Practice, practice: This is, of course, the best way to learn; all the best players have spent countless hours playing online.

Move, rookie: Don't stand still, fer cryin' out loud! In a network game with even a few players in it, this is almost never an effective technique.

Find the action: In order to maximize kills, you must seek out the areas of the map where everybody's killing each other. This is often not the most comfortable place to be, but it's where the best players are, and where the best chances of obtaining a quick kill are. Note that many players may be injured and near death here, and it may be your shot that takes them out. Don't shy away from the action.

Jump right back in: Don't dawdle when you're killed. Jump right back in and run.

Learn a good strafing technique: One-on-one shootouts are the most common form of combat, so learn to get good here. When you see another player, how you react is critical. Here are a number of tips to remember:

• aim for the head (maximum damage in most servers)
• move side-to-side and back and forth; try to keep the enemy in front of you
• jump and duck
• take advantage of two fighting each other; stand back and shoot at both
• increase mouse sensitivity for 180° turns (see next tip)

Some of these thing are obvious, but when you see someone, it's tempting to just run straight towards them and fire at their body. This is how you will die against the more experienced players. Practice dodging their fire while still keeping your aim true at their head.

Increase your mouse sensitivity: The faster you can move laterally and spin around, the better. The default mouse sensitivity is set really low, meaning you need to move the mouse a long way to spin all the way around. You can fix this, but I suggest doing it gradually so you can get used to it along the way. Start by upping the value to 6. Here's how:

• Bring down the console by hitting the ~ key
• Enter the following:     sensitivity 6 <enter>
• Get rid of the console by hitting ~ again

Once you get used to this, up the value by 2 or 3 each time. Experienced players have their sensitivity set as high as 20. [Credit: style]

Don't camp: "Camping" refers to finding a spot where you can wait for someone to "spawn" (jump in after dying) and shoot them before they get their bearings. You are the lowest of the low if you try to use this technique, and experienced players will make a point of seeking you out and punishing you.

In general, hanging out in one spot is not effective. Try to think about kills per minute; very good players average 3 or more. If you dick around waiting for someone to show up, you'll never achieve this kind of number. Jump in and go find someone, quick. Kill, die, repeat.

Know your weapons: Be sure to experiment with all of the weapons available in the map you're in. They will all serve you well in certain situations; you need to learn when to use which weapon, and learn the keystrokes necessary to quickly switch between weapons. You might even want to consider creating key bindings (see below) for quick access to your favorite weapons.

Be patient, and don't whine: We all have bad days. No one wants to hear about how bad your connection is lagging, or how off you are tonight, or how fukt this svr is or any of that. Don't give up; good performance seems to come in patches, so if you're getting your ass kicked, stick in there and your time will come. You will learn the fastest from players that are better than you, so use your bad days as opportunities to improve: experiment, and ask the good players questions; if you're polite, they'll give you valuable tips on why you suck so, so bad. Trust me, if you're patient, every once in a while you'll win a round against one of the masters -- a fun round indeed.

Chatting: The default key binding for chatting with your fellow players is the 'y' key. Hit it if you want to type in a message to everyone else playing. Sometimes hardcore players don't chat because it cuts into their valuable killing time :); I find that it makes the game way more fun for me, and it's not worth the extra performance for me to forego this feature.

However, it does cut down your kills per minute, so if better performance is your goal, keep this in mind, but also try to remember that you're playing this game presumably to have fun. There are some very cool people out there that you'll find very enjoyable if you're polite. Ignore the assholes; wait till they leave, then talk about them behind their back with the cool people. :)

If you're typing, face a corner or wall. Experienced players will recognize this, and not kill you. Or, more likely, they will kill you, then pretend they didn't realize you were typing and then apologize, like I do. :)

Freelook mode: Some servers allow you to roam around in 'freelook' mode before you jump into the game. Before you hit your 'fire' button (the left mouse button for most people), use the keyboard arrow keys to cruise all around the server. You can observe the game in real time, watching what experienced players do and where they go. You can learn a lot about how to play, and also what nifty things exist in the current map that you never saw before. Some servers force immediate respawn, so you can't use this feature.

Controls: Most players use a keyboard/mouse combination to control the game, using W/S/A/D keys to move and the mouse to aim and fire. However, some of the best players use joysticks or other controllers.

Learning a new server: [Arzach says:] One of the things I see a lot of newbies doing is to log on to a game server late at night when there are few other players. This allows them to "play around" with their weapons and get used to settings and surroundings. They basically do pretty good unless some towering HL junkie decides to hop on and cause havoc. Generally, if I have a bout of insomnia, I'll log on and try and do some late-night coaching (I also never use my normal names and push fakelag to 150).

I used to set up my own server in HL Multiplayer settings, even though I didn't have a network at the time, I would just set-up my PC as if it were and play a (lonely) game of deathmatch. But it did accelerate my deathmatch skills and knowledge of the common maps. Also, if I came across a server with a map I had never played before I would DL the map and explore it at my leisure without having to engage in online combat.
[End quote]

Ask for help: [[LDR]Cannon says:] Press 'y' to talk and don't be afraid to ask for help. Most of us, I believe, are more than willing to do a little coaching.
[End Quote]

Your PC: A faster machine definitely gives you an advantage, even if you think your network or modem performance is your bottleneck. Current consensus seems to be the AMD Athlon at the highest clock speed you can get, currently 1.1 GHz (December, 2000). Pentium 4 reliability is yet unproven; it just came out in new machines a few weeks ago.

Other things that affect your system performance include bus speed, memory speed, and amount of memory.

[Find good hardware recs, check Kiril]
[Ultimate gaming system rec]
[How bus speed affects performance]
[How memory speed affects performance]
[Pentium 4 reviews]

Your Video Card: There has been an explosion of new, very fast 3D accelerator cards onto the market. These cards are expensive, but they will help your gaming performance. I won't even try to keep up with the card wars; I'll list a few references. I have a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI. I upgraded from a Voodoo 2 and definitely noticed a difference. In any case, upgrading your video card will help you play better.

A number of operating system components and drivers play a major role in your gaming configuration. Keeping these components up to date, and configuring them properly, are important to your over all gaming experience.

Your OS: Most everyone is using either Windows 98 or Windows Me. These operating systems are your best choices for playing online. You've gotta configure things correctly, though, to maximize your gaming performance. Read on:

	Performance Tips - halflife.net	Half-Life performance tips.
	Max3D	Games, news, reviews, and hardware.

Fate, n : an inevitable and often adverse outcome,
condition, or end : DISASTER; especially DEATH