With so many options at your disposal, it’s easy to feel lost about what the best options are in a given situation. This handy guide has everything you need to know to put your gear to use.
Choosing a Hero Item
Every player is given three options for starting weapons before departing on a mission, and each brings its own strengths and weaknesses to the table.
You should consider your teammates’ selections, to choose a balanced squad before heading out of the cave.
Taser
The taser is a close-quarters weapon, capable of putting an enemy to sleep. It can be used when being attacked, as well as to assist a teammate who is being attacked. You can even zap an unsuspecting enemy if you get close enough.
In the current version of the game, the Taser feels vastly under powered and unworthy of selection.
Grappling Hook
The grappling hook is an effective tool for accessing places in town you otherwise could not. It creates a rope to climb, and can be used by every member of the team. It is also reusable, and can be picked up after climbing it. While a team of grappling hooks is under-armed in the field, having one player equip it increases your team’s options.
When starting in the lower cave entrance, you don’t have to follow the path past The Shape door if a member of your party has the grappling hook. Just toss it up over the ridge and climb up to change your entire approach angle to the mission.
Crossbow
Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to get right up on an enemy to take it out, and instead could shoot it from a distance? With the crossbow, you can!
Combining the close-range value of the taser with the ability to drop an adult from across the yard (into a blissful sleep, of course) makes the Crossbow the clear choice for offensive work. Anyone not on hook detail should choose the crossbow for their hero item.
Tip: The dart from your tranquilizer gun can also be used as an escape item when grabbed by an adult.
Foam is Your Friend
While a can of shaving cream may not seem like the most handy of items for a child to carry with them, there is no item in the game more versatile than a can of foam.
Keep Things Cushioned
Exploding a can of shaving foam may be a messy headache come morning, but at night it’s a useful tool for evading the adults wandering around town. Footsteps on non-grass surfaces are loud, and draw the attention of any sleepwalkers or lucids nearby. When you drop a layer of foam down, it muffles your steps, allowing you to sneak by unnoticed.
Tip: Foam also serves as a cushion during falls. If you need a backup route off a roof, or out of a tree house, throw some foam down and land on it to spare your health.
Take Their Vision
Your small town is home to a surprisingly high number of security cameras, seeking to catch you and your friends committing sins. They can’t catch what they can’t see, however, so peg the camera with a shaving foam can to take it out of commission.
When You Need to See, However…
Perhaps the most handy ability of a can of foam is making The Shape visible to the naked eye. If The Shape pursues you through a pile of foam, its footsteps become visible for you and your teammates to see.
Tip: Particularly brave players can try to hit The Shape with some foam directly. This covers The Shape in a layer of foam, meaning you don’t have to close your eyes to see it, a welcome, if temporary, relief.
Recovery Items
In an ideal world, every mission goes off flawlessly and the kids get in and get out without being discovered. More likely, you’re going to face some hairy moments. When those come, it’s important to have recovery items to help get you back to the clubhouse without becoming Shape-fodder. There are two recovery items each helping with a different key stat.
Chocolate Bars
When The Shape hits the fan, sometimes the only solution at your disposal is to leg it. Unfortunately, every kid can only sprint for so long, as doing so consumes stamina. If you’ve sustained damage already, your stamina will be even lower.
Chocolate Bars provide a quick stamina boost, and you can even consume them at a full sprint, adding valuable sprint time to your escape.
Tip: A well-timed chocolate bar can be the difference between escaping The Shape and going to sleep. Try to save your chocolate bars for when The Shape is after you, instead of wasting them fleeing common enemies.
Bandages
While extended stamina is great, if your health has been so badly damaged by capture or falls that you’re barely hanging on, it’s not gonna do you any good.
Bandages patch you up and increase the maximum stamina capacity, while also increasing your ability to fight off grabby adults,
Misdirection Items
When all you have is a small team of kids taking on a whole community of evil and evil-adjacent adults, head on is rarely the best approach. These items let you use a little misdirection to get what you need.
Noisemakers
Perhaps the most straightforward of the non-starter items in the game, they do exactly what they say. Throw them as a projectile and they explode where they land, drawing the attention of any of The Shape’s follower’s nearby.
Tip: Noisemakers are great for crossing open spaces, like the center of town or the main chamber of the caves, when you can’t find an opening. Toss a Noisemaker into a corner, or to another sector of the street, then scoot across the open space while the adults are distracted.
Flashbangs
It’s probably best not to worry about just how the young kids in a small town got their hands on so many SWAT-ready devices, just be glad they did. Flashbangs are thrown to create a blinding light which incapacitates nearby enemies so that the kids can beat a hasty retreat.
Tip: Flashbangs also work as an escape item when an adult grabs you, so it’s always good to hold onto them. If your health is full and you’re nearing the end of the mission, however, you may be better off shoving to escape and taking the wound in order to keep the flashbang to open up an escape route back to the clubhouse.
Sleep Tripwire
When you need to prepare an escape route, you can’t beat a sleep tripwire. Simply deploy it across a hallway or stretch of yard, then the first enemy to pursue you past it will receive a tranquilizer to the leg which puts them down for the count.
Tip: You can place a tripwire directly over a particularly pesky enemy if your teammate has them pinned. As soon as the pin is released, the tripwire fires and puts the enemy to sleep.
Do you have any other tips or sage wisdom regarding item usage in The Blackout Club? Figured out something with your friends you want to share with the world. Drop your tips and experiences in the comments below!
