Overview
Drones are deployable scouting devices in Rooted, separate from the ROTOR robots that act as hostile enemies. A drone lets a player survey terrain, locate resources, and observe contaminated zones without exposing the character to spores or hostile fire.
Usage
Property | Detail |
|---|---|
Function | Aerial scouting of the open world, including locations not yet accessible on foot. |
Power | Energy-consuming. Drones require an energy supply to operate, which ties them to the electricity progression. |
Role | Identifying nearby resources and threats, scouting paths into contaminated zones. |
Limitations | Hostile factions also field drones, so deployment in heavily contested areas is risky. |
Companion Drone
A backpack-style drone companion was introduced as part of the Phase 3 announcements. The team has hinted that the backpack drone is being developed for interactive support roles rather than scouting alone. Specific abilities have not been finalized in public posts, so capabilities listed below are limited to those already shown in current builds.
Tactical Use
Drones are most useful when paired with salvaging runs in unfamiliar territory. Sending the drone ahead reveals enemy positions, environmental hazards, and dense salvage areas before the player commits resources to a route. Co-op groups can split roles, with one player driving the drone while teammates approach on foot or in vehicles.
Limitations
Drones are not invulnerable. Hostile survivors and ROTOR units may down a deployed scout, and energy depletion forces a return to base. Players need to balance scouting time against the energy cost of running and recharging the drone.
Future Development
More drone capabilities are expected to arrive in subsequent patches, including expanded companion behavior and additional interactions with the electricity and automation systems. Updates will be added here as new features ship.
Companion Drone Expansion
The drone arrived in the game in the September 2024 update and gained companion-style functionality in Phase 3, including expanded behavior and the ability for the player to name their drone. The drone docks on the player's backpack when not in flight, providing both a visual indicator and a constant readiness state.
Deployment Loop
Deploy the drone from the backpack with an input bind.
Pilot the drone to scout territory, mapping enemy patrols and salvage clusters.
Tag points of interest for later return or co-op coordination.
Recall the drone before exposure or contact risks the unit; it docks back to the backpack.
Use Cases
Scenario | Drone benefit |
|---|---|
Pre-engagement scouting | Map ROTOR patrols and bandit positions. |
Salvage triage | Identify which buildings hold higher-value scrap. |
Co-op coordination | Mark routes and rendezvous points for teammates. |
Contaminated zone planning | Plot a safe path through a city run before risking exposure. |
Integration With Survival
Drones plug into the broader salvage and exploration loop. Strategic scouting cuts blind decisions in hostile territory and complements firearms recovered through the December 2025 weapons patch. Drone tech feeds back into the electrical salvage category, with drone parts a meaningful pickup category in the world.
Drone Hardware On The Public Roadmap
Drones have their own thread on the studio's public roadmap, and it splits cleanly between hardware that is finished and hardware that is still being built.
Entry | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
Pilotable drones | Completed | The remote-controlled unit itself, logged twice on the board under slightly different card names. |
Drone landing pads | Completed | Fixed landing platforms, which give a drone a base of operations away from the survivor's pack. |
Signal beacons with detector | Completed | Placed markers plus a detector, complementing the drone's own marker placement for squad navigation. |
Modular components | In progress | Swappable hull, rotor, optics, and battery modules, with wear and tear tracked per component so a unit can be tailored for reconnaissance, combat, or transport. |
The modular card is the significant one. It turns the drone from a single fixed tool into a platform with loadouts, and the per-component wear model means a drone flown hard on a scouting run carries that damage forward rather than resetting. It also introduces a combat and transport role alongside the reconnaissance use the alpha already supports. The modular card is not in the public build. The drone itself, however, was rebuilt for the August 2026 patch, covered below.
The Rebuilt Drone (v0.0.2.381)
Patch v0.0.2.381, released on August 14, 2026, replaced the drone wholesale. The previous unit ran a full quadcopter physics simulation, which the studio described as far too expensive for what the drone actually does. The replacement flies on a lightweight flight model with near-zero performance cost, and the tilt and hover you see are presentation rather than simulated physics.
Change | Detail |
|---|---|
Flight model | Lightweight model built for Rooted, replacing the quadcopter physics simulation. Tilt and hover are visual only. |
Heads-up display | New display carrying a compass and gauges. |
Exit prompt | A permanent prompt that shows your actual bound key rather than a fixed default. |
Return radar | A small radar pointing back toward the pilot. |
Zoom | Reduced from its previous range. |
Audio | Full audio pass. |
Access | Pilotable by every player rather than tied to a specific role. It can be deployed, flown, and handed over. |
The studio noted that the new drone was imported from the production build into the alpha, which makes it one of the few pieces of the newer branch that alpha testers can use directly. The three tiers of long-distance stand-ins added in the same patch also apply while flying, so structures now stay visible from the air at range instead of appearing only on close approach.