THE FINALS Guide For Beginners
THE FINALS is a fun new first-person shooter that allows for some next-level shenanigans. It’s incredibly popular right now because of the extraordinarily destructible environments, enjoyable weapons and classes, and incredible movement. This game is a high-octane visual feast that’s every bit of fun to play as it looks like in trailers. Despite how easy it is to pick up however, it can also be confusing, so we’ve put together this THE FINALS Guide for Beginners to show you the ropes.
Quickplay
When you first click on the Play button in the main menu you’ll have three options to pick from: Quickplay, Tournaments, and Practice.
The practice mode is pretty self-explanatory, as it consists of the tutorial and the practice range. After finishing the tutorial, we recommend hitting the practice range to try out new classes, weapons, gadgets, and specializations (more on that later).
The Quickplay mode puts you into a single match where you have to reach the cash goal to win. As of writing, there are currently two game modes available: Quick Cash and Bank It. We already covered the game modes in another article (THE FINALS Game Modes Explained) but we’ll give you a brief overview here too.
Quick Cash
In Quick Cash, there are three teams of three players, all scrambling to get their hands on a Vault. The vault is a small box that you can crack open to reveal $10,000. Once the Vault is opened, your objective is to take it to one of the Cashout Stations. Cashing out the money takes a few minutes, and you’ll have to defend the point from rival teams that are trying to steal it.
On the flip side, you could also wait for a team to start a Cashout, ambush them once they do, and steal their earnings. For each successful cashout, your team will earn $10,000. The first team to reach $20,000 (two successful Cashouts) will win the game.
If you die in this mode, you can respawn after a short time. In the case of a team wipe, your team will be respawned as well, but the respawn timer is longer. Each Quick Cash game is eight minutes long, but it can be extended further if a Cashout is in progress.
It all sounds easy, but Quick Cash requires a good bit of team coordination and strategy. At times, you’ll find yourself focusing on defending a Cashout from the other two teams. On other occasions, your objective might be more focused on stealing Cashouts from other teams. Either way, it’s a fast-paced adrenaline rush that’s utterly rewarding.
Bank It
Blink and you’ll miss it. Bank It is a mode that’s even faster and more chaotic than Quick Cash. This time around, you have four teams of three players all working to deposit their cash. However, Vaults work a bit differently in this mode.
Multiple Vaults will spawn across the map, and unlocking them will drop coins for you to collect. At the start, Vaults will give you anywhere between $2,000 to $6,000. As the game goes on, Vaults can drop up to $10,000 in one go. Once you grab the cash, you need to take it to one of many Cashout stations to deposit it. The first team to reach $40,000 wins.
The kicker here is that Cashout locations don’t remain static. Cashout stations will disappear after a short time, and others will pop up all across the map. Depositing cash only takes a few seconds, but it’s easy to get lit up by another player who was just waiting for you to start the deposit.
Needless to say, everything can change within a moment’s notice. You can lose cash as quickly as you earn it. Players that are killed drop an extra $1,000, plus the other cash that they were carrying, making them a valuable target.
Certain strategies work better in Bank It than in Quick Cash. For example, since there’s an innate focus on speed, a good light player with the ability to dash can dominate with ease. It’s a great game mode for getting frags and warming up, but playing the objective is just as fun.
Tournament Mode (Ranked/Unranked)
If you and your friends are feeling competitive, you should hop into the more serious Tournament mode. In an unranked tournament, eight teams are split into two groups of four. You’ll have to play against the other three teams in your group and get to the top two in order to qualify. Naturally, standings are decided based on the amount of cash you acquire.
The gameplay is nearly identical to Quick Cash, and the bracket-style format is the only difference. At the end of the match, the two teams with the lowest amount of cash are eliminated. The top two progress further, and this carries on until there are only two teams left. They then duke it out to win THE FINALS.
The ranked tournament is similar to the unranked one, but this time you have 16 teams fighting for the win. There are now four groups of three players, and you’ll be playing four matches if you get to the final.
You can change weapons and equipment in between rounds if you have them in your saved reserve loadout. However, you can’t swap classes in between rounds. Another difference from Quick Play is that you have limited respawn tokens. If you use them up, you’ll have to wait for your team to get wiped to respawn together.
The Classes
THE FINALS has three contestant classes that you can pick from: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Each class has a different set of weapons, gadgets, and specializations for you to consider. As such, the playstyle varies heavily depending on which class you’re playing with. For example, you can play a vital support role as the Medium Class, a demolition role with Heavy, or a stealth role with Light.
Each class has three specializations to pick from. These function like ultimate abilities in other games, and they change your playstyle quite a lot.
Light
The Light class is incredibly popular among players because of its fast movement and variety of available playstyles. Lights are the smallest and fastest class in the game, meaning it translates well to a playstyle that focuses on stealth or speed. However, your health is lower than a Medium or Heavy, so you’ll have to play cautiously.
Light Specializations: Cloaking Device, Grappling Hook, Evasive Dash
As a Light, the Cloaking Device is your best friend. By activating this ability, you’ll become harder to see. This allows you to get the drop on unsuspecting opponents and kill them with ease. It also allows you to traverse across large open areas of the map while remaining unseen. Pair this with the Stun Gun and an SMG or shotgun, and you’ll quickly learn how powerful stealth can be.
The Light Class also has access to a sniper rifle, a shotgun, a pistol, and two melee weapons in the form of throwing knives and a dagger. Each weapon has its own merits, so try them out in the practice range.
As for the other two abilities: Evasive Dash gives you three dashes that allow you to quickly move across the map and escape fights with ease. Pair this with the Vanishing Bomb gadget if you still want some form of invisibility.
Lastly, the grappling hook is fun, but not as practical as the other two abilities if you ask us.
Medium
The Medium class is the glue that keeps the whole team together. As a Medium player, your focus should be to support your team. While you’re not the strongest or the fastest, your weapons and abilities are incredibly powerful.
Medium Specializations: Healing Beam, Guardian Turret, Recon Senses
The most important gadget as a medium is the Defibrillator. You can use this to instantly revive downed teammates. Speaking of helping teammates: if you have the Healing Beam ability, you can heal your Heavy player so that they act as a bullet sponge to enemy combatants. This makes the Heavy harder to kill and allows them to win fights that they would otherwise lose.
If you don’t want to play as a Healer, go with the Recon Senses or Guardian Turret. The former allows you to see where other enemies are around you, while the latter allows you to place a turret wherever you want. Both abilities are incredibly powerful, and allow you to get a decent number of kills.
One of the most powerful gadgets in the game is the jump pad. As a Medium, you can place a jump pad to escape enemies, get the higher ground, or just move around the map quickly.
Finally, for the main weapon, the FCAR is your best choice in terms of damage, accuracy, and reload speed. If you want to change things up though, both the shotgun and revolver are surprisingly powerful as well.
Heavy
THE FINALS features server-side destruction, and the Heavy class is what facilitates this concept the most. If you’re starting out as Heavy, the easiest playstyle to get used to mainly involves wreaking havoc with your RPG or the Charge N’ Slam ability. You can destroy entire buildings or quickly one-shot opponents with explosive force.
Heavy Specializations: Charge N’ Slam, Goo Gun, Mesh Shield
As a Heavy, you’ll have the highest health and the slowest movement speed. Your running speed isn’t that great, but at least you’re hard to kill. The Lewis Gun is the best weapon here, as it does well at both long and short range. However, if you love combat at terrifyingly close range, then the Sledgehammer or the SA1216 shotgun gets the job done well.
In terms of abilities, both the Mesh Shield and Charge N’ Slam are good for different purposes. The Mesh Shield allows you to protect your team, and this is crucial if a team member is stealing a cashout or low on health. Charge N’ Slam is more chaotic, but it can help you bring down entire buildings so your team can easily pick off enemies that are scattered in the aftermath.
Finally, for the gadgets, both the RPG and Dome Shield are absolutely crucial. The RPG is capable of one-shotting most Light and Medium players, and the Dome Shield can protect you from any oncoming damage instantly.
Unlocking Weapons, Abilities, and Gadgets
Each class in THE FINALS is only as powerful as the loadout you create for it. As soon as you start playing, you’ll earn VRs that you can spend on unlocking weapons, abilities, and gadgets. When you’re starting out, you’ll have to grind the game for a bit to unlock all the weapons for a certain class. It takes even longer if you want to unlock every single thing for every class. So, prioritization is important here.
When starting out, it’s always a good idea to get your hands on a good automatic weapon. The shotguns, melee weapons, and grenade launchers in this game are fun, but not always the most practical choice for beginners. So to start things off, Medium players should get the FCAR, Lights should get the XP-54, and Heavy players should get the Lewis Gun.
Another good first upgrade is unlocking the abilities. For example, if you’re playing as a Light, unlocking the Cloaking ability should be your top priority. Similarly, you might want the Guardian Turret as soon as possible as a medium.
Keep in mind that within the practice range, you can go and try out all the weapons and gadgets even if you haven’t unlocked them yet. This will help you get a good idea of how the weapons work and whether they suit your playstyle or not.
The Environment
The best part about this game is definitely its interactive and destructive environment. You can lift bridges by using the connecting buttons, shoot at a zipline structure to destroy it, or demolish entire floors and walls to move the objective. There are a lot of subtle things you can do that many new players might not notice.
For example, you can shoot the hanging crates in the sky to create explosives or obstacles. You could also plant a C4 to an explosive barrel and use it as what the community calls a “Nuke”. Toxic Gas is also quite powerful, and the Goo Barrels allow you to block off certain areas while you’re protecting the Cashout.
Destruction is a big part of the game. For example, if your enemies are protecting a Cashout on the floor above you, you can blow a hole in the ceiling to make them drop down. Similarly, you can level entire buildings to bury your Cashout under rubble, making it harder for the opposing teams to reach and steal it.
It would be impossible to cover everything about the environment in this short section, so get out there and experiment for yourself. Use everything you see to your advantage, and see what fun and interesting scenarios you can come up with.
Conclusion
THE FINALS has taken the gaming world by storm, with many players delving into the sandbox shooter. Despite the fact that it can be a confusing game at first, THE FINALS has taken the good things from every shooter and put it into one. With this THE FINALS beginner guide, you all the information you need to build a solid foundation in this game. Good luck, have fun!
THE FINALS is free to play on Steam.
