SWAT: The Starting Survivor and Ricochet

At a glance

What SWAT is for

SWAT is the survivor everything else is balanced against, and the first questline assumes you are using him. That makes him the least exciting pick and the most reliable one — no unlock gate, no dependency on a synergy partner, and a damage line that covers the two most common types in the game.

Ranks

Every survivor has five ranks, the fifth added in version 1.0 along with two new synergy nodes, two passive improvement nodes, and one passive node that buffs the whole team whenever SWAT is in the squad. Ranks 2 through 5 each have an achievement:

The Survival Level each rank requires has never been published by the studio, and is not guessed at here.

Personal mission chain

SWAT asks for five missions, each its own achievement, and unlocks repeatable quests afterwards. Every one raises Team Bond, the squad-wide bonus to Cash and Specialization Points.

Window of opportunity → Breach and hold → Emergency rescue → No-knock entry → Crisis Negotiation

The mission chain is a police tactical operation, escalating from a window of opportunity to a hostage negotiation.

Patch history worth knowing

Patch 1.0.0c fixed SWAT’s Ricochet: Shattering evolution, which was not dealing Slashing-type damage. If you were chasing the million-Slashing-damage achievement during launch week and it refused to track, that was the cause.

Where SWAT fits

See the survivor tier list for how SWAT ranks against the other eight and why, the full roster for every unlock and mission chain side by side, and builds and synergies for how squad composition actually works.