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I realize this is a fairly new game, but a handful of friends and I were playing last night and got to the first level where you can get "infested" by the parasite head-crab aliens.

The game prompts you to heal to counter it, and even on normal difficulty our Medic was going through 2 group heal beacons each time just to prevent death. I feel like either we're missing something or this is just a rather annoying game mechanic that feels a tad overtuned at the moment.

Note that our medic did not have the medic gun, as we weren't high enough level to unlock it yet.

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    Oh there is an easier way. A bullet between the eyes. Not the most effective in terms of remaining firepower, though. Joke aside, the game is great but lacks such kind of information indeed, would be good to find an answer to that.
    – Gnoupi
    Jul 20, 2010 at 12:25
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    @Gnoupi Humorously enough, our first thought was to try to use the flamethrower to burn the parasite off our infected teammate. Fiery death ensued.
    – TheQ
    Jul 20, 2010 at 12:28

4 Answers 4

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Healing seems to be the only way, but there are some methods that can help avoid infestation or - if you got infested after all - get enough healing in time:

  1. Area-of-effect weapons such as the flamers or tesla cannon seem to work pretty well against those face-huggers, as do tracking weapons.
  2. If you repeatedly get infested during a specific mission, consider taking a self-healing pack with you.
  3. Have somebody in the group carry adrenaline. When anyone get infested use the adrenaline to allow the medic and the infested enough time to rendezvous - that way there will also be less demand for healing.
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  • Good idea with the Tesla cannon since it cant friendly fire. That would probably be very helpful to be able to spam into the parasite waves.
    – TheQ
    Jul 20, 2010 at 13:05
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You can remove infestations by using the electric armor item. Its often a good idea for the "point" soldier to have this equipped during heavy infestation runs, but if you're having trouble in general having everyone equip it can significantly reduce the pain of swarm parasites.

Note though, that the best way to manage infestation is to not get infested in the first place! Flamers and Tesla guns work well.

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  • Cool! Thank you. I haven't unlocked everything yet so I'll keep an eye out for it.
    – TheQ
    Jul 20, 2010 at 15:59
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Something else to note: The healing beacon has two limits:

  1. How much it can heal total.
  2. How much it can heal per second.

If all 4 marines are damaged and in the healing field, they will all regain health, but 1/4th the speed of a single damaged marine.

Same for infestations. If you have an infested player, he should be the only one in the healing field to make sure hes gets healed as quickly as possible.

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No, there is no way other than massive healing. Note that this is to remain true to the original UT04 mod. You're supposed to avoid getting infested in the first place, rather than trying to cure it. After infestation you can only drop a couple healing beacons and hope for the best.

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  • I'd never played the UT04 version prior, so I wouldn't have known. Thanks for the info. We did eventually get through by, as you said, being extremely cautious and avoiding infestation, but it seemed a tad over-the-top in frantic situations.
    – TheQ
    Jul 20, 2010 at 12:44
  • If this was true, why is there an achievement called "Infestation Savior" for curing an infested marine
    – juan
    Jul 24, 2010 at 15:13
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    There is also an achievement for dying 25 times in TF2 (as sniper, to backstab.) That doesn't mean you're supposed to die.
    – Nick T
    Aug 11, 2010 at 16:53

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