This article is growing over time, so check back every few weeks for additional info.

How to gain points and level up faster:

• Stay near where the squad Leader marks the objective (this brings extra points, filling the squad perk bar).
• Stay with your squad (these players are marked green instead of blue). Every time you receive support points (for example for healing, giving ammo, or kills), you will receive additional points if you help a player from your squad.
• Concentrate on one class and one weapon; that way, you will receive medals, giving you extra points.
• Even if you don’t kill your enemy, you will be awarded assist points if someone finishes him off. For example, if you bring an enemy down to 10% and another player gets the kill, you will get 90 points (instead of 100 for the kill). In your stats, incidentally, it will count as a kill.
• Lay down fire on enemies squatting or lying behind cover. Even if you don’t hit them, their view will be blurred for a moment, and if someone else kills them, you will be awarded suppression fire points even if you fail to hit them.
• Use grenades, rockets, or 40mm shells or tank fire to hit enemies lying behind cover. Instead of shooting the cover directly, shoot the ground next to it. That way you will cause damage and provide suppression, so if another player kills the enemy, you’ll get lots of assist points.
• If you kill someone who is shooting at or has just killed one of your teammates, you’ll receive more extra points. If the player in question was in your squad, you’ll get even more points. So always remain close to your squad members.
• Ammo packs and medic kits will be dropped if you are killed. So other players can get ammo even after you die and you will receive points even after you are long dead.
• For every second that you’re present while a flag is being captured, you receive points. So it’s worth jumping into the radius of a flag even if it is not quite captured.
• And finally: When you urgently want to unlock something, look for a half-full 64-member conquest server. Play on a map which has many paths between the different control points. To score the most points, avoid fights and move only from flag to flag . As long as you have more than eight players and play on normal servers, that won’t be a problem. But when you play on a private server for days with the same three people to ramp up your XP without anyone dying, EA will delete your points.

Some general pointers:

• Use means of transports to get around your enemies: It’s better to wait for a vehicle and reach the objective than die on the way there and lose tickets. When you’re in a vehicle, don’t drive off without the others. Always wait a couple of seconds and see if anybody is running towards the vehicle.
• Never take the direct route. Use cover, and never stand in the middle of the road. When you move, always run from one bit of cover to another, even if that extends the distance a bit.
• Never stop in doorways. Too often that will block your teammates‘ escape routes, which may cost them their lives.
• Do not walk in close file. For one thing, some bullets penetrate multiple heads. For another, a single enemy salvo can kill several allies at the same time.
• Wooden walls, tin shacks, and especially wire fences covered with tarpaulin are not cover. Penetrating bullets will sometimes do less damage, but they will penetrate. If you suspect that there is an enemy hiding behind one of these, just fire half a volley at the cover and empty the rest of your clip wherever the hit box lights up.
• Take a look at the maps on an empty server. Find new ways to get to places where there is a lot of fighting. Popular camping spots in particular always have unobserved avenues of approach to them or to locations from which they can be bombarded with grenades or rockets.
• Try to avoid open areas. Cross roads only at 90-degree angles. What is important in this game is tickets, not seconds, so it is better to take a detour and avoid losing your life.
• If your clip is empty and your enemy is still on his feet, never ever reload. Instead, switch to your pistol; this is much faster. If you reload in a duel, you will die.
• Do not look in only one direction. Look left and right, especially if you’re nearing an objective. Doing this and reacting quickly takes a lot of practice, but it’s worth getting good at.
• Find your own tactics. You may prefer stealthy play with a silencer, or you may be more of a lemming. Customize your equipment accordingly. Synchronize it with your squad. At the end of a round, it is not uncommon to see players at the top of the standings who don’t have many kills, but took a lot of objectives.
• Letting enemies escape and surviving is better than getting killed yourself. This is important for your team because you save tickets that way. It is extremely important for your squad because they will be able to spawn at your location and won’t have to walk across the whole map again.
• In one-on-one situations, never stand still; always keep moving, if only mindlessly left and right.
• Don’t get in your squad’s way. Crouch when you are in a narrow place so your teammates can jump over you. Do not walk into their line of fire. Communicate the position from which you are taking fire or where you see enemies. The more of your teammates that are shooting at an enemy, the faster he dies.
• If you know that you won’t hit anything anyway, leave the killing to the professionals and take care of medi-packs, ammunition, or vehicle repair. Also view the tutorial on getting more points.
• You will only receive help if you tell your squad what’s happening. So use the commando rose (Q key). If you die, it is essential that you use your headset to announce that you are dead and, if possible, broadcast where the enemy was. Your squad is relying on you; if you die without saying anything, the rest of your squad will die, too.
• If you are attacked inside a house (by an opponent who is also in the house – in a stairwell, for example), make sure not to be the first one to look around the corner. The enemy knows where you are, so get out of there immediately. Walls can be destroyed. Grenades fly through openings. Make sure to get out of there and try to take the enemy from the side.
• Always try to aim for the head, even in close combat. That causes more damage than body shots. You will be frustrated at first, so practice, practice, practice.
• If you have the feeling you are not getting enough kills, it is worth taking a look at your graphics settings. Even though the game runs at high resolution/quality, “worse” graphic settings can give you the crucial millisecond that is the difference between killing and being killed.
• A sniper only looks ahead, so flank him and try to kill him from behind.
• Always be conscious of what you are hiding behind. Many players act as though they were in B movies: they hide behind a vehicle and their feet remain visible. So duck behind a wheel; don’t lie down, and do not stand or squat behind the middle of the vehicle.
• If you are looking for cover, only sit down; do not lie down. You can turn faster that way, and if you have to run from a grenade, you cannot escape if you are lying down.
• After a firefight, you should immediately reload your weapon while behind cover. Even if only five shots are fired, you practice loading the clip, and soon you will do it automatically. You don´t lose bullets if you reload a half-empty clip.

Weapon tips:

1. There is no best weapon in the game. The damage per bullet is not of consequence because each weapon behaves in a different way (scatter, clip capacity, and shot frequency). Try all the weapons for a few rounds to determine which weapon functions especially well with your skills and style of play.
2. Knife attacks: If you attack an enemy with a knife from behind or from the side, he has no chance. During a knife attack from the front, the player has about one second to fight back (“counter-knife”), and the key he has to press (standard: F) is even displayed. If he does it quickly enough, he counters the knife attack and the attacker dies without a chance to “counter”.
3. If you want to use the spectator mode, you have to choose it in the browser before joining the server. So find a server, click on it, but don´t use the Play button. Click on „Spectator Join“ on the right side.
4. If you fly in a helicopter, always fly higher than your enemy in a dogfight. For one thing, you won’t be seen as easily, and for another, many helicopters crash if they try to target an enemy above them because they tilt backwards when attacking and lose altitude rapidly. When there is an enemy in front of or above you, dive below him and fly at him, not away from him. While he turns around, you can gain altitude, and he might even lose sight of you.
5. The AK-12 can be switched to burst-mode (V key) so it shoots faster than in the normal full-auto mode.
6. The bollards that are raised at bridge entrances don’t always stop tanks and other vehicles: just drive diagonally onto them at the edge of the bridge; the vehicle will lift slightly, and you can almost always get past them without any problems.
7. As a supporter and as a medic (assault), drop munition packs/medi-packs at regular intervals.. That is good for the team, and you will continue to get points even after you die until the package is used up.
8. Squad perks: the class of the squad leader determines whether the whole team gets offensive or defensive improvements. They will be shown as small icons above the squad member list. The bar only fills when the squad acts at points indicated by the squad leader, meaning squad actions at other flag or bomb points do not help the squad as a whole. When all the squad members are dead, the squad perks bar resets to zero. So when you see the notice “You are last man in squad”, it is essential that you survive!
9. You should definitely change your sound to “Wartapes” (you can find it at Settings -> Audio -> Speaker System). It takes some getting used to, but it makes it easier to locate enemies. Enemy footsteps, calls, and even reloading sounds are significantly more audible.
10. If you like to play a medic, don’t be the first to run around the corner – a medic needs wait and revive the hotheads.
11. Hearing is much more important in this game than you might think. That’s why you should use headphones rather than speakers: even mediocre headphones give you a far more precise sense of direction than expensive hi-fi speakers.
12. Buy the right mouse – until recently, I didn’t believe myself how much the mouse alone can influence game play. But one of our members improved his statistics by 30 percent immediately by buying a 40-euro mouse.
13. You can use the knife to make holes in wire fences and windows (F key). When you switch from weapon to knife instead of hitting [F], you can carry out knife attacks much faster, which is far quieter than firing off your weapon.
14. Silencers: When you equip your weapon with a silencer, the damage decreases and the bullet falls faster in its line of fire (this means snipers will have to aim higher). But you are no longer shown on the mini-map!
15. Beware of snipers: there are a lot more and better sniper positions in Battlefield 4 than in BF3. Always act as if there were a sniper on every roof:
16. Do not walk across open terrain; the maps will always offer safe approaches.
17. Use vehicles; walk back a bit and take a jeep instead of getting killed all the time.
18. Your enemy will almost always jump up when you throw a grenade in his vicinity. So throw a grenade and switch to your rifle before it lands: it’s a sure kill!
19. You can draw your pistol and shoot while you are swimming. Many players do not know that and are defenseless in water. The pistol can be selected just as it is during normal play.
20. If you want to fly, you should practice on empty servers. For one thing, nobody will shoot you down while you are practicing, and for another, you do not spoil the fun for the other players.
21. The laser pointer tightens your shot group when you shoot from the hip. When you aim and look through the crosshairs, the laser pointer has no effect. However, you see the red point. It is not as bright as in Battlefield 3, but the rule is: if you attack a lot, you should turn on the laser pointer; if you play defensively and tend to shoot from ambush, you must turn it off. You turn the laser pointer on and off with [T].
22. Additional crosshairs and zoom: for some machine guns and some zoom objectives, the zoom factor can be changed with [T].
23. Do not hide right next to walls. Backpacks or body parts can stick through the walls. Sometimes you can even see the enemy’s name when he sits right behind a wall. If you want to hide, you have to go all the way into a corner and then take a small step forward again.
24. Because some weapons scatter more than others, it makes no sense, with some of them, to aim if you are shooting at close range.
25. You don’t need a lot kills to get a lot of points. If you take objectives and stay with your squad, you receive considerably more points than someone who has a lot of kills but is never near an objective. Always staying near objectives and your own squad and supporting team players gets you a whole lot of extra points. Also, look at the tutorial on “how to get more points”.
26. If you have a hunch about where the enemy is hiding, shoot a rocket or a 40mm grenade in that direction and pay attention to your hit box in the HUD. The crosshairs flash a bit if you hit someone, so you see whether he is near the point of impact.
27. The scope determines how fast you aim. Even a few tenths of a second can make a difference, depending on how you play.
28. If you see a medic dying right in front of you, you can take over his class and revive him. That is good for the team and your own points.
29. It is almost always better to revive fallen soldiers right away because those who are revived are able to shoot right away and don’t have to get up in order to do so. That means you have double the firepower as soon as he is revived. However, only very good players should kill enemies first and then revive comrades. Why? You get a ticket back each time you revive someone. That means that if the revived player is killed again, your team has at least not lost anything. So there is at least a chance to save a ticket and possibly even to kill your enemy. So always revive first and then kill. If you die in a bad place, you can reject revival by performing a right click. If you accept revival (left click), you have a better chance to kill the enemy because you know where you were killed from.
30. Some piles of boxes make it possible to make yourself almost invisible while lying on the ground – unless a lamp or a laser pointer is used. When you are lying against the wall, your character can move forward, but in some places cannot be seen because of a wall projection. That’s really nasty, so we won’t show you the places where this is possible at this point.
31. A six-fold zoom makes sense on some maps, but on others it’s too much. Change the scopes depending on whether you expect close combat or distance combat on a given map.

Vehicles and counter measures in Battlefield 4:

1. C4 sticks perfectly to your own vehicles, too. If you get out during the ride, the vehicle continues to roll. If the C4 is detonated, you are out of the radius of the explosion.
2. Don’t put mines and C4 in a row, even though some videos recommend doing so. If things are lined up, they are easier to notice. So always offset placement or place three directly next to each other.
3. If planes or helicopters are fired at with stingers, they are alerted by a special warning noise. But if they are marked with a SOFLAM or a laser pointer of a vehicle/aircraft and a guided rocket from a vehicle/aircraft is fired at them, they only notice upon impact, without a previous warning.
4. Rocket launcher: NEVER shoot again from the same position. For one thing, the enemy sees the trail of the RPG, and for another, you have the opportunity to take a relaxed aim from a different position.
5. Place mines or C4 in areas which have no consistent texture if possible – generally not on streets, but on dirt/gravel roads. If they must be placed on streets, place them on the edges of shadows (especially if they aren’t moving and have no angles). If you must, place a mine in the middle of the street, detonate it yourself, and place your mines on the resulting black area.
6. Rocket launcher: Two rockets directly from behind destroy a tank. The more oblique the angle, the less damage is done, so it’s best to wait a little for a better shot.
7. A shot at a tank’s tracks will cause the tank to stop immediately. It is unable either to drive or to rotate, unlike BF3. Warning: the turret is still fully operable and can rotate!
8. A tank’s armor is strongest in the front, moderate on the sides, and weak in the back. The weakest armor, however, is on top. So it makes no sense to shoot at the front of a tank. Instead, you should proceed as follows.
9. When you are in a tank and you want to attack another tank, pull up next to it and instead of rotating only your turret, rotate the entire chassis to a point where the front of your vehicle aims directly at the enemy. Most players will not think of this and will continue to present the less armored flank.
10. If you are a foot soldier carrying rockets, make sure always to let the tanks pass you and fire at them from the back.
11. Since the weakest part of the tank is its top, you should activate the Javelin rocket if you are an engineer. This rocket zeros in on a vehicle and follows it on its own. This is the trick: Aim at the enemy and wait until the missile has located the target. Then pull up the crosshairs and shoot immediately. Now the missile will fly steeply into the sky first and then hit the target from above, causing maximum damage. By the way, the Javelin will make this flight on its own from a great distance.