Moloch

Moloch
Stats
Health 1,000	Sight: 1
	Hearing: 1
Armor N/A	Weakpoints None
Immunities N/A	Vulnerabilities N/A
Behavior
Walk speed 0.3	Swim speed 1
Aggressive? Always	Can Enter Submarine? No
Drops only 1 of the items marked with an asterisk * may drop at a time
Items	Chance
N/A	N/A

The Moloch are large crustacean-like creatures that manifest in Barotrauma. They are one of the most common aquatic life encountered in Europa's oceans.

Description

Molochs posses three pairs of elongated legs which allow them to propel themselves through water, although their legs make them poor at walking on dry ground. Their shell is primarily pearl blue in color, with their legs taking on a more whitish blue appearance.

The Moloch's shell acts as both its defensive and offensive capabilities. The shell will absorb a majority of the damage inflicted to it (1/100th of the damage). It is also the Moloch's only method of attack, using the shell to ram into targets.

They are ponderous, but their mass alone allows them to easily inflict heavy damage on a submarine by simply colliding with it.

In-game

Impact with a Moloch, or even just a corpse thereof, is especially damaging to the submarine's hull and easily busts holes in it, causing large amounts of flooding. While the Moloch will deliberately attempt to ram the submarine, it cannot match the speed of its target. Consequently, the Moloch presents the most danger either when submarine sinks or is driven into a Moloch (which goes to show the importance of using the sonar in navigation) or when the submarine is already kept immobilized by another circumstance. In either way, the damage caused by the Moloch is about to make the situation worse.

The dorsal shell of a Moloch significantly reduces the efficiency of attacks from above (to 1/100th of their normal damage): it is strongly recommended to shoot them from beneath for maximum efficiency.

If the player uses the Railgun, it will take three to four shots to kill it. If a player manages to shoot it under it's shell, it will usually be an instant-kill. If not, shooting it again will kill it.

Molochs cannot be inflicted with bleeding.

Damage Values

Item	Attack Damage	Kinetic Force	Damage Type
Head	200	400	Blunt

Trivia

• Before version 0.3.2.0, Molochs were unable to damage players, but tried to regardless. This resulted in the popularity of a 'rush' strategy to deal with them: divers would swim to the Moloch and strike it with even the less efficient weapon, distracting the creature from the comparatively vulnerable submarine and slowly wearing out the monster. The issue was fixed in 0.3.2.0, and the strategy abandoned.
• Interestingly, the Moloch's code doesn't include direct damage values against structures, instead transferring kinematic energies to yield the same result and create hull breaches.