/basic attacks and sometimes your abilities to continue to build global haunt levels.

Rifts are your lifelines. If you lose all of them before you’ve generated any global haunt meter, you’re going to have a difficult time generating global fear. Once all rifts have been destroyed, Ghostbusters will have one single goal… to capture you. While rifts are still out there, many ghostbusters will be occupied with searching for and finding your rifts.

The problem with rifts is they are in predetermined locations. Higher level players will have some knowledge about where to search for these. Some maps like Prison, there is an artifact spawn point right next to their spawn.

While you are trying to generate global haunt levels, you also need to protect your rifts. You can see all of your rifts in your “Ghost View” with right-click. You can also see Ghostbusters. You will want to relocate these rifts to harder to find locations and items.

Rifts that have been exposed and discovered should take priority, but it can be very difficult to retrieve them when surrounded by Ghostbusters. There are numerous strategies to take here, but Ghostbusters at high levels will often have a defender watching. If there is a single ghostbuster, it is likely you’ll be able to get in and out before they catch you. With all four you need to have some planning, but you’re limited on time. Almost every ghost has an ultimate that will work in these situations. Remember that you can’t tunnel through walls or enter objects while holding a rift.

I will include more information in the combat section about general combat strategies that should cover these potential situations.

Combat can be extremely tricky as a Ghost, but also very rewarding. I was motivated to write this guide because of the general Ghost playstyles I’ve seen is very passive/fearful and downright cowardly. Bunny hopping between objects and running for dear life, vertical loops etc with very little basic attacks or abilities used. You don’t have to play this way.

To maintain combat, you need to maintain your Ghost energy. It’s the bar in the bottom left. When empty, you can’t basic attack or sprint. To generate Ghost energy, you can stand still or stop running. The fastest way to generate energy is to go inside an object and stay still, but you also generate a decent amount moving around while inside an object.

When you attack a Ghostbuster, you will fill up their slime meter. When their slime meter is full they will go down and need to self revive or be revived more quickly by a teammate. Each ghost has a basic attack, minion ability, special ability and ultimate.

I won’t cover each individual Ghost and their play styles, but you can read about each of the ghosts strengths and weaknesses in the Ghost customization menu.

Disabling Ghostbusters equipment. When coming at a ghostbuster from behind, you can disable their proton pack so they can no longer tether. This does have an energy cost and depends on each Ghost. When you slime a ghostbuster, it’s pretty easy to get behind them and tamper with their pack, so even when they get up they can’t assist in tethers until they restart their proton pack.

Traps: You can close ghostbusters traps and pick up closed traps. You can drop them in unreachable locations and they will have to return to the cart to replenish their trap. You can also destroy traps. Some ghosts like Lunker have abilities that will destroy traps easily. Basic attacks will destroy traps but it depends on the ghost and how many basic attacks it takes. When trapped you will have to button mash one of five buttons while moving your mouse over the green circle and keeping it there.

Tethers: Ghostbusters will attempt to tether you with their proton packs and pull you into their traps. You break out of tethers by button mashing and moving your mouse/left stick to keep the arrow pointed in the green. Accessibility options for auto-mash do help you break tethers more consistently.

Combat Loop: A single ghostbuster is really no match for you, but you may not know all the tricks. If you’ve tried to go 1:1 and just gotten tethered and trapped, this should help. A tether is not instant, it takes a little time and it can be broken if you break line of sight or move behind an object. If you use doorways and static objects to your advantage, you can break line of sight and they will have to reacquire and rebuild the tether. While you are breaking LoS you can continue to basic attack and use your abilities. Once a ghostbuster is down and you’re not under a lot of pressure, you can disable their pack, steal their trap and go hide it and pretty much make them down for the count. Remember as strong and as dangerous as GB’s are, they have limitations. They cannot fire infinitely as they generate heat, and their traps are limited on energy while they are opened. When they have no trap they cannot do anything but grab you. Another way to break LoS and tether building is to hop into an object, basic attack and hop back into the object, basic attack again. On the base slimer, it takes 3 basic attacks to slime a GB. This can easily be achieved without getting tethered in a 1v1 without using an ability

If the tether breaks, you get an instant movement speed bonus even without energy. Depending on energy level and fight location, you can often choose to relocate. You want to take fights in areas where you have clear exit strategies. You don’t need to run away to the other side of the map, but you want to be able to quickly relocate to a nearing location with plentiful objects to take over.

When you start to win these fights, you’ll get a lot more opportunities to sabotage the team with proton disables and trap stealing.

Equipment: You want to be aware of the secondary equipment that Ghostbusters have in their arsenal. If you break contact by going up to the second floor, be aware that some GB’s have grapple hooks and will follow you. Its an excellent chance to mount a counter attack on GB’s because its highly unlikely all 4 will have hooks. You’ll catch them cornered and can easily best them using the tricks of breaking LoS, continuing to basic attack and using abilities.

Slow grenades are somewhat dangerous, especially when they’re used by GB’s who know all these strategies. The best way these are used against you are when they’re used to cover your exit strategies. It might make sense to play less aggressive in this situation. You choose the fight, you choose the location. Don’t over commit in these situations and relocate.

Radar packs don’t really affect combat, but be aware they do ping off your location. When you’re not actively trying to engage GBs and are working haunt levels/fearing civs/moving rifts, you want to be aware this is giving away your location.

There is a new item, I’ll followup and correct the name here…. This item gives off a blue glow and this makes it so you can’t enter into objects or pass through walls. This is pretty much a death sentence. You need to be very cautious in these areas, but its power is not unlimited. I have not seen this tactically used very often as it’s still new. Oftentimes you can just choose not to fight or engage there. What I haven’t seen a lot is GB’s using this while destroying rifts. It would be an excellent item to use for their team in these situations. Just be aware walking into a fight with this tech down is very one-sided. You will need to keep tight control over your energy levels and know the only escape is sprinting out.

General tips
Quick access in the escape menu. This is for new players. You can access everything in the game through this menu. Queuing map/changing research projects etc. Use this menu.

There are 9? Ghosts with numerous variants. You can also choose between minions and facehugger trap minions. Each has their place and might work for your strategy. Each ghost has variants with different playstyles depending on that second ability.

I’ll include more here later.

Combat tips
Door camping. When you relocate, it might be a good idea to camp the door. You’re in third person and can see around the doors, they can’t. You can easily get a couple shots off here popping in and out of the door.

Multi-floor advantage. Rooms that have easily accessible second floor access, but no stairway for Ghostbusters is an easy retreat break from

I’ll include more here later.