So you wanna be a good nightmare

Welcome to Rick Hick’s nightmare guide, which is me, talking to you, about the nightmare antagonist. “You’ve got five seconds to break that lamp before I add you to the lists of Nanotrasen casualties.

YOU AND YOUR LIGHT EATER
So you’ve been chosen to be nightmare, great. You’ll spawn in a dark place in maint and should immediately start getting rid of those PESKY LIGHTS (ALSO APC’S THEY ARE SO USEFUL TO BREAK). You slowly lose health in the light and regenerate in the dark, as well as having free unrestricted movement in the dark. So don’t be a dummy and go SSD on a flashlight. Remember, there are a lot more things that produce light in this game than you would imagine, most turned on machinery or consoles will produce a faint glow which will knock you out of shadow walk or deal damage. Also, smacking nerds with your armblade will delete any light-producing items aside from their PDA.
It’s important to make a kind of sphere of influence. As nightmare you’re very fragile and always need an escape route, try knocking out lights in places that are non-essential and but not isolated, like the chapel, bar, and arrivals. People will come here for you to kill, but nothing overwhelming, and you will always be able to shadow walk back into a room. Oh, that reminds me, you have shadow walk, the most busted bullshit to ever exist.

SHADOW WALKING ON THE NERDS
Shadow walk is much more than just a jaunt. You have the ability to reposition in any situation as long as you’re in a dark room. So when fighting that sec officer with a gun, don’t just walk at them and try to hit with funny armblade, fucking spin around them at lightning speeds by rapidly spamming shadow walk, hitting them with chip damage from your armblade before they can react. I’ve had several sec officers kill civilians on accident because they shoot at me and I just shadow walk.
Oh yeah, another thing shadowwalk is good at, dodging projectiles. D O T H A T. I don’t expect you to neo dodge every single shotgun pellet going towards you, but at least try. The number of people I’ve seen who just… walk… towards… a man with a gun while in a dark room when they can FUCKING JAUNT WITH NO COOLDOWN is incredible.
Shadowwalking also gives you the most valuable thing in SS13 combat: the ability to pick your fights. If you see the captain walking alone in a dark hallway you can walk in, then you see his sec escort and are immediately in sci maints 400 tiles away from them. As long as its DARK you can go ANYWHERE, fight ANYONE, and ALWAYS WIN. If you read this guide with no prior knowledge of ss13, you would probably think nightmare is the most powerful SS13 antag. Well, you’re not that wrong, but it definitely has glaring weaknesses.

OH GOD HOW IS THERE STAMINA DAMAGE EVERYWHERE
That’s right, one baton in the light and you’re basically dead. This is counting on sec not being a bunch of idiots, so take it with a grain of salt. Since you rapidly lose health while near bright objects, all some idiot with a baton has to do is hit you once or twice and boom. Dead. The goal of a nightmare is to carefully balance your risk of being killed with your ability to create new zones of darkness to murderbone in. Also; please, PLEASE cooperate with the Traitors/Lings if there are any on the station. Having a buddy can bust you out of a really tight situation, remember, you will also revive in the dark if you are in a dark location, so even some dude just dragging you to maint can save your game.

PLACES THAT HAVE PEOPLE TO MURDER
By far the best places to fuck around with are anywhere service, cargo, sci, and engineering. These are all key departments that people hang around in, but you won’t find a lot of sec here. And people playing in these departments probably won’t be prepared for hand to hand combat with a nightmare.
One moment someones making a toxins bomb, they see the lights go out, boom, they’re dead. Cargo is great for murder too, since they have the means to supply the station with ways to kill you but are teeny tiny babies themselves. Stab the QM a few times.

THE SHUTTLE
The shuttle is the riskiest fucking place you could ever go as a nightmare, and yet, its so tantalizing. A big donk pocket of injured, stupid crew members to kill. Sadly for you, the shuttle is CHOCK FULL OF LIGHT, and also CHOCK FULL OF PEOPLE, and the more people the more likely they know they can repeat table you in front of a light and just kill you. If you choose to go on the shuttle, please make sure you have a lifeline. Some antag you’re colluding with or anything, because if you make one mistake on there you are toast.

FINAL THOUGHTS
Anyways, I made this very bored at ten in the morning, so take anything with a grain of salt. Nightmare is a very difficult antagonist to play, but for the love of god use shadow walk to get out of bad situations, dodge boolets, and break apc’s. AND DONT BE A FRIENDLY NIGHTMARE… WHEN YOUR WEAKNESS IS LIGHT AND YOU WANNA BE FRIENDLY YOU’LL DIE.

MISC SHIT
Use your eyes on the lowest intensity, so you can discern lowlight and highlight areas while still having good visibility.
Shadow walking behind people and saying “Nothing personal, kid.” is a great meme.
As a Nightmare you cant use advanced methods of sabotage, like plasmaflooding or bombmaking. You’re dumb, and you’re designed to be great at head-to-head 1v1 combat.
Kill the fucking botanists. They surprisingly make a lot of EXTREMELY BRIGHT FRUIT as soon as they see you and are an actual threat. (If they know how to do botany that is)
Take headsets from people, it’ll let you monitor comms and taunt crew.

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I never saw this until now, it’s quite informative. I’d always recommend smacking a plasmeme to condemn them to a slow, painful death.

Thank you Mr Rick ‘Nightmare’ Hick!

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I am oonga sec with batong and seclite, remember to stay in the dark and pick your fights or this will be you

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I don’t usually like playing Antag but Nightmare is one I really wish I would have gotten more than once in my 400+ hours.