There’s more than just secret alien pilots to unlock in Into The Breach. If you’re tough enough to complete every challenge, then you can unlock a Secret Squad of Mechs in the Hangar. This group is pretty special — they’re a mechanical, cybernetic-hybrid team of Vek insects. They’re kind of like Mecha-Godzilla, but bugs.
They’re also one of the best end-game squads available. While they start off weak, their damage output becomes pretty gnarly once you get enough Power Cores to upgrade them. They can be placed in Custom Squads like any other mech, and the team starts out with two direct-damage attackers — that only do one damage per attack. They look completely awesome, and that’s reward enough.
More Into The Breach guides on Gameranx:
- Into The Breach: 10 Tips To Help You Crush The Vek | Beginner’s Guide
- Into The Breach: An Easier Campaign Victory Guide | Custom Squad Build
- Into The Breach: How To Use Console Commands | PC Cheats Guide
- Into The Breach: How To Unlock Secret Alien Pilots | FTL Easter Eggs Guide
How To Unlock The Secret Vek Hybrid Mech Squad
To unlock the Secret Squad, you’ll need to complete basically every challenge in the game.
- Earn a 4 Island Hard Difficulty victory.
- The “Secret Squad” at the bottom of the Hangar will appear.
- The Secret Squad costs 25 coins.
That’s a huge amount of coins. There are 55 achievements in the game, and each one gives you one coin. If you skip the rest of the official main squads, you can get the Secret Squad a little earlier — but, you also need to unlock squads to get more challenges / achievements for more coins. Really, you need to unlock all the other squads first, then complete all the achievements to get 25 coins.
The hardest coin to earn is probably from the “Distant Friends” achievement. To earn it, you’ll need to find one of the alien pilots — and to do that, you’ll need to scan every map for a yellow beacon. It can appear on the ground, inside mountains, or in the ice — but only if there isn’t already a future pod in the level. If there is no future pod, play on Easy and spend a lot of time cracking open mountains to search for yellow beacons. After recovering the beacon, an FTL pod will land and you’ll unlock an alien pilot.
Let’s get into the Vek Squad. This is definitely a squad designed for experienced players only. They have low attack in the early game, but can be upgraded into true monsters by the end.
- Techno-Beetle
- Techno-Hornet
- Techno-Scarab
The Techno-Beetle is the toughest with 3 health — the others only have 2 health. The Hornet flies by default and can move four spaces. They have secondary weapons by default that you can unlock with one Power Core each, so acquiring Power Cores is essential to victory for this team. It also turns them from weak starters into god-like end-game mechs. If you’ve got the patience, this team is great for future Hard Mode runs.