Balita
[REDACTED] guide: the best skills, weapons, and suits for escaping Black Iron Prison
A
Alan Wen
With each attempt, you can accrue more resources to unlock more skills and gear that will get you further. As you progress from each room and to new biomes, you’ll face tougher challenges, but you’ll also unlock random upgrades that will also give you advantages depending on your build and playstyle. Our [REDACTED] guide goes over some of the best skills, weapons, and suits to unlock, as well as how to survive against the rivals also trying to make it out of Black Iron Prison in one piece.
Best early skills to unlock
You can unlock skills in the hub from the Crisis Management Terminal. When equipped, they grant abilities or stat upgrades from the beginning of the run. Unlocking and upgrading skills requires Contraband resources that can be obtained during a run as rewards.
The first page has skills that will be incrementally useful. Padded Vest is a great choice since it gives you more health to start with, and the more health, the higher your chance of survival. It costs 40 Contraband to unlock and can be upgraded nine more times so that you can start a run with 150 HP. You can also find opportunities to increase your maximum health during a run.
You have three equip slots to start with, but can unlock more using Samples, a currency obtained from defeating bosses the first time. When you defeat the first boss, Berserker, you’ll be rewarded with 2 Samples. But you should use these to unlock the second page of skills on the terminal instead, so you can access the following game-changing skills that will give you a real advantage early on. Just spend a few runs grinding because it will cost a lot of Contraband.
- Last Caress - when your health drops to zero, you’re automatically revived with half of your max health. Costs 300 Contraband (1,000 to upgrade for a second revive).
- Double Dash - gives you an additional dash. Costs 150 Contraband.
- Executioner - instantly kills enemies with low health (health threshold: 5%). Costs 100 Contraband.
Best weapons to unlock
You can equip a melee weapon and a ranged weapon in each run, starting with a baton and pistol. Over the course of the game, you can buy up to seven additional weapons from the Riot Response Terminal in the hub. These won’t all be available from the start, and weapons also require Keycodes to unlock, which means it will likely take a few runs before you have enough to buy a new weapon. It’s all the more reason to make the investment worthwhile.
The best melee weapons:
The Cattle Prod is great for its long reach, and you can charge it up to dish out a flurry of jabs at enemies in front of you. Costs 10 Keycodes.
Barman Shanks is short range, but makes up for it by being very fast. Plus, you can just hold down the attack button to keep striking the enemy, and even more effective as a backstab. Costs 30 Keycodes.
The best ranged weapons:
Assault Rifle has good range and fires a 3-shot burst at a decent firing rate. During your run, you also have a chance of finding schematics that can modify it so that it does more damage to enemies at full health but less damage when they have lower health, or start with a slower firing rate that becomes faster the longer you’re continuously shooting. A great weapon to use while keeping your distance. Costs 25 Keycodes.
ATOM fires an energy beam that’s effective at taking down enemies at long range as long as you keep the beam on them continuously. While you don’t have to worry about reloading, if it overheats, then you risk waiting for a while for it to cool down before you can use it again. Some schematics can reduce the cooldown time or make the weapon increase in power when it’s kept close to overheating status. For the widest range, Blind Justice makes the beam fork out in three directions. Costs 60 Keycodes.
Best suits to unlock
Suits in [REDACTED] provide various perks which can be equipped from the Gear Locker from the hub and require Security IDs to unlock. New suits are only made available as you progress further in the game depending on the biomes you’ve reached and the rivals you encounter.
The base perks that suits provide fall under a few categories: an increase to stats (e.g. maximum health, movement speed, maximum GRP uses); less damage taken in a specific biome; and an increased chance of finding a specific type of experiment during a run.
If you’re looking to increase your survival chances, it’s best to unlock the suits related to each biome—Convict Cagematch, Sludge Tunnel, Cold Dead Hand, and Avionic Anarchy—so that you receive 25% less damage in each biome. Each suit unlocks when you have reached the boss of that respective biome for the first time. From the Terminal Power Supply in the hub, you can spend 40 Electronics to unlock Gear Locker Access Stations, allowing you to change suits in between each biome.
But if you’re focused on just one suit, unlock the Anarchy suit then upgrade it once, which increases damage enemies receive from hazards by 100%. Then clear 6 biomes while wearing this suit to upgrade it again, which deals an additional 5% damage for every 50 maximum health you have. If you have been upgrading your maximum health with both skills and upgrades during the run, you can deal an additional 20% damage with maximum health of 200.
How to defeat rivals
There are eight rivals in total, which you’ll initially encounter one at a time within the first few rooms of the first biome, Convict Cagematch. Once all are introduced, you will be up against three randomly selected rivals in each run.
You can keep track of them from the tracker at the bottom of the screen, and it’s important to keep up with them because even if you survive the monsters and bosses, it’s still game over if they make it to the escape pod before you. But as you’ll be very underpowered initially, it’s not something you need to be concerned with at the start.
The main threat rivals pose is that they can launch remote attacks on you, which adds new challenges in a room. These include floor hazards, turning the lights out so that you can only have a small field of vision of the direction you’re facing, enemies that burn or explode upon death, and even a gas leak that depletes your health slowly until all enemies are defeated.
You can launch remote attacks on these rivals by targeting a rival and then inputting a correct sequence of number combinations. These have lengthy cooldowns, but fill up quicker if you can clear a room quickly too. The best remote attacks to use will slow down or stop the rival for a brief time, so use these on whoever’s in the lead so that they don’t get so far ahead that they activate the escape pod before you’ve caught up to them.
You can also encounter rivals in brief skirmishes during the run if you follow their footprints through a door, and you’ll then find them in the room after that by entering the door with the rival’s head above it. During skirmishes, the room locks down for 30 seconds. This usually won’t be enough to defeat a rival, as they also have a shield that needs to be taken down first, but you will be able to weaken them before they make their getaway, and any damage they take carries over when you encounter them again.
The key to gaining an advantage over a rival is to unredact their files, which can decrease their damage output, as well as making them susceptible to other attacks. You’ll have the opportunity to find a computer room to unredact one entry each time, and it’s common for these rooms to appear after a skirmish with a rival.
If you manage to defeat a rival in a skirmish before reaching the end, you can retrieve their passkey and use it to activate the escape pod if you get to the end first. They will also drop a rare resource, Souvenirs, while their “disguise” becomes available from the Gear Locker.
That’s it for this [REDACTED] guide, which should have you prepared for your early attempts to escape Black Iron. Be sure to make the most of each weapon and skill with the many randomly generated rewards that enhance and modify your build in surprising ways to make each run fresh.
[REDACTED] is available now on the Epic Games Store.