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Evolves From: Larva Evolves To: Burrower, Hivelord, Carrier, Queen Role: Build the Hive and expand it with new weed nodes. Support fellow Aliens with your pheromones. Plant weeds aggressively to support pushes. Use your acid to destroy equipment. Guides: Guide to Hive Building, Guide to Pheromones |
General Information
The Drone is the humble worker of the Hive. While most other castes make themselves useful in their combat prowess, the Drone finds her vocation in building and maintaining the Hive. Relatively fast, the Drone can also build on the move. She is equipped with corrosive acid capable of melting through weak structures, minor obstructions such as furniture, and almost all equipment one can find lying around. Her attacks are fairly weak, and she is not intended to engage hostile targets unless another caste has them suppressed. Her health can hold itself together, if only just barely.
The Drone can help out with building the main Hive, spread weeds around aggressively using her mobility, or even attempt to build forward hives. In all cases, their skills will be needed to make nests to secure new captures, and to make the colony more habitable to Aliens, one weeded tile at a time. To help with this, the Drones have a massive plasma reserve and a respectable plasma regeneration.
Pheromones play a big role in the Drone's arsenal. A Drone can be an incredible supplement to an ambush group, making it faster, better, stronger, and providing them with weeds to rest on as they advance.
Playing as a Drone
As a Drone, your job is to assist the Queen by building, growing and reinforcing the hive, and eventually extending it using the mobility other building castes lack. To this end, the Drone has the ability to shape structures out of resin she can secrete with Plasma. The Drone is otherwise patently average in all regards, with a relatively underwhelming attack but a decent speed and health. All and all, building above fighting unless desperate.
It will usually be critical for you to build the main core of the Hive as soon as the Queen has picked a spot to nest in. Then, build these structures in this order as soon as the hivecore makes hive weeds: a spawn pool, two evolution pods, nests, and an egg morpher, while begging your sisters to assist you in filling them with plasma.
Afterwards, you may designate yourself to these jobs as you wish:
Maintain the hive
Maintain the hive by planting eggs near nests, pooling burst bodies, filling egg morphers, and providing plasma to the Queen and your sisters. It cannot be overemphasized how important these tasks are to your hive's survival: planting eggs near nests ensures hosts will be instantly hugged if a sister regurgitates a host on top of a pile of eggs; pooling burst bodies allows aliens to boost and replenish their numbers; filling egg morphers is a must when the hive runs out of eggs; and most importantly, providing the Queen and your sisters with plasma ensures she and your sisters will always be able to use their abilities, especially the Queen's ovipositor abilities, which include appointing leaders, relaying announcements, and providing heals and plasma to your sisters in the heat of the battle.
Build the hive
Weed EVERYWHERE possible, even in the little nooks and crannies you think may not matter. Weeds are the foundation of your hive! They allow you to create structures, they allow all members of the hive to move more quickly whilst slowing down marines, and they help aliens regenerate plasma and health. Also, build defences. Build doors anywhere you can find natural horizontal or vertical gaps of one to three spaces and build sticky resins in front of them to slow the marines down. Finally, build walls. Lots of walls, especially on the frontlines and places you want to make extra doors in. However, build only enough to make it difficult for marines to navigate, not for you and your sisters to navigate. Remember: the Hive relies on mobility, and your designs should not hinder it.
Sabotage the Marines
Make the hive as unfriendly to marines as possible! Slash and melt anything in your way, especially shocked doors! Slash APCs until the box flips open, then slash them again to release a rain of sparks and shroud the building in darkness, just to your mother's liking! Slash and melt down everything you can vomit your corrosive acid on, including metal and plasteel, weapons, ammo, gear, food, flares, and mostly anything in research, medical, engineering and security. After melting down doors, make your own, and maybe make checkerboard sticky resin in front of them. Attrition warfare at its finest.
In conclusion, Don't underestimate how much work a single building caste can do. Trying to excuse yourself of the responsibility of building the Hive on other Drones is a high way to total and utter failure.
Abilities
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 Rest |
Used to rest and get up. Aliens 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 Resin Node |
Place a Resin node, which spreads weeds across a large area. Can't be planted if there is already a node on the tile or if it's on unsuitable ground to plant it on. An example would be grass or water.
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 Choose Resin Structure |
Click to choose what resin structure to make. This opens up a menu of all buildable resin structures for you to choose from. The default structure is a Resin Wall.
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 Secrete Resin |
Secrete the chosen Resin Structure on the a chosen tile next to you or on top of yourself.
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 Order Construction |
Order the construction of a hive structure to be built.
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 Transfer Plasma |
Transfer 50 Plasma to any target within 2 tiles. You have to stand still when transferring, and the target must not be out of range when the transfer is made. | |||||||||||||||||||||
 Corrosive Acid |
Vomit a glob of acid on item to dissolve it. Multiple items can be clicked at once as long as you are standing still.
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 Emit Pheromones |
Emit one of the three Pheromones. It is advised to emit the pheromone that are not already being emitted, as pheromones don't stack except for Frenzy pheromone. | |||||||||||||||||||||
 Tail Stab |
Activating tail stab will begin a windup of one second, and upon conclusion, will enable you to launch a two tile attack that deals 1.2 times your maximum melee damage. It requires a direct click on the targets sprite, however, if it is missed, it only incurs a standard slash delay. Additionally, it will always hit the targeted limb.
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Attainable Strains
Strain Abilities
Healer
- Health: 600
| Abilities: | Description: |
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| Pheromones | PASSIVE: The strength of your Pheromones is increased. |
 Apply Salve |
Confer a regenerative buff on your sisters or allied xenomorphs at the cost of your own health. You cannot apply a salve to any xenomorph who is on fire.
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 Plant Lesser Fruit |
Plant a lesser resin fruit on the ground beneath you. They heal directly as much as greater fruit, but do not have the regeneration boost. You may only plant three at a time. Cooldown is 5 seconds.
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So, you are a healer.
You've sacrificed your ability to build resin structures for more health, better pheromones and the ability to heal your sisters. Hooray! This strain is best taken mid-to-lategame when the Queen is not on her ovipositor providing heals, especially on the dropship. However, it would not hurt to switch to Healer once the talls land if you want to help your sisters early. Your pheromones are 'Strong', so you should always at least have one pheromone toggled at all times, preferably the one you and your sisters are currently missing or whichever is currently the weakest. With your Apply Salve ability toggled, Shift+click or middle+click on an alien sister or your queen to give a bit of your health to them. Be careful; spamming clicks could cost you all of your health. Oh, and your life.
Gardener
| Abilities: | Description: | ||||||||||||
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Order Construction |
Order the construction of a hive structure to be built.
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 Resin Surge |
Boost a basic structure's health by 6000 (wall, door, membrane) when used on one for 15 seconds. Create a 3x3 area of sticky resin when used on an unweeded tile. Create a temporary wall (100 health) when used on a weeded tile. Skip 5 seconds when used on a plant, helping mature it. 20 second cooldown. Ranged. Can be used while resting.
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 Switch Fruit Type |
Switch between Unstable, Greater, Spore, Alacrit and Cruor fruit. Icon denotes whichever fruit is currently selected.
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Plant Fruit |
Plant a resin fruit on the ground beneath you.
Can be picked up and fed to other xenos by click dragging it to yourself. If you feed the Queen and she is observing a xeno, with both being on the same z-level then, the observed xeno and the queen both benefit from the fruit.
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So, you are a gardener.
Keep your fruits as close to the front as safely possible, so that fellow sisters can get them easily. Use surge to irritate marines by making doors or walls virtually impenetrable. Use the right fruit for the situation: If there are multiple healers and the queen is on ovi and healing from there, possibly prioritize unstable fruit for shields. If less of those resources are available, plant more greater fruit for bigger heals. You can only have 6 fruit planted at a time, so choose wisely.
Building Tactics
- Try to build nests and place eggs away from the Queen so she will be safe in case a captured host sets off a bomb in the hive.
- If you run out of places to construct structures, make a hive cluster and fill it with plasma; it will spread hiveweeds and allow you to construct more structures.
- If you no longer need a hive cluster, destroy it, then fill the area with regular weeds. Structures stay active even if there are no hive weeds beneath them!
- In large areas that require weeding, space out your weed nodes seven tiles in every direction until you make a square, then place a node in the middle of that square. This saves plasma.
- An alternative strategy to weeding is going as far as you can until you cannot spread the hive any further, then weeding your way back.
- Build Hives with a lot of corners and fairly small chambers. The Marines are fast and have powerful ranged weapons, so force them to fight in tight, cramped spaces and on your terms. Covering floors with sticky resin adds to your advantage by making it virtually impossible to maneuver tactically. In large open areas, build resin walls to block lines of sight and for your sisters to hide behind.
- Always build multiple layers. A single layer can easily be shot through, and once your backline is exposed, your Drones are prone to getting wounded, which will slow down repairs.
- Avoid using multiple layers of resin doors or making the Hive too tight and confusing. The goal is for the humans to suffer should they enter your Hive, not for Aliens to suffer from living in the same Hive as you.
- Keep in mind that Boilers need an unobstructed line of sight to the enemy in order to bombard properly. If you are building fortifications in the field, ask them if they can shoot properly or they'd rather have less walls in front.
- In open spaces, a 2x2 wall can take a beating while providing enough cover for aliens to retreat and regenerate their health. This wall design is important since they allow aliens to close in to the front without being shot at. Doors can be added to clusters of such walls, granting your sisters the element of surprise.
- It is discouraged to build corridors 1 tile wide because aliens will body-block each other. Try to always leave a 2 tile wide corridor. Protip: The Tank and APC are 3 tiles wide.
- Spread the eggs out around the hive to allow easier infecting. Remember that eggs can only be planted on hive weeds, which are spread by the hive core and clusters. Ideally, avoid leaving unplanted eggs laying around so Marines don't steal them.
Combat Tactics
- When the assault begins, try to tag along at a distance. While you are not a frontline combatant you will be needed to plant weeds, spread Pheromones and build defenses to assist the frontlines. Don't be that Drone hiding in the egg room while your sisters scream for nests to be set up and for weeds to be planted in contested areas.
- When the Hive is defending or attacking, Drones should be in the backline placing weeds and defenses for the frontline. Listen carefully to the Hivemind so you can fulfill requests from fellow aliens.
- The Drone is one of the most mobile castes which have access to facehuggers, making it highly desirable to work together with most offensive castes to net the Hive one or two more infected Marines.
- If the Queen dies, you are first in line to replace her. Make sure to stay safe, even excessively so. The last thing the Hive needs after losing its Queen is Drones throwing themselves to the Marines and dying.
Facehuggers
You can pick up Facehuggers by clicking on a mature egg or an egg morpher with an empty hand to open it, then clicking on the facehugger with any intent active to pick it up. Next, click on a host when you're next to it and the facehugger in your selected hand should attach. You have two hands and can use two facehuggers if you click quickly. If you need to return a facehugger back inside of the egg, drop it on top of the egg and after a few seconds it should crawl back inside or click on the empty egg with the hugger in hand.
Drone Evolution
Drones can Evolve into four possible castes:
- The Queen. If the old Queen died, you will have to wait until the Hivemind restores from the frenzy. You may then rise up as the new Queen of the Hive. A sister will have to, however, as a Hive cannot survive long without a Queen. You can check if other Drones want dibs, but if you hear nothing, take one for the team. It's not needed to have full Evolve progress to evolve to a Queen. Be careful: You are very vulnerable if Marines find you alone, so plan on evolving somewhere safe.
- The Burrower trades in the Drones monstrous plasma pool, pheromones, and hive building ability for the ability to make resin traps and build tunnels to help her sisters get around the map more quickly.
- The Hivelord is an even more effective Hive builder, with sturdier resin structures and an insane plasma reserve and regeneration. She also gains a strong movement speed ability allowing her to get to the frontline or away from it at a safe speed.
- The Carrier allows the Drone to specialize in the infection and capture of hosts. She has the ability to store facehuggers and eggs safely around the battlefield for later use She can create hugger traps that act as infectious 'landmines' which will infect individuals that step on them.
Drone Stats
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You can learn more about alien stats here.