The Lighthouse is a map featured exclusively in Survival Mode. It is the only map in The Last Stand campaign. The layout of the map is centered around a small group of connected buildings, with the largest being a two-story lighthouse. The buildings consist of a small storage shed, behind which is the first of the two rooms of the main lighthouse building. A stairwell in the larger room allows the players to reach the top level of the lighthouse, which can also be accessed through a system of ladders around the buildings. The machine used to start the map is located in a separate garage-type room, and is a large fuel pump. There is an obscenely large number of Gas cans and propane tanks on this map. The ammo pile and other weapons are inconveniently located on the outside of the house, which means you may not have a chance to change weapons or grab ammo when the horde attacks.
Gameplay
The chapter serves as a Survival Map for the game, the only thing the player or players need to do is survive for as long as they can. This chapter does not require the players to reach a safe room or get rescued to win but by setting a record for surviving for a long period of time against an endless stream of Infected.
Survival
See also: Survival Mode
The Survivors drive to a nearby Lighthouse near the sea and a cliff. They sought to find rescue here by turning on the lights of the lighthouse, but this only brings an endless stream of Infected onto them. With the realization that they are now trapped, the Survivors make a Last Stand before getting killed, how long can they hold their ground?
Overall Tips
- Teamwork is essential to long-term survival.
- In this mode, most of the popular choke points, closets and easily defensible corners are removed. Even if you find one that has not been removed, it is not recommended that you fight from there as The Tank will quickly defeat you when he arrives.
- You have an infinite amount of time to prepare. Use this to your advantage. Take as much time as you need to set up gas cans, propane tanks, oxygen tanks, and to find a good place to fight from.
- When searching for a place to fight from, remember that you need a location that not only limits where the horde attacks from, but also gives you a fair chance against the Tank. You either need to be able to fall back and deal with the Tank easily, or have a good enough vantage point to kill him before he can get too close.
- Ammunition is a problem. Unless you are being overrun with Infected or fighting a Tank, try to use your pistols as much as possible. Conserving ammunition should be a priority, as trying to get more during a horde attack can often be fatal. When you do head out for ammunition, remember to take at least one teammate with you.
Tactics
Weapons and ammo at the spawn point
- Since the map is placed in a forest area, use the various fuel and propane tanks given to you to create a perimeter around the buildings. You won't last long anyway, but it should help keep a large amount of the horde off your backs. Just remember to use the hunting rifles to shoot propane tanks, gas tanks, and oxygen tanks from far away.
- The stairwell, while being a cramped location, can give the advantage of a sort of choke point, and the high-ground defence tactic. Infected can jump through the windows above the stairwell, negating some of the high-ground advantage; however, it is also more difficult for Special Infected to reach you.
- It is ill-advised to stay within the rooms during a Tank attack, as there is not much room to move around. However, sticking close together may help your team focus their gunfire.
- Be careful about how close you are to the edge at the top of the lighthouse when there is a Tank or Smoker; Survivors can easily be knocked or pulled off.
Approaching the Light house
- Smokers are especially dangerous to the Survivors if they plan on using the roof as a defensible position. Because the Survivors are exposed, the Smokers can drag them out of reach of the other Survivors, and they can be killed quite quickly.
- A good place to set up is in the generator room. Set up several gas cans around the room for the initial few minutes, have two molotovs and two pipe bombs, and have all four Survivors have auto shotguns. Using the bump on the water heater, get two Survivors in each space between the pipes. Start the generator, and use only pistols until the Tank music starts. When the Tank begins to climb the water heater, unload on him. He should die before being able to do any damage. Once the Tank is dead, pull your pistols out again and repeat. A good time to get ammo is at about 9 minutes. This is at a time when there is a break of spawns. Just beware of Special Infected hiding around. Good luck!
Near the Light House.
- Another great spot to fight is the chimney on the lighthouse. You must be all humans, as this does not work with bots. All four Survivors either grab an assault rifle or a hunting rifle. Then trigger the swarms and go to the chimney. All four Survivors must be on the chimney, or else it won't work. Now that you are on the chimney, Infected will just stand and they will never try to attack your team. This is because this spot isn't "nav marked," so the AI thinks it's outside the world. The Tank, Common Infected and Boomers won't get you. Rarely, a Smoker or a Hunter will attack, so keep an eye on each other.
- An alternative to an all-human team would be to kill the AI bots prior to starting the lighthouse generator.
Inside the house.
- Another good place to fight is the fireplace room. Have everyone grab auto shotguns and dual pistols then station themselves in the corners. Have someone activate the fuel pump, then run inside. The wall to the left of the fireplace will come down, allowing Infected and Special Infected to come into the room and attack you. Make sure you man the doors and the broken down wall after the attack comes, as you will have your hands full by the time the doors are destroyed and the wall is demolished. You will almost have no breaks (hence the name "Survival Mode"), but it is a convenient place to fight, since you are close to the ammo and supplies outside.
- If you are going to head inside the house, watch out for the walls. They can easily be broken down, and the last thing you would want is a Smoker dragging you outside. Remember, Left 4 Dead is a game based around teamwork; have someone go with you for safety.
- There is another ammo pile located on the roof of the fuel pump room. If you manage to survive long enough to need more ammo, this pile is safer than going all the way to the ground.
- Almost every room (including the lighthouse tower) has a decent-sized pile of pipe bombs and Molotovs; use these to your advantage.
- Try to avoid being on the ground outside the house. Infected will swarm around you making movement to safety almost impossible.
- Another good way to start the round is to start a campaign and change the difficulty to Easy. The Easy difficulty would then be passed on to this chapter giving less damage to the Horde and lesser health to the Tank. This is best when all players are human-controlled and everyone should last longer to earn a gold medal. Just remember to stick indoors and good luck!
Left 4 Dead 2 Version
See also: Lighthouse Finale
For a long period of time, this was the only map from Left 4 Dead that was not made available in Left 4 Dead 2 as part of the Cold Stream DLC (aside from community-created ports available as add-ons). When asked if it would be available officially, the Left 4 Dead developer twitter said they wanted to "do something else for co-op players" that was "what (Last Stand) was originally intended to do". It is unknown what this was hinting towards and whether it made it into the game in any form, and the tweet has been deleted since.
However, in September 2020, as part of a surprise collaborative community-driven update, The Last Stand was remade as a full, two-chapter Campaign for Left 4 Dead 2, playable in all modes, with a greatly expanded adaptation of The Lighthouse serving as the second and final chapter.
New areas have been added that provide a lead-up to the finale area and an escape route to the rescue vehicle, for modes with a linear progression such as Campaign and Versus. In Survival and other modes that make use of the Survival Mode format, the fencing from the original version of the map is present, blocking access to the new areas, resulting in the map being near-identical to its Left 4 Dead form in terms of the playable environment, with the newly added areas becoming purely cosmetic background decoration. From a gameplay perspective, the Survival Mode version of the map is unchanged from Left 4 Dead, apart from weapon and enemy profiles.
This remake is exclusive to the PC version of Left 4 Dead 2.
Notes
- The Lighthouse is the only scenario in which no promise of evacuation is expressly stated.
- On the 360 version of Left 4 Dead, the chapter description for the Lighthouse is a file name, called L4D_HOLDOUT_LIGHTHOUSE.
- There is a glitch in the map. If you run to the end of the road where the car is, there will be a fence. Jump in the very corner where the fence meets rock. Doing this right means you will float in mid-air for a few seconds, hear your character scream, hear a loud crack and die instantly.
- This is due to a bug in the Source engine; when the hitboxes of two models collide, the player gets stuck in between them, although the engine thinks the player is free falling at enormous speeds. As fall damage is calculated by your downward velocity, your character will die when the game calculates that they've reached a fatal velocity, causing this bug.
- There is another glitch to this map as well: if you go around the house connected to the lighthouse, you will see two rocks standing next to each other. Behind them is a tiny plot of land where you and a friend can stand and if you place your survivor(s) right, no Infected can find you, although a well placed Smoker can find you if you're not standing in the right spot and so, in theory you can stand there forever.
- There is no Campaign version of this chapter, however, loading the chapter using the "map" console command will begin a game in campaign mode, as is the default behaviour for the map command. The chapter will behave identically to the "offline co-op list" glitch described above when played in campaign mode.
- Very rarely, the Last Stand will appear in the offline co-op list. When you play the level, the loading screen has no title and is different from the Last Stand loading screen. When you spawn, you appear on the other side of the fence at the car. The map keeps going until it reaches a sheer drop. Starting the generator will sound a loud foghorn and turn on the lighthouse light, but no hordes will spawn.
- If you run all the way to the fence, turn left, fall off and hang on to the side of the cliff, none of your teammates will help you. But in order for this to work, you must be as close as possible to the fence.
- Before this map was released, a video showed that instead of turning on the generator you were supposed to use a radio to call for help instead. This was cut in the final version.
- It is unknown based on what lighthouse in real life in USA the lighthouse depicted in both Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 version. However, the lighthouse building itself probably modeled after Presque Isle Light lighthouse on the shore of Lake Erie in U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is one of three lighthouses in Erie, along with the Erie Land Light and the North Pier Light. The lighthouse is situated on the northern shoreline of Presque Isle State Park overlooking the beach.
- In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, there was a map that was cut during the public beta called Lighthouse (de_lighthouse), the setting was most likely seemed to be along a shoreline, with the action going on both inside and outside a lighthouse, which could be a reference to this map.
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