I recently really got into this game and it's a lot of fun. Part of my enjoyment in games relies on being able to understand the systems and then from there be able to make educated decisions that improve my performance.

While there is correct information out there, information on the shooting mechanics of Holdfast is surprisingly hard to find online, with multiple contradicting statements. Here I hope to help clear up some common misconceptions.

A majority of information in this guide comes from messing around in ibrown's tracer training server. Super good for gaining an understanding of how these things work.

In Holdfast, the origin of your bullet is the current camera position at the time of firing

This means that when shooting in first person, the bullet originates from somewhere around your character's head, and when shooting in 3rd person, the bullet originates from the space above, slightly to the right, and behind your character.

At first I thought that this would allow for some total BS if someone's camping a roof and using the height of the roof to shoot over it without ever exposing themselves. I've tried it, and it doesn't work.


By testing on the ibrown tracer server, I have discovered that at some point in the hit registration calculation, the game checks to see if your character would have had line of sight (from the first person camera I'm pretty sure) on whatever you hit in 3rd person. This validation avoids total BS. This seems to only happen when you are right up against a barrier, but the game provides some feedback on when this "line of sight" check is failing by playing a hollow bassy thud, like a bullet hitting a sand barrier or something.

Note however, this check still applies even at range, so if you don't see the puff of your bullet impact on the ground when you miss, it may be indicative that whatever you're trying to shoot at in 3rd person is failing this check.

If you're missing your shots past 8m, don't worry, odds were much higher than you'd think that you'd miss. Once again, I highly recommend checking out a server with tracers enabled to verify these mechanics with your own eyes.

All musket classes have the same default accuracy when standing. That inaccuracy will be a horizontal deviation bounded to +/- 2.8 degrees (from here on out whenever I say accuracy/inaccuracy I will be referring to this number). Every shot will have a randomly determined "gravity" affecting how much the bullet arcs/drops.

aside: I can't actually be certain these are degrees, but I'm pretty sure. These are just the numbers provided by ibrown's server, which uses a command that relays information from the game

Crouching only improves accuracy on classes where their attributes state it does, i.e.: The Line Infantry and the Light Infantry. The bonus is small, but there.

Removing the bayonet from a musket with T will provide a "5%" accuracy bonus according to the game. I still have no idea how these %'s work, whether they're additive or multiplicative, or what base values they operate on. Point is: it provides a very small accuracy buff. The light infantry's standing inaccuracy without a bayonet becomes +/-2.66 degrees (from 2.8), and crouching becomes +/-2.261 degrees (from 2.38). (Note: You must be standing to remove or fix your bayonet)

Movement does NOT affect accuracy. Note however that moving while crouching forces the character to stand up, so if you're playing a class with a crouch bonus and your crouch toggle is on and you fire while moving, you will NOT get the crouch bonus because your character will have been standing. For those who like the extra details here are some random facts:

• You gain the crouch bonus as soon as you let go of the movement key while crouch is toggled.
  
• You cannot shoot while in the middle of the crouch animation.

Other outside factors such as officer commands and music will improve your accuracy as well. But considering these are outside your control they are beyond the scope of this guide.

I'm not fully sure how this works either haha and it's something I wanna figure out. I'm pretty sure that for most classes, a musket hit should be a kill since all characters have a health pool of 100 hit points, however some classes can benefit from damage reduction effects. Something that seems consistent is surgeon's and officers surviving musket shots due to the presence of guards. This isn't something I worry about though as it's always outside of my control (perhaps headshots deal more damage? But they're so rare I haven't the slightest evidence of this).

As another aside: why do some bayonet attacks one shot when others don't? Looking at the stats page for the bayonet it should only deal 60 damage, but it one shots full health characters FAR more often than it doesn't. Also, why does the grenadier's melee health boost never seem to work? I've read somewhere that it has to do with how much you drag your melee attack?

One last "thing" that's important to know for Holdfast is that even besides the horizontal deviation, bullet paths consistently start of going down instead of parallel in the zy-plane (basically, vertically if you're looking at your shot from the side) to the ray that would be cast outwards by the center of your crosshair. It's weird, but you can test this out in the tracer server to see that it's true. This basically means that if you're using the default crosshair you should ALWAYS be aiming with the bottom half of your crosshair, even at close ranges.

So center your cross hair horizontally, and vertically, aim it above where it would be if you were just centering your crosshair on the guy.

I use the "nail" crosshair option, and at almost every range I use the tip of the bottom "nail" to aim for the center of mass. I don't hit anything most of the time, but at least my bullets usually land at the correct height / correct region in my vertical FOV.

For getting a sense of how often you can/should be able to expect to land shots, mess around on a server with tracers enabled. It'll help you gain an intuition for how the numbers in this guide should actually feel.

Overall, take it easy out there, and know that when you miss you can blame it on poor luck and probably be right. Because of this, I also highly recommend you practice melee in a dueling server or with a friend to get semi-decent at it, as it will add a lot of enjoyment to your Holdfast experience.