Freefall Tournament Beginner’s Guide

Freefall Tournament Beginner’s Guide by PhragX

If you’re new, welcome to FFT. You’ve found a great game and I hope you’ll enjoy it! Please check the forums for hot topics of discussion and general gameplay tips (if my guides aren’t finished as you read this, I’m still working on it). And please be aware that there is NOTHING you have to pay for in this game.

If you’ve been playing for awhile, welcome to my new guide. I hope you’ll find some useful ideas in here but, more importantly, I hope you’ll join the discussion and offer your own ideas. The best input will come from shared experiences and not just my own, so I look forward to hearing from you.

GENERAL OVERVIEW: What this game’s about

Freefall Tournament is a third-person shooter game. You control a marine of your choice and fight to help your team dominate the map against up to 8 live enemy players! Currently, you can choose from 8 classes, each with its own set of weapons and abilities on one of the 3 maps. Each map has its own set of rules and objectives, so you’ll have to tweak your skills everywhere you play!

1. WHAT YOU SEE: Interface Stuff

1a. Main Menu

After sitting through a commercial advertisement, after you’ve introduced yourself with a friendly “Hello!” to the Kongregate community in the chatroom and after the game finally loads up, you’re rewarded with this daunting screen (without all the red marks):

1. Your menu is on the left. Here are the buttons…

Full Screen I recommend hitting Full Screen unless you like talking in the Kongregate chat. This game is better in full screen, but it’s good to be social too.

Play!: If you don’t care where you end up or who might be there, just press this and relax. The game will add you to a room automatically. Be warned, this seems to pick at random, so your room might be empty!

Find Game: You should use this. You’ll see a list of games available and you can pick whichever one you’d like. This also reveals how many players in each room and your ping to each room.

Armory: I’m not sure you will see this button right away; in the old days you needed to rank up a bit before you could use the Armory. Today, if you go to the armory you can read about each class’s weapons, abilities, and you can purchase a class for permanent use.

There’s a blank button: Sometimes content changes, but expect something to be here eventually!

Servers: Here you can choose to play on US West, US East, and Europe servers. I recommend setting this to wherever you live (but US West probably has more players at any time of the day).

Settings: Open up the settings menu (more details in the next section).
2. If you have any friends, they’ll appear at the bottom left, next to your own pretty face. If a friend is online, they’ll show up first so you can join them wherever they are! But if you’re curious who else you know, use the green arrow buttons to scroll through your long list of friends, you popular person you. You’ll see their portraits, their rank symbol if they’ve ever played, and a join button if they’re online (rank title if they’re offline).
3. Your own rank is at the bottom right. Current experience points (XP) and current Z-cash (Z) is also here.
4. It’s hard to miss the big bulletin in the middle. The developers work hard to keep this game alive and they deserve a little something for making this awesome game. Please be kind to our devs.
5. At the very top left corner is a fun bit of information. But you can also find that stuff out here. ;)

1b. Settings

The Settings menu can be accessed on the Main Screen or by pressing the ‘O’ key while you’re in a game. You’ll see this:

1. Adjust the display to either look gorgeous or run smoother. The choice is yours!
2. If you change your mind about playing Full Screen, you can always check or uncheck this box.
3. I recommend playing with the highest resolution you can, but the options are here.
4. If you don’t know what volume controls are for, this is probably your first game. :)
5. You can adjust your button preferences by clicking that blue button. “Invert Mouse” means pushing your mouse forward makes you look down, pulling back makes you look up. By default “Invert Mouse” is unchecked. Finally, Mouse Sensitivity changes how fast you need to move your mouse to look around. High sensitivity means you’ll look around very fast.

1c. Teams Screen (Scorecard)

Press Tab during a game to see the teams in a screen like this:

1. Your team scores are always here. No matter which map you’re playing on, you always want your team to have the highest score located here. In this case, Gold Team is losing.
2. Beneath the team scores, you’ll see how many times each player has died or has scored a kill. It looks like this gold player is doing very well—however, this is a Dock map, which is a Capture-the-Point (CP) map. On CP maps, your personal kills are worth 1 point to your team and rarely matter when you want to win.
3. Each team’s total kills and deaths is recorded at the bottom. Again, because this is a CP map, these numbers don’t mean anything useful. Even though blue has fewer kills and more deaths, blue is still winning this match.
4. At the top, there’s a “Switch Teams” button. If your team is winning AND your team has more players, you may press this button to switch teams.

1d. Classes Screen

If you press ‘C’ in game, you’ll get this list. The Armory (on the Main Menu) has all the same information, but the layout looks different.

1. At the top, you see how much Z-cash you have available. At the moment, Z-cash is only good for buying permanent access to a class of your choice.
2. Beneath that, you have 3 buttons. “Summary” is what you see here. “Skills” shows a list of skills available to the class you have selected. “Weapons” shows a list of weapons available to this class.
3. Along the left is a list of all the classes. Currently, there are 8. An orange closed lock shows that class is not available for you to use. A green open lock shows that class is available for you. You can click any class at any time to learn more. Press “Select” to change the class you are currently using in the match (you will change when you die or return to the spawn point).
4. Every 24 hrs, the “free-to-use” classes rotate. 1 class from each chassis type is available each day for free. I will explain chassis types later on, in a general class guide.
5. Finally you have the option to buy a class permanently. Don’t feel like waiting for a class to be free? No problem! Spend 10,000 Z-cash or a few kreds and it is yours forever. (The price for all classes is currently the same no matter which class you want; kred prices are sometimes on promotion).

1e. Game Interface

Whew! There’s a lot to learn! Now that you know your options, let’s get into the game!

1. At the top, you will always see each team’s score. In this case, the game hasn’t started yet so there is no score. You can see I’m on the blue team, so I hope blue gets more points!
2. No match will ever start until 4 players have entered the game. I’m all alone :( Players may leave the match after it starts, so it IS possible to have fewer than 4 players during gameplay; however, it will not START unless 4 players are there.
3. You can press ‘C’ at any time to open the Classes screen. However, at this time ‘L’ refers to a ‘Lab’ for buying boosts but is currently unavailable.
4. Press ‘T’ to start typing in this box. Chat texts go above. Further above that, you’ll see who killed who and what weapon they used (Colonel Mustard with a Candlestick??).
5. The icon on the left represents your class choice. This boot is a Scout. Next to it is my health (red) and shield (blue). Shields will automatically regenerate if you avoid getting hit for awhile.
6. You can see your current movement speed here. I’m standing still.
7. These are your class abilities. You don’t get to choose them, they come with your class selection. In most cases, Q is representative of your class (for example, Scouts gain tremendous speed), E is a support ability to give you a combat advantage, and F throws some kind of bomb. Each ability’s effect is unique to your class.
8. The little grenade-looking thing with a 3 shows how many ‘F bombs’ I have remaining. I never pay attention to the Damage Per Second (DPS) counter because it changes too quickly.
9. This meter shows how many bullets you have in your gun before you automatically reload. You can reload manually by pressing ‘R’. In some cases, this will show a cooldown meter instead of an ammunition meter. Pay attention to it before you rush into a fight.
10. Finally, you probably noticed the “Capture” in the center of the map. On some maps, you must capture the point and hold onto it so your team’s score will go up. This point is inside that ship: yes, you will always see indicator through walls so you won’t get lost!

Pick-Ups

On every map you’ll find some items you can pick up. At the moment, there are 2:

These health packs will return some health to you. If you’re a tank with a high maximum health, you might need 2 of these to reach full health again.

These are your F bombs. Every class can pick this up, but your F bomb ability won’t change. Each class can carry up to 3 F bombs at a time and starts each life with 3 bombs.

2. HOW TO PLAY: Basics
Default Controls I strongly recommend using WASD and a mouse for this game. However, I list all of controls so you can use whatever is comfortable for you. You can change these anytime by going to Settings, then clicking “Configure Keys” near the bottom.

W , Up arrow– move forward
S, Down arrow– move backward
A, Left arrow – strafe left
D, Right arrow – strafe right
spacebar – jump/jetpack
1, 2, mousewheel – cycle between your primary
R – manually reload your currently active weapon
Q – activate a skill (sometimes called a ‘Q-tility’)
E – activate a skill
F – drop an F-bomb! (well, actually, you throw the bomb…)
Left Mouse-click – use your weapon
Right Mouse-click – use your weapon’s alternative feature (typically a target lock-on)
C – open the class-select screen
Tab – open the score sheet
O – open the settings screen
T – type to everyone in the match
G – type to only your team