'%20x='0'%20y='0'%20height='100%25'%20width='100%25'%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20xlink%3Ahref='data:image/jpg;base64,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'%3E%3C/image%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Most of your games of Among Us will feature you playing as part of the crew, attempting to repair your ship or base while avoiding a mysterious and unknown impostor. Of course, it can be frustrating to play as part of the crew, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing, but seeing as everyone has to learn somehow then it might be helpful to check out these general tips and pieces of advice.
Among Us Crew fundamentals
When playing as crew, your primary focus in Among Us should be on keeping track of your fellow crew. It might be tempting to keep your nose to the grindstone and accomplish your tasks as quickly as possible, colloquially referred to as “speedrunning your tasks,” but doing so might cause you to ignore vital and important information that could help the crew later in the game.
Any and all information gathered as the crew is useful, even simple stuff like tracking who went where at certain parts of the game, or who was seen with whom. For example, being able to accurately identify that yellow was last seen with blue at a meeting where yellow’s body was reported will be useful for the rest of the crew, even if it doesn’t completely condemn blue.
Because Among Us is a game about deception and sneaking around, it’s your job as part of the crew to help see through the deception as much as possible first, and to complete your tasks second. Tasks should generally be seen as a secondary win condition, something that creates inevitability and forces impostors to act, but not the primary way that the crew should win.
Among Us: Crew etiquette, play crew so that you can enjoy impostor as well
Playing as a crew member in Among Us also comes with a specific worry, which is that the group etiquette for the game may change based on the groups, or simply over time as players get better. One of the earliest strategies adopted by crew is to group up very quickly, and slowly do tasks while maintaining near perfect information about who is where at all times.
This method prevents the impostors among us from having any clear chances to score kills, but also has a knack for making the game less fun, and so many groups operate under accepted etiquette rules. One such rule is to avoid excessive grouping, and to only stay near each other when the game situation warrants it.
While this might make your crew games less efficient, it will make your impostor games more fun. I encourage every play group to have a discussion about what they want from their games before playing, and for every player to play as though they might be the impostor next game.
Among Us: Crew strategy and how to respond to sabotages
Of course, grouping up is not always bad, and that is why I avoided giving hard specifics about when and why you should or shouldn't do it in Among Us. Sometimes you will want to group up, and it will be the right thing to do.
A good example is during responses to sabotages. A common impostor strategy in Among Us is to sabotage the lights and then kill the first player who arrives to fix them. To counter this as the crew, you should wait outside the place to fix lights, and move in as a small group that can repair the lights and cover everyone’s back.
Other sabotages will require that you split up. Depending on the situation, you can prioritize time or security. For example, O2 requires that the crew input two codes, but doesn’t care if those codes are input separately, which allows the crew to huddle up and move from one to the other, even though that will take a bit longer.
Others, such as reactors and seismic stabilizers, require the crew to interface with a tablet simultaneously, making them have to split up. Reactors are still close to one another, so the crew can get there as a group and then divide the jobs, while seismic stabilizers are much riskier.
The best advice for these sabotages isn’t to complete them quickly, but rather to carefully note who shows up, and who remains with whom, in order to provide information in the event of a kill.
Among Us: The oxygen can wait, I found a body!
Critical sabotages in Among Us are ones that the crew must handle in order to avoid losing right away. During these sabotages, nobody can call an emergency meeting, but they can still report a body. If a body gets reported, the sabotage will wait and the crew can take a moment to talk about the body and where everyone was.
In some situations, reporting a body may be the only way to avoid a scenario where the impostors can have a guaranteed kill.
Among Us: Using tasks to your advantage
You shouldn’t worry too much if you’re struggling with the tasks in Among Us. If you’re new to the game, or you just haven’t been assigned a specific task, it’s okay to take some time to learn that specific puzzle.
However, you should pay attention to your task bar, task list, and who is performing tasks. The task bar increases whenever a task is fully completed, meaning that it doesn’t increase for multipart tasks until the last part is finished. The task list, however, is ordered and can be used to crew advantage.
The task bar will always follow the same order:
- Common tasks
- Long Tasks
- Short tasks
If you have two common tasks, they will be the top two, and if you have none then the top task will be a long task, and so on.
Common tasks are important to pay attention to in Among Us because every member of the crew has the same common tasks. This means you can use this to see who might be “forgetting” to do their tasks.
Another thing to address is what makes a task long or short. Long tasks simply refer to tasks that have multiple parts, and not necessarily to tasks that take longer. For example, the Med-Bay scan or asteroid shooting tasks are considered “short tasks,” despite taking much longer than something like watering plants.
Lastly, while I recommend playing with visual tasks off, if you have them on then you can watch fellow crew conduct certain tasks to guarantee that they are crew. However, this degree of certainty is, in my opinion, a bit to strong for the average Among Us playgroup.
Among Us: Final notes on playing as a crew member
An important piece of advice for Among Us no matter what your role is to remember not to take the game too personally. It’s only a game, you win some, you lose some, and the only reward for winning or losing is another game. It’s more important to foster a fun playgroup to enjoy the game with than to win any specific game.
I have personally witnessed crew members angrily yell at and criticize other crew members, resulting in those players deciding they don’t want to play with that group, and causing the group to reduce to six or seven players instead of the ideal ten. If you or another player is making Among Us unfun for someone else, try to curb that behavior as soon as possible, or expect your playgroup to dwindle.
And lastly, when you do die as a crew member, don’t forget to do the rest of your tasks. Just because you're dead doesn’t mean the company expects your work to remain unfinished.
