Update Preview: Uncharted Depths

Hello everyone!

The last update of the year is coming next week. We named it “Uncharted Depths”, naturally because of the environment overhaul that makes your journey into the unknown more scenic than ever. Even more importantly, this update rounds off this year’s efforts to lend our game the kind of depth its name suggests. So, let’s take a closer look – what does it actually contain?

New environments

Barotrauma environment overhaul
The new environments are much more varied, and pretty.

Because this topic is not easily covered in just a few paragraphs, we wrote a bit more about it two weeks ago. Take a look here if you missed it! The other improvements in the update build on these environmental changes in many ways – more about that below.

New missions

Ever get that feeling like you’ve completed all the available missions at least 800 million times? To remedy that, we’re finally adding some new ones, with more to come soon in following updates. For now, let’s take a look at…

Destroy a nest: Now that we’re getting caves, we need cave missions, too! This mission tasks you with locating, entering and clearing out a cave. So, enter the lair, find a nest full of eggs and dispose of them. (Mind the grown monsters guarding the nest, and the brand new ones that may hatch as you approach.)

Mineral collection: As mineral spawning has been adjusted a little along with the environment overhaul, now is a good time to go prospecting. To complete this mission, you’ll need to find and collect a cluster of minerals with the aid of the newly added mineral scanner. As a bonus, you get to keep the minerals you dig up.

Activate a beacon: This is where we go deeper, both in terms of gameplay and game design. It’s always been the plan that player action can and will affect the spread of humanity on Europa, and this is how: reach, repair, power up and activate a beacon station, a small lighthouse of sorts, to pave the way for civilization. Just be careful – activating the beacon will attract a swarm of creatures, so the station will probably be harder to get out of than it was to reach.

Approaching a beacon station.

Besides the obvious – it’s just nice to have a bit more variety – we’re hopeful these additions will also solve some problems our players have encountered, particularly later in the game. Where it may have been a bit too hard to find outposts in the late biomes, the beacon missions and the better-balanced way the map now evolves should make the late campaign a bit more forgiving, and there should always be habitation no more than a few nodes away from your position on the map.

New enemies

We’re also adding new enemies to bring increased variety to your underwater struggles. These two new adversaries are particularly exciting, because both introduce behaviors that are completely new to the game.

The spineling is the first monster with a ranged attack. Yes, finally! In boring terms, it’s a medium-sized, mid-tier creature, meaner than a crawler but nicer than a mudraptor… and more interestingly, it shoots armor-piercing spikes that can pass through several decks of your sub and impale unlucky crewmembers within. We look forward to hearing about your best practices for dealing with these creatures – don’t get skewered!

New Barotrauma enemy, the spineling
The spineling may not be the biggest enemy you’ve seen, but we advise caution nonetheless.

This update also adds the long-awaited ballast flora (first mentioned only a few days after our early access launch, if our Discord server is to be believed!). It’s a wholly new concept in the world of Barotrauma that stretches what we typically consider an ‘enemy’ – instead of another monster fish, it’s a vaguely plant-like organism that takes root in your ballast tanks and will spread through your sub searching for sources of electricity to feed upon. Keep it in check or deal with the consequences!

New Barotrauma enemy, the ballast flora
The ballast flora’s fleshy appearance resembles the thalamus. Can you guess why?

What else?

Besides the environment overhaul, the missions, and the enemies, the update of course contains a bunch of other improvements and fixes – this is, again, one of our biggest updates to date. Here are some highlights for the “miscellaneous improvements” category.

Barotrauma's new mineral scanner interface
The new mineral scanner interface.
  • The mineral scanner mentioned earlier. This new feature of both onboard and hand-held sonar monitors (but not navigation terminals) will allow you to see mineral deposits as blips on the sonar.
  • A ready check that can be used to check if everyone’s ready to depart from an outpost in multiplayer.
  • Level difficulty now affects how outpost events are chosen, so you should no longer run into the more lethal ones very early in the game.
  • A new bot order, ignore, to command AI crew to avoid using/repairing/taking specific items or devices.
  • A new option to make non-wiring related items transparent in the Submarine Editor to make wiring easier.
  • A new music track, “Wartrauma”. This track plays at military outposts and sounds, well, soldierly.

That’s all for now. Keep your eyes peeled for the update next week!

Comments

  • December 4, 2020
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    CPT Crow

    You guys really outdo yourself with every single update. I can’t wait to start traveling through Europa again next week!

  • December 5, 2020
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    LordClanker

    I seriously cannot even fathom the amount of fun I will have activating beacons and fighting my way out, or maybe having crew members get left behind and just start living on the beacon stations.

  • December 5, 2020
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    Aitonater

    I have a singleplayer campagin which I’ve been working on for a few months. I have a really experienced crew and I’ve done lots of upgrades to my ship. All vanilla. Is there anyway I’ll be able to transfer my ship and my crew over when the new update happens? I’m really worried I’ll not be able to use what I’ve worked really hard on.

    • December 7, 2020
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      Dynamoon

      Hi! Great to hear you’ve been enjoying singleplayer 🙂 Old saves should work following the update, but if you’ve made it very far on the map with a non-deep diver sub and haven’t upgraded your hulls, you may run into some problems with the depth (not being able to travel without getting crushed). Even if that’s the case, it should be possible to teleport to an earlier location with console commands to get those upgrades before proceeding – you should ask on our Steam forums or in our Discord server if you need more info about how to do this!

  • December 7, 2020
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    Shayd Green

    I hope you add a command and behaviour for ballast tank cleaning. Those assistants can’t be pestering their precious Captain for orders. I’m a busy man you know.

  • December 10, 2020
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    shp

    We’re fighting against ballast flora and it’s extremely easy to catch and hard to fight, especially with other creatures attacking. Is there a more efficient way to kill it?

  • December 16, 2020
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    Yukikaze

    I find a way to do it; you need to wear a diving mask/suit, and grab a flamethrower (the quickest way), go into the ballast tank and manually pump out all the water with the pump , when there is no more water, turn off the pump and find a place with minimun infection and start to burning it. You can also use a flame grenade instead but water must be pump out and pump must be turned off.

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