Changelog:
3/11/2025:
- Added a notice that a triggered traps give you a notification in chat
2/11/2025:
- Made the fact you can use the hugger ability on morphers clearer, as I’ve seen a fair amount of Carriers withdrawing huggers using left click and picking them up
- Clarified on the need to throw huggers defensively, rather than offensively.
1/11/2025:
- Added tip about reloading eggs
- Added tip about carrying Facehuggers in hand
- Standardised Facehugger/Hugger and Resin Hole/Resin Trap
- Added a How-To on capturing Predators thanks to @ondrej008
- Clarified “fierce tackle” in PvP section thanks to @Henriquekill9576
Foreword (Please Read This)
This guide assumes you know the basics of playing Drone and playing Xenomorph itself.
Don’t play Carrier without learning to play Drone.
If you’re unfamliar with Xenomorph at all: play the tutorial and then play Drone.
If you don’t know the maps at all: play Drone until you’re vaguely familiar with all the maps
If you don’t know how to haul: play the tutorial
If you don’t know how to nest a Marine: play the tutorial + remember you need a Cluster nearby to nest Marines.
Carrier won’t be fun to play if you struggle to play Drone, and you will die a lot (not fun).
This guide will teach you:
- How to play Carrier
- What an Eggsac Carrier is
- The basic gameplay loop of Carrier
- Some tips for playing Carrier
This guide won’t teach you:
- The basics of Xenomorph
- Map-specific strategies, beyond some tips, until I can get around to taking screencaps of all the maps. (I’m lazy.)
Introduction
I’m Danger!, some of you might know me as XSO or other characters. After two months and several incidents where I deleted the entire guide, I present to you my Carrier Beginner-Intermediate guide. As always, there’s always things and concepts that can only be picked up with time but this should be a pretty comprehensive guide to get you into Carrier, and playing it to a sufficient level. You’ll probably die, you’ll probably mess up caps, but I hope reading this helps you and maybe inspires some of you to give this caste a try.
In the Vietnam War, various militaries learned a counterintuitive truth. Wounding a soldier causes more harm than killing them. Carrier weaponises this principle. An infected marine, if recovered, needs another Marine to recover them, then wastes the time of a Corpsman to MEDEVAC them - then, wastes the Normandy’s airtime that could be used on airstrikes, then wastes supply and material re-arming themselves shipside all while taking out a powerful Marine and potentially leaving other Marines without their utility or leadership.
A dead Marine comes back instantly, an infected Marine takes five minutes.
Carrier
Carrier is an evolution from Drone, trading away the ability to build basic structures for the ability to store facehuggers and eggs. While it also increases in size from T1 to T3, its plasma pool is halved.
Abilities
This is your new ability bar:
Evolving from drone brings you four new abilities:
Plant Resin Hole (Plant Resin Trap)
This plants a Resin Trap on any weedable surface, which can then be filled or acid from a different caste. To fill the hole with a facehugger, left click the hole with a facehugger in your active hand.
How to fill a trap faster?
Dropping a facehugger onto a trap, will make it automatically climb in after a small delay.
Teamwork Makes The Hive Work
Burrowers can also make Resin Traps for you. Resin Traps of any variety can be filled by Spitters, Burrowers and Boilers to create an acid trap. This releases a powerful 3x3 stun for Spitters and Burrowers, while creating a small gas cloud for boiler.
It’s important to know that a resin trap creates a 3x3 exclusion zone at its center, preventing you from placing any other traps near them. Several objects, which you will learn overtime, also prevent the placement of traps in their area.
Equip / Throw Facehugger
This ability draws a facehugger from your storage or throws a held facehugger 4 tiles.
Throwing Facehuggers
You can throw a facehugger four tiles. The only practical use of this is refilling traps that you accidentally walked away from, and in a defensive capacity to hopefully slow down or stop someone chasing you. Hitting someone with a hugger has no impact, and they take 5-15 seconds to hug someone when on the floor. There’s no offensive use to throwing huggers.
You can also use the ability on an Egg Morpher to instantly withdraw all its huggers, up to your capacity.
Left clicking on a tackled Marine with a hugger in your hand will apply the Facehugger on their face, hugging them.
Remember that you can’t pull a Facehugger out while on fire, and will lose any facehuggers in your hands at the moment you’re lit on fire. Similarly, Marines that are on fire don’t live long, so you can pat them out like you do with your own sisters.
Equip Egg
This ability withdraws an egg from storage (either your personal storage, or picks up eggs off the ground out of a pile).
You can also use this ability to place eggs inside an egg morpher, which instantly fills it with more facehuggers.
Reserve Facehugger
This ability reserves how many facehuggers within your storage you would like to keep for yourself, preventing ghosted players from spawning as them once you are within the set threshold.
How many to reserve?
I generally believe it’s useful to have Huggers spawn on you. However, at minimum you want to reserve one, for emergency situations where you can incapacitate someone for self defense. Other than that, you reserve as many as you need - keeping in mind how long it’ll take for you to walk back to an Egg Morpher. Sometimes there will be many hugger players, sometimes not.
Order Construction
Carrier still retains the ability to place construction nodes, similar to Drone. This is a key tool for Carrier, moreso than Drone. Egg Morphers, Plasma Nodes and Clusters are extremely important, and are more important for Carrier because they can’t build structures like Drones can - so often are the ones placing them.
Just remember to ask for help filling them in, from nearby sisters or the Queen giving you plasma as Carrier has extremely poor plasma capacity.
Traps
Once inside a resin trap, if a Marine steps on it, the Facehugger inside will knock them to the floor - hugging them after a small delay. In this state they’re unconscious for several minutes, which leaves you enough time to Haul them to the Hive or a Cluster before they wake up.
A triggered trap will send a notification in chat to the entire Hivemind showing:
- A trap was triggered in X area
- A facehugger hugged someone in X area
(A destroyed trap only sends the first, a successful trap shows both, if it’s only the third notification it typically means an Egg or Morpher was activated or there was a time gap between the activation and the facehugger leaping.)
Should I take someone to the Hive or a nearby Cluster?
I personally believe in taking the person to the nearest cluster, unless in direct threat of CAS or an probable Orbital Bombardment. I think that it’s more important for them to burst faster, and for you to get back into the fight quicker - although taking a capture to the Hive does let you replenish off of the eggs and morphers that are in the Hive. The decision is ultimately yours to make, based off what you see and know.
Facehugger's Healing Properties
One important concept to note is that most Marines you get will be injured, bleeding, and sometimes purposefully overdosing on drugs to try kill themselves. Sometimes they’ll be on fire. Facehuggers will sedate Marines as well as inject them with an anti-IB, anti-OD and healing chemical to ensure the survival of your future sister. Hauling prevents suffocation from being dragged on the floor. Being nested will heal Marines and prevent death by most means.
Woke Huggers
A Marine stepping on a trap will awaken the Facehugger inside. A Marine shooting a trap (but not the Hugger) will also awaken the Hugger. A Carrier dying with huggers aboard will also awaken the Facehuggers. Awoken Facehuggers will leap on someone after several seconds within range, typically this is whichever Marine they’re lying on top of.
You, or a nearby sister can take advantage of this to distract / protect the awakened hugger in order for it to instantly leap and instantly hug the Marine, although this is extremely situational.
It’s my Burst-Day! What do I do?
Evolve to Drone - then, once the Queen sets up the Hive Core; find space and place 2 Egg Morphers preferably facing outwards and covering any direction that someone may come into the Hive.
Afterwards, move to the Hive’s “Designated Hold” - the position which the Hive is setting up to defend. Place a Plasma Node, and all but one of your morphers. Then, behind this, preferably somewhere in caves - set up a morpher and clusters for a “nesting area” to reduce the need to run back to the Hive to nest captures.
It might be good to avoid nesting in Hive.
Avoiding nesting in the Hive means that Marines aren’t sure where exactly your core is. Obviously, everyone has an idea of where your Core is but obfuscating its location may mean preventing Marines from wandering around to Hive Dive or flank your Queen.
This is best done by placing good clusters in the rear of the front, and communicating with your Hive to avoid moving caps all the way to Hive. Although, you might want to communicate with your Queen on this.
Carrier unlocks at 00:10,
At 00:10, tunnel or walk back into the Hive as a Drone and evolve into a Carrier. Use your Retrieve Facehugger ability to empty out the morphers and put them into your storage. Head to the Designated Hold.
Starting from the where the Weed Killer Area ends, weed and trap towards the hold and then inside it. Remember that Quantity before Quality is important. Once you run out of debris to trap under, trap around corners and next to resin doors. Quantity Before Quality.
Carrying Facehuggers in-hand
It can be useful to store a Facehugger in your hand. First, it lets you carry extra. Carriers are the only caste that can indefinitely carry Facehuggers without them dying. Second, it can be used by Eggsac Carriers (explained later) to cap any Marines they need to without needing an egg to finish growing.
Tunnels
As a Drone-evolved Caste, you can rename tunnels (right click) and are the primary beneficiary of them (to tunnel back to Hive for huggers). Co-ordinate with your Burrower, if there is one.
How to Handle a Plasma Shortage
Using plasma nodes, asking a Drone to transfer you plasma, asking the Queen for Leader and asking a Burrower to help you dig resin traps can all be methods to maximise the amount of traps you can place. (Ranked in order of helpfulness)
Queens are unlikely to give you leader partly because some of them don’t realise how important you are to the Hive, partly because they think the Xenomorphs which kill hosts are better than the ones who capture them.
A Drone following you around (less cheverons the more likely they are to agree) will help maximise your potential, at which point you’re only limited by the regeneration of facehuggers.
Trapping Alternate Paths
When you’re confident with your map knowledge, especially if there’s more than one Carrier or you’ve got Morphers and Plasma Node on the designated hold, it could be worth also trapping alternate paths and flanks to catch Intel Officers or Scouts straying off the front. This could also act as an early warning system to prevent any Hive Dives or flanks, and can catch fleeing enemies who are taking any possible path back to their F.O.B.
BYOD - Build Your Own Debris
An important aspect of Carrier, on some maps, is that you are overreliant on how much Debris the mapmaker puts on the map. To counteract barren areas, you can:
- Push around some welding tanks
- Push around crates
- Slash open lockers
- Slash open crates
- Slash chairs
- Slash tables
- Flip tables over to scatter their debris
- Kill animals
- Break windows and, ask acid-enabled sisters to melt them down
- And more…
What do I do if there’s more than one Carrier?
Before evolving, especially if you’re joining the Hive late, you can use “Hive Status” to check if you’ll be the second (or higher) carrier. Talk to the other Carrier(s)! With more carriers there is greater importance on making sure all your morphers are positioned well, and being used efficiently. With a greater strain on the hugger economy, you’ll need to use the Queen’s eggs to fill egg morphers for use as huggers.
One Eggsac? One Trapper?
There is room to argue that with two or more Carriers, one of you should go Eggsac strain, in order to use less huggers and differentiate your abilities. However, as discussed later, I think Eggsac has it’s own downsides and consequently it is a situational pick. Some maps, especially city-based maps (Chance’s Claim and Hybrisa Prospera) have enough debris around the map that two trapping carriers are worth the investment.
What now?
Until 00:20, and when the first Marines land (usually indicated by the pink fog appearing but keep an eye out), you should continue trapping, starting from as close as you can get to the Marine’s landing zone and towards where you’ll be defending. Out of combat is when Marines are least ready for any traps! Once you’ve covered the area between the Designated Hold and Landing Zone; you can focus on trapping wider, to catch any alternate paths or areas where Intel Officers will try to roam through.
Past 00:20, when Marines can land, take a safe position inside the Hold and await the Marines. You’ll likely catch some of them in traps, getting hugs. However it’s less likely that you’ll be able to follow up on it without Lurkers or Runners ready nearby.
Once Marines arrive at your Designated Hold, you should focus on following up on any throws or pulls or stuns from your sisters to tackle hug Marines.
As the Hive loses ground, or pushes forward: you should split your focus between tackling Marines who are pulled into your lines (to capture them), trapping the new ground you’re being pushed onto / pushing out onto or creating new resin structures (recovery or plasma nodes, egg morphers) for your team. One of your most important abilities as Carrier is the ability to turn kills into captures. A lot of castes, especially Lurkers, Runners, Warriors are poor at capturing Marines especially on the front due to poor tackling strength. Your presence means you can secure the hug, and take the sedated Marine into the rear areas.
Short Term Memory
The importance of trapping fresh ground is that Marines won’t expect traps in territory they’ve already cleared, especially if it’s recent or they’ve already cleared traps out.
Draw Them In!
As a follow-up to the previous point, it could be important to draw Marines into trapped territory to limit how they can manouvre. As laid out in the introduction, once a Marine is hugged, they’re dead weight on the push. Drawing the Marines into traps, getting one hugged is a sure-fire way to wipe a group if possible (especially on off-flanks or quieter areas of the map).
The main gameplay loop of Carrier is juggling front presence, trapping and making sure you’re always reloaded.
Have no fear, the Queen is here!
At some point, the Queen will leave her Ovipositor and head to the front. When you first hear/see she is planning to move, you need to stock up fully on Facehuggers, then await her arrival.
As the Queen pushes forward, you should aim to follow her and attempt to capture (tackle + drag) anyone screeched. If Marines prove too strong, or there’s specific Marines causing issues, charging into the screech with a hugger in hand to hug but not capture the troublesome Marine is a good idea.
Hugging without Tackling
Marines highlighted with this effect can be hugged directly without needing to be tackled as they are locked in place, typically from a Queen’s screech or a Trapper Boiler’s Trap.
Backline Carrier
As a Carrier, you are very well-suited for a static backline role. You won’t get away with roaming around due to your slow speed and reliance on weeds, meaning you can be zoned out and ran down if you’re caught out of position. However, you can sit in the backline and anchor yourself around a Cluster and Morpher, placing traps and assisting in caps for the other sisters with you could be useful and could be a huge problem for any Marine teams.
As a Carrier, you have basic Drone-level Phermones which are always useful for other Xenos to recover health or flee faster.
T3-sized Threat
As a T3-sized Xeno, alongside Ravager-Crusher-Praetorian (and Hivelord), Carrier can fully break APCs down to their most damaged state as well as ripping open holes in walls to fully destroy a wall (although not causing holes weirdly).
This can be perfect in the backline for cutting Marine communications for a prolonged period of time, as most Comtechs don’t carry several spare APC boards.
Late-Game
Late in the game, often enough, all the Marines who are likely to step into traps and overextend into the loving embrace of a Warrior’s lunge & throw are gone. The remnants of the Marine Corps are barricade-loving Marines who won’t risk their life to even risk stepping on a trap. This also means that most of the Marines’ offensive power has been dulled. At this point in the game, focus on Clusters, Recovery Nodes and Plasma Nodes to help your team and trapping whatever territory you’ve got/gained.
Because you can’t build walls or doors, at 01:00 it’s a good idea to walk to whichever Comms Pylon is free and set up a Cluster there to help your team. Drones are likely busier than you are.
Again, remain trapping whatever territory you have in case of a push, and be close and ready to haul captures home and hug whoever needs to be sedated.
Hijack
Everyone is going to kill your caps right in front of you, however, if you get any then this could be important later when the Hive inevitably suicides and you’re left to try recover against the Marine horde.
Ultimately, use your judgement as to the gamestate, and what you need to be doing. Or.. just ghost. Your pick.
Eggsac
Using “Purchase Strain” in the Alien Tab, you can transform into an Eggsac Carrier.
In exchange for your ability to store huggers and place traps, you gain larger plasma stores, strong pheromones, and the ability to lay eggs by using your plasma stores. In addition, you can now carry twelve eggs at once and can place eggs one pace further than normal. You can also place a small number of fragile eggs on normal weeds. These eggs have a lifetime of five minutes while you remain within 14 tiles. Or one minute if you leave this range.
Using “Generate Eggs” for an extreme plasma cost, you can generate your own eggs at roughly the same speed as the Queen can. This can be extremely helpful to help multiple carriers maintain a supply of huggers, or for filling “nesting rooms” with eggs.
As well as this, you gain Hivelord-level Phermones (a step down from Queen) compared to the Drone-level Phermones you had before.
A checkerboard pattern helps to maximise and maintain area of effect, while minimising the amount of eggs needed to fill the space. A Marine walking into a tile adjacent or onto an egg, will be instantly hugged after a small delay. Even if they backpedal out, unless they break line of sight then they will be instantly hugged no matter the distance.
Queen Can Only Make 32+3 Eggs
From observations in game (I’m too lazy to check the code) the Queen can only generate 32 eggs under her, with ~3 eggs in queue that will spawn once there’s room. This is important to know especially for Eggsac as any eggs past 32+3 aren’t generated. At every opportunity, you want to move Eggs out from under the Queen to help maximise the number of eggs generated.
Kutjevo Refinery and Cape River Mining Colony
Eggs, and Facehugger Traps, can be hidden inside the tall grass around Kutjevo Refinery. I once reported this as an issue, and was told it’s a skillcheck for Marines to burn down grass and not blindly step into it. Do with that as you will.
Eggsac Tactics
Your goal as Eggsac will be to move eggs to the front, to make “nesting rooms” filled with eggs to help castes with poor tackling (Lurker, Runner, Warrior) to instantly hug and capture Marines. Eggs can be used semi-offensively too, placed besides doorways to prevent Marines from easily walking in, and to help any Xenos who can pull Marines in through the doors to instantly hug them.
Reloading Eggs
Used Eggs (indicated by their opened sprite) can be reloaded by left clicking on them with a Facehugger in your hand. This can be useful to conserve your eggs, and instead using a facehugger from a further morpher.
However…
As Eggsac (and Carrier as well) you carry the extreme risk that your death will drop your eggs for recovery. Marines, through Research, can reverse engineer your perfect form to weaponise it against you. Losing eggs, on most rounds, will often end your Hive. If you’re in any risk at all, it’s worth planting all your eggs and turning off generation.
If you are low on plasma, acid-enabled sisters can melt your eggs down for you.
Downsides…
More eggs is always good, especially for feeding other Carriers and Egg Morphers. However, individually, while eggs have a powerful leaping hugger (3 tiles) - Marines aren’t going to blindly walk into them. It’s going all-in on facilitating other sisters to cap. Traps are extremely powerful because they are hidden, less so their capping ability.
How To Trick Marines
You can trick Marines into walking into eggs by using a fortified defender, or having a sister take a serious injury and run through a doorway with a Marine chasing.
Help! I’ve overextended and I need to PvP to defend myself!
The most common threat to you is being shot while dragging a Marine on the frontline.
The second most common threat are rogue Marines in the rear of the Hive, often Intel Officers or, the Scout trying to rescue YOUR captures. After that, are survivor players who’ve made it off the planet and have come back to clipfarm for their frag montage have round impact beyond surviving roundstart.
Use your experience from Drone
Your first step should always be calling the hostiles out, you can’t take them on alone. Then, your best movie is to trap around them, or follow a Lurker/Warrior/Runner/Spitter in and be prepared to cap. As mentioned before, once you hug one, they’re tied down with dead weight and are fish in a barrel.
When in mortal danger, you have two options: fight or flight. Often you can run, but in bad situations you must fight.
Carrier has an even fiercer tackle than all the other Drone castes. 2-4 tackles will knock down any Marines, and it is strong enough to permanently keep someone pinned (at least, long enough to begin hauling them, with the recent tackle nerf) AND it is mathematically more likely to 2-tap tackle according to @Henriquekill9576 (check the comments). Carrier also benefits from being a Size 3 Xenomorph, meaning they’re the same size as Ravagers, Crushers and Praetorians. They’re immune to knockdown from Scout’s stun rounds and shotgun stuns (slug rounds and point blank buckshots)
Off weeds, you won’t have a good time fighting Marines, but on weeds your relative speed advantage over Marines means that your tackle may take out most Marines before they can do much about it.
In desperation, you charge the Marine and hope to knock them down, or you run and try to make it difficult to follow you using your night vision and facehuggers. Running over your own trapped territory is a good idea, but if necessary then dropping and throwing Facehuggers behind you is a good idea. Clicking on a facehugger with an empty hand will instantly hug any Marine, and most people don’t know that it takes them a long time to actually leap, which makes it a semi-important use defensively to stop Marines blindly chasing you.
Yautja/Tall Hunter/Predator/Beast Men
This species of two-legged tall-beasts take pride in hunting your kind, and sometimes will end up attempting to poach your most fearsome (or most clueless) sisters in your Hive. Capturing one gives you the fearsome Abomination, but to Yautja being captured brings them ultimate shame and is the ultimate dishonor.
To capture one; which you may be requested to do at times:
- Your Hive must slash their head enough times for them to lose their mask.
- Your Hive must knock the Yautja over, or knock them unconcious (without them self-destructing).
- You must hug them, same as a Marine, except Yautja when awake have a chance to swat away any Huggers. (Image attached)
- Once infected, haul them to the Hive and place a “Thick Resin Nest” directly next to a wall, then click and drag them onto the wall. You do not nest them like Marines, you click and drag them onto the wall.
- You then gather around and protect the Hive so that the other Tall Hunters don’t plasma-cannon your Hive. There are no limits to what Yautja can do to kill your Abomination-Sister.
Conclusion
This guide has walked you through the differences between Carrier and Drone. It’s shown you the basic “gameplay loop” of Carrier, as well as the intricacies of Eggsac Carrier, along with tips for maximising your effectiveness along the way.
In the future, I might add more images, and map-specific advice. I’m experimenting currently with a different capture method, that I might add here if I figure it out / it’s worth it.
I’m always open for feedback, this is a big guide and no one’s Carrier experience is universal 
Best of luck to everyone, I really hope this inspires some people to try this caste out, and helps newer players navigate this caste without feeding eggs to the Weyland-Yutani Research Department.
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