Insurgency Sandstorm has a lot of optional/customizable settings that you may want to tweak to improve gameplay and convenience.

1. Enable Compass:

Click Escape and go to Game Settings then 'Game' at the top center.

Scroll down to 'Always Show Compass' and check the box. This will display a compass at the bottom center of your hud, which also displays directions to
enemy players spotted by allies and teammates, using a map mod.

2. Change team/enemy colors:

You can change the player icon/map colors in the same 'Game' menu. This affects the colors/icons of players in-game, varying by game mode and server setup.

3. Show map/tactical map in-game and bind to a key:

By default, the in-game tactical map is not enabled. In the Settings menu, go to Binds and scroll down to the User Interface/HUD section.
Bind a key or mouse button to 'Tactical Map (Hold)', shown above. 

4. Setup Classes and Save Loadouts Explained

Setting up class loadouts on the main menu. From the main menu, click on Customize, shown below:



Until you get used to it, the class/loadout system can seem complex and like it fails to save your preferences. This isn't the case, but you need to understand a couple of the game mechanics.

The game saves separate loadouts for each team and game type, which means you have approximately 12 different loadouts, between Insurgents and Security teams, day/night maps and the various game modes. This is so you
can play a different type of sniper or gunner role per game type or map, for example.

It's important to understand if you set up a particular load-out while in the server for Security on the Ministry TDM  daytime map, for example, this will NOT be saved for another game mode, map or team. You can edit them on
the fly.

However, if you set up loadouts on the main menu before joining games, these will be saved across teams/classes. It's recommended to set up all loadouts from the main menu before you enter a game server. Here's how:

Once you click CUSTOMIZE from the main menu, you'll see the following screen, which manages player appearance and weapon loadouts. The Appearance screen looks like this:



The highlighted left panel lets you customize how your character looks. Some items require in-game currency to unlock, which you earn with XP through playing maps.
These are all cosmetic items with no impact on gameplay.

You can use the '+' icon on the right to create a new empty set, then save it at the bottom of the page, after editing. You can save multiple appearance sets and toggle between them.

When you join a map, you first select your team (Insurgents or Security) then an Appearance, then a Loadout.

In the highlighted box below, you can see the Faction and game type panel. Remember each game type and map can have a custom loadout:



If you choose the faction Insurgents, on the right, you can then select to configure each loadout for any game type, class, day or night map.
Remember they're all unique to the team/class/game type.

5. Customizing a specific class:

Note the highlighted boxes, below. Click the 'Default' button on the right to reset the selected class (on the left) to the stock or default loadout.
This is what you'll carry in-game if you simply use the stock classes/loadouts.

You can click Default under Rifleman which will give you the stock loadout. You can then customize that loadout for Rifelman on the left, before saving it at the bottom of the page.

This will update the Default loadout for an Insurgent team-member, playing Rifleman on the selected game type. The loadout will always stick.



If you click the  '+' icon on the right, in the above example, you can create an empty loadout for this team/team/gametype. You can then customize it however you wish.

You can make multiple loadouts for each class/team. Once you create an empty class loadout, you'll be prompted to name and save it, like this:



You can then configure the loadout.

Important:

Keep in mind, different servers may run different rules, which gives a different points cap for loadouts. Note each weapon, attachment, accessory, etc, all has a points cost. At the bottom left under the Class/gear panel there's a points total - in a server this shows what's allowed per class. Your loadout cannot exceed this total.

A default or vanilla server has a stricter points allocation for players, per class. MFH's server unlocks all weapons/attachments, but some weapons are team/class specific. We also have a custom points pool so you can carry more gear.

This means IF YOU CREATE A CUSTOM CLASS/LOADOUT in MFH's SERVER, IT MAY NOT BE ACCESSIBLE IN OTHER SERVERS, and vice versa. To make this easy, simply customize the Default loadouts for general play, and make MFH loadouts for our server. That will prevent you from having to select a custom loadout in each map, repeatedly.

If you do edit your loadout on the fly, note the changes will not show up until you respawn.


Inventory Tab:

The Inventory tab at the top simply shows you all the weapon skins you've unlocked or downloaded from the game's DLC store. Nothing can be configured here.

6. Black screen on map load?

Occasionally players load a black screen on entering a map. This is a game bug caused by having the incorrect version of the game after a Steam update. Note that you may think the game updated in Steam automatically, but sometimes the update gets stuck.
Here's how to fix this manually:

1. In Steam, go to the Library menu at the top and then click on Download Updates, like this:


2. You'll see a list of games with pending updates. Look for Insurgency Sandstorm and process the download. Then simply reload the game and reconnect to the server. 6. Manage Mods

The server manages mods automatically and will inform you of mods downloading on joining the server. This typically takes less than a minute for the half-dozen mods on the MFH server. You don't need to do anything except click 'accept'.

If you want to manually manage mods so you can use others offline or in other games, you can easily do so. The https://mod.io/g/insurgencysandstorm site manages all IS mods for servers and local play. You can log in there using your Steam or Epic account
and automatically subscribe to mods, much like the Steam Workshop. When you click 'Subscribe' on any mod page, in the top right corner, the game will download the mod in the background, when you log in. Be careful to check the mod is up to date with the latest game version - comments at the bottom of the page usually make this clear.


7. Fixing problem Mods:

With a modded server, sometimes mod files don't update automatically. 

If you want to remove all previously downloaded mods, to make sure the server is sending you the latest updates, simply go to the mod folder within the game directly and delete the folders inside it. You'll find this here:


Simply select all the folders inside this modio folder and delete them.

When you join a server with mods, they'll automatically download again. If you manually subscribe to mods on the mod.io site, they'll load into this folder.

In the game menu, downloading mods will show the following black banner: