[Dev Diary] Unit Deep Dive

It won't be long now before the new unit update arrives! To get ready for the update and give you the best chance against the swarm, it's about time we took a deep dive into Units. Enjoy everything you need to know about who you're controlling and the enemies they'll face. Steam post image

Your Allies

You have four units to work with, each one is built to answer a different question on the battlefield. And the new and upcoming unit is also going to have its role to play.

Knight

The Knight is the answer to “how do I hold a line.” He swings slowly but hits hard. The Knight wants to be in front, and is the unit you do not need to babysit.

Arbalist

The Arbalist is our mid-range unit, the ideal backup to the Knight. Her range lets her engage threats before they reach your defenses, and her damage output scales well when you can funnel enemies into tight corridors or chokepoints where many Knights would struggle because of the limited space.

Priest

The Priest is the support. Fast attack cadence, lowest armor in the roster (tied with Pyromaniac at zero), and a dedicated Heal Beam ability. We have seen some players use Priests with Knights as a mobile impenetrable wall. I am looking at you Ganun ;-)

Pyromaniac

The Pyromaniac is the glass cannon. The biggest hit in the game, strong armor penetration, and almost no way to survive a mistake. He has the smallest health pool, no armor, and he is slow. But boy does this unit melt the Swarm with its AoE damage.

Steam post image Knights and Arbalists band together to take down the Spawner.

The Enemies

Hatchings

On the Swarm side, the Hatchling is the baseline swarmer. Barely any HP, no armor, melee only. On its own, it is almost harmless. But that is not the point. The Swarm sends dozens of them, and left alone on our precious planet, Ulora, they will grow into something far worse.

Warrior

The Warrior is a grown-up Hatchling. More HP, armor, and the scythe-like claws have matured into something that can actually slice through defenses with their armor penetration. Keep these away from your Arbalists either way, or you might hear some groaning sounds!

Adult

The Adult is the Swarm's frontline bruiser. More HP and armor than the Warrior, and better armor penetration. It does not hit the hardest in the Swarm family, but it is the hardest to put down while it is grinding through your defenses. It demands attention not because of its damage, but because it just does not stop.

Brute

The Brute is also melee and built to be a wall that hits back. More HP and more armor than anything else the Swarm sends your way, plus serious damage and armor penetration to match. Where the Warrior is a wall you have to clear, the Brute is a wall that punishes you for trying.

Scorpling

The Scorpling is the ranged harasser. It has a long aggro range, wide vision, and throws splash shots from a safe distance. But it fires slowly and has a minimum attack range, meaning it cannot shoot you up close at all. Close the gap, and it is helpless. Let it sit at range, and it will chip your army apart.

Scorpion

The Scorpion is the bigger, slower version of that same threat. Same long range, same minimum attack range, same extended aggro, but hits way harder and fires even slower. If left alive, this unit will make sure that your precious defences and units behind walls are joining one of the Deities up there.

Tunneler

The Tunneler burrows in from a distance and sets up shop near your base. It does not fight directly. What it does is spit out waves of Swarm units from its bowels, and it escalates with each wave it sends. The longer it lives, the tougher and more numerous the units it produces.

A Tunneler that goes unanswered for long enough will be sending Adults and Brutes at you while the main Swarm hits your walls from the other side. It shows up on the minimap once you spot it. Prioritize it.

Spitter

The Spitter is a stationary ranged attacker. Planted in the ground, long reach, spits once in a while, but it is AoE. And what it spits melts through armor. Its main purpose is to defend the hive and its eggs.

Steam post image

Spawner

The Spawner moves slowly and walls and does no direct damage, but it lobs eggs from its cloaca that hatch into new Swarm units. The Spawner is heavily armored, but right after its egg-lobbing ability, it becomes vulnerable. Are you going to prioritize killing the eggs before they hatch, or are you going to target the Spawner?

The real threat is not the Spawner itself, it is what it leaves behind if you aggro and ignore it. Kill it before it has time to turn a quiet corner of the map into a new problem after aggroing it.

Swarm Best Practices

It is tempting to pick the right unit for a given threat. In practice, composition matters more than any single matchup. The Priest keeps the rest of your army standing. The Knight buys the time everyone else needs. The Arbalist clears the swarm, so your heavier units do not drown in chip damage. The Pyromaniac melts what the rest cannot get through.

A good army is a combination of them all, covering each other's weaknesses. This is without taking the Arcanum into account, your customizable talent tree. With the right upgrades, you could do a one-unit-only run and still tear through the Swarm!

...But beware, not all Swarm will go down so easily, even with the right combination.

The Brute is our most dangerous swarm unit, and it is not close. Most HP, most armor, hardest hit, highest armor penetration in the whole Swarm. It comes in melee range and brings all of that with it.

The Scorpion gets the honorable mention for completely different reasons. It will not win a brawl, but it does not need to. Long range, extended aggro, the widest vision of any enemy in the game, and a slow, deliberate fire rate that wears your army down from a distance you cannot always answer. It sees further and commits to the fight earlier than its smaller scorpion sibling. The Scorpion does not chase you. It just makes sure you eventually have to come to it.

CableHook Games Personal Favorite

Design-wise, it is the new Knight, and it is not even close. The old version was still the sci-fi Knight model from an earlier version of the project. He was fine, but he never really really fit the theme. The new one looks like he is actually part of the army. Seeing him on the battlefield next to the rest of the units was one of those small moments where the whole game felt a bit more like itself.

Favorite unit to play is a different question, and honestly, it shifts with whatever Arcanum build we are running at the time. I (Davey) keep coming back to mass Arbalists. There is something very satisfying about a volley of bouncing bolts because of the Ricochet Essence, and seeing people on the Discord share their own versions of that build has been one of the best parts of development. If that sounds like your thing, come hang out with us on Discord!

Don't go into Ulora alone, take these tips!

There is one setting we want to point at, because we think it is underrated: every unit has a target selection mode, and it is one of the more powerful tools at your disposal.

The options are Closest, HighestMaxHP, HighestArmor, and Random.

On paper, that sounds like a small thing. In practice, it changes how the unit fights. A slow heavy hitter set to HighestMaxHP will not waste its shot finishing off a Hatchling that is also one-shottable for the Arbalist, so the damage lands where it actually matters.

An armor-penetration build paired with HighestArmor targeting keeps picking the fight it was built for, instead of chipping whatever happens to be closest. Random is there too, and it is exactly as messy as it sounds, but there are compositional reasons to want it. Think of the mass Arbalist build I mentioned earlier with the Ricochet Essence, this makes your Arbalists super efficient AoE damagers.

It is just a button, but once you start thinking about your army with it in mind, your whole army feels less like a group of units and more like a plan!

The Next Unit Sneak Peek

We are not ready to name it yet, but the design problem is easy to talk about. Right now, when the Swarm is already at your walls, and there is a Scorpion throwing attacks from the back, you do not have a good way to tackle this, that is what we are trying to resolve.

And that is all the hints you are going to get!

Thank you for reading! We hope this gives you a leg up against the Swarm, and we can't wait to release the next unit very soon!

See you in Ulora,

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