INTRODUCTION – Paper, Scissors, Flesh Eating Monster
Welcome hunters (or slavering beast) to the lush and verdant planet of Shear. Home of varied and exotic wildlife, natural resources and vicious killing machines. Anyone else feeling like a redshirt from Star Trek after signing up for this? Evolve has four main game types, each of which has differing win conditions and strategies you can use to improve your odds of success. Here are some basic ideas to keep in mind when playing this game. No matter what mode you are playing, these should help keep your side alive.
Hunters:
- Stick together: While it can be useful to split up (especially into pairs for advanced strategies), don't under any circumstances go wandering off alone. Why? Because even a level one monster can easily overpower or use stealth to pin and claw to death a lone hunter. If you do break up into pairs, make sure to keep in quick sprinting distance of each other. The bleed out timer is quite short in this game, so if a pair gets ambushed you want to be close enough to reach them.
- Pair up: As mentioned above, some strategies revolve around pairing up, using decoys, and setting up ambushes and traps. In this situation, it is important to pair up the right classes with each other. A good starting combination is: Assault + Medic. The medic is tasked with keeping the assault player alive while they track the monster aggressively in it's weaker (lv 1 or 2) forms. Anyone who has played a class based shooter should understand how this works. Support + Trapper: While the other group is actively tracking the monster, this pair can set up traps, flank the monster or use pincer tactics to attack from both sides.
- Use class abilities effectively: Each class of hunter has a different and valuable class ability. Using these with skill and at correct time can be the difference between a dead group of hunters and a group of hunters high-fiving on the corpse of a monster. For example: Timing the assault's shield ability well (when a monster is actively attacking him, or when reviving a comrade) makes him temporarily invulnerable and will allow him to survive more effectively or successfully resurrect the medic of the team so the hunters can make a comeback.
Monster:
- Feeding. Nom nom: Feeding (except for certain game modes) and running is the literal "bread and butter," for most of the time you spend as a monster. Hunt, nest and resuce modes all contain sections (hunt especially) where your monster should be feeding itself up and gaining passive buffs from special wildlife. Once you have evolved once or twice, you can take the fight to the hunters or destroy the objective. Advanced strategies involving stealth and luring hunters can also come in handy later.
- Armour Maintenence: Armour management is one of the most vital aspects of controlling a monster. Monsters have an armour bar which can be refilled by eating dead wildlife or hunters. The monster's health bar on the other hand cannot be refilled, so fleeing or interrupting attackers while you feed to regain armour are essential skills to learn. Keeping an eye on your armour and fleeing when it is nearly spent is a good tactic for monster players to get their heads around early on. More experienced players will know when to keep pushing or to leg it instead.
- Stealth: Yes, your hulking Godzilla style monster has stealth abilities. These allow you to bring down animals without being attacked and reduces the chance of detection by hunters. You can also pounce on lone hunters and rip their giblets out while they can do nothing about it. All they can do is wait for another hunter to arrive and rescue them. Stealth is especially handy in dealing with the final remaining hunter as if you initiate a stealth pin, they have no comrades left to revive them, meaning your monster can chow down without fear of reprisal.