Since "Duke Nukem 3D" the items in first person shooters don´t vanish forever
when they are picked up, but they come back after a specific time, which is also called
respawning. To deny your opponent access to the items the best thing to do is to be at the
place where the item respawns the second it respawns. Because it is always the same time
between pickup and respawn you don´t have to rely on luck to achieve that, but you can
time the respawns.

"The
armor in Codex respawning"
Here are some respawn times of items you should know:
Item: |
Seconds: |
|
|
Shield |
55 |
Armor |
27,5 |
Boots |
27,5 |
Pad |
27,5 |
Ammo |
27,5 |
Vitals |
27,5 |
Health |
18,33 |
There are several methods for timing items.
The most obvious but also least accurate one is timing by your feeling. Although this sort
of timing gets better the longer you play you will never be accurate on the second.
A much better method is to use a clock attached to the monitor, a program that times for
you, such as a midi timer controlled by the windows hotkeys or someone standing behind you
to time the items for you. All of this is certainly a great advantage but it often isn´t
allowed in tournaments, so you shouldn´t get used to those methods.
The only solution left is to use the gametime, which is shown at the bottom in the
scoreboard. There you can always see the remaining time in the game. So you just have to
look at the time when picking up an item and you can calculate when it will respawn.
If you pick up the shield at 8:30 for example, then it will respawn at 7:35. To make it
easier you can leave away the minutes and just memorize the seconds, because only the
powerups Damage Amplifier and Invisibility have respawn times longer than a minute and
duels are played without powerups.
Only looking at the seconds also makes the calculation a bit easier. Instead of
substracting 55 seconds you can just add 5 seconds and you´ve got the respawn time.

"next
shield at 54"
The shield is the only item I am timing on the second in duels, because I just can´t
memorize different times at once and most of the time I don´t even have to. The only
things worth timing besides the shield are armor and boots. Because you will guard the
armor most of the match you won´t need to time it. And because boots have the same
respawn time as armor you only have to pick up armor, then immediately pick up boots and
the next time the armor respawns you know that the boots will also respawn soon.
You should be aware that when playing without timelimit the remaining time is replaced by
elapsed time, so you have to substract 5 seconds instead of adding them.
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