Rock Puncher

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The Rock Puncher is a large, aggressive species of Fauna. The Rock Puncher was first designed for the original game which takes place in The Crater but was scrapped, eventually being revived for Below Zero.

Appearance
The Rock Puncher has a bulky, armored body. It has six articulated feet and two arms at the front. The head shows four, orange eyes at the front and and a pair of mandibles directly underneath. Its body ends in a small, short, shrimp-like tail.

Attached to the arms are two large club-like extremities, presumably used to deliver powerful strikes against hard objects.

The Rock Puncher's underside is gray with a green shade while its back is yellow with red patterns. Its arms and legs also share the similar patterns, with their tips being dark brown in color.

Behavior
Rock Punchers are slow moving, aggressive crustacean-like creatures. They move along the sea floor until approached by the player. At such a time, they will begin following the player, and will even occasionally jump at the player if they swim too close. They can be distracted by Rockgrubs, which are their main prey.

Rock Punchers can be observed tapping the seafloor with their forelimbs, testing the ground for any potential Rockgrubs. If the Rock Puncher finds any, it will repeatedly punch the ground to unearth a rock covered in Rockgrubs, and will proceed to pick it up and feed off of the rock. After feeding, the Rock Puncher will toss the rock aside, allowing the player to break the rock and gain resources such as Titanium, Copper, Silver, and Gold.

Despite its relatively small size in comparison to many predators, the Rock Puncher's phenomenal strength and tough exoskeleton protect it from all mid-sized predators, leaving it vulnerable only to predators in the Leviathan class.

Design
The Rock Puncher is heavily inspired by crustaceans of the order Stomatopoda, the mantis shrimps. Some members of the group possess club-like forelimbs that are used to deliver extremely powerful blows to their prey: all types are noted for the incredible acceleration of their forelimb strikes, which can exceed 10,000 Gs and are delivered so fast they generate cavitation bubbles that further damage their prey, it is even said that their punch causes so much friction that sparks are started underwater. The Rock Puncher is essentially a scaled up mantis shrimp. Make sure Robin has a tough aquarium if you have her keep this creature.

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Trivia

 * The Rock Puncher's design is most likely based on the mantis shrimp.
 * Early animations for the Rock Puncher can be found here.
 * Gamefiles refer to the Rockgrub as "Rock Puncher Larva" but an early Trello card refers to them as "RockPuncher Food".
 * The Rock Puncher was originally planned for Subnautica, but was later cut and repurposed for Below Zero.