Overview
This guide is mostly meant to teach newer players (or those who want to learn new tricks) information about class advantages, weapons, and more.
Traitor Basics
Before we start
Keep in mind that i havent been able to play barotrauma since the last 2-3 updates. i believe they said they’d be fixing the issues in an update that came out long ago. They told people to look at their security but i havent been able to find anything blocking the game. Until i get a response on my discussion or an update comes out fixing it its completely out of my control. So while you read this guide remember its a bit old, sadly i wont be able to do anything about it so if anything changes feel free to let me know in the comments.
Pre-Round Info
In Barotrauma, if someone is hosting a server (or your hosting a server) you have the option to either:
Enable traitors (Yes)
Have the possibility of traitors (Maybe)
Or have no traitors (No)
Keep in mind that if traitors are a maybe or a yes, it will show up in the traitor filter in the server selection menu.
The Real Deal
So, you have been selected to be a traitor, you’ll likely have gotten a popup and a message in chat telling you what your mission is (Oxygenerator Sabotauging, Husk Infecting, Etc.) Most, if not all traitor mission goes through a cycle of:
Get chosen –> Get Mission Info –> Do Mission –> Do preset escape plan (Game will either end or tell you to get a certain bit away from the ship for the round to end.)
Doing Missions
Getting Mission Info
Now, getting mission info is awfully easy, its mostly just going to certain storage things like lockers and picking up items (Oxygen Mask/Oxygen Tank) until you find the specific one you need and get mission info.
Doing The Mission
Now you should know what you need to do. For the sake of examples we will say your mission is to sabotage a Oxygenerator. If you want to do this mission you would need ATLEAST a Screwdriver (Bare Essentials, Item Creativity is later in the guide).
Once you have all of this ready you need to find the Oxygenerator, You should have a option to sabotage it. Then you hold position at the generator until it breaks, then make sure it stays broken until a certain point (Mission Info tells you)
Now you will have completed your mission, Hooray! You should have free reign to kill everyone if you wish (that or the round just ends.)
Getting Creative (Murder)
Item Creativity
Now that you know how to do the mission, you need to factor in the (likely) 5 or so people who will likely see you doing it and just blast you with a shotgun until you stop moving (not recommended for traitor stopping btw, gives a mission to another random person). So you’ll need to defend yourself.
Fentanyl
Fentanyl is your absolute lord in its holy syringe form. 2 injections and your targets absolutely devastated and will die faster than you can say (or they can scream) “CLOWNS”
Chloral Hydrate
Chloral Hydrate is the stun version of Fentanyl, not as godlike but very close (Due to its non-lethal nature). Ill explain later in the guide the wonders you can do with a stunned person.
All Guns
Guns are kinda eh, extremely good against most monsters but loud and most good traitors only use them as a last resort due to their loud and noticable nature. Ill go over it quickly:
Revolver
Revolvers are the best gun in the game, their big stun and accurate nature makes them great for fighting off enemies of all kinds.
Smg
Fast but weak, this gun is definately my second best choice when it comes to preparing myself, accuracy is very important when fighting off fellow crew members as if they have a more accurate weapon, your the one found dead in the ballast randomly late in the game without any items, clothes or id’s
Shotgun
Personally my least favorite (though not saying much, guns are supposed to be uncommon and powerful) Its got an extreme kick and good at ripping people apart at close range, but generally loses in a battle with other guns. Recommended on smaller, more compact subs.
Syringe Guns
Silent but deadly if used correctly, its my personal favorite due to its helpful nature when giving doses of your favorite poisons from afar. very unrecommended for fast killers like fentanyl as it reportedly only gives half of the syringe, therefore not being lethal.
Oxygen Mask/Diving Suits
These are not technically considered weapons which makes them a good weapon if you know how to weaponize it. Putting welding fuel instead of oxygen tanks in them will kill people in less than 5 seconds most of the time. For an added chaotic bonus change all diving suits to welding fuel then blow up a part of the ship for an easy mass killing that looks like an accident.
Welding Tools
Also not a weapon, but can be used for bombings via putting an oxygen tank in instead of welding fuel, this may actually get you banned from alot of servers so heres a better idea.
Be a medic
Wait for an engineer/mechanic to be brought to you for help
give them a oxygen trapped welding tool
watch as they use it to fix things, then get blown up and (if its a traitor server) likely get killed for being a traitor.
Not Getting Caught (Deception)
Beginner Info
As a traitor, the submarine is your play place as long as you have the skills to keep it that way. The more you know the game the more you can use it to your advantage.
Id Card
Id cards are used alot less than they should for being so useful, Got caught and are stuck in a room without your id card? Find a body/bodybag and take their id, then haul you and your clown boots outta that area and cause more havoc, People leaving the server randomly? wait until a sec officer or captain leaves then find their body and steal your id, now you have access to a large portion of the sub!
Disguising Yourself
Planning on going double handed fentanyl on some poor engineers trying to fix the reactor you broke? it helps to have a mask (oxygen mask, clown mask, most things ending in mask, diving suit)
open inventory space for your id card once you take it off and a empty piece of your soul for extra fentanyl storage, this makes your nametag come up as a ? and allows you to get away with that fentanyl homicide.
Its also recommended to have someone elses id instead of having none (to not have as much suspicion come up,) and taking off your job assigned clothes (only if your using a mask and not a diving suit). This makes you harder to be figured out and can (as an added bonus) cause chaos among the crew as people beat up the poor fool you got your id from
Hiding On the Sub (Stealth)
Introduction
The steel world inside the submarine is always bustling and ripe with chaos and confusion, if you harvest this environment correctly you will be able to slip in and out of trouble
Example
Lets say you messed up, your fentanyl manslaughter and almost uncomfortable overuse of the clown outfit got your identity known. Its not over yet! The only failed traitor is one who is dead (or left in the ballast to drown when the ship goes down cause alot of ships dont have brigs). The best idea is to hide in the ballast, its rarely gone into unless the ships flooded and the pumps break (And if any poor weak mechanics stumble upon you just stun them, take their id and headset and let em die)
Know Your Ship
Lets say your on a pretty good and easy to navigate/understand ship like The Black Bass (i <3 you black bass). Take some time to figure out the locations of each area on the ship, where is the bridge? The armory? The medbay? How can you use the positions of the areas and the design of the ship to move around swiftly and undetected? Where is the spot where the clown outfit spawns? Knowing this information can safe you in a pinch, and the good thing about this is that you dont even need to be a traitor to follow this rule!
Getting Into Places You Shouldnt Be In
Surprisingly, people dont pay much attention to those who LOOK like they’re meant to be there, heres an example: As an engineer, i wanted to get into the armory, I began gathering items starting with the id card of an old captain which had died. I found security clothing and a diving mask and put all the items on, showing me as a security guard with the name of the captain. I was worried that they’d notice i was using the card of a non security guard but surprisingly they didnt care. I slipped into the armory, took what i wanted, and left. Let me explain the components of this.
The id card combined with the diving mask made it so i was shown as a higher up. the security clothing also solidified that i was a guard and working together with every other components i ended up looking well close to a security guard.
How to do your work in every class
Introduction
In this section i will be highlighting the best ways to do traitor jobs in every class
Captain
As the most well known and “respected” class on the ship, everyone knows your name. The best way to go about doing your job is to try to cause distractions. People will always immediately recognize you due to your ranking being given to only one person every game (Unless respawn is on, people may be given the ranking also to pilot the shuttle to the ship.). Your best bet will be to distract everyone and cause chaos, whether by setting the reactor to explode, messing with the oxygenerator, causing any explosion at all, or just piloting the ship into a wall and blaming it on someone walking into the captains area. These will allow you to run around and do your traitor work under a thick blanket of chaos.
Security
As the hand of the captain, you are given a strong set of power and respectability from everyone as long as you act decent and keep your head down. Your best bet on doing your mission is to stay out of conflict and do missions while the whole ship crumbles around you. While the captain may keep a close watch on you if he’s half decent you will always have the moments where his focus is off of you (probably on outside threats) and you can make your moves.
Doctor
A personal favorite of mine, everyone trusts you to do your job and do it well, if you put on the guise of being helpful you can cause real damage where its needed. As the doctor, you have the perfect setup of being strong enough to kill people with two syringes (Fentanyl) and alot less attention to you from the captain. You also have access to one of the most powerful stun items in the game (Chloral Hydrate) and can, if given said items, easily stun, kill, and take what you want if you do it right.
Engineer
As the engineer, you are given a strength in wiring and generally useful in repairing stuff like junction boxes and other electrical items. You also have easy explainable reasons to have a button which if wired correctly allows you to smoothly break into rooms your not given access to.
Mechanic
Mechanics arent really all too great for being traitors, you wont have any good experience in the tricks needed to do traitory, chaotic things. While you have the advantage of being generally uninteresting beyond doing orders you still have no access to good weapons and cant do the process of quietly preparing for battles as smoothly and easily as most other classes.
Assistant
As the bottom of the class ranking you are practically hidden from the highest of the rankings and have a very good reason to have just about anything nonthreatening as you really are only here to help. You can quite easily get around and do your work as everyone asks everyone else to do work.
Clown
Your this class by ultimate choice, when you put the mask on the world around you becomes two things, hostile or peaceful. Security will stun you, the captain will order you to be killed. But if your lucky enough you will have a ship that leaves you be, or even worships you. Your traitor abilites function similarly to the assistant but without being hidden from anyone. Your biggest strength is that people wont get onto you for ANYTHING that isnt killing people, Have a stun baton on you? Ehhh, the clowns just trying to make sure nobody/traitors attack him. Got someone elses keycard on you? Thats clowns for you, probably stole it off of some poor engineer getting stun checked by guards after important items went missing. People generally dont care about what your doing unless it threatens the entire sub.
The Social Advantage
In Barotrauma, its not hard to make “Friends” that will Die for you help you with most things you need as long as you do it right.
Making a “Friend”
Making friends in Barotrauma is laughably easy, you could honestly just go up to someone, say we are friends, then get to know the person.
What friends you want
You ever see that mechanic/engineer that keeps getting in trouble with the security? make friends with them, the need to live is weaker than the need for revenge. It also helps if the person your making friends with has the same job as you or closer role wise.
What to do
Make a “Revolution” plan with them and begin collecting weapons, be honest with them about everything but your traitor status, kill those who attack them, act like true friends. Then, when the security guards are dead or just kinda walking around mindlessly, go to the captain and kill them with the help of your friend. Let them become the new captain then go full on focus on your mission. While they either get into the job of being captain or get stunned and shot to death by a security guard, complete your mission while the chaotic rift of many deaths covers your actions.
Elongating a Mission
Theres no shame in taking your time when doing a traitor mission, but if you dont have alot of time left, you need to find ways to slow down the ship without completely destroying it.
Wires
Suprisingly, alot of people dont know how wires work, luckily for you all you need to do is mess with them. For a start, cluttered ships are your friend, unwire engines, navigation terminals, pumps, they all are extremely hard to notice and can be lethal to the mission time if people arent constantly checking wires because of that one door unwirer. (I personally recommend pumps or nav terminals, i have been trying to learn how to make ships and the pumping and moving systems are annoying as hell.)
Sabotauging
Traitors are given an exclusive option to sabotauge things, sorta like the opposite of a repair function. This is generally used for missions but also can be used as a distraction, the ship has many things working in order to make it a working enviroment, oxygenerators, fabricators, ethanol, all play into playstyles and functions. Destroying something so important that cant be ignored can really put peoples mind off of other things, not recommended as its not exactly effective in getting the entire ships attention.
Actually Catching a Traitor
After getting killed and not noticed for 3 whole hour long rounds, im gonna make a part of the guide for those people who have a harder time catching traitors.
Guessing a Traitors Mission
Some random guy shot you with deliriumine? Found a Mudraptor Egg in a vent? Congratulations, you either know what the traitors mission is or someones doing stupid things again.
Ill start off with an example, one time i found a button in a medical cabinet. To your average foolish individual its just a button, but if your brain is massive like mine you’ll know this is likely for one of those traitor missions in which they blow up the entire ship. Knowing this information i promptly went to the deconstructor and popped it in. Problem solved! Once you know traitor missions somewhat well you can use it to completely destroy them. If a mission is destroyed the traitor will get a message and then the traitor will be passed onto someone else. keep destroying these missions if possible until you can capture a traitor, then kaboom! you win the game as long as that pesky traitor stays in their little pen (brig)
Finding Traitors As Captain (Kinda a rant)
When abunch of people are getting pulled out of the airlock and theres some random guy in a diving suit up there, connect the dots. STOP being lenient when it comes to finding traitors who are killing your crew. the longer you take without action the more crew dies, the worse state the ship is in due to the traitor. Teach your crew the hard way to do their job and just their job only, get your guards to watch EVERYONE, including themselves. STRONGLY suggest incapacitating instead of killing. DO NOT WAIT TO PUT PEOPLE IN BRIGS FOR SUSPICIONS. Punish people or else everyone will die.
The End of This Guide (Currently)
Thanks for reading this boring guide about how to kill people, i encourage you to go look at more to get your own certain style of killing (mine, if you havent noticed is alot of fentanyl)
Oh and also, dont forget to make a comment if you want something added or have any questions, i dont make many guides so if i make a mistake let me know. (Also, i made this guide originally at like 3 am so that may explain some of the… creative choices)
Credits
The people who suggested ideas that were added to the guide are:
Ian_4004
SonoFelice
And not to elongate the guide artifically, but PLEASE leave a comment if you have any suggestions, it’d really help as i want people to learn new tricks.