YMMV / Killing Floor

• Abridged Arena Array:
  • Not as severe as it happens in other multiplayer games, but many games are played in WestLondon and Farm. Explanation: The easiest perk to level in the game is the Sharpshooter because headshots with the standard issue 9mm pistol count towards perk progress, which further gives damage bonuses to the pistol among other weapons. Both maps have plenty of open space for landing headshots before the zeds close in, and WestLondon is also among the brightest of the default maps.
  • The most played custom maps, like Arcade-Mall, Arcade-Skatepark, Arcade-Shopping-Center, Gladiator and MountainPass, are also wide open; MountainPass in particular essentially combines Farm's very long sight-lines with WestLondon's brightness, and as such became an official map in an update and is now at least as widely played as either of those two.
  • Other maps that are played a lot are Wyre, a wide open map, MoonBase, which has zero gravity and thus allows everyone to evade Fleshpound and Scrake attacks (though Sirens and Crawlers become even more unbearable), and BioticsLab, a closed map that hosts no less than two easily defended killzones (one of which is right where the players spawn). Tragically, other fine maps such as FilthsCross and IceBreaker are almost always ignored.
• Broken Base:
  • The fact that DLC has been getting more expensive - it used to be two bucks for four player models in each pack, but since the release of Ash Harding has now escalated to five bucks for one. In fairness to the devs, the five-dollar characters have some unique attribute, like a new voice pack (Ash Harding ^note whose voice pack was adopted by other female characters, some of which can be unlocked for free, rendering her DLC even further obsolete) D.A.R., Reggie the Rocker^note although Reggie has the absolute bare minimum number of lines required - every possible response only has one voice clip) or some sort of trail following them (money for Harold Lott, feathers for the Chickenator); the characters in the two-dollar packs just use the same voice lines as the default characters.
  • Weapon-based DLC has been hit with this too; for every pack actually adding new weapons, there's another one consisting solely of reskins for existing ones, not to mention they're even more expensive than characters (eight bucks for the golden weapons, for instance). Even the bug that allowed the player to wield both basic weapon and its reskinned variant was quickly fixed after the first golden weapons pack relese.
• Breather Level:
  • The first wave spawns only Clots and the occasional Bloat, so one has to really try or play on Hell On Earth to get killed. Even moreso at perk levels 5 or 6, where one can plow through the round with their bonus weapons. The same applies to Objective Mode levels as well.
  • The second escort objective on Steamland's Objective Mode version is relatively easier than the first one due to Ringmaster Lockheart standing in place instead of moving around, and the spot itself is fairly easier to defend.
  • The "Dock Party" segment near the end of FrightYard's Objective Mode. Most specimens come from only two directions, and the players are given enough space to run around and kite the zeds. The time required to defend against enemies is not long either.
  • The penultimate mission in Transit's Objective mode - while it may be a bit more difficult if one chooses to defend themselves in the reactor core room, most players just prefer to go back to where they came from and hold their position there. Most specimens will come from only one direction, which is a tight staircase, alongside a glass screen which can be used to see which specimens are coming next. Those who do appear behind the players at times are usually Stalkers and Crawlers. The same strategy can be utilized in the final mission as well, where you have to fight two Patriarchs at once... but not without its risks.
• Event-Obscuring Camera: When the Patriach first spawns there are about five seconds during which you are forced into a third-person view of him as he stands up and gets ready to fight. If he spawns near you, the camera continues viewing the Patriarch, during which you can't see well enough to do anything while he can do whatever the hell he wants to you.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • At least one player chooses Sharpshooter on later waves due to Scrakes and Fleshpounds being much easier to kill through headshots regardless of difficulty. People also like to choose Support Specialist for maps with cramped hallways and Berserkers/Medics for open maps.
  • When it comes to the final wave, many people opt to simply choose Demolitions and put pipebombs in one or more spots in order to maximize the damage to the Patriarch. If the boss survives the first onslaught, the battle might become more tense.
  • Lever-action rifle is quite common among new and veteran players alike due to being incredibly cheap and having good damage, accuracy and firing rate. It fares especially good in the Sharpshooter's hands due to having its damage, reload speed and fire rate increased significantly, but despite this other classes too prefer to user the lever-action rifle as a backup weapon. In addition, it can be found lying randomly on the map.
  • Desert Eagle boasts high power, relatively fast reload, has user-friendly iron sights and can be dual-wielded, in addition weighting only two blocks and being able to find on the ground anytime. Unsurprisingly, you can see many players carry them around regardless of class they are using. Same can be said for Flare Revolvers, which are useful for tagging the Patriarch on the boss wave or slowly draining the health of lesser Specimens, such as Scrakes or Fleshpounds.
  • It's become common for a Medic player to buy a Z.E.D. gun on the final wave to make the process of tracking the Patriarch down and stunning him with alt-fire beam easier. Of course, teamwork should still be in play because otherwise the Z.E.D. gun will leave the wielder at severe disadvantage.
  • Berserker and Medic players prefer to fight the Patriarch by simply stunlocking him and leaving him in one spot long enough for the teammates to take him out. On the flipside, this can backfire if everyone gathers too close for the Patriarch to do a roundspin attack that will severely wound or one-shot most of the team. With enough caution, most of the boss fight can be cheesed this way.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Gorefasts. They are flat out impossible to outrun on higher difficulties, have an annoying double slashing attack and deal a lot of damage. Not only do they spawn in groups, but they have high treshold of pain and might No-Sell certain attacks that would usually make them flinch.
  • Sirens. Their screams disarm explosives, cause exponential damage the closer you get, ignore armor, make your screen shake like crazy, they have a good amount of health, and the game spawns them at about the same rate as Stalkers. Luckily, they're fairly slow... but that doesn't matter when one comes up behind you and unleashes a bloodcurdling shriek right in your ear - or, worse, you're playing as a Berserker and you have to rush two or more of them at once.
  • Bloats. They come with packs of weaker enemies and Interface Screw you, amplifying the damage you take and ensuring that you die horribly. Thankfully, they can be taken down with a simple headshot or two from a basic 9mm pistol.
  • Husks. They constantly pelt you with fireballs from the distance, ensuring that you will catch on fire and slow down each time you are hit, thus making you an easier prey for other specimens. Even worse, it's hard to predict where exactly is Husk going to shoot. Unless you are Firebug, dealing with them is a pain, and even if you are fireproof, you are almost guaranteed to have your vision obscured if you are hit. Even using an exploit to avoid splash damage entirely ^note You can stand on an obstacle above the floor, thus making the fireballs bypass you without doing any harm may leave you vulnerable to all other kinds of enemies.
  • Scrakes and Fleshpounds. Both soak up enormous amounts of damage and are unstoppable once they begin charging towards the players. Because how zed health scales up with the amount of players, they are borderline unkillable without focus fire from the whole team. Berserkers, inverse to the above about Sirens, are probably the best class to take care of Scrakes since they can stun-lock it to death with repeated slashes to the head - but good luck doing so without getting disemboweled when unaware allies just shoot it on sight and break it out of those stun-locks.
• Difficulty Spike: Likely to compensate for fewer achievements than other holiday-themed events, most of the ones for the 2011 Halloween update specifically required players to play Bedlam (an extremely dark and cramped map) on Hard mode or above to unlock them.
  • The Objective mode added with the 2013 Summer event expects you to fight off Fleshpounds starting from the second or third wave - which would be bad enough if you could handle them the normal way, but now you have to stand in place while fighting them or ignore them while moving at a snail's pace. It's far from a majority by any metric, but there have been people asking Tripwire to remove level-completion achievements for Objective maps, simply because it's so much more difficult in a way people are having trouble adapting to.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mr Foster is easily the most popular character in the game, so much in fact that he was one of the first characters to appear in the sequel.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Ninja Vanish" - the act of spamming a lot of explosives in the same area in a short lapse of time, typically done by a neophyte Demolitions rapid-firing an M32. This is not only wasteful, as everything short of a Fleshpound is dealt with easily with 2 explosives at most, but causes the resulting smoke to linger far longer than usual, obscuring everything that ''will' approach after that. The Firebug can also get this by spamming the flamethrower needlessly.
  • GLaDOSH for the Trading Sphere that replaced the Trader during PotatoFoolsDay.
• Game-Breaker: Several classes have had or still have extreme advantages in comparison to the others.
  • The Support Specialist class was this for a while, and it's still pretty bad. It gets all kinds of bonuses to shotguns, increased grenade capacity and damage, increased weight capacity, increased welding speed... it's a Super Power Lottery of sorts. It's long since been nerfed by patches which greatly increased the threat posed by many specimens (namely Gorefasts, Scrakes, and Fleshpounds). Two new weapons were then added to put the other classes on even footing with the Support Specialist.
  • The Level Up content pack introduced the Demolitions class, whose easily spammable, rather cheap specimen-proximity-triggered pipebombs could be piled up and used to instantly kill the blissfully unaware Patriarch. Though nerfed with smarter specimen/Patriarch pathfinding and a special "diminishing return" resistance for the Patty himself, the pipebombs continue remaining as the best tactic weapon for any perk that can afford them.
  • For the longest time, the Sharpshooter perk repeatedly wound up with this status, as its higher tier weapons were, on headshot, usually extremely powerful to the point of flooring a six-player server Suicidal Difficulty Fleshpound before he even got within 20 meters of getting a hit in edgewise and still have the firepower or attack speed to wipe out a good deal of the hordes of low priority targets, too. As of this writing, the lever-action rifle is the only weapon of the Sharpshooter perk's that hasn't been nerfed significantly yet, and even it's still powerful per-shot on par with the Commando's top-tier weapons. The only reason the Sharpshooter is not completely overpowered is that its stance during the boss wave takes a hit with the Patriarch being harder to heashot due to his head swaying around, and its most powerful weapon of the bunch, M99 AMR, being a colossal double-edged sword that can either take the threat out in no time at all or spell its wielder's doom due to heavy weight and slow rate of fire.
    • The crossbow, on itself, broke the game for a long while until it was finally nerfed. Back then, it cost a mere £400, regardless of perk levels. That meant everyone could easily buy it by Wave 2. The damage it did was greater, and the weight speed penalty for being burdened was lower, making it the side arm of choice for every perk despite its weight. Yes, the ammo was expensive, but you could get half of your max ammo for free repurchasing it because it also sold for £400. For a while before the balance patch, the achievement that was granted for defeating the Patriarch using only Xbows, Merry Men, had been achieved by 10% of the playerbase on Steam, which is a lot considering it was meant to be One Of Those Achievements. Eventually it was shot hard by the Nerf Gun, as its headshot multiplier was almost nullified for the specimens it was meant to kill in the harder difficulties, and purchase and resale prices were raised to £800 and £600 respectively. This unfortunately resulted in Sharpshooters themselves attaining this status again, since it meant they could effectively get an extra £600 towards whatever they wanted if they were at a high-enough level to spawn with the crossbow; this wasn't fixed until the Halloween 2013 update changed it so weapons players spawn with at level 6 now always sell for £225, regardless of their actual value.
    • Even after all the nerfs, the crossbow is still ludicrously powerful when used by a sufficiently-leveled sharpshooter; by default, headshots with it do 4x damage, and the perk bonus makes it even higher. Considering that any other hit with it causes 300 damage (few other guns can match or exceed that without being explosives), a headshot for someone not a sharpshooter causes almost as much damage as a pipebomb, at a fraction of the cost, not to mention the One-Hit Polykill one might land against a whole row of enemies. In the hands of a Level 6 Sharpshooter, it does nearly double what a pipebomb will. The high damage output is nerfed on higher difficulties against Scrakes and Fleshpounds as a form of balance, but in spite of that this is a good weapon for picking out Husks and Sirens, as well as Scrakes who can still be stunned with headshots providing the Sharpshooter is the one shooting.
  • Katana was introduced shortly after the game was released, yet it still remains as one of Berserker's most valuable and effective weapons. Costing only £599 when leveled up at max, it provides no penalties to movement speed while carrying it (the only weapon besides the knife that has such benefit), is capable of greatly prolonging ZED time and is capable of stunning or flinching Scrakes from behind with alt-fire or, on difficulties below Suicidal, face-on with base attack.
  • The Flare Revolver, which can only be bought once you obtain the first Community Weapon Pack, is useful for every perk bar none. Not only does it have a low price of £500, and even cheaper for the Firebug, but it can also be dual-wielded and it also pretty lightweight (2 blocks when single and 4 blocks when dual-wielded). In addition, the Flare Revolver is capable of setting the specimens on fire, in addition to being powerful enough on it's own, and it's ammo reserve is very high, despite having a drum size of only six shots. While the slow reload may be an issue, it goes away too if you are playing as a Firebug or a Commando.
  • From the same DLC, we have the Buzzaw Bow. It's the only ranged weapon from which Berserker benefits the most - while it's pretty expensive, it's razor disks are capable of cutting through enemies like knife through butter. Said disks can also ricochet from walls, floor and ceiling, and unlike the Crossbow bolts, the launched buzzaw projectiles never disappear (and are in fact highlighted so they could be found easier) and can always be picked up, provided they end up in a place that can be reached.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Crawlers, especially if you're a Berserker. Their obnoxiously short hitboxes can completely ruin your momentum, practically guaranteeing you've got to fall back and switch to a different, less damaging but ranged weapon to dispatch them, leaving you wide open to all the other specimens. Appropriately, Crawlers are, in fact, human-spider hybrid hybrids. This eventually became less of a problem as longer (and slower) melee weapons were introduced and the axe reworked, so that a zerker can now hit crawlers more easily with those. They are still very dangerous on the higher difficulty levels, perhaps even more so than Scrakes and Fleshpounds.
  • Stalkers come in a distant second, since they're invisible until they start attacking or you're a Commando. And they love to take advantage of this just to piss off players with slower-firing weapons - they will often mix in with other groups of specimens and shield them from your bullets. Except when you are playing a Commando and trying to farm Stalker kills, of course, at which point they'll shield your teammates' targets and completely avoid you. Have fun grinding those.
  • Clots can be annoying; five or six can swarm you, leaving you victim to Husks or Fleshpounds, or worse, the Patriach.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Buying a dual handgun adds half of the maximum ammo capacity to your ammo pool. Selling one of the dual handguns does that too. For most handguns, buying and selling one of your dual handguns maxes out your ammo at a lower cost than simply purchasing the ammo, specially at higher Sharpshooter perk levels.
  • Normally, deploying a pipe bomb simply drops it onto the ground. But plopping down (or up, rather) pipe bombs at the correct angle can cause it to settle on top of you, resulting in a walking mine. Sometimes this proves useful against overwhelming odds, other times it result in a Senseless Sacrifice. Hilarity tends to ensue no matter the outcome.
  • Sometimes shopping at Trader with not enough money to accomodate everything you need might result with your amount of dosh becoming negative. You won't be able to share dosh with other players, and the only way to start getting money again is to kill speciments when the next wave comes.
  • On Farm, it's not uncommon for the Patriarch to spawn, immediately clip through the ground mesh and fall down below the map boundaries, then die. Anti-Climax Boss at its finest, ladies and gentlemen.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Playing Transit in Objective mode with Dr. Rachel Clamely serving as the Mission Control (and eventually unlocking her) takes a much darker turn plot-wise when Rachel comes back as the Matriarch in the sequel.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Players clamoring for an official female player model were told for years that it was impossible to do, at least without giving her an existing (male) voice, due to "technical limitations". Funny how that worked out in summer 2012.
• Memetic Mutation: Everything the survivors say.
  "'Loads' a' money!"
  "It's rainin' money!"
  "Dosh! Grabbit while ye can, lads."
  "Mawney mawney MAWNEY!"
  • For which the game soon came to be the "DOSH simulator".
  • Thanks to Garry's Mod videos, Briar and Masterson are this. They're awesome and their power comes from DOSH.
  • Eventually acknowledged with the Harold Lott character, a shameless expy of the Harry Enfield sketch that inspired the above lines.
  • The sheer absurdity of almost every character having fingerless gloves regardless of their third person hand model led to many players accusing Tripwire Interactive of having gloves fetish.
• Narm: Scrake likes trousers. Also, Bloats will sometimes gleefully admit that they're fat.
• Nightmare Fuel: Has its own page.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The perk leveling system. It's not too bad early on, but after level 3 prepare to spend upwards of 10 hours to reach the next level. Raising any perk to level 6 is an exercise in tedium. And then there are the perks with two level-up conditions. The numbers for door welding are ridiculous. And God help you hunting down 100K Stalkers before non-commandos kill them.
  • Higher difficulties on public servers. There is no way to prevent lvl 0s and 1s from joining them; they will inevitably join in the buy period of a late round, fail to reach the trader, cause the round to spawn 20% more zeds because of the increased party size, and die in 30 seconds. You can vote to kick them, but the round usually begins before this is achieved and the damage is done already.
    • Higher difficulties in general for the cheap method of simply increasing the hitpoints of all enemies, turning them into bullet sponges.
  • Zed Time happens a bit too often for players who aren't actually doing anything spectacular, and a bit too rarely for players who are in a situation to take advantage of it. Most often it's just for the final kill of one group of enemies, ending before anyone can find and start attacking the next group; at the very least, when it does happen in the start or middle of a group of enemies, some perks are able to chain up to four kills to extend it.
  • As listed in Event-Obscuring Camera above, there is a cutscene for the Patriarch spawn during the final wave, and as such it takes away any visibility of what your character is doing. If the boss cutscene happens to occur with him in the same room as you, things can go south really fast.
  • The Trader location changes every wave, sometimes forcing the recently respawned players to take a long track just to reach her in the first place. Farm and MountainPass are easily the worst offenders, with some trader points being placed at least one or even two hundred meters away from the spawnpoint, and Steamland also has one trader location placed directly at the other end of the map from the place you spawn in. Unless you are playing as Medic or Berserker, be prepared to miss a trader in case you don't make it in time.
  • When you kill a Siren just as she is about to scream, you will be guaranteed to lose some health upon standing close since she still lets out a sonic wave after being killed, even if you decapitate her.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • Before the introduction of the Demolitions perk, the LAW rocket launcher was an awful weapon. Extremely expensive, ridiculously heavy, not much ammo, and a very high chance to gib yourself due to a huge splash damage radius. Annoyingly, it didn't even do that much damage to "boss" enemies - Fleshpounds and Scrakes could eat a rocket and still keep coming. The later patches greatly improved its stats, pulling the LAW out of the heap.
  • The Blower Thrower from DLC Community Weapon Pack 3 is generally avoided by the majority of Killing Floor players for being a pathetic version of a flamethrower with the tendency to run out of bile very fast. There is also a chance that the weapon wielder will get bile all over themselves due to inaccurate use. In addition, despite being one of the Medic's guns, the Blower Thrower lacks the ability to heal teammates with darts. Even the gun's ability to sic the specimen on Bloats loses it's cool because Bloats usually do not last long against other mutants.
  • While the chainsaw is pretty fun to use (especially for corridor control), it's not really recommended for difficulties higher than Hard or even Normal. The main reason is that it weights quite a lot, slowing the Berserker down in addition (the only Berserker weapon that is capable of doing so, by the way). Getting past the weight problem, there is also medium damage output, and while it does have unlimited fuel, it does not fare well against bigger enemies. Restricting Berserker's speed could very well spell their doom on higher difficulties.
  • Dual 9mm pistols are considered prety lackluster due to being too inaccurate to kill specimens at long range and too weak to deal any sufficient damage to bigger enemies at short range, even if the player is a level six Sharpshooter. To make matters worse, the second 9mm adds outrageous four blocks to the weight while all other pistols that can be dual wielded have only two for the second gun. You're much better off buying the dual-wielded version of Desert Eagle, MK23, Magnum (which still has good damage output in spite of long reload and small revolver mag) or Flare Gun.
  • The version of M4 with M203 grenade launcher does not offer much benefits to Demolition or Commando players despite sounding cool on paper. The main reasons for that are high price for non-Demolition players, absurd recoil (even for Commando players), the lack of ability to level up with this gun while playing as Commando and the Demolition's lack of complete immunity to explosive weapons. That, and the iron sight is pretty tricky too. However, in a good Demolition's arms, it may become Difficult, but Awesome since it's primary fire can be used for self-defence against crowds of lesser specimens (when one learns to control the fire rate), while the alt-fire can take of bigger enemies from larger distances.
  • The Bullpup rifle used to be the only perk weapon the Commando had at launch, so with other automatic rifles coming to his roster since the fall of 2009 it quickly fell out of favor with its mediocre damage and questionable fire rate. Its usefulness rarely goes beyond the 4th wave on Long game regardless of difficulty, and many players prefer to keep AK-47 or any other automatic rifle with better stats.
  • The Flamethrower is a pretty good starting weapon for Firebug players, allowing them to wipe out hordes of zeds with little damage (or even no damage to themselves) thanks to gaining fire resistance. As an off-perk weapon... not so much: high weight that can be easily saved for better guns, weaker damage to enemies and, most importantly, it is much easier to get the player using it caught on fire, and unlike the Firebug, they lack any fireproof capabilities.
  • The machete used to be a good backup melee weapon at launch... until Katana came in and overshadowed it in almost every possible aspect, turning it in a rather weak substitute. It's main saving grace is that it does not cost a lot - and that it can be found on the map and sold to the Trader for dosh later.
  • The Combat Shotgun, which costs 5 times as much as the regular Shotgun, shoots faster and has a pretty reflex sight. The tradeoff? Well... it reloads 35% slower than the regular, holds 2 shells less, does the same damage per shell, has the same maximum amount of shells, and its ammo is also more expensive. As such, it's not very useful on higher difficulties.
  • The M99 AMR sniper rifle looks very cool and has the highest damage of any other Sharpshooter weapon, but its disadvantages make the weapon very situational at best and downright detrimental at worst. The first problem is that it weights a whopping thirteen blocks, limiting your carrying capacity to either a machete or a pipebomb, neither of which are very useful for the Sharpshooter. Even worse is that on the highest difficulty, it's damage is not really that high - on a full server, a Fleshpound may eat a headshot from the M99 and still keep going, immediately going berserk and potentially risking the team getting wiped out. Worst of all, its ammunition is extremely expensive, forcing you to either rely on cash-ins from your teammates or look for ammo boxes. Even against the Patriarch, where it fares much better due to money having no value during the final wave, the rifle's heavy weight and slow firing rate, as well as the Patriarch being a lot more evasive than other Specimens, will turn you into a sitting duck with little room for error.
• So Bad, It's Good:
  • The player characters' hammy voice acting would be weapons-grade Narm if it wasn't intentional (to say nothing of the Patriarch and, hoo boy, the trader's voice clips).
  "Oi'm troyin' to 'eal you, not shag you!"
  "You're all fur coat an' no knickers, bitches!"
  "I like the big ones. Don't you?"
  • And then you get to the Patriarch...
  "Look at you, running around like insects. I'll crush you like the pests you are!"
  "Everything is so simple when you have a rocket launcher for an arm!"
  "U KILLD MAH CHILL-DREN DUHRHUHUHUHU."
  "YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!"
  • Exacerbated during season events; he reads and studies the Pungeon Master's sourcebook for just such an occasion.
  Circus Patriarch: (after a Total Party Kill) I see you enjoyed the show as much as we did. You might say... that it was to die for.
• Stock Footage Failure: Regardless of what player skin your character has, the throwing grenade animation still re-uses the arm of a military soldier dressed in green camouflage uniform. This bug has never been fixed as of now.
• That One Achievement:
  • 777 requires you to win a fuel can on the Objective mode version of Fright Yard on the first try. The chances of achieving this are very, very low, but what truly makes this achievement notorious is that you reach the slot machine only in the second half of the level. Essentially, if you don't win fuel during the first cash-in, then you have to restart the whole map and do the previous tasks all over and over again. It really says something when there is a custom map that has only the slot machine and nothing else, meaning that restarting it in case you are not lucky is not much of a pain.
  • Dignity for the Dead is also pretty tricky to get. First of all, it cannot be done solo - you need a partner of yours die so you could kill the mobs that are devouring their corpse. Except that most of the time the monsters will stop feeding on another player's body and turn their attention back to you. More often that not, the constant gunfire in the distance will result to the mobs switching to them and leaving the dead body alone. In addition, the only specimen that can cannibalize the fallen body of a player are Clots and Crawlers. This makes it pretty difficult to kill one monster eating a body, much less ten at once.
  • Hide and Go Pukey requires the players to find and shoot fifty clown plushies in a single game on Steamland. Besides the large amount of targets needed to destroy, some plushies spawn in the places you rarely expect them to be, and some of these are also hidden in Trader rooms. Fortunately, if you play this map in Objective mode and reach the mission where you have to escort the Ringmaster, the round won't properly start until he is healed, meaning the player will have no time limit to snipe the plushies on their own.
  • Dot Of Doom requires the player to do 25 headshots in a row with M14 EBR. Given how prone Specimens are to sway their heads from side to side as they approach you, it can be very difficult to kill them in the head each time. Fortunately, non-lethal headshots are allowed too.
• That One Boss:
  • The Patriarch on Hell on Earth difficulty, assuming the players do not cheese him out with bombs or any other strategies. He is incredibly fast, his bullets and rockets deal a lot of damage, he has more health in general and his attacks one-shot unarmored players up close.
  • The final stage of Transit features a Dual Boss consisting of two Patriarch clones coming to kill you at the same time. Given how low the odds are of surviving in the main reactor room against two bosses, holing up on the second floor and placing tons of pipes is the most effective strategy, but it can also backfire badly even on the Normal difficulty. While in solo it's not much of a problem, in co-op there is a whole plethora of ways your teammates can screw the whole thing up, from staying in the main room all the time to get slaughtered or, even worse, standing on the pipes you have placed outside and letting your effort go to waste because of a single Patriarch rocket.
• That One Level:
  • Suburbia is not very liked among the players due to how confusing and outright dark it's layout is. While there are camping spots that can be defended, they are not completely safe either, and in case of speciments breaking in, there is little hope of escaping unless played with a well-coordinated team. Staying on the run throughout the whole map also has its risks since Husks, Scrakes and Fleshpounds will make such tactic difficult.
  • Offices has several staircase hallways which are almost guaranteed to get you sandwiched if you happen to take a trip through them mid-wave, with the Patriarch being the most dangerous foe to face there since his roundspin attack becomes outright devastating without any space to evade.
  • The Objective mode version of Steamland has several really nasty stages.
    • Power Trip manages to be pretty difficult, despite being only the second stage of the level. In addition to adding Scrakes and Fleshpounds to the roster, it is also a Luck-Based Mission with fuse boxes being sprawled around at random. While the specimens will target them as their top priority, it might not help much when bigger zeds are around and targeting the players instead. A single Fleshpound might ruin the entire game if not taken care of early.
    • Gold Rush is widely considered to be the hardest part of Steamland, and it's not hard to see why. You are required to carry three gold bars from vaults (which have to be unwelded first) to the Ringmaster's zeppelin. The problem? These bars are very heavy, limiting your speed and making Sirens, Fleshpounds and especially Crawlers a truly threatening force. It is even harder to do in solo without anyone with normal speed to cover your back. And there is an achievement that requires your team to carry all three gold bars without taking damage.
  • The Objective mode version of Fright Yard is no slouch either in this department, having three difficult stages in a row.
    • Crate Job is deceptively easy since all the players have to do is stand on a pressure plate until the bar in the right corner fills to the end. When no one is standing on the plate, the bar starts decreasing, thus forcing the players constantly gather in one spot where they can easily be overwhelmed. While it can be managed easily with the right team, the higher difficulty levels require maximum teamwork and a lot of luck. Scrakes and Fleshpounds are frequent to come straight from the left corner, which is the closest specimen spawn to the pressure plate. Halfway through the task, the specimens start coming from all directions but one (e.g. behind the players), requiring maximum teamwork to hold the line until the task if finished.
    • Precious Vomit is where the difficulty is cranked up significantly. The players are required to lure ten Bloats to fall into the pit in order to collect their bile for Martel Halliday. The thing is, the players are constantly assaulted by the Specimens which include Scrakes, Sirens and Fleshpounds, and if three specimens other than Bloats fall in the vat of bile, the whole process will be restarted anew. Playing in co-op might also make it harder if the team has a griefer (or a person unfamiliar with the map) who is trigger-happy to kill Bloats on sight and thus prolong the entire round.
    • Gassy Gambling comes shortly afterward and is just as nasty. You need to get two gas canisters from the improvised casino machines by dropping dosh at them, all while the Specimens keep attacking you from all sides. The space to kite is much more restricted, leaving little room for error on higher difficulties, and while the slot machine might give you an extra ammo pack, it might very well cause more Specimens to spawn nearby. Tellingly, most players decide to save extra dosh in order to give themselves a headstart when this round begins.
  • Finally, we have Ojbective version of the Transit.
    • Hazardous Transport is not very hard when playing in co-op, but in solo it can become quite a pain in the butt since you don't have anyone to cover your back. The nitroglycerin jar you are carrying slows you down greatly, all while specimens are coming at you from both directions. Better hope you don't run into a Fleshpound on your way to the goal point.
    • Inside Job is similar to Power Trip, except there are two transformators to weld and power up the gauge at the right screen corner. Sounds simple, right? Well, here you have even less space to move around, especially since specimens spawn very closely to both electric boxes.
• Vindicated by History: The game didn't start off on a strong note due to being unstable at times, having a somewhat repetitive gameplay and being overshadowed by games like Left 4 Dead 2. As the time went on though, the bugs had been all fixed, which improved the gameplay and some of its mechanics, and the addition of seasonal events helped Killing Floor to mature properly in the eyes of many. In fact, the Denser and Wackier approach the sequel took caused the fans to look back at the first game more fondly for being better focused on the Survival Horror genre.

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