Among Us - Comprehensive Basic Guide (Gameplay and Tactics)

A longer guide aimed at giving as much information as possible about gameplay and tactics so that you are able to overcome most public lobbies and be ready for private matches where people tend to have some experience with the game.

Contents

Guide to Basics

Guide to Basics

All credit goes to dylanstrategie!

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to my guide! I’ve decided to try and collect all the tips, tricks and observations I could gather from playing this game for a bit to try and have even a basic reference for public players. Currently, some public lobbies can very much feel like total anarchy, and while genuine griefing is not too prominent, there’s a lot of obvious things that are being missed

I’m not pretending to be an old veteran or anything, but I did want to compile as much as I could for easy reference. Some of this is based on a few nuggets I’ve seen around, but the main issue is that those guides are usually focused solely on playing Impostor well enough and ignore the Crewmate side of things (which will be 80 % of your games on average).

This guide assumes that you are playing in a public lobby (no intense voice comms or close friend group that might be more competent/can read you more easily), on Skeld (sadly 95 % of public servers run it so hard to get proper game experience on other maps) with settings that are not too bizarre (like ultra speed, no kill cooldown, no eject report, 3 impostors, etc).

Before Playing

Assuming this is the first time you play this game (or plan to), there are a few simple things you should do before you begin:

Jump into Settings and switch to Mouse + Keyboard movement. Being able to strafe with your arrow keys while using your mouse to aim freely is invaluable not only for general mobility, but also to avoid giving yourself away as an Impostor. Standing still in a hallway when a sabotage goes off is a dead giveaway to experienced players.
Jump into Freeplay on Skeld and try out your controls and some minigames. This is good to ensure you know what you are doing. You can use the computer in the starting area to switch yourself to Impostor to try out the antagonist-only menus in a safe environment, or test out how killing/venting/sabotage works.
Pick a multiplayer name. Easy to forget, but “Player” won’t do. You can’t pick anything long at all, so pick something snazzy. People call out by color or name.
Choose the Imposter Filter By default, it is 1. This will usually be far too challenging in a 10 player game. I highly recommend you search for games with 2 Impostors as they tend to have more balanced challenge for a full game.
Jump in and get wet! Don’t be afraid of losing, even as Impostor. You have to try to get better, and many rounds can end quickly or drag into a stalemate without much input from you. Soon enough, you’ll get the flow of things.

When joining lobbies, the easiest way to get one that actually works is to not join the ones on the top of the list. Aim for the ones that have 6/10-8/10 slots and pray. With any hope and a bit of training in offline mode, you’ll be playing your first match.

The Typical Match

It is important to understand how a match flows and what is going on before you can get better at the game. Otherwise, you are more or less running around headless and become a prime target for both Impostors and experienced players misreading you as an obvious Impostor.

The average game will have 10 players, of which 2 are Impostors. The Impostors know who each other are at all times. Every member of the crew is given a list of tasks to complete on the top left, which require them to travel to specific points on the map (open on the top right, exclamation points mark the spots). Impostors also have tasks as a suggestion but they can’t complete them. The game ends in these ways:

All Impostors are dead. Crew Victory. As the crew has no means of self-defense, the only way to kill both Impostors is to vote them off during a discussion round.
The Crew completes all their objectives. Crew Victory. This means that every alive and dead crewmember needs to finish all of their tasks. This victory is rare in Public because you will always have that one scaredy crewmember who refuses to finish his tasks.
Impostors overwhelm the crew. Impostor Victory. If the remaining Impostors can no longer be voted off by remaining loyal crew, they win instantly. This happens at 2 players alive for 1 Impostor alive, or 4 players alive for 2 Impostors alive. Main Impostor victory.
The Ship/Colony is destroyed. Impostor Victory. The Impostors can always trigger a lethal sabotage. If allowed to tick down without being fully fixed or skipped (by reporting a body), it will wreck the mission and end the mission as an Impostor Victory.

The main goal of the crew is to complete their tasks more or less quickly to put pressure on the Impostors while doing their best to draw Impostors into revealing themselves so they can be voted off, or confirm enough people to weed out the remaining Impostors by process of elimination.

The main goal of the Impostors is to kill enough crew to overwhelm them without getting guessed out by the crew, as every kill opens an opportunity for a crewman to report it and call for someone to be voted off (and thus killed).

Crewmember Basics

Odds are, you will be picked as one of the eight crewmembers on the ship. It is a simple role, and yet you are everything but helpless and playing smart can -mostly- prevent you from being the opening casualty or being helpless when mid-game turns around.

As Crew, you start in an extremely strong position. There are two Impostors, and you have seven allies. However, you don’t know who to trust, and you are given a deceptively long list of tasks that will usually bring you through the entire ship, dividing your attention and inevitably giving the two Impostors openings to shank you or others. Every death without an Impostor gettng their retribution brings you closer to total defeat.

There is a lot of strategy involved with this game, but for now here are a few basic tips to keep you out of most trouble:

Do your tasks, especially the ones where everyone else is heading. Check where your tasks are on your map, and prioritize the ones that keep you in a crowd. Not doing your tasks handicaps your team, so don’t just blank out and follow people idly until a kill report!
Stick with people when you can. While beelining across all your tasks might sound cool, this will inevitably lead to you being totally isolated at one point or another and promptly shanked if an Impostor crosses your path. Solo rambos on first round are premium pickings for even passable Impostors.
Keep an eye on people going in and out of rooms. It’s hard, obviously, unless you have a perfect memory, but one of the biggest ways to betray an Impostor is noticing them going in a room and not out, and finding a body inside. Prioritize people travelling in duos, as these are the most vulnerable to a betrayal.
Check out sabotage alerts. Flashing lights, alarms and a counter indicates that an Impostor sabotaged a module on the ship. If these happen, it is common procedure for everyone to finish or drop what they are doing to go fix it. Failure to fix a lethal sabotage in time will end the entire match in an Impostor victory.
Prepare for the discussion round. Inevitably, the Impostors will kill someone and the body will be found. Make a note of who you were travelling with (especially if they didn’t leave you for any significant amount of time), and conversely who was lurking near the kill spot if you happened to be nearby.

The game has a bit of mechanical intensity when starting out, but it’s a hump you should get over quickly. The minigames usually require only extremely simple puzzle skills and can all be figured out after a hour of playtime at most. Remember to take it slow, it’s better to complete it a bit slowly than having to do it three times over and overfocusing on it, which can get you killed.

If you are confused over the map, don’t fret. They have some complexity, and some things that are hidden to normal crewmembers like sabotage points (doors and modules) and vents, but you will learn these very quickly.

Impostor Basics

Sadly, while crewmember has a very low skill floor, starting out as an Impostor can be a rough and unforgiving experience. Even the most stupid of players can usually tell if you killed someone in front of them or jumped into a vent while they were walking up on you, which can lead to you being eliminated instantly.

The biggest tip I can give you on your first Impostor rounds is simple. Play it safe, don’t go for fancy drive-by kills. I would say that half of Impostor misplays in public lobbies consist of shanking someone when someone was either monitoring you (via cameras, or watching you walking into a room with no other exit), or simply walked in on you. You have no recourse to facing two crew members at once, as the body will be instantly reported no matter what you do. So do what you can to make sure you’re not caught.

Other things you will want to grasp rapidly to not get wrecked as an Impostor in the first round:

Sabotages are the bread and butter of competent Impostors. There is a huge amount of strategy involved in what buttons to press, as every sabotage has heavy implications on crew flow or kill opportunities. Refrain for mashing buttons, especially at round start when your kill is on cooldown.
You can sabotage either doors or modules, not both (except on Polus). If any door on the map is down, the modules cannot be sabotaged until it goes back up. If a module is being sabotaged, you can’t drop any doors.
You can kill from pretty far away. The kill radius on Normal is pretty generous and allows you to lunge at someone to kill them. Don’t be afraid to bull rush someone if you are sure your kill is safe, they won’t be able to evade or run away unless they anticipate you well.
You can camp in a vent if your kill is likely going to get spotted. Going out of a vent in a room you have not prepared/scouted is extremely dangerous and can get you instantly spotted or deduced by a competent crewman, especially with kill on cooldown. Instead, you can stay in the vent and wait for the body to be spotted, which will immediately end the round.
You cannot do tasks, but you can pretend. Safely pretending tasks is an art of its own and extremely hard to do consistently, but running around aimlessly constantly is a dead giveaway of an Impostor past the first two rounds. Simply stand still next to a task that has no visual effect to “do” it.

This is really the basics of basics, beyond incredibly basic tips that everyone should know (for example, do not go in vents in front of people as it is a dead giveaway of your role). Of course, it’s not much, and there’s plenty more to learn to not do horribly as an Impostor and end up with a serious mess on your hands during Discussion.

Discussion Basics

Inevitably, someone will get shanked, and his halved body will get eyed down by some unfortunate witness (or someone will jam down the buzzer and call for an emergency meeting), leading to the infamous Discussion. And as any good discussion is settled, it will either lead to the murder being ignored, or someone being tossed clean out of the airlock as a scapegoat. Doing this properly is important as both roles, and can easily save or ruin any amount of skill in the round-to-round gameplay.

As always with basics, this can be condensed in a list of tips:

If you have nothing good to contribute, shut it. As sharp and rude as it might sound, talking too much or giving horrible pointers is the easiest way to ruin your team. Silence or meaningless chatter (Where? Who? Any clues? Skip then?) is the best weapon of a good Impostor, and talking random nonsense as crew can lead to a mislynch and get multiple innocents killed. If your information or suspicion is bad or shaky, don’t give it yet, countless crews lynch eachother over one tidbit of bad intel.
The reporter always gets first dibs on the accusation. Check in the talking list for the person wielding the loudspeaker. They spotted the body and officially reported it, so they command a minimum of attention. Don’t talk over them unless you have damning information (you saw someone else vent or kill in the open, or you can certify the reporter killed their target).
Do not lynch the reporter as a default option, especially early on. Killers can report their own kills, but this is very rare as it tends to be obvious (good players can easily tell when a kill was “too quick”) and they will be forced to frame someone or say they have nothing (which looks terrible and makes them suspicious, especially on a quick kill).
Skipping is perfectly acceptable if information is bad. Lynching people “on a hunch” or over really petty information is a quick way to double the Impostor’s kill rate and make them win a match. Remember that Impostors will happily play the crew again eachother, a crew killed in Discussion without trading is a huge win for them!
Discussion is your opportunity to give strategies and exchange all information, so use it. Especially if the crew is set on a specific lynching target, or if they are planning to skip, don’t hesitate to use the voting chat to plot strategies, give personal suspicions or make requests (for example asking crew to follow you on round start to see you prove yourself).
Treat trades seriously. Usually, if X accuses Y, you will see Y bow to the demand but ask that X be lynched if they turn up innocent, basically trading their life to make sure a framer doesn’t get away with it. Stand by that, and make absolutely sure both sides are taking it seriously. As a crewmate, trading with another crewmate is the worst thing you can do. This guarantees at least 4 kills by start of Round 3, potentially as much as 6, putting you in Sudden Death mode with 2 Impostors alive. Do not trade over petty information!
As Impostor, do not be suicidally loyal to your teammate. You are aware of who your killing buddy is at all times, so you can easily tell when a vote is going sour and he’s up on the chopping block. However, going on a heavy defense of a fellow Impostor is an extremely risky strategy and will get both of you executed in short order. Do not defend an Impostor unless you are pretty sure you can tie or scramble the vote, and that you can win next round!

Generally speaking, you are advised to go with the crowd unless you have good information or feel that someone is being too zealous. If people are calling for a skip, skip. If people want your head, try to understand why and find who is framing you to trade with them. If yellow says he saw red jump out of a vent, kill red. If red is innocent, kill yellow for framing. This should work as long as no-one intentionally griefs or talks out of their rear end.

Tasks, Doing Them, Faking Them

Tasks are the crew’s main weapon besides discussion lynching, as it is the only reason why Impostors can’t just lounge back and kill one person every ten minutes until people get bored and leave. These dictate the flow of the round for the Impostors and will force them to make more and more rash decisions as it fills up. Reversely, good Impostors will quickly notice crews that are slacking or being fearful and tear them down slowly and methodically, making victory short of impossible in a public match.

But all tasks aren’t created equal, and the type of tasks can matter hugely on how they are done. Generally, this is how tasks tend to be divided:

Common Task. A very specific task that is shared by all crewmembers. Note that it is not collaborative, thus every crewmember has to do it himself. This task usually causes an area to become high traffic, which can open up a kill opportunity to a very aware Impostor. On the Skeld, the common tasks can be Administration card swiping or wire fixing. Do note that crew members can share other tasks randomly.
Short Task. A task that can normally be done in a single interaction lasting a few seconds (at least a step of it. Download Data is considered Short but requires you to travel to another spot to upload it). These are often the most faked interactions as they can easily be done by stopping near the object of interest for a moment and then taking off. Some also don’t tick up the progress bar until fully “done” to get suspicious veteran crew off your back.
Long Task. A task that require your attention for a long period of time, usually ten seconds or more. These are more likely to have visual feedback (with some exceptions like Start Reactor). They can still be used to idle in specific rooms without looking extremely suspicious however, but beware of not timing it with a progression tick if not immediately killing whoever is observing you.
Visual Task. The bane of Impostors and the core of the Among Us metagame. Assuming they are enabled, some tasks will give obvious visual feedback when underway or completed (Weapons task will have them firing, Medical Scan will show the character being scanned to others, etc). Since Impostors cannot do normal tasks under any circumstance (even to pretend), this is the main way to prove beyond a doubt that a person is legitimate crew. Reversely, pretending to fake a visual task will get you into a world of trouble with any perceptive crew member.

For crewmembers, it is important to note that every notch on the task bar at the top left indicates a crewmember’s full task list being completed. Once full, it means that every crew member in the game has finished their tasks, yielding instant victory. If you are close to victory, consider grouping up and march people to dangerous objectives to give the Impostors a surprise slam dunk!

For Impostors, tasks are the bane of your existence. Not only are they an alternative way for crew members to win that forces you to keep the pressure up, but they can easily betray the fact that you are not helping the crew. It is important to note that the only way to genuinely fake an interaction in a way that will fool anyone is to stand under it for a reasonable amount of time, and leave as the task progress bar ticks up (unless you pretend it’s a specific multi-stage task). Doing it any other way might give a veteran crew member hints, though not as badly as pacing aimlessly in a hallway until someone splits from the group!

Sabotages and Emergency Tasks

If the entire game was just crewmembers calmly doing tasks while Impostors lurked in the shadows, nothing would really prevent the crew from just rushing the tasks in big, coherent groups and never giving the Impostors any vulnerability to exploit.

Of course, this is not the case in game for a simple reason. The Impostors have an unlimited access to sabotages, which allows them to mess with the ship’s modules and thus with the crew, and even to send most of them on a scramble to fix a lethal sabotage that if completed will end the entire match as an Impostor win.

The first and simplest thing to note is that Impostors have global sabotage access. They do not need to be anywhere near the thing they are hacking for it to work, allowing them to trot through the hallways as they shut half the doors or cut the oxygen. These sabotages are also on a cooldown, though it is short enough that Impostors can easily keep the crew under pressure.

On The Skeld, the all-time public server favourite, there are five sabotages available for Impostors to mess with the crew, each with a specific purpose:

Reactor Meltdown. The nuclear button will overload the reactor, giving the crew 30 seconds to intervene before the station explodes. Two people are needed to simultaneously swipe a hand reader to reset the reactor, located inside the same room but conveniently just out of sight of eachother. This sabotage will also cause most of the crew to head to the left of the map, as a well-timed kill if the wrong people go in first can end the match.
O2 Shutdown. The O2 button will shut down the oxygen system, meaning the crew will choke and die in 30 seconds unless two separe pin-code readers located in Admin and O2 itself are solved. These tasks can be done independently of eachother but require a significant travel time and solve time. This sabotage will also cause most of the crew to head to the right of the map, as a well-timed kill if the wrong people go in first can end the match.
Lights Off. The Light button will rapidly shut down all the lighting on the station, making all non-Impostor players totally blind except for an extremely limited radius around them, preventing them from spotting other players (or their corspes). The lights can be rapidly fixed by flicking a switchboard in Electrical, but the damage from being able to chase freely through dark hallways and kill in direct sight of others can be intense.
Comms Off. The Comms button will instantly shut down all station communications. While it might sound like the black sheep of the bunch at first, it has its uses. This hides every crew member’s task list and the minimap icons indicating where they are, and disables cameras and the administration table fully until repaired. This is fixed in the small Communications room with a short but potentially tedious minigame of matching a scrambled amplitude wave with a model.
Door Lock. Clicking on any of the door icons will immediately close and lock all doors leading into the room for ten full seconds, trapping people in and out and setting up opportunities for clean kill and vents (assuming no-one saw you come in), or simply general chaos as crewmembers across the ship are stuck in rooms or hallways, alone or with more or less trusted crewmmates. Do note that while door locks are on their own cooldown and can be fired separately, they will block all other sabotages while active and can’t be fired during other sabotages.

While the two lethal sabotages (Reactor and O2) might sound impressive and always worth a go, it is important to note that only the dumbest of dumb crews will let the reactor explode or the O2 run out freely, especially early on when everyone is alive and accounted for. Instead, their main power resides in forcing most players to enter a specific room to ensure that the threat has been neutralized, allowing Impostors to reset everyone’s positioning and set up for kills on newly isolated targets.

Also, never underestimate doors. While they block the bigger, fancier sabotages, a single door sabotage might be all you need to secure a clean and easy kill on someone stuck in a room, giving you ample time to vent away before someone barges in and confirms the misdeed. Just always make sure no-one saw you actually go in! It is also recommended that you drop all doors at once to confuse the crew and not make it too obvious which room should be checked for a murder victim.

When using any of the flashy sabotages, be very careful about seeming too happy to ignore an ongoing lethal sabotage. A crewman casually “doing tasks” in Weapons when the Upper O2 is about to run out is a prime target for a lynch, much less someone camping the actual objective without fixing it. Do note that you can also fix your own sabotages, which is recommended if you arrive first and can tell it will be fixed either way (notably if a large swarm of players is coming up behind you). Some people might even be fooled into thinking that your diligent behaviour makes you safe, which can be a great setup for an unfortunate duo pairing in the midgame to endgame.

Killing and Getting Away With It

Killing people is the bread and butter of Impostors, and outside of pulling off a perfect lethal sabotage or getting the crew to lynch eachother in sudden death, the only way for them to win the game. As such, you can reasonably expect both Impostors to spend most of the game looking for opportunities to execute people, and most importantly getting away with it without being thrown out the airlock in the ensuing report!

While this can lead to more in-depth strategies discussed later, it is important to note that every safe kill has an exponentional effect on the match. A dead crewman means one less person to vote with the crew later into the round, one less person as a potential witness to a sloppy murder, and one less person to form trios when you need to play safe. As a result, letting people die, even if you have a strong group going, is basically as close as you get to throwing a game. Don’t do it!

Conversely, an Impostor killing someone and being instantly noticed and executed heavily swings the game in the crew’s favour, especially very early. Going 8 or 9 to 1 as an Impostor is not impossible, but it is absolutely not a cake walk, especially since someone will automatically be proven by getting the Impostor executed and can quickly move to prove other people or form a voting/task group. One kill is not worth throwing the game, unless it’s the winning kill!

As stated earlier, the biggest thing about killing is that you need to get kills that are safe and not give other crew members obvious clues, especially early on. Assuming no-one leaves, you have up to seven people in Round 1 who can potentially guess who killed that poor crewman, or walk in on you or otherwise observe you enter or leave the room the victim was killed in. Don’t give them a slam dunk case by rushing the first isolated target you can find!

Your kill starts on cooldown at the start of every round, so your first thought should be a good fake destination for a task you are going to pretend to do. Keep an eye out for anyone who isolates themselves or duos with you on the part of the map you are prowling. The easiest kill setup is meeting up with someone isolated and no-one seeing either of you together until you kill.

Remember that sabotages are available to give you a kill setup, so don’t panic or do something rash if you’re stuck in a crowd or no-one makes themselves a good target by the time your cooldown is up. You’ll usually want to save the sabotage until then (except for doors, as they can be used to split groups and cut line of sight right before your kill). Not only will the sabotage force people to move suddenly, but they might distract people enough to give you an opening. Obviously, if someone is ignoring the sabotage totally, they are usually isolating themselves and making themselves a perfect target for a stab, as people will be gone from the area for 20+ seconds.

Getting away from a kill is important, as being caught with a body or clearly running from it will get you executed in 95 % of lobbies. The easiest method, assuming your room features one (remember to scout ahead, don’t hesitate to cancel a kill if your getaway is not secure), is the humble vent. You can enter it instantly when in range, allowing you to leave the room unseen for a connected vent. You can also just camp in the vent assuming you are not expecting a second kill, which is especially recommended early on as people are still doing tasks all over and will most certainly run into your kill or your teammate’s. If you exit your vent, make sure to do it in a room that is safe, magically appearing from inside a room someone was just in is a slam dunk case for a lynch.

Leaving on foot, or deciding to continue leaving after venting is extremely dangerous and not recommended unless you are absolutely sure your entire side of the map is isolated (early on, this is basically never). The only exception is if the lights are out and you don’t expect for them to be repaired before you get reasonably far away from the body and blend back in.

Be very careful about indirect monitoring. If someone is obviously dipping in and out of rooms checking where everyone is, or if you see a camera blinking red near your kill, this definitely means that someone is checking where everyone is in anticipation of puzzling together a murder on this side of the station. You will usually want to prepare a coherent sabotage (on Skeld, anything but Reactor) to get them off your back before you try anything. Do not attempt to force it, they want you to be carelesss!

While detailed more later, Lights Out allows you to bypass all these concerns and get kills that would be suicide in normal gameplay. Since crewmmates can literally not see more than two feet in front of them, but you can still see normally, you can easily run up behind someone in the dark, stab them, and carefully leave while dodging other people coming in before the lights go back on and your misdeed is spotted.

At the end of the day, killing is an art, but remember to try and get safe kills above all. While you don’t want to be that Impostor teammate that literally gets no kills all game, going kamikaze and only killing one or two people before being lynched will put your fellow Impostor in a world of trouble.

Proving Crew and Being Safe

At the end of the day, the main struggle of the crew during the game is to find out who are their fellow, trustworthy crewmmates, and who the one or two Impostors left are before they give them improvised spine massages. Usually, the main slang that is used in this game to denote that someone is most likely a genuine crewmember is them being “Safe” (or “Proven”, as seen in TTT).

Of course, the opposite would be to do things that appear dodgy or that make no sense for a crew member, from the subtle like pacing incoherently through hallways, to the blatant like diving down a vent right in front of someone. This makes you Suspicious, or can even instantly prove you are an Impostor and give the crew an easy kill with an emergency meeting!

However, it is important to denote that there are levels of safety and suspicion that any competent player should apply, and things usually linked to them, which I will try to describe now.

Safe/Proven/Confirmed Crew

Anyone exhibiting any of these behaviours can basically be trusted, as it is either impossible or incredibly unlikely for an Impostor to do these. Even if they do them, they are likely to harm their team or sabotage their own efforts. Don’t hesitate to duo or trio with them around the station, and listen to them!

As Impostor, anyone who gets labelled as such is a priority target. If you can isolate them, shank them. People trust them and they will form solid voting blocs in the mid to endgame, which can win a stalemate in the crew’s favour.

Performing a visual task in a way that multiple people can certify. It is absolutely impossible for an Impostor to fake a visual task, so as long as it is clear they are the one performing the task, this proves them permanently.
Being in full view of multiple people all round when all Impostors killed. Since there is a pretty big kill delay, and things like venting pause the recharge, two kills means that both Impostors got their kills off. If you never lost track of someone during that time, and they never got too close to any kill site, they are basically proven. Make sure both Impostors killed however, one Impostor can easily play pretend as a crew companion for a round if no good kill opportunities emerge!
Getting an Impostor lynched with evidence. This meaning that they volunteer critical information that gets an Impostor voted up, without needing someone to suggest them first. For example, calling an emergency meeting, declaring someone vented, and they turn up as an Impostor when flying out the airlock. While Impostors are advised to throw obvious and hopeless teammates under the bus, it is incredibly rare for Impostors to casually and single-handedly throw their teammates with information only they witnessed, especially early on and if no-one else corroborates.
Getting murdered, or thrown out the airlock and confirmed innocent. As stupid and obvious as it sounds, it’s important to remember that if this happens to someone, you can confirm that they were speaking as proven crew. While they might not have perfect information, this might bring some new doubts.

Potentially Safe/Trusted

These are behaviours you would expect from someone doing their job as a crew member, though nothing stops an Impostor with some skill from faking these. As a crew member, you want to keep some sort of mental note of who looks more safe, and who looks suspicious for those dangerous voting stalemates. As Impostors, try to end up in this category if you want to survive past the early game!

Performing tasks in general. Most crewmembers will expect Impostors to be on the prowl for isolated crewmmates, so someone staying in a large group and obviously tending to devices makes little sense, especially if repeated or if kills happen away from them. Check for task completion ticks if you can!
Foregoing “obvious” kills. If you are travelling alone with someone and they don’t kill you even after multiple times of entering a room with a vent without being seen by others, this is a good sign of trust. Good Impostors will make sure their kills are safe, but ignoring clean kills is crazy. Of course, make sure the kills you think they are ignoring would make sense to them!
Accepting scrutiny/timeouts. As always, Impostors are usually always on the lookout for opportunities. Staying twenty seconds in Medbay with three other people to see Yellow scanning themselves makes no sense in that context, especially since others could be isolated during that.
Good report callouts. Since Impostors rarely self-report, and framing is extremely dangerous (it’s very easy for a crew member to counter a claim by saying they saw the person somewhere else just before a report), someone who makes a good report on a kill or even helps find an Impostor can likely be held in esteem.

Finding Imposters and being Suspicious

Suspicious

Switching to the bad part of the scale, suspicious behaviour is the stuff that gets crew members thinking about someone’s loyalty. Early game, it can be a fair warning to steer clear from someone, or at least to avoid being alone with them at all costs. Late game, as options narrow with proven crew mates, they become liabilities to hang unless they have cleaned up their act

Pacing aimlessly or nervously, camping. Even a lost newbie can open his map and head to an objective. Someone who constantly doublebacks on himself, seems to wait outside doors or in rooms away from objectives or seems to dip in and out of a room with someone working alone tend to attract suspicion. Just make sure they’re not in a buddy system if simply gravitating around someone!
Going out of their way to be isolated. Avoiding big groups or splitting very quickly. Pacing or doing random stuff if followed by someone else. Seeming to panic or leave when they were in a duo and someone extra moves in.
Potential fake tasks. Leaving tasks that take a good few seconds unreasonably quickly. Seeming to “remember” tasks they kept passing by earlier when under new scrutiny (be careful about late reveal tasks like rewiring panels). No progress tick on a task that should have had one.
Convenient sabotage. Standing still moments before a sabotage, especially constantly. Perfect door slam if they were getting followed. Someone spots a group, splits and lights go out quickly afterwards, or doors go down on you.
Very good awareness during Lights Out. Impostors can see others perfectly during Lights Out. This can betray them if you see them obviously taking good notice of you and other teammates as you stumble around in the dark.
Improbable mobility. Anyone who appears to go from one side of the map to another in an unreasonable amount of time, or exiting task rooms you never saw them enter, always brings up the prospect of having used vents to that end. Just make sure you’re not underestimating how quickly they can navigate!
Unreasonably useless in Discussions. By the mid-game, most crewmen should have basic leads on who is safe or suspicious, especially as the amount of people to track drops fast. Impostors will usually go out of their way to not provide leads as they will have to make them up on the fly and any counterclaim can go very poorly for them. Being creepy silent is obviously an even worse form of it.
Trying to get a Safe/Proven crewman voted off. While everyone might not have perfect information at all times, someone you personally saw prove themselves (by doing a visual task for example) being attacked randomly during a Discussion round is suspicious. If they are accused of an obvious Impostor thing (for example venting), don’t hesitate to confront the accuser to avoid a mislynch.

Impostor

Some actions are just so egregious that they prove that someone is working against the crew. As an Impostor, you should do everything you can to avoid these, and as a crewmember, you should go out of your way to press on them, even calling an emergency meeting if you reasonably can.

Spotted using vents. Only Impostors can use the vent system. This is a slam dunk case, run for the emergency meeting unless you can see the body they caused, then report that!
Running away from a murder or not reporting. Obviously, if you literally saw them cut the body, this goes without saying, but if someone darts out of a room or general hallway and you find a body retracing their steps, you can assume they have something bad to hide.
Defending another Impostor. If an obvious Impostor made up a horrible alibi and someone went for it hook and sinker (especially as the only one), you might want to give them a good check next.
Making a clear Impostor call on someone who turns out innocent. If the person who flew out of the airlock for “using a vent” or “self reporting” turns out innocent, the person who reported them likely isn’t.
Darting out on a visual proof promise. If someone claimed they were going to prove themselves and refuses to do so, they have a lot of explaining to do.
Pretending to do visual tasks with a straight face. While some like Medical Scan be be excused by the nearby Sample task, others like Weapons or Trash make for horrible fakes. Do not trust anyone who AFKs on them without visual feedback.
Ignoring sabotage. Early on, some crew mates might opt to power through their tasks during a lethal sabotage. However, later on, and at any time if they are doing so absurdly close to the actual sabotage fix point, this behaviour can cost crew the game with a well-timed murder, and thus be more than questionable. Camping a sabotage repair point without actually doing it is also a dead giveaway.
Being executed and revealed Impostor. Obviously, but this means that this person’s defenses or condemnations can take another spin. Be careful about fake throws however! Some Impostors are aware that some of their peers will throw their teammates in rage after being offed early and might supply a fake name to get a mislynch out of their misfortune.

Advanced Round Flow

Now that we covered basically everything you need to know to be competent at the game (assuming you’ve had time to practice), we are going to cover the metagame and how to peak above the rest of the crowd and be the person who carries an entire round. However, much like before, we need to start by reviewing how a round -truly- works

This guide defines a round as the time between everyone getting control (start of match or after a discussion) and the time where the next Discussion happens, when a body gets reported or an emergency meeting is convened, which immediately resets everyone to the Cafeteria or map equivalent and cancels ongoing sabotages or tasks. Rounds are obviously where all the gameplay happen, with Discussions being limited to social skills only (either deduction or manipulation depending on what side you belong to). The sum of all rounds is a match/game.

There is a specific flow to every round, and multiple “stages” a match/game goes through, which can be summed up as follows:

Early Game/Stage 1. Both Impostors are still alive and at least 8 people are alive in total. The game is still undecided. The crew can still safely focus on tasks and skip discussions with no/bad hints and shouldn’t lynch on a single suspicion. The Impostors should carefully think up their opening kills to make sure they aren’t caught, even if it means killing late or even not killing in a short round, as dying now will swing the game massively in the crew’s favor.
Mid Game/Stage 2. Both Impostors are still alive and at least 7 people are alive in total. At this point, the game is still balanced but Impostors are making gains. The crew should start playing more safely and ensure they stick in coherent groups, and anyone who can prove should do so when others see them. The Impostors should start or continue to fabricate a cover to get the one or two more kills they need
Sudden Death/End Game/Stage 3. Both Impostors are still alive and 5-6 people are alive, or one Impostor with 3-4 people alive. The last bit of the crew needs to stick together at all costs while preparing to fix sabotages, and call the emergency meeting to vote Impostors out. Impostors can win the game during the round if they get enough kills to get down to 4 people alive with two Impostors, or 2 people alive with one Impostor, so don’t give them kills! They are also the most likely to win by Sabotage if they can pick out or stall people during it, which is a common Sudden Death tactic.
Crew Advantage. One Impostor is alive with more than 5 people alive, or the tasks are at least 75 % complete when not in Sudden Death. If this happens, focus on finishing your tasks to secure the victory, but don’t split to avoid getting the Impostor back into the game!

As you can see, the game can move quickly. Since Impostors can kill two every round, the game can move from Early Game to Mid Game in Round 2 (3+ kills, or 2 kills with mislynch), and even into Sudden Death as early as Round 3 (4+ kills, or mislynch leading to it). This underlines how powerful properly and cleanly killing someone is, and how bad it is to random lynch as a crew! This also means you can go from running around in one round, to playing ultra safe and trying to prove everyone and vote by elimination in the next.

As soon as the round starts, so does your strategy for the round. Your first decision is to choose a destination to accomplish tasks (you should always be accomplishing tasks as long as you are not isolating yourself, especially early on). For obvious reasons, and as stated earlier, I would recommend generally sticking with at least a few people (never go down an entire direction alone or with only one person). The actual meaning of the directions and what they imply for you will be detailed later on the Skeld guide, but you will generally get a good idea of how the map is split up after playing a few rounds on it.

The Impostors start on kill cooldown, which means that they can only kill after the amount of time listed on the lobby screen (usually 20 to 45 seconds). This also means that outside of new Impostors, they have absolutely no reason to act suspicious or start a lethal sabotage immediately unless they are going for a specific strategy (like forcing everyone into Reactor, O2 or Electricity immediately on Round 1 to confuse the crew). As a result, it acts as a bit of a “truce”. You should usually be going straight for your task and try doing it if you have any company, or find people if you don’t feel safe.

The kills will usually happen a bit after cooldown ends with competent Impostors, so you can fully expect that both kills will have been done after a minute unless your team is playing it extremely safe. While rare early on, failing to find bodies even if you couldn’t see the perpetrator is dangerous. Impostors may roll with it and try to go for a second set of kills, especially if kill cooldown was set low. Allowing Impostors to kill two people in one round is the worst thing you can ever do, as it will get you very close to Sudden Death and it is extremely unlikely you can properly investigate the kills in Discussion.

Assuming the match isn’t won or lost, a round can only end in two ways. A kill is reported, or someone heads to the Cafeteria and triggers the Emergency Meeting. As an Impostor, you tend to like long rounds, as they give you a good chance to get two kills off and dramatically wound the crew, though you may abort a bad round where you are unable to get a kill to avoid an aggressive crew from running away with tasks. As crew, you always want to end a round as soon as kills have happened, even if it means triggering an emergency meeting if needed. If the round has been going for more than a minute and you suspect kills have happened, do not hesitate to beeline to the Cafeteria and use your emergency meeting, you might save the game!

The emergency meeting unlocks after a specific cooldown (normally none, but it is extremely rare for it to not be set to at least 15 seconds to give Impostors counter-play if someone plans to instantly emergency meeting on round start). The emergency meeting will also lock in all conditions if a sabotage is ongoing, including non-lethal ones (doors don’t count). As an Impostor, you can give a last saving throw to someone obviously gunning for the Emergency Meeting by calling a sabotage in and shanking them before it’s repaired.

It is critical for you to keep track on what game stage you are in and how your current round is flowing at all times, so you don’t get surprised by sudden changes in crew behaviour, or worse, a sudden game over screen because the Impostors got the final kill. Remember to not let rounds drag on for too long, you don’t know how many people are dead until you’re back at the round table!

Advanced Crew Tips

As crew, your biggest weapon, as obvious as it is from the beginning, is others. Impostors want isolated targets quietly doing tasks in the back of a room no-one saw them enter, to get themselves a tasty kill. One cannot underestimate how important it is for competent crewmembers to always have someone with them, preferably more than one. Even if it means ignoring isolated tasks, especially early on!

Duo and trio are two words you should keep in your mind early on. Travelling alone is, to put it simply, as good as suicide. If the first person you meet is an Impostor, and especially if you meet in an isolated room, you won’t be seeing the Cafeteria again. Being in a duo that is clearly obvious to others is far safer than it appears at first glance. If you wind up stabbed, the person that was tagging with you will appear extremely suspicious for obvious reasons, even if they were not spotted running from your body. As long as you don’t intentionally split for them, you are putting an Impostor in a difficult situation by tagging with them, as long as others witnessed you two wandering off together!

A trio, and of course anything above this (all the way to one, enormous stampede of crewmen) is of course even safer, and starting a four people you are guaranteed to be safe, as there are only two Impostors. There is also a specific dynamic with a trio even if you are unlucky enough to be tagging with both Impostors. Killing a person tagging along as an Impostor duo is extremely dangerous, as this casts suspicion on both Impostors if they don’t make a perfect getaway or get spotted before the deed.

Later on, as the number of crewmen still standing on their own two appendages shrinks, you will switch to a specific dynamic that genuinely wins matches. The buddy system is the next evolution of these random tag-alongs. If you trust someone enough to tag along with you even when the both of you are unaccounted for, you make yourselves an atrocious target for an Impostor, assuming you tagged with a safe person. Do not blindly go on a buddy system with someone who hasn’t reasonably proven themselves. Good Impostors will act safe to not be voted off later. If in doubt, ask for someone to prove themselves in Discussions before you follow them!

Proven groups are the plural version of this, with one person that is proven beyond a doubt (usually due to doing a visual task in front of others) leading a group of other crew and sending them around the ship to do tasks. This dynamic forces Impostors to use their sabotages to try and shake you up instead of simply picking you off one by one and easily finishing the round. Killing the proven person can also split the group, so be extremely careful about moving in a coherent group, as this is the main counter for Impostors!

Remember to save up your visual tasks until the mid-game! It is very rare for crew to win by tasks outright, and being able to scan yourself or throw the trash out in front of multiple other crew will instantly allow you to prove yourself beyond doubt. Be careful about being a target after this however, don’t do this and immediately wander off!

Assuming you are playing safe and not casually entering rooms alone, your main moment of weakness will be sabotages. While crew will often move in big blobs down the hallway to fix it, this leaves you vulnerable to being ambushed by Impostors lurking around, especially during Lights Out. The need for speed during lethal sabotages also means that you might have to fix an objective alone, which is a perfect opening for a clutch Impostor kill if the crew is moving poorly.

Mid and late game, the biggest danger is being blocked from doing tasks. The Impostor can just spam sabotages off cooldown to send you swerving through the map, and wait for any vulnerabilities to axe a question to an unfortunate crewman. While you can win by elimination with bad Impostors, good Impostors will act friendly and tag with groups enough to not be the “one person who is never here”, until they get the perfect opportunity to get away with a kill.

Advanced Impostor Tips

It cannot be reiterated enough, every kill is powerful and should be treated as such. Don’t just run around blindly stabbing the first person you catch alone. You will be guessed out and caught most of the time, especially if you went on the busy side of the map! If you want those tasty ambush kills, the mid-game is where you will find them. Keep yourself alive until then!

Be aware of who is collecting good information and proving themselves, and reversely who is playing stupidly, unreasonably believes you or made themselves suspicious. It is absolutely worth skipping a safe kill on someone that stands to be lynched, or take some chances to kill the one person who proved themselves early and is trying to organize the entire team. Killing people with good information cripples the crew, and leaving people who are suspicious alive even when they’re been wandering off alone makes them look extremely suspicious and will often get them lynched first during elimination. Getting the creepy crewmate thrown out the airlock first can literally win you the game if you are on tempo with kills.

If someone throws accusations or suspicions around during a discussion and they’re not onto you, strongly consider shanking them and not the person they’re accusing (assuming their target is crew). If the person under accusation did not take the precaution to stick with people or prove themselves, this makes them look horrible and will get them thrown out. You probably won’t even need to speak up and frame them.

Closing random doors can make the crew panic very easily, and set you up for unusual kills. A combo that is often not expected is manning the cameras while doing it, and making sure to lock people out from your incoming kill. Camera vent is linked to Electricy and Medbay, both have doors! Additionally, dropping a lot of doors will only slightly delay the next sabotage (it will unlock when the last door raises if not on cooldown), and can even split groups if timed properly or give your teammate an opening he didn’t expect.

While dangerous, as your target will get a proof of you being an Impostor before you kill them, and anyone could wander in or already be inside, you can use vents to enter a room someone is in and kill them. There is a high chance that people might be circulating outside the room, especially on some rooms like Navigation that normally have bad vent links, which will create serious bad blood between crewmen. Electricity is the most famous one as there is a big view blocker hiding two of the three tasks and the vent from the door and most crew will not enter willy-nilly. Doing it with Lights Out makes it a lot more safe, and can make for some pretty nasty frames if someone leaves a room to fix the lights, leaving a crewmmate behind, and they wind up dead. You cannot sabotage while in vents, so do it beforehand.

Using O2 sabotage to swing a crowd from left to right, or inverse for Reactor, is a good tactic to sow chaos and open up kills. Most people will rush whatever room is being sabotaged, often beelining it in a predictable pattern, allowing you to set up good drive-by kills. Early in the game, it is also very unlikely that anyone will make a mental tally of who showed up to fix the emergency or not, especially as legitimate crew on the other side of the ship may ignore it to fix tasks.

If someone found you out but doesn’t have a body to report, you still have a chance to get them! The dead don’t talk, so you simply need to catch up to them and shank them before they hit the Emergency Meeting. Do not ignore witnesses to obvious Impostor acts, they will always be believed. The main strategy, assuming your teammate is being reasonable and didn’t blow the sabotage early, is to fire a sabotage, especially Lights Out, or drop the doors in the way of the Cafeteria to catch them or run your kill cooldown down.

Lights Out hard counters Emergency Alert. It will block it from triggering until repaired, and you can very easily kill the reporter even if they are in public or in the Cafeteria. This can also be used to save a vent kill if it fails and someone walks up on you after you’re out of the vent but before you shank them (if you are caught venting or speeding out from the kill, good luck). Simply go for an immediate Lights Out and kill the crewman if they are stupid enough to run for it.

Be careful about killing someone trying to fix a lethal sabotage if time is running out, especially Reactor. You can run out time by faking the emergency task and making sure there’s no backup, giving you an instant and satsifying win, but if someone sees the body and reports it, the sabotage will immediately be cancelled and you will move to Discussions, where you are certain to die. When in doubt, simply repair the sabotage unless you are certain that the crew screwed up and that they cannot repair or report in time.

Sabotages get stronger the longer the game go on. While early on they can be used to pick kills, late in the game they can block the Emergency Alert, be used to get kills even on organized groups, or even win you the game if played properly. O2 tends to become more powerful than Reactor as there is a huge detour between both tasks that can be extremely dangerous to a single, coherent group. If the group was far away enough (Reactor or Camera area, especially Lower Engine), doing the tasks one by one will not work and the sabotage will time out, giving you an easy win. This means the group must split. Lights Out allows you to directly attack groups as only a small distance between members is needed to mess with them, and if the entire group goes into Electricity you can lock them in with doors once fixed to waste more of their time.

If multiple people are literally stacked right on top of eachother, you can perform what is referred to as a stack kill. Simply enter the stack and mash Kill. Someone will die, and the body will be reported very quickly, but it will be genuinely incredibly hard if not impossible to see who actually did it as there is no kill animation besides a very slight side step to match your victim’s sprite. This works especially well during sabotages or common tasks as people might stack right on top of the task, and some may jitter inside the stack to taunt. Do note that everyone inside the stack becomes suspicious, so make sure there are enough people who are not proven to not give people an easy guess!

You can “fake” visual tasks if you feel ballsy. Simply stack up with someone who is genuinely doing the task and claim you also were doing it at the same time. While a shaky proof, especially if your choreography is off, it might be enough to get suspicion off of you in voting stalemates, and explain why you didn’t save up your visual task to experienced crew.

Advanced Discussions Tips

All rounds past the first begin with a Discussion, and they all end with a Discussion. As such, it is still an important topic to get especially good at. Crew need to find and punish the Impostors, and the Impostors need to stay alive to keep killing.

First of all, it is important to note what a Reporter must do. The Reporter is the person who triggered the discussion by reporting a body (hence the name) or calling for an Emergency Meeting. As soon as the screen shows up, they must pull up the chat and give the following, if possible in this exact order:

Where. Where did you find the missing body, or where did you see the misdeed happen (and what misdeed) if you called for an emergency meeting.
Who. Who has either clearly done the deed (if the Reporter knows), or who is under suspicion if not. You will be expected to say who was near the kill. If you literally saw no-one going in, say that.
Why. If you can’t specify either for an emergency meeting, explain why you called it and what you want to achieve. While calling a non-execution meeting is not suspicious (Impostors usually always want rounds to drag on for as long as possible to get multiple kills), totally frivolous meetings are not cool. Interrupting a long round or discussing strategy like who is proven or not is not frivolous unless the crew is about to win by tasks.
Any clues. If the initial briefing is inconclusive, the table opens to everyone else to give their own suspicions. Do not randomly run your mouth, calling someone suspicious on little evidence will easily lead to a mislynch or cover an Impostor frame.
Vote, skip or talk. Depending on the info gathered people either agree to vote for a specific person (always ensure the vote doesn’t split. A tie or enough people skipping will cancel the vote and might give a busted Impostor a last free kill!), skip the vote (to return to the action if no-one has anything), or keep talking and planning for the next round. Everyone must vote for the vote to end, so please don’t stall!

Failing to give this information, especially basic stuff, will make everyone suspicious of a self-report. If you are new to the game and see a body, it is better to open the map to see where you are before reporting, so you don’t draw a total blank!

As stated much earlier, skipping is the way early in the game unless you have damning evidence or the Reporter is willing to engage themselves on an accusation. Lynching someone because they might have been in the general area 10 seconds before a report is a very good way to kill an innocent person, make sure you’re being reasonable when retracing steps mentally, especially as most competent Impostors will simply vent out and will be nowhere near the body in short order.

Get people proven and safe as crew. Process of elimination and backing eachother up in votes wins games for the crew! As the list of people alive gets smaller and smaller, and as individual people prove themselves beyond a doubt, the amount of people who are left shrinks rapidly. If there are only as many Impostors left as people who are unproven or suspicious, you can argue for a lynch by process of elimination.

Avoid crossing suspicions! If someone accuses someone you trust, don’t get into a shouting match or a trade, as you are likely to get innocent people killed and put others innocents under major suspicion for lynching an innocent. Always ask people to justify their suspicions, and propose a soft solution to avoid having to trade unless you are certain the other person is framing. Red might have been absent when the kill happened, but you were with him, so make sure to speak up. Impostors can definitely back eachother up casually, but this is rare for them to genuinely defend eachother on the chopping block due to the risk of being executed one after the other. Early in the game, never lynch on suspicion unless multiple people can confirm the suspicion and no-one backs them!

Discuss round strategy if you have things you want to do! As there is no leadership role, don’t expect people to follow your orders and kiss your boots if you literally micromanage them or order them around, but it is perfectly reasonable to ask people to follow you to do tasks in a dangerous room (Electricity notably) or to prove yourself (Medbay, Storage, Weapons notably). Since you can’t talk during the round, this is the time to broadcast your intentions! Most people tend to trust orders as an Impostor has no reason to get people grouped up and planning to prove eachother, though expect people to ignore you and wander off in public lobbies. As long as you have at least two followers, you can still go ahead with your idea.

During Sudden Death, assuming your information isn’t good enough to execute the last suspicious crewmates, make sure to get people moving as a group. If anyone does something weird, make sure to get a trio on them. When in doubt, hit the Emergency Meeting! A kill or two can end Sudden Death in Impostor victory!

If you are stuck in -absolute- Sudden Death (one kill wins the game for the Impostors), you are in a world of trouble, but it’s still possible to win if you play it perfectly. If Emergency Meeting is unlocked, hit it and vote whoever is most suspicious, run around the Cafeteria until then, using tables to avoid whoever is obviously chasing. If it gets locked by a sabotage, you will most likely game over unless the Impostor does something stupid like not defend the sabotage task and not hunt whoever is camping Emergency Meeting.

The Skeld and You

The Skeld is the game’s original map, and due to the lack of map scrambling as a default option, the map of choice for basically all public lobbies as of current. As a result, knowing it in and out will put you above the brass in public lobbies

First of all, you should look up the actual map to visualize how rooms are linked.

I will list the important features of every room, as well as some guides for some rooms.

Cafeteria

This is where the crew starts every round and acts as the northern divider of the map. This is usually a safe area with three tasks slightly out of view along the northern wall.

The emergency meeting button is on the middle table. If stalked by an Impostor, make sure to round the table before hitting it and pray.

There is a vent on the right door leading to Weapons. It is very rarely used outside of Lights Out or Emergency Meeting/O2 ambushes as all its connections are horrible and this is a high traffic public area.

MedBay

A very common room for proving tasks, though it only has one other task. Usually ignored past proving tasks outside of sample task, as scanning alone is a bad play. Security camera fully covers the entrance.

Vent is inside along the left wall, visible from inside the entire room. If you shut the door before going in, you get what you see, making it a good kill vent.

Upper Engine

The top left corner of the map. A common transit room, especially early in the round. The room is totally flanked by cameras, making it particularly dangerous.

Vent on the top left corner connects to Reactor and Lower Engine. It is visible from a transit route!

Only kill if you can shut the doors and enter from Reactor vent safely! Mind the major blind spot through the engine which can hide a crewman doing refueling or caught by the doors.

Reactor

A task room with an infamously long and tedious task in the center which can easily tie up someone. Completely covered by Security cameras and no door makes it a risky kill.

Vents are on both ends of the room and connect to respective engines but very visible from the open doorway, making them the ultimate gamble when setting up a Reactor ambush or simply killing someone doing a task inside. Emergency tasks cannot see the opposing vents. Expect a crowd during emergency however

Security

Crewing this room is dangerous as there are no tasks inside the room itself (there is a single Fix Wiring task right outside the door) and this room has good vent connections. A smart Impostor who sees the cameras running will likely shut the door and vent hop to you to shank you. If you are going to use this room intensely, get a buddy. Good Impostors will beeline Security if the cameras are on.

There is a vent in the South East corner, visible from doorway task but not from the Camera station. This vent connects to Medbay and Electricity and is safe if the door is closed.

The Security Cameras and their connections are as follows:

Top Left: Navigation Hallway. Weapons is North, O2 is West, Navigation is East. Hallway to Shields is South.
Top Right: Admin Hallway. Cafeteria door is North, Admin is East, Storage door is South.
Bottom Left: Medbay Hallway. Upper Engine door is West, Medbay door is South, Cafeteria door is East
Bottom Right: Security Hallway. Reactor is West, Security door is East, North and South connects the engines (doors not visible)

Lower Engine

Upper Engine’s cheekier, lower brother. Unlike Upper, the right door is not covered by cameras, making it an interesting kill if no-one is keeping an eye on lower hallway. Mind the rewiring and upper room blindspot however!

Vent on the bottom right corner connects to Reactor and Upper Engine. It is visible from a transit route!

Electricity

The most infamous room in the ship. The hallway outside it is by far the least secure in the game with full door shutdown possible and zero camera coverage, and the room itself has an enormous sight blocker hiding the tasks and the vent in the back from the door. The lights are fixed under the blocker.

The vent on the top left which connects to Security and Medbay has “kill vent” written all over it though is it actually riskier than Medbay since someone could be hanging out in the bottom part of the room and walk up on you. Walking in is actually far safer and allows you to confirm a clean kill, making it a pretty terrifying room for crew. Do not go in alone!

Storage

Another famous proving room and doubling as the bottom transit room. This room has an enormous sight blocker in the middle that makes it a bit riskier than Cafeteria, though it is high traffic and thus risky for a kill. It also has no vent to support the doors.

Admin

An extremely high traffic room sitting in the most convenient top to bottom transit on the map and the Administration console. While less powerful than the Security cameras, this console allows you to see how many people are in each room, giving you a clue of where people are, thus an interesting tool for Impostors to use.

It also contains a bottom left vent with atrocious connections (Cafeteria and Navigation Hallway Lower Corner) and no doors (unless you close both Storage and Cafeteria), and the entrance is covered by cameras. All and all a very dangerous room for a kill due to the traffic on the ID console and lower O2 override, but if no-one watches the cameras it can be a nasty surprise.

Communications

This is easily the lowest traffic room in the game (though with no doors it can be checked on from the hallway). This room has two petty tasks and the underused communications fix. The lack of vents or doors, and the high traffic hallway outside makes it a particularly bad kill room and thus a room that is usually overlooked in gameplay.

Admin

An extremely high traffic room sitting in the most convenient top to bottom transit on the map, containing the Administration console. While less powerful than the Security cameras, this console allows you to see how many people are in each room, giving you a clue of where people are moving, which actually makes it an interesting tool for Impostors to use.

Shields

A high traffic public room with a single, extremely rapid shield task that can be used for proving and an obvious vent right next to it. Usually not liked by Impostors due to the total lack of cover and the camera coverage on northern entrance. The vent leads to Navigation’s south vent.

Navigation

A decently isolated room with an entrance covered by cameras and no door. The double vents lead to public spots (Weapons top, Shields bottom) but can easily be used to hide after a good kill. Due to perspective, the top vent is always visible when crossing the hallway, and bottom vent is hard to see. Has a lot of tasks!

A small, cramped room without doors and vents and with camera coverage. Very dangerous kill as you will need to run quite a bit to jump into a vent and you will be spotted on camera doing so. O2 upper task is here.

Weapons

A famous proving task room, heavy traffic and a somewhat exposed vent. Not a great kill room in and out of itself, though you can close Cafeteria door for a cheeky ambush, especially with cameras off.

A quick thing I would point out about The Skeld is that the left side of the map provides far safer kills than the right, giving an interesting dynamic to experienced Impostors. However, that also means that good crewmen will rarely enter this part of the map alone and favor going right to do these tasks first.

Among Us – Comprehensive Basic Guide (Gameplay and Tactics)