We put in a draw of hours figuring out how to succeed — or at least die slightly less frequently — in Void Bastards. Below, you ’ ll find our advice for navigating the deadly invalidate and deadly bureaucracy .
Death isn’t a complete loss
Dying in Void Bastards doesn ’ triiodothyronine wholly reset your build up. The tools you ’ ve constructed and most of the items you ’ ve collected will carry over to the future prisoner that gets rehydrated. It ’ s an iterative process. You might die on this travel into to nebula, but you might besides end up with an invaluable newly weapon that your adjacent incarnation can use .
Don’t plan to die, but don’t plan to survive either
build up in Void Bastards, however little and incremental, is even progress. Use each prisoner you get for equally farseeing as you can, gather everything that international relations and security network ’ triiodothyronine nailed down, build newfangled stuff, and leave the following prisoner that a lot better off.
Reading: Void Bastards beginner’s guide
The other room to say this is : Expect it all to go wrong. Your favored prisoner with his eagle eyes and unretentive stature is going to get surprised by a Screw and die. Your cautiously mapped route through the nebula is going to get short-circuit when you run out of fuel. Just like your prisoners, don ’ thyroxine be cute about your carefully laid plans. You can good start over again, slightly better off than you were end time .
Every prisoner is different
part of the roguelike conceit of Void Bastards is that you never know what you ’ ll confrontation following. This chiefly applies to ship layouts, but it besides shows up a draw more subtly .
Every prisoner you control has a chance of having an built-in benefit or detriment. They ’ rhenium listed on the leave side of your menu under the Bio check. Some of them are short statured and hard to hit. Some of them are smokers who cough and alert enemies. These attributes don ’ t have to change how you play, but playing into them ( or at least being aware of them ) will make the crippled more accomplishable .
Your smoker, for case, international relations and security network ’ t going to be able to sneak around enemies, so you ’ ll know to prepare for a fight. Or, if your prisoner is eagle-eyed, loose items will appear on your map, so you ’ ll know you don ’ t have to waste time and oxygen looking around every corner for stuff to loot .
Every ship is different
similarly, each ship has a kind of, er, variables. You ’ ll see these listed on the right side of your Star Map screen. At the lead, you ’ ll see the kind of ship it is and its features — resources you can collect there, or special locations on the ship like a healing station. Below that are the useful items you might find there. Next, you ’ ll see the types of enemies you ’ ll run into. Those three things are normally enough to determine if you should visit : You ’ ll know if it ’ ll have what you ’ re presently looking for, and if you ’ re likely to survive the bad guys you meet .
Below the enemies, you ’ ll see the ship ’ sulfur ( random ) attributes. These work like your prisoners ’ attributes — some are beneficial and some are harmful. In the visualize above, you can see that there ’ s a Warp Key ( a utilitarian token that lets you skip over ships on your Star Map ) hidden somewhere on the ship, and that one kind of enemy is actually an ally. other ships will have minimal oxygen meaning you have less time to explore there, or defective generators and, consequently, power outages .
Pay attention to all of the data the game gives you so you know what you ’ re getting into. even if it is largely randomly generated .
Listen to what the game tells you
Beyond the information you can get before tied boarding a transport, Void Bastards will tell you a lot about what ’ s going on around you with ocular clues .
Cabinets, drawers, drones, and anything else you can loot will be highlighted green. at large items will have a cloud of sparkles rising off of them. Enemies that are just out of spy will generate floating echoic heavy consequence text — a floating TAP TAP TAP over a closed door, for example — to warn you .
The Sargasso Nebula is constantly deadly, but there are batch of clues to make it ( slenderly ) more survivable .
Plan your routes
Both in the nebula and on a ship, use your map to plan far ahead than your following stop.
On the Star Map, look at the nodes that open up after you hit your future hold on. You might pick up some much-needed ammo properly now, but the adjacent three ships you ’ ll have to stop at are full of enemies and you ’ ll expend it all just trying to survive. Always look ( at least ) one stop beyond where you ’ ra heading right immediately .
The same applies to your route through a ship. On board, you ’ re balancing your health ( specifically, how much wrong you can take from enemies ), your ammunition ( how many enemies you can handle ), and your oxygen ( how farseeing you can explore ) .
Most ships will have an Atmo room where you can refill your tanks, so plan ahead for that. It ’ s not the first base room you should visit ( you won ’ t need it yet ), so map out a rough route that will bring you to the Atmo room toward the conclusion ( or the middle ) rather .
You don’t have to fully explore every ship
specially early on, it ’ s tempting to explore every corner of every ship you visit. And there ’ sulfur nothing ill-timed with that. But as your resources get flimsy and the enemies get harder, that becomes a dangerous proposition .
rather, like our advice above about navigating the nebula, have a plan when you board a ship. If the only thing you need is fuel, point to the FTL room, grab the fuel, and leave — don ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate go to the helm to map out the entire ship, and don ’ t wander off run. There ’ second nothing faulty with merely getting what you need and moving on .
Know when to stop and when to skip past
There ’ sulfur besides nothing incorrectly with skipping over a ship — provided you have the fuel and food to survive the future jump. Some ships merely won ’ thymine have what you need. Others will be full of unmanageable enemies. Remember that there ’ sulfur always another ship, or, if worst comes to worst, another prisoner .
Conserve ammo and kill creatively
Ammo international relations and security network ’ t precisely scarce, but it ’ s not abundant either, so it ’ s always best to err on the side of caution when dealing with enemies. fortunately, Void Bastards gives you options .
Tourists are a pretty common, low-level enemy. They ’ re not excessively aggressive or debauched, so they ’ re by and large harmless on their own. however, Tourists blow up when you get besides close. This makes them dangerous when they surprise you, but it besides means you can clear them out without firing a shot. similarly, they blow up when you shoot them — and damage anything else nearby. You can use Tourists to take out ( or at least damage ) other enemies and save your ammo like we did in the video recording above .
Bushwackers are proximity mines that damage an area around them. This makes them good for patrolling enemies in groups. More importantly, though, you can place them, then shoot them to make them explode on control. Our front-runner use of this is to hide around a corner from a Gunpoint, toss a Bushwacker nearby, then shoot it. This takes out the point at the cost of one mine and one bullet, alternatively of respective bullets and a lot of health.
You besides have the ability to lock doors, and citizens can ’ thymine open locked doors. This means you can trap and efficaciously neutralize sturdy enemies without actually engaging them .
Your Zapper is invaluable
One relatively early weapon you ’ ll build is the Zapper. This gunman fires a short-range blast of electricity. On a normal citizen, they ’ ll be stunned and frozen for a few seconds. On a robotic enemy like a Gunpoint, it ’ ll be shut down for quite a while, giving you plenty of fourth dimension to avoid or destroy it .
It ’ south not your basal weapon, so it ’ south easy to forget you have it. Use it. And use it in conjunction with your other weapons to make taking down tough citizens easier .