A Totally Serious Guide to Hell Let Loose

Adam Sharman
7 min readSep 25, 2024

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Relax… It’s Hell “Let Loose” not Hell “Get Stressed”

One of the first things I ever wrote for the internet was a beginner’s guide to Hell Let Loose. Since then I have done a lot of self development and personal reflection in the foxholes of battle scarred Europe. Freshly armed with my knowledge from hundreds of hours of gameplay, I have come to understand how to truly play this WW2 Shooter:

DO NOT use a Microphone

Hell Let Loose is a serious game and many players like to immerse themselves in the experience by roleplaying their place in an epic, continent spanning war. In order to have the best gameplay experience I heavily recommend avoiding the use of a microphone, your squad mates in WW2 wouldn’t have had individual headsets so it’s better if you don’t either.

If you do urgently need to communicate with your comrades then politely ask them for their postal address so you can park up outside and yell fractured commands through their window. Make sure a sterling rendition of “Erika” is playing on your car stereo for extra effect.

Not a cell phone in sight, just people, living in the moment.

DO NOT Defend

You’ve heard the old adage, “The best defence is a good offence” and these words have never been truer than in your average game of Hell Let Loose. Remember, if you and your squad find yourselves concentrated on your own point, the enemy is more likely to realise that there is something valuable worth attacking there.

Constant offensives are the prime way to show that you are a real threat to the enemy team. They will be so bewildered by your overwhelming confidence that they might resort to simply hiding behind their sandbags. If, by some freak accident, a cowardly enemy sneaks behind your lines and starts capturing your point then you simply have to capture their point… harder.

I can tell that by reading this guide you are truly an overachiever. So as an advanced strategy you can show teammates your tenacity and daring by holding ground deep into enemy territory. The enemy will never suspect you to be on the uncapturable points behind their lines and the sheer hit to their morale will be more effective than any paltry bombing run.

DO NOT Flank

Explosions, headshots and flank pain. The top 3 causes of unrevivable deaths.

Seriously? The enemy is right in front of you, why are you trying to put more distance between you and them? Games of Hell Let Loose are won purely based on who shoots the most. It’s simple, if you can make more ding sounds than your opponents, then you will advance. The closer you are to the enemy, the easier it is to shoot them. Understanding this is key to explaining that any time spent trying to build additional spawn points encircling an objective is simply time you could have spent unloading more clips in the vague direction of the opposing infantry.

Every now and then some rogue officer may take it upon themselves to try and set up a garrison behind the enemy team. This is a common method experienced players use to highlight and weed out the new recruits who might be tricked into spawning on it. These “n00bs” can then be safely removed from the server to allow for a more mature and realistic FPS experience.

DO NOT Build Spawn Points

In Hell Let Loose there are two types of spawn points an officer can build:

The first is an outpost, placeable by an individual officer at no cost which allows only their squad to spawn on it. Overuse of outposts is a sure-fire way to get lazy, out of shape teammates. If your squad isn’t prepared to deal with the minor inconvenience of a light jog over empty fields with minimal cover to get into the battle, would you really trust them with your life in a live firefight? Worst of all, if an enemy was to discover your outpost and destroy it, you would be handing off a whopping 5 offensive points to the enemy team which can make all the difference in a particularly close round.

Secondly we have a garrison. In friendly territory a garrison requires you to have 50 supplies nearby in order to construct it. Now while a whole team can spawn on a garrison, the main problem is that 50 supplies can also be used to construct an AT gun, and only one of these two options can take out a tank. Allied infantry simply won’t have a need to respawn if you kill anything that can potentially threaten them. You are here to win, so stop thinking with a loser’s mindset.

DO NOT Build Nodes

Hell Let Loose is now over 5 years into its development cycle and the community who continue to play the game are pretty well versed in its mechanics. For any new players, nodes are structures that can be built by the engineers of the team in order to provide the commander more resources for special abilities. Now take a good look at this piece of key art for the game.

Note the AT gun aimed at the supply truck… it’s all in the subtext

Do you see an orderly queue of well supplied vehicles? Do those roads look reliable enough to handle the complex logistics needed to support a 20th century war machine? Of course not, so don’t patronise your commander by giving him unrealistic supply chains. I would be frankly insulted if my officers didn’t trust me to utilise the rather limited fuel, ammo and manpower at my disposal for best effect.

If you get on particularly well with your commander, make sure that you and 2 friends are constantly using the artillery to best simulate a munition starved command scenario. Not only will your seniors appreciate it, but you will be building more adaptable leadership for campaigns to come. The developers even subtly encourage you to avoid building nodes by having supply trucks that are immediately rendered immobile and unusable from a small hole in the ground. Take the hint Private.

DO NOT Form a Tank Crew

Now hold on, I am not saying don’t use armour, it’s a vital part of any fighting force. The problem is that in Hell Let Loose every fighting vehicle has THREE crew slots. Sadly this is a bug that the developers have never patched out because each tank only has ONE main gun. What the fuck are the other crewman going to do? The main gun already has multi level optics so the spotter is entirely redundant and driving around simply makes your vulnerable rear armour more likely to be exposed to the enemy.

Besides, if you split up a crew, then instead of 3 people in 1 tank, you can have 3 people in 3 tanks. It’s simple maths. 3 > 1. SOLO TANKING IS A FORCE MULTIPLIER.

Important Note: As a British national I am legally obligated to tell you that English tanks DO need a second person. The tank’s boiling vessel is not going to operate itself and the gunner will be rendered useless without a constant supply of tea. This is one of the many reasons people felt the British faction was rather underwhelming on release.

Make sure you aren’t too rough with British tanks either, we don’t want to risk the good china.

DO NOT Use Smokes

To effectively shoot the enemy. YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE ENEMY. A handful of classes come equipped with smoke grenades but you absolutely should not use them. According to one study around 50% of soldiers in WW2 actively smoked during the period and another 20% reported general annoyance at your shitty smoke concealment strategies. How are we supposed to dodge the enemy shots if we can’t see where they are coming from?

Finally and most importantly…

DO NOT Have Fun

I mean it. Do you think this is a game? This is war and the last thing I need is your giggly ass taking me out of my hardcore mil sim experience. Any attempt to find enjoyment, laugh with friends or otherwise use some of your time on this earth to generate positive emotions is strictly forbidden in a game with such a serious subject matter.

Frankly, I have been complaining to the developers that to even play the game you should need to prove that for the last 24 hours you subsisted off nothing but rain water and expired military rations in the local forest. Sadly my protests have been met with concerns that it might “Make it harder for new players to join” or “hurt the long term commercial sustainability of the game”. As if either of those things matter.

Now that you have taken these lessons to heart. I hope to see you out there on the fields of Hell Let Loose… preferably on the opposing team.

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Adam Sharman
Adam Sharman

Written by Adam Sharman

Your friendly neighbourhood analyst. Can't shut his mouth when it comes to games and apparently can't stop his typing either.

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