An architect during anarchy, here's a handy guide to the Engineer Class in Hell Let Loose.

The backbone of any well-oiled team, the Engineer in Hell Let Loose is a fortification-building machine. Capable of turning any spot on the battlefield into an impregnable bunker or filling the land with various mines and barbed wire, this helpful class has a lot of useful things to deploy on the frontlines.

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Engineers are often high in demand as they have access to a wealth of obstacles, cover, and other constructs to aid in the overall war effort. This means they play a lot different compared to other classes in the game. It can be a lot of information to condense if you’re new, so here’s a handy guide to the Engineer in Hell Let Loose.

First off, the Engineer is primarily a defensive role. They’re very squishy and don’t have a lot of ammunition or items to defend themselves if they come under fire. So they’re best-used way in the back or ideally next to the Commander and an enormous stockpile of Supplies.

Engineers are all about building instead of fighting. They can construct barricades, barbed wire, bunkers, and more to keep the enemy at bay or provide respite from machine gun fire for friendly troops. Their Sapper tree, unlocked at level three, also provides a lot of fun tank-killing capabilities if you’re looking to try something more aggressive. But if you prefer to avoid direct conflict and like creating complex defenses in the massive maps of Hell Let Loose, then the Engineer is worth checking out.

As an Engineer, you’ll be getting familiar with Supplies and how they work. This class doesn’t really function without them. So knowing what to do with these piles of crafting parts when they’re air-dropped in or dumped off the back of a friendly truck is crucial.

To summarize, Supplies are resources that are used to construct barriers, Garrisons, and other vital equipment out on the battlefield. Without these, the Engineer is pretty much useless, so staying near a big pile of it is key.

The loadouts for the Engineer, like the other classes, have a little extra variety if you want to specialize your soldier further instead of being just a heavily armed Bob The Builder. Your standard loadout has access to all the bells and whistles of constructability. So if you like setting up walls and Nodes, or setting lots of landmines this is primarily where you’ll be sitting.

The other variants are, the Sapper, which has no construction options, but you get AP Mines, a Smoke Grenade, and a Satchel Charge, which let off massive explosions. Finally, there’s the Field Engineer, which has the ability to build, some grenades but no landmines.

The Engineer for the United States is possibly the best version of this class in Hell Let Loose. Whilst that statement will probably get you thrown out of some Community threads, their weaponry is absolutely solid. Their starting slate has the rapid firing M1 Carbine, whilst their Sapper wields a shredding buckshot blast of the M97 Trench Gun.

Finally, to keep up with their full automatic friends, their Field Engineer gets to use a Grease Gun to suppress anyone pushing their barricades with submachine gun fire. Also worth noting is that the United States is the only faction with three variants to their Engineer Class. Whilst the German and Soviet Union sides only have access to two.

For the German side your choice of weapons is a little sparse, but they’re still useful. Their base Engineer Class has a Karabiner 98K, which is pretty decent and only takes one shot to put down soldiers. So you’re not completely defenseless.

Their version of the Sapper, known as the Pioneer has an MP40 which comes with a good stock of magazines and can chew through soldiers like they’re tissue paper.

The Soviet Unions Engineers get the short end of the stick unfortunately when it comes to weaponry. Their starting loadout gets to run around with a Mosin Nagant 91/30, and that’s pretty much it. The Sapper class doesn’t get any better as they use the exact same gun.

Whilst it’s fairly reliable at range, it makes this particular class extraordinarily squishy on the battlefield. So if you’re running an Engineer as the Soviets, try to avoid firefights as often as you can. Let the guys on your team with the PPSH machine guns do the fighting, and stick to building them cover so they can survive.

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Once you’ve gotten the basics of the Engineer down, it’s always worth knowing what the best thing to do is during a particular game mode. As an example, in Offensive you’re best used at the key Capture Points, building layers of defenses and bulwarks against the eventual enemy assault. While in Warfare this class has to adapt to the constant flow of the fight, creating small HQs and fortified Spawn Points at key areas of the map.

There’s a lot of fun stuff you can do with an Engineer once you start digging into what they’re capable of. To make the transition into this class a little smoother for first-timers, here are some helpful tips for the Engineer in Hell Let Loose.

One of the most important and crucial tasks you can perform as an Engineer is to build nodes. These simple little constructs are relatively cheap to make. But they’re a worthwhile investment and you’ll often see or hear the Command chain asking for them to be made.

For the uninitiated, Nodes basically generate a special resource for the Commander. This allows them to use their abilities like calling in Air Strikes, Recon reports of enemy positions, Air Drops which are temporary Spawn Points, and much more. Each Engineer per Squad can only make one of each, but if you can put them down it’s recommended that you do.

Normally when you’re running around as a soldier in Hell Let Loose, your priority should be to stay with your Squad. Pushing a Capture Point or covering each other as you cross an open stretch of field. As an Engineer though, you have a lot more freedom as you’re better used elsewhere.

For example, hanging around key areas with large parts of the battalion, building defenses, and traps for the enemy is a better use of your time. Or hanging around the Commander to help them build Nodes in new tactical positions on the fly. If you’re playing on the Offensive mode, staying at the Capture Points is mandatory, as turning these key points into fortresses is the only way to help your team survive the long rounds, enemy fire, and constant artillery barrages.

The Engineer and their Sapper variant are absolutely brilliant at turning any stretch of ground into an impassible minefield. They can be an absolute nightmare to the enemy with how versatile they are with their explosive tools in their kit and how creative you can get with your landmines.

For example, great places to put the Anti-Personel mines are in ditches, behind barricades that could get overrun, in doorways, or chokepoints that will funnel enemy players. For Anti-Tank mines, aim for main roads or wide crossings in fields as that’s where tanks tend to hang out the most. These little devices also don’t trip for friendly soldiers or vehicles, so don’t worry about sticking them down in an area with a lot of foot traffic. Though they can still be detonated with bullets or an accidental grenade toss, so watch your fire. Finally, mines can trigger in clusters if you place them near enough to each other. A good trick is to place a bunch of AP mines around or close to an Anti-Tank mine. That way if any armor sets it off, there’ll be a massive explosion that should also clear out any nearby infantry hiding near the tank or vehicle that set it off.

You're limited to the number of mines you can place down in one life but they remain if you die.

A great feature of the defenses you can build as an Engineer is that some of them can be upgraded to bigger and stronger forms. These larger variants cost additional Supply to build and take quite a bit of time to construct. But you can speed it up by getting other soldiers to help with your hammering.

However, just because you can upgrade your cover, it doesn’t mean you always should. Bunkers for example, start as a square sections of wooden walls and as they get upgraded they turn into real cement and sandbag-covered bunkers. Whilst the stand-alone barricades gain sandbag and cement walls. Whilst one sounds stronger than the other, bunkers are bullet, rocket, and artillery magnets. You’ll rarely see them manned because of this, so they’re just a waste of Supplies. Fully upgraded barriers are better at blocking and are much better at hiding your outline as you fire from behind them, so get those walls down instead.

As an Engineer, if you really want to earn yourself some praise from your teammates, you should find the nearest tank out in the field and ask if they need any repairs. These trundling boxes of doom regularly get battered by enemy fire. In the majority of cases, they’ll have some part of their vehicle that needs a quick blowtorch back to full health.

Normally to get repairs armor divisions have to head all the way back to Headquarters where they’ll need to sit by the Repair Station for a few moments. This can take them out of the fight for a very long time, as well as open them up to ambush when they’re leaving or heading back to the frontlines. So if you see one of these rumbling past, ask them if they need some repairs as it will keep them in the field longer and could help massively in the long run.

NEXT: Hell Let Loose: Artillery Guide

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