In the Back 4 Blood Ridden Hives DLC, you'll encounter new threats in new levels all while reaping the game's best rewards to date, but only if you can make it out of the titular warrens of woe alive. For that, you can use our Ridden Hive tips, because venturing into a hive only to wind up dead won't net you much of anything in terms of tangible progress. Here are some crucial tips for finding, clearing, and surviving Ridden Hives in Back 4 Blood.

　　

Bring Heng on all of your missions

To start the Back 4 Blood DLC, you'll need to find randomly-spawning Ridden Hives all around the game's world, but the nature of them means you may walk right past one without knowing it was nearby. To fix this problem, make sure someone in your group is playing as Heng, one of two new Cleaners who comes with the DLC. His passive skill allows him to automatically detect Ridden Hives when they're nearby, guaranteeing that you'll never miss one in your vicinity.

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Combine Skull Totems to transport them more easily

Once you've entered a Ridden Hive, the objective is to collect and escape with Skull Totems. These will be left around the junction-like hives in groups of three per level, and, if you're a horde shooter OG, you'll see they act a bit like the Gnome Chompski figure back from the Left 4 Dead 2 days. Whoever carries the Skull Totem can't swap to another weapon or item without also dropping the totem. That would be a real mess, except in this case, Skull Totems are also great bludgeoning weapons.

　　Even better, when you find other totems around the hives, you can combine them, which makes carrying all three even simpler--as it means only one person needs to wield a totem. This also enhances the totem as a weapon, giving you a killer win-win scenario for escaping with the maximum number of Skull Totems.

　　

When you get lost, look for webbing

The Ridden Hives are designed to be dizzying. With tunnels made of flesh and viscera, things can start to look rather samey after a few minutes in a hive. But the best way to leave breadcrumbs--figuratively, you don't want to eat off that floor--is to look for entrances blocked by webbing.

　　Clearing webs out often reveals new paths, or at least new rooms hiding more loot. If ever you've gotten turned around, webs are your friends, even as the Ridden behind them surely aren't.

　　Your descent into a Ridden Hive will demand closer teamwork than ever.Gallery

　　

Know when to cut and run

As you explore each hive, you'll come across early exits. It's probably best you don't take them right away, but try to recall their locations and how to get back to them, as there may come a time when you need to escape earlier than at the true end of a hive.

　　Surviving a hive is a battle of attrition, and if your team is dwindling in size and in rough shape, sometimes it's a better idea to leave a hive prematurely and bank the Skull Totems you have, even if that's not all of them. The risk-reward element here is meant to be rather tantalizing, but don't let foolish overconfidence get in the way of you unlocking new hive-exclusive cosmetics with your Skull Totems. Sometimes less is more.

　　

Open Warped Chests at your own risk

In each hive, you'll find a lot of Warped Chests--locked white boxes with some of the game's best possible loot inside. However, opening them will do considerable trauma damage to each member of your team. Trauma damage is a loss of HP that can't be regained using health kits, meaning even just one or two opened Warped Chests can leave your team highly susceptible to being overrun and killed.

　　Therefore, communicate with your group and take note of how your team is doing before you just thoughtlessly open a Warped Chest. While these chests are your ticket to equipping the game's new legendary-tier weapons and attachments, a really nice gun may not be as valuable as your health bar, so choose carefully.

　　

Share the wealth

If you do open a Warped Chest, you'll find they're loaded with goodies. But that's not to say there's enough for everyone. Inside any Warped Chest, you'll find a few legendary weapons and attachments alongside some lesser, more common items.

　　Since you probably won't want to open every Warped Chest you find, it's important to share the contents of the few you do open. If only one or two players have all the best loot, your team will be unbalanced, which can lead to poorer-equipped Cleaners dragging the group down--or worse, having your best-equipped players dying and no one alive with anything fancy to fight with. Back 4 Blood is all about teamwork, and that's even truer inside an oppressive Ridden Hive.

　　Mark Delaney on Google+