I personally noticed quite a lack of guides regarding xenomorph, despite half the game revolving around them. I am getting around to working on a definitive hive guide that will give new players a rundown of how to play the hive and good pieces of advice.
The wiki is solid already for a starting place, but doesn’t go as much into tactics as I hoped it would.
For now, what advice would you give new players for certain castes?
EG -
As a hivelord, you should not build confusing layouts that could easily trap sisters when they retreat
Slash the lights, melt the flares in your spare time
The rav hedgehog is decent for leading pushes along with so and so.
A carrier with a warrior is a good combo for securing caps
Pat out your burning sisters, blue flame deals a lot of damage
For training in combat play defender. It’s a t1 so it easy to get and not too specialized. You got decent hp and armor. The only issue is you lack any powerfull combat ablities but if your brand new then play defender.
Rule of thumb,
1 tier 1 = 2 marines
1 tier 2 = 4 marines
1 tier 3 = 6-8 marines
Keep a tally to know what you risk doing anything.
There’s a delay to going into crit and in your healthbar going down. In most cases, if you hit half your HP, retreating will almost always keep you alive.
Never devour a marine, just spam disarm to take them to the hive. If you devour you risk them stabbing you in the stomach, if you have them stunned they can never move so long as you keep disarming them.
If you’re caught in the middle of an OB or about to be naded, rest and you’ll negate a lot of damage, and you’ll actually be stunned for less time/thrown around less.
Clear resin is not a meme, if you put it in front of a resin door you can essentially have a window to stare at a marine.
Always aim right foot or right hand, every xeno does it, hands andfeet break; one slash or spit nabs a splint off.
Fire is almost always a meme, if you can disarm someone and drag them into the fire at least 3 tiles, you can most likely survive, stop drop and roll, and heal on resin. Marines in 2-3 tiles will fall into crit.
Unless they changed this, runners can push a marine, especially a lagging one, with their movement speed, so you can just run up to a marine and push them into the abyss.
Never devouring means you’re slower (unless you’re a sonicspeed runner), can’t use tunnels, and should you run into another marine, they will easily force you to abandon your otherwise free cap.
Reverse bursting is basically a non-issue since you can just spit them back out and spam tackle them with 0 counterplay at any point. Devour is free speed and security.
Defenders with their crest down can open holes in walls like a T3 and also fully destroy APCs like a T3.
When building traps as a burrower or carrier. Hide them under items or place them next to doors for maximum effect on unsuspecting tall hosts.
Burrower tunnels can be hidden. Either in long grass or under certain things like beds. To use the hidden tunnel right click the tile or alt click to see everything on a tile and use it.
Open ground is almost always death. Make use of cover. Build those walls and doors drones and hivelords.
Burrowers burrow ability can be used to survive OBs.
Alt clicking the queen tracker can be used to track leaders, tunnels or the hive core.
Stick close to leaders for free pheros. Which normally means faster healing.
Build clusters and healing nodes to support the hives healing.
Build an acid tower if your sisters keep getting set on fire. It can also help you hold a location as a sort of xeno turret.
Drag your crit sisters out of harms way. You can also block bullets while another sister drags them, best done by defenders. You can drag and block bullets by standing ontop of them and clicking the next tile to move them there while dragging, rinse and repeat until they are safe.
If you’re on the frontline and someone infront of you is nearly dead and trying to escape, move the fuck out of the way. Really, just fucking move. Your epic frag compilation clip isn’t as important as letting someone else live and I cannot stress this enough because I see so many bodyblocks that were entirely avoidable.
You can tail-stab doors to check if they are shocked, if they are then you will receive a much shorter stun then if you would have tried to open it.
Tail-stab does 1.2x your normal melee damage (for example, if you are a Queen with 40 slash damage then your tail stab will do 48 damage, roughly*) and will always hit your targetted limb.
Aim for limbs; Legs/Feet to slow down marines, Arms/Hands to cripple their item handling, Head for potential decapitations. The chest is usually the most armoured part of a marine’s body and you should avoid it if you can.
Defender can lower its crest to gain an extra 5 armour and resistance to stuns and explosions, it also lets you resist being stunned by being shot by a shotgun - just keep in mind you move slowly while it’s lowered but it can potentially be good for escaping by lowering your chances of being stunned.
Sentinel’s spit will stun marines who are infected with a larva, otherwise it just slows marines and can drain a small amount of chemicals.
I recommend using Half-Nightvision as it lets you see dark areas which you can potentially hide in or run into while escaping, you’ll get used to it after a while.
You can Alt-click on the Queen tracker and change it to show you the location of leaders, the hive core or tunnels, just don’t forget to change it back after.
Tunnels are ordered, in both the tracker and tunnel menus, from closest to furthest - the tunnel at the top of the list will be the closest while the one at the bottom will be the furthest.
Shift + C is the shortcut for secrete acid and is useful on castes with acid to quickly melt things.
Melt flares, light is the bane of Xenomorphs. Adding acid onto a flare will make it burn out faster with the strength correlating to the strength of the acid. Especially you should be melting the green signal flares.
If you have the opportunity, melt anything that marines might be able to use - I recommend weapons, materials, ammo, grenades/explosives and whatever else in that order of priority.
If you are a caste who can weed, weed very aggressively and make sure that both the area you are in and the immediate adjacent areas are weeded as much as possible, especially behind you. This helps with escaping later if needed.
Pheromones are your friend; Recovery increases health and plasma regeneration, Warding provides extra bleedout health, Frenzy lets you move faster. Use or emit them when able.
If you struggle with sprite clicking, you can enable Directional Assist and then simply click past/behind someone to have an easier time hitting them. Instead of clicking the tile they are on, just click one or two tiles past them, takes a bit of practice.
Learn the map and its common areas/points of contention, basic navigation ability will save you in the long run.
If you plan to play lurker, a very important part to learn that I’ve seen newer lurkers lack knowledge on is you can sprite click yourself to slash the person underneath yourself.
I would also recommend binding your resting and resist key to a combination for me ctrl+R and shift+B respectively. Many times, I see xenos accidently fat finger resting or hit the resist button by accident while on fire resulting them getting killed due to the long delay of being able to move again. You can also use rest to avoid bodyblocking xenos as they can walk over you.
You also always want to be strafing when dealing with multiple marines. Never be in a straight line that allows a marine to simply shoot down towards. This prime lurker demonstrates this well in that they never stood still and kept slashing me while moving around my pounced body and finishing off with a tail stab.