[Top 20 Tips] Foxhole How To Rank Up Guide

As an immersive military game set to be able to hold a thousand players waging war against each other in real-time, the hit indie game Foxhole immerses its players further into the game with the addition of ranks and levels that display your participation in the game’s many, many wars! From a measly private up to a seasoned general, as you play this game and sink hours into it, you can progress through the ranks of the game at a reasonable pace.

…But maybe you don’t know where to begin, or maybe you want to rank up faster. Here in this guide, we’ll give you 20 tips and tricks that’ll be sure to help you get started on how you want to level up.

Being an immersive military game set in the 20th century, it’s going to be a given that a game such as Foxhole will have a rank-and-file sort of system to add to the immersion. And indeed, there does exist a form of hierarchy system in the form of ranks and levels in the game! Throughout playing the game you’ll go from a measly Private up to a venerated Field Marshall that earns the respect and admiration of others.

The rank system of Foxhole can be briefly described through the term Rank & File. These are two terms that refer to the individual levels of a player that are never reset and kept across wars, shards, and factions. Technically speaking, while certain ranks, in the beginning, allow you to access in-game tools, ranks and levels as a whole are purely cosmetic and do not affect the overall gameplay.

Rank is defined as a leveling system used to identify a player’s participation in the game as a whole. The rank system subsists on the commendation system, which uses Commends, a mark of approval and a form of currency that can be earned by helping the war effort. The more comments a player receives from other players, the higher their rank is. 

While they are purely cosmetic, the vast majority of players in Foxhole attribute a person’s rank to their level of trustworthiness and experience in the game. A person with a somewhat high rank such as OCdt or WO2 will be seen as more trustworthy to other players than a person without a rank or a low rank such as LCpl or Cpl. Here are a few more reasons why you should definitely at least try to rank up in Foxhole:

• Earn respect from players
• Gain experience through war efforts
• Access to in-game tools: make squads, regiments, map posts
• Be more trusted with mid to late-game weapons (eg. tanks, etc.)

In addition to that, this guide here will give you 20 tips and tricks to learn how to quickly rank up in the massively multiplayer war game of Foxhole!

Tip #1 - Participate in the war effort!

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One of the best ways to earn commends from other players and rank up quickly through Foxhole is just by playing! Work closely with high ranks and fight on fronts, and you’ll almost always get a few commends thrown your way. Veteran players like to see newer players going through the ropes of the game, and if they see you working hard, they’ll often give a commend or two to let you advance through the first two ranks of the game quite quickly!

Tip #2 - Scrapping and Gathering

Heading to the backlines, picking up a hammer, and making a beeline towards the nearest active scrap field is one quick way to earn a lot of commends that’ll make it faster to rank up in the game. Collecting resources for the war effort is a sure-fire way to earn a lot of commends which you can trade with other scrappers to rank up. You earn a single commend for every 300 pieces of salvage you harvest, 150 for coal, 150 for components, and 75 for sulfur.

Tip #3 - Do Logistics

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You can earn commends, which you can trade with other players, by doing general logistics. You can retrieve completed orders in the public section of a factory or mass production factory, and transport them to the frontline to earn commends. This is one of the most effective ways to earn commends as the frontline typically has around 10-30 players actively fighting around a single base of operations which can net you up to 30 commends per transport.

In addition, you’ll also earn commends you can give out to other people. For every 400 basic materials worth of orders you retrieve and transport, you’ll get 1 commend each!

Tip #4 - Killing Pays

If you find the backlines too boring for your taste, you can also earn tradable commends through killing and eliminating players on the frontline, which you can then exchange with other players to rank up. For every 5 kills you net against the enemy, you’ll earn a single commend! One of the best ways to capitalize on this is by doing artillery, or by manning a machine-gun post as these can easily kill more than 5 enemy soldiers at any given time if you’re on a heavily populated front.

Tip #5 - Medic Duties

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Playing as a medic in Foxhole is one of the easier ways to gain commends, as it works two ways. One, you earn commends for every 10 soldiers you revive from certain death. And two, you can farm and get a lot of commendations from other players just by reviving them. In fact, there’s a higher chance of the second one occurring a lot as a lot of the players value medics a lot and want to encourage them to keep 

Tip #6 - Commend Trading

If you’re in a backline, you’ll frequently find someone broadcasting in the regional chat about “Commend Trading”. If you have some spare commends, you can definitely net a few commends from another player in exchange for your own. While this is often discouraged in the eyes of others as it wasn’t earned through effort, commend trading is one of the faster ways to advance through the ranks of Foxhole!

Tip #7 - Build and Construct!

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Building and constructing defenses along the front- and backlines is also a good source of commends both to give away and to receive. If you’re in a coordinated front, you’ll often work with one or two more builders moving to build up defenses so the rest of your faction can advance safely and establish an offensive line. For every 300 basic materials you use in this endeavour, you’ll earn a commend you can give away.

Tip #8 - Participate in Operations

A lot of regiments, but also a lot of solo players, will often recruit the common infantrymen to participate in their operations. You can almost always bet that someone with a high rank or a regimental officer will be hanging around your spawn area looking to recruit fresh bodies to join their mission. While the operations might vary in scale and chances of actually succeeding, it’s a good way to earn commends and gain experience if you distinguish yourself from the others by communicating and fighting well!

Tip #9 - Repair and Refurbish!

In a similar token to Tip #7, you can also earn commends by repairing and refurbishing damaged vehicles and structures. For every 300 basic materials you use, you’ll earn a commend! Additionally, high ranking officers manning these vehicles or around these structures that you’re repairing and keeping maintenance might see your efforts and reward you with a commend or two.

While it might not be one of the fastest ways to rank up in Foxhole, you can easily rack up a lot of free commends by just doing this and trading with other players who have a lot of available commends and are willing to trade.

Tip #10 - Help other players out

Foxhole is a game that has thousands of players participating in the war in real-time. That said, you’ll just as likely encounter a soldier in the frontlines as you would in the middle of nowhere or in the backlines by some secluded road. This makes the world feel lived in, as players can be found just about anywhere if you look hard enough. 

And these players might just need your help. While trucking along the backlines you might drive by a broken down truck with a fellow soldier standing by, or you might stumble along a person running down the road miles from civilization looking for a ride to safety. You can help them! And if you’re lucky, they might even reward you with a commend.

Tip #11 - Artillery is the King of Battles

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Complementing the previous tips regarding farming commends by killing enemy players, you can expedite this process by participating directly in artillery operations. Wielding these awesome weapons of immense power is one way to get the attention of both the enemy and your allies!

Whether its by manning the gun directly and pulling the trigger, or as a loader lugging around heavy shells, or as a spotter in the frontlines providing coordinates to allow the artillery guns to fire accurately, you can earn commends just by participating and distinguishing yourself in such a team!

Tip #12 - Freight supplies around

It is well known that logistics is the foundation of any appreciable war effort. One of the few methods of providing logistics to undersupplied frontlines in a great amount is through freighting. Through the Ironship, or known simply as the Ironship, entire frontlines can be supplied in a single timely arrival of a freighter ship carrying vital supplies from the backlines.

The BMS Ironship is a large logistical ship specially designed to transport large quantities of equipment and supplies from backline logistical towns to midline seaports or even directly to the frontlines if any depots are accessible via dockyards’. Their arrival and deposition of supplies can often help deliver vital supplies to a region in dire need of materials in bulk, making it easy to farm commends with them as depositing cargo with them into a depot directly announces it to the entire region allowing other allied players to commend you!

From personal experience, I’ve actually gotten close to 30 commends from delivering freight to fronts like Farranac Coast and Westgate on two separate wars, accelerating my ranking up quite significantly that it would have if I had simply delivered these supplies via truck.

Tip #13 - Pursue grand objectives

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Foxhole is a grand-scale war game that has, in fact, an end goal that players have to work towards. This end goal is the defeat of the other faction in the vast majority of wars hosted by the game. While this might be a vague tip regarding the overall scale of the game as a whole, it’s something you should always keep at the back of your mind if you intend to dedicate a considerable amount of time into this game and wish to progress higher up the superficial ranking system of the game.

While the overall objective might be the defeat of the opposing enemy team, there exists objectives scattered throughout the entire game map in the form of strategic towns and locations, highlighted by an opaque circle with a town symbol on the map when viewed from afar. These key locations are milestones that dictate how well a war has been for a faction. The more of these key locations under your control, the more territory you have and the less the enemy has.

In that sense, you can bet that participating in the defence and taking these locations from the enemy is a surefire way to earn commends both to trade and to receive.

Tip #14 - Do the dirty work

There’s a lot of work that goes behind the scenes that makes the world of Foxhole keep chugging on. These aren’t always the floral kind of work, depending on how you’d view them. They certainly don’t include the things you’d expect to do when playing the game.

You can earn a reputation from other players by doing these types of work. An example of dirty work would be cleaning up after a battle, which includes several different aspects to it such as: picking up loot from corpses and depositing them back to base, wrenching locked vehicles abandoned in the front and returning them to a safe and populated area, and shovelling artillery craters back in to restore the land.

Tip #15 - Maintain the intel network

The map is one of the most used mechanics in Foxhole. It can be accessed by pressing the “M” key, which gives you access to the full map of the game from a theatre-wide view down to your region and exact location. If you take a close look, you can see there are dozens of triangle icons scattered throughout the map with a wide white circle around them.

Those triangle icons are Watchtowers, one of about three ways to gather map intelligence and keep the map up-to-date on both allied and friendly positions. In most cases, you’ll see gaps in the network that guard your friendly roads from previous partisan raids or otherwise decay, leaving opportunities for the enemy to sneak in and get the jump on you.

You can help maintain the map intelligence network in fine condition by going out and building new ones to replace or cover gaps in the map where your map intelligence doesn’t have coverage. Doing so helps contribute to your construction quota, wherein for around 5 watchtowers you gain a free commend to trade with.

Tip #16 - Maintain the perimeter

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Complementing the previous tip, you might also see defensive positions scattered near or around these watchtowers if they’re close to roads and key positions, marked by their pentagonal symbols on the map. In the same manner as the previous tip, you can grab a hammer and some basic material and help maintain these positions if they’re better than just building new ones next or in front of them.

While these efforts might be minor compared to the other tips in this guide, it’s actually one of the less focused parts of the game that helps a lot in defending your friendly territories effectively. You never know… that thin intelligence network and defenses might be the only thing keeping the enemy invasions away from punching through and surprising you and your faction!

Tip #17 - Be a partisan!

A partisan is not an official role in any capacity in Foxhole. Rather, it’s a title adopted by the community to refer to player soldiers that don scout uniforms, binoculars, and light weaponry to infiltrate enemy lines and scout out the resistance before conducting counter-supply raids and disrupting the enemy’s ability to deliver supplies or fight cohesively.

Partisan operations typically begin with scouting, probing for weaknesses in the enemy lines, and looking for a way to sneak through. These operations often happen at night and require a lot of patience and teamwork. Individual partisans die easily, but a group of around 2-4 will work well as it’s not big enough to warrant the full attention of the enemy at the front but is big enough to cause damage.

As a general goal, you’ll often be hunting vehicles and vulnerable infrastructure in the backlines of the region and distracting the enemy players by diverting their forces between hunting you down and fighting the greater allied force.

Tip #18 - Do public logistics

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While you can certainly do the entire logistics bundle by harvesting your own materials, making your own product, and transporting it from the backline logistical towns to the frontline bunker bases. You can instead opt to focus on one aspect of the logistical chain. A good aspect to focus on, and one that’s always in dire need of players doing it, is the harvesting aspect of the supply chain.

In the early game, you can bet that there are going to be a lot of players in the backline flooding the scrap fields mining away, and putting them into the refineries to “cook”. In the mid to late game however, these numbers dwindle and you’ll often just see a few remaining scrappers at the fields as everyone turns their attention to enjoying the frontline battles or something else entirely. 

By scrapping and delivering into the refinery and setting it to be available to the public, you can earn a rapid amount of free commends within a short period and in one gaming session as opposed to the multiple sessions needed to complete the whole supply chain by yourself! 

Tip #20 - Start a “business”

Throughout the game’s long and tenured history, there have been many players who have circumvented and risen above the normal progress of the game and added their twist to it. One of the more amusing ones is players or even whole regiments that dedicate themselves to the business side of the game, which is an entirely player-made side of the game.

These businessmen or war merchants will often be broadcasting themselves in the world chat, announcing their services and their availability in a particular region. They’ll often sell an assortment of wares that would otherwise take a long time to get, such as vehicles, tanks, ships, and rare weapons both from your faction and from the enemy.

It’s best not to question how they acquired such goods. It’s better to just accept and appreciate the fact that there’s a black market in Foxhole, and you can buy anything there with enough resources or enough commends. Take inspiration, and maybe start your own!

Tip #20 - Distinguish yourself

Many famous and infamous individuals in Foxhole have made their mark in the game’s community. Chief examples among these individuals are Seed, Trekker, Heimdall, and Flashwhite, among others. Seed is the Colonial Field Marshall, Trekker is a well-known regiment commander, Heimdall is a martyr for being the quartermaster, and Flashwhite is the Warden Field Marshall.

In one way or another, these individuals have distinguished themselves from the rest of their comrades and have earned an almost legendary status within the community for their works or contributions to the game, for better or for worse. 

Aside from their reputations, they also have one thing in common, they earned their distinction early on when they were relatively low ranks and now when you see them, they’re all high-ranking officers garnering admiration from their allies and respect from their enemies. 

I’d suggest taking notes from their journey throughout the game, and how they became the people they are now in the Foxhole community. One of the most special and long-lasting ways to earn commends and rank up is to garner a reputation for being dependable, reliable, and unique from everyone else!

Afterthoughts

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While ranks and levels might be a part of the game and integral to the immersion, it’s not a life-or-death situation with them at all. You can play, progress, and enjoy the entire game without ever worrying about what your rank is and what your level is. In the end, it’s all just a cosmetic aspect of the game and holds no importance whatsoever except for social standing.

We hope that, despite ranks being purely cosmetic, your interest in wanting to rank up through the game is helped via this guide!

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