Sand Wasp

The Sand Wasp is a giant insect beast native to the deserts of the Borderlands. Sand Wasps buzz around, attacking with a melee sting, but they can also launch a ranged attack, firing out a string of tiny glowing green wasps.

Diablo III Monster

Diablo III Monster [e]
Sand Wasp
Classification:	Beasts
Monster Family:	Sand Wasp
Role:	Cannonfodder/Ranged
Monster Stats Norm/Night/Hell/Inferno
Life:	Low
Mana:	N/A
Armor:	Unknown
Resistance:	Unknown
Offence Norm/Night/Hell/Inferno
Armament:	Baby Wasps
DPS:	Unknown
Low Damage:	Unknown
High Damage:	Unknown
Range:	Ranged
Speed:	Unknown
Movement:	Fast
Monster Modifiers
None
Spells/Abilities
Spit Baby Wasp
Found In
Borderlands

This Sand Wasp is a fairly weak monster when dealt with one-on-one. They become dangerous in groups, or especially on a crowded screen, since they can fire out repeated sprays of miniature wasps. These glowing green bullets cruise straight across the screen at a slow speed, but with several wasps firing them at once they can become quite numerous and more than a nuisance.

Depending on what other monsters appear, it might be a good idea to try and kill one or more of the wasps, to make sure you're not drained from constant baby-wasp barrage as you are fighting more important foes, like a Desert Dervish.

Spells and Abilities

• Fire Mini-Wasp

This is more an ability than a spell, since any Sand Wasp can do it numerous times, potentially launching dozens of tiny wasps, in bursts of four at a time. The mini-wasps aren't very damaging, but they can be quite numerous and very annoying and distracting to players who are locked up in combat with other enemies.

Mini-wasps fired like BBs.

Sand Wasps are very common through most of the surface levels in Act Two, but they seldom spawn in large groups, and no boss packs were seen in the BlizzCon 2009 build. They did occur as Champions and solitary bosses, which were considerably more difficult than individual normal wasps.

The AI of the wasps is similar to that of Blood Hawks found in Diablo II. The Wasps tend to hover around and move in semi-random fashion, and could be fairly easily ignored, if not for their annoying projectile attacks.

Background

The sand wasps presumably dwell in the desert regions of Sanctuary, where they await their prey. Their main attack seems to be the act of shooting baby wasps at the target. Whether or not they are aggressive towards humans is because of demonic corruption, or just hunger is unknown.

Previous Appearances

We have seen giant insects before, primarily in Diablo II, Act III. Whether this desert wasp has anything to do with the jungle one remains to be seen.

The Diablo I expansion (which is not quite canon) also had a multitude of insects, which could possibly be related.

Development

The Sand Wasp was first seen at the GamesCom 2009 demo and shortly after that at BlizzCon 2009. The inspiration for this enemy was old time arcade games, where players are forced to dodge bullets from opposing ships.

Blizzcon 2009 Panel

Sand Wasp mini-game!

The Sand Wasp and its unique ranged attack was discussed in the Heroes and Monsters panel at Blizzcon 2009. The following summarizes the panel discussion, but is not a direct quote:

The Sand Wasp is a natural creature. Not a demonic enemy. It's meant to show that the world of Sanctuary is very dangerous; it's not just the mutated demons that can kill you.

Sand wasps are swarming creatures. They're not very tough on their own, and are a fairly easy kill for any character. They're dangerous in conjunction with others; other wasps or especially other monsters to occupy the character and let the wasps fire freely. We call multiple wasps attacking at once the "Bullet hell effect." where their mini-wasps clog the air.

This concept was tough to work into the game. We tried a lot of different projectiles from the wasps, but none really worked. Eventually we got the idea to use tiny wasps, but it was still had to communicate to the whole team, from artists to programmers, what sort of effect to create; where the concept came from. Eventually we realized that it was emulating an old arcade action game, and made a little demo version to show what we were thinking about. (Animated movie of the Galaxian-like arcade shooter plays.)

Media

You can find pictures in the Diablo 3 screenshot and picture gallery:

• Diablo 3 screenshots and pictures
• Sand Wasp-specific gallery contents

• 

  Sand Wasp concept art.

• 

  Wasp and BBs

• 

  A pair of wasps hovering.

References

• Sand Wasp concept