Alien Ruins

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* Notes: Needs to be up to date with the current steam version.

The **Alien Ruins** are vast, underwater caves that the player can encounter in *Barotrauma*. They are most commonly found embedded into rocks and ice found underwater.

## Description

Alien Ruins are made up of long corridors and vast rooms of incredibly thick blocks. These rooms are particularly massive, possibly implying that their creators were larger than humans, with similarly large doors. Notably, these doors cannot be opened by conventional wiring, so attempting to make a submarine out of alien parts (as seen in the gallery) is all but futile. These ruins are often inhabited by a sole Fractal Guardian which can be a notable threat to an unprepared player. As always, a Diving Suit is required and a small Shuttle is recommended to get into an entrance of a ruin.

## Obstacles

Rooms in the ruins sometimes contain traps.

### Motion Activated Turret

This trap features a motion sensor activated turret that periodically switches on and off. It is powered by an Alien Power Generator, and can be disabled by removing the Alien Power Cell within.

### Three Buttons

This obstacle features a door locked by a simple puzzle. It has 3 buttons, each of which toggle one or more of 3 lights. When all 3 lights are lit, the door opens.

### Timed Button

This door has 2 lights beside it. One of the lights periodically turns on and off. When the button is pressed while the light is turned on, the second light lights and the door opens.

### Roomful of Mooks

This room will have several monsters in it. Possible monsters include: Fractal Guardians, Crawlers, Husks

## Loot

As well as the following Artifacts, the Alien Ruins can very rarely contain an Ancient Weapon, the strongest handheld weapon in the game.

### Artifacts

*Main article:* Artifacts

**Artifacts** is the term given to a series of relics left behind by extraterrestrials on Europa. They are frequent targets of salvage missions in Quest Mode, and are potential sources of rare raw materials. Both the origin of these artifacts and their purpose is unknown.

Each artifact tends to have dangerous effects on their environment; for lack of understanding, they are impossible to prevent and can only be worked around. It is unknown how much of it comes from their intended function, normal side-effect of their working, or degradation sustained due to a lack of upkeep.

Five sorts of artifacts have currently been recovered from Europa, distinct in appearance, composition and effect: **Psychosis**, **Faraday**, **Skyholder**, **Nasonov** and **Thermal**.

### Other

Amongst the alien ruins, the player can find various other items inside Small Alien Chests and Large Alien Chests.

#### Alien Power Cell

The Alien Power Cell is used to power Alien Weapons.

#### Alien Pistol

The Alien Pistol is a ranged weapon that deals Burn Damage and inflicts Psychosis.

#### Ancient Weapon

The Ancient Weapon is a ranged weapon that deals Burn Damage and high damage to structures.

#### Alien Flare

The Alien Flare is a bright and long burning Flare item.

#### Alien Trinket

The Alien Trinket is a minor artifact that deconstructs into an Oxygenite Shard

#### Alien Curio

The Alien Curio is a minor artifact that deconstructs into a Sulphurite Shard

#### Alien Ornament

The Alien Ornament is a minor artifact that deconstructs into a Physicorium Bar

## Trivia

* Every generated level in *Barotrauma* contains an artifact somewhere, even if only laying on the cavern floors. This implies their creators must have been incredibly prevalent in this section of Europa.
* A Moloch is sometimes found instead of an artifact at the end of salvage missions in the quest "Salvaging an artifact", as they emit the same kind of infrasonic signals. Killing the misleading creature will still be considered a success.
* As of Version 0.8.2.0, items taken from the ruins in Campaign mode will now be present in the next round. Previously, these items were deleted after ending the round.
* Since the Thermal Artifact is only active when inside a submarine's hull, it suggests that the Thermal Artifacts were likely used by it's creators to defend their territory.
* As ruin walls use the same internal file structure as submarine walls, most third party anti-griefing systems will return a false positive whenever they are damaged. This could be intentional, as it is possible to construct a submarine out of ruin walls in the Submarine Editor.
* The alien trinket appears to be a reference to the Lament Configuration from the Hellraiser series.