After an explosive same-day release during this year’s The Game Awards, THE FINALS has already taken the world of the first-person shooter by storm. Only in its first week, Steam alone has seen it skyrocket up the most played list. It’s clear enough to see that the free-to-play, shooter-driven game show has piles of potential to take advantage of in its future.

Personally, it’s been the most fun I’ve had with a game in its genre for a long time (sans the Gundam Evolution-shaped hole in my heart). But for all its fluidity in movement, snappy shooting, and simple, archetype-based abilities, the game is no walk in the park.

In fact, mastery of shooters is no guarantee of success at all. THE FINALS’ primary game mode, Cashout, doesn’t offer any allowances for taking out your opponents. It is all about the money, but earning it takes strategy, teamwork, and speed. Here are a few tips on cashing out and keeping your ill-gotten gains from getting nabbed.

1. Do NOT rush the vault

It all starts here. The map will let you know where the next vault will next appear, and it’s up to one of the three teams to activate the vault in order to pick up a Cash Box. Now, it’s not instant: the vault will take time to dispense its Cash Box. But in my experience, it’s never the fastest team that ends up picking up the Box; rather, it’s most patient team. Let your enemies duke it out while the vault takes its sweet time. Don’t waste it waiting on the Cash Box, set your team up quietly and in the vicinity, ready to loot it off of whoever gets their gravity glove on it first.

2. Keep up with ziplines and jump pads

Maybe it’s self-explanatory, but I’ve seen more than one player try and run directly from point A to point B to not point it out here: THE FINALS is a fast-paced game, and it wants nothing more than for you to stay in the action. Make sure you use those ziplines! Some are horizontal, some are purely vertical, some are steep and diagonal, but don’t let gravity stop you; you can go up and down ziplines from any angle. Jump pads also aren’t as guided as you think, and you can cover a truly massive distance or land with pinpoint accuracy once you get the game’s movement down, and they’ll get you to a Cashout Station in no time at all.

3. Pick your fights, delay the winners

An easy one to forget, THE FINALS doesn’t offer straightforward incentives to take down your enemies, at least in the Cashout game mode. To win, you need to keep your eye on the money. And if the target in your crosshair doesn’t have the money, maybe hold off and focus on the enemy who does. If you expend your abilities, time, and lives of your teammates taking down the team who’s also racing to try and steal a Cashout, the team who’s sitting there defending it is going to have a much easier time doing so against a weakened opponent. Always be cognizant of where and when you’re picking off your opponents, and never waste a second of time.

4. When in doubt, blow your way out

I cannot stress the one enough: blow up anything and everything between you and a ticking Cashout Station. THE FINALS boasts destruction physics on a genuinely absurd scale. There is frightening little you cannot level down to bricks and rubble with a few well-placed grenades, explosive tanks, or breaching charges. If your enemy’s holed up and the battlefield doesn’t agree with you, change the battlefield. If the Cashout Station is on the floor beneath you, don’t take the stairs, destroy their ceiling! In fact, if there’s poison, fire, or turrets sitting on the Cashout Station, do yourself one better: drop it somewhere else! It isn’t a static object, it complies with the physics just as much as any item in the environment. You know what they say: an objective in motion stays in motion. Why steal the cash when you can steal the entire Cashout Station?

Are you and your friends playing THE FINALS? Have you been able to Cashout? How many buildings have you destroyed? Have you successfully poisoned yourself with a toxin canister that ricocheted off your target? We’ve all been there. Right? Share your stories in the comments below, or in the Boss Rush Network Discord server.

Image Credit: Embark Studios (via Xbox)

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