Mirelurk King

Mirelurk Kings are seemingly the brood leaders of the mirelurks.

Physical Characteristics
Mirelurk Kings are humanoid and stand a foot taller than the average man. They are faster and have more powerful melee attacks than mirelurk hunters. Additionally, they have very high health, slightly more than even a Super Mutant Master. However, they lack the damage-resisting carapace shells of standard mirelurks. Their heads are also much easier to target, due to their humanoid body shape. These factors can make them actually easier to defeat than Mirelurk Hunters, and they are typically only a threat when encountered alongside a group of standard Mirelurks or Mirelurk Hunters.

Mirelurk Kings possess a unique "sonic" ranged attack similar to that of the robobrains, which cannot be used if the Mirelurk King's head is crippled. The attack causes a moderate amount of damage and can cause the player's head to become instantly crippled. However, this attack is fairly easy to avoid.

Loot
Mirelurk Kings contain Mirelurk Meat as well as the considerably more potent Softshell Mirelurk Meat.

Locations
Mirelurk Kings can be found mainly in deep water environments such as the following:
 * The entry to Rivet City's Broken Bow, near the snapped-off part of the aircraft carrier
 * Rock Creek Caverns
 * Mirelurk Nesting Hole
 * In the water by the Abandoned Car Fort
 * Around a pond directly west of the Republic of Dave
 * The Reactor Room area of Vault 92
 * The Sunken Chambers of Oasis
 * The submerged area underneath the Anchorage War Memorial.

They can also emerge at random from a river. Note that Mirelurk Kings typically only appear at these locations at high player levels. The only possible exception is the Mirelurk King encountered in the Oasis Sunken Chambers, who serves as a sort of "boss" for that area.

Trivia
The Mirelurk King possesses a striking resemblance to the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and an even greater resemblance to Abe Sapien from the Hellboy comics.

Bugs
You can reverse-pickpocket a grenade into a Mirelurk King for a stealth kill (which results in negative karma because pickpocketing any object results in negative karma).