How to Survive and Kill the Nutcracker in Lethal Company

We’ve been over the Masked, but now it’s time to tackle the more straightforward enemy new with patch v45: the Nutcracker. In this guide, I’ll go over how to survive and kill the Nutcracker in Lethal Company, which is the one way to get the Shotgun.

Lethal Company Nutcracker Survival Guide: Shoot to Kill

The Nutcracker introduces guns to Lethal Company officially. Some players were using a shotgun mod, but now we’ve got one in the vanilla game. It can’t be as simple as buying one off the store using the Terminal, though. Oh, no. You have to take on a Nutcracker to get your hands on some firepower. What makes this even more annoying is that these enemies are particularly aggressive, and hunt you down once spotted..

How to Survive a Nutcracker

If you’re just trying to survive an encounter with one of these monsters, you need to be aware of your surroundings. Look for pillars, bookshelves, counters, walls, anything you can use as cover for when the Nutcracker you’ve encountered fires its gun.

You can hear Nutcrackers through walls, specifically the mechanical noises of their joints moving. These enemies patrol the halls of facilities looking for intruders. When one is actively patrolling, it won’t necessarily notice you. It’s when it lifts its toy head off its shoulders and reveals the eyeball within that it becomes a problem, as it will target crew members it sees moving within its line of sight.

The stop-and-look cycle happens frequently enough that it’s hard not to trigger the Nutcracker into becoming aggressive. If you play carefully when you hear its movements behind walls, though, you might be able to avoid being attacked.

You can escape a Nutcracker by breaking its line of sight for several seconds. This usually entails running away and making lots of turns. You’ll be able to tell it’s calmed down if the music stops.

How to Kill a Nutcracker

Being that these are extremely dangerous creatures, killing one is no easy feat. You need to make use of cover in the surrounding area so that its shots don’t hit you and, instead, hit the cover before you. Then you need to get in and hit it with a Shovel or sign, and get back behind cover. It doesn’t take long for Nutcrackers to reload.

Killing one using the above method is extremely risky and takes practice to pull off regularly. Alternatively, you can make use of Stun Grenades, Homemade Flashbangs, or the Zap Gun to stun the Nutcracker for long enough to hit it until it dies. This is a far safer option, but it might require at least two people just to get it done before it’s able to shoot whoever is assailing it.

Once you’ve killed a Nutcracker, you can steal the Shotgun right out of its cold, dead hands. You should have at least one shell in the barrel, and the Nutcracker should have dropped a couple of extra Shotgun Shells on the floor for you to pick up.

That’s all the advice I can give on how to survive and kill the Nutcracker in Lethal Company. Check out some of our other LC guides here on GameSkinny, such as what Hazard levels mean, all moon Fire Exits and hazards, or how the Mimic mod works.