Undawn Hold the Line Guide: Tips to Successfully Complete Any Level

If you’re facing difficulties in completing levels in the Hold the Line mode, then this guide is for you. I’ve been playing Undawn for 4 months, so I have a lot of useful information about this game mode.

As of writing this guide, my character is level 92 and ranks 53th in the Hold the Line leaderboard with a character rating of ~47000.

Quick Video Guide

Why It’s Important to Clear Hold the Line

This mode is accessible through Esc → Ravens → Hold the Line.

On the right, there’s the “Title Up” section where you can see the bonuses, you’ll receive for leveling up your Hold the Line title. Individually, these bonuses might seem insignificant, but the cumulative increase in your stats at higher levels becomes significant.

Furthermore, for the first completion of each Hold the Line level, you’ll receive Silver and Talent Points, with higher levels granting larger rewards.

Boost Your Character Rating

It’s no secret that your character’s rating directly affects the damage you deal and receive in PVE (excluding special events). Each Hold the Line level has a recommended rating for completion. If your rating falls below this requirement, you’ll deal significantly less damage and take more damage from even the weakest enemies.

In today’s Undawn, a low rating is the primary reason why you can’t complete Hold the Line. You need to eliminate all the zombies quickly, and if most of your damage is reduced due to a low rating, it becomes impossible. So, the first and most important step is to increase your rating through all available means.

The simplest and most cost-effective way is through Talents. However, remember that such a rating will be “hollow.” Your character won’t become stronger if you enhance melee damage and frost pulse mine. For this reason, it’s best to invest your resources in enhancing your character’s base stats.

Strengthening Your Character for Hold the Line

First and foremost, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with the Undawn character stats guide (especially the basic damage formula) to precisely understand which attributes to develop.

You can strengthen your character for Hold the Line in several ways.

Heavy Weapon: M134 Heavy Machine Gun

If you’re using anything else, it’s an immediate mistake. In Hold the Line mode, you need maximum DPS, so you require the M134 Heavy Machine Gun. On my server, an epic one costs around 100-130k Gold. Check out a separate guide on crafting a Gold weapon in Undawn.

Camp Training

All the skills listed below are available in Esc → Skills → Camp Training after the player joins a Camp.

1. Barrens Hunter & Durable Armor: These two skills increase the damage dealt and decrease the damage received in PVE, respectively.
2. Weapons Expert & Weapons Defense: These skills boost your character’s overall damage and resistance to incoming damage.
3. Headhunter: It increases damage to weak points on the target, which is typically the head for regular zombies and players. Zombie bosses and mini-bosses may have several weak points, such as the abdomen.
4. Lethal Wounds & Damage Amplification: These skills enhance your character’s critical hit chance and damage, which is crucial in both PVE and PVP.
5. Mechanical Modification: This skill raises your drone’s damage and resistance to damage. Only upgrade it if you’ve already maxed out all the skills listed above.
6. Skilled: It increases the damage from your character’s skills, such as turrets, grenades, and more.

Talents

All the skills listed below are available in the Esc → Skills → Talents section.

1. Armor-piercing Shell: Increases the character’s armor piercing. Against strong mobs and players, each point of armor piercing provides approximately a 1.5 times greater damage boost than a point of the “Damage” parameter. Yes, in Undawn, mobs have armor. If this is news to you, I recommend reading the character stats guide mentioned in the link above.
2. Maximum Firepower: This talent boosts the character’s Damage stat. Remember that 1 point of Damage on its own doesn’t provide any benefits. However, every 10 points of Damage increase the character’s damage by 1%.
3. Corrosive Grenade: This is a grenade you should take with you in Hold the Line. It significantly reduces the armor of mobs in the affected area for a short duration.
4. Auto Turret: This is a basic long-range turret that fires at any enemies within its range. You can also try the Automatic Flamethrower, but personally, I didn’t find it particularly effective.

Music

As for music, only use the Song of Ashes, which increases the character’s Armor Piercing by 32 points. As mentioned earlier, this parameter is far more important, especially if your character has low Armor Piercing overall.

Food

The best food for completing Hold the Line is food that increases damage to zombies. For example, at levels 90-99, you can use “Scrambled Eggs with Horn Mushrooms” (1 Horn Mushroom + 1 Egg to unlock; +2 Fruits, such as Pineapple, for the bonus).

An alternative is food that boosts Damage (for example, “Stewed Pork with Horn Mushrooms“) and Armor Piercing.

You should test which of the available dishes at your game stage provides a greater damage increase on your own. Just eat something, enter Hold the Line, shoot at mobs, and record the damage. Then try another food and compare the results. This way, you’ll know for sure.

You also need some food that provides resistance to damage from zombies or damage resistance.

Additionally, you can use the Grilled Fish Feast. It’s expensive but can be helpful if you’re just slightly short of the damage needed to complete a level.

Polishing

This is an effective way to significantly increase your character’s damage. Players usually focus on getting bonuses from “Set Polishing” and evenly polishing equipment: first, all items to level 15, then to 18, and so on. Here’s a small tip: never do this.

First, never polish melee weapons because they provide absolutely nothing except a few points of “empty” rating. Bonuses from polishing only affect the weapon you’re polishing. Upgrade it to levels 6-8 and forget about it forever.

Secondly, prioritize polishing your main and heavy weapons to the maximum. This will provide a much greater damage boost than “Set Polishing.” Start polishing the rest of your equipment only when obtaining “Set Polishing” becomes cheaper (or at least roughly equivalent) to the next level of polishing for your main/heavy weapons. To check this, you might have to press a few buttons on a calculator, but I believe you can handle this challenging task! 😀

Hold the Line Strategy

This isn’t a “rigid” guide, but rather my way of completing it.

1. Equip the M134 Heavy Machine Gun. You should start firing it as soon as mobs appear to replenish its ammo during the battle.
2. Release your Drone about 5-6 seconds before the start.
3. About 3-4 seconds before the start (right after the drone), deploy the Auto Turret.
4. Throw the Corrosive Grenade in the spawn area of zombies about 1-2 seconds before the start (right after the turret).
5. Begin by targeting mini-bosses first.
6. After you’ve used up the M134 Heavy Machine Gun’s ammo, use your main weapon to kill some of the smaller mobs to prevent them from damaging the gates.
7. To avoid damage from zombies, move and roll around the entire location.

For a beginner, this may seem a bit challenging, but in modes like Hold the Line, every detail matters, including the timing of skill usage, weapon switching, and more.

If you’ve followed all these steps but still haven’t been able to complete the Hold the Line level, the only “cure” is to increase your character’s rating.

Non-working Hold the Line Bug

In early game versions, it was possible to climb onto the truck on the right and from there onto the roof, where mobs couldn’t reach the player. From there, you could damage mobs with impunity. This bug has now been fixed and no longer works.

Useful Mechanics in Hold the Line

• In Hold the Line (as in all other modes), there’s an Exit button. If things aren’t going well, you can leave the mode prematurely.
  
• Thanks to the “Exit” button, you can recharge your firearms with ammunition for free at any time. Just enter any Hold the Line level, use the ammo box, and leave the mission.
  

If you have any questions or something to add, don’t hesitate to leave a comment on this post.