Into The Abyss: Difficulty overhaul for seaworthy men

This mod improves Barotrauma by making it a harder, more immersive and unforgiving experience. I recommend assembling a good crew with people who really know how to play their job to the fullest. Following is a categorised list of major changes.

You can now accept missions from any location, even natural formations and lairs. “Low risk-low pay” missions are in the outer rings, while the more dangerous missions that pay good money are at the breeding grounds and military outposts. Missions generally pay more credits due to difficulty increase.

Outposts are better separated with the rings on the campaign map. Cities are on the edge, habitation outposts in outer rings, specialised outposts and breeding grounds are further in and Endworm lairs are in the centre. If you want to get advanced supplies, travel to the inner rings!

Differences between different outpost types are bigger. Buying advanced drugs is only possible at research outposts and buying advanced weapons is only possible at military outposts. Habitation outposts provide some contraband weapons and drugs, but hiding these from authorities is costly. Fuel is best bought at mining outposts.

New central node has been added with Endworm mission. Kill the overhauled endworm, win the campaign. Having a difficult boss fight in the centre is better than killing a few crawlers and calling it an end! Only a few have been to the centre and fought The Beast from the Abyss[i.imgur.com].

Everything costs much more credits. 50+ items shopping sprees from the vanilla campaign are gone. Fuel is very hard to get at the beginning and you will have to plan ahead. It will seem like it’s impossible to gear up for the centre at first, but once you start finishing one mission after another in the breeding grounds and military outposts, you will easily get enough funds for your physicorium ammo and nukes.

Easy free resources in the levels are severely nerfed in the outer rings. No longer can you gear up with free materials for the entire campaign in 15 minutes at start. Cold caverns have been completely mined by the Coalition and while Europan Ridge has some rare pieces of ore, the best place to mine is the Aphotic Plateau. Biome shows on top of screen when you start the round (aphotic plateau has greenish background and is in ring 3 and 4).
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Combat – the core of Into The Abyss. You will see many more encounters with monsters in the levels. Gone are the boring long missions with minimal monster spawns. Before you master the teamplay and the submarine, chances are that many of your crew will die. A lot.

In vanilla, there is “intensity” parameter, which prevents monster spawns when you are in a lot of trouble. I’ve removed this safeguard – monsters don’t care how you suffer, they just keep coming. They spawn more frequently and in greater numbers. The longer you stay in the level, the worse it will be for you. Not only are you wasting precious credits by burning fuel, but harder and harder spawns will come at you if you keep wasting time sitting on the seafloor. Keep moving and loot efficiently!

Almost every monster has been changed and improved in some way. Mudraptors and mantises board submarines aggressively, but are very vulnerable to fire damage. Molochs are now a very dangerous enemy that can kill the crew inside the submarine easily without even breaching the hull. Tigerthreshers deal very little damage to hull, however they rely on Bonethreshers to open up a gap in armor, through which they will swarm the inside[i.imgur.com] of the submarine, at the cost of attacking much less often and being less tanky. You will have to learn and master the monster encounters. Make sure you have a vigilant captain and clever security!

Clever monsters like mudraptors go for the hatches and doors, instead of clawing uselessly on the hull. Mantises were updated with the new mudraptor AI and behave in similiar way. Crawlers keep together with strong swarm behaviour. Mission moloch is very agressive (as the mission description says) and actively hunts the submarine. Biggest AI challenge was Endworm AI. Endworm agressively attacks the submarine and it now attacks divers as well (it used to ignore them).

Newest major patch for Barotrauma introduced wrecks. They are hard enough in the base game, so I’ve left them intact except for 3 small changes. Thalamus spawn chance is bigger as you are nearing the centre, there are more monsters in the wreck and loot has been adjusted to economy of the mod (no free thorium rods!). Wreck missions are mostly between habitation outposts and are a good way to get some good gear and ammo. THALAMUS BRAIN REQUIRES EXPLOSIVES TO KILL. I recommend detonator + UEX.

-DECREASED MOD FILE SIZE FROM 40MB TO 6MB
-hidden uniform variants from vanilla have been enabled (see screenshots)
-adrenaline cures stun, opiates no longer heal burn damage
-mudraptors and mantises are very vulnerable to burn damage
-UI elements and main menu changed for atmosphere
-Improved creature loot
-endworm reskin and fixed AI (https://imgur.com/gallery/gaqhywX)
– new mudraptor swarm mission for 8000 credits, find them at breeding grounds!
-bonethreshers are slower, have less HP, attack slower, but they punch big holes in shell
– tigerthreshers use these holes to board the submarine agressively
-wreck loot has been adjusted to fit the mod’s economy (no free fuel!)
-increase the amount of enemies spawned in wrecks

How to install:
-subscribe to the mod
-in main menu, go to settings and enable it top left
-restart the game

How to uninstall:
-in main menu, go to settings and disable the mod top left
-restart the game

Undertow discord, #baro-modding channel
for helping me get through the initial stages of the mod. Without them, this project wouldn’t grow past simple monster spawn increase mod. Especially Kai, HalfDeadKiller and LordFrith (author of REALLYBIGMAP).

Jlobblet
for helping me with many aspects of the mod including troubleshooting, ballancing, hosting servers and especially for teaching me how to manage the mod on github, which has been great help.

Kaillera
for helping me with ballancing, suggestions and finding various bugs in the mod

Barotrama Crew discord server
for giving me the opportunity to play this mod as it was intended – with organised crew. Because I can play this mod with them regularly, I can really see what needs to be changed, ballanced or fixed. Otherwise I would be relying on guessing and artificial test environments.

This comment section
for reporting bugs, giving suggestions, asking questions and giving feedback about the mod.

Barotrauma developers
for creating this unique game and giving people without any programming experience like me the simple tools to create something as complex as this.