XCOM 2 Alien Hunters DLC Coming; Adds New Mission, Weapons, and "Ruler" Aliens

XCOM 2 players have a new DLC pack to look forward to next week. Following the Anarchy's Children pack, the new DLC Alien Hunters adds new campaign content, including a new mission, weapons and armor, and a new update to the Avenger's Armory called "Hunter's Lodge." Players can also expect to go up against three new "Ruler" aliens in combat.

The Rulers include the Viper King, the Berserker Queen, and the Archon King. They appear randomly throughout the campaign after completing the new DLC mission and each have their own tactics. However, the Rulers only show up for a limited time, after which they'll escape the map and return in another mission later on. You can see what they look like in the gallery below.

Gallery

The four new weapons include the Bolt Caster, which delivers high damage in single-shots; the Hunter's Axe, a new blade weapon that can be thrown; the ShadowKeeper pistol, a gun that is guaranteed to hit and conceal you if you kill an enemy with it; and the Frost Bomb grenade, which freezes targets temporarily. The catch with these weapons is there's only one of each and if a soldier equipped with them dies, you have to carry their bodies to the Skyranger or you'll lose them permanently.

The new DLC comes with three new armor sets, which you'll have to create with the Ruler aliens' corpses. The armor gives you a higher chance of causing the corresponding Ruler's subordinates to panic--for example, wearing the Viper King's armor is more likely to scare Vipers. The armor sets also grant unique abilities to the user, such as boosters that let you fly around the map.

Alien Hunters arrives alongside a compatibility patch that also makes general bug fixes, optimizes performance, and balances the single player and multiplayer modes.

You need XCOM 2 to play the Alien Hunters DLC, which releases on May 12 for $9.99. The alien invasion strategy game is only available on PC, Mac, and Linux. Developer Firaxis has said it isn't opposed to bringing the game to PS4 and Xbox One but said last year that its focus was on the PC version.

Players can also look out for new perks, weapons, and aliens from the studio behind XCOM: Enemy Unknown's Long War mod. Long War Studios released three mods at XCOM 2's launch and the Toolbox mod in April, which lets players adjust a bunch of different things including camera rotation, UI, and soldier stats.