Midnight Ghost Hunt: Tips for Newer Hunters

Tip above all tips – Talk to your teammates, tell them what your plan is. I.E. I’m going to walk around with a radar and see if i get any readings – call out when you get readings. / I’m going to take a vacuum and a harpoon, someone please escort me because I can’t fight alone ect. Even weird strats can work if you have a team thats got your back. Tell people when someone dies or when you see something, keep it brief.

Tip 1 – No early graves – When you hear the death ding of a teammate dying – THIS BECOMES YOUR TOP PRIORITY. Get your ass over there and find out what happened. Defend the body above chasing the ghosts. Being a single hunter down is a massive loss, even if you’re mid chase, forget it and head directly to where your teammate has fallen. You need to revive them, your quick response may result in the death of a ghost and prevent a team-mate from having their soul eaten which prevents you from reviving them. I cannot stress this enough – do NOT give the ghosts free kills. You can recover before midnight if you lose people but the game is much harder for the hunters when they’re a person or two down.

Tip 2 – Ping it – Use your ping, middle mouse button. It marks objects, ghosts and locations for 2.5 seconds, gets peoples attention, if you’re unwilling or unable to use your mic, use your ping instead. Ideally, use both. Mark ghosts that are running, mark when you get readings on your radar, mark shards to be vacuumed, mark traps so that other hunters are aware.

Tip 3 – Listen closely – Everything makes noise, poltergeists make a loud hum when they float objects, props scrap and bang on the floor as they move. If you hear lots of movement and noises, you have a very active ghost team and you might want to fall back to prepare a better loadout. Something making a loud metallic scraping noise? Or a rattley telephony noise? Hear something thumping repeatedly? Might be a ghost jumping up and down to reduce their ecto-level.

Tip 4 – Watch broadly – Whilst listening closely is great, you want to do the opposite with your sight, don’t hyper focus, watch everything instead. Half the time as a ghost, I don’t even need abilities to move undetected, I just use corners and move when no one is watching. Being the hunter with the sharp eyes makes you 10x more dangerous to ghosts, being hyper focused on your radar makes you an easy target, stay alert, don’t tunnel vision. Watch your whole screen, you won’t regret it.

Tip 5 – Arm appropriately – Choose a gun that suits your playstyle and skill capabilities. Hitting small objects with the reaper or frostbite is hard, no shame in bringing a flamer or spec cannon, the only weapons i’d advise giving a hard miss are the hammers. Every weapon has its place, pick what you feel comfortable with, not everyone can hit that perfect sniper shot on a flying lantern but if you can’t hit the huge chest sliding across the floor either, put the reaper away and pick something that suits your aim. If you can’t hit your shots, you’re playing a man down.

Tip 6 – Some guns don’t mix – Don’t pick anti-synergy weapons with your team. Like what you might ask? Couple of examples, frostbite and flamer – they cancel the perks of the other people. Frostbite and harpoon – frostbite takes a couple seconds to start damaging props, every second with the harpoon is precious, if your friend hits a crazy harpoon shot, you don’t want to be wasting time slowly freezing the prop instead of killing the ghost. They don’t make a great pair despite seeming good in theory. If you don’t know what weapon to bring, default to the spec cannon. Its an amazing weapon.

Tip 7 – What makes me a good demoman? – Disabling mass ghost traps, uncovering hidden ghosts and demolishing heavy props. Grenades stick to props and have a good throwing range, C4 sticks too but is close quarters with a huge blast radius. Got a school classroom full of floating chairs and skeletons? Throw a fun brick through the door and cease that display. Think a ghost is hiding in a room but can’t locate them? Bring the explosives, they might end up unearthing it. They don’t hurt your teammates but can hurt you, so only watch out for yourself.

Tip 8 – The salt will protect you – You start the game with a salt circle around your spawn that fully protects you and the generator, don’t bolt from it the second the game starts, take a couple seconds, ensure the start of the map isn’t booby trapped, then head out. Two seconds will stop an embarrassing game loss. Feel free to stay in the circle and open fire on anything you suspect, including props massed around the generator, some ghosts like to corrupt these causing them to explode but because the gen in invincible, that tactic doesn’t work anymore.

Tip 9 – Position matters, make it count – Where you stand and therefore choose to fight makes a huge difference. Being stood in the open makes it easy for ghosts to charge up and fling themselves at you. Remember, if they’re in a prop, they need to physically collide with you to damage you, putting something solid between you works. I’ve held my own 4v1 due to good positioning (and the mighty Project X) so be assured, it matters. Beyond that, a lot of ghosts like to use elevation to escape, they can’t do that if you’re already up there. The right hunter in the right place makes all the difference.

Tip 10 – Know when to haul ass – If you see a ghost charging up in a prop (The prop will glow blue), you’ve got limited time to act before it throws itself either at you or away. If you’re with your entire team, the ghost can only hurt a single person, so go aggressive and take them out. If you’re alone, be cautious, especially if you’ve taken damage before hand, anything below 70 health and you’re in danger of dying very quickly, even to small props. If you go down, you’re costing your team time – stay alive at all costs. Charging takes time so if you’ve spotted them doing it immediately, you may be able to kill them depending on your weapon and their prop, but if they’re charging something big and you’re alone, mark it and run. Live to fight another day, hunter.

Tip 11 – Perks that work – The right perk makes a build fly, pick something appropriate. Quick reload increases DPS and reduces reload vulnerability, extended mag lets you heap the pain on for longer, lightweight lets you keep pressure on fast moving ghosts, extra equipment is great for planned assaults and traps. Juggernaut is amazing versus aggressive ghosts and healing aura is great versus ghosts trying to wear you down. I’d highly recommend Jugger if you keep getting downed before midnight – make them work for it.

Tip 12 – How does this bloody thing work? – Get to know your detection options and pick what works best for you. Radar is stable, effective and easy to read. Spec phone is powerful and long range but easily fooled by corruption and poltergeist. Pathfinder is good versus prop sliding ghosts but weak versus certain abilities and jumpy ghosts.

Tip 13 – No hunter left behind – Keep a general eye on what your team is doing and where they are. See a 5th person? Call it out. See someone alone on the far side of map? Be ready to go to their aid of they’re attacked. As a hunter, you have limited information compared to the ghosts, use everything given to you, your teammates are a very useful source of knowledge.

Tip 14 – If that don’t work, use more gun – You can shoot floating props to disable the throw effect and you can shoot death grip traps on the floor to destroy them. Don’t spend your whole time shooting because you won’t be able to hear things but your weapon is your best defence versus ghost tricks, be quick on that trigger finger if you’re being trapped.

Tip 15 – If its too good to be true – Don’t go chasing ghosts wildly into unexplored rooms in the beginning of the game. Some ghosts will expose themselves early to get you to chase and make you run into rooms full of skeletons, floating objects and exploding vases. Not always, but just always keep your wits about you. Once again, ghosts make noises, if you hear lots of humming and moving, be wary of ghosts attempting to bait you.

Tip 16 – Live together or die together – Unless you’re highly experienced, I wouldn’t wander around alone, stay in pairs to cover more ground and keep each-other safe. Numbers do matter and hunters are stronger together.