XCOM 2 ’s Alien Hunter s DLC is upon us and, not surprisingly, the new Ruler ADVENT are a real fothermucker. The Viper King is the first of the new baddies you’ll encounter, and if you’re doing the DLC as a second (or seventh) playthrough your squad will struggle to survive him. Fortunately, after a few trial and error rage quit sessions I figured out a few tips for how to survive (and eventually defeat) XCOM 2 ’s Viper King.
The Viper King Is Not Meant To Be Beaten
The very first thing you need to realize is you will not be beating the Viper King on your first encounter (again, assuming you’re doing the DLC as a playthrough). His health is exponentially higher than that of your entire squad combined. And, like all the other new Ruler units, he moves after every squad action, not the turn itself. So you’ll find him and, say, move a ranger closer to get a shotgun blast. But as soon as the ranger finishes moving, it’s the Viper King’s turn again, and he’s going to do any number of awful things to that nearby ranger. From the XCOM 2 blog :
The Viper King’s move set includes:
Choke, an upgraded version of the Bind ability that deals more damage and has a chance to knock the target unconscious
Freezing Breath, a deadly area-of-effect attack that can freeze multiple targets simultaneously
Huge amount of health that will take multiple engagements to deplete
Will summon a portal to flee battle after devastating your soldiers or being chased off
The first few encounters your goal is to knock off enough health so that he summons a portal. To do this, the best plan is distance. Once you realize the Viper King is going to appear on your mission the best strategy is to group up (but not too close because he WILL use Freezing Breath and that has a grenade-sized AOE) and move at a snail’s pace and keep at least one or two soldiers on Overwatch. You want to bait him out so that you can get a few shots in once he appears. Overwatch is the only chance you have to get more that one shot off on him per turn. And a good head start goes a very long way. The longer he’s out there the worse it gets.
Choke And Stagger
The Viper King’s goto move is Choke. He wraps up a soldier, applies pressure, and you have about one to two ACTIONS (not turns) to save the poor schmuck being choked. You can break the Choke by shooting him, which is why it’s imperative your soldiers stay near each other. If you need to buy a little time you can heal the chokee, so if you’re lucky to have a Specialist with Combat Medic you can help someone who’s been caught out of position.
Once you break the choke you need to pour on the fire. Sharpshooters tend t be the best counter against the Viper King. They can do lots of damage and keep a safe distance. Try to move your weaker soldiers towards the Sharpshooters line of sight and draw the Viper King into position. He is very rarely concerned about cover so getting him in the open isn’t too difficult, and as long as you have a well positioned squad with sightlines he can be scared off. But don’t get too attached to your Rookies. Sometimes the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and leaving a decoy for the Viper King to engage can mean heading home with three soldiers instead of not at all.
Grenades, Grenades, Grenades
Another problem in fighting the Viper King is his propensity to dodge shots. All Vipers have a high dodge chance, so it’s natural the Viper King shrug off more of theo 75 percent than you’d like. Grenades are guaranteed damage, though. And the Viper King doesn’t have much environmental awareness. You can sometimes catch him next to a car or truck or other explosive object.
A grenade plus an explosion bonus can do up to 9 damage, which is a lot in the early game when your squad still has conventional weapons. So if you find yourself missing a shot over and over, try lobbing a grenade instead. It might seem wasteful to use all of your squad’s explosives so quickly but, trust me, getting this guy off the map is a priority.
He can’t be poisoned, unfortunately, so I am hesitant to use the gas grenade. Especially because he will pull soldiers towards him from across the map with a tongue attack, and they’ll get poisoned if he drags them through a gas cloud. Better to save the gas attack for the handful of weaker enemies that normally accompanies him on the map.
The Purple Portal Means Its Almost Over … For Now
The Viper King can leave just as quickly as he arrives. If you happen to encounter him on a mission with a turn limit, good luck . Best to let him run as soon as he summons his portal so you can get back on track to finishing the objective. I fought him on a 12 turn mission and couldn’t finish it even though I ran him off with a few turns left, so I had to restart the whole thing and make killing him my first priority. Which isn’t always easy since he is aware of your squad position and won’t stay in the same place. So you’ll reload a save and run to where you thought he was and he might not be there.
If you’re not on a time crunch, don’t relax when he summons the escape portal. That’s when you can get aggressive because he won’t be around much longer. Pull someone out of cover for a better shot, set up an overwatch on his escape route, do whatever you can to knock off another bit of health before he’s gone. The less he leaves with, the less he has when you meet him on your next encounter.
It’s worth mentioning that the repeater attachment, which offers a low percentage chance to instantly kill an enemy, does work on the Viper King. Obviously there’s no way to guarantee you’ll have one if you do a new playthrough, but anyone who is checking out the DLC with their end game squads would be wise to stock up on repeaters before heading into the field. I wouldn’t be surprised if Firaxis patches that out soon. As XCOM loving redditors point out , it kind of kills the fun of the DLC if you blast away one of the challenging, cool bosses you paid cash money to play with.
Got any tips for beating the Viper King? Any thoughts on the new DLC? Lets us know in the comments!
