MORDHAU – How to Use Beartraps

This is a more thorough and up-to-date version of a guide I made a while back on how to use beartraps. This guide will include everything new that has come with the recent patches.

The Beartrap

Note: Credit goes to Kyyoo

In a game full of horse riders, spear+shield users, and archers, using the beartrap is a refreshing and fun way to play. It is one of my favourite strategies when I just want to rack up some kills and have a good time. It is also extremely entertaining to watch an entire enemy team try to focus all of its efforts on destroying you rather than playing the objective.

The beartrap is a two point weapon that, when equipped, gives you a single beartrap that can be refilled at supply boxes.

You can place a maximum of four beartraps at once. When you try to place a fifth beartrap, the oldest beartrap will be destroyed automatically.

Beartraps only stay placed as long as you’re alive. When you die, the traps stay active for about three seconds before all automatically breaking. This can result in a few kills from beyond the grave but it does not happen too often as the traps break rather quickly.

Beartraps do damage relative to the leg armour of whoever steps in them. If the damage is not enough to kill the person then it will cause them to fall over and be stunned temporarily. Level 3 leg armour will make the victim take 30 damage, level 2 leg armour will make the victim take 50 damage, and level 1 as well as no leg armour will make the victim take 100 damage and it will be an instant kill. It is possible for you and your teammates to be hurt by your own traps however the damage values are different. If you or a teammates steps in your trap with level 3 leg armour you will take 15 damage, level 2 leg armour will take 25 damage, level 1 and no leg armour will take 50 damage.

Your teammates are just as bad as your enemies when you use beartraps because they will most likely set off your traps more often than the enemies do. The most annoying thing about using beartraps is having teammates try to disarm them or just walk obliviously into them. The great thing about using beartraps with stupid teammates, however, is the fact that you do not receive any team damage penalties for teammates who are damaged or killed by your beartraps. The game recognizes that if a teammate is stupid enough to not pay attention and they walk into your trap, then it’s the teammates fault, not yours.

Beartraps can be disarmed by hitting them with a weapon in the center of the trap. This can be very finicky, however, and may take a few tries to accomplish. I will talk more about this in the “Loadout” section of the guide.

Beartraps will not activate if a person crouch walks over them. This is not common knowledge but some people are aware of this tactic. It is noteworthy that you can induce a type of paranoia within the enemy team where you will cause them to crouch walk everywhere around the map where they think a beartrap might be.

Loadout

Your beartrap loadout can be extremely flexible, however, some strategies work better than others. Here is the most effective build for a beartrap loadout that I have found:

The first thing to note is that I use two sets of beartraps. This is because you are only able to have four beartraps placed at a time, so with two beartraps in your loadout you only need to use the supply box once in order to place all of your traps.

I think that polearms work the best with this loadout becasue of their long reach. If you are fighting somebody and they are on the other side of one of your traps then you can still hit them without walking into your own trap. Using a long weapon will often make enemies who are using smaller weapons want to close the gap between you two. This can be easy bait for getting them to walk right into a beartrap place between either of you (often times the enemy will be so focused on getting close to you that they will not notice a beartrap placed at their feet).

I prefer the billhook over any other weapon for my trap loadout because 1) it is a polearm with decent range, 2) it has an extremely low point cost, 3) it is the only weapon that has the ability to push and pull enemies.

In the billhooks regular mode, it will push enemies with a stab and pull enemies with a slash. In the billhooks alt mode, it will pull enemies with a stab and push enemies with a slash. Using this effectively can result in you being able to push and pull stubborn enemies into your beartraps.

The billhook also does enough damage where if an enemy falls in your trap but does not die from the damage, one stab while they are stunned and recovering should be enough to kill them.

Your choice of armour is mainly up to your preference, though I recommend using level 3 leg armour so that if you happen to fall in your own trap, you will only take 15 damage. I use a level 1 helmet, a level 2 torso, and level 3 legs (1/2/3). I also like to have tenacious equipped as a way to heal. You will spend a lot of time hiding while using your beartrap loadout, either waiting for people to walk into your traps or waiting for a supply box to open up. Tenacious will allow you to heal back a lot of damage while only costing 1 perk point.

Crossroads

The map sections will be presented in order of which maps beartraps are most effective on to which maps beartraps are least effective on.

I think Crossroads is the only Frontlines gamemode map that deserves its own section because it is just so easy to use beartraps on this map.

You should always play on the red team because it is easier to kill blue players using these strategies based on the direction that they spawn from relative to where you will be camping.

The Holdout Point

When playing on crossroads, the most important thing to know is where you will be the safest. You will mainly be focusing on the Holdout point however you can play around the tower as well. At the Holdout point, it is the safest to stand on what I like to call the Safety Corner:

This location allows you to be on the point at all times (which will get you a ton of points) while also being elevated and out of direct view from the enemies who come through. There is a danger zone when sitting in the safety corner and that is the staircase right behind you:

You wont often be attacked from this angle unless the enemy team is getting really frustrated with you and is out for blood. Just watch behind you and keep your weapon ready to stab enemies that try to jump down on top of you from here.

This image shows the best locations to place your traps in while camping in the safety corner. The numbers show which spots you should prioritize based on the number of traps you have available to to you. You can only have four bear traps active at a time but there is a fifth location there in case you want to change things up a little and put a trap somewhere more unexpected.

Since it is most likely that you will have two sets of traps in your loadout, you will need to refill from the supply box once in order to get all four of your traps placed.

The Tower Point

The Tower is a much more risky locaiton to use beartraps at and will result in less kills as it does not have as much foot-traffic going through it. However, if the Holdout is taken and you want to use beartraps to defend the Tower, there is still a lot that you can do to be useful. The Tower does not have a safe location to stand like the Holdout does so your best bet is to use yourself as bait in the inside of the tower for enemies coming and trying to take it over.

This image shows again the best trap placements while defending the Tower as well as the priority for placing your traps.

Make sure to be careful of horses when refilling your trap supply while defending the Tower.

Getting Kills

When an enemy encounters a location where you have traps placed, you have a few different options in order to kill them.

They don’t notice the traps

• You can let them walk into your traps. This will result in them dying either instantly or falling over. If they fall over you can give them a single friendly stab to finish them off.
• You can stand on the other side of your traps and act as bait, distracting their view from the trap placed on the ground in front of them.

They notice the traps

• This is where having a long range weapon comes in handy. You can position yourself with the trap between you and the enemy and take stabs at them until they accidentally walk into the trap or you kill them with your weapon.
• If they notice the traps but don’t notice you standing nearby you can sneak attack them. You will get the opportunity to do this more often than you think because enemies will see the trap and instantly start trying to hit it in order to disarm it without checking to make sure there are no enemies nearby first. While they are trying to disarm your trap is the best time to hit them.
• Making them to panic may cause them to walk into one of the traps or you might just be able to do enough damage to kill them.
• Use the billhook to yoink them into a trap.

Grad – Invasion

Aside from crossroads, this is very difficult to do on Frontlines. However, with the addition of the attack / defense mode; Invasion, it is now possible for beartraps to be viable on every map within this gamemode, so long as you are on the defending team.

Therefore, each of these following sections will assume 1) You are playing on the defending team. 2) You are playing the map in the invasion gamemode.

For each of these sections about the Invasion gamemode, I will only talk about locations for trap placements as I have already discussed strategies for getting kills and using traps effectively in the previous sections of the guide.

Point 1 – Defend the Village

This point is very chaotic and it will be difficult to use beartraps effectively. Beartraps are best used indoors or in dark places where they are not easily seen and a map like Grad makes this difficult, especially on the first point where most of the area is bright and outdoors.

There are a few houses on this point that make good locations for placing beartraps. The first is the large open house near the stables:

There is also the smaller S-shaped house near the farm:

Point 2 – Defend the Castle

Beartraps become much more effective when defending the castle. There is much more interior space which results in hallways where enemies are funneled into your beartraps as well as dark areas where the beartraps are much harder to see.

I have found it very effective to place beartraps on top of the walls on the other side of ladders:

Placements on the inside of narrow doorways where lots of fighting can be expected to happen is also good:

If you are interested in fighting down in the tunnels and trying to defend the Warden then the location next to the staircase which can be lowered is very good because the blue team has to jump up a ledge in order to lower the staircase:

If you plan to defend the Commander then there is one very notable spot which is good to defend. One of the towers has a climbable rooftop next to it where players on the attacking team can jump from the rooftop onto the tower. They will often do this if the Commander is inside the tower and is well defended from the other angles. Placing beartraps on the other side of the tower wall may cause enemies to fall into them after climbing over:

Camp – Invasion

Camp is one of the more difficult maps to use beartraps on as almost the entire map is bright and open. There are a few ways you can use beartraps to defend your points still, however, you wont get nearly as many kills as you would on a map like Crossroads or Grad.

Point 1 – Stop the Cart

I would not recommend using beartraps here. It is extremely hard to get any beartraps down when there are so many people clustered into this small open area. As I have said previously, beartraps work best when placed in dark, claustrophobic areas where you can force enemies into your traps. On the first point of Camp you could try to sneak in one or two traps around this area where people will be squeezed but it is most likely these will get your teammates before they get the enemies:

Traps can also be hidden in the river for some easy kills however the river is so small and there will be so many people around that it might be hard to get traps actually placed inside of it:

Point 2 – Defend the Siege Towers

This is the part of Camp where traps become very effective. The enemy team has to carry explosive barrels to specific points near three siege towers. These points can be surrounded with beartraps and easily defended because in order to disarm the beartraps the enemy must first drop the barrel that they are carrying. Beartraps near these siege towers can make it very hard for the enemy team to push past this point:

Point 3 – Defend the Camp

The last point has a couple sneaky places to point traps and a couple good choke points, however, like with the other parts of Camp, you wont be racking up insane amounts of kills. You can be useful in slowing the enemy down, but that is about it.

Putting the beartraps on top of stairs or on the other side of the single ladder outside of camp can be good. There are also two easy choke points where you can get some kills:

Taiga – Invasion

At this point in the guide, many of the locations I point to will be repetitive of things I have said about previous points on other maps. I will do my best to be thorough for Taiga without repeating myself too much.

Point 1 – Protect the Foresters

To be quite honest, this point is not even worth talking about in terms of beartraps. It goes by too quickly and the area is too open. We will skip straight to the next point.

Point 2 – Defend the Fort

The second point on Taiga has a few very good places to place beartraps but is also very open and often times can get chaotic with the amount of people that are crammed into the small area.

The first thing to note is that there are three ladders where traps can be effective if placed underneath:

There are also a couple very dark doorways and choke points where beartraps work wonders in slowing down the flow of enemies into the fort:

Point 3 – Defend the Cart

Getting past the third point on Taiga requires the attacking team to fill a cart near the defenders spawn with 4 explosive barrels. This is an extremely hard objective to complete, especially if the cart is well defended with archers and engineers. Surrounding the cart with beartraps can be a very good tactic, however you need to make sure to place the traps far enough away. If the traps are too close to the cart the attackers will be able to place the barrels inside the cart without getting close enough to trigger a trap:

There is also a ballista on the defenders side that can be easily taken over by the attackers if it is not protected. The easiest route to the ballista for the attackers is through a side cave. Placing beartraps inside this cave can give the ballista and your teammates some good protection:

Point 4 – Defend the Cave

The final point of Taiga is to defend a cave while the attackers try to push the cart, that they just filled with explosive barrels, through the tunnels. Long, dark tunnels make for perfect bear trap spots however when the cave is filled with people it can be difficult to get beartraps down without dying right away. There are rafters which are good for hiding on top of and I especially recommend placing traps down the main tunnels where the attacking team is trying to push the cart through. Though, if you find that to be too crowded, there are plenty of side tunnels in which to hide beartraps for unsuspecting flankers: