Nightcrawler

The Nightcrawler is a Blackout-exclusive Gootraxian, obtainable by finding and wearing the Mysterious Goggles that spawn around the map during a Blackout. It is a mini-boss type Gootraxian with an obscene health pool, having roughly 800 HP (compared to the average Human or Gootraxian's 100 HP).

The Nightcrawler is notorious for its rarity, and notable dedication is required to obtain its transmogrifying item. It is one of the most sought after Gootraxians due to its uniqueness and abilities.

Description

N/A

Appearance

The Nightcrawler is a lizard-like Gootraxian with gray scales and an even darker gray underbelly. The tips of its arms are covered in dark gray scales that resemble the appearance of gloves. It has neon purple markings on the front of its torso and bottom of its tail, alongside dark gray lines with crescent-like patterns through them along the sides of its limbs and ears. It wears a pair of tri-lense night vision goggles that glow purple over its eyes, and a belt on its waist. Its belt holds multiple ammo pouches and a blowtorch.

Festive Variant

The Festive Variant takes on the same appearance as the normal Nightcrawler, now wearing a light gray military shirt with darker gray spotted markings, a dark grey beret, and a tactical vest instead of having an underbelly. It wears a pair of dark-gray heavy military boots, with knee guards above them. Its markings and lens colors are a bright neon green instead of purple. It also has a pair of headphones over its "ears" below its main pair. It holds a police baton and has a silenced MP5 on its hip. The goggle-less version wears a pair of sunglasses over its eyes instead of having them bare. This festive outfit is a reference to the Cloaker from Payday 2.

Abilities

Pummel

Deals 23 damage to a foe. The first 2 hits have a much shorter cooldown than the third hit.

The first 2 hits can hit a maximum of 2 targets, while the 3rd can hit a maximum of 3 targets.

During a Blackout, the third swing will cause the Nightcrawler to dash forward, much like a Katana swing, but does not slowdown the user.

Pursue

Stomps the ground, ragdolling and flinging away anybody close to it. It then crouches and its goggles gain a purple glint. After a moment, it will emit a loud screech and have a purple glow, all while retaining the glint and reaching extreme speeds. Anybody caught in its way will be pushed away and ragdolled. If a player happens to be caught in its radius when the ability ends, the Nightcrawler will grab their neck and punch them away, dealing 70% of their health. Your character automatically runs forward in the duration of this ability. You are unable to jump while you are using Pursue, yet you are able to change directions from moving your camera. If a Nightcrawler runs into a door while using pursue, the door will break and be thrown forward onto the ground.

This subtracts 100% of (300/600%) of the rage bar inside and outside of a blackout it has a cooldown of 20 seconds.

Retaliation (Passive)

Whenever the Nightcrawler loses 20% of its HP, it will stomp the ground, knocking all players away from themselves, giving them a chance to either get away or infect someone to recover. This effect is also triggered if the Nightcrawler is shot with any gun (100%), or if they are hit with a Bottle or Scythe (%chance). This ability seems to be broken or disabled for now.

Axe, Bottle, and Scythe Immunity (Passive)

The Nightcrawler takes minimal damage and no knockback when damaged by non-golden Axes, Bottles, and Scythes while in a Blackout.

Rage Bar (Passive)

Goggled Nightcrawlers must fight in order to keep their rage bar full. If the rage bar is empty, the Nightcrawler will begin taking damage. The bar caps at 300% (600% during blackouts). If the Nightcrawler manages to keep the bar above 200% (400% during blackouts), they will begin to regenerate health.

The rage bar drains slower if there aren't many players in the server. Inversely, the bar will drain faster for servers with a large player count. The more players there are, the faster the bar will drain.

Trivia

The Nightcrawler first appeared on the V3.1 thumbnail.
If you're infected by a Nightcrawler, you will need to infect 10 people instead of 5 to unlock it in the Bestiary.
The attacks for Pummel appear to be based on traditional martial arts.
The Nightcrawler is one of the few Gootraxians that can ragdoll or kill a survivor instead of infecting them. The others being Buck and Hazzy.
The Nightcrawler is a reference to the Cloaker from the Payday series, with both sharing a similar ability to charge at foes.
- Originally, the noise from its pursuit was a pitched down Cloaker Charge, which was later changed to a more original sound after its full release.
If you look closely in the V3.1 thumbnail, you can see the Japanese symbols for "menacing". This is most likely based off the meme involving popular anime and manga series, "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure."
This is the first Gootraxian to be unobtainable during their reveal, but still featured in a thumbnail.
The idea of Nightcrawler was created by about 5 people collaboratively.
Both Nightcrawler and Buck have similar color palettes.
When speaking in chat, the player using Nightcrawler will produce sounds similar to hissing or light roaring. These sounds were created by developer and musician, FishCracks. This is an ability that the original goggle-wearing Nightcrawler has, but not ones infected.
- If you want to have the voice lines, run the command ":tf [name] nightcrawler;goggle=true;cloaker=true" in your VIP server. Instead of playing hissing sounds when talking, it will play one of Cloaker's many voice-lines. (This has been removed as of Hallow's Eve V3.1)
To transfur yourself into Nightcrawler with Goggles in a VIP server, you will need its entry and use the command :tf [name] nightcrawler;goggle=true.
You can activate the rage bar in private servers by running the command :tf me nightcrawler;goggle=true;forcerage=true.
To get the festive variant, you can use the :fg command. This applies for all Gootraxians as well. In a public server, someone can throw the Festive Bomb item nearby to have the same effect.
It was released in the Late Christmas Update along with SprinkleKit, the latter being a replacement of Conekat.
Though the Nightcrawler has a large health pool, it cannot recover over time, and only heals from infecting Humans.
- It gains an estimated 10HP from infecting.
The Nightcrawler does not drop its goggles upon death.
Hovering over it's Bestiary icon about 18 times will cause their icon to begin vibrating, producing the Pursue sound effect.
There is a glitch where running the :fg command while transforming into a Nightcrawler will cause it to have purple lens colors, yet the green pattern will remain.
Nightcrawler has been confirmed to be inspired by Salazzle from the Pokémon franchise.
Nightcrawler is one of the only Gootraxians with multiple ways of obtaining its Bestiary, the other being Buck
Often abbreviated as NC/nc
Xotile/developer calls Nightcrawler "Nightcarler" as a nickname
Nightcrawler used to have an official theme dedicated to them created by "AuxCord," whom later retracted permission to use the song in Kaiju Paradise.
- You used to be able to find it on YouTube and Soundcloud.

Gallery

Nightcrawler’s icon, as seen in the Bestiary.

Nightcrawler’s alternate icon, as seen in the Bestiary.

Nightcrawler's Stomp SFX

Nightcrawler's Pursue SFX

Nightcrawler's Full Pursue SFX