Prey - Enemies

This post is part of our series of tips for Prey by Arkane Studios. It's not meant to be a comprehensive walkthrough filled with boring common-sense or easily-discovered points of interest, but things that might be tricky or that are easily overlooked.

Enemies

Early on you will encounter some "rare" enemies like a Thermal Phantom, Poltergeist, and Technopath. Don't kill them until you've scanned them with the Psychoscope if you are keen on getting Typhon Neuromods. These early ones are thankfully easy to avoid and destroy later.
Many Typhon cause nearby lights to sizzle. Typically you hear them making ambient noise or dialog first, but you can also estimate where they are by looking for lights sizzling, and track their movement by noticing lights that start sizzling and lights going back to normal when they have passed by.
If you kill something while it is in an active Lift, you may not be able to loot the corpse. The remains do not get Lifted up or down, and as soon as you enter a Lift your orientation is changed and you are moved, so you don't really have a chance to look at the corpse and loot it.

Corrupted Operators

Operators typically do not react to being shot at by a Turret. If they approach it's usually because they spotted you or spotted you moving the Turret (moving objects attracts more attention than you moving stealthily not carrying an object).

In the late game, Operators did fight back when attacked by Turrets. Not clear what triggered this change.

Even when they do approach, Turrets seem to be strong against Operators because each hit staggers them, slowing or preventing them from moving.

Cystoid and Cystoid Nest

Accumulated Radiation slowly fades unless you are at 100%, so it's generally not critical to avoid them just because of the radiation.
Turrets are very useful here as they are fast and accurate, good against the small Cystoids.
The Huntress Boltcaster is actually a very good weapon against Cystoids.

Cystoids detect the bolt as an object and will pursue and try to collide and explode with it, just like any other thrown object nearby.
In space it will be hard to locate the ammunition for retrieval later, so throwing available objects is still preferred. But if you have nothing on hand, it is better than using gun ammunition that has a wider spread in space. The Huntress Boltcaster is strangely very accurate in micro-gravity, unlike other projectile weapons.

Military Operators

They have no Typhon "contamination" so Turrets ignore them and they ignore Turrets.
They constantly respawn from Operator Dispensers.

You may have heard an automated message from time to time when any Dispenser is blocked so you can try to stop them from deploying a replacement.
But if they do keep spawning, you can keep farming Q-Beam ammunition and occasionally Disruptor ammunition, plus Spare Parts with you have the Dismantle Neuromod/skill.
Given enough time they can clear an area of all Typhon, except maybe a Nightmare if they can't get hits on it before being destroyed. So it may be in your interests to just sneak around them.

Mimic

During the Tutorial you see what physically happens to a human when they are killed by a Mimic. Whenever you see a corpse that looks like that, you should be on alert that there might be Mimics.
Can't usually climb over barriers or up slopes, so climbing up to high ground can keep you safe. However they can tiptoe on their tentacles or try to reach with their tentacles to lash you, so get up really high.
When you reload a game, an object in Mimic form may have changed orientation to an upright position if it was on its side.
When sneaking up on a Mimic, it is generally better to get close but not too close. Instead, rush the rest of the distance so that it doesn't start to transform or finish transforming and hit you first. You might lose the Sneak Attack bonus but you can get the damage bonus for attacking it while it is an object.
Mimics that are transformed into objects do not react to Typhon Lures.
(Video below) Sometimes you can clearly see the object that a Mimic has been transformed into, but the Psychoscope cannot. And throwing items at a Mimic in object form does not reliably make it transform.

Nightmare

You encounter a Nightmare for the first time shortly after entering the Arboretum. Until that event is triggered, they do not appear.
The event enables a recurring event/quest "The Nightmare is Hunting You" which has a chance to place a Nightmare on a map when you enter it. Once the location is selected, it will always be near where you transition in, even if you turn around immediately and go back to the location from another direction.
A Shotgun with fully upgraded damage and supporting Neuromods is great here. Otherwise, a Silenced Pistol, because it has good range and can shoot very fast. Failing even that, run and climb
The timer on the recurring quest doesn't start until the Nightmare notices you and does nothing if it expires but the Nightmare still knows where you are. So you won't actually lose your chance to kill the Nightmare for Exotic Material when the timer runs out and there's no big hurry to Scan it with your Psychoscope or kill it.

Poltergeist

It can be tracked with your Scope, and once tracked you can locate it with the marker even when it is invisible. However, successfully tracking it seems to not be guaranteed even if you have fully scanned it.

Once you have tracked one you can notice it doesn't like to be close to you, so you can more or less keep it from attacking you by aggressively chasing it.

It can throw things at you but tends to prefer the lift field.
The lift field doesn't seem to actually damage you unless you smash into something (usually the ceiling) when lifted. So just keep moving.
Does not appear to have a melee attack, so you can chase it around and whack it with your Wrench if you like.

Telepath

Turrets don't do much damage per shot, but they are also very resistant to the Telepath attacks.
Their purple bolts are somewhat slow and have some tracking, so if you strafe, you can sometimes get them to smash harmlessly into cover while you lure the Telepath to come closer or fly lower.

Voltaic Phantom

They can shoot electricity, but generally do not unless they cannot find a way to walk to the target.

Weaver

The ones you encounter in the G.U.T.S. are very different from the ones you encounter elsewhere in the Talos I later. They are generally less aggressive or are at a distance where they prefer to reposition.
Later in the game Weavers start to show up and they can pump out a lot of Cystoids. Turrets are recommended as they can fire rapidly to keep up with the Cystoids while fighting the Weaver. Even so, at short range, a single Turret can be overwhelmed by a flood of Cystoids, and Turrets are vulnerable to explosive damage.