So, you did it! You were a Ghost, saw that shiny (and perhaps a bit spooky...) "Blob Carrier" ghostrole and took it! Or you were 3 minutes into your shift and got that heart attack inducing motif telling you you're a carrier. What do?
Well - just like the guidebook says, first things first you gotta find a good spot. If you're a human carrier - coords OFF! You don't want parameds knowing your last location when you eventually unleash your true self...
But beyond that, just find a quiet, secluded place that people won't go to much. This means NOT MAINTS. Or at least, not a random spot in maints - tiders, janis, and more will regularly patrol maints for various reasons - and the AI of course does laps around the entire station on the norm. You want somewhere that noone cares about. Somewhere that noone goes. If you're a shift-start carrier that means you want to wait til the last possible moment, till all the tiders are done in their exhaustive ransacking of the maints - if you're ghost-roling in, I hope you took some time to examine the map during the raffle and identify a good spot that noone is visiting!
Good spots usually are gonna be far to the edges of the station - in space on the catwalks is often a good choice for stealthy starts; but once the real battle begins those same starts will get you killed by flying secoffs you can never hope to touch. Tight, clustered corridors are your friend - not your foe. You want to limit how many people can engage you, while still having multiple avenues of assault. You do want somewhere in the maints - but somewhere noone ever visits, with lots of obstacles....
solars.... bathrooms.... decrepit bars... the like! Maints on most maps have many suitable locations - though some do not (Core....). Pick on!
But with that out of the way - how does one actually PLAY blob? Sure the guidebook has some info, but it doesn't tell you anything about the controls or what buttons do what. For a new player, it can be extremely confusing.
When you unleash the Blob, make sure to examine the buttons on your hotbar! You'll have several abilities (not necessarily in order)
1 - "Swap Chemical" ; An important ability that will be discussed later!
2 - "Factory Blob" ; Select and use this ability on any "normal" blob tile to upgrade it into a factory; Factories passively produce Blob Drops (floating orange balls of useful, if weak, blob) and can be used to make blobbernauts (much more powerful, player-controlled minions). Each Node (and Core) can only sustain ONE factory!
3 - "Resource Blob" ; Select and use this ability on any "normal" blob tile to upgrade it into a resource node; each node will passive produce resources required for... just about everything! Each Node (and Core) can only sustain ONE Resource Blob
4 - "Blob Node" ; Extremely Important!!! Select and use this ability to create a new Blob node on a normal blob tile - Expanding the range of your influence, creating more passive expansion, and increasing the maximum number of factories and nodes you can have. The only limit is space - nodes cannot be within 5 tiles of other nodes or the core.
5 - "Move Core" ; Select and use this ability on a Blob Node to move your core to that node. Very useful if a spot has become too dangerous to remain in!
6 - "Create Core" ; Select and use this ability on a Node to create a brand new Blob Core - which will go to ghostrole raffle and likely be picked up by a new player. Blobs can share influence, but not resources - having an extra set of eyes and an extra person to click can greatly help you to cover more ground in the later stages of a battle. But its exorbitantly expensive, be careful!
7 - "Blobbernaut" ; Select and use this ability on a Factory to create a Blobbernaut, a big hulking and extremely powerful ally that can be controlled by a ghostrole. They can destroy obstructions for you, making expansion faster and cheaper, and of course fight off enemies. They die quickly off blob, however, so make sure you expand during battle to give your blobbernauts cover and passive regeneration!
The first and most important thing is EXPANSION. To expand as a blob is easy! Simply left-click on an empty tile adjacent to any blob tile you already have. If the tile has obstructions, you'll instead attack the obstruction, dealing damage - keep clicking to destroy it and free up the tile for expansion!
The second most important thing is EVOLUTION. Simple blobs will not survive the coming battle - you need minions, you need stronger blobs, and above all you need RESOURCES. Resources are the Blob's bread and butter. You start with a hefty sum, but it wont last long. You need RESOURCE BLOBS to produce more. But RESOURCE BLOBS have a limit! You can only have ONE per blob "Node" (including your core!) - to make more factories, you need more nodes (and the factories have to be near the nodes they're tied to!). So EXPAND. Make NODES. Make RESOURCES. GRRRRRROOOWWWW!!!
These resources are spent on everything - making blobs, and even attacking! (Yes, every time you click to attack you spend resources! You must be choosy, don't waste attacks on bad targets! And surely don't mindlessly break every single wall around you...)
The next thing is FACTORIES. You need allies! Minions to fight the COWARDLY leg-havers who will abuse their mobility to stay out of your attack range. Like resource blobs, each node can only sustain one factory - so try to make sure you have a factory on every node! The blob drops on factories don't tend to travel very far, so make sure to place them near their node to serve as bodyguards! Blob drops can also convert corpses into blob zombies - full on players who can use their knowledge, tools, IDs, etc. to aid in your expansion with no limitations! These factories also serve as maximum capacity for Blobbernauts, by far your most powerful ally. Make sure to make em!
The next thing is upgrades! Plain blob tiles are very weak and die quickly to just about anything - but by Alt-Clicking (that is clicking while holding the alt key) you can spend 15 resources to upgrade them to strong Blob, or 30 to upgrade a strong blob to a Reflective blob. Strong blobs are far more resilient, hit harder when you attack with them - and Reflective blobs will actively reflect energy weapons back at the attacker. Which is extremely powerful since burn damage is your greatest weakness, and energy weapons are the premiere source of burn!
But how to expand? To where? What should you break? What to ignore?
Even with all your allies, the Blobs biggest weakness is range - you simply can't do much about people who stand off and away from you. So make sure you don't break every wall, giving the crew free reign to stand back and hose you down! Break walls strategically, creating narrow chokes and hallways. Passages for your allies, angles of attack to get off sick nasty flanks, etc. - all while minimizing the crews ability to effectively engage you. This also minimizes the amount of resources you have to spend on expanding, and reduces how many you have to upgrade to effectively fortify any given angle. Truly - do NOT just mindlessly convert the station to green! Become a fetid honeycomb of moldy vileness. Be efficient! Remember, blob nodes only care about distance- not raw blob count. This manner of strategic wallbreaking also lets you go farther out with the same batch of resources - allowing the creation of more nodes (and thus more resources) more quickly, and provides more cover for those nodes so crew don't just go digging for blob gold. The AI blob drops are also exceptionally good at fighting around corners (since they ignore server desync).
All in all - don't break all walls. Instead try to break every other wall, or even every third wall to create a metallic honeycomb of death and efficiently expend and produce resources!
Ah - but how quickly should you expand? Once the Blob reaches a certain 'size' - the station is notified. But what IS that size? As it so happens - its a specific percentage of the station being coated in blob tiles. And all it does is tell the station that there exists a blob - not where it is. But an AI that knows to look will always go to check the least occupied areas first - as will smart secoffs and borgs. Thus, it is imperitive that you take your time for as long as you can. Stay small at first, build up a bank of resources - make only 3, maybe 4 nodes at most and do so with as few blobs as possible. Upgrade all of the blob tiles around this 'core' that you can to create the best possible initial advantage. Get Blobbernauts, possibly even get additional cores if you manage to go undetected for long enough. Generally, you don't want to expand beyond 3 or 4 nodes until you absolutely HAVE to (IE - when a borg or other crew shows up and outs you). In an ideal world, you'll have all your upgrades and a massive bank of resources built up that you can use to explosively expand outwards once you're outed and gain a massive amount of extra ground.
At its core, Blob is a snowball antag. There is a certain threshold where you simply gain so many resources that you can physically expand faster than the crew can kill you, letting you freely move core to safer locations, create blobbernauts, terrorize the crew, etc. If you have a strong maints presence and a decent amount of resource blobs, breaking into a main station hallway is essentially game over - its a ton of completely unobstructed ground and very easy to spam nodes in and gain access to other parts of the station. Your primary goal isn't trying to robust sec and the borgs (though you should try to if you can!) - its growth. If you have to give up ground in one place to gain MORE ground in another? That's always a good trade for you. Killing hapless crew members is a solid way to get blob zombies, and blob zombies can go off blob and really cause chaos.
The final section of this guide will go over the Blob Chemicals - IE blob "colors" or "types". By default you start as Green Blob, which is the "physical" blob - it has the strongest (and most resource efficient) direct attack, but no particular defensive properties or other unique abilities. It is strong, it is reliable - its good! Swapping chemicals costs resource, and early on it is not advisable to do so unless you're absolutely certain in the strength of your start location.
The other chemicals are Purple blob, which has a weaker and less efficient attack in exchange for mild regeneration on all blobs (IE your tiles will heal over time, which for fortified tiles can be a real nut buster for secoffs or borgs haplessly trying to whack you down with melee weapons). It also generates a very tiny amount of bonus resources, and can be a net positive if you do swap early and don't get outed for a long time. However it does tend to fall off once you expand, its weak primary attack makes expanding tedious and expensive and the powerful regeneration doesn't do a ton for weak blobs.
Orange blob is the "Fire" blob - Fire blob trades the blobs weakness to fire for a weakness to water - and gains the ability to light things on fire when it hits them. Its attack is even weaker and less efficient than purple blob, but losing the blobs primary weakness is a pretty huge boon and fire damage can be lethal for standard crew. If you find yourself faced with lots of standard crew (rather than borgs or energy resistant secoffs), the orange blob can be a great way to steamroll over the hallways and flatten med, bar, etc. Just be mindful of the Jani and Atmosians, who can spray water over massive areas and obliterate you. Fire Extinguishers also crush you! Orange blob is usually a short-lived swap, once the crew wizens up and pulls out the water you MUST swap back or find yourself rapidly dwindling to nothing. NOT to be done early game!
Red blob is the Explosive blob - it does what it says on the tin. You become resistant to explosive damage, and your attack becomes ridiculously strong - literally causing explosions with every click. It is, however, very expensive and a gibbed crew cannot be made into a blob zombie. Very good once you're already nice and large and have a decently sized army to work with and no longer care about converting. Also breaks through walls very quickly, making it good for trying to disarm nuke. Do be careful, your blob drops and blobbernauts do NOT benefit from the explosive resistance - avoid friendly fire!
As of the time of this writing, I can't even remember the color of the fifth chemical let alone what it does - so it's probably really bad since I literally never see it. That or its heavily slept on - I do plan to actually check once I get blob again, at which time I will update this guide!
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