What are you trying to prove?

**WhiskeySix** · 04-02-2009, 11:42 AM

... is the name of the achievement you get when you beat all four campaigns on expert. Me and a few others have been taking a break from VS to work on this over the last week or two.

Last night was particularly awesome. After getting repeatedly, frustratingly destroyed on Blood Harvest for the last few nights, I switched it up and started a lobby for Dead Air. (heh, the night before, we beat both tanks at the end, and then as we turned the corner, there was the third tank STANDING ON THE RAMP TO THE APC!!! #$%@!)

Anyway, Fallen, Namebot, and Helmetless Helgast joined up, and we started without drama (i.e. didn't spend the typical 45 minutes in the lobby trying to get a freakin server

). When we left the greenhouse at the start of lvl1, we handled a horde, but then namebot and fallen got disconnected by steam. After they reconnected, we restarted to make sure they'd get credit for beating the campaign, if we were lucky enough to do so.

It turns out that would be our only restart of the night! We had incredible teamwork the whole night... the kind that "just happens". Isn't it funny how sometimes you just gel and other times you just can't do anything right? There were a couple of close calls, where we had three guys incap'd, but we never had all four die. At the end of it, all four of us ended up getting our "expert dead-air badge"! What's even more stunning was that we got it on the first attempt at the finale!

(The hill behind the plane is where to be - long sight lines makes it easy to kill the horde, and then you've got a big open space in front/right of the plane to deal with the tanks. Plus when you beat the second tank, you're right there at the plane.)

Anyway, I had a crappy day yesterday (didn't get a job I'd interviewed for and expected to get), and this was the perfect attitude-adjuster at the end of the night. Thanks for the awesome teamwork guys

**RogueTheory** · 04-02-2009, 01:06 PM

Sounds awesome!! I've actually been trying to finish this achievement myself, but pubbing Expert games hasn't worked out too well for me thus far. Add me up on Steam if you'd like: tho005

**Iamthefallen** · 04-02-2009, 01:22 PM

Yeah, there's been some really good coop games lately. It seems like there's always some issue and I can't finish the campaign, so it was fun to get started so quickly and be able to go through the whole thing in an hour forty.

Steam/connection issues aside, this game is awesome when you got a good group. It's so cool to see how teamwork develops during the course of the campaign, and a few maps into it everyone knows what to do and where to go when the hordes come.

**Charles Darwin** · 04-02-2009, 08:53 PM

damn it thats the LAST ONE I NEED!!! :P lol

**whitelancer11** · 04-02-2009, 09:11 PM

i actually havent tried it out with my friends..

**WhiskeySix** · 04-02-2009, 09:32 PM

Originally Posted by whitelancer11

i actually havent tried it out with my friends..

omg! expert coop with friends is intense!!

**Celestial1** · 04-02-2009, 10:11 PM

Originally Posted by WhiskeySix

(heh, the night before, we beat both tanks at the end, and then as we turned the corner, there was the third tank STANDING ON THE RAMP TO THE APC!!! #$%@!)

Not only that, but he and the entire horde happened to rush DIRECTLY out of the barn aside the APC, making it frustrating to get in. I think we had 1 in or almost in at some point, but were all incapped by the tank, ruining it.

But, at least we invited the horde to come jump off of the cliff with us.

**™º¤Õh €vîL Ôñë¤º™** · 10-08-2009, 10:40 AM

Originally Posted by WhiskeySix

omg! expert coop with friends is intense!!

When I fought my way to getting this achievement, I too had been plagued by disconnects (most annoyingly halfway to the farmhouse and finale event). Then, to make matters worse, I went through a (thankfully brief) phase, of getting an achievement, but only for one night!!

One of the perks of this though, was that I spent a LOT of time playing expert maps, which really stood me in good stead for going on to play Vs matches. Small mercies, n alla that.

If I could go back to the beginning of my l4d experience, I think I'd recommend though playing co-op until you've got all four campaigns survived (Mercy Killer, Toll Collector, Dead Baron and Grim Reaper), no-one left behind and all the fundamental anti-SI ones, then switch it up and go to Vs for a while. The only downside to now playing Vs most days/nights is that I find myself still looking up at all sorts of rooftops the AI Director would never use for hunter pounces. Seems those witches really don't like being trodden on......

The bonus to going Vs is that it REALLY sharpens you up, almost like Boot Camp for Expert difficulty levels. Having said that, struggling through night after night of expert difficulty attempts may have much the same effect, but at least you stand a chance of getting a few Vs achievements at the same time, and it saves you from the inevitable "bad taste" associated with some campaigns (Blood Harvest for most people, in my experience). A friend of mine took almost a month to get BH on expert and, having played it with him most of that time, I seldom go back to that final campaign.

Anyway, enough of this, I have to go finish off getting my Littlest Genocide achievement.

**Kebab-Kastike** · 10-20-2009, 11:36 PM

Hmm, I always considered Expert as boot camp for Versus.
If you don't survive coop on expert, you aren't likely going to do well in versus as you cannot defend yourself properly.

Depends a lot who you play with though.

**Lyramion** · 11-20-2009, 08:48 PM

I tend to disagree - a good VS team will be very reckless - zombies surround your mate? Bast away with the shotty including 5-8 teamdamage. Expert is about being very careful and advancing step by step.

Now with L4D2 out we also have realism mode to be on top of it all