Bioshock

General Advice

• Bioshock is, at heart, a game about atmosphere and narrative more than tense shooting or resource management. Approach it accordingly.

• Resources will seem scarce enough during the intro that you may think the game is a survival horror: it is not. (Unless you play on Survivor difficulty.) Before long you'll be forced to leave behind all kinds of stuff you can't carry, and even your wallet has a Zelda-style limit of five-hundred bucks, which you'll probably hit faster than you'd think. There aren't any big purchases to save up for, so don't be stingy. If you do somehow manage to actually run low on cash, Big Daddies always drop a ton.

• Similarly, don't be afraid to burn through ammo. You'll end the game with nearly complete clips anyway, so you might as well go out in a blaze of bullet glory.

• You can't get every plasmid and ability in the game in one run, but you can get a very large number of them- and many are pure number buffs of earlier versions. You can get every weapon upgrade, but you have to find every single upgrade station.

• The Deep Moral Choice system is, regrettably, bullshit. While harvesting Little Sisters gives you more Adam to begin with, for every three you save, you'll get a gift that involves unique plasmids and a very large lump of Adam.

• Vita-chambers revive you when you die with no penalty whatsoever. Unless you turned off the Vita Chambers, there's ultimately no real penalty for dying other than a lot of backtracking. This is both a good and a bad thing; it's great when you're stuck in a situation you can't possibly get out of, but it's bad when you get lazy and don't want to fight those damn security robots so you let them kill you. Turn Vita-chambers off if you want a challenge.

Exploring Rapture and Taking Everything

• Pay close attention to your surroundings, and play in the dark if possible. The game's much better that way.

• Hack Everything. Literally. There is nothing bad that can come from Hacking something.

• If you freeze something beforehand, like a Vending Machine, the hacking minigame is made slower and easier.

• If you're absolutely desperate for a health pack, destroy a health station.

• If you're heading into an icy area, bring incinerate with you. Almost every block of ice you see will contain highly valuable loot.

Build Strats

• You don't really need anything other than the wrench; with wrench-focused tonics and plasmids, it is the most powerful weapon by far. That doesn't mean you should use it exclusively; you can almost beat the entire game with just the wrench, but it's much more fun if you play around with your powers.

• The generally accepted 'best way to kill something easily' is either the Electro Shock -> Wrench combo or Freeze -> Wrench, but again, play around to see what you enjoy.

• The invisibility plasmid you receive for researching spider splicers is game-changing. Splicers talk constantly and give away their movements, giving you plenty of time to stand still and wait for a chance to attack.

• The electric discharge plasmid can be pretty cool, but beware that if you're near a Big Daddy or any friendly machinery the shockwave will hurt them too (which also causes the Big Daddy to attack you too).

Big Daddies

• There are very few truly worthless abilities or builds. It's OK to experiment! At most, some earlier abilities don't keep up in terms of raw damage, especially if they have buffed versions later.

• Several Big Daddies can be killed pretty cheaply if you get the power that can temporarily charm them (which requires you to rescue, not harvest, three Little Sisters) - just befriend one, lead it to another, attack it, and watch. They'll stay completely focused on each other until one of them is dead, so make sure to even the odds if one of them gains too much of a lead.

• After killing a Big Daddy and rescuing/horribly violating his Little Sister, the Big Daddy will always respawn. That said, you don't need to fight or sneak past them. They won't hurt you if you don't hurt them.

• 4 or 5 trap bolts will kill a Big Daddy from full health on Hard mode.

• Electric Gel and Chemical Thrower upgrades will also murder Big Daddies. Electric Gel is fairly rare, but there is enough to make it through the game.

Photography

• Research as early as you can and as often as you can. it gets you all sorts of unique damage bonuses and skills.

• The game gets much easier the more research you do, especially if you research turrets and security robots. However, you cannot research bots you have hacked.

• The camera doesn't use film unless it takes a picture worth points, so snap like a madman. Make sure you have enough film to fill the camera.

• Photographer's Eye 2 comes from researching Rosies. It boosts how many research points points you get from photos. Get it ASAP. The easiest way to safely research them is via the temporary charm ability described in the Big Daddy section above.

• Equip both Photographer's Eye 1 and Photographer's Eye 2 to get a +25% bonus to taking pictures.

• There's a tonic that makes you invisible if you don't move for a couple of seconds. This helps a lot when doing research! Place yourself near where enemies path and you can take lots of good close-ups when they walk by.

• The plasmid that makes enemies trip security alarms (or just hacking cameras and drones) is your friend when you are doing research. You cant photograph friendly drones, but drones summoned by a friendly camera are still technically neutral. Recording the resulting fight will get you bonuses for action shots (they are fighting), and for "Multiple targets" (assuming you manage to get a splicer and the drone they are fighting in the same frame).

• You can also research the Little Sisters for small bonuses to your health and eve bars.

Spoilers & Missables

• If you don't kill Sander Cohen to nab his Muse Box when you first meet him,
  you can visit him at home in his apartment much later and access a room with goodies, like a weapon upgrade station and stuff. This room is locked if you killed him earlier. You can also traipse all the way back to Fort Frolic to get inside the Muse Box, though the contents aren't worth it.

• At a later part in the game, your health will be permanently lowered. Its effect is scripted, and eventually your health bar will be restored to its previous level, so don't worry about losing your health bonuses.

• Don't pick up a Big Daddy helmet unless/until you really, really have to. What happens afterward is rather annoying.