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Before your first match
Enlisted will let you start playing within a minute of installing, and that is roughly how long it takes to pick a faction you will regret. Progression is tied to the army you play, so a faction you choose casually on day one is the faction you will still be unlocking equipment for in week three. Pick the one whose weapons and theatre you actually find interesting, not the one the first screen happens to put under your cursor.
Beyond that, turn the tutorial on and finish it. It is short and it covers the squad-order system, which is the one piece of the interface that is genuinely not self-explanatory.
Five mistakes almost every new player makes
- Playing it like a solo shooter. Your squad is not an escort. Order it into cover near the objective and it will hold ground, draw fire and give you somewhere to respawn into. Sprinting ahead of it wastes the only advantage you have.
- Ignoring the engineer. An engineer squad can place a forward rally point. That removes the long walk back from spawn, which is the single biggest drag on a failing attack. Unlock one early and actually use it.
- Bringing nothing that can hurt a tank. Sooner or later a tank parks on the point. If no squad in your line-up has an anti-tank option, you have no answer and the round is over.
- Chasing kills. Objectives pay better than kills, both in the match result and in progression. Capturing a point you did not personally clear still counts.
- Spending money in week one. Premium squads shortcut the grind. They do not teach you the game, and you cannot tell whether you like Enlisted until you have played it for free for a few evenings.
Building a line-up that works
You take several squads into a match and they act as your reinforcement pool. A line-up that only contains rifle squads will be competent at everything and good at nothing. A reasonable early spread is: two infantry squads so you always have bodies, one engineer squad for rally points and cover, and one squad carrying an anti-tank option. Add a vehicle slot once you have one worth fielding.
Upgrade soldiers rather than hoarding resources. A fully equipped squad of five is more useful than two half-equipped squads of five, because you spend the match inside one squad at a time.
Not installed it yet?
None of the above costs anything to try. The game is a free download.
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Using squad orders properly
Three orders cover almost everything. Follow keeps the squad on you, which is right while you are moving between sectors and wrong once you arrive. Hold position parks them where you put them — use it to garrison a building or a treeline next to the objective. Move to point sends them somewhere without you, which is how you get an AI body onto a capture zone while you cover the approach.
The practical habit: give an order every time the situation changes, not once at the start of a round. Squads left on follow all match are squads that die in the open behind you.
Which role to learn first
Rifleman, and it is not close. It teaches you the maps, the sight lines and the time-to-kill without the extra demands of a specialist. Once you are surviving reliably, add the engineer, because the engineer changes rounds. Leave snipers and mortars until later: both are easy to play badly and hard to play usefully.
If and when to spend
Enlisted is free to download and free to play through. It also sells premium squads, vehicles, cosmetic items, a paid progression track and earnings boosts. Whether any of that amounts to a competitive advantage is argued about constantly and the answer moves with each balance update, so we will not pretend to settle it here.
Our only firm advice: play for a week first. If the loop has not held you by then, no purchase will change that. If it has, buy the thing that removes the grind you personally dislike, not the thing that is on the front page.
Keep reading
Enlisted explained
The longer piece on how the squad system, maps, progression and monetisation fit together. Read the explainer
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Who writes here, how claims get checked, and what we refuse to publish. Read the editorial policy
Accurate to the best of our knowledge on 6 October 2026. Enlisted is a live-service game and its systems change; where this guide and the publisher’s own information diverge, the publisher’s own information prevails. Corrections to info@celeros.online.
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