Any way to actually deal with warpers, or do I just need to live in fear from now on?

[Excessive Paranoia]

Upon returning to the game after a year away, I've been running into massive problems dealing with these things. I like the idea of warpers, I really do... bio-engineered hunter-killers designed to clean up the mistakes of their creators and armed with advanced combat mechanics. On paper at least, they seem to present a great end-game threat. That said, they have been steadily ruining my end-game experience, not because they are difficult to deal with, but rather they seem impossible to deal with... They seem to be everywhere in the biomes where they are present, they have massive aggro spheres, and are able to detect and attack you though many layers of walls (I was warped out of the heart of a wreck in the grand reef and nearly killed before I had any idea what was going on), and even pull you out of your vehicles, negating any protection they might provide.

In practice, this has meant that if I'm in an area with warpers, I rarely leave the safety of my cyclops and if I do, I beeline straight to what I want to grab / scan / do, and then straight back. More often then not, I just stay away from those zones, which is upsetting as the grand reef was always one of my favorite biomes in the past. As far as I can tell, you can't attack them in any way because they will just teleport out, only to return a few seconds later and attack you again. While I have my own opinion about how these things should be changed, what I really want to know is if there are any decent methods of dealing with them other than being helplessly teleported every few minutes and eating a steady diet of medkits?

[redeyedraven]

You can try ramming them with Cyclops' flank speed setting, at your own risk.

Personally, I just bypass them and the only time they got really dangerous for me was in the lava-zones (one of the warpers almost got me killed by one of the Sea Dragon leviathans there by getting me out of my prawn).

Most of the time they're just annoying IF they manage to warp you out of the vehicle.

On rare occasion there are more of them though and when more than one of them manage to teleport you around, you lose a lot of health, so bring medkits. The reinforced dive-suit will only mitigate their melee-attack (and their melee-attack is rarely used).

[Excessive Paranoia]

Originally posted by redeyedraven:

You can try ramming them with Cyclops' flank speed setting, at your own risk.

Personally, I just bypass them and the only time they got really dangerous for me was in the lava-zones (one of the warpers almost got me killed by one of the Sea Dragon leviathans there by getting me out of my prawn).

Most of the time they're just annoying IF they manage to warp you out of the vehicle.

On rare occasion there are more of them though and when more than one of them manage to teleport you around, you lose a lot of health, so bring medkits.

So basically the answer is no?

[redeyedraven]

Originally posted by Excessive Paranoia:

Originally posted by redeyedraven:

You can try ramming them with Cyclops' flank speed setting, at your own risk.

Personally, I just bypass them and the only time they got really dangerous for me was in the lava-zones (one of the warpers almost got me killed by one of the Sea Dragon leviathans there by getting me out of my prawn).

Most of the time they're just annoying IF they manage to warp you out of the vehicle.

On rare occasion there are more of them though and when more than one of them manage to teleport you around, you lose a lot of health, so bring medkits.

So basically the answer is no?

If you want a simple answer, I tend to say 'yes'. If you keep moving it's harder for them to teleport you out of your vehicle, so you CAN play around them for the most part. They're just dangerous if they actually manage to warp you around, especially when your health is fairly low.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Originally posted by redeyedraven:

Originally posted by Excessive Paranoia:

So basically the answer is no?

If you want a simple answer, I tend to say 'yes'. If you keep moving it's harder for them to teleport you out of your vehicle, so you CAN play around them for the most part. They're just dangerous if they actually manage to warp you around, especially when your health is fairly low.

The problem I have with this approach is that it turns forays into the grand reef into episodes of benny hill with yackety sax playing in the background while I dodge teleporter balls the whole time. This is made orders of magnitude worse when you have a new warper spawn every 25m or so through some areas which means there is almost no way to pass through there without aggroing at least one of them.

[redeyedraven]

Originally posted by Excessive Paranoia:

Originally posted by redeyedraven:

If you want a simple answer, I tend to say 'yes'. If you keep moving it's harder for them to teleport you out of your vehicle, so you CAN play around them for the most part. They're just dangerous if they actually manage to warp you around, especially when your health is fairly low.

The problem I have with this approach is that it turns forays into the grand reef into episodes of benny hill with yackety sax playing in the background while I dodge teleporter balls the whole time. This is made orders of magnitude worse when you have a new warper spawn every 25m or so through some areas which means there is almost no way to pass through there without aggroing at least one of them.

From my personal experience there I can tell you that the warpers tend to be busy zipping around in a fashion that makes it look random.

They occasionaly lock on to you as well, but in my Seamoth I was not caught by them down there. In my Prawn on the other hand, yes. Just make sure there are not too many of them close to you because of their "chain-teleporting" that can kill you in only three hits at full health.

Most of the time they just teleport themselves around and "warp in" local predators, which is less of a problem if you have a Seaglide with you in case you need to get back to your vehicle.

With a Prawn, and some patience you can also try to kill them with drill or claw, but that's a game of patience. After each hit they just relocate. The good news is that when they just relocate they don't warp YOU around.

Cyclops at max speed can kill them by ramming; you still need time to accellerate and your ship will sustain a good amount of damage from that though.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Originally posted by redeyedraven:

Originally posted by Excessive Paranoia:

The problem I have with this approach is that it turns forays into the grand reef into episodes of benny hill with yackety sax playing in the background while I dodge teleporter balls the whole time. This is made orders of magnitude worse when you have a new warper spawn every 25m or so through some areas which means there is almost no way to pass through there without aggroing at least one of them.

From my personal experience there I can tell you that the warpers tend to be busy zipping around in a fashion that makes it look random.

They occasionaly lock on to you as well, but in my Seamoth I was not caught by them down there. In my Prawn on the other hand, yes. Just make sure there are not too many of them close to you because of their "chain-teleporting" that can kill you in only three hits at full health.

As best as I can tell, its not random at all. I spent about 10 mins watching the one that teleported me out of the middle of a wreck before going anywhere near it because I tend to avoid working at night so I had nothing better to do than sit on the bridge of my cyclops and watch it. It always warped into and out of the same points in space and always after about the same amount of time. I think the issue isn't that they behave randomly, but that they have a large aggro radius, are not blocked by walls, and there are far more of them than there should be. In my opinion, they should be rare like reapers if they are going to be so powerful.

[redeyedraven]

I added some notes to my last post.

[happyPig]

The AI predicts fire with your current movement. You can use this for your advantage.
Try move and stop, move and stop. Tapping left and right or keys for sub up and down also helps. So you mess with the AI calculations.
In other words: Keep moving but never in one direction.

[Grim]

Warpers used to be easier. You could hit them with anything and they would just teleport away and leave you alone.

Warpers got a big buff in this update, though. they are physically larger, it takes multiple strikes to get rid of them, and they don't go away for very long, typically coming back to harass you some more in a few moments.

They become a bigger problem in the deep grand reef where you can encounter multiple warpers flanked by multiple crabsquids and between the teleporting and EMP blasts can make for a frustrating experience. Luckily if you last long enough the crabsquids will actually start to fight the warpers.

The only other way that might work is supposedly if you release and infected fish, the warper will go after it and leave you alone (for a little while). Never tested it myself.

[Andromalius]

Originally posted by herugrim:

The only other way that might work is supposedly if you release and infected fish, the warper will go after it and leave you alone (for a little while). Never tested it myself.

Is there a good source of infected fish, or a way to infect fish?

[redeyedraven]

Originally posted by Andromalius:

Is there a good source of infected fish, or a way to infect fish?

They are found just about everywhere. Keep your eyes open for that green glow that sticks out.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Originally posted by herugrim:

The only other way that might work is supposedly if you release and infected fish, the warper will go after it and leave you alone (for a little while). Never tested it myself.

That's something I'm going to try, though I doubt it will work as well as hoped as most hand-carryable fish are killed in less than a second by warpers. I still want to try it though because it will be interesting to test whether or not the warper AI will allow target switching if more infected fish are discovered. It might be a workable strategy to drop some infected fish somewhere nearby to catch the attention of the warper to give some room to work.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Originally posted by TH3R3_W4S An Attempt:

If you upgrade to the repulsion cannon you can propel those warpers into walls etc... tends to keep them quiet for a short while. While exploring lava areas in prawn suit I made sure repulsion cannon was in a quick slot so if I did get warped out I could equip and fire quickly to avoid damage.

I'd been thinking about that, just hadn't gotten around to it since copper has been somewhat rare for me so far. I take it that it doesn't fire them out of visual range like it does for everything smaller?

[Blud]

Hopefully they will fine tune the damage on the Cyclops. It seems to made out of paper and is too easily damaged by the wildlife in the game. Getting out to repair 3 times of more and suppressing 2 fires while doing a slow decent under the flaoting islands just isn't fun.

[Excessive Paranoia]

Originally posted by Blud:

Hopefully they will fine tune the damage on the Cyclops. It seems to made out of paper and is too easily damaged by the wildlife in the game. Getting out to repair 3 times of more and suppressing 2 fires while doing a slow decent under the flaoting islands just isn't fun.

IDK, after reading just how paper thin the cyclops is now, I've stopped taking it to places where its going to be attacked. Instead I park it nearby and then use the seamoth or prawn and then just use the larger sub as extra storage. It's really cut into its usefulness rather than making it more relevant, but unless the devs decide not to be stubborn and make adjustments to its survivability, its what we have to work with.