The hardcore co-op shooter GTFO is equal parts combat and stealth, but if you get too comfortable with one and not the other, you may be in for a world of pain.

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Resource conservation is vital to staying prepared for anything in GTFO. An important way to make sure you don’t waste too much of anything is to avoid waking up rooms - in other words, be stealthy! Unfortunately, GTFO doesn’t do much to teach new or existing players the ins and outs of its stealth system. That’s why we’re here to help with some useful tips for mastering stealth.

9 Understand The Sleepers

Players watching a sleeping striker

When asleep, GTFO’s monsters have two states: they’ll either be glowing, or they won’t.

When a sleeper is not glowing, you and your team can move closer to it while crouching without waking it up. When it does glow, however, movement, sound, or light will have a high chance of triggering it, which may cause an entire room of monsters to come rushing at you.

When they glow, they will also emit a low-pitched ‘growling sound’ to further help you realize when you should stop moving. Be patient with this game of ‘Red light, green light’ and you’ll slowly but surely get the hang of the timing.

8 Co-ordinate Your Kills

Multiple sleepers in their glowing state

GTFO is a co-op game for a reason. This becomes evident when multiple sleeping enemies have the chance to be directly next to each other, and taking care of one without alerting the other becomes an impossibility.

With the help of a friend or two, you can synchronize your kills together to avoid this issue entirely! Just make sure nothing is glowing in the distance when you take your swings, or your efforts may be for nothing…

When everyone is ready, one person should vocally begin a countdown.

7 Use The Bio Tracker

GTFO's bio tracker pinging alerted enemies

The Bio Tracker tool shows you where enemies are located relative to you. When looking at its display panel, any white dots you see represent a nearby sleeper.

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While essentially being ‘another pair of eyes’, the bio tracker can be deceptively useful. If you find yourself in a very dark or foggy room where visibility is limited, stick together and let whoever has it take the lead, as they’ll be able to easily tell how many enemies are nearby and exactly where to find them.

6 Glow Sticks Can Be Useful

A sleeper illuminated by a glow stick

Glow sticks are an extremely common sight when opening a resource box. While it's typically demotivating to find them in place of something like ammunition or health packs, there’s nothing wrong with designating one player as the dedicated glow stick carrier in case you need to stealth through a dark room.

Regardless of the bio tracker's help with navigating the dark, getting a direct visual on enemies without needing to risk using your flashlights can help the team maneuver much more efficiently. The bio tracker cannot tell what kinds of enemies are nearby either, so getting a risk-free visual confirmation may save your life.

5 Be Cautious Around Bigs

A sleeping giant in its glowing state

Sleeping giant variants need a lot more care than your average horde. A single big can easily wipe out your full team if you wake him up in melee-range, and when they’re sprinkled in a room full of smalls, it can be tricky to take them down quietly.

The main way to do it is to get your full team, or least three people, crouched behind one and ready to swing. A quick countdown followed by three well-timed fully-charged swings should do the trick, but make sure no one misses their shot, or you may regret it. Worst case, if a giant has too many sleepers in close proximity, carefully clear out the rest of the room and leave it for last.

4 Prioritize Scouts

A scout spreading its tendrils on a bridge

Alerting a room is one thing, but triggering a scout is a lot worse. Not only will the critters in the local room get angry, the scout will summon an additional wave of enemies which have the chance to wake yet another room, which can either lead to the end of a run or a massive waste of precious limited resources. Needless to say, you should absolutely prioritize getting rid of them.

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Be extra careful - if you wake up a sleeper, it’ll trigger the scout, so don’t rush ahead to kill it. While it’s most efficient to whack one in the head with a full hammer or spear charge (you can even c-foam it if it’s too mobile for your liking), if a room is jam-packed with enemies, it may actually be a better choice to shoot it from afar with a powerful weapon like the sniper rifle. While this will certainly wake the rest of the room, it’s safer than adding an extra scout wave to the list of things to shoot.

3 Plan Your Path

Players carefully traversing a foggy forest

When it comes to larger rooms with more diverse and deadly enemies, carving your path strategically is important. Some teams split up to speed up stealth time, which in some cases can work, but if enemies are packed close together or giants are in the equation, problems may arise.

If the team is split up and the room wakes up, there’s a far higher chance that someone will go down. The same can be said for if you and your team carelessly clear a thin path into the middle of the room; if other enemies are awoken, you’ll be completely surrounded.

Often the best trick is to clear the section closest to the door you came from, so you have more space to move, and slowly clear the room from one end to the other. This way if awoken, the horde will mostly come from in front of you, which makes defending yourselves far easier.

2 Take Advantage Of Your Flashlight

Two Players Searching with their Flashlights

Sleepers react to three things: movement, sound, and light. A common mistake that many make is forgetting to turn their flashlight off when exploring new areas, but there’s actually a way to use it to strategically stealth through rooms.

If you point your flashlight at an enemy for only a mere moment, it will go from its sleeping state to its glowing state. Enemies naturally go in and out of their glowing states, but they are usually out of sync. Flashing a group of enemies at the same time will also cause them to glow at the same time, synchronizing their sleeping patterns and allowing for safer movement.

1 If All Else Fails, Use Plan B

A Horde of Strikers Breaking Into a Room

Sometimes, a room may seem so dangerously packed that there’s nearly no hope in clearing it silently. That’s okay. GTFO is all about planning ahead for the insurmountable!

When in a truly dangerous situation, always have a Plan B. Whether that’s to shut the door and place a mine on it, or to have sentry guns pointing down a hall you can lure the enemies toward, sometimes you may simply need to wake up a room in advance, so you don’t get caught in the middle of it and risk losing the run. Planning ahead will allow you to think about what’s more important - should you allow sentries and a mine to take care of most enemies, losing tool but saving ammo, or vice versa?

Ultimately, as with any strategy you may choose to employ in GTFO, the choice is yours to make.

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