Revision 1

The Xyther is the Xol Tier 1 melee body and one of the four units the official faction page names in its sample roster. It costs 75 hexite with no flux, carries 150 health behind a 100 point shield, and hits ground targets only for 24 damage on a two second cycle. The shield is the point: the entity description states it takes reduced damage from attacks over a certain size, which inverts the usual relationship where large hits are what kills a frontline unit. Two Xythers merge into a Defiant.

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

Stat Block

Weapons

Abilities

The shield behaviour that the unit is known for does not appear as a named ability. It sits in the unit description, which states that the shield takes reduced damage from attacks over a certain amount, and the threshold and the size of the reduction are both unpublished.

Upgrades

No Xyther specific upgrades exist. The Molten Core buys the rebuild for 100 energy, and the World Forge upgrades reach the unit as a Xol army unit.

World Forge Vitals is unusually good on this unit, because it raises health and shields together and the Xyther is the only Tier 1 body in the faction carrying both.

Conversion Costs

Replicate is the Xol conversion mechanic, paid out of the same top bar power pool as the Grell Infuse and the Legion Reanimate. Rather than buffing a unit it copies one, producing a second body from an eligible ally. Since the balance pass of August 11, 2026 it also works on molten units, at twice the usual power cost. Eligibility is not universal, and the tags on a unit record are what say which of the three conversions apply. The Xyther is eligible for all three at an identical 3.75 power each. Since August 11, 2026 Replicate also works on a molten Xyther at twice the cost, which copies a body that rebuilds itself when killed.

Role

Two hundred and fifty effective points across health and shields for 75 hexite is the best raw durability per hexite at Tier 1 in the faction, and the shield behaviour tilts it further against exactly the weapons that usually beat cheap melee. A unit that takes reduced shield damage from large hits is being told to walk into artillery and heavy single shot weapons, not away from them. Armour is a number as well as a type. It subtracts a flat amount from every incoming hit with a floor of 1 damage, so it blunts many small hits far more than one large one. The Xyther carries an armour value of 0, so the flat reduction does nothing for it and the shield is doing all of the work.

The offensive side is modest. Twelve damage a second at range 1.1 with no armour bonus means the Xyther is not killing anything quickly, and it cannot touch air at all. It is a body that occupies space and banks toward the Defiant, and the 30 second build time is the longest of the three Tier 1 production units, so a Xyther opening commits earlier than a Roller or Spectron one.

Molten Rebuild changes the arithmetic of trading. A molten Xyther that dies comes back once every two minutes, which over a long engagement makes it the cheapest sustained frontline in the faction. The cooldown is long enough that it rewards a slow grinding fight rather than a single decisive one.

Faction Context

The Xyther Assembler is the third Tier 1 production building and, like the Gyroforge and the Spectral Foundry, it unlocks Tier 1 mercenary hiring and leads to the Molten Core. The Xol commander Anrubic carries a Xyther Shield Wall ability whose cooldown was cut from 90 seconds to 30 on August 11, 2026, and it can merge with Xythers among other units. See Heroes and Commanders for how commanders work across the modes and Units for the shared stat block.

Counters

Balance History

Notes

The roster record for this unit is COMPLETE. Every core field is published.

Two figures are described rather than published. The shield damage reduction threshold and its magnitude appear only in prose, and the Molten Rebuild entry gives a cooldown but no rebuilt health value.

The Defiant record in this data release dropped the Biological tag that it carried in the previous release. The Xyther itself has never carried that tag, so a Xyther and the Defiant it merges into are now categorised the same way where they previously differed.

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 the full stat block is published, and it is not a studio document, so the figures are best read as careful community documentation of a build rather than as an official specification. Dated balance notes, by contrast, come straight from the studio patch posts.