Xenonid 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. They 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.

How to join the Xenonids

In order to join the Xenonids as a roundstart larva or queen you must set your job to a higher preference than None. Anyone can join as Xenonids and there is no playtime required to unlock higher castes other than round start Queen. Any Xenonid can ascend to queen during a round if the previous queen dies or one was not selected at the start.

If you die as a humanoid character and ghost out of your body you have access to the Ghost Roles, these can provide mid game options to joining the Xenonids. Note that these roles are not guaranteed and are subjected to a random selection of the current pool of ghosts who join the raffle.

Winning the raffle means that you spawn as a larva, Lesser drone or Parasite respectively.

The Ghost Roles Menu

If you join as a Larva, be aware of your surroundings before you burst from your host, not every spawn is guaranteed safety and death is common if a larva is not careful. Use your Evolve ability to bring up the Evolutions menu, from here you can see how many points are required before your evolution can proceed. You can crawl under most doors and tables with ease but cannot use normal attacks.

If you join as a Parasite, your job is to infect a host. You may accomplish this goal by using your ability Leap to attempt to attach yourself to the host if they are within a single tile of your Leap's path or Left Clicking a host that is laying on the ground. Note that you are vulnerable after the leap if it is not successful. If the host is infected you will immediately die. This is considered a success! You can also crawl under most doors and tables with ease but cannot use normal attacks.

If you join as a Lesser Drone, You will spawn at the current Hive Core's location. A Hive core can be in a safe area of the nest or dangerously close to the front. As a Lesser Drone you are fragile, with great potential, but you will never be able to evolve as the Larva can. You take damage when off of weeded areas and have limited plasma. Your job is one of nest tender and is a great way to learn the basics of capturing hosts. Lessers can be available if a Hive Core is built and fed, so its good to ask questions to the other Xenonids as you need to learn how to play the basics.

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.

Xenonid Basic Gameplay

Capturing Hosts In order to continue the lifecycle of the Xenonids a proper host must be infected by a parasite. This can be done in three ways: A Xenonid egg will automatically attempt to attach a parasite to a host if they are within 1 tile of it. A parasite is placed onto a host manually by a Lesser Drone, Drone or Hivelord. 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.	Xenonid egg infecting a host
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 tackles to properly subdue a host depending on the caste of Xenonid you are. Combine this with dragging in order to relocate hosts throughout the nest.	A Xenonid Drone tackling a host
Devouring & Regurgitating Devouring a host is typically used for transporting hosts safely to eggs, without the need to drag and tackle them at a reduced speed. Note that the host can become unstunned inside of the Xenonid and attempt to break free if they have a knife in their boot, do so at your own risk, best practice is know where the eggs are and regurgitate them directly on top of an egg. The steps to do so are as follows. Make sure the host is properly tackled to avoid them standing up, the action will cancel if they stand up. Switch out of harm mode and drag the host to yourself using left mouse. Switch back to harm mode and continue tackling as the progress bar finishes. Regurgitation is the action of expelling the host after Devouring. Activating the ability will release the Host but stun them for two seconds.	A Drone devouring a host
Pinning In order to secure your hosts for incubation it is recommended to pin them to resin structures. The steps are similar to devouring. Make sure the host is properly tackled to avoid them standing up, the action will cancel if they stand up. Switch out of harm mode and left click the wall, or drag the host to the wall using left mouse. Switch back to harm mode and continue tackling as the progress bar finishes.	A Drone pinning a host to a resin wall

Basics of Construction

The Queen, Lesser Drones, Drones and Hivelords are able to build Resin Structures. 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. Weeds that spread to walls are typically weeded as well. 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. Xenonids can break resin significantly faster than Marines, so don't be afraid to tear something down and start over. Walls provide protection for the hive. Doors require an adjacent resin wall, weeded wall or door in order to be constructed. They cannot be constructed next to objects that do not become weeded, such as windows or blast doors. Membrane can be seen through but is the weakest structure to build. It acts as a wall otherwise.

A Drone building a Weak Resin Wall

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.