Revision 1

The Flame Walker is the Tier 3 heavy infantry of a The Valkaru contract, bought one at a time from the War Vault and hired into a main faction army rather than played as part of a Valkaru force. Mercenary groups are contracted partway through a match and mixed into whichever faction you are already commanding.

Eight hundred health is the second largest pool on either mercenary roster, and the weapon behind it is the most specialised. Remnant Flames fires two volleys of 3 damage every 0.2 seconds down a five degree arc, which is 30 DPS flat and 75 against Light armour. It is a unit bought to delete infantry.

Figures below describe the September 2026 Early Access build carrying the identifier ZS.c36778, and they move with a patch cadence that has been close to weekly since launch. Roughly half the versus roster had a stat touched in the fortnight before that build was captured, so read every number here as dated rather than permanent.

Stat Block

Weapons

The weapon fires down a narrow five degree arc rather than at a single model, so everything standing in that line takes the stream. Against Light armour each projectile does 7.5 instead of 3, which is 75 DPS into whatever is unlucky enough to be standing in front of it.

Abilities

Upgrades

Nothing upgrades the Flame Walker directly. The Valkaru talent line, taken at faction levels 2, 4 and 6, is what changes it.

Relic Plating is the significant one, taking the Flame Walker to 2 flat armour and 1,000 health. At that point it carries as much raw health as the Valkaru Beast for less than a third of the power the Beast costs to summon.

Conversion Costs

Three factions can act on a unit that already exists instead of building a new one, and each pays out of the same top bar power pool. Infuse is the Grell mechanic, permanently raising a friendly unit's health, damage and regeneration for the rest of its life at a bonus of 45 percent since the balance pass of August 11, 2026. Reanimate is the Legion of Truth version, which speeds the unit up by 30 percent while it lives and stands it back up when it dies. Replicate is the Xol version, which copies an eligible allied unit outright.

The Flame Walker is eligible for all three, and in this build the three prices are identical at 17.5 power each. See Resources and Economy for how the top bar pool fills.

Role

The Flame Walker is the Valkaru answer to infantry. Seventy five DPS against Light armour, poured down a line rather than into a single model, clears the cheap ground units that a Hound squad would otherwise have to chew through one at a time. Behind 800 health and status resist 40 it can do that from inside the fight rather than behind it.

Leap-Smash is what makes the 9.5 range usable. A 15 second cooldown jump that stuns for a second and then slows for another is how a 400 move speed unit gets in front of something faster than itself, and it is the second of the two Valkaru tools for creating contact, alongside the Pull on the Valkaru Tow Bot.

Against Heavy or Medium armour the specialisation disappears. Thirty DPS for 6 supply is poor, and the weapon does not target air at all, so a Flame Walker bought into the wrong matchup is mostly 800 health of terrain.

Faction Context

The Valkaru are described as a war driven society that favours direct assault and brute force over manoeuvre, and the Flame Walker is where that reads most literally: a heavy infantry unit that jumps into the middle of a formation and burns it. The four buyable units all come out of the War Vault, with the Beast summoned separately through the group's top bar power. For the hexite and flux behind the purchases, see Resources and Economy.

Tier and Armour Interactions

Heavy armour on 800 health, with 1 flat armour and status resist 40, is a durable combination against the general case. The flat armour value of 1 does very little on its own, since flat armour subtracts damage per hit with a floor of one damage, but Relic Plating doubling it at faction level 4 is a real change against massed light weapons.

The Heavy armour type is the exposure. Anything carrying a Heavy bonus hits the Flame Walker at full effect, and that includes the Marran Heavy Trooper at +100 percent from the other mercenary roster in this pair. Units covers the six armour types in the current build.

Counters

Strong Against

Weak To

Balance History

• No dated studio balance note between the Early Access launch of July 20, 2026 and the hotfix of September 1, 2026 names the Flame Walker. Every figure on this page has stood unchanged across the whole of that window, which makes it one of the few units on either mercenary roster untouched by the balance passes of August 11 and August 28.

Notes

• The roster record for this unit is COMPLETE. Every core field the source publishes carries a value, which is unusual: most units on this roster leave at least the status resist or the flat armour blank.

• Mercenary units carry no build time, and that is a property of the game rather than a gap in the record: they are hired rather than constructed, so the entity data publishes a price and a squad size but no production timer.

• One field is genuinely absent and is not guessed here. The entity data publishes no range figure for Leap-Smash, only its 15 second cooldown and its landing effects, so the distance the unit can jump is not on record.

• Per unit numbers are drawn from a community maintained entity catalogue that the studio links from each of its own faction pages. It is the only place a full stat block is published, so read the figures as careful community documentation of one build rather than as an official specification. Dated balance notes come straight from the studio patch posts and are stated as such.