So Project Winter is WAY deeper than it seems at first glance.

Project Winter has become Among Us but longer. It's not the developer's fault Among Us happened, it is the players' fault for failing to have an attention span. This entire guide can be replaced by 'yell SUS, laugh into the mic, avoid conversation, and team up with a friend over Discord until you're both on the same team then psychically wreck the opponents.' I wish you well in your future endeavors.

That said, I'm going to leave the rest of this unchanged as a loving tribute to what PW was. Please leave a comment telling me how dumb and outdated this three-year-old guide is so I can feel properly ashamed for not committing more of my free time to a game I now get downvoted for trying to play like a grownup.

It's really about playing the other players, building trust, and betraying that trust, and this guide is here to help you uncover the nuances and rhythms that make this game such a joy to play, as well as a few tips and tricks that aren't at all obvious or even necessary unless you're up against expert-level nonsense.

Before we go any further, I just want to say one thing: IF YOU'RE ALONE, YOU WILL DIE. No amount of skilled gameplay will reliably correct for disregarding your teammates. This is a social game, and it's designed to give the traitors an easy advantage against lone survivors. Don't get such a swelled head that you think you don't need teammates.

So there's just a tiny bit of structure to the way the game unfolds. Broadly speaking, there are three main patterns. I'm going to call them The Lone Wolf, the Wolf Pack, and the Double Sheep.

THE LONE WOLF: The most common pattern, one traitor (the 'sheep') stays with the survivors, building up trust and delaying them while the other (the 'lone wolf') runs about opening traitor crates and getting wildly powerful. This can be very effective when survivors break into small groups, because the lone wolf can easily overpower a team of two survivors wandering together and the sheep can surprise an unwary group of survivors who think they have the upper hand.

DISADVANTAGES: A power clique can overpower the sheep's ability to delay with a fast first objective, resulting in a weaker lone wolf. If the survivors identify the second objective early, they can travel in a group of four or more, negating the lone wolf's strength since they will be easily identifiable.

THE WOLF PACK: If both traitors abandon all pretense early on, usually by murdering a survivor they lure into a party of three who goes exploring, they can run around getting traitor crates together, mining the escape route, and generally making for an extremely formidable end-game fight. This works best against survivors who ball up into a large, difficult to split knot, especially if the traitors use the hatches well to sabotage whichever objective the Big Knot isn't currently at.

DISADVANTAGES: Each traitor is only half as strong, and good survivors will quickly identify that the traitors are both AWOL and power through the objectives as quickly as possible. If the survivors find the armory, or if the animal objective is present, or if no survivors die to wild animals or disconnects, this strategy has a much lower chance of success.

DOUBLE SHEEP: The rarest, most difficult, but most rewarding strategy at present, both traitors stick with the survivors and remain as 'helpful' as possible, building trust but delaying the first objective. Done properly, it is possible to get survivors exiled and lead the group to give you their weapons, or create such despair among the survivors that they fail to build enough trust among each other to even complete the first objective. If someone becomes too suspicious and becomes exiled, they can always revert to the Lone Wolf strategy or even transition to a Wolf Pack if they have amassed enough ore to trap and defend the power station.

DISADVANTAGES: The traitors must still take risks to delay the objective properly, and if discovered the traitors will be hard pressed to defend each other without energy drinks.


Clearly the patterns can change throughout a game; as traitors are discovered, exiled or killed, the game inevitably trends towards some form of the Wolf Pack. The survivors clearly gain by forcing this state as soon as possible and identifying traitors early, but traitors can subvert that urge by shifting blame and sowing distrust.

In this game, it's important to get to know who you're playing with. You only have half an hour to ferret out the traitors, so you need to get cracking ASAP.

-Are people punching each other for ore, or nipping wood from someone else punching down a tree in the first few? Keep an eye on those baddies. The game's been out long enough that you shouldn't assume they're newbies. Get a tool ASAP and let them know they won't win a game of slap and tickle with you. If you're feeling aggressive, you can always take the side of whoever gets hit first.

-Is someone shouting 'I'm the traitor,' throwing things at people, and generally being obnoxious? They're probably a troll. The best way to handle trolls is to put them in time out. Tell them you have to assume they are softening up the group for their traitor buddy, down them, and then revive them. They will be low on health, warmth, and hunger, and will need to spend the next few minutes getting back in shape if they want to accomplish anything as survivor OR as traitor. If they come after you for this, decide to yell into voicechat or insult you rather than doing something productive, down them and do not revive them- they're already weakened from being put in time out.

-Is someone going to check the objective first thing, calling out what's needed, and looking for bunker mates? This player knows communication is important, and is either a really strong survivor or a very dangerous traitor. This player will power through the first objective if they find two other survivors to team up with, but will also look suspicious if bunkers start getting sabotaged or the needed scrap doesn't materialize.

-Is someone making an axe and running off to chop wood near the base? They're not doing the most helpful thing, but they're not exactly running off to open traitor crates, either. If they're communicating, they're probably survivors.

-Is someone making a pickaxe and running off to score some ore? Be VERY suspicious, especially if the objective just needs fuel. A cooperative team can afford to hold off on trapping the power station, and a traitor can very easily stock landmines while looking helpful here.

-Is someone panicking at every sign of suspicious activity? Vigilant people are still helpful, you just need to take their claims with a grain of salt. Know the difference between vigilance and paranoia, though- someone crying wolf over harmless things may be better off ignored.

-Is someone just running off on their own early on? Follow them! Everyone needs a buddy, especially traitors. It may feel like a waste of your time, but it's wasting the traitor's time just as much, since they won't open a traitor crate or use an escape hatch in front of you when they haven't had any energy drinks yet. Think about it this way- in an eight player game, 2 survivors each following 2 lone wolf traitors means 4 people are doing nothing to help or hinder and 4 survivors are free to work together on the objective. The remaining four are going to learn to trust each other REAL quick and form a power clique.

A power clique is the single most dangerous thing to traitors in Project Winter. A power clique is a group of survivors who have decided that they can trust each other completely, and everyone outside of that clique is suspect at best and traitorous at worst. Three survivors, if they are right about each other, can murder everyone else on the map and freely complete their objectives with even a small amount of time remaining.

So: build yourself a power clique. Assemble your Avengers! Instill trust in others by sharing that second rock with someone who was checking the objective. Cook some food and give it to someone once your hunger drops to half- do it with an audience, and you'll build trust not only with that person but everyone else who sees. STICK UP FOR PEOPLE. Players who are obnoxious, insulting, and vindictive are not worth having on your team as survivors. They are destroying the trust essential to building a power clique. They will do more damage to both your chances of success and people's enjoyment of the game than any other kind of traitor.

You probably suck at building a power clique if you are good at discovering the traitor but nobody listens when you tell them to exile the traitor. You probably suck at building a power clique if you can't get people to open bunkers with you. You probably suck at building a power clique if you routinely lose to traitors because you did all the work on the first objective, found the distress beacon while the others were out being losers, and traitors find and kill you on your way back.

Calling out others for being not very good at the game is an Ego Move. It's driven by a natural weakness to feel superior to other people, but it backfires on you every time. The player you complain about rarely thanks you for pointing it out. They'll get defensive, hurt, and angry. They will not join your power clique, and will at best try to find some other survivors to team up with. At worst, they will assume you are trying to destroy morale because you are a traitor.

In Project Winter, there's three visible meters- health, warmth, hunger- and one invisible meter. It's invisible because it's impossible to quantify, but it's real and it exists. It's your Trust Meter. Every altruistic thing you do (that gets noticed) increases your Trust Meter, and every suspicious thing you are seen doing (or are accused of) decreases your Trust Meter. Want to see how real it is? Tell a group that Big Jerry opened a traitor crate and begin attacking them. If the group turns on you, your Trust Meter isn't high enough to just kill someone on your word alone.

THE FIRST RULE OF TRUST: If you do something helpful, but nobody notices, your Trust Meter DOES NOT GO UP. Anyone can claim they put in 3 gas five minutes ago, and you trying to claim credit after the fact is actually a little suspicious. Helping to open bunkers is the easiest way to exploit this rule- two other people see you doing something helpful.

THE SECOND RULE OF TRUST: If one person accuses you of something, and it can't immediately be proven false, your Trust Meter goes down, even if by just a little. Good traitors use this rule like a wedge to break up power cliques. Sabotaging three-person bunkers is my all time favorite method of exploiting this rule.

Now, the difficult thing about Trust Meters is that everyone's is different. The communicative player who always wants to bust some bunkers open? Their Trust Meter starts high, but it can crash fast if you don't follow their lead or if bunkers get sabotaged. The loner who just wants to craft the scrap themselves? Their Trust Meter starts low, but if you help them with their scrap, it can get a little higher. The super arrogant jerk who called you an idiot because you crafted an axe when clearly you should've crafted a pickaxe? Their Trust Meter won't ever go above zero, so don't bother.


Before you do something suspicious as traitor OR as a survivor, check your Trust Meter. Will the people around me have my back, or do I need to go assemble my power clique before calling out a traitor? If I've been implicated in several bunker sabotages, should I really be the one using the truth serum, or is it a safer play to give it to someone else you trust?

If my Trust Meter becomes irreparably damaged, say by mistakenly killing an innocent, it's time to think exit strategy. As a survivor, that means not doing anything too suspicious and keeping a weather eye out for the escape pod. As a traitor, that means building a campfire kit if possible and remembering the location of the nearest escape hatch.


Conversely, if you feel your Trust Meter is maxed out, usually because people start saying things like "No way is Big Jerry the traitor, they did X," then you should make use of it. As a survivor, that means things like getting the truth serum, asking for gun parts or medkits, or sticking together to go find the second objective. As a traitor, that means doing all the exact same things, except saying how you trust Dogface Ned and you'll go with him to the beacon. (Sorry about your impending doom, Dogface Ned.) Use it or lose it!

-If you don't have a lot of trust when using the truth serum, inject a survivor and identify them correctly as survivor, then do something heinous and unforgivable like stealing 9 scrap. You'll heavily taint the other survivor by association when your cover gets blown.

Finally, don't forget that everyone ELSE has a Trust Meter, too. You can grant people trust by putting yourself in a publicly vulnerable position at the hands of someone else. Giving someone a gun part, medkit, or the truth serum needle inside the cabin during a blizzard is a great way to earn trust, provided they don't turn around and use it against you. Every gesture of trust can backfire, sure, but you gotta start somewhere. Similarly, as a traitor you can get a LOT done by picking at everyone else's trust meter. Just observe and call out everyone's suspicious actions. If two traitors are embedded with the survivors, even one exile vote by a survivor can become three and result in an exile. An exiled survivor is a survivor who cannot enter the first objective to fix it, cannot enter the cabin to call the escape, and will likely freeze, starve, and die to wild animals.

Project Winter is a tightly timed game. You have eight minutes from the time you discover an objective to the time the traitor airdrop happens. This means speed is of paramount importance for your first objective.

As a survivor, you really have two first objectives:
#1) Fix the Power Station Within 8 Minutes
#2) Find At Least Two People You Trust


Of these two, #2 is more important than #1. If you do 1 but not 2, you will find yourself dying to stupid stuff like joining a team of two traitors to discover the second objective. If you do 2 but not 1, the traitor will have an airdrop but you will have the makings of a power clique, and you can use the additional time to firm up your clique by opening more bunkers, getting guns, and so forth.

If you must do your distraction of a bonus objective, do it after the first objective is complete.

As a traitor, your first objective is to DELAY THE FIRST OBJECTIVE. If you don't get that airdrop, that means the survivors have at least 21 minutes to goof off, trap the power station, find the second objective, clear half the bunkers on the map, and get enough guns to wipe you and your traitor buddy off the face of the earth. Being a lone wolf is great fun and all, but it's HARD when the survivors find your open traitor crates and spend a full ten minutes chasing you down because they are all over the map.


So the earlier the survivors finish the first objective, the fewer risks they need to take to finish the second. A no-traitor game with competent survivors (one in which both traitors are discovered and executed as well as the power station is repaired within 10 minutes) generally looks like this:

20:00 remaining: Survivors start looking for the beacon
15:00 remaining: Survivors have found the beacon, activated it, and identified what it needs- survivors begin assembling the required parts
10:00 remaining: Survivors as a pack travel to the beacon, drop off parts, and return to the cabin as a pack to call for rescue.
9:00 remaining: Survivors arrive at the escape vehicle, make sure everyone's bonus objective is clear, have a good chuckle about pretending to be traitors. GG.


A typical survivor success feels a bit more like this:

20:00 remaining: Someone gets accused of taking parts out of the power station, delays incurred
15:00 remaining: Power station finally gets fixed
13:00 remaining: Survivors trap the power station, max out their health and hunger because nobody wants to leave the cabin until they're topped up, and go out in one or two packs to find the beacon. One person goes off solo and dies to wolves.
9:00 remaining: Second objective discovered, mad scramble to assemble required parts.
3:00 remaining: Parts are delivered to beacon, the 3-4 remaining survivors decide who to send back to call for rescue and who stays (if it's a helipad).
1:00 remaining: Mad dash to escape vehicle, followed by showdown with traitors at the escape vehicle or near cabin.

An ideal traitor success feels a bit like this:

22:00 remaining: First traitor airdrop arrives, at least one survivor has been killed.
18:00 remaining: After power station is robbed and a traitor is exiled, someone is assigned to watch the power station.
15:00 remaining: Power station gets fixed, survivors run off to gather ore for traps
13:00 remaining: After placing approximately one dozen landmines on the power station, players mill about the cabin arguing over who should go with whom to seek out secondary objective. Someone tries to go off solo, and is accused of being a traitor so they return. The survivors top off health and hunger and leave.
12:30 remaining: Blizzard happens, survivors run back to base and sit uselessly.
9:30 remaining: Survivors seek out second objective, traitors activate first airdrop. Power station is remotely sabotaged, forcing survivors to trudge through their own mines to fix it. A survivor dies and their exile vote disappears, enabling the exiled traitor to return to cabin, warm up, and snatch up parts and maybe even re-sabotage the power station.
7:00 remaining: Power station repaired and re-mined, survivors begin to seek out the second objective. Second traitor airdrop lands.
5:00 remaining: Players find second objective, and the traitor still embedded in the main group snatches up all the relevant parts for it, tossing them in traitor crates. By this point I generally feel that the survivors are likely doomed.
3:00 remaining: By now there's maybe one or two survivors left, straggling uselessly and calling out for the other survivors. If I'm still the embedded traitor, I don't even need to turn on them at this point. All I have to do is follow along and make sure they don't assemble 12 cogs or whatever by themselves. If they do, well...


0:00 remaining: The survivors are freezing to death, running scared to an escape vehicle to die at the hands of the traitor waiting there, or just plain giving up hope of repairing both objectives. They huddle in the cabin during their last moments. I share a cigarette with them, commiserating on how terrible life is sometimes. Roll credits.

Generally speaking, the later the game goes on, the more likely I am as a survivor to do risky things like go solo in order to complete objectives. If I'm on track and I know there's plenty of time left, there's no need to split the power clique just to send someone back to the cabin for rescue. If I know there's not enough time for both of us to escape, I will sprint to the cabin for help and send the other survivor on to escape. (Thinking about that Trust Meter even now.) As a survivor, I am always in a hurry by default, and it takes an act of willpower not to plunge full speed ahead even when I know both traitors are definitely dead. (I never know for sure until the end, unless traitors whip out guns on groups and try to 1vX us.)

Similarly, if the survivors complete their objective earlier than I expect them to, I need to take more risks as a traitor. Sabotage bunkers, poison things in plain sight, set traps outside bunkers while others are inside, do whatever dumb things might give me the slightest advantage so I'm not stuck whipping out a sniper rifle on the loading ramp of the helicopter while survivors pound me to death and insult me for being so bad at traitor. As a traitor, I'm always looking to run the clock down by any means necessary- I will claim to be hungry at inconvenient times, say that I'm freezing, run at the first sign of danger, and so forth. I've even triggered airdrops by putting in parts slowly at the power station. Granted, I had to beeline for the hatch after that, but it got me the airdrop which is all I want in the early game. Keep your eye on the clock.

The two most important things about combat:

1. All other things being equal, whoever gets the first strike in a 1v1 wins the fight.

2. Unarmed survivors run faster than armed survivors.

This means that whether you're planning on outing that traitor and killing them before the group can complain or panic, or whether you're waiting until you've finally gotten someone alone, you need to make sure you get the first strike. Ideally, you want to have a full windup on your melee strike to do the full 350 or so so that you only need 4 more quick hits to down a full health survivor. There are several ways you can put yourself into this situation:

-When they run into a bear trap: Hardest to set up, easiest to take advantage of. You should be able to get two full swings in.

-Right after they enter a bunker: They can't see you winding up outside the bunker, but they're also invulnerable while the crate opening animation is happening, so time it when they're moving from crate to crate. You'll feel like a weirdo standing there with your weapon up, but they can't see you and won't be able to shift gears quickly enough.

-When you pass through an occluded section of the map: If you run behind a bunker or even a tree, they won't see you winding up, and it will take people a second to change course if they've been on cruise control following you to wherever.

-When they stop to pick up an item: You can offer them relevant parts, food, or if you're feeling really brilliant, a medkit.

-While people are standing on co-op consoles: People really let their guard down here, and the science consoles in particular can only be gotten into/off of from below, which means you can run up from the south and get a hit or two in easily before they really react.

-Swap clothes: If you say "yeah it's me" as you approach, they won't believe you, but the confusion will buy you a few seconds and that's all you need to wind up.

-Nonsense: Heck, if you ask just about any unrelated question as you approach, the word part of people's brains will engage and their fight-or-flight response will die down just a moment. If you're already a little close, sometimes a moment is all you need. Math questions would work better, but they might also arouse some suspicion. Try it out!

So run speed. Why does it matter? Because if you're trying to kill someone, it's extremely likely that you'll be interrupted or interfered with by somebody else. Hitting someone slows them for like half a second, so once you get your first big hit in everything else can be quick jabs... but if you miss and they run empty-handed, you won't catch up unless they screw up big time, or switch to a weapon or medkit. The only thing you can do at that point is throw random items to slow them, but since you're switching away from your weapon, they can switch back to a weapon and put your lights out.

Coordination is key- if two survivors are chasing a fleeing traitor, 'cut the pie' and go around obstacles in different directions so that if the traitor tries to escape by turning the corner, they'll catch a fist in the face. For example, if the traitor is running north towards an ore deposit, ask the other survivor to go west while you go east. If the traitor tries to run west to dodge you, they get hit by your buddy. If they try to run east to dodge your buddy, they get hit by you.

As a traitor, fleeing is your best offensive move against multiple survivors. If you can kite two or more survivors behind you, they're not doing anything productive, and if you
opened even one traitor crate, you've got more warmth and hunger than they do, so you can outlast them no matter what. Nothing short of a full-on manhunt will pin you down, and eventually the survivors will give up. As soon as they give up, you need to turn and chase the nearest one down. The more you can string them out, the more likely it is to catch a lone survivor out and down them. Then the survivors have to choose between reviving the downed survivor or chasing you. If they revive the downed survivor, full swing the reviver, then knock the other one back down. If they keep chasing you, run a bit further out, then pop a medkit and kill the chaser. You don't have to finish every survivor you down. Medkits are uncommon and a survivor with no warmth or hunger isn't going to want to chase you very far knowing they're one hit away from being down again.

Guns are good for starting fights, not ending them. A sniper rifle is great for scaring off pairs of survivors, but not as helpful for survivors themselves unless the traitor is known to be camping somewhere. Shotguns are clearly great up close, but they make SO MUCH NOISE that you're better off just meleeing most of the time. Semi-auto rifles can point blank any survivor with a full clip, and it comes with 3 clips.

Crossbows are not effective unless they're poisoned, but then they're AWESOME. If you are exiled with a regular crossbow, use it to harass people but run if they try to close, then harass them again when they give up the chase. Tranq guns and poisoned crossbows are AMAZING on offense- a lengthy slow means you can down someone with a melee even if they are fleeing and unarmed. Important point: Slow effects do not affect weapon speed, so if they try to stand their ground, keep at range until they are weakened enough to try fleeing, then close in.


Bear traps will stop anyone in their tracks, do 150 damage, and prevent them from fighting back for a full six seconds. If you can plan your assault, you're best off putting the traps in front of traitor hatches. As a survivor, you'll be able to trap a traitor before they escape via the hatch. As a traitor, you'll be able to trap survivors while escaping. If you trap a survivor but a second is right behind, kill the untrapped survivor. If you trap one of three survivors, use the extra time to escape and come back later. You won't die from starvation or cold, so you can always come back even from zero.

Defense is essential to survival. Sometimes you just have no clue who the traitor is, you didn't find any gun parts, and you have to go out into the eastern edge of the map with two people who might both be traitors. When you can't go on the offense, you gotta play defense.

There's no armor and no dodge chance in Project Winter, just your health bar and theirs. The first step of a good defense is making sure your health is maxed whenever possible. If you're a little wounded and you run by a white berry bush, stop and eat a wild herb. Don't get assaulted by wolves, lose a third of your health, and assume you're fine to keep exploring. Backtrack to the last place you saw herbs, top off, or head back to cabin and cook berries until you're all better.



The third step in defense is avoidance. Obviously, you want to be very careful about going anywhere solo. Don't try for the beacon unless you're confident you can take four wolves. (I don't go without two medkits.) You may be able to down the wolves, but if you're at half health after that and a traitor finds you on your way back, gg.

Also, all the ways I told you to get the first strike back in Offense? Avoid those situations. Take the long way around the visual obstruction. Let the total strangers hit the bunker first if it's just the two of you far from cabin. Keep a healthy distance from people who run with weapons. If you're not at full health, run unarmed so you can escape.

ESCAPE ESCAPE ESCAPE. If someone has the nerve to strike first, you can safely assume they've got at least 1000 health. What makes you think you can come back from that? Get out of there and find someone you trust. Don't pull out a weapon if you didn't already have one out. If your inventory is full of scraps and you have no free spots, throw an item or three at your attacker while fleeing (NOT your melee weapon, NOT a medkit!) to slow them down enough that you can pull away- once you run out of things to throw you'll have a slot free so you can run faster.

The third best step in defense is medkits. Medkits will restore 800 health or so, and so they can bring you to full from just about anything. If you down a traitor, pop the medkit before finishing them off. If you get hit by a sniper and you can get cover, pop a medkit before popping your head back up. If you're ambushed with no chance of survival, guzzle those medkits to buy time for a rescue and to make sure your killers don't get to use your medkits for their own nefarious purposes.

If you can get enough space between you and your attacker, you can pop a medkit, find herbs, get back to cabin, whatever it is you need to do to get yourself back to full health and in a position to take revenge. If you escape an attack, the enemy just lost the advantage of surprise, which makes it a million times harder.

Some tips to make your getaway:

As a traitor, escape hatches are the obvious choice, but there is a windup on them, so if your hunters are on the same screen as you don't bother. Run around wolves but then cut back so survivors risk getting attacked by wolves, or aggro wolves then drop meat. RUN THROUGH ICE WATER. Survivors hate that and will leave you for dead, or they will chase you through it and become easy prey since you will have more health proportionally even if you are all losing Max health to cold.

Cut lines of sight wherever possible. Doubling back behind a mountain is difficult but not impossible, good chasers will swing their weapons while chasing you through occluded spots, but it's a great time to change direction and gain some ground. Tossing a smoke grenade is a great way to gain ground as well as confuse everyone else- even if you just keep running and don't change direction at all, they will usually assume you did and throw themselves off your trail.

Once you're not on the same screen, you're not out of the woods yet. Your snow trail will give you away so if you stop for herbs they'll just find you again. Run through ice water if you have to, run over rocks, double back over other trails, anything to break up the trail. Running through obstructions is GREAT because many hunters assume you're setting up an ambush with reinforcements and won't even enter an obstruction- running blindly into a potential bear trap is a terrible plan! Heck, you can even hide in the obstruction until they pass by, then double back once they've passed you. Remember that other players can see your name but not your colored symbol, so if something has to stick out, do that. Also, be mindful when using small obstructions that you cast a shadow, especially if you are readying a weapon.

I won't go so far as to call it intelligence, but information is a key component of gameplay. Here's some nifty ways you can use information to your advantage:

The single best thing survivors can do is communicate. There's no such thing as too much communication. A survivor who is not communicating may as well be a traitor.

A SURVIVOR WHO IS NOT COMMUNICATING MAY AS WELL BE A TRAITOR. Don't be that survivor.

-If you're opening crates, call out how many relevant scraps you find.

-If you're going to explore a second objective, call out where you're headed.

-UP IS BAD. NORTH IS GOOD. "There's a bunker up here" means NOTHING to survivors who don't have fancy headsets that tell them where your voice is coming from. They may well be north of you, and so up will lead them further away. "Bunker north of cabin" is objective, clear, and will get people where they need to be.

-If you mine the power station to Iowa and back, tell everyone. It's worth waiting a few minutes to inform the straggler who just came back with an armload of ore before they blow up your mines trying to place their mines.

-if you're going off on your own, let someone you trust know where you're headed.

-If you've got a special survivor role, let people know, especially defector. Sure they'll kill the both of you if two people claim defector, but eliminating a traitor first thing is well worth the sacrifice. Be a team player. Announce your defector role ASAP.

-If you're attacked, don't panic. Calmly tell who did it in voice chat and the radio. "Pizza is killing me in the west" will get Pizza exiled and might even get you a rescue team. "OW THE TRAITOR SHOT ME I'M POISONED HELP HELP" will get you killed and probably the rest of the survivors too.

WITHHOLDING information can be just as valuable as communicating! If you finish the first objective but there's still eight people at base, announcing you're wandering off alone to the east just invites the traitors to team up and kill you. Wander off in one direction, then change direction, preferably while behind an obstruction. You'll know if you're being tailed because you'll hear footsteps long before they can see you've stopped.

-If, as a survivor, you find the beacon but you don't necessarily trust everyone on radio or in group, you don't have to activate the beacon. Activating the beacon also lets the traitors know you found it and where it is. If you keep that secret and covertly assemble parts with one or two other survivors you trust, you stand a good chance of repairing the beacon before the traitors suspect you've found it!

Conversely, if you find the beacon but you're poisoned or you hit mines, the traitors found it before you- you may as well activate it.

-Sometimes no information is just as important as information. If you complete the first objective and you haven't seen one or two survivors all game, you should rightly be suspicious. Similarly, if you keep an eye on who contributes parts, people who don't contribute parts should automatically be suspect.

-If you check the objective early enough and run back to report it while others are crafting their tools, you can lie about the objective and people are likely to forget who said it was what when it comes time to check it. You'd be surprised how often people will forget to doublecheck it, and how forgiving people are about getting it wrong if you claim to be tired/drunk. Alternately, say nothing, most people are usually too busy doing their own thing to notice you checked the objective, and they'll pass over parts that might be needed for the objective.

-If you pick up a radio, maintain radio silence for a bit, see if anyone else is chatting. If you're not already part of a radio using team, someone else is, and those people might not be on your side.

-If you're the traitor and someone else kills a survivor, claim to investigate and be the first to loot the corpse. You can plant your radio as confirmation of traitor status.

-Keep a running verbal count of how many parts are in the power station once you start putting them in. If you're a traitor, make sure you have a weapon selected, then question the number as you go to put yours in and grab as many parts as you can. They'll suspect the previous person just long enough for you to get the hell out of there. Stealing 9 electronic or mechanical scrap from the objective when it's time to complete is totally worth blowing your cover, especially if the traitor airdrop hasn't happened yet.

-If you use the truth serum to identify a traitor but aren't sure you're in solid company, like if you're out in the wilderness with only one other survivor, wait until you've built up good trust with at least one other person before saying what it is. You can even say 'I don't want to say what it is just yet,' and if they bolt at least you're not getting 1v2'd by a traitor who's been out chugging energy drinks all game.

-As a traitor, red radios are your best friend. You can play nice, even begin to help unlock the truth serum, then call out that survivors are doing the serum to your lone wolf buddy. Identify the first objective over the red radio, but not in regular voice chat. Call out when you're leaving items in the power station, or when you're dumping items in the storage chest. TELL YOUR TRAITOR BUDDY IF YOU ARE DYING. Say "I'm down, got 30 seconds left to live, northwest quadrant." Relative directions are bad. Objective directions are good.

-Then get a matching one and ditch your red. The best place to ditch a red radio is in a traitor crate. The worst place to ditch a red radio is on a body that you swapped clothes with. Remember to tell your traitor buddy you're ditching the red radio for a yellow or whatever.

OK, sometimes you're in a pickle and you don't have a smoking gun.

What? Too many figures of speech, dial it down a notch.

Let's say you're in a pack of five and the message pops up: ESCAPE VEHICLE DEPARTED, 3 SURVIVORS LEFT.

You know the traitors are with you, you've all split up several times and rejoined, there's 10 minutes left on the clock, so if you split the group up the traitors are going to have an easy win. Nobody's immediately running off, nobody's been seen opening traitor crates or anything obvious. You need to make a galaxy brain move.

Why do you need to make a move now? Because it's your best chance at winning the game.

WHAT IF YOU PICK WRONG? Then you might lose, but at least you lose quick, rather than a protracted game of cat and mouse as everyone loses hope and dies alone.

WHAT IF YOU PICK RIGHT THOUGH?

You're in a 3v2 with the traitors where they haven't set up any traps and they don't have the advantage of surprise. That's as good as that fight is ever going to get, unless the traitors start getting real dumb. Don't count on people being dumb.

SO I JUST ANNOUNCE "GALAXY BRAIN MOVE TIME" AND START HITTING PEOPLE?

If your Trust Meter is all the way up, you can absolutely just say "trust me on this" and start wailing on someone. Remember to also say "kill whoever attacks me, they're the other traitor."

If your Trust Meter isn't all the way up, you may have to preface it a little bit. Good survivors will understand, but chances are you've got at least one dummy who thinks that the first person to attack is always the traitor. (That's actually pretty solid reasoning most times, but not in this scenario.)

If people don't trust you at all, you may just have to point out that 5 players left means 3 survivors and 2 traitors, and that the first person to run off solo is a traitor. Sure you've just locked yourself into a group that's probably going to stop every 5 seconds to pick a berry, grab an herb, or open a bunker, but a group with 2 traitors where the traitors aren't opening crates and chugging energy drinks is basically a group of three good survivors and two incompetents, which is way better than two traitors.

HOW WILL I KNOW WHO THE OTHER TRAITOR IS?

The other traitor will be the one trying to kill you, or revive their downed buddy, or run off during the chaos. It won't matter as much.

SO WHO DO I KILL?


Kill the person who helps the least. If the objective is to gather 15 fuel and some dude is chopping down trees like his life depends on it, it's probably that guy.

If everyone's helping a lot, sweet maybe you can just power through the objective before the traitors can do anything to stop you. If you gotta make a move, kill the person who talks the least. If everyone's talking a lot, just kill the most annoying person. Even if you're wrong, you've gotten an annoying person out of the way.

OTHER GALAXY BRAIN MOVES

-If you've finished the primary objective and nobody's exiled yet, use this same system to exile someone. Exile is a powerful tool in the survivor's arsenal; if you're not using it, you're leaving a perfectly good weapon on the table before going out to fight a bear. If you exiled a survivor, they'll come back to the cabin, complain, and then earn enough trust to get un-exiled. Exiles can still escape and do everything else. Sometimes it's just the price you pay for being the least helpful person. As a bonus, if you exile with the minimum # of players you can get a heads-up when someone dies because you'll get the "Dogface Ned is no longer exiled" message.

-Kill people who swap clothes. Adding needless confusion is a traitor move.

-If someone announces that they are the identity thief early on, down them, revive them, and exile them. An identity thief is just a traitor who hasn't converted yet.

-Telling the group you're going off alone then hiding behind an object to see who comes to hunt you is a perfectly viable tactic. Maybe bring a smoke bomb to make sure you can get back to base safely.

-If you run across a pair of people, one of them is down, and each says the other is the traitor? One of them is right, and that one is down because they didn't chug energy drinks from traitor crates. The safe move is to kill both, but if you need people alive to open bunkers, killing the guy who won the fight is a pretty safe bet. If nothing else, downing both will buy you time to hear out both sides, if you're into that kind of thing.

Thanks for reading this far! Here's some secret bonus tips I picked up after a LOT of playtime:

-If you get tested at the science center but you swap clothes, the icon that identifies you as a survivor or a traitor goes away. This is one of many good reasons not to swap clothes as a survivor, and one of many good reasons to swap clothes as a traitor.

-You can destroy the ice walls that the traitor generates by doing damage to them. They've got a lot of HP but they definitely can get wrecked!

-Lag compensation means sometimes you will be swinging at another survivor, and a sound will happen, but you will not be connecting. If you can't down someone after six running swings, give up and find another way to stop them later.

This is and always will be incomplete. I'll add more to it as I discover more about the game. If there's stuff I've missed, feel free to comment your own discoveries.