FBC: Firebreak: 9 Beginner Tips to Survive Your First Shift

So you’ve volunteered to be a Firebreaker, and now you’re staring down a paranatural threat with only a glorified super soaker in your hands. It happens to the best of us.

FBC: Firebreak is developer Remedy Entertainment’s first crack at a live-service multiplayer game. It’s a Left 4 Dead-like horde shooter set in the Oldest House (from Control), an ever-shifting building that contains the world’s foremost paranatural threats.

Taking place six years after Remedy’s 2019 game Control, FBC: Firebreak has players participating in a new initiative that seeks to contain the Hiss invaders and other crises throughout the Oldest House’s sectors by drafting a ragtag team of volunteers from within the Bureau.

The game is heavy on action, and you’ll have to utilize teamwork, your first-person shooting skills and all of the pieces of your arsenal to survive. Here are some tips to survive your first shift.

Communication is important, even without voice chat

One of Firebreak’s more bizarre design decisions is the fact that a horde shooter has no in-game chat options. You can’t hook up a microphone to communicate with your teammates, and there’s no text chat option to send them a quick message.

That makes queuing with randoms extremely difficult — this is a game that requires teammates to stick closely together to receive shield and perk benefits from one another, and anyone who splits off can be quickly overwhelmed by paranatural threats. This is even mechanically enforced — if you stray far from your squad, soon your shields will deplete.

You should frequently mark waves of enemies your teammates haven’t noticed yet, ping where you’re moving to keep the team together and point out shelters before you open them and spawn a wave of Hiss enemies.

Even if you’re in a good place resource-wise, ping the healing showers and sinks and any ammunition you don’t need. Live and die by the ping system, because it’s the only way you’ll be able to share crucial information with the team.

Bring along a six-shooter at the beginning of the game

Firebreak’s arsenal of weapons is extremely limited, and all of the guns hit like a wet noodle until you upgrade them. You start with a boomstick that doesn’t boom, a submachine gun that requires you to burn ammo to tick away an enemy’s health bar and a revolver that can knock out fodder in two shots (or one well-placed shot to the dome).

The revolver is the obvious choice for new players until you have enough lost ***ets to buff your weapons up by advancing in the requisition p*** (which functions like a Helldivers 2 war bond). It hits the hardest, it has a modest reload time compared with the shotgun and its only downside is offset by the fact you have two teammates covering you as well.

Resource management is the key to victory in harder Jobs

Once you unlock more parts of your Firebreaker kit, you’ll want to step into harder Jobs, either by upping the difficulty or the containment level for longer expeditions. That’s the right move, but you’ll have to learn a new skill: Resource management. It’s very easy to stay stocked up on ammunition on lower difficulty missions, but it starts to get harder to retain your resources as hordes of enemies constantly spawn in as you set the threat level higher.

Make sure you know where the closest ammo station is at all times, and don’t be afraid to pop open one of the bunker-like shelters to collect the ammunition (and more importantly, the grenades) from within. Certain enemies, like the armored grenadiers with miniguns, will also drop several ammo pickups when you defeat them.

Players are able to restock their most important equipment as well, like the Fix Kit’s swivel gun or the Splash Kit’s healing humidifier, but this takes longer and you can’t count on being able to pull another one of these valuable abilities out of the ammo station in a pinch (its replenishment seems erratic). Prepare your arsenal between encounters so you have these powerful pieces of equipment when you need them the most.

The Black Rock Neutralizer is your new best friend

The ragtag Firebreak initiative team doesn’t exactly have a stellar arsenal. You’re carrying around a single (probably faulty) firearm, a jury-rigged gadget and a couple of other odds and ends. It’ll certainly be a challenge to hold your own against the paranatural threats of the Oldest House, but every once in a while, you may come across a great equalizer.

The Black Rock Neutralizer is a special weapon you can find at ammo stations or (rarely) within opened bunkers. This grinder propels chunks of black rock ore at enemies, ripping them apart with ease. It’s an incredibly effective weapon that thins out hordes or shreds through boss health bars.

Most importantly, if you’re playing with corruption modifiers on, the Black Rock Neutralizer is the only way to destroy the altered items that cause chaos throughout the match. No matter what you use this weapon for, it’s an incredibly versatile piece of equipment that can help your team stay in control of the battlefield.

When in doubt, huddle it out

This is a team game, and you and your teammates are forced to stick together if you want to fight at full power.

Players in close proximity to one another get resonance bonuses, sharing the benefit of any leveled-up perks that they have equipped. More importantly, players who are split up from one another don’t get the benefits of shield regeneration, which means they’re basically kneecapping their own survivability.

When a situation gets out of hand, sometimes the best thing a team can do is huddle up in an area with health and ammo until they can get things back under control. Whether you park yourself in the start of a zone with an ammo station and a shower, or you find a nice warm bunker to open up, identify the best places to make a combined stand.