How to Get Xenosamples in Aliens: Dark Descent

As Aliens: Dark Descent begins you’re a little out of your league, even for the Colonial Marines. But as the game progresses, you’ll have the opportunity to level up pretty much everything, giving you a better chance of avoiding an unexpected chest-baby. Aside from gathering general resources, you’ll also want to get your hands on some Xenosamples. But how do you go about that? If you want to know how to get Xenosamples in Aliens: Dark Descent, here’s the answer.

The Methods for How to Get Xenosamples in Aliens: Dark Descent

As the name suggests, Xenosamples are material taken from the Xenomorphs. There’s more than one way to get your hands on them, but be warned that the second method is going to put your marines at risk. Here are the methods I’ve encountered.

Daily dilemmas: When you’re on the Otago, you’ll have to let a day pass before you can deploy again. Or you can skip a day yourself; it’s up to you. But when you do choose to roll over to the next day, you’ll be offered a dilemma to deal with.

For example, a couple of your marines might be fighting and you’ll have to choose what to do with them. Or you might have the opportunity to send a dropship out on a mini-mission to gather some resources. This mini-mission will use up a day’s deployment, but you’ll typically end up with a reward — and since the computer handles it, you don’t need to do a thing.

One of the mini-missions you’ll be offered is collecting Xenosamples. If you accept you’ll lose a day, but you’ll gain some Xenosamples, usually at least 10.

Killing Xenomorphs: The other method is to kill Xenomorphs, something you’ll be doing a lot of playing Aliens: Dark Descent. The snag is that the odds of getting a Xenosample, marked by a DNA helix above the corpse, is low. It has to be at least 1 in 20, probably lower than that. I must have killed around 40 aliens in one deployment and only got two Xenosamples back.

The good news is that the bigger the alien, the more Xenosamples you’ll get. When I killed a charging category 2 alien, I ended up with four samples. Regular aliens give you one at most. To collect the samples you have to “activate” their corpses, which means sticking around. But given the low drop odds, you should grab them while you can.

So if you were wondering how to get Xenosamples in Aliens: Dark Descent, that’s what you need to know.