There are very few moments that get the adrenaline pumping than the opening split-second encounter with a Coil-Head in Lethal Company. Nothing shakes you up quite like turning a corner and staring face-to-face with an entity that will snap your neck if you turn away even for a little bit.
In this guide, I will tell you everything you need to know to survive an encounter with the Coil-Head. This will include knowing their behavior patterns and steps you can take to save your life.
What is Coil-Head in Lethal Company?
The Coil-Head is a dangerous entity that one can consider as a skill check encounter in Lethal Company. They can appear on virtually every moon, including the starter moon of ‘Experimentation’. Coil-Heads are distinguished by their mannequin-like appearance and coils for necks.
This entity is comparable to SPC-173 from the SCP universe. Notable differences include rapid movement instead of instant movement and weakness brought on by loud noises and bright lights.
According to employee Sigurd:
“Vir colligerus, or colloquially named Coil-heads, have not been studied extensively due to their extreme unpredictability and dangerous properties. They have been known to combust into flames when being dissected or even deactivated, and they carry dangerously high levels of radioactive particles. Due to this and other reasons, it has been highly speculated they were created as biological weapons of war, although this has not been proven.
Coil-heads’ visual appearance is that of a bloody mannequin with its head connected by a spring. Their defining behavioral characteristic is to stop when being looked at. However, this does not appear to be a hard-and-fast rule. When they encounter a loud or bright light they sometimes appear to enter a long reset mode.”
How to survive a Coil-Head encounter
Surviving an encounter with a Coil-Head takes a lot of cool nerves on your part. They barely make noise on approach and will only produce sounds after closing the gap between you. When faced with a Coil-Head, stare at it and calmly assess your surroundings before deciding what to do next. Staring at a Coil-Head will prevent it from advancing toward you. But as soon as you break line of sight, it will immediately go for the shortest route to kill you. You can’t take your eyes off it for a second.
Important: It is possible that you can run into two or more Coil-Heads inside a salvage site. Getting them bunched up and into view is paramount to survival. You might need to hug a corner for a bit until they all get into view.
Collecting salvage around a Coil-Head is relatively safe, provided you keep the entity within your viewing screen. But escaping the facility should be your top priority. If you’re in a party, you can take turns staring at the Coil-Head(s) to prevent them from moving but someone’s eventually going to be left behind with the entity. This is where you have to buy yourself some time.
The easiest way to buy time is to stun it with a ‘stun grenade’. Dropping one close to it will buy the few seconds you need to quickly find the exit. But that strategy is completely useless if you don’t know where the exit is. For even if you stun it, sooner or later, that ‘thing’ will be right up against you in no time flat.
If you don’t have a stun grenade on hand, your only course of action is to lead it to a door and angle yourself in a way that you have both the door and the Coil-Head in view. This is managed by getting it to move within 30 degrees of the door with the center of your screen fixed on the door.
Tip: The trick is to position yourself slightly from the door and then look away to make the creature advance to a favorable location somewhere near a doorframe. Make sure it’s just for a split second and there’s space between you two. They move fast, so the closer it is, the faster you need to be.
Your odds of survival are greatly lowered if you have to deal with other monsters and if there’s a turret/mine in play. But whatever happens, don’t look away from them. That’s at least a guaranteed death right there.
Can you kill a Coil-Head?
As of the writing of this article, there is currently no way to kill a Coil-Head. The log entry suggests that it bursts into flames when destroyed but that has yet to happen after repeated hits with a shovel or stop sign. It also doesn’t appear to be bothered by light, unlike snare fleas.
Once you’ve exited a facility that has a Coil-Head near that point of entry, it is nearly impossible to return via that entrance. Simply for the fact that you enter a facility pointing towards the door. You won’t have time to react before a Coil-Head snaps your neck. It is during these encounters that you should take stock of what you have and leave the area if you can afford it.
And that’s everything you need to know about surviving an encounter with the Coil-Head. Don’t worry about still losing your nerves even after seeing one after a dozen hours of play. I’ve learned how to move around bunker spiders and eyeless dogs with great care but I still get chills running down my spine when a Coil-Head appears on screen. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, if you ask me.
