Shooters have evolved to the point where simply having good aim isn’t enough to dominate a match anymore. Games like Concord have all embraced the hero shooter genre and done away with the generic characters we played in games like the original Halos and Call of Dutys. Beyond learning the unique characters, there are the maps, modes, and little intricacies you have to pick up on to fully master the game. Jumping into Concord, you might think just finding your main and running games will be fine, but there’s a bit more going on under the hood and systems that you will want to understand that the game isn’t all that clear about. Let’s get you ready to be the next best Freegunner in the galaxy with these tips and tricks.
Experiment with your characters
Concord has 16 Freegunners to pick from, which is a bit daunting. The developers did a great job making each one unique, but they are also not very well organized in terms of knowing which falls into which role. Unlike Overwatch, which clearly divides its roster into roles, you need to read and experiment with characters to understand how they fit into the flow of combat. Give each character a few runs to really test out, and ideally try them in different game modes as well. Some characters are far more useful in objective game types than in pure deathmatch types. Make sure you also don’t just stick to one character you like and that’s it. Each character can only be used on a team once, so if someone else picks them first, you’ll be out of luck, but there are also two more strong reasons to have a small handful of characters you’re comfortable with we’ll get to later.
The best modes to learn characters with, outside of training, are any respawn-enabled modes.
Change characters often
Going off that last point, there’s a slightly hidden system in Concord related to your Crew Bonuses. You can see that each character has one of six Crew Bonuses that do things like give longer range or faster reload times. These aren’t tied exclusively to that character, though. As long as you play and die as a character with one bonus, you can switch to a different character with a different bonus when you respawn and will stack both of those bonuses. If you swap efficiently, you can get all the crew bonuses after six swaps.
Obviously, you don’t want to intentionally die just to get these bonuses stacked up, but in round-based modes especially you would be wise to rotate characters to make the most of this hidden system since your opponents probably won’t be.
Respawn vs. no-respawn
This is a simple one, but always pay attention to which type of match you are playing. The game is split into respawn and no-respawn modes, which are self-explanatory. No-respawn games like Cargo Run and Clash Point are meant to be more tactical and slow, sort of like Valorant. If you’re not running with a team or don’t want to play super cautious and tactically, you may want to stick to the respawn modes.
Even if you’re into the no-respawn modes, pay attention to when they have hero lock. These modes not only give you one life per round but you can also only use each Freegunner once in the entire match. This forces you to swap each time, which is good for the Crew Bonus but bad if you don’t know how to play five or more characters well.
Unlock variants
You can’t unlock new Freegunners in Concord, but you can get what are called variants on them. These are indicated by a Roman numeral by the character’s name. By default, they will all be I, but you can get yourself the II version, and perhaps III in the future. These variants don’t change the character’s weapons or abilities but their combat traits. For example, Lennox I’s passive is that he reloads whenever you perform a dodge, while Lennox II has more ammo for his guns.
Aside from adding a bit of variety to your characters, variants are great because they technically count as a second character. That means in modes where heroes are locked after using them, you can kind of get around it by using Lennox I and then Lennox II later.
Variants are unlocked by completing jobs in the Job Board. Unfortunately, these rotate on a timer and you never know which one will be available when.
Don’t forget to use the crew builder
However, even when you do get a variant, you will notice they aren’t in your character roster to select by default. This is where the crew builder comes in. This lets you basically customize your character select screen with which characters you want on the line and where. This might seem optional and not important to pay attention to, but it is the only way to access any variants.
Making your own crew is also handy for easily rotating characters. If you put your best characters first on the list, you don’t have to waste time scrolling through the default order to swap. This is also how you can add duplicates of the same character to your list for modes that lock heroes after one use if you really want to stick with one character.
