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Evolves From: Drone Evolves To: N/A Role: Carry huggers around, allowing the Hive to impregnate new hosts on the move. Use pheromones to assist fellow Xenomorphs. Guides: Guide to Pheromones |
General Information
The Carrier is an evolved form of the Drone. Its unique ability is to store 8 facehuggers safely and carry them around, which allows the Carrier to become the Hive's main infection vector, able to carry facehuggers to the tallhosts instead of having to bring them to egg nests, and thus deploy them directly on the battlefield.
The Carrier is one of the fastest big Xenomorphs in the game, besides a Hivelord under the effects of Resin Walker or a charging Crusher, allowing it to flank rather comfortably or perform hit and run tactics. While it loses the Drone's ability to build most resin structures, it is still capable of planting resin weeds. It also has access to Pheromones, a critical tool in its arsenal, especially if flanking.
The facehuggers you throw will behave like normal facehuggers, but after being flung a distance they will be stunned for a short bit, and they will not be able to land on humans on a throw. As such, it's recommended to aim ever so slightly off-target. The facehugger will have room to adjust with a pounce once its lights are back on. Remember that clicking a hugger in your active hand stores it.
Playing as a Carrier
As a Carrier, you will find yourself in a strong Support-oriented position, with your facehugger throw allowing you to add an extra threat to tallhosts facing you. While other castes focus on dealing damage or stunning, a carriers focus is on the windows of opportunity to infect tallhosts with the facehuggers you throw. Once a tallhost is hugged, they will be impregnated and will only be able to remove the embryo with advanced surgical procedures. If they don't make it back in time, you can fully expect that they will eventually hatch a Larva.
Your ability to plant weeds should never be underestimated. While you're not a sturdy Xenomorph by far, you can still take more hits than a Drone, and tallhosts will certainly hesitate to engage you alone and head-on. In a pinch, you can simply fire facehuggers away to force them to deal with those while you make like the wind.
Carriers can place hugger traps, which are small resin holes hidden away on weeded surfaces. These holes can then store a facehugger, just like an egg, and lets the facehugger ambush passing humans. Hugger-filled resin holes additionally make the victim trip and fall, as well as notifying you when a trap is triggered and giving you the trap's location. These small traps allow you to easily get infections on any human foolish enough to rush straight into the Hive, and if you feel inclined, can even be put in forward or unorthodox positions to get pounces where the Marines expect to easily clear patches of weeds. In all cases, you can supply the weeds you need to plant those, making them a rather powerful, self-contained ability.
Abilities
| Abilities: | Description: |
|---|---|
 Rest |
Used to rest and get up. Xenos heal faster when resting on weeds. |
 Regurgitate |
To devour, grab a host with Ctrl + Click or
Grab intent (3 in hotkey mode) then click yourself, standstill. To stop the host from getting up and running away, you can switch to an empty hand (X in hotkey mode) and keep tackling them using Disarm intent (2 in hotkey mode) when you are devouring them. Xenos with devoured humans inside them can not vent crawl but Xenos with devoured monkeys can. Hosts with boot knives can injure the Xenomorph they are inside if they are conscious. Using this ability with a host devoured will regurgitate them back up, giving a moderate stun. (Edit this template) |
 Plant Purple Sac |
Can't be planted if there is already a sac on the tile. Can be removed by one slash with harm intent for re-plant.
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 Emit Pheromones |
Emit one of the three Pheromones. It's advised that you emit a pheromone that isn't already being emitted, as pheromones don't stack. Your pheromones will grow stronger as you mature. |
 Throw Facehugger |
Puts a hugger in your hand if it is empty. If you do have a hugger in hand it throws that hugger. You can directly store a hugger by using this ability on a hugger on the ground next to you. Throw a facehugger by using the middle mouse button. |
 Retrieve Egg |
Allows you to retrieve eggs with your middle mouse button.
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 Place Resin Hole |
Places a resin hole on weeds.
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Attainable Strains
| Strain: |
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Shaman Abilities
- The Shaman Strain cannot be affected by Pheromones, and their abilities cannot affect themselves or other Shamans
- Shaman Abilities are stronger with more non-Shaman xenos in a certain range (Range increases based on maturity, from 3>4 tiles)
- Shaman Abilities have a cooldown from 40>20 seconds based on maturity
- Shaman Abilities all require an egg to preform the ability, if there are no non-Shaman xenos in range, the ability will not function but the egg will still be consumed!
| Abilities: | Description: |
|---|---|
Adrenal Healing |
After channeling for 2.5 seconds, Shaman affects in radius 3 all other non-Shaman xenos of their hive by giving them overhealth for 30 seconds, repairing their armor, and unstunning them. Effects are proportional to number of xenos after channeling. No more than 25% of armor integrity will be restored. Minimal effect is 10% armor integrity, if only one other xeno was near you.
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Frenzied Scream |
After channeling for 3 seconds, Shaman affects all humans in range by applying a 4 second (endurance may lower this time) knockdown and forcing humans to roll (it may extinguish fire and acid). The radius starts at 3 tiles from Shaman if Shaman has 1 non-Shaman xenomorph nearby, and increases by 0.5 tiles per nearby xeno, up to limit of 7. This ability cannot hit same target more than once in 20 seconds. It also won't affect recently screeched by queen targets.
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Adrenal Pheromones |
After channeling for 2.5 seconds the Shaman will emit ALL pheromones with effects starting at 1 (lowest level) when 1 non-Shaman xeno is nearby, and with a 0.5 increase per xeno up to five 5 (ancient empress level). This pheromone emitting lasts for 30 seconds.This ability does not affect Shamans.
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Carrier Tactics
- The Carrier thrives as an ambush caste, with a powerful ability to hold a chokepoint by chugging facehuggers into it. While Marines can simply shoot the facehuggers as they come in, they will probably reconsider simply rushing in.
- Facehuggers have a very short life expectancy once thrown, usually under thirty seconds. As a result, it is extremely hard to use them as traps unless placed in resin holes, and they will usually be used directly against tallhosts to be viable.
- Facehuggers are capable of ripping off headgear on their own, and once viced to a Marine's face, nothing will pry them off. A facehugged Marine is as good as infected.
- The Carrier will usually heavily benefit from support, especially from castes that can easily stun a tallhost and drag them into the facehuggers you throw. Sentinels and Runners are two obvious candidates, but Spitters and Lurkers can do in a pinch.
- You will need a large amount of eggs to do your work, especially since you are bound to throw many more facehuggers than you get infections. Make sure the Drones are up to date with the latest engagements so eggs are always close to the front.
- Your facehuggers are useless against tallhosts that are already infected. As such, you should be careful when dealing with those hosts.
- Resin holes can easily be used as the Xenomorph equivalent of a proximity mine. Any Marine foolish enough to walk near one unprepared will usually be pounced and infected on the spot. And since a dark hole is hard to see on equally darker weeds, this can make for a surprisingly efficient method of ambushing Marines even in clear corners, to say nothing of dimly lit areas further concealing them.
- As noted before, facehuggers will be stunned for 10 seconds after landing, with that stun time reducing as you mature, even if it hits a Marine directly. Only when this initial stun is over will the facehugger be ready to pounce. While throwing facehuggers at Marines is a simple and obvious way to get infections, it is less efficient than throwing your facehuggers in cover and tricking tallhosts into running in their range once the stun is done.
- You can also hide resin holes or even eggs under debris such as metal. Due to the massive amount of stuff on the ground, a marine is extremely unlikely to notice it unless they are specifically looking for your devious trap.
Carrier Maturity
Carrier Maturity focus, unsurprisingly enough, on improving their unique ability to throw facehuggers, by increasing the storage amount. Carriers can also expect general improvements to all its statistics, with no noteworthy increase. As they upgrade, Carriers will get better at what they do, and better overall.
Carrier can not Evolve any further as it is the end of their caste line.