Barotrauma Winter Update 2025: New Submarine, Gameplay Enhancements, and More
Barotrauma, the intense cooperative submarine survival game set beneath the icy oceans of Europa, continues to evolve with its latest release: the Winter Update 2025. With an active player base averaging around 3,072 players, the developers have once again delivered a substantial update packed with new content, gameplay improvements, and important bug fixes.
At the heart of this update is the introduction of a brand-new submarine, the Wallaby, a tier 2 Attack class vessel that brings fresh tactical options and challenges to the table. Alongside this, the update introduces new mechanics such as valves and weakpoints, improves combat NPCs, and enhances the submarine editor experience. Let’s dive deeper into what this update brings and how it impacts the Barotrauma community.
The Wallaby: A Compact but Formidable Attack Submarine
The Wallaby is a new tier 2 Attack class submarine that defies expectations with its firepower relative to its size. Designed to be a versatile and aggressive vessel, the Wallaby is equipped with a full set of fabrication facilities, allowing players to craft essential items and repairs on the fly during missions. This makes it a highly self-sufficient submarine, ideal for teams looking to balance offense with sustainability.
However, the Wallaby is not without its vulnerabilities. The update introduces weakpoints in the submarine’s pipe system-specific pipes that can break and cause dangerous water hazards inside the sub. These weakpoints add a new layer of risk and urgency, requiring players to be vigilant and quick to repair damage using a wrench. To aid in repairs, valves can be turned off to isolate sections of the pipe system, though this disables any linked pumps, forcing players to make strategic decisions during emergencies.
Another notable design choice is that some walls linked to weakpoints cannot be cut through as shortcuts, adding to the tactical complexity of navigating and defending the Wallaby. This balance of power and fragility makes the Wallaby a unique addition to the Barotrauma submarine roster.
Gameplay and Combat Enhancements
Beyond the new submarine, the Winter Update 2025 brings several gameplay improvements, particularly in combat and mission design. The developers have rebalanced higher-level enemy NPCs, equipping them with better gear and making combat encounters more challenging and rewarding. This change aims to keep veteran players engaged and encourage teamwork and strategy during hostile encounters.
Additionally, the update refines the medical system by preventing characters from being revived with CPR if they have no oxygen available-for example, a player wearing a diving suit with an empty oxygen tank. This fix addresses an exploit where players could farm medical skill points by repeatedly reviving oxygen-deprived characters, ensuring that medical gameplay remains balanced and realistic.
Submarine Editor and Circuit System Upgrades
For players who enjoy designing and customizing their own submarines, the update introduces several quality-of-life improvements to the submarine editor. One of the most appreciated additions is the inclusion of level background visuals in the sub editor’s test mode, allowing creators to better visualize how their submarine will look in the actual in-game environments.
The update also enhances the editor’s precision tools: the rotation tool now snaps to 1-degree increments, and the scale tool snaps to 0.1 increments, with the option to temporarily disable snapping by holding Shift. These changes allow for finer control and more detailed submarine designs.
Moreover, the circuit system has been expanded with two additional input and output connections (0 and 9) on circuit boxes, aligning them with mux/demux components and adopting 0-indexing for consistency. Relays have also received an upgrade, increasing the number of signal connections from 2 to 5, enabling more complex and efficient electrical setups within submarines.
Multiplayer Stability and Bug Fixes
Multiplayer remains a core component of Barotrauma’s appeal, and the Winter Update 2025 addresses several issues to improve the online experience. Notably, the update fixes a bug where inventories and wallets could sometimes reset during multiplayer sessions, a frustrating problem that affected player progress and item management.
While the patch notes cut off mid-sentence regarding multiplayer fixes, the developers’ ongoing commitment to stabilizing multiplayer functionality is clear. Players are encouraged to update to the latest version to ensure they can host and join servers without issues.
Recap: Autumn Update Highlights
It’s worth briefly revisiting the Autumn Update, which laid important groundwork for the Winter Update. Released shortly before, the Autumn Update introduced “Blueprint” items-essential for unlocking crafting recipes involving Alien materials. This addition deepened the crafting system and encouraged exploration and trading.
The Autumn Update also featured a significant rebalance of the railgun weapon, improving its behavior so that its high-power shells can penetrate multiple targets and submarine walls, enhancing combat dynamics. Grenade aiming was refined to reduce frustrating misses caused by excessive sliding or rolling, and the throw force of most throwable explosives was standardized for better consistency.
Medical items received balancing passes as well, with broad-spectrum antibiotics now affecting all infected limbs but curing less infection per limb, and antibiotic glue becoming more situational with potential drawbacks. These changes made medical treatment more strategic and less trivialized.
Looking Ahead
With the Winter Update 2025, Barotrauma continues to build on its reputation as a challenging and immersive cooperative survival game. The addition of the Wallaby submarine and new gameplay mechanics enrich the tactical depth, while editor improvements and multiplayer fixes enhance the overall player experience.
As the Barotrauma community grows and the developers remain active in refining the game, players can look forward to more content, balance tweaks, and quality-of-life improvements in future updates. Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer exploring the depths of Europa for the first time, now is a great time to dive back into Barotrauma and experience the latest innovations firsthand.