Before you start playing Barotrauma, you should know a few things.
Barotrauma is a hard survival game in which you play as a submarine crew exploring the strange horrors and wonders of Europa. As you move through a huge underground network where people live in small safe zones, anything could go wrong at any time.
This is not the kind of game that shows you how to play by holding your hand. It’s easy to lose track of time when you’re exploring and trying to grow your submarine while keeping all of your crew members safe, but there are a few things we wish we had known before getting in.
Everyone Needs A Welding Tool
In Barotrauma, you can play different parts. So, each member keeps the ship in good shape by focusing on the tasks they were given and using the tools that are best for their skills. Every job has its own skill tree, so it might seem like you should just let the mechanics do the welding and everything else. Obviously, that is a big mistake.
Even if your trip seems to be going smoothly, you could run into all kinds of animals, enemy ships, or even just the ground by accident. When your shell is broken, it’s crazy how quickly everything goes to hell. Make sure everyone has their own welding tool so they can fix the holes when the water starts coming in from all sides.
Upgrade Your Diving Gear ASAP
Every basic submarine should have enough diving gear for the crew to use when they need to. If you have tasks that require you to leave the submarine, you need to do this. Even if you work on the submarine most of the time, you’ll still need one in case the armour is broken.
Without a good diving suit, the water pressure will kill you and you won’t be able to breathe. With the upgraded battle diving suit, you’ll have a little more speed and defence. This might not seem like much, but sometimes the difference between life and death is how fast you can swim away and fix an engine.
Multiplayer Servers Can Be… A Mess
So you want to play Europa with people you don’t know? That’s cool, and it gives you the chance to meet new people and get more into the story of losers being thrown together because this is the kind of work that’s available. The way the game is made makes it feel like it was really made for co-op, so if your friends don’t have a copy, you should try the multiplayer sites.
Still, a lot of computers can be a real mess of different things. If this sounds good to you, then you have nothing to worry about. If you don’t, you should be ready for a whole new journey full of violence from your own crewmates who think you’re a traitor, random griefers, and a lot of players who just don’t use comms at all.
Active Sonar Calls Attention
In the pitch-black waters of Jupiter’s moon, you mostly have to depend on your submarine’s sonar to check for possible enemies, goals, and obstacles. Usually, the captain is in charge of this, but anyone can handle the deck.
You can use either inactive or active sonar, but active sonar casts a wider net and can find more interesting things. Even though this is helpful, the active radar also draws the attention of threshers, crawlers, and other scary things that live in the deep. Active radar always comes with a risk, so be careful when you use it.
Having Your Own Crew Is A World Of Difference
Even though you can add bots to your team, you should really start with a small group of friends for the best experience. Beginners can get very frustrated when they try to play alone, and multiplayer sites are very hit or miss.
When you have a crew that you can talk to, tasks go much more smoothly, and your chances of surviving go up by a factor of ten. After all, who has time to play Among Us when reactors are exploding, leviathan sea creatures are looking for you, and crew members are getting sick every two seconds?
The Tutorial Will Not Prepare You For Everything
Barotrauma is a simple guide that will help you get ready for your first trip. There are also a number of job-specific tutorials, since the game works differently based on whether you are a medical doctor, captain, engineer, mechanic, security officer, or assistant. Just from this part, there’s already a lot to take in.
Even if you think you know how to do the job you want, you’ll quickly find out that the training did not cover everything you’ll need to know as you go on more trips. A lot of what makes Basket Random game fun (and hard) is that you have to figure out how to do certain things on your own and how to use the tools you have. Just be ready for a lot of people to die and things to go wrong.
Every Role Is Essential
You could have everyone on the team do the same job, but that would be tempting fate and asking to die in the cold. When everyone does their jobs right, barotrauma can be very rewarding. Make sure you know exactly what your job is. Even though it might not be what you want to hear in a game, every team member should learn more about their jobs and skills.
This isn’t the kind of game where your character can be good at everything. When each person builds their skill tree, it’s important to think about what’s best for the whole crew. You can always change jobs if you want more of a challenge.
Everything Needs Juice
Wires! Repairs! Power!
It makes sense that everything in your submarine needs power, but you’ll realise how complicated this system is when you’re in the middle of a trip and need to connect wires to add changes and think about how much fuel this will use. Even then, that doesn’t take into account how often things break. On top of that, helpful tools like the portable sonar, underwater scooter, and stun stick all need batteries.
Be ready to handle your nuclear reactor and engine with a level of stress you may not have felt before. Just do yourself a favour and bring an Engineer with you.
