If you've found your way to this guide I'd like to firstly thank you for taking the time to swing by here, my name is Miffroon and I've been playing The Showdown Effect since the open beta release. I've tooled around with the game a fair bit and I tend to have a fairly successful run when playing.

This guide is mostly for newer players or people who are just looking to try and up their game a little bit, there's been a large influx of players lately with the new update, however I feel many people are feeling rather intimidated when they encounter older players who have had time to fool around with all the different parts of the game.

I'll cover weapons, characters, maps and also offer some advice where I can just to give you a step up and enjoy the game more.

Things to remember while in game

• Ctrl (Default) is your ability key, each character has a unique ability which will be discussed in the character tab later in this guide. Learning these abilities are CRUCIAL for doing well in The Showdown Effect
  
• B (Default) is your bandage key, when you sustain damage you can't recover health unless you take time to bandage your wounds, bandaging recovers very little health to begin with but the longer you bandage for, the more health it regains at once
  
• You earn AC based off of kills you make in the game, I believe you earn less AC when you use custom rulesets so keep that in mind when you try and 'farm'
  
• AC can be spent from the Unlockables tab on the main page, this is where you can unlock new weapon types, new weapon skins, new characters and wearable items for your characters
  
• Be aggressive in combat, very rarely will you do well on the scoreboards if you play a passive game. Jump into combat and try and score as many kills as you can
  
• Be aware of what mode you are playing, if you spawn immediately next to someone else, you're in a team game and you need to be aware that blue names are allies and red names are enemies. People will get annoyed at you fast and you might even get kicked if you can't tell friend from foe.
  
• Don't be afraid to die, dying in this game doesn't mean anything beyond someone getting another point.
  
• Don't take it personal, if someone keeps killing you they're likely not doing it on purpose to ruin your day. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, don't get mad or upset about things. While it can be infuriating to die out of the blue, you shouldn't let it affect your game experience and just vow to do better next time

Movement isn't something that is terribly hard to get in The Showdown Effect, the game itself is VERY fast paced, knowing how to move effectively during combat is an absolute must if you want to come out of a fight alive, or if you're trying to lose someone stalking you down.

Important Notice: NEVER STOP MOVING IN A FIGHT

Seriously, if you stop moving in a fight to get your aim sorted, you're going to die anyway, try and mix up your movements to make it harder to track a shot on you, jumping and changing directions is a good start, but if you keep doing this. People will eventually catch onto the pattern, instead try adding in things like rolls or slides or a wall climb followed by a stylish backflip off and nailing your enemy in the back with your weapon of choice.



Roll
Double tap A or D (Default keys) to perform this ability.

The bread and butter form of movement for most, rolling is incredibly useful for crossing the map quickly without movement abilities. It's pretty much your best defence for escaping a stalker too when you're low on health, a quick roll off a ledge followed by a direction change can completely throw someone off.


Dive
Tap Alt (default key) while running in a direction

Dives are a double edged sword, they're really good at delaying damage or providing you time to line up your shot on someone, however they also take you out of the fight for a few precious seconds, a bad dive will likely only end in you getting cleaned up, or even worse you and your target will both end up dead. A dive onto someone will grab a hold of them and throw them with you in whatever direction you're going, you also take less fall damage from the dive while your helpless victim is forced to take it all, this can be really useful on some maps which are quite tall, such as the fishy business elevator shaft. A dive from the top of that shaft will kill anyone that you grab.. The sneaky thing to remember is though, you can grab someone at any point in your dive and they'll still take full damage. Someone healing at the bottom of that elevator shaft? Dive down onto them and the impact will kill them and leave you perfectly fine!


Slide
Hold S (default key) to crouch while running in one direction

Criminally underlooked, sliding is no faster than running so many don't think it worth the time, however sliding is a crouch so it makes you immune to dives, what's more you can use it to slide under low walls or to dodge enemy gunfire while still being able to fire in return. Sliding has saved me on more than one occassion.


Wall Climbing
Run at a wall and jump towards it, make sure you're still rising from your jump

Not much needed to be said here, run towards a wall and jump at it to start climbing it, you roughly take about 3-4 steps up the wall before your character stops and starts to slide back down the wall slowly, from here you can either try and climb up to a ledge, or bounce off to get something behind you.









Wall Sliding
Jump/Fall into a wall and hold your direction towards the wall to slowly slide down it

Wall sliding is another movement skill that doesn't really need much talking about, after a wall run or when you jump from somewhere and fall against the wall, you grab on and start to slide down slowly, at this point you're able to aim around and fire while sliding down the wall, so try and make use of that. You can also break a fall by wall sliding, if you hit the wall right before you impact the ground you won't take any damage and you'll have covered ground much faster than you would have just sliding down as normal.


Ascending/Descending
Hold W and Space (default) to ascend up, S and Space (Default) to descend

Trapdoors, vents and all other manner of thin ledges are dotted around the maps, when you see a thin ledge and a walkway or corridor above/beneath it, you can be certain that you can bypass that and find yourself back in the thick of the action. It's worth noting that when you do this, there is a few short moments of invulnerability, you can use this to your advantage to avoid a potentially lethal attack.

Combat in this game seems rather simple at a first glance, but in reality it can be quite difficult and daunting to a new comer. To do damage in this game your crosshair must rest squarely on the target you plan on hitting, anywhere else and your shots will miss, there are a few exceptions to this rule but I will cover those in the weapons section

Important Advice for Combat

• Never give your opponents an easy time, a stationary target is usually a dead one
  
• Learn to block, even if you don't use a sword. Look around for items that you can pick up quickly to use as a shield while someone take potshots at you, be careful with your weapon choice as not all blocks are created equal
  
• Experiment with weapons, don't limit yourself as you never know if you'll find a combination that suits you better
  
• Learn the active reloads, reloading your weapon has a small mini game, hitting the reload button again when the line hits the white bar will speed your reloading up a great deal, you will need to learn this skill to not get caught short during a firefight.
  
• Don't waste ammo, when you reload you lose all the remaining bullets in that clip. It's not so bad on smaller weapons but on something like the assault rifle that only has two extra clips, keep an eye on your reserves.

Weapons

Machine Gun/Assault Rifle

Big, bulky and a huge magazine size, the assault rifle is the first weapon you'll have unlocked, it's also a pretty competent weapon even after you've got the AC to unlock more weapons, it's real advantage is the clip size, which is a good thing because the reload on it is slow as hell even with the active reload. Thankfully you should never need to reload it in a firefight as it does fairly respectable damage.


Sword

Quite a popular weapon, while many who use it tend to just flail wildly and hope for kills, the sword does actually have a high skill ceiling attached to it. The block is useful for mitigating damage as you close in on someone to start hacking at them, but remember that a block isn't infinite (unless you're playing with modifiers) and someone with an assault rifle is going to stun you out of that block unless you can close the gap. Never ever attempt to dive someone when you're using the sword as you will always roll away from them afterwards, which will leave you struggling to cover ground again to start your attack. It's worth noting that crouching or holding W (default) will also cause two different types of swing, the upswing is useful for hitting someone dropping down above you or catching someone sliding down a wall.


SMG

Another popular weapon, mostly because it's a very versatile weapon, it can fit into most weapon combinations as a solid main weapon or hold out weapon, due to the fire rate of the SMG you'll burn through a clip very fast, however it's got great damage potential and in a sustained firefight you'll usually pick up a kill or two before needing to reload.


Single Shot Rifle

This is the most popular weapon around at the moment, one shot will shave off around 2/3's of your health and leave you vulnerable to the follow up from whoever fired, due to the single shot it's not a weapon I'd recommend for beginners as you have to be certain you're going to hit or have yourself a good exit plan. Most people tend to pair this with the shotgun for up close as it's a one two punch that'll put someone down if you're right up close and personal.


Pistol

Overlooked by many as being a weak weapon, the pistol actually does more damage in a single shot than the SMG does in two and does as much as two shots from the assault rifle, it's a decent weapon to keep as a holdout weapon when you need to reload because of it's damage and it's respectable fire rate


Shotgun

Another commonly used weapon, the shotgun is like the SMG in that it can be used with near enough any weapon combination. The shotgun is the only weapon that suffers from fall off damage, depending on how close you are to your target you will do increasing amounts of damage. Your shots also cause a knockback which is useful for giving yourself some breathing space, or punting someone off a ledge or into an abyss. You will also knock back people who are blocking so use that to keep a sword user off of you.


Rocket Launcher

A rather unwieldy weapon, unlike other weapons in the list, you don't actually need to target someone directly to hit them, instead hitting the fire button causes a charge up of a second or two, at that point the launcher will fire in the direction that the red laser beam is pointing. A useful tactic for this weapon is to aim at the ground and then at the last second flick your mouse in the direction you want your rocket to fire, it can catch people off screen unsuspectingly. Do be careful with the rocket launcher though as you damage yourself with the rockets too, you might also get called out for using an 'unskilled' weapon. Be sure to remind sword users that they can block the rocket shots if they were so inclined.


Thrown Weapons

Knives, shurikens.. Throwing weapons are probably the one weapon type that will draw you the most heat from the community when you play, the reason for that being is that the knives are thrown in an arc and the projectile will damage the first player that they hit during flight, you might find this useful for mopping up kills from off screen, but be forewarned you might end up being kicked from some servers. The knives also recieved a damage nerf so be sure to bring another weapon with you to deal with anyone up close and personal as it's much harder to hit reliably with the knives when someone can see what you're doing.

Melee weapons

These are items you can pick up through the level, and you will find four different types of melee weapon in the level. These are small, medium, large and blockers, they're all rather easy to identify and they're good to pick up in a pinch if you need to block or throw something at a fleeing foe.
Small weapons are bottles, daggers and similar weapons. They swing faster than the katana does but they also do less damage and have less of a swing range, they're better off as throwing weapons, they also have a rather weak block bar.
Medium weapons are maces, metal pipes and similar size weapons, they're essentially reskinned katanas with the same reach, block and damage.
Heavy weapons are halberds, fire axes and wrenches, these weapons are slow and cumbersome, a swing will take the better part of a second to actually perform. But if you manage to swing without being interrupted it's a one hit kill on anyone who isn't blocking or shielded, anyone blocking your swing will be instantly dazed and vulnerable for a follow up swing. They're a little worse than medium weapons at blocking from what I've seen.
Blocker weapons are shields, bags of gold and trash can lids, they don't do a lot of damage and their range sucks. But a blocker has the highest block bar in the game and can soak plenty of damage before your block is shattered.



As I said earlier, don't be afraid to experiment with your weapons. There's quite a few combinations you can put together with the weapons available. Try not to double up on weapons if you can help it, mostly as it will draw more heat to you from the community but also in some cases it can be detrimental to you. Two swords might sound like fun to alternate blocks so that people can never break through your block, but you're also left with no ranged method of fighting which will be a huge handicap on most servers, same again with two knives, you might have very good range but when someone closes the gap to you, the slow fire rate with knives leaves you open.

The game at this point has ten characters, although if you did not pre-order and you did not buy the deluxe edition you miss out on Liam Neeson Hank Stream and Mizu Ichiban. Every character comes with their own unique ability, some more situational than others but all of them are useful in one way or another.




Dr.Johnny Bionic

A new addition with the latest content update, Dr. Bionic's active skill will remove his weapons for a short time and turn on his robotic drill arm, consider this a more powerful version of the katana. One swipe with this weapon will take off around 90% (yes you read that right) of the target's health, if you use this after damaging an enemy you can rack up a quick kill, it's also amazing for sweeping into a group and destroying them with a series of quick swipes to mop up kills.

Average recharge rate.




Dutch McClone

The first of two characters that are unlocked initially, Dutch is usually the more popular of the two because of his ability to completely absorb damage from his shield. When activated, Dutch's shield will absorb around 1200 damage for 2 seconds, that's his full health and then some. There are some interesting tricks revolving around using the shield to draw out fire before a counter attack.

Very long recharge rate.




Hailey Skye

The second character that you'll have unlocked initially, Hailey Skye's ability is interesting as it's a very powerful mobility tool, hitting the action skill will shoot Hailey up into the air, it's useful for cutting out a lot of wall jumping or just trying to make a quick escape, it can also be used when falling to save yourself from a potentially fatal fall or to try escape the pit on Battle of the Bandits. However it's worth noting that if you press the dive button and THEN use the action skill, Hailey will perform a rocket dive which rockets her horizontally across the map, grabbing anyone in the way and snatching them away for the ride too.

Very short recharge rate.




Liam Neeson Hank Stream

The pre-order only character, Hank's ability is a thrown grenade that on impact with a surface or player will explode and push back all enemies and do impressive damage, a direct hit is on par with a rifle shot and a relatively close hit will still take just under half health away. You can damage yourself with your own grenade so do be careful when you're throwing.

Average recharge rate.




Leona Wolf

Leona has a rather interesting ability, upon activation the camera zooms out and Leona gets a minor speed increase, however she also can now track players that have passed through the area recently. A trail of black smoke will lead you the direction they have headed and you can even see the trails through the walls, perfect to tell when someone is hiding behind a door waiting for you to run through.

Long recharge rate.




Lord Edmund Gauntlet

Edmund's special ability is the poison flask, a thrown projectile that will spawn a gas cloud on collision with a surface, this causes a lingering poison for about 3-4 seconds that will cause damage over time to anyone who passes through it, they will also have their movement speed and jump height reduced for the duration of the skill, this can be quite deadly if thrown into a fight, it's worth noting the poison will also connect to people through floors, so if you think someone is above you on a trapdoor or ledge, throw it up and get the drop on them with the damage.

Average recharge rate.




Mizu Ichiban

Blood bath is an interesting skill, upon activation your background turns red while players and the level itself turn black, in this mode Mizu heals herself whenever she spills the blood of an enemy. At first I believed the skill to be a little random on it's healing, however the healing only takes effect if you're close enough. This is why most Mizu players use a sword, because of the damage + the close proximity heals you roughly for 1/3-1/2 of your life per swing if you can time it right. Other weapons aren't as great for life stealing however. It would also seem that the longer you engage in close combat, the longer the ability actually lasts for, I've managed to have Mizu's ability up for around 10 seconds at one point due to the number of people coming at me. As a side note, beware of Dutch, you won't get any health back when his shield is active.

Long recharge rate.




Mr. Shur Foo

A great mixture of mobility and damage, Shur Foo is a popular character because of his kick. Upon activation it launches you in the direction you face, if you collide with another player you knock them back slightly and also do decent damage. Can also be used while jumping or falling.

Average recharge rate.




Sgt.Lance Koboldski

Lance's ability gives him some amazing survival potential, upon activation he roughly recieves 1/4 of his health back and regens more health over time, useful for surviving a prolonged firefight, or just topping yourself back up quickly so that you don't fall behind in the kill counts.

Average to Long recharge rate.




Thelma Vaine

The other new character with the latest content update, she's drawing a lot of mixed feelings because of her ability which upon activation cloaks her and becomes see through. It's still possible to see her running around but she is rather hard to spot. In the middle of combat it's going to be very difficult to pick her out in the crowd. Keep an eye out for the shimmering and bending of the background and the telltale buzzing sound that accompanies her cloaking.

I'm providing a still shot of what the distortion effect looks like, this isn't perfect of course because the characters still move even while idle which makes spotting her a bit easier than in this picture, also any items that she picks up, or any weapons that have particle effects will still show up which can help in finding her.

Long recharge rate.

Please watch in 720p for the best quality

Battle of the Bandits

A map that has a lot of height to it and a few death drops if you can line them up right, most of the combat takes place in the Banquet Hall on the lower left side of the map, however fighting can break out in most locations, expect to see a lot of fighting on the bridge as well as underneath, the pit in the middle is good for securing a quick kill, a shotgun blast while someone is jumping over will usually kill their momentum and drop them in the middle, if you're feeling risky you can also try and dive someone into the pit but 9 times out of 10 you'll end up killing yourself too.

• Permanent Halberd Spawn at the very top right of the map, also a popular camping spot
  
• Banquet Hall is usually the main combat area
  
• Diving from the ledge at 14 seconds in will be a kill no matter what health

Castlevania

Not as 'tall' as BotB is but it's got a lot of close combat points while remaining so open, the courtyard area over the right hand side by the tavern usually sees the most action, with the combat being multi-tiered, the sewers also see a lot of action from people dropping down from the tunnel above onto others passing through.

• Permanent Halberd Spawn in the middle of the map at the top
  
• Courtyard and Tavern usually the main combat points
  
• Top Left of the map is a usual camping spot as the trees can cover a player slightly.

Downtown Beatdown

The largest map of the bunch, it's easy to wander around and not find anyone to fight here, most of the combat takes place in the subway section but also on the levels just above it is quite common, pockets of combat can be found mapwide though.

• Permanent Wrench Spawn is top left of the map
  
• Subway most common fighting point, followed closely by the floor just above it.
  
• Diving from the club balcony is not lethal at full health, but it will take around 2/3's of your health
  
• Top right is a popular camping/bandage spot.

Fishy Business

A medium sized map, plenty of combat can be found in the office building on the right hand side, the elevator shaft is dangerous as divers from the top will kill anyone they grab, divers from the next floor down will probably take 3/4 health damage.

• Permanent Wrench Spawn in the lower left
  
• Office building is a combat hotspot, the street level on a whole does have plenty of combat though too
  
• Diving is lethal in the elevator shaft, keep to the left when climbing up to avoid most divers
  
• Top left is the most common camping spot

Fort Fiesta

A new western themed map and very small compared to all the other maps, 8 players can be quite frantic here. Because of the size combat is spaced out across the map but there's a great deal of focus happening around the middle of the map.

• Seems to lack a permanent spawner of heavy weapons, the guitars on the second floor of the middle building only have three pickups before being used
  
• Middle building and just to the left and right of the middle are the usual combat hotspots
  
• Very few safe spots for bandaging, the far left and the top of the middle building seem to be the safest points to heal up.

South Eastwood

Another western map, a fair deal bigger than Fort Fiesta however. Combat is usually quite spread out on this map although the mines in general seem to see a bit more combat than other places.

• Permanent Pickaxe Spawn in the mines just underneath the street section of the map, near the middle
  
• Combat can be found mapwide but there is a large focus in the mines and sometimes in the streets just outside the saloon.
  
• Left side of the map seems like a common camping spot, the far right on street level is also quite commonly used too.

Well thank you for making it all the way to the end of this guide, I'm hoping that the advice I've laid down in here has been useful to you and that you can use it to improve your game. I've a great fondness for The Showdown Effect and I believe that we could do with more shooters based around this style of gameplay.

Show this to your friends and please rate me up if the guide helped out or if you just want to make it more noticable to others in the game. Remember everyone, TSE's success is based upon the community. Try not to alienate new players and help them out with any questions they might have.

If you do have any questions in game, feel free to ask Myself (Miffroon), Crab or Venom. We've all been playing a while and we like to try get more people into playing. I'm sure there are many other veteran players who would be more than happy to help out also with any questions you might have.

I have been Miffroon and this was my 'Showdown Effect: All Purpose Guide'.