Hey, if anyone is interested, we have created a discord server for people playing The Thing Arctic on EU Server. Everyone is welcome! https://discord.gg/Y7QEJWr

This bug appeard after recent patches. It's not possible to pass through lowered supply depots anymore. They remain impassable when you lower them. Please fix.

We are playing very often. Is it possible to remove starting videos? Or skip? It takes a lot of time to see it..

The Thing developers are dead, but the community isn't. (kappa)

We have created The Thing Arctic group  recently, feel free to join, guys. <3

Hello

I've found a guy who played Thing Arctic game having infinite minerals. So he made radar very early and after that also built some turrets. Idk if he hacked Thing Arctic game or SC2 overall. This is first cheater I've encountered in this game. I think it's at least interesting to watch. Here is the replay:

https://uploadfiles.io/l7xcj

Rewind to 30:35 and watch player "igor" (cheater).

Hello

It's beo again (the guy who played this game alot and who made last two posts). I want to report a bug: if you build a radar dish right at the end of the round then the timer "Chopper arrives in" remains. So ship arrives in round where radar was not built at all (that was a strange win for me). Link to screenshot:

https://ufile.io/d9hzj

Hello

It's beo again (the guy who played this game alot). I already posted some suggestions that could improve the game in my previous post. But those suggestions aimed to improve the game without sufficiently changing the gameplay. Now I would like to propose changes that still do not require redevelopment of this map but would strongly affect the gameplay.

For now this game is too much about your micro. Microing with your character is the main factor that affects the result of fights humans vs Things. And these fights are the main part of the game which decide who wins and who loses. Thing player with bad micro will most likely lose to human player with good micro in 1v1 fight. Thing player with good micro can do whatever he wants when playing against humans with bad micro and still win. I suggest to change that in favor of players with bad micro. So players who do not play sc2 rankeds or other "tryhard" games could enjoy the game (they can not enjoy it for now cause they lose in it too much or they just don't wanna play "tryhard" game).

I suggest the following: we buff Thing's "f" ability by increasing duration of root by 2-3 seconds and in the same time we make Thing unable to turn to Thing form from human form if one or more of human's abilities are on cooldown. Also if Thing's "f" ability is on cooldown human's abilities are disabled until "f" will be ready for using.

As a result of this change Thing will not be able to infect human by attacking him in human form and then (after making some damage on him in human form) immediately turn to Thing form, root with "f" and finish him with Thing's melee attacks. Thing will not be able to Taser/Bash/Stimpack/Grenade/e.t.c. human and then finish him in Thing form cause Thing form will not be available immediately after using any of those abilities. So we completely remove main way of infecting humans by Thing. But from the other hand Thing will be alot more scary in Thing form: if Thing turns to Thing form in close proximity from human it can infect full HP human (with best perks, best defensive abilities and best weapon) unless he has morphine.

Obviously you don't need to be good at micro to infect humans (even very strong players) as Thing after this change. Also to not get infected you just need to keep distance from another human and maintain full HP. Thing needs to hunt more in burrowed form now or wait for a good oppotunity when he can suddenly turn to Thing form from human form. This is much easier for players with bad micro than always moving in human form (even when they are revealed as Thing) and trying to outmicro human players.

This change also would reduce the impact of annoying for many players thing: "I could kill (infect/escape from) him, but he moves so fast that I just can't click on him with my ability".

This change does not completely remove impact of microing to the game but it makes it less valuable.

I wish we could give this a try.

Hello

I'm pretty experienced Thing player (nickname "beo", was GM before my rank was reset). I would like to talk about some simple changes to the game that does not change the game overall, but that could make it better and more popular.

In my opinion the two main problems in the game for now are:

1) It's pretty unfriendly for new players.

If we want to make this map more popular this is extremely important. I see lots of new players who come into game and they do not know what this game is about at all. They do not know what to do. So player just stands and tries to understand what he should do and then suddenly the game is over (Thing gets killed). If all 3 rounds end up like this no wonder that he will never play this game again. 

So I think that would be nice if game would have more in-game tips. For example, the most important tips for new players are:

- you can make radar dish to call salvage ship and escape with it to win the game

- you can get minerals by killing zombies and zerg building or find containers on map

- you can make blood test and test if player is Thing or not

Some of these tips are appeared during loading screen, but still most of new players have no idea about all of those when they play thier first game. Also it would be nice to make those tips more evident and good looking because lots of players just did not look at left top corner where tips are located by now.

Also I think that playing Thing is too complex for a first time player. I think that it would be correct to not let first time player play Thing. I think that player must play at least 10 games as human before he will be allowed to play Thing.

Another problem for new players is that they often get teamkilled by high-tier players cause high-tier players don't want to craft bloodtest in order to test newbie like "I'd better just kill him, he is useless anyway". I suggest to punish high-tier players for that by setting there starting amount of minerals to 5 instead of 60 for several games. Of course teamkill could be an accident so player must teamkill several times to deserve such punishment.

Another problem is upgrade system. New player has only a few upgrade points available and most of upgrades are locked when hight-tier player can have up to 30 upgrade points and all upgrades are available to him. Player who has more points has advantage over player who has less. In my opinion level of advantage can be described as: 10 points of advantage = high advantage, 20 points = completely unfair game, 30 points = cheating. The player who has more points has more damage, more HP/armor/dodge, faster contruction, more HP on his turrets, much better regeneration of mana and HP. This advantage can be so high that human character with more points becomes sufficiently stronger that Thing character with less points. This obviously should never happen. In order to make game more fair I suggest to make every player having 10 upgrade points total no matter what level he is. That will not make game completely fair cause new player still will not have access to very important upgrades but it is a big step in right direction.

2) It's highly imbalanced in human team favor.

If human team decides to group all together then they already have a huge advantage over Thing and winning game as Thing becomes very very difficult (I believe it's impossible with correct play of humans). Still there are some other things in game that make it even more imbalanced. I'm gonna talk only about few of them. These things should be changed in my opinion:

- Remove free keys from corners of the map. These are locations that can be solo cleared at very early stage of the game. Most of games are played without truck at all. Though when game reaches its late stage with lots of zombies truck is very OP device that can also be repaired with Repair kit. Huge zombie waves become nothing but free minerals to human team. Such poweful things should not be free. It's probably correct to remove possibility of repairing truck too.

- Nerf "Rapid deployment" perk. It should not affect upgrade time of auto-turrets. It's too strong overall and it also has too good synergy with "Pocket auto-turret" ability. If Thing unburrows and attacks human he can immediatly use Pocket auto-turret and get fast missile turret because of "Rapid deployment" upgrade. Unfortunately this strategy works for now.

Additional thing that probably should be fixed is bad terrain. There are at least two places on the map where terrain behaves not like it should. It looks like it consists hidden impassable areas. One is situated in right top corner where you can get free blood test. When you run there along thin path you can cleariy see that your character can't pass along some areas there. Another place is situated on the rise of bottom right entrance in central building. There is one square where you can't build barricade.

I hope Kawo will read this ^^

I cant really find the interactive map on this site. I remember i used to easily acess the map, where i could look up various things like weapon racks, spawning points, items, etc. If it still exists can somebody give me a link to it?

Gonna be any new content for this game at all? It has been making sort of a comeback lately as P A R A S I T E has died down a lot and the new Blizzard update for free WoL, seems like a great opportunity to maybe add something cool like a new item or weapon or new area of the map. My friends and I really love this game and hope the devs haven't disappeared. I completely understand if there won't be anymore updates or not for a while, adding new stuff is time consuming and you are probably busy. Just an idea though. Thanks for reading, and also, long live the Swedes!

- Chat mechanic abuse- (not tested yet)

You must know, by now (if you're a veteran), that the thing chat is isolated from the survivors chat. Effectively if you write (in Allies) while you're in thing form, the survivors won't be able to see it and vice-versa. So how can you abuse this to your advantage (as survivor)?

When Thing is infecting a human it is forced to be in thing form for 3 sec., and a flashy exclamation mark appears on the map, with a very distinct sound. Wish means as soon as you see this, you have ~2-3secs (depending on reaction time) to write anything (in Allies) to confirm that you're not a thing. With this method, you can easily detect who are the things, leave 0-1 undetected (depending on the player count). Tho, in reality, the Things (thing form) won't be the only ones who won't say anything. Simply gather in a group and TK the rest, it'll be easy with 3-4 or + persons.

-Fixed camera abuse-

This one is sooo easy, and pretty effective. All players have a fixed camera, this tip/trick/cheat is already known by many, so here it goes. Some walls hide your character, you'll have to find them yourself (ya, work for this one), if you're in burrow form, as thing, you can get behind this wall and be pretty undetectable (unless someone has hp showing all the time or when dmged).[ I've never used this until now, so this info comes from someone else who survived this way]

Another way you can use this to your advantage (tested and used by me ;P) is to hide a turret behind it. If you far enough to the left or to the right that part is revealed, so as long as you have vision of the location you can actually build and upgrade it (hotkey:7). To have vision you only need to fully build a normal turret close to the location (it will give enough vision). It's pretty hard to build, wish makes it pretty hard to throw a nade, or even to shoot (depending on if the shooter has agro on you or not), but not impossible. Easy(ish) way to kill it is through auto-attack in thing form or zambies -.-.

-Another good tip- (but not really)

Is simply kill anyone with low hp, -1 survivor (-1 helper or not) but at least -1 potential thing (+1 zombie lord wish, if in late game won't do much .aka zombie cap abuse). If you want to avoid pen. for killing him, just follow him and auto attack to make his hp low enough till he's killed by a zambie.

-Douchebagish move-

After getting infected use handgun or use another method to die. Even douchier move, kill the thing that infected you (wish is already low hp cause of your attacks) and die.

-Netrap-

Northern-middle base ramp. You can build to depots on top and on the bottom (lower them), wait till someone comes, trap them and blow 'em up. A great catch would be if you get everyone. (Happened to me once, but I didn't blew them up, such a waste...). You can escape with a force-field.

-The ABCs of this mod-

To infect: Tase-Snipe-Nade-Transform-Fungal and make sure to target player, if turret is nearby. If you don't have access to taser just go to one of those weapon racks, and you can get that ability from there, same goes for all non-unlocked abilities.

-For pros/veteran/master up ranks-

You'll get+ exp per game if you kill, spines/tumors/zombies rather than actually going after the thing. Effectively, killing the thing shouldn't be your top priority.

-ZombieLords-

I don't really control zombies that much, but here's what I've generally seen. Make sure to control the truck, if it's still there aka prevent any survivor get into it. Take note of who's the thing and make their life easier by not letting zombies in their way. If the truck is destroyed or, if you're sure that the survivors don't have enough mins/key for the truck (and the clock is ticking helipad), be in the helipad.

-Vengeance killing-

Finally, I've saved for last the most important (in my view) topic. If someone kills you as human, you shouldn't jump into the thinking of, "Oh he's killing me for no reason, I'll make him taste his own medicine by killing too". A lot of times there's a reason behind it or maybe it was a mistake, we're all humans, after all, we all make mistakes. One of the things that I learned with life, is that seeking vengeance will bring you nowhere. I  know what it feels, I've been there. You feel great, cause you finally taught that kiddo a lesson, showing that you're more than bla bla bla... Sometimes I died more times just to seek the vengeance that I never got... losing myself in the process, no longer having a fun experience. That's how wars start and people die, this might be a game, but morally your killing yourself. There's a Chinese saying: "He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself". If you'll never take anything from this game, I want you to take this from me, never let yourself be blinded by vengeance, learn to forgive others and to forgive yourself.

This is why I love this mod ;) you learn so much from it, about yourself and others.

Ty for reading this guide.

I was wondering if there was a possibility to make a new Thing map that takes place somewhere in Argentina, which is the setting of one of the Thing comic books.

I've been playing this game for over 2 years now, and I really like it but for one small problem, it's not available for private modding.

I would really like the developer to unlock this full map on the editor, not just the module data itself, because I would really like to explore other options for this map. Adding in AI guards, or AI things or survivors are just a few of my ideas and I would love the chance to make these a reality.

Hi guys, i used to play this mod pretty often like 1 year ago or smth.

Since i dont really go on SC2 now it s hard to find people playing this mod, what are the peak hour to play theses days ? 

I m on GMT time zone

I've met more than 10 people already who have experienced the following bug: whenever you exit the game by using this button

you can no more rejoin without reloading SC2.

I'm not sure if it's some internal bug or SC2 glitch, but it is only fixed by pressing F10 + Q after round 3 (i.e. avoiding "Quit" button in endgame dialog).

So maybe you just remove that button? The game probably loses a decent amount of newbies because of it.

Happened when two people were using the little spider mines and mine suddenly exploded. When I asked what happened a friend mentioned that he had pressed his detonate key.

Absolutely love the game by the way it really does the 1982 movie justice.

So this 1 guy snipes me and tries to kill me. I shoot him too (after the initial snipe), so both of us are in hagro mode/agressive to each other. I escaped so I could regain a bit of health. Afterwards I come back to finish the job/fight and I get penality for killing him, yet he started the fight. So why do I get penality?

2nd: A player at my rank, that is almost maxed, gets ~-720exp penality. 720exp=~15 noob thing kills/ 6 experienced thing player kills. Isn't this too much?

So this glitch basically doubles almost everything.

That includes trucks, barrels, spine crawlers, spore crawlers and some other stuff too

For this glitch to happen you must first co-operate with a thing or just have some great luck because this glitch is not easy to do. It requires some great timing skills. So first things first you must have the radar built and then be on the helipad til just the last moment. The thing must then hit you and infest you exactly before the dropship "cinematic" begins. This will cause the game to be won by the thing and the humans I believe, which causes the game to spawn all structures and other stuff twice during the round after.

I bring these replays as proof

Here is the original video you might say or when the glitch was first discovered:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/o130jpay4p4oq30/The+Thing+-Arctic-+%28352%29+DOUBLE+BARREL.SC2Replay

With the help of a friend we replicated the glitch after numerous attempts:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/pq7iqq5ackt8kzq/The+Thing+-Arctic-+%28360%29+First+succsesful+attempt.SC2Replay

Our goal was to exploit this glitch for EXP farming and so we did, but I was tasked with reporting this.

I just found a bug in the creep tumor where you can spawn more than 1 creep tumor with 1 creep tumor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3pG3MJgCr4

Often when playing the thing I've found the weapons to be suited for certain situations only. The sniper, a weapon being very efficient at dealing high damage towards enemies of all sorts with its ability and range. However, it cannot really stand its own against a larger mass of enemies. The Shotgun is another one of the weapons capable of dealing high damage with its ability but has a considerably smaller range and has a small splash damage. The flamethrower is a great weapon for dealing with masses of zombies, being capable of lighting multiple enemies on fire will deal a large amount of damage over time but it is nearly useless against survivors and the thing. The gauss rifle is a weapon similar to the sniper, having a long range ability that deals a high damage but slightly different since it does not have a "lock-on" like the sniper does instead you aim somewhere and fire in a straight line.

The situations that these weapons can be great in truly make this game very good since for most of the situations that you will end up in there will be a weapon that will be suited for the job. However with turrets, another question comes to the subject. How well does each weapon work together with the regular turret and its upgrades?

The sniper being a weapon that deals high damage and capable of doing so at a long range makes it very good in combination with turrets. The turrets form a line, which prevents enemies from coming close to the defender and the sniper deals with any target that sieges from a longer distance away than the turrets can reach.

The gauss rifle can do much of the same job, having a longer range than the turrets with its ability it can deal damage to most long-range attackers as long as you can hit them. Being better in some situations than the sniper and being worse in others but overall can it also perform this "teamwork" with the turrets well.

The other two weapons, having no such long range ability are at a disadvantage when combining with turrets. Often what I've experienced is that you cannot fight any siege attack with these two weapons without leaving the turrets and walking out of the base and doing so often exposes you to danger and to being trapped while being out of the turrets protection. Any stun attack will most certainly leave you out in the open and with any zombie controller doing his work at surrounding you are without a doubt not going to make it back to the base. If you choose the other option and stay in the base eventually the gates and turrets will fall, even with repairs. These weapons cannot have been designed for camping as it is obvious that you cannot prevent or fight siege attacks with them.

Perhaps then, as it seems that a new turret must be made. That can attack at longer ranges a than a missile turret but must be unable to fire at short ranges or something else to balance it out. Preferably it should work in some way that it needs a player to use a shotgun or flamethrower to defend at shorter ranges best. In this way, we also achieve the symmetry that we get with the sniper/gauss rifle and regular turrets.

To anyone having read all this, my thanks to you for hearing out my concerns about the shotgun and flamethrowers lacking a way to defend against any siege attack.