While the game itself is fun enough, Back 4 Blood takes your zombie shooting adventures to a new level beyond just teaming up and running through missions. Unlike the Left 4 Dead games, to which this is an obvious spiritual successor, there now exists a form of currency that persists between your runs instead of each one starting you off from scratch. You won’t be able to start off with top-tier guns or anything like that, but the Supply Points you earn will make taking on those higher-difficulty levels much more manageable.
Supply Points are necessary for unlocking the majority of the cards in Back 4 Blood. Cards, in short, are different buffs and perks you can add to your character throughout a run. Without a strong deck of cards, even the most skilled and coordinated team will have a hard time making it through the later missions, especially when the difficulty is cranked up. You’ll need quite a lot of supply points to complete the collection of cards, though, and it isn’t always clear what the best way to get them is. Here’s the best way to earn supply points in Back 4 Blood.
Further reading
- A beginner’s guide to Back 4 Blood: How to fight back against the horde
- Is Back 4 Blood cross-platform?
- Back 4 Blood’s card system explained
Fastest ways to earn supply points
Supply points come from two main sources: Completing specific Accomplishments, and beating campaign missions. Between these two, there are three main methods to keep in mind if you’re trying to rack up a ton of supply points as fast as possible. Just make sure you’re not playing the Solo mode to try and grind these out. You cannot earn any supply points in that mode, so you have to be playing multiplayer, either matchmaking or with friends.
Accomplishments: There are 144 Accomplishments in Back 4 Blood, and they are essentially in-game achievements or trophies. They are broken down into several categories, such as General, Campaign, Swarm, Cleaners, and Ridden. You’ll complete a bunch of these in your early hours without even trying, probably netting yourself a good starting bundle of supply points for doing things like completing campaign acts for the first time or getting a specific number of kills with different weapon types. Make sure you go into your menu and see what Accomplishments you think you can work toward while playing, but pay close attention to the rewards on the right-hand side. Not all Accomplishments result in giving you supply points, so prioritize those that do.
Play missions on high difficult levels: If you can, and have a team to help make it easier, play the game on the highest difficulty level you can manage. The three different difficulty levels have massive leaps in supply point rewards if you can make it to the end of a level. Jumping up to Veteran from Recruit will already double the amount you earn, and if you can survive on Nightmare you get about 50% more than Veteran.
Play short missions: If you’re ready to really grind out some points, there are a few missions and methods that have been found that can net you the most supply points in the shortest amount of time. The shortest missions in Back 4 Blood are ones like Act 1’s Sound of Thunder and Act 2’s Heralds of the Worm Part 1. Each one lasts probably less than five minutes if you’re rushing it and have a team that is focused on getting through quickly.
The most popular way for beginners in particular to grind points is in Sound of Thunder. The goal of the mission is to bring ammo to the howitzer to shoot either four or five times, varying depending on how many people you’re playing with. One person should be on shell duty, bringing them all over to the howitzer at once while the others fend off any Ridden. Then simply fire it off, reload right away, and repeat as fast as you can while your team covers you. The whole mission will be done with in no time, allowing you to run it multiple times in short order.
Heralds of the Worm Part 1 takes a bit more preparation and skill since you’re going up against an Ogre in this mission. By building a team focused on explosive damage and packing as many grenades as possible from the shop, you can pummel the Ogre with frags immediately and take him out with little to no danger. From there, your team just needs to clean up the other Ridden in the area and run to the next safe room. This is arguably the fastest method, so long as you and your team already have cards like Demolitions Expert, Improvised Explosives, and Bomb Squad at least.
Where to spend supply points and what to buy
Supply points are used in the hub area to unlock new cosmetic items and cards to build your deck. You can find a woman named Chenda near the shooting range where you can exchange your points. Supply Lines give you rewards to unlock in a set order, with multiple Supply Lines to invest in. You can see what you will get for each tier of a Supply Line to help you decide where you want to put your points first. Each Supply Line has a different overall theme, like The Clinic supply line having cards related to support and healing. Once you buy out everything that Supply Line has, a new one will appear to replace it.
There’s no right or wrong Supply Line to invest your supply points into, just whichever one will give you cards related to the type of player you want. Simply check out all your options, look at the rewards each line has, and start investing in what you want. We do recommend prioritizing cards over cosmetics since they will help you tackle the game’s harder difficulty levels, thus earning more supply points down the line, but it is entirely up to you.
