SkimmerReport
English：Skimmer · Creatures
Giant insectoids of the northeastern desert that sleep buried in the sand by day and swarm by night. They are the most common first cause of death for characters starting in United Cities territory — and also the best first source of income.
Skimmers are large insectoids found across the arid northeast of the continent. They look like an antlion larva scaled up several dozen times: a low-slung body, two long antenniform forelimbs held up over the back, and a ring of white fangs made for feeding on corpses. They are highly aggressive and charge anything they see, which makes them the first lesson learned by players who start inside United Cities territory.
The things buried in the sand
A Skimmer's most dangerous trait is not its combat ability — it is that they are not standing on the ground during the day.
Skimmers spawned from nests or from larger squads bury themselves in the sand to sleep between 6:00 and 23:00, surfacing in groups only at night. "Sleeping" is entirely literal here: the whole animal goes under, leaving only the white plates of its mouth exposed at the surface. Unless the player slows down and watches the ground, there is almost no chance of noticing that the few "white stones" underfoot are in fact the faces of six insects.
If anyone walks too close, they wake early and attack immediately. This is the notorious Skimmer camp ambush — a squad crosses the Skimsands and the ground erupts underneath them.
Some behavioural details worth remembering:
- Lone individuals do not sleep. A Skimmer that spawns on its own is a "24-hour hunter", roaming and feeding around the clock, with no safe window.
- Pack members go back to sleep. If woken during the day and left out of combat, they wander for roughly 140 in-game minutes before reburying themselves.
- Player characters are usually faster than Skimmers, so running is nearly always an option.
Recorded play makes the cost of this very clear: a squad with no combat ability runs into six Skimmers in The Great Desert, the line collapses instantly, and members are dragged off one by one[V1 0:02:19]. There is no way to solve that situation head-on. Only two options work — scatter immediately in different directions so the pursuers split up, or stall for time until passing Manhunters take over and pull the swarm away[V1 0:02:19].
Distribution
The Skimsands are named directly after them and hold the highest Skimmer density; beyond that, The Eye, Heng, The Great Desert, Bast and the Grey Desert all have stable spawns, with likely migration into Sinkuun.
In the Skimsands' homeless spawn table, "Skimmer Patrol Group Nocturnal" (3–6 animals) carries a weight of 100 and "Skimmer Solo 24hr" a weight of 50 — together outweighing the patrols of every humanoid faction in the zone. That is why this buffer strip between the Holy Nation and the United Cities, politically quiet as it is, is such a nuisance to actually travel through.
Nests come in two kinds: Skimmer Nests and Small Skimmer Nests, which spawn randomly in the Skimsands, Heng and The Great Desert. The two squads found at a nest are one older lone individual (age multiplier 0.9x–1.0x) and one to three individuals at 0.5x–0.9x. The nests themselves drop no items.
Combat data
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| All combat stats | 35 (randomises by ±10) |
| Martial Arts | 3.5 |
| Body part health | 60–258 (roughly 200–250 as an adult) |
| Blood | 56–174 |
| Movement speed | 6–23 mph (×2 in combat) |
| Extra attack slots | 1 |
Their "weapon" provides a flat 23 cut damage, unaffected by stats, and their attacks hit a single target only. The damage formula works out to roughly 23 + 0.84–0.85 × (Martial Arts + Dexterity), which for an adult comes to about 55–60 cut — enough to drop an unarmoured new character in one hit, but no threat at all to a squad in full light armour.
Fighting them, and cashing them in
The most effective early approach is to hand them to the gate guards. The Samurai Gate Guards outside United Cities towns favour polearms and clear Skimmers with ease. Since the player outruns the animal, kiting pursuers all the way to a town gate and collecting the bodies after the guards have finished gives a steady supply of food and cats while still completely unequipped.
What one Skimmer corpse is worth:
- Animal Claw ×6 at an average of about 90 Cats each → roughly 540 Cats
- Raw Meat ×2 at an average of about 60 Cats each
- Foul Raw Meat ×8 (nearly worthless, but edible)
If you do want to fight them head-on, the Desert Sabre deals +100% damage against Skimmers, one of the most direct counter relationships in the game (the same weapon also has +100% against spiders).
Trivia
- Skimmers are the only animal in the game that uses "unknown" quality weapons, which means they have only two weapon quality variants rather than the usual three. Since the bulk of animal damage comes from pierce values that quality does not affect, the difference is barely noticeable in play.
- They share their sound effects with the spiders.
- "Skimmers" does not appear on the factions tab; it is one of the animal factions flagged internally as "not real". They are mutually non-hostile with the Western Hive and the herbivore factions.
- Caravans destroyed by Skimmers are a recurring motif in the game's background narrative — several characters got their start by scavenging supplies from the wreck of a caravan the Skimmers had left half-eaten.
See also
Video citations
- Kenshi | The Nugget Mafia (Ep. 1)HeroInHisHead