New Player's Guide


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You may be wondering some or all of the following: All of these questions have answers. You don't have answers. That's why you came here (and you came to the wrong place!)
 * How do I move?
 * Why is it so laggy?
 * How do I talk?

How do I play this game?
The aim of the game varies according to the game mode, but a general objective is simply to survive. Escaping on the shuttle will keep you safe (and end the round) if you're not in an anti-station role (ie syndicate).

However, SS13 is a roleplaying game. For this reason, you should generally try to keep your speech in correct english, or it will seem like your character is mentally retarded. Additionally, it is important to compartmentalise - your character DOES NOT know everything you know OOC (out of character). This can have several effects. For example, most players will not appreciate you searching their headset for the syndicate frequency, because there is no reason that your character will know about this frequency ingame. As well as this, you should respond in-character for everything that happens around you, be that fleeing in terror from a monkey, or having your character get angry at another.

For information about Game Modes, check out the Game Modes page.

Alternatively, scroll down for a HUD overview and a tutorial.

How do I move?
Press the arrow keys.

Why is it so laggy?
That's Stuntwaffle and BYOND's fault (but you should blame Nannek).

How do I talk?
To speak to fellow players, type Say, press spacebar, and write your message. Press Enter.

To speak on your headset, type Say, press spacebar, type a ;, then write your message. Press Enter.

To speak Out of Character, type OOC, press spacebar, write your message. Press Enter.

To speak to the administrators, type adminhelp, press spacebar, write your message. Press Enter.

The Guide!
This is basic stuff that isn't intuitive to start with, and if you ask in-game most people will find you and weld you in a locker. Always ask in OOC, because it doesn't give your character away as nooby, just your account!

First thing to notice is the lower left-hand corner. This is your equipment sheet.

1: Active Hand, 2: Mask, 3: Back

4: Right Hand, 5: Clothing, 6: Left hand

7: ID Card, 8: Protective clothing, 9: Headset

Acting on anything in-game involves your hands. You of course have a right and a left. If not, report to Medbay. Along with the green equipment slots, there's the gray "Active Hand" slot (Slot #1). This is the most important icon to learn! If you click on ANYTHING, it will attempt to use what is in your active hand. What is in your active hand is shown in the R/L Hand slots, #4 and #6. If nothing is in your hands, you will pick up small/medium things or interact with large things. Once something is in your hands, you can equip items by clicking on the slot they want to go to, like jamming a mask on your face.

Along the side of #6, there's a very little bar, click that and we get a bunch of new slots. Gloves, Shoes, Eyes, Head, Belt and Ears. Of these, you'll probably only ever care about Head and Belt, and occasionally Gloves, but that's later, in Jobs. Most of us leave that equip bar open all the time. Lastly, on the right of #9 are your two pockets. You'll start with a pen there, but you can put any small thing there (ie non-container things). Things continue to work through your pockets! This is a good way to carry a flashlight so your hands are free. The belt also works just like pockets with things still working while equipped there, however the range of items that fit on belt is smaller.

Next up, notice the bar along the righthand side of the screen. From top to bottom, is your Health/Target Indicator, Internals indicator, Ox, Tox, Fire and Temp indicators, Overall Healthometer, Are-You-Awake-O-Meter, Are-down-on-ground-O-meter, and lastly Pull Indicator. Virtually all of these are 'trouble' lights, as in if they turn on, you're in trouble. Excepting the Health/Target indicator, of course: Much like the face of the guy on Doom, this guy will begin to look more and more like raw hamburger as you take physical damage (Suffocation and Toxins won't show up here). Equally as important, it shows where the damage is. Along the side is another pullout menu, and the functions should be obvious. For example, if you click on someone with bare hands with the Head/Chest selected, you will perform CPR (if set to Help), push them (if set to Disarm), or punch them (if set to Harm). Grab isn't really useful until you start loading people into sleepers, cryogenics machines, or genetics machines - basically some of the most newbie-unfriendly parts of the game.

If you get hurt and manage to get to medbay, you can tell the Doc where you are hurt and they will be able to help. If you're the Doc, see Jobs.

Next useful thing on there is the Pull indicator, in the very lower right. If you are pulling something, it will show up as a man with a box. Click him to stop pulling (or walk into the item you are pulling to push it away).

Next up on the UI is the action bar along the bottom. Drop drops whatever is in your active hand straight down. Throw is kinda tricky to get a hold of and isn't really useful except for grenades, which are rare anyway, so don't worry about it. Hand, as we said above, switches active hand from left to right and right to left. You'll use this one a lot. Last is Resist, which you use if someone is trying to force a cyanide pill down your throat or a needle full of toxins into your veins. Click this quickly if you get a red message that someone is attempting to fuck with you (unless you know they have good intentions, of course).

Finally, the last and arguably most important is the very, very lowest bottom left corner. Hover over something and this tells you what it is! The game is pixel-based, so make sure you hover over what you want to interact with if there is a stack of shit there. If you have trouble, right click the stack, go to what you want, and hit "move to top". Bam, easy click!http://

READ ALL THAT SHIT AGAIN. The interface is slow and unwieldy, so you had better know how to use it. It is not intuitive to pick up on the fly!

OK! You move with the arrow keys. It's kinda glide-y but you'll get used to it.

Since you are new, when the game loads up make sure your job preference is set to Assistant and Be Syndicate is set to No. If not, people will yell at you. But even if you forget to do this, 99% of the time when you join it will be midround so you'll be an assistant anyway. The best part about being an assistant is that nobody gives a damn if you do anything or not, so you're free to wander the station a bit. You have pitiful access though, so there is that.

I'm getting ahead of myself. First thing you'll do is spawn naked in the spawn room. Use CharacterSetup by clicking on it in commands or typing it out if you want here. Otherwise, rightclick the panel under you and hit Ready, this will spawn you into the shuttle. If there's a bunch of naked people there, the round hasn't started. If you're alone with a gray suit on, it's midgame.

Pray that the lights are on outside. If not, shit is going down on the station and you're not going to be able to move freely since most of the place is probably depressurized or something. Shit might be going down anyway, but things at least haven't gone all Lord of the Flies yet.

Whip out your Maps. Our first stop is a storage room to get our good friend the Toolbox. Move south out of the shuttle, walk past the Scrubbers, down the hall, past the Security checkpoint, then go straight north to the room. If the doors are closed, click on them to open them. If they don't open, someone has fucked with them. There's a bunch of scrubbers in there and a couple toolboxes. If you're lucky, nobody has taken them yet. Click on a blue toolbox to pick it up. Click the Hand action button to switch hands- now that your right hand is full you'll likely be doing everything with your left. ''If there are no toolboxes here, you can head south, then east, and through that door. Two more spawn there, so it's a good bet one will be left.''

Now, for this tutorial I'm going to have you break into something. Most of the game is circumventing things the traitor has done to slow you down, or slowing the others down if you're the traitor. Both of these are done primarily by breaking into shit, and the toolbox is your best friend for this.

Head up to the Chapel. Nobody is ever in the Chapel so we can have some privacy. You can tell the chapel because it has a dark, patterned floor. The entrance has a blue door that you'll notice doesn't take up the full square: these doors open if you move into them or if you click them. If you want total privacy, you can click on the differently-patterned gray walls to open the confession booths, but visitors in the chapel are rare as hell so it doesn't matter much. Pick a gray wall segment- I suggest the farthest north one that leads into the Chapel coffin room.

This assumes you have the toolbox in your right hand and your left hand free. With your left hand active, click the toolbox. Of the storage, click the Welder, this will put it in your left hand. Click it again to turn it on (you'll get a text message "You will now weld when you attack"). Click the wall. After a few seconds you will notice the wall changes a bit. We're not done yet! Click the welder again to turn it off, then click your toolbox to put it away. Now pull out the Screwdriver, and click on the wall again. NOTE! Most of the wall is now 'metal sheets' so you'll have to make sure you are clicking on the wall, not the sheets. You'll know you got it right when you get the message "Now Dislodging girders". When this is done, you can click the toolbox to put the screwdriver away. Rightclick the girders and hit Pull (they count as a Large item, you can't pick it up). Pull it into the middle of the room, then either walk into it to push it away or click your Pull Indicator in the lower right corner. Congratulations! You've broken into the office!

While in gameplay terms you haven't really done anything, hopefully you've learned how the game interface works. Most guides are written assuming you know how to do what I've said here, so you might want to try it once or twice more to make sure you get it. If you do this with the same welder, you'll run out of fuel! Find a 'weldfueltank', most storage places will have one, and click it with your welder (IE: With your welder in your active hand, click the weldfueltank). Bam, good as new. This won't work on reinforced walls, so you'll have to see the guide on breaking them down. It also takes a Crowbar that you don't have yet.