No Man’s Sky – How to Destroy a Walker

Most of you probably know that getting to alert level 4 is how you summon a Walker, so this section will be tips to improve your survival getting there.

1. Critical hits
A critical hit occurs when a bullet strikes a specific area on an entity (im not saying enemy because animals have them too) when you score a critical hit, a beep will play and the damage number will show up in yellow, instead of white. also damage will be greatly increased (4x i believe). Usually the mining laser is not able to score critical hits, but the boltcaster can. The critical area on a drone is somewhere around the center of the iris on it’s front. It sounds easy to hit but the area iis small and sometimes doesn’t register. the best guide for critical area on a drone is the armoured drones. armoured drones show up at alert level 2 and they have armour protecting their front. The armour has a small hole in the center of it. if you can get a bullet through the hole, it will most likely be a critical. now for the Quads, which show up at alert level 3. The Quads’ critical area is rather large, but hard to get to. Quads have a red bump on the back of the chassis. The entire red area is the critical area. it is difficult to get to because they are almost always facing directly toward you. As for the Walkers, we will talk about that later.

2. Evasion
Evasion means not being in the way of enemy fire, it is also known as dodging. Dodging a drone’s fire is simple. All you have to do is keep a fair distance between you and the drone, and strafe wile keeing them in your sights. their bullets move slow enough that you can dodge most of their bullets. For Quads, it is mostly the same, however you need to try to stay to the side of them. Their laser has about 180 degrees or less of angle it can fire, however, Quads cannot move while firing and even if you get out of range when they start to fire, they will have to finish their firing cycle before they can move. Also, Quads have a melee attack. they can jump at you from some distance and deal significant damage. however they can only do this to you if you are directly in front of them. they will also jump back if you get too close to it. just get out of the firing area when it charges up, and you will be fine.

This section is where the real action begins. by this point you should have gotten to alert level 4 and are now staring down the Walker itself. so here is how to beat it.

1. Stage one Evasion
the Walker fight is split into 2 “Stages”. The attack on the first stage utilises a laser similar to that of a quad but somewhat more powerful. the laser also moves faster thean a quads laser. you do have more of a warning before firing because the area around the target will begin to glow. when that happens, run. sprint in a circle around the walker a the laser won’t be able to catch you, or you can run between it’s legs, as it does not have a melee attack (you can’t be flattened). If you are behind it, you will see a blue orb on it’s back that looks like a weak point. Ignore it, it’s not. it doesn’t even have a hitbox. Basically for this part of this section, just try to get behind it as fast as you can.

2.Stage one destruction
By now you are probably saying “just tell me how to kill it already”. so i will. Stage 1 is Armour. What you need to do is destroy all of it’s armour, as doing so will cause it to become vulnerable in Stage 2. There are FIVE pieces of armour you need to destroy: upper and lower legs (4) and upper head. what you need to do is shoot the armour in the downtime between laser shots, and reload right before it shoots. you cannot start a reload while sprinting but you can finish one while sprinting. About the upper head armour: it is VERY important that you shoot the upper part of the head, as the lower part is unarmoured and will do nothing in stage one. Once all armour is destroyed, Stage 2 will start.

3.Stage 2
Stage 2 will start with the walker stomping the ground and shooting dozens of plasma missiles into the air, the plasma missiles couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn so you don’t need to worry about them. after this tantrum is over the Walker will begin firing laser bolts at you, similar to a drone. the bolts are slow and easy to dodge so all you have to do is strafe. This is the stage where you can deal direct damage to the walker. This is also the stage where the critical area becomes active. This critical area is unique, as it is vulnerable to mining lasers. So you can use your laser to pinpoint the weak spot then rain lead with the boltcaster. The weak spot is near the blue spot on it’s face, the exact area is hard to describe, and i don’t have any pictures so the best i can do is that if you aim your boltcaster at the blue spot, a good amount of the spread will hit the critical area. The blue spot itself is not a weak point. So the strategy put simply is move in a circle around the walker and shoot at the blue spot with your boltcaster and you should be good.