Hello Commanders! A new XCOM 2 DLC, Alien Hunter , releases May 12 and it is a doozy. It adds a new enemy mechanic centered around a “Ruler” class for basic Vipers, Archons and Berserkers. From the XCOM 2 official site:
These new Rulers, including the Viper King, are quite formidable, Commander. They will show up at random in your campaign, once you’ve completed the new narrative mission, and each will have their own unique behavior and tactics, so don’t expect them to act like their subordinates. If you can’t take out a ruler quick enough, the alien will escape to fight another day. We believe these rulers are incredibly intelligent and are pursuing your soldiers across the globe.
If you happen across a Ruler on a mission and don't kill it, it comes back in future missions. Killing one allows you to use the corpse for custom suits of armor. However, no performance details have been released so it's unclear if Rulers gain XP, strength, abilities etc but it seems a fair assumption that there will also be some kind of penalty for not killing these guys because XCOM.
Firaxis hasn’t revealed all of the new armor sets coming in Alien Hunters save one: the Icarus suit. It will be crafted from one of the fallen Rulers and, like all the new weapons, is a prototype item that is destroyed if equipped to a soldier that dies in battle (and whose body is unrecovered). The Icarus suit allows an XCOM soldier to fly and, from the sound of it, it doesn’t have any kind of cooldown or limit like the Archangel suit .
The new Alien Hunters DLC will also add some new weapons to the mix too:
Bolt Caster - high damage single-shot weapon
Hunters Axe - a powerful new blade weapon that can be thrown at enemies or used to dispatch foes at close range
Shadowkeeper Pistol - has the Shadowfall ability that is guaranteed to hit and will place its user in concealment if the enemy is killed
Frost Bomb grenade - temporarily freeze targets
And with any new XCOM 2 DLC comes a new patch that Firaxis said will include standard bug fixes, optimizations and balance tweaks you'd expect, but no notes released yet so we don't know specifically what's being addressed.
Alien Hunters will be available for download on May 12 for $9.99, or as part of a larger Reinforcement Pack collection for $19.99.
