Hell Let Loose: Vietnam Beginner's Guide - Tips and Tricks for Your First Matches

‘Hell Let Loose: Vietnam’ throws you into 50-on-50 battles across six vast maps, inspired by real-life locations from the Vietnam War, and during the first hour you rarely feel as though you’re making any headway. Most new players spend these matches trudging towards skirmishes that ended several minutes ago, dying at the hands of enemies they’ve never even spotted, and wondering why their kill count refuses to go up. The solution has almost nothing to do with aim and almost everything to do with the map, the radio and the respawn screen.

Top tips for Hell Let Loose: Vietnam

The biggest adjustment of all is to view this as a squad-based game with a shooter built in, rather than a shooter with squads tacked on. A lone player in the jungle contributes nothing and dies at the hands of someone they never see, whilst the same player twenty metres from their squad is revived, receives alerts and is informed of where the fighting is actually taking place.

• Complete the ‘Getting Started’ guide before your first proper match. It’ll teach you the tactical map, radio channels, capture points and respawn points in about the same time you’d waste getting lost in a real match.
• Check the radio keys before remapping anything. C is Unit Radio, V is Proximity Chat and X is Leadership Radio in the default PC settings.
• Open the Tactical Map before each deployment. Objective, squad, forward respawn point, route – in that order – then click ‘Deploy’.
• Stay with your squad and take cover. Fights in open terrain are lost by those who remain in plain sight, so first break the line of sight, and only then report contact.
• Reorganise when your position no longer serves a purpose. A deliberate death is worth more than four minutes spent running towards a battle that has already moved on.

Two of these points require a caveat. Repositioning yourself is not the same as abandoning a flank you’re deliberately defending, and the difference lies in whether you can answer the question ‘why am I here?’ with something specific. Remapping keys is also more dangerous than it seems, because changing a familiar command to the C key silently eliminates your ability to respond to your own platoon, and the symptom looks more like a faulty microphone than a conflict of hotkeys.

All Hell Let Loose: Vietnam Guides

Each system mentioned above has its own page, and the table below indicates which one answers each question in full.

Note: read the roles page before the progression page, as unlock levels are tracked by role, and focusing on the wrong role will result in several matches being wasted.

Tips for beginners in Hell Let Loose: Vietnam explained

Learn how to use the interface whilst nobody is shooting at you.

The ‘Introduction’ section covers movement, crouching, lying down, swimming, healing, basic weapon handling, the command structure, radio channels, the tactical map, battlefield markers, respawn points and capture points. That list may seem long, but it boils down to four questions you need to answer in every match: where is your squad, where should you respawn, what is the objective the teams are fighting for, and which radio channel reaches the people you need to contact. You don’t need to complete the Specialist Tutorials first, as these deal with problems you haven’t encountered yet. The ‘Squad Leader Training’, in particular, seems abstract until you lose an advanced respawn point in a real match and see the whole squad suddenly having to face a three-minute trek. Go back to the more in-depth tutorials once the four basic questions no longer require conscious effort.

Check your radio keybindings before remapping anything

Communication fails quietly, and the cause is usually a key mapping issue rather than a hardware problem.

The default PC settings shown during training are C for Squad Radio, V for Proximity Chat and X for Leadership Radio, the latter of which is only relevant for roles that remain on the leadership channel. If you can hear your squad but cannot reply, check the Unit Radio before you start troubleshooting your headphones or audio controls. It’s worth keeping Proximity Chat active even in a silent squad, as nearby players outside your unit often have the information you’re missing. You don’t need to talk constantly to be useful on the radio, and short calls convey more than long descriptions: enemy at my position, tank on the right, OP has been taken out, medic here, moving towards the objective. One precise call saves more time than five minutes spent trying to make sense of the battle through the vegetation on your own.

Open the tactical map before every deployment

The spawn screen is a tactical decision, not a loading screen.

A common mistake made by beginners is to click on the icon closest to the capture point and then discover that the squad has moved on, that the objective has changed, or that the forward spawn point has been destroyed whilst you were in the deployment menu. Instead, follow a set procedure: identify the active objective, locate your squad and the squad leader, find the squad’s most useful forward spawn point, compare it with the team’s spawn points, and only then deploy. The correct spawn point is the one that allows you to continue the work your squad is already doing, which is often not the closest one on the map. Once you’re alive, the map itself answers the question that gunfire cannot, because the sound in the dense jungle indicates that a firefight is taking place without telling you whether it’s relevant. Assess the objective, the squad, the allied respawn points, the pings and the route, and move forward by following the route rather than being guided by the noise.

Stay with your squad and use cover

Your distance from your squad is the factor that determines whether you’ll die.

This isn’t Call of Duty or Battlefield, and the movement speed, lines of sight and respawn system penalise any player who strays off to look for their own firefight. When you’re under fire, the first step is to seek cover and the second is to call it out, because a squadmate who knows the enemy’s position can win the engagement you were about to lose on your own. Spotting the enemy is a skill in its own right, and many players aren’t naturally good at it, so relying on teammates with better vision is a legitimate tactic, not a weakness. The map also offers movement options that most novice players forget they have, including swimming, climbing, crawling quickly and dragging an injured teammate out of the open before reviving them. Flanking works well in this game, but a blind flanking manoeuvre, of which no one is aware, usually ends with you being killed in a spot your squad will never reach.

Reposition yourself when your current position is no longer useful

Deliberately giving up ground is often quicker than walking.

Repositioning may seem like a waste the first few times, because you’re alive and have already expended effort crossing part of the map. The alternative is worse: several minutes walking towards a battle that’s already over, arriving alone and dying at the hands of a squad that’s already taken up position. Reset your position when your squad has moved on to another objective and left you behind, when a more advanced respawn point becomes available, when the ground you are defending no longer protects anything, or when the front line has simply shifted beyond walking range. Defending a flank, monitoring a route or awaiting an enemy advance are real tasks; therefore, thirty seconds of silence is not, in itself, a reason to reposition yourself. The test is whether you can identify what you’re doing, and if you can’t, open the map.

The Best Strategy for Beginners in Hell Let Loose: Vietnam

Your K/D in your first ten matches means nothing, and actively chasing it only makes you worse, because every kill you chase in the jungle takes you further away from the sector that decides the round. Gaining ground, keeping a respawn point active and reviving teammates are actions that influence the score that matters to your team, and kills will come naturally once you know which routes the enemy is using. Set yourself a learning objective per match rather than a score target, whether it’s reading the map before each move or issuing three useful warnings. When the round starts to feel chaotic again, go back to the same sequence: map, squad, spawn point, listen, move towards a task, and reposition if the map has moved on without you.