Coming next week: Treacherous Tides Update

Hello everyone!

The Treacherous Tides update is finally nearing release, so let’s take a final look at what you are going to find in it.

Traitor system overhaul

As we wrote in the previous post, the traitor system is getting a proper facelift in this update. In a nutshell, look forward to…

Traitors available also in campaign mode
Adjustable maximum danger level of traitor events
A total of 27 traitor events
Chaining traitor events, where one successful one may lead to another
Events with multiple traitors and codewords
Many new traitor-specific items, like the radio jammer and deepdiver ducks
Traitor events now use the scripted events system, which makes them much more varied and also much more moddable.

Barotrauma traitor update report suspicious activity — Be ready to report any suspicious activity you see, keep your head on a swivel!

Improvements to alien ruins

We’ve made some improvements to alien ruin layouts to create stronger progression in how the ruins evolve as you play further: later-game ruins are larger and more complex than the ones seen earlier on. This makes ruins you first encounter easier to traverse, with more complex ones only coming up as you progress further into the campaign.

On a related note, we’ve added a bit more challenge to handling the alien artifacts that you can haul home from your ruin exploration trips. Artifacts now require some more care when transported or stored, and each type of artifact has its own special procedures to pay some more attention to.

Barotrauma new artifact effect example Nasonov — Alien ruins have been improved and some artifacts have received new visual effects. Here’s the Nasonov artifact’s pulse effect.

Storage and inventory changes

We’ve written about the upcoming storage changes in more detail before as well, and here’s the quick version:

Stack sizes of most stackable items when placed in cabinets go from 8 to 32.
Cabinets get extra rows for more storage, and placement of storage containers inside cabinets is restricted to a single row.
O2 and welding fuel tanks gain increased capacity, but no longer stack in character inventories. This way, you should not need to switch tanks all the time, but you also need to consider your oxygen supply more carefully on away missions.
Added a new storage item: Backpack, essentially a larger variant of the toolbelt with a small speed debuff to help you move things around. Can be obtained through the new assistant talent “Bag It Up”, and purchased in stores around mid-way through the campaign.

Barotrauma new backpack item example — The backpack will be especially useful for cave exploration and mining excursions.

Circuit boxes

This new feature of the electrical system allows you to create complex wiring more easily and compactly: instead of adding multiple individual components into the sub’s walls, you will be able to configure your wirework inside a single item, the circuit box.

Barotrauma circuit box interface example — The new circuit box interface, opening up a world of possibilities for wiring wizards.

Submarine polish

Two vanilla subs have received some attention for this update.The Berilia has been modernized in many ways, based on reworks submitted by WJohnston & UberPendragon. Changes include quality-of-life improvements like a medical fabricator, an armory, cleaning up and repositioning various items, improved layout, aesthetic changes and rewiring. The R-29, first created by rav2n in 2019, has also received a number of improvements.

Barotrauma Berilia submarine updated version — The new and improved Berilia.

What else?

We’ve also got a few other improvements inbound:

Using devices on board the sub gets new animations. This helps to indicate to the crew whether a character is using a device or simply standing next to it.
New ammo indicator lights for the submarine’s turrets which make it easier to see how much ammo you still have left before needing to reload the weapon.
Addressed lead being too scarce, as it’s needed for almost all ammo types. Now ammunition can be fabricated from different materials, not just lead.
Various optimizations, for example to situations when there’s lots of NPCs around; loading screens are also significantly quicker.
The skill loss on death can be adjusted (or completely turned off) in the server settings.
If a client joins when their character is “braindead” (killed due to disconnection), the character is now revived and the client immediately regains control of it.

The Treacherous Tides update is coming next week, and you can continue test-driving it in the Unstable version until then. Stay tuned!