Electro-Pest

Electro-Pest is an electrically charged variant of the Pest. Like its ordinary counterpart, it leaps at targets and deals contact damage, but its leap is much more dangerous: when it starts the jump, it emits a shock ring that deals 30 Blunt Stun damage to everything in the area around it. This shock attack has a 3.5 second cooldown, so it only occurs about once every other leap.

The shock ring also creates a dangerous close-range counterattack window. If the Electro-Pest’s charge is active, striking it up close will cause the attacker to take 30 Blunt Stun damage in return. Because the effect is an area attack, it bypasses shields, which makes clustered fights especially hazardous. The creature is still sluggish outside combat, but in a fight it is far more threatening than a standard Pest.

Electro-Pests can drop several useful materials when harvested. They always provide Capacitor and Tech Scrap, and they also have a high chance to yield Raw Pest and Raw Pest Rump. They can be captured with the Pest Trap, which turns them into a companion that can attack for the player.

The safest way to deal with an Electro-Pest is to avoid trading hits at close range. Ranged attacks are the most reliable option, since they let the player punish the creature without entering the shock radius. If melee is necessary, the best approach is to evade the leap, wait out the shock ring, and then counterattack during the recovery window. Fighting multiple Electro-Pests at once is especially dangerous because each leap can create overlapping damage zones.

In GATE records, Electro-Pest is classified as IS-0173-B and is treated as an electrically modified form of the Pest. Containment instructions emphasize non-metallic surroundings, full electrical isolation, and grounding all equipment before any interaction, even with sedated specimens. The entry also notes that the creature originated from Dr. Abraham Stern’s cybernetic experimentation on the Pest, before the work was halted in favor of studying the organism’s further evolution.

A notable issue in early access through v1.3 involved the interaction between its charged close-range response and the Prickly and Thorns bonuses of the Carapace Armor Set. That interaction could create a damage loop, making melee attacks against a charged Electro-Pest extremely dangerous and often lethal to the player.