Baby Striker

Occurrence | Very Rare (Mother Spawns)

**Baby Strikers** are the smaller form of Strikers. They are fast and agile, but have the smallest health pool and damage of any other sleeper. They were first introduced alongside the Mother in Rundown 003.

## Appearance

The Baby Striker is currently the smallest enemy type of the game. Unlike normal Strikers, they have enlarged heads, a lighter skin tone, and are covered with blood akin to that of a newborn child. They crawl around on all fours when moving and have high pitched screams compared to the ones that normal strikers emit.

## Spawning

The Mother will emit a high pitched screech, after which the Mother will spawn 20 babies. Its boss counterpart, the Big Mother, will spawn 30 babies.

In prior Rundowns, Babies could only be spawned directly by Mothers, but, with the release of Rundown 005 they can be found spawned asleep like any other Striker.

## Behavior

They act almost identical to a normal Striker, charging at the player at a greatly increased speed. They can be seen primarily crawling and, when in distance of the player, will use a smaller form of a sleeper tentacle to attack for 4% of the player's health. Unlike regular sleepers, the visible and audible warning of an attack is much more brief so it can be near impossible to avoid attacks from them.

Like Strikers, they don't pose a threat individually. However, they spawn in hordes, and failure to cull the horde can leave the player vulnerable.

## Strategies

Baby Strikers by themselves pose no real threat, they have very low HP and their head size can be a large and easy target. Due to the cost effectiveness of most tools it is ill advised to use C-Foam, Tripmines, or Sentries against them, although each will work as they should (the Auto Sentry is a notable exception and presents a good counter to Baby waves if positioned prior to waking up the Mother). Instead, a player should have some form of an automatic weapon, as that will be the quickest way to dispatch larger hordes of them.

Spawn camping the Mother with any form of automatic weapon, especially the Combat Shotgun with its higher bullet spread and count, can cull a large majority of the wave, giving the player more breathing room when it comes to the remaining Babies.

Like most enemies, holing up in a corner works, as you will need your whole team focused on killing them, because they are very small and will scurry fast to attack you and your team.

Babies are only a threat as long as the Mother is alive since they make it hard to deal with any other enemies since they'll be the first to attack you due to their insane speed, so the quickest way to deal with Babies is to quickly deal with the Mother. Spawns, although brief and in between, can outnumber the player as each spawn requires a significant amount of ammo to be spent.

Baby Strikers can also be melee killed with a normal hammer swing, but that is ill-advised unless there are only a few remaining.

If possible force Babies to climb up a ladder, a whole team with hammers can easily deal with a baby wave if all players position themselves on top of the ladder and just keep doing normal swings to kill any baby that climbs up. This is due to only a single enemy being able to be on a ladder at a time.

It is not advisable to attempt to run away from Babies, as their speed allows them to easily catch up to and even attack a running player.