User:KalimbaMachine/Xeno Guide

Xenonid Overview

Xenonids are predators that stalk, hunt or capture their prey within the darkness, and use them for reproduction in order to ensure the survival and continuation of their species. Xenonids typically operate in a hive structure, with a hierarchical organization. The Queen is central to their reproductive process, while drones and other castes serve different functions within the hive, including defense and nurturing of young. There are numerous Xenonid castes in RMC with different skills and attributes.

Xenonid Heads-Up-Display

There are typically 5 elements in the Xenonid HUD. In descending order these are:

1. Health: A green oval, this directly represents how much HP you have left.
2. Queen Tracker: A purple arrow/dot, points towards the queen if there is one, otherwise it simply displays a dot. A dot is also displayed if you are very close to the queen.
3. Armor: An orange shield, your armor reduces your damage taken by a certain amount.
4. Night vision: A yellow oval, with a green dot in the middle. You can click on it in order to switch between:
   1. Full night vision (Default): This sets the brightness of everything on screen to the maximum. You can also see living & dead beings through walls when active. While this mode is active, it is impossible to distinguish between lit and unlit areas.
   2. Half night vision: This highlights all living & dead beings, in addition to resin structures and weeded human walls, but the light level remains unaffected.
   3. Off: Completely turns off night vision and highlighting.
5. Plasma: A blue oval, this represents how much plasma you have left, which is used for abilities.

Xenonid Quick-Start Guide

As a Xenonid, your primary goal is to serve the Queen and obey her will. You will first start as a larva unable to do anything for now other than communicating with the hive and trying to survive until you can evolve. You will have to wait until you gain enough evolution points before you can evolve. For starters, you should evolve as either a Defender (to learn the basics of combat) or a Drone (to learn the basics of construction).

To attack, activate harm mode (bound to 1 by default, and can be adjusted in your actions bar), then click on any adjacent tile, entity, or item to start attacking it. For Xenonids, it is almost always better to use wide-swing attacks by pressing spacebar while harm mode is active and your hands are free. It is better to use this than a normal attack for groups of marines, although you should not wide-swing when breaking barricades with other Xenonids, as they will block your attacks (though they will not take damage). After you've learned the basics of attacking you also have numerous abilities that differ between caste. Be familiar with the caste you've chosen, and try out their abilities before you head into combat.

A Drone building a Weak Resin Wall

Basics of Construction

Resin structures require weeds to be built on, to spread weeds activate the Plant Weeds action, this will place a weed node that will spread weeds in a 9x9 pattern around the node.

To build resin structures, first select a type of structure, then select the build action and click an empty adjacent weeded tile to start constructing it. Once the animation completes, the structure will solidify. Xenos can break resin significantly faster than Marines, so don't be afraid to tear something down and start over.

Xenoid egg infecting a host

Capturing Hosts

In order to continue the lifecycle of the Xenoids a proper host must be infected by a parasite. This can be done in three ways:

1. A Xenoid egg will automatically attempt to attach a parasite to a host if they are within 1 tile of it.
2. A parasite is places onto a host manually by a Lesser Drone, Drone or Hivelord
3. A (sentient) parasite manually attaches to a host using their Leap ability, or attaches its self to a downed or pinned host by left clicking them.

After 8 minutes of the host being infected by the parasite the larva will burst if the host is alive or dead as long as their corpse is not rotted. This timer reduces to 6 minutes if nested on a resin or weeded wall.

A Xenoid Drone pinning a host to a resin wall

Tackling

In order to tackle hosts simply activate Harm mode and right click the target until they fall down. It may take more or fewer tackled to properly subdue a host depending on the caste of Xenoid you are.

Pinning hosts

In order to secure your hosts for incubation it is recommended to pin them to resin structures. The steps to do so are as follows.

1. Make sure the host is properly tackled to avoid them standing up, the action will cancel if they stand up.
2. Switch out of harm mode and left click the wall, or drag the host to the wall using left mouse.
3. Switch back to harm mode and continue tackling as the progress bar finishes.

Minor Tips and Notes

• Follow the Queen's orders. Always. You can face OOC punishment if you blatantly refuse a direct order.
• Do not go to the landing zones of the marines early into the round. For 20 minutes after the first drop, there are sentry guns around every LZ.
• If you are a caste that has them, you should always have pheromones active. Their effects can be seen by pressing the help button in the pheromone radial menu.
• Generally, if the Queen is not laying eggs, and you are a combat caste, you should stick with her.
• Capturing marines is much more important than killing them early into the round.
• Certain words will be automatically translated for Xenonids (ex. "human" will be converted into "tall host"). A full list of replacement words that you should use can be found on the Slang page.