SPRAWL zero Enemies and Factions

SPRAWL zero’s city is not a shooting gallery. MAETH populated it with factions that have jobs: the Junta occupies, IMAGO-DEI evangelizes with hardware, and stranger things — organic, mechanical, airborne — fill the gaps. You play as FIVE, which means some of the people you kill wear the same colours you do. This page is a field guide. Story motives sit on story. How to win the firefight sits on combat.

The demo is mostly IMAGO-DEI in urban streets, with Junta weapons appearing as pickups and Amalgams showing why those pickups exist. The full roster at launch is described as grounded and airborne, organic and mechanical. We will not invent unit names the developers have not shown. We will tell you how the types behave.

IMAGO-DEI

The techno-religious group is the demo’s primary human opposition. They hold compounds in The Graveyard and streets in Buried. They fight as squads: a captain, riflemen, grenadiers, and bodies on flanks. They are not bullet sponges if you are using the gun you just stole from them. They become sponges if you insist on a dry pistol because the next crate is five seconds away.

Fanatic is a flavour word. In practice they are F.E.A.R. squads with cult paint. They will flush you. They will talk. They will not wait in spawn closets forever. If a room goes quiet, someone is walking around the long way.

Their weapons are one half of the forty-plus arsenal. Color tiers on those guns still matter. A higher-tier IMAGO special is usually better than a grey pipe, but it is the wrong answer against Amalgams. Swap when the floor offers Junta hardware.

The Junta

The Junta is the militarized government FIVE works for. You will still find their corpses, their guns, and their architecture. Junta weapons are flagged as especially effective against Amalgams. Learn the silhouette. If a fight suddenly feels like you are tickling a monster, you are probably holding the wrong faction’s toy.

Do not expect the Junta to remain a friendly NPC faction just because Laida is on the radio. The prequel’s pitch is that FIVE is a weapon pointed at a cult while the city fills with other hands on the reins. Treat Junta soldiers you meet in the wild as the same problem as anyone else until a mission says otherwise.

Captains and information

Captains are the most important human target in any encounter. Killing one reveals remaining squad members through walls. That is your radar. Prioritize them with Bullet-Time or a sniper line. If you dump Rushdown into the first rifleman you see, you have spent the meter on the wrong rank.

A captain left alive is why grenades keep landing in the same crate. Details on that loop are in combat; the short version is: captain first, then the glowing outlines, then the loot.

Amalgams and other hybrids

Amalgams are the demo’s reminder that the Sprawl is not only a civil war. They mix organic and mechanical tells and they shrug off the wrong gun. Junta weapons are the documented counter. If you have not seen one yet, you will — Buried’s later streets are where players start saying the shotgun that melted cultists is suddenly doing chores.

When an Amalgam arrives, do not empty a sniper you were saving. Throw that sniper, pull the Junta special, Shield the first burst, then dump. Abilities and the weapon tier list both assume you will make that swap instead of role-playing a loyal marksman.

Airborne and vertical threats

Buried already names a Seraph — a helicopter. Steam players have reported Gravity Shield can reflect its fire and kill it even when radio lines tell you not to engage. That trick is on the achievements page. Official copy also promises more airborne units in the full roster. In the demo, treat anything above you as a reason to stop camping waist-high cover. Gravity Gloves can pull some problems out of the sky; Bullet-Time makes the rest shootable. If you cannot see the sky, you are in a bad piece of cover.

Civilians, scenery, and what not to overthink

The city is dressed with cars, signs, and people who are not in the fireteam. Do not assume every silhouette is a captain. Scan when you are lost; shoot when the silhouette shoots first. Explosive barrels and toxic tanks are more reliable allies than a random bystander.

For routes that avoid the densest packs, use the demo walkthrough. For a loadout that assumes mixed factions, use builds. For who ordered FIVE into this mess, read story after you can survive Buried.