Just came across this pic, first look at it close to the screen, Einstein... then move back a meter or so.

First let's setup a key that allows you to suicide.

Open UTInput.ini in your my documents\games\unreal tournament 3\config folder

Find a key that you don't use, I used F6 because I can allways just type "stat net" if I need to see my network settings ingame.

Bindings=(Name="F6",Command="suicide")

So how the hell can suiciding help you?

Here's a few scenarios:

You are on defense, you just killed the enemy offense trying to grab your flag, your low on ammo and low on health, and you know enemy offense will be back in a few seconds. Instead of trying to get health and ammo, of which there is none available in a worst case scenario, suicide. You are now back with 100 health and you can just grab a gun from a gun spawn. if you wait chances are you will be jumped by enemy offense with none or low ammo and health, they will escape and you have to chase them with no guns, or a low power gun, not good.

Enemy flag carrier grabbed your flag, you chased him all the way to enemy base and killed him. Now you need to get home, so you translocate as fast as you can home, but enemy was in your base and grabbed your flag before you got there. Instead of translocating home, just hit suicide key the second you return the flag and your instantly back home ready to guard your flag.

You'r on offense, your are on route to back up your flag carrier and you get cornered by enemy, you spend time trying to escape and kill them off, all the while your flag carrier gets killed because you weren't there to back him up. Don't fight, hit suicide, now you'r back and not cornered anymore.

You'r on offense, either as flag runner or backup and you get nailed by someone down to 25 health, now you have to spend time getting health back up to 100, all the while the enemy is hammering your denfense and have time to run your flag home. Don't spend time getting health if you get down to 25, suicide and you'r back with 100 health ready to hammer the enemy defence.

Remember, in ctf and other team games (Except TDM of course) kills does NOT matter, personal score does NOT matter. Every second you do anything else than a team objective, of somewhere playing deathmatch or whatever, you are HURTING your team and helping the enemy by letting them have time to get stacked on health and ammo.

Running the flag home is one of the hardest jobs in Unreal Tournament, so you need to prepare yourself before you go for it.

First of all, you need to stack up. Learn the maps and know where the shieldbelt, shieldwest, keg of health and health vials are and learn the fastest route to grab them so when you are ready for the flagrun you are maxed out on shield and health.

When going for the flag DO NOT fight people around the flag of and then try and grab the flag this will not work. On most maps, players you kill will spawn in the base again with full health ready to take you down. You need to learn how to be sneaky and stealthy, sneak in, throw your translocator at the flag and get the hell out, DO NOT fight, just haul ass and spam like hell behind you, in order to do that, you need to learn how to run backwards, or just quickly flip 180 degress to fling a loaded cluster of rockets behind you and then turn and run, never stopping.

If you get hurt on the way and are low on health, don't spend time stacking up, just suicide (type suicide in the console or rocket yourself to death) and then stack up, no point in using health vials to get to 100 health when you get that just by respawning, THEN you can pick up vials and shield, remember, in CTF all that matters are capping the flag, kills won't gain you anything, there's no point in being the high scorer when your team lost the match. Also remember that capping flags earns you many more points than killing players, if you cap all the flags you will probably have the highest score anyway.

First of all, if your game is not setup properly you will have a lot harder time being successfull. Here we will go over a few things that you should implement to increase your chances of improving.

Weapons on seperate keys (no, scrollwheel does NOT cut it):

It's very important to have all your weapon bound to seperate keys. All weapons have counter weapons, and you need to select the correct weapon for the invironment you are in, for example if you are in a close area fight and you have the minigun out then you are dead meat if you meet a player with flak or rockets out. This means that you need to be able to go straight to the weapon you need in a split second, scrolling to find your weapon is a recipe for disaster.

As mentioned above, select the right weapon for the area you'r in, constantly be aware of your surroundings, if you head out in the open pull out the minigun, shock, sniper, weapons that are effective against players that can move around, if you head into close quarters, pull out rockets, flak, or load up your bio rifle, if you go into a long narrow corridoor pull out your shock rifle and get ready to do some combos, since a player you catch in the corridor can't dodge out of the way, learn to constantly think about your surroundings.

Also make sure you turn OFF "weapon switch on pickup", YOU need to be in controll of what weapon you have out.

Hidden weapon:

Almost all good players play with hidden weapon. When playing with hidden weapons, all you have to focus on is your crosshair, and that's where the bullets will go, having a huge weapon take up your screen will make it harder to focus on your crosshair.

Hidden weapon also makes you focus on weapon sounds and learn them, you will soon know all weapon sounds and how they sound when you switch to them, this means that if you hear someone comming and they switch weapons you know exactly what weapon they have out and can take counter measures: "hmm that guy just switched to stinger, we are in close quarters so he will be helpless against some rocket spam"

Your crosshair:

Selecting a good crosshair is vital. Yes, something as simple as selecting a crosshair that works for you can improve your chances a lot so experiment until you find a good one. Most veteran players use a simple very small pink dot. Pink, because that color is almost never in any maps so you will never lose sight of your crosshair in a fight or have it blend with the colors in the maps.

Here's 2 articles that shows how you can change your crosshair:

Custom Crosshairs
Change your crosshair color

The shock rifle is a weapon unique to Unreal Tournament, it's by far the most versatile and powerfull weapon in the hands of a player that knows how to use it, it can be used tactically also in defense.

Most weapons in Unreal Tournament has 2 fire modes, but the shock rifle is special because you can combine the shock primary fire beam with the alternate fire ball to create a massive explosion that can easily take out 3-4 players if timed right. The combo explosion is also great for taking out players that are behind a wall where other weapons can't hit them.

To create the combo explosion, simply fire a blue ball with the alternate fire button, then fire at the ball with the primary beam and blam, lot's of damage and a cool effect to.

From easy to hard...

The stand combo:

When a player is approaching you and is still out of reach to do damage, fire a shock ball at where he's going, then pop the combo when he's close, instant death and lots of body parts

Seek out areas of the map where players tend to clump together and duke it out, find somewhere higher up if possible or just far out of the way and pop combos right in the middle of the players, you can easily take out 3-4 players at a time if done right, and you are out of the way so you won't get hit by stray weapon fire. Pop a few combos to get some kills, then move off when you get noticed to another place and do the same there.

The shock combo is extremely effective when you are defending your flag, find somewhere where you are hard to see, then wait for someone to approach the flagstand, fire of a shock ball at the flag (Not the player) so when he reaches the flag he walks right into the combo. When you get better at it, time it so he just gets the flag, then dies, killing a flag carrier earns you more points than just killing the player if he didn't grab the flag, that's called point whoring btw, and it's lots of fun You can do this with other weapons of course, for example load the bio rifle and lob a big ball of goo on the flagstand, nobody can take the flag without dying if you do this, rockets works to, the trick here is to not shoot at the player, shot at where he's going, the flagstand, a lot easier

Stand combos are also the perfect way to backup your flagrunner, if you see someone grabbing the flag, stand out of thier way so they can move past you, now stay put and shock combo where people will try to follow to return thier flag, they will be deadset on getting the flag back and will most of the time walk right into your combos.

Stand combos is probably going to get you yelled at, that's because it's very effective and easy to do

Moving combos:

This is the territory of the veterans, it's hard but if you learn how to do it you can become unstoppable.

Fire a shock ball while moving, keep moving dodging, strafing and hit the ball to create the combo. Once you get this down, while moving, shot the ball at where players are going and pop the ball when it's close to them. Predict where they are going, or herd them in a direction with the primary beam and pop a ball that you sent flying. Experienced players knows how to get out of the way of a ball approaching, to counter that, fire one ball left of them and one ball right, now they have nowhere to go and you just pop the one that's closest to them, very hard, very effective.

Tactical combos:

If someone grabbed a flag and you didn't get them, now they will be heading for the fastest route out of your base, you know where that is so send a ball over there so it catches them once they are there.

Chokepoints are in all maps, small corridors where people have to go to get somewhere, that's where sitting somewhere and standcomboing that chokepoint becomes a great tactic.

Or perhaps you just grabbed the flag, the enemy is in hot pursuit right behind you, if you learn to run backwards let of a shock ball and combo them when they come around the corner you can own lots of people.

Learn to lure people to come after you, run around a corner and do a standcombo in thier face when they come around the corner.

Have fun, but bevare that with being a shock whore comes some verbal abuse, that's when you know you graduated to shock whore status

Unreal Tournament has a very different movement system than other games, while having some movement features that are familiar, but if you don't learn the unreal exclusive movement features you are an easy target and you will die a lot more, hopping and turning won't cut it in Unreal games.

Dodging:

Tap any of your direction buttons 2 times fast and you will quickly hop in that direction. Dodging is vital for moving fast and getting out of the way of enemy fire.

When in a fight, don't just wildly jump up and down, that's called "bunny hopping" it while may feel like you'r doing something that works, but it realy doesn't, at least not against an experienced player.

Learn how fast weapons fire, then anticipate when the weapon that your opponent has can fire next and THEN dodge out of the way. This, of course is not effective against constant fire weapons like the stinger and link gun. Which leads us to the next thing...

Strafing:

Never use your keyboard to turn, use your mouse for that, and bind buttons to left and right strafe. When running, never run in a straight line, get used to allways strafing left/right at random while dodging in an unpredictable manner. That sniper up on a ledge somewhere will have an easy time picking you off, if you just run straight, and you never know when that bullet will take your head off so don't give them any help.

Circle strafing:

Circle strafing is a movement technique that will make you a lot harder to hit. To practice, find a thin pillar somewhere, whip out your Stinger minigun and fire at the piller, now using your strafe left or right buttons move in a circle around the pillar while keeping your aim pointed at the pillar. Once you can do this without thinking, you can move around another player trying to hit you (And missing you) while you'r spraying him full of bullets.

Don't just strafe in one direction, mix it up and be unpredictable, your enemy will be trying to keep his aim trained on you, if you only move in one direction it will make it easier for him to hit you, if you move in all kinds of directions at random you will be a lot harder to kill.

Many times I see players grabbing a flag in ctf and they are so focused on having it and getting it home that they go right by powerups and health even when nobody is right behind them. Take the extra second to grab health, vials and shield, it will increase your chances tenfold of getting home without getting killed by a couple stray bullets.

Getting killed everytime by a good player?

Drop out of the game and join the server as a spectator. While in spectate mode, follow the good player and learn his tricks. Watch how he moves, weapon useage, and tactics. It's the best way to learn fast.

Hi there and welcome to the Unreal Tournament 3 newbie bible where you can read up on tutorials, tips and tricks for players new to the unreal tournament universe.

This is a collection of tips, tricks and easy stragegy guides for new players that have never played Unreal Tournament before. If you'r a veteran there probably won't be much to learn here. This guide is made so new players can get a head start and not be killed over and over.

This bible is a collaborative work that anyone can add to, or suggest changes and corrections via the comment system so that moderators can update the pages.

Anyone can add pages to this book, just click on "add page/child page" and enter your tutorial, tricks and tips.

Please take a moment to think about what a new player might search for in a search engine and make that the title, and also make sure to use the text of the title once or twice in the page text, this makes sure that a search engine will bring it up when newbies are searching.

If you are new to unreal tournament 3, please don't hesitate to ask questions via the comment system on the relevant page, the author will probably drop by and answer your questions.

Also, if you realy want to improve, read the article linked below first, it's not related to Unreal Tournament, but it IS related to the mindset of being a winning player.

Playing to win