Old MachinesReport

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Hostile robots still executing an order issued a thousand years ago. They hold the deadlands where ruins are thickest, they attack on sight — and you cannot tell which of them is switched off.

The Old Machines are a faction of hostile robots roaming some of the most dangerous regions in the world — usually the places where lost ruins are thickest.

The wiki leaves one important guess in its description: some of them may be malfunctioning, and some may simply be following ancient programming. Either way the result is the same. They attack nearly anyone on sight.

Who they do not attack

The exception list on their hostility is worth reading closely:

That list is itself a piece of lore: everything the Old Machines let past is either a machine or tied to the Second Empire. Their notion of "one of us" froze before the Empire fell, and everything else registers as an intruder.

The player is not on the list, and never will be.

Members

The Iron Spider is the most common of them — a robotic spider, a weaker version of the Security Spider, roaming the wilds rather than guarding ruins. It is fitted with maiming devices. It will not eat your unconscious characters, but a lightly armoured character it puts down will usually die of the wounds if nobody comes. The Iron Trail is named after them.

The Sniperbot patrols the southeast alone, is difficult to spot, and usually gets a free shot in with an Eagle's Cross — and with its ranged skills, that shot is close to a guaranteed hit. It wears [High] armour, with a 20% chance of [Specialist].

The Cleanser Unit is a leviathan-like machine patrolling the Ashlands, with average stats but enormous health. It is the game's only renewable source of AI Cores.

The Spider Foreman guards the Spider Factory on the Forbidden Isle. A Screamer MkI skeleton, he carries a Meitou-grade Staff whose reach lets one swing connect with several of your characters at once.

The Broken Skeleton is a malfunctioning Skeleton, usually wandering alone in Obedience, the Floodlands and the Iron Valleys, and also found in Ancient Tech Labs and Deadland Workshops.

ErrorCode 0x000000 is a Soldierbot skeleton armed with a Short-Cleaver.

What they hold

Patrols spawn on the Forbidden Isle, in the Deadlands, The Iron Trail, the Iron Valleys, the Ashlands and Cheaters Run. Iron Spiders range wider still, into the Floodlands, the Grey Desert, Obedience and Sonorous Dark.

They control three locations:

Dead Fishing Village in Cheaters Run is inhabited by more than 30 ErrorCode 0x000000 units, which will try to "arrest" anyone who enters. The village holds two Watchtowers and four Old Storm Houses, and attacking any one house calls reinforcements out of all the others. The loot is Iron Plates.

Police Barracks appear in Cheaters Run, Sniper Valley and The Pits, staffed by Old Empire Police Robots or ErrorCode 0x000000 units, with very little worth taking. The one in Sniper Valley is empty.

The Spider Factory on the Forbidden Isle is the only notable structure left on that island. It houses roughly 15 Security Spiders and Iron Spiders under the Spider Foreman. Anyone who can sneak past or fight through finds a large haul of research artifacts in the locked metal boxes — at least 4 Ancient Science Books and 2 Engineering Research.

What it means in practice

That turns crossing those regions into a running gamble. Detouring around every spider is too slow; not detouring means eventually stepping on one. Most players hug the edge of the map on the way through and never stop to rest on ruin ground.

Seen from the other direction, the Old Machines are also one of the most important late-game resource pools in the game. The AI Cores off Cleanser Units and the Ancient Science Books in the Spider Factory are gates the tech tree cannot route around.

See also

Iron Spider, Cleanser Unit, Security Spider, Skeleton Legion, Second Empire, Ashlands, Deadlands