Rockpox Swarm

[Aratorin]

Ok, so I've got 310 hours in the game. Something like 500 missions. All during Season 3. I've got 10+ Error cubes and Bittergems, so "rare" stuff happens pretty frequently. I've fought lots and lots of rockpox glyphids, but until today, 100% of them have been at infection spikes.

Suddenly today, on a mining mission, miles away from any infection spikes, I get mission control yelling at me about a rockpox swarm. Then like 10 Rockpox Praetorians show up. Which is pretty awful in close quarters, deep snow, during a freaking blizzard. But not only did that happen, it happened 5 times during the mission.

Is this like the rarest event in the game, and I just got extremely unlucky, or does some other factor trigger rockpox swarms? I understand RNG, but it seems extremely unlikely that with just simple RNG, I encounter something for the first time over 300 hours in, and it happens 5 times during that one mission.

[Auton_Baz]

Rockpox swarms are really common in my experience, and they can appear anytime as long as the mission still has an active spike somewhere. This is part of why you have to clear the spikes as fast as you can, especially on point extraction.

EDIT: theres no trigger, they just replace regular swarms, similar to how random dreads or mactera/praets/swarmer-only swarms do.

[Smetrix]

Probably never noticed since most people rush getting those done first.

[Aratorin]

Originally posted by Smetrix:

Probably never noticed since most people rush getting those done first.

You can't really rush them on a mining mission, when they spawn in the final chamber.

[Frisky]

rockpox swarms imo are decently common in litho missions, not common enough to where you see it every mission but theres a pretty solid chance of getting one

they suck if I'm being honest, massive groups of rockpox basically murders your ammo economy for the whole mission even after you've dealt with them

[Chibbity]

Am I the only one who finds Rockpox waves to be typically easier than normal ones? I mean they are covered in weakpoints!

I guess it depends on your build though, to be fair.

If I'm running something AOE focused it can definitely be a struggle.

[Mr.Pessimism]

pics or it didn't happen

[SCamp]

Originally posted by Chibbity:

Am I the only one who finds Rockpox waves to be typically easier than normal ones? I mean they are covered in weakpoints!

I guess it depends on your build though, to be fair.

If I'm running something AOE focused it can definitely be a struggle.

Breach Cutter, Beyblades and Burning Hell are all of the AOE that pop weakpoints that I remember (it's been so long since I've seen a rockpox swarm).

[Frisky]

Originally posted by Chibbity:

Am I the only one who finds Rockpox waves to be typically easier than normal ones? I mean they are covered in weakpoints!

I guess it depends on your build though, to be fair.

If I'm running something AOE focused it can definitely be a struggle.

it all depends on class and loadout

someone like bread cutter engineer might have an easy time or minigun gunner

but thunderhead and hurricane are pretty much a coin toss on if they actually work against rockpox grunt boils, scout is scout and the best driller has is using his drills to kill 1 praetorian then getting stunned through the infection build rate

[Glockenspeal]

don't worry about it new season will start soon and rockpox waves will vanish into oblivion unless it becomes a new mission type/hazard

[LT2483]

There's something weird about rockpox swarms in that they are fairly rare, but once they do appear in a mission, all the swarms after it in the same mission have a really high chance of being a rockpox swarm.

Like, I only see rockpox swarms once in every 10 or so infected missions, but in all those missions that did get a rockpox swarm, I think I've only had one mission where I only got one rockpox swarm, and every other mission had two or more.