Omega Creature Special Skills Gallery
Hello Riftbreakers!
As we promised last week, today we will look at all the special skills we have developed for the most powerful enemies in the game - Omega creatures. These additional abilities expand the skillset of the creatures you regularly encounter in the game beyond anything you’ve seen. The Omega skills come in all roles - offensive, defensive, and supportive, requiring you to adapt your combat style for each encounter. This article will show you all the skills individually, clearly explaining each. We will also tell you about our experience while developing them, including discovering some absolutely overpowered combinations we experienced first-hand. Let’s dive in.
First, let’s quickly recap what we know about Omega creatures and their skills so far. They are special remakes of the creatures you have seen on Galatea 37. The difference is that the creatures of this strain are much more dangerous than their regular counterparts - which is reflected in their unique appearance. Omega creatures are beefier stat-wise and can also receive additional traits. The higher the game’s difficulty level, the more abilities a creature can receive. In the game's early stages, you won’t encounter Omegas at all, or they will only receive an HP boost. However, as you progress, they will start receiving additional skills. One Omega creature at the highest difficulty level can have up to four abilities. Now that we’re all up to speed on what they are, let’s see the full list of the Omega abilities.
We used a regular Fungor as our example skill "carrier", because it is a slow unit that does not have any additional skills. This will allow you to take a good look at each skill individually.
These attacks come in various shapes and forms. The attack patterns get more complex as the Omega creatures grow stronger.Cascade Attacks - These attacks are telegraphed by warning zones appearing on the ground. After a few moments, acidic explosions, lighting strikes, or underground rocks appear in the marked areas. On higher difficulty levels, more danger zones appear. You will have to move around a lot not to get hit!
Unless you can outheal the damage, melee weapons against Aura-equipped enemies are not the best idea.Damage Aura - A true classic. The radius around the Omega creature is lava (or some other equally unpleasant element)! If you stand close to the creature, you will continue to receive a steady stream of damage. Attack the target from afar or find a way to outheal the damage.
Drones are always on the move and you have to be as well!
Drone Spawner - If you thought that Baxmoth drone swarms were terrifying, just wait until you see an Omega with this ability! This skill allows the creature to spawn an endless stream of aggressive drones that will happily attack you and your structures. You must never stop moving unless you want an express trip to the HQ.
This Omega has no time to waste - there are millions of eggs to lay!
Egg Spawner - This ability allows the Omega creature to spawn eggs that will hatch into full-sized creatures after a few seconds. This supplies the attack wave with a never-ending stream of cannon fodder. However, it’s not as bad as it would seem - you can destroy the eggs before they hatch.
Fungor recovered all its lost HP in just one lap around the lake. However, if you keep dealing damage, the heal won't trigger.
Healing Aura - A support skill that restores the health of all enemy units in a large radius around the Omega creature. The creature endowed with this ability can also heal itself, meaning you can’t leave the fight halfway and return another day. You have to defeat it all at once.
The meteors get more powerful and accurate later in the game. However, since they don't target you specifically, meteors are a threat for your structures as well.
Meteor Spawner - The Omega creature can send a targeted meteor strike at you with this ability. There is a big difference from the cascade attacks we mentioned earlier - the meteors do not follow any pattern. You only have a fraction of a second to escape, so practice dodging!
Taking down the source of the Resistance Aura is a priority.
Resistance Aura - Thanks to this ability, all the creatures in a radius around the Omega will receive a meaningful damage resistance boost, including the big guy! This makes your targets significantly harder to take down.
How do you like chaos and a never-ending stream of cannon fodder?
Resurrect Aura - Omega creatures have been taking lessons from Necrodons. Thanks to this skill, they can revive units that have fallen in battle. If there is no one they can revive (unlikely), they will instead summon a pack of creatures out of thin air.
Shockwave will punish you for getting too close. It will also prevent you from teleporting around the map.
Shockwave - This ability triggers when you get too close to the enemy unit. It will send a shockwave pulse, dealing damage in a radius around the creature and also turning off your minimap and the ability to teleport. It is better to stay away as far as possible when you see it.
In case you're wondering - this is just a regular version of the Swarm Spawner skill. Omegas can also be surrounded by Ultra Canceroth. You're welcome.
Swarm Spawner - The Omega creature with this ability is surrounded by a swarm of Canceroth cells. They serve as additional protection from attacks and deal a fair share of damage. You have to destroy these cells before you get to the Omega. Be quick - they will grow back after a while!
You can either fight, or try to escape. Be quick though - these walls can pop up very quickly.
Waller - A creature with this ability will create walls that severely limit your movement options. You will have to break through these walls to escape or press on despite the limited maneuverability and deal with the source of the problem.
Now that you get the whole picture, you can see that Omega creatures can get more than one ability (but not multiples of one!), which can lead to some overpowered combinations. Imagine our shock when we first encountered a creature with both Healing and Resistance Auras on a Survival run. We had only reached Advanced weapons at that time. The beast was absolutely unkillable for us and ended our run prematurely. Similarly, the combination of Waller and Drones or a Damage Aura has almost halved the population of gamepads around the office. Based on the playtesters’ feedback, we preemptively excluded some combinations of Omega skills to prevent further emotional damage. We will continue making changes to ensure that Omegas remain tough but fair and beatable.
Do you have any ideas for more skills that we could use? Let us know in the comments! If you want to have a chance to fight these creatures before the official release, sign up for the Closed Co-Op Beta below. Everyone who signs up will receive access to the Beta for them and their friends before the testing period is over.
[h2]To sign up for The Riftbreaker Multiplayer Beta please fill in the following form:[/h2]
We reserve the right to contact only select participants, but we will do our best to accommodate everyone!
[h3]A very important PS: We are aware of an issue that causes the game to crash on Nvidia RTX GPUs when raytracing is enabled. This issue arose with the release of the new drivers for these GPUs. We are working on the issue and we are narrowing down on the source of the problem. However, in the meantime, if you are experiencing crashes turn raytracing options off in the Advanced Graphics menu. We apologize for these issues and we are doing our best to fix them as quickly as possible.[/h3]
EXOR Studios
The first nest you find in the game is in the Prologue mission. Although we won't be making this one any different, it portrays the issue with the event altogether - shooting at an immobile, defenseless object is not that engaging.
Things change a little when there are a couple of nests involved, and the difficulty level is a bit higher. Some creatures try to stop you from wrecking their homes, but they are no match for your firepower.
After giving them an HP boost and some abilities, the nests are a much bigger problem now! The ones you can see here have one ability each: one shoots fireballs from the sky, another sends bursts of lightning, and the third keeps healing the other two. While we won't be spawning the nests so close to one another, this gives you an idea of what we wanted to achieve.
More nests, more chaos! Again, this is a testing situation, and the nests won't ever be this close, but the chaos is glorious! Drones, pattern attacks, healing - they have it all. Prepare your best gear!
A blast from the past! In this build from 2019, the upgraded buildings were marked only with a number hovering over the rooftop. It looked bad and was almost invisible in real gameplay.
As a middle ground, we added plates with numbers that denoted the upgrade level. It worked fine, and those numbers can still be found on some buildings. Still, we could do better.
In the end, the most commonly built structures that are likely to appear in large numbers got individual models for each level.
The new AI Hub building levels.
The new Repair Tower building levels.
The new Liquid Material Storage building levels.
Level 1 AI Hub might be a bit of a shock at first, as it doesn’t feature the prominent green light that we've become used to. Look how tiny that thing is! Level 3 was significantly beefed up, and the screens all around the structure give it a more advanced look. We used an animated texture on this model, which worked well in this case!
The Liquid Material Storage had to keep the pipe attachments in the same place, as well as the windows that showed the kind of liquid inside. That limited the options slightly. However, you can easily see the progression from Level 1 to Level 3.
Finally, the Repair Towers. Level 1 has lost a little bit of its heft. We wouldn’t leave the HQ unsupervised with only use these towers to protect it. However, Level 3 got much beefier and looks like a beacon of… repair.
The most basic example of the new system in action. The Biocache dropped a unique item and some resources for good measure. The higher the rarity of the Biocache, the better your chances for more advanced gear and even more resources.
The weapons you find as loot have unique properties, like cluster projectiles, for example. They are tuned to be meaningful and trigger often, so that it's not just a "paper" chance for a bonus effect.
Unique drops are plentiful, but not guaranteed. Worst case scenario - you get a resource fountain. Biocaches are guaranteed to drop Carbonium and Ironium now, in addition to other resources.
It is entirely possible to fill out your entire inventory without touching the crafting menu even once, but you have to rely on RNG to get what you want. The choice is yours!
Since Omega creatures are the guardians of Bioanomalies, you can get often get two rewards for the price of one! Here, we got a Mortar from the Baxmoth Omega, and a Repeater from the anomaly.
The underground treasures also give you a chance for a unique item - and that's in addition to other loot inside. We're not removing anything for the sake of the new system!