Blob
REASON: Needs reformatting. Page bloat reduction.
Blob
Superiors: N/A
Difficulty: Very Hard
Guides: No external guides
Access: Anywhere you can eat your way into.
Duties: Spread onto the whole station
Departmental Head
Unknown
| Abductor • | Ash Walker • | Blob • | Changeling • | Contractor • | Construct • | Cultist • | Guardian • | Lavaland Elite • | Malfunctioning AI • | Mindflayer • | Morph • | Nuclear Agent • | Pulse Demon • | Revenant • | Revolutionary • | Shadow Demon • | Slaughter Demon • | Syndicate Researcher • | Terror Spider • | Traitor • | Vampire • | Wizard • | Xenomorph • | Zombie |
| Combat • | Death • | Hacking • | Traitor Items • | Agent Items • | Crafting • | High-Risk Items • | E-maggable objects • | C-maggable objects • | Martial Arts |
Blob is a game mode in the Secret rotation where a large biohazardous Blob, infests the station and starts destroying everything its path, including hull, fixtures and creatures. Note that this differs from the blob random event, as a person is chosen to be infected with the blob and burst after a certain time, where the event picks a random location and ghost to play as the blob. The crew must destroy the blob until it destroys a pre-determined amount of the station (350 x Number of Blob Cores).
If the crew manage to destroy the blob core, the crew will win. But if the blob manages to spread to a predetermined size, the crew will lose.
It Came from Outer Space!
In the Blob game mode, the blob is controlled by a player, called The Overmind. A number of players are selected to play the blob. They are technically infected and have to choose a location for the blob's base in a random time limit. As time passes the player will get messages which will indicate when they are about to burst.
Infected? What to do!
So you're infected with Blobitis. Sucks to be you! Unlike many other modes that revolve around an antagonist from a station where some roles cannot be the antagonist in roundstart (such as Traitor), this mode will infect anyone regardless of role! Nobody is safe from the infection! But you can make it suck less to be you by ensuring the easy survival of your future self. In the first few minutes, there should be ONE and only ONE thing on your mind. Getting resources. Create a resource blob close to your blob core as soon as possible. Then save up resources for a Power Node to place 6 tiles away from the Resource Blob and then place a Resource Blob next to the node to power it. At this point you can focus on more resources and expanding or start making factory blobs for defense and expand outwards. Splitting is also a good idea, 2 blobs will get the job done faster than 1.
Positioning
Positioning is extremely key to winning as a Blob. Do you want to get shot at from space by emitters setup 3 screens away from your core? Do you want to be easily spotted and quickly killed by assistants? Then don't setup in a main hallway or infront of departments. Cut cameras with a screwdriver and wirecutter around you as well that way the AI can't spot you or your core for a good while.
You should immediately go position yourself at the place you want to be. You will receive warnings when you're close to bursting, but the exact time is random, just be as quick as possible and stay there and wait. The best place for a blob to choose a base is in an inaccessible area, decreasing the chance of being spotted and being contained; but be warned, it has to be on the station Z-level and on a floor, otherwise you will instantly lose. Think along the lines of good Xeno hiding spots. Public hallways are bad. Out-of-the-way places that require elevated access are good. Chokepoints are good. It can also be strategic to spawn in places that will cripple the crew once you destroy them, like the SMESes or telecoms (be sure not to do anything stupid, like releasing the singularity.) Make sure you're somewhere safe before you burst!
Blob Chemicals
Blobs are made of chemicals; these affects their color of the blob bits, all blob tiles, as well as their attacks. The chemical you start with is completely random, but you can change it to another random chemical later by spending resources.
When attacking an enemy, each blob wall adjacent to the victim will also deal damage, meaning up to 4 attacks can be made if a tile is completely surrounded. You deal less damage to armored targets, with fully armored victims only taking half of the pain they normally would.
| Chemical | Visual | Damage Type |
|---|---|---|
|
Ripping Tendrils |
Attacking tiles deal 15 Brute damage and 10 Stamina damage. | |
|
Boiling Oil |
Attacking tiles deal 15 Burn damage, and sets the victim aflame. | |
|
Kinetic Gelatin |
A gambler's chemical. Attacking tiles deal between 5 to 35 Brute damage. | |
|
Sorium |
Attacking tiles deal 15 Brute damage, and sends people flying away. | |
|
Envenomed Filaments |
Attacking tiles deal 15 Toxin damage, causes Hallucinations, and injects 10 units of Spores into the bloodstream. | |
|
Lexorin Jelly |
Attacking tiles deal 10 Brute damage, 25 Respiration damage, and halts breathing for 8 cycles. | |
|
Cryogenic Liquid |
Attacking tiles deal 10 Brute damage, 10 Stamina damage, and injects 10 units of Frost Oil, freezing victims to death. |
Split Conciousness Power(100 Resources)
Split Conciousness Power
'The Overmind also has the ability to make a new Blob Core taking from local ghosts/observers with the Split Mind Ability placing a blob where there Overminds eye is over. This core can have different chems from its Mother blob.
This power is EXTREMELY useful. This creates an entirely new Blob spawned from a ghost. This Blob can work with you to consume the station which means you can do advanced tactics with your partner such as charging emitters rapidly overpowering the emitters ability to kill your spawned blob tiles. Or just flat out murder tag team humans and Cyborgs. This should be a priority to get when you are established with enough resources and defenses like Factory Blobs.
Blobmunition
Blobs can attack players who are directly (not diagonally) adjacent to them by expanding(Ctrl+Clicking the tile they are standing on) onto their space. The blob can also spend resource tiles to place blob pieces. Blob pieces can expand into almost anything, including r-walls and even space, but note that space is much slower than onto a clear floor tile, which can be useful for slowing down the regeneration of the tiles around the blob core. Try hemming in crewmates with blobs and then attacking.
The Overmind can also decide to place special blob pieces which have special functions and abilities. The Overmind must have resource points to replace the normal blob pieces with special versions and to expand where the Overmind desires. The blob core will produce resource points at a normal rate but to get more the Overmind must construct additional resource blobs.
Blob Buildings
This is a list of all the blob types that the overmind can spend resource points on to buy and replace normal blob pieces with. There are limits on how close you can put the same special blob to each other -- for example, the resource blob cannot be near another resource blob.
Core Blob: The most important part of you, it is the brain of the blob and the heart. You cannot have more than one core so you must protect it at all costs, or you will die. It will regenerate health on its own, and you can keep track of its life from your HUD. Also produces one resource point per second all on its own, and powers nearby structures more efficiently than nodes.
Normal Blob: Expands your reach and allows you to upgrade into special blobs that perform certain functions.
Strong Blob: Strong and expensive blob which can take more damage. It is fireproof and can block air, use this to protect yourself from station fires.
Resource Blob: Produces resources every pulse. Try to build these earlier to get a strong income. Defending your resource nodes is important; always replace them if they are taken down. The more resource blobs you have, the harder it will be for the crew to reach your core. Can't be built within 4 tiles of another Resource Blob but with optimal placement, you are able to place up to four of these around a node.
Storage Blob: Increases max resource point capacity by 50 for as long as it is up. While not useful to a newborn blob, these exponentially increase a large blobs fighting and staying power.
Node Blob: A Node will grow normal blob tiles around it, factories and resource nodes can be placed within a 3 tile radius around them. Necessary for expanding your territory, and will rapidly eat through any adjacent walls. Nodes are additionally used for the Split Consciousness and Relocate Core command. Can't be built within 5 tiles of another Node Blob. Ideal for breaching secure areas or defending choke points.
Factory Blob: If near a Node or Core, spawns up to three 
Blob Spores per factory, which will attack nearby food (read: people.), or even form 
Blob Zombies! (See below). Can't be built within 7 tiles of another Factory Blob.
Factories can also be turned into a robust face-punching...
Blobbernaut! This destroys the factory and spawns a robust juggernaut of a blob. Juggernauts are ghost controlled creatures that deal moderate damage to crew, can break down airlocks/machines, degenerate health while injured and separate from blob tiles, but regenerate health while moving across blob tiles. They are immune to pressure but are vulnerable to loss of gravity.
Blob Zombies
If a blob spore generated by a factory blob comes into contact with a deceased human, it will form a blob zombie! The blob spore will take over the crew member's brain and run around and attack people until it is killed. Blob zombies are hardier than normal spores and do about five times their damage, and they even benefit from armor the crewmate might be wearing! Also they are completely horrifying.
Blob zombies can happen on their own, but you, the blob overmind, can speed up the process by rallying spores to the location of the corpses you've made.
Hotkeys
- Click: Expands Blob tiles to the target tile(needs to be adjacent and not diagonal to another blob Tile) and Attacks a human/cyborg on the targeted tile. Save up resources to quickly and rapidly kill borgs or humans.
- CTRL+Click: Create Shield Blob
- Middle Mouse Click: Rally Spores/Blobbernauts use this to send spores to kill people
- ALT+Click: Remove blob
Kill That Blob!
The Emergency Shuttle usually will not come during blob mode. Nor will the blob spare you or your precious station from a horrible death. Guess you better take it down fast, then.
Tools of the Trade
Generally speaking, burn damage is very effective at destroying blob tiles. (note that this does NOT mean setting fire to everything). Here are some tools at your disposal:
- Armor: Blobs do brute damage, so anything that protects against this, such as Riot Armor or Riot Shields, are helpful. Make sure to attack diagonally as much as possible, as the blob can only attack and exapnd in cardinal directions. Don't let yourself get surrounded!
- Welding tools: Cheap, readily available from YouTool machines (hack them for two more Upgraded Welding Tools) or an autolathe. Grab one and start burning away. Make a path towards a resource node and take it out. One guy with a welder isn't going to be able to breach the core, so work together with other crewmembers. It's a good idea to grab some fuel tanks to keep nearby so you can refuel quickly, but make sure your welder is OFF before refuelling, and be sure the blob doesn't get close enough to absorb them. The Research and Development department of Science can produce plasma cutters if they have the correct research levels; they do the same damage as lit welders without any need to refuel, and have the added bonus of not setting plasma on fire. Replace your welder with a cutter ASAP if Science starts making them.
- Laser weaponry: Available in the Armory and can also be produced by R&D or ordered from Cargo. Laser weapons require recharging, so it is a good idea to grab a charger and wrench it in a safe location so that you and others can recharge your weapons. If you're in Cargo, take the time to order as many guns as possible before you run off to fight - just make sure someone can open the crates for you first.
- Emitters: Spare emitters can be found in Secure Storage inside Engineering. Set them up as far away from the blob as you can while still striking the core. If the blob reaches them, they're gone.
- IEDs: The modest explosion is enough to rip a bit of the blob apart without destroying the floor and ruining atmos for people. Throw them in when you see weakness in the blob's defenses to tear open an attack point.
- Flashbangs: Two flashbangs will destroy all weak blob tiles in a large area, allowing people to rush in and destroy the special blob squares. If you don't warn people you're using these, they might get stunned and eaten by the blob. Give people a chance to clear the area and if your flashbang stuns someone, pull him out of there before the blob sees the opportunity to make a zombie out of him.
Once again: DO NOT USE FLAMETHROWERS OR PLASMA FIRES (see below). They are useless and will only make the rest of the crew die and hate you.
DEFCON 1
Should the blob grow too powerful, there is a good chance that Central Command will okay the use of the station's nuclear bomb to destroy the blob if contacted via the Communications Console. You must have Captain level access to do so. If Central Command determine the situation cannot be salvaged, they will send you the nuke code in order to arm the bomb. Once armed, you should sit and wait for your death knowing you failed the station.
A Quick Note On Intent
As you know, your intent affects what you do when you run into people while moving. If you are on help intent, you walk through that person, and if you're on disarm intent, you'll push them out of the way or into the nearest object, like a wall, or a blob.
In other words: If you are fighting the blob, use help intent or everybody will hate you.
Why is it always Zombies?!
Zombies can take people down quickly in groups. Prevention is the best measure; if anyone goes down, pull them out and away from the blob before they either die or the blob blocks them off. If a zombie's smacking at you, the natural reaction might be to try running away but don't do that, running around in a panic is the last thing you should do. Zombies, like many NPC mobs, have laser-guided autoattacks and will relentlessly pursue and hit you until you're down, plus anyone trying to help you won't be able to get a single hit off the zombie if it's running around chasing you.
If you've got a welder in hand (Which you should if there's a blob.) and the zombie isn't armored, simply stand your ground and attack like mad with your lit welder. Even if you're unarmored, it will go down first unless you let it get a few free hits off before fighting back. If it's armored, though, you're totally out of luck unless you have armor, a fire axe, or a buddy or two fighting alongside you.
Medbay
When a blob is present on the station, Medbay becomes absolutely critical in keeping crew in fighting shape:
- Medical Doctor: You are field medics. Put your HUD glasses on, grab a first-aid kit and heal people so they don't die. The worst thing in blob mode is someone with half the armory in their backpack dying and getting engulfed and/or zombified by the blob. Don't let this happen. You will want to bring brute patches/bruise packs and probably burn patches/ointment if people are inevitably getting caught in lasers or getting hurt by inevitable plasma fire. Don't waste them on someone with 10 damage to one limb; use triage like a real doctor. You can also drag people to cryo and dead people to cloning, but generally you'll be more useful on the field. When removing dead crew from the fight, it is a good idea to loot their bag so you don't unintentionally lose useful gear and weaponry.
- Chemist: Mass produce medicine. During Blob, if the crew is competent, you will run out of medikits very quickly, and Cargo is better off ordering other things. What you'll need depends largely on what kind of blob you're dealing with and how competent the crew is. You can either leave your pills/patches on the counter for people to grab or take them to the battlezone yourself depending on what people are doing.
- Geneticist: Clone the people who inevitably die. Always have someone cloning. Some of the powers you can discover are of limited use, but some can turn the tide in the crew's favour.
- CMO: You are NOT a field medic, let the Medical Doctors do that. You should be coordinating your staff, ensuring Medbay proper is doing its job. Contribute your first-aid kit to the cause, and consider contributing your hypospray to someone you trust who can actually use it.
- Virologist: Some of the advanced positive symptoms, such as toxin compensation/filter or magical breathing, can be invaluable in blob fighting. However, if too much time has passed, they will likely be of very limited use.
Cargo
- Order guns. Energy guns have their place, and are nice, but the station already has plenty. Combat shotguns may be better if people are good with them and print as many shells as you can in advance. Why? If you print lethal shells between Industrial Welders, combat shotguns don't have the downtime of energy guns. A constant feed of lethal shells makes for the ability to print, shoot while printing, clear shell, take new shell, feed old shell in, repeat. It makes the metal cost extremely low, and does big damage. Besides that, you should already have enough laser guns on the station that unless someone loses them to the blob, you have barely enough chargers to charge them all at once.
- Order emitters. You may need to order emitters. Don't assume the ones in Engineering Secure Storage will last, or even that anyone will remember to use them at all. Point seven emitters at a blob and it'll regret everything.
- Order lots of metal and glass. Don't rely on mining to get back at all or on time. However...
You can make dozens of Industrial Welders from a single sheet each of metal and glass. They're 70 metal, 60 glass, or something like that, with a single sheet of material providing 3750 of each. An Industrial Welder is the exact same size as a normal welder but holds 40 fuel and comes pre-fueled.
Science
- Research & Development: If you haven't already, begin researching as fast as possibly in order to unlock upgrades and improved weaponry to fight the blob. Ensure the Protolathe is upgraded so that it prints faster and uses less materials and get upgrades out to the frontlines as quickly as you can.
- Toxins: If you're confident in constructing bombs, do so. Just be aware of the size and impact of your bomb, and make sure everyone is completely, one hundred percent aware that you have a bomb, and how large the impact will be. Inform the Research Director and the station at large that you have bombs to use. Be aware that you might be denied because of the risk to crew...
- Roboticist: Building medibots is a good, fast way to get some on the spot healing for crew fighting the blob. If you are capable of doing so, building a Gygax or Durand can be worthwhile. However, it might be better to construct cyborgs, as they can serve multiple functions in helping to fight the blob or help crew.
- Xenobiologist: Slime upgrades can be very useful, if you have them to hand. Sentient animals likely won't be of much use, but Golems are expendable and can be quite helpful in assisting to damage the blob. If you haven't got time to make progress in Xenobiology, consider assisting another Science department.