The Hunter Mine Launcher is a weapon in Deadlocked. Manufactured by Vox Industries, it places mines that automatically home in on nearby enemies. It is available from any DreadZone vendor upon reaching Sarathos for 35,000 bolts. It can be upgraded to the Stalker Mine Launcher with use, which launches much bigger mines that split in two upon detonating. In challenge mode, it can be upgraded to the Mega Stalker Mine Launcher for 1,250,000 bolts.
The weapon is a stubby, grey metal and dark blue weapon with a few bright cyan highlights and three blades that jut out from its wide triangular nozzle. The Stalker Mine Launcher is largely similar, though its design is much bulkier and its mines are bigger, and split in two upon exploding.
History[]
Gleeman Vox personally requested a weapon capable of firing explosive homing mines, to the dismay of his weapons design team that considered it crazy. They were subsequently fed to leviathans, and his new team designed the Hunter Mine Launcher.[1]
After DreadZone closed down, the weapon was sold in an asset auction, and adapted into the Mine Launcher seen in Secret Agent Clank.[2]
Gameplay[]
The Hunter Mine Launcher in action.
The Hunter Mine Launcher serves a dual-role by allowing mines to be placed preemptively as defensive emplacements, and by firing them directly at enemies, functioning more or less as a homing grenade launcher. Its ammo capacity and damage is average, but with its solid rate of fire one can quickly cover an entire area with a maximum of eight mines. Over time it falters damage-wise, but with its base capabilities and decent spread of alpha mods it can stay useful from time to time.
It is also possible to run into enemies with the weapon when a mine is loaded, causing it to immediately explode. This is a rather high-risk tactic, but allows one to very quickly deal damage.
Concept art.
The Stalker Mine Launcher upgrade fires bigger mines that split in two, which then home in on the same enemy again, seek out a new nearby target, or simply stay in place waiting for the next opportunity. This effectively triples its damage output, easily making it one of the more useful weapons in the game due to its versatility as it is also highly compatible with any of the three explosive-based omega mods. The Time Bomb Mod, for example, never fails to fire with the weapon, and with the high number of mines, one can easily enforce area denial with the Napalm Mod.
In multiplayer enemy players can destroy your mines from a distance, due to this it is recommended to avoid open areas and use them as traps for corners and so on.