7/4/2021 - Added a section on picking your fights.

1/11/2022 - Added a Very Important! section on making failure useful through self-evaluation. If you read only one section, read that one.

This guide is going to assume that you are familiar with the basic mechanics and gameplay of Super Animal Royale, you have a few dozen matches played, and at least 4 to 10 hours of playtime. Matches in this game are quick, and there are plenty of resources for reading up on the basics, so if those things aren't true for you, I recommend spending a little more time familiarizing yourself with the game before considering this guide.

Hello! I'm Vile, and I've been playing Super Animal Royale for a couple weeks or so.

I've found that there aren't really any guides for players like me, who are familiar with how the game is played and have a good grasp of the basics, but are interested in informing and refining their decision-making abilities to improve their performance.

However, I think the notion of "improving performance" often gets confused for the behavior of prioritizing performance over fun - the idea of being a "sweat" or a "try hard" as the kids call them.

I think that being good and having fun are things that can support each other. If you make good decisions and engage with the game intelligently, you'll play more confidently and expand your ability to have an enjoyable experience. Likewise, if you're having a good time, you are going to play much better than if you are bored, distracted, uncomfortable, or just plain tilted.

With this in mind, I've decided to frame this mindset for improvement like this:

When you start playing Super Animal Royale, for your first few dozen matches, this is your default state of being. You are unfamiliar with the flow of the game, so it's impossible to know if any move you make is a good one. Even if you are playing with more experienced friends, you haven't had time to process any advice they give.

Even still, you will probably find some victories. You may get some kills, or even win a few fights. You might stumble upon a mole crate with cool guns in it, or even wind up winning a whole match. However, you may feel that these moments don't happen often. They feel like they're out of your control; you're playing reactively, and things might happen to you more than you make things happen.

This is what it means to be Winning by Accident, and Losing on Purpose. You're not trying to lose, you think, but if you examine your behaviors and decisions as your understanding of the game grows, you may find that they're failing you very frequently. You commit to fights that can't be won, you use the wrong tool for the situation at hand, or you run out of resources. You forget to reload, you get shot before you can fight back, you get flanked and pushed into bad positions, you even slip on your own freakin' banana peels!

The thing is, is that all of this is okay. If you process that you are in this state of being and decide that you are okay with it, there is no need to change how you interact with the game, as long as you are enjoying it. Accidental victories are still victories, and how much they mean to you personally is for you and you alone to decide.

However, for me, and for players like myself, there is enjoyment to be had in the process of changing and improving this mindset. If you are like me, and you want to start winning on purpose, I think this guide will help you towards that goal.

The most common player interaction in Super Animal Royale is the Fight. Two (or more) players see each other, and use their resources to knock the other guy(s) down before they get knocked down, themselves.

Fights can be drawn out over minutes, or be over in seconds. There are many factors that determine the outcome of the fight, and they can all be boiled down to one question: Who has the advantage?

Advantage is more powerful than any weapon in the game. Weapon availability and choice are components of advantage, but without context, a sniper rifle or a minigun is only better than a shotgun or a pistol on paper.

In the split-seconds that it takes to decide the outcome of a fight, these are just a few of the factors that are used to create and press advantage.

• Is your gun ready to fire? Is the enemy's? Who shoots first?
  
• How many hits can you take? Is there a mount or a hamster ball that can tank damage?
  
• Is the enemy prepared to fight you? Do they have a choice? Do you?
  
• Are you able to disengage safely? Is the enemy able to disengage safely?

As you improve, you will process these types of questions more quickly, exactly when you need to. In a split second, you must be able to discern who has the advantage. This is the sort of thing you will think about more as your understanding of the game grows; this is the start of the mindset that will lead you towards being able to control the situations you are in.

Now that we've graduated beyond the raw mechanical basics of gameplay, and we're on to developing and sharpening our general sense for how a fight will go, the information and insight we've gained can be applied to one very important decision:

"Should I fight, or should I flee?"

Over the course of your time in Super Animal Royale, you will make this decision potentially a dozen times or more, in every single match, from the first seconds down to the final circle. Which option is better? This depends on many circumstances, most of which build off of our sense for advantage and disadvantage.

Generally speaking, if we detect that we are at a disadvantage - broken armor, weapons empty, no cover, anything that makes a fight hard to win - we should flee. This seems obvious, but keeping track of your resources and building the habit of effectively managing them is a learned skill. It's very easy to get tunnel vision and only focus on shooting at the enemy, which, you may find, will end many a run for you.

However, because we're learning how to play effectively, that means that sometimes we are able to create our own advantaged situations, occasionally creating them from situations where we were initially at a disadvantage!

What, exactly, this entails is going to depend on your situation, but the most basic and generally applicable method of advantage is the idea that it is much easier to fight an enemy that is unprepared to fight you back. Striking someone down before they can defend themselves (does that sound like a familiar situation?) is the most decisive victory you can secure.

How this general concept is applied to gameplay is the fun part. For example: If you are caught out by someone who's unloading their weapon at you before you've even acknowledged their presence, that's a bad situation. If you stand around and shoot back, their bullets will hit you before your bullets hit them, so fleeing is (usually!) our best chance.

However, if they give chase, then things get interesting. We can use their relentlessness against them: If they're chasing us, we know where they might be before they get there. Advantage! By moving cleverly around cover and shooting where they're going to be, we can punish and discourage them from chasing us down. If they're smart, they'll stop. If they're not paying attention, though... That could end up turning into a winning situation!

The big takeaway is this: Learning when to run away is the best way to increase your survival rate - and your placement number! However, we can't run forever - enemies carry loads of valuable resources that we need to prolong our survival and take fights more favorably, and you can only scavenge so much.

Advantage is great, but ultimately, winning more fights - and, therefore, winning more matches - is about destroying the enemy(ies) before they destroy you. We win fights by dealing damage, but how much damage do we actually need to deal to win?

By examining the game's weapons and the damage numbers they can put out, we can not only deal damage more intelligently, but also intuit how much damage we've taken without even having to check our health bar, letting us make better decisions, faster.

Every animal has a maximum of 100 health. They can also have up to 3 points of armor. If you're like me, and you're not quick enough to detect what armor someone has based on their player model, it can be helpful to automatically assume that a given enemy has level 3 armor unless you know otherwise. This way, we avoid being surprised when an enemy takes one or two more shots than we expected. Count how many fights you lose where the enemy is only one hit away from death!

With these numbers in mind, we can do some rough, simple math to get a general approximation of how many hits we need to land in order to win, depending on our weapon of choice. Likewise, we also understand how many times we can get hit before we die, further informing our choice to fight or retreat.

Exact numbers are hard for me, so I prefer to think of damage numbers in terms of breakpoints - thresholds that meaningfully change how many shots are required to kill a player once their armor is broken. Remember that, unless you are using a magnum, a hunting rifle, a sniper rifle, sparrow weapons, or the dart gun, you will need to add 3 hits to account for armor.

• 15 damage = 7 shots to kill (10 vs armor)
  
• 17 damage = 6 shots to kill (9 vs armor)
  
• 20 damage = 5 shots to kill (8 vs armor)
  
• 25 damage = 4 shots to kill (7 vs armor)
  
• 34 damage = 3 shots to kill (6 vs armor, 5 w/ magnum)
  
• 50 damage = 2 shots to kill

It is important to observe your damage numbers, both in the pre-game shooting range and in live fire scenarios. Weapons like the AK and the Magnum, which have high damage at any range, do not need to land many hits to deal critical or mortal damage. However, fast weapons like the Pistol and SMG will deal similar damage at close range with a much faster rate of fire.

This is why paying attention to your gun's recoil spread is important. If you are too hasty in your attack, your aim will be thwarted by your weapon's recoil, and you will find that victories will slip through your claws by single digits. By focusing on landing only a few accurate shots at an advantageous range, we avoid overextending and giving the enemy an advantage they can use to turn the tables.

However, while discipline is important, firing wildly can also create pressure, forcing the enemy to risk taking stray hits if they do not retreat.

Having observed our weapons' damage output, one conclusion is clear: Everything hurts at point-blank range. In close quarters, even the lowliest common-grade Pistol can deal 100 damage in 4, potentially 3 shots!

However, no weapon is as devastating in close range as the Shotgun (or the JAG-7, which is functionally identical, for our purposes). A full-force Shotgun blast will destroy all armor. The follow-up shot - less than half a second after the first! - will easily deal over 100 damage. That's a problem!

How do we prevent this? The Shotgun has a very short effective range, but range is not always something we can control. Getting caught standing at the business end of a shotgun is a situation no strategy can consistently save us from. Thus, the best way to deal with this situation is to do everything in our power to avoid being stuck in it in the first place.

To do this, I've created a rule that I apply to all situations in every match:


Is this objectively correct? Probably not. Many players will forego the shotgun for more versatile options. However, the point of this rule is not to be correct; the point is to prepare ourselves for this deadly situation before it even comes up.

If you, at all times - in the first seconds of a match, or in the final seconds - treat every player like they have a shotgun, you will decrease the likelihood of being destroyed by one in a close-range engagement.

This does not mean that you should not engage people in close quarters (especially if you yourself are wielding a shotgun!). It simply means that you must be aware of the risks of doing so - if you fight someone at point blank, you must win quickly and decisively. If you do not, then at best, you forfeit your advantage and some valuable resources. At worst - you're diskoalafied!

All of this advice and insight is fine, sure, but how does one go about actually applying it? We can read and research and theorize as much or as little as we like, but ultimately the only way to apply the knowledge and improve is to go and play the game. We will quickly find that reading and theorizing have underwhelming effects on our actual performance. That is okay, because the thing that is truly going to make better players out of us is that we are going to make failure useful to us.

What you do after you die is perhaps the single most important factor that will determine your ability to improve. That is to say: It is fine to be upset or disappointed. It is fine to complain about the other guy's tactics or gear. It is fine to bemoan your luck or admit your own faults. However, if that is all you do every time you die, you are making your path to improvement - and probably your overall experience with the game! - slower and more painful than it needs to be.

This applies to ALL skill levels, from beginner to intermediate to advanced and beyond. Whether you have 2 hours in the game or 200 or 2,000, the way you handle failure will have a significant impact on your ability to enjoy the game, as well as your ability to learn and improve.

I propose that the best way for us to make the most of this important time is to evaluate our performance. Mechanical skill (aim), map knowledge, and game sense are good examples of what most people think of when asked what they think constitutes skill, but self-evaluation is a critical part of developing those skills, and it is, itself, a skill!

Point of order: It is the skill that is most directly affected by informing ourselves through study. Reading guides like this does not make us aim better, not directly. What they do is help us to construct a frame of reference for us to think about while we practice our aim. This goes for any traditional skill you may read about and wish to improve upon.

So, what does good self-evaluation look like? It involves us asking ourselves questions that make us think about what we know, what we don't know, what we do, and what we don't do. Here are some good ones to think about on the death screen:

It's a good idea to start simple. The death screen offers a clear idea of what delivered the killing blow, but it may not tell the whole story; maybe you were put in a deadly situation by something else entirely.

Even this simple question has many different applications depending on the circumstances of your death. You can draw some observations depending on the situation. Is that a weapon you struggle to deal with? Was it something you saw coming, or something unexpected? What makes that weapon effective, and how does that relate to how you died?

This is an important question to learn how to navigate. Just saying "I'm bad" or "They're bad" is not useful for anyone. The skilled and attentive player moves past that and thinks about their actions, their situation, and the circumstances that led to their death.

This is when you compare what you know and what you did. Was there a different way you could have played the situation? Was there a way to avoid the situation entirely? Did you try something new, or is an old habit failing you? The more honestly you ask and answer questions like these, the more effective your improvement will be.

This one is super important. If you ask yourself no other questions, ask this one. Do yourself the favor of recognizing what you are doing well, no matter what. Give yourself something, every single time you die. Set small goals, preferably ones that focus on yourself and the things you want to improve on.

Did you get a kill? Did you escape a nasty situation? Did you witness something cool/interesting/funny? Did you explore a new area? Did you try something fun, even if it didn't work? Did you hit a shot? Did you make it to top 20?

You may only have a 1 in 64 chance to do the Winner Dance, but there are many smaller victories you can seize along the way that are more directly in your control, and they are critically important for helping you to not only enjoy the game, but to recognize your own improvement.

That's about all I can think to say on the topic of improving as an intermediate player. There are a few more things I would like to remark on, like using throwables and mounts to control space, or examining the decision to commit to firing or commit to dodge rolling, but I can't quite think of how to talk about them substantially. I will probably revisit this later if I have more thoughts to share, or if some of my thoughts end up changing.

I hope that this guide is at least somewhat insightful to other folks who aren't quite beginners anymore, who are interested in sharpening their personal performance and achieving more frequent, more satisfying victories. This is my first time writing something like this, so there are probably a lot of things I can do better.

Thank you for reading my guide. Take it easy out there, OK?