Deathclaws come in many flavors, all of them deadly.
Some enemies in the Fallout series just make you want to quicksave on sight.
- Fallout Tactics has one special encounter with a huge pack of Deathclaws that takes place in complete darkness. Also, burst weapons in the series are famously unreliable against anything with decent armour. Quite a few of the robots in the same game are nearly invincible against anything except Energy Weapons, but the Behemoth Droid is perhaps the worst, given how well it is armed.
- Fallout 2:
- The Enclave patrols, which will be a nasty surprise for those that played 3 first. Nothing short of end-game weaponry will even scratch their power armor, and if you don't have a suit of your own, they will almost certainly cut you to ribbons with their first move.
- The Bounty Hunters. They are probably as bad as Deathclaws, or worse. Why? Because if your character is a child killer or just too damn evil, these guys attack you. Until the end game, they ALWAYS outgun you, using weapons you are only going to see somewhere further in the game. They also always outnumber you. This only gets worse as the game advances, and every one you kill drops your karma further, so even more powerful (relative to your level) mercs come after you next time if you happen to be on one of the karma "borders" the game seems to use for these encounters.
- The Wanamingos in Redding's mines are competent late-stage Demonic Spiders: their attacks are decently blocked by power armor or advanced combat armor and when you have high-penetration guns like the Gauss rifle you can actually inflict meaningful damage and have a chance of completing the mission. Problem: you get to Redding very early on, while armored with wet tissue paper and armed with peashooters. At the time you're likely to be doing as many quests as you can to grind through the first few levels, so you'll take on the mines quest with enthusiasm. This is overwhelmingly likely to end in a very brief Curb-Stomp Battle followed by a reload.
- Fallout 3:
- Deathclaws are the most well known radioactive abomination: in the first two games, they were merely superhumanly fast, brutish, and damaging. In Fallout 3, though, they gain some fantastically cheap moves, including the ability to leap from normal maximum effective shotgun range to into melee within a split second, while taking more punishment than a Super Mutant to kill. They can also take out a character with full health and the best non-power armor in a couple of swings. Best of all, they can be encountered in packs. The reason for this is cheap, though. The Deathclaw's attacks bypass DR and deal full damage to the player every time. However, if you can kill a Deathclaw, you can make a melee weapon which does the exact same thing— by mounting its claw to a glove on your hand. Sneak attacks and the Dart Gun— a weak weapon that cripples targets' legs so they go slower and can't perform "leaping" type attacks— are very useful for taking them out. With Better Criticals, you can kill one in 2-4 shots from Lincoln's Repeater, fewer if you use more powerful things like Fat Man or the like.
- In the Broken Steel expansion, you really need to watch out for the Albino Radscorpions and Super Mutant Overlords. The Albino Radscorpions are 1.5 times as large as the Giant Radscorpions, have as much health as a Super Mutant Behemoth, and are random encounters in groups of 1-3. Overlords spawn anywhere with Super Mutants, carry Laser Shotguns called Tri-Beam Lasers which punch straight through power armour due to a hax effect that does unblockable 40 HP damage when used on the player. The shotgun fires 3 beams. Either that, or it comes with a Gatling Laser or a Super Sledge which comes with it's own unblockable 25 HP damage. Its health is a touch less than a Behemoth, but has higher endurance, and unlike the finite Behemoths, Overlords respawn. If you have the Chinese Stealth Armor and Silent Running perk, the easiest way to get rid of Overlords is to sneak behind them and drop a grenade or mine in their pants (by reverse-pickpocketing them to their inventory). This should kill them without fail.
- Feral Ghoul Reavers from Broken Steel share none of the weaknesses of the Overlords and Deathclaws and share the "may spawn whenever enemies of the same type may spawn". Dart guns only prevent their leap attack and cut their terrifying movement speed to 75% while not stopping them from hitting you VERY hard. They have insane perception that they will see you without fail even with 100 sneak, silent running perk, and Chinese Stealth Armor, making sneak attacks on them nigh impossible; they lack any weapons to shoot off, manage to have a deadly-accurate ranged AOE attack other Feral Ghouls lack, and share the 1200+ HP and 10 Endurance that Overlords have. For icing on the cake, Reavers can get bugged in mid-fight, turning them invincible for some time; that is, unless you start shooting at their legs during their "bugged-out" phase, and therefore thankfully bypassing their invincibility period. Note that, of the three, only the Super Mutant Overlords give any loot worthy of the ammo expended to kill them. The other 2 give a few hundred bottlecaps at most.
- On a lesser scale, Broken Steel also has the Hellfire Troopers, who have advanced fire-resistant power armor and wield the deadly Heavy Incinerator, a very accurate long-range fireball thrower.
- The Pitt Expansion Pack features Trogs as a replacement for Super Mutants. In practice, they more closely resemble weaker Deathclaws. Unfortunately for the player, they tend to come in packs of eight or more at times, and a higher-level player will encounter Trog Savages, which are every bit as strong as actual Deathclaws. To add further insult to injury, you can't bring in your Powered Armor or Frickin' Laser Beams, so higher-level players are going to end up with a much tougher time.
- The expansion pack Point Lookout adds in Swampfolk and Tribals. Despite wielding old-timey double barrelled shotguns or axes, and wearing overalls or robes, they are tougher than Enclave goons wielding plasma rifles and wearing high-tech powered armor due to the DLC giving them an additional 35 damage that can't be blocked similar to the Overlords above, and are about as common as regular raiders in the swamp. Oh, and there's Reavers in the swamp. The next and final expansion, Mothership Zeta adds space aliens, whom, to be honest, are better than the frickin' hillbillies with their axes.
This unblockable 35 damage applies per projectile, and Swampfolk are quite fond of the Double-Barrel Shotgun which shoots *9 pellets* per shot. Up close they can easily hit you with nearly 300 damage in a game where you max at 700 HP - assuming you take maximum endurance, reach level 30 and all HP perks. Otherwise expect to loose half your health in the first shot of the fight.- Shielded aliens in Mothership Zeta, especially the ones with Disintegrators, can become demonic spiders at higher levels, as their damage resistance and numbers increase as you level up.
- Any time the Talon Company or Regulators set up an ambush after you’ve left a building. They’re not dangerous at higher levels, but they can easily decimate lower level players.
- Fallout: New Vegas:
- Deathclaws take advantage of the new Damage Threshold system to take Made of Iron to a new level. As in, using the anti-materiel rifle with AP rounds on a sneak critical (something that would gib practically anything else) knocks off maybe half their health. God help you if you wander into the Deathclaw Promontory or Quarry Junction at a low level. Oh, and the Dart Gun that you were so very used to in 3? Tough luck, because it doesn't appear at all in this game, since the guys at Obsidian thought it was too much of a Game-Breaker to be used in New Vegas and decided to exclude it from that game. Happy days... Fortunately, if you can cripple the Deathclaw's leg, it can be easy enough to, literally, keep out of arm's reach. As long as there isn't more than one coming at you, all you need to do against a crippled Deathclaw is keep your distance while shooting, and hope you don't have your back to a wall...
- New Vegas has Cazadores, giant mutant wasps that despite their flimsiness, attack insanely fast and usually come in large packs. And their poison attack can quickly kill the more unaware player (or those without Antivenom). For added Nightmare Fuel, the loud sound that a Cazador makes upon stinging a target is bugged, such that it plays at full volume regardless of how far away it is (as long as it is actually being rendered by the game), and regardless of who its target is. Thankfully, due to the small DT stat they have, a 10mm SMG with hollow-point (standard or jacketed HP) will tear them to pieces. Or you could shoot their wings out. Of course, this only really works if they're in front of you. The little bastards have a habit of being everywhere. And the larger Cazadors need more than just a shot in the wings to kill: first you have to cripple their wings, then cripple their legs, and then FINALLY put enough rounds into their skull to kill them. They get upgraded in Old World Blues. Mercifully, Obsidian gave player a perk called DNAvenger that gives you 10-30% passive damage and compliments with Implant C-13's 10% passive damage. Unfortunately, you have to kill 10 of these freaks to gain its full potential and shell out 8,000 caps for the implant. Better get stocked up on supplies...
- Trying to get the Ratslayer at a low level? Have fun finding out Giant Rats are not easy pickings like they are in most RPGs. Here, they're fast, tenacious, and can chew through Metal and Combat Armor with ease.
- If you're at a high level, you better not piss off any of the major factions. You'll get hit squads after you wearing Power Armor (NCR) or Centurion Armor (Legion) and armed with chainsaws, thermic lances, 12.7 mm SMGs, and anti-materiel rifles.
- And the radscorpions are still around, of course. Giant radscorpions, in particular. You know it's bad when you're faced with an oversized arachnid and breaking out the ap ammo is a sound survival strategy, rather than an exercise in hilarious overkill. The locations where these guys are mixed in with their fast, sneaky bark scorpion cousins are especially... interesting.
- And, if you think Giant Radscorpions are tough, Old World Blues gives us Robo-scorpions. These things are even tougher, can shoot laser from their tails, and if you think you had it, it will blow up after you finally defeat it.
- The half-coyote half-rattlesnake Nightstalkers. They inject poison (albeit less potent than Cazadores), deal sizable melee damage, possibly bypassing Damage Threshold, and attack in packs. Worse, Lily's first quest has you fighting invisible Nightstalkers. Like most DLC creatures, the ones in Old World Blues level with the player. The "DNAngent" perk in Old World Blues at least gives a nice 10% damage bonus and the Animal Friend perks works on them as well, possibly due to the coyote DNA in them.
- The New Vegas DLC Dead Money introduces the ghost people. They're usually not the most damaging enemies, but their weapons are often designed to cripple limbs which will make you waste a stimpack in normal mode and a doctor's bag in hard mode. They also come back to life if their health is depleted and one of their limbs is not severed, so if you kill one with a gun and can't sprint up to the body fast enough to cut its limbs off, then you need to waste precious bullets to blow its limbs of from range. They wouldn't be nearly as bad if they weren't found (only) at the Sierra Madre, where all your stuff gets taken and the air may slowly kill you depending on difficulty. Here wasted supplies can mean death no matter what level you are at. They are also almost everywhere in the villa. If you killed Rawr before going to Dead Money, keeping Rawr's Talon allows you to make the Fist of (the North) Rawr and not have to be completely defenseless when the DLC starts. Having the 'Bloody Mess' perk makes them far easier to handle too.
- The Mantises from the main game are mere Goddamned Bats, but the Zion Mantises from Honest Hearts hit almost as hard as entry-level Deathclaws.
- Lonesome Road introduces Tunnelers, the even more demonic distant cousins of the Pitt's Trogs. In addition to speedily dishing out large damage and attacking in large groups, they also tunnel through things (hence their name). The Hulking ones can knock you down and leave you a sitting duck for the others, and another variant can poison you. They also level with the player, meaning that at high levels, they are bullet sponges that can smite a Power Armored character in as little as two hits (depending on the difficulty setting).
- And then there's Lonesome Road DEATHCLAWS. Remember all those fun times when you got your ass handed to in Quarry Junction, Dead Wind Cavern, and Gypsum train yard? Now you can relive those moments and more as the deathclaws here level with you, growing stronger at levels 30, 40, and 50 at which they hit harder than the Legendary Deathclaw itself but not be as strong. Irradiated Deathclaws are somewhat easier as they have no Damage Resistance or Threshold and therefore take full damage. The named Deathclaw, Rawr, is a beast that hits like a dump truck (He can kill you in power armor at level 25 with three hits), has 900 hit points with a 15 Damage Threshold and only flare guns and flash bangs scare it for a few seconds.
- Most enemies in Fallout 4 take a level in badass, but there are some new ones which certainly qualify:
- Super Mutant Suiciders are a kind of Super Mutant who will basically run up to you and attempt to high-five you with a Mini-Nuke. They're a bit tougher and faster than the standard Mutant and if they reach you it's pretty much a guarantee that you won't survive the blast, even in power armour. You can try to blast the nuke in their hand which will cause them to explode...but in doing so lose the chance to loot the valuable Mini-Nuke off their body, and due to how the system works, that death and any collateral damage don't qualify as player kills and so don't award any XP. To add insult to injury, there's an achievement for being killed by one.
- Assaultrons are a new kind of robot which can run as fast as Deathclaws in 3, can dodge bullets and block attacks, are extremely durable, and can punch you extremely hard in melee and fire Eye Beams which can quickly deplete your HP (though this attack is mercifully easy to dodge). Then there's the Assaultron Dominator, which adds stealth and bladed arms with insane damage and reach - it can kill you in two hits when you're wearing a full set of modded combat armour. Oh, and they're immune to headshots.
- Remember the Children of Atom? They're back as gangs of psychotic cultists who worship irradiated mutants and kill people with guns that deal massive amounts of radiation damage, lowering your maximum health and normal health restore items don't cut it, only Rad-Away can help. If you plan ahead and bring a hazmat suit, they'll pull out backup weapons which can rip through the unarmoured suit with no trouble.
- Some of the higher ranking Raiders will actually have bootlegged versions of power armour, though these suits are thankfully inferior to the suits you'll be wearing. Some of them also pack Fat Mans and regular missile launchers - they will see you before you see them, and most of the time your first indication that they're there is the tell-tale whistle of a nuke flying towards you, by which point it's too late. If you're not wearing power armour, it's a One-Hit Kill. This will lead you dying over and over while you try to find where they are and bring them down first.
- If you make enemies of the Brotherhood of Steel, you can expect to encounter Vertibirds an awful lot until you destroy the Prydwen (and sometimes even afterwards), which are resistant to small-arms fire and rain mini-gun fire down on you, and most infuriatingly seem to be much smarter fighting you than fighting NPCs. Oh, and when you do bring them down, they go out giving you a big middle finger by crashing on your head and exploding.
- It's not just the Brotherhood that use Vertibirds. The Gunners, a mercenary faction that are much more organized, better equipped version of Fallout 3's Talon Company can, on occasion be seen using Vertibirds as well, likely scavenged from pre-War military bases or stolen from the pilots as they land to drop off Brotherhood patrols.
- Remember Deathclaws? They're still around, and they come in a variety of deadly forms, one of the most frightening of which being the "Chameleon Deathclaw", that can blend in with their environment, making them practically invisible until you're practically tripping over them and getting your face ripped off right afterwards. Once you encounter them, you'll remain on guard for the rest of your playthrough.
- The new ability to burrow through soil makes enemies like mole rats Goddamned Bats on steroids. Radscorpions on the other hand become absolutely terrifying, particularly the Deathskull variant most often found in the Glowing Sea. They’re fairly bullet resistant, hit devastatingly hard, cause poison damage, and with the burrowing ability can basically teleport to within melee range for an ambush or to maintain pursuit, unless you find something solid to stand on QUICK.
- Far Harbor introduces Fog Crawlers, two-story tall mantis shrimp with blade-like claws more lethal than a Deathclaw's, and at least as much speed and resilience as said enemy. They also can stab with their pointed head and perform an unblockable Shockwave Stomp that damages targets even above ground level. The worst are the Enraged variant, which due to a programming error have a DR of 4000, effectively making them Immune to Bullets and able to withstand multiple Fat Man blasts. The "Kneecaper" effect is really the only good way of slowing them down as it has a decent chance at crippling legs.
