Going to open this by saying revenants are, mechanically speaking, one of the weakest antagonists in the game. The notion that they’re overpowered or difficult to deal with is rooted entirely in ignorance of their weaknesses - this guide aims to fix that.
Remember to use this guide responsibly - It’s not especially good for the round when antagonists gets dunked on immediately, and this guide is going to teach you as a player how to do this to revenants. Remember to stay in-character and weigh the benefits of the round as a whole before utilizing your gamer knowledge of any antagonist.
Basic Weaknesses and Info
- The null rod and its variants do extreme damage to revenants and will leave them as a pile of residue before they can hope to respond if caught while stunned. The chaplain is the greatest foe of any revenant and should be called in to exorcise evil spirits.
- Holy Water and Salt both impede revenants - they cannot enter any tile that has been affected by either substance. Both can be easily spread over large areas using smoke machines, spray bottles and chemical grenades
- Revenants can only feed on victims that are either in crit, stamcrit or sleeping. If the chemist isn’t busy making grenades see if they’re willing to make stimulant drugs and they might save a life.
- Using any ability except telepathy and phase shift costs the revenant some of its life force, reducing its current HP. This HP will regenerate up to a fairly low maximum, though this maximum can be increased through the consumption of high quality (living) souls.
- Additionally, using any ability except telepathy and phase shift causes the revenant to be stunned in place for at least a few seconds, and unable to phase shift for eight seconds.
- If a revenant uses multiple abilities back to back, the vulnerable periods are stacked leaving them vulnerable for much longer than they otherwise would be.
- All three of the above points mean a reckless revenant will be extremely vulnerable to aggressive crew members.
- When you kill a revenant, pick up the residue and throw it. Revenants will revive after a short timer if their residue is not scattered. If you think a revenant has been killed prematurely and you want to be a bro, pick the residue up and play dumb with it IC until it vanishes and then be shocked.
Individual Abilities and how to deal with them
Defile
- Rusts tiles, opens various containers and causes very minor damage to glass. Also removes holy water and salt within most of vision range of the revenant.
- Generally harmless to players and nothing needs to be done with regards to this ability.
Overload
- Costs 40 HP to cast.
- Causes nearby lights the revenant has line-of-sight with to shock all mobs within three tiles after a two second delay.
- Cannot be used in areas without wall-mounted lights - if you are being harassed by a revenant with shocks, consider removing some wall lights to give the attack blind spots. This is especially important in areas with excessive amounts of lights such as medbay. PDAs and Flashlights all provide safe light.
- Because of the initial delay, the revenant is vulnerable both before and after using this ability, especially if they manage to position themselves poorly in relation to lights.
Blight
- Costs 50 HP to cast.
- Infects nearby humanoids with a disease which prevents stamina regeneration and very gradually drains stamina. Upon reaching stamcrit the victims are locked in stamcrit for an extended period, after which the disease is automatically cured.
- This disease may be very easily cured with holy water, which can be provided in copious amounts by a chaplain (use holy book on a water tank to convert the entire thing) or ordered in limited quantities via cargo.
- In the absence of holy water, this disease may be cured by… resting. Literally just lay down, you don’t even need a bed. All you have to do is not move until you get some sparkles and a notification that says you feel better. This takes 30 seconds and it is recommended to do it away from wall-mounted lights for hopefully obvious reasons.
Malfunction
- Costs 60 HP to cast.
- Causes a relatively small EMP and has a high chance to emag machines which are possible to emag, and is guaranteed to emag bots.
- Station bots are a massive liability if there is a revenant about, especially medibots which will inject lethal amounts of chloral hydrate when emagged leaving high quality food sleeping on the ground for a revenant to slurp the soul out of.
- While the individual bursts are not very strong, Silicons will suffer chip damage that will require wiring repair to fix every time they’re caught in a pulse.
- For IPCs there really is no counterplay - you’re just going to die like you always will against EMPs. It’s not only going to cause massive physical damage, but also going to cause massive organ damage.