Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor News

Last week we updated our Living Roadmap with the headlines for Update 03. This time, two of the bullet points would have appeared quite cryptic to you, but today we’ll share the details about the first one of them: Masteries. Masteries are divided into three categories: Weapon Masteries, Class Mod Masteries, and Biome Masteries.

There are 42 Weapon Masteries, one for each weapon, and they unlock once you’ve reached one of its first milestones. In a weapon’s Mastery, you enter a 3-stage dive where you are only able to use that specific weapon, and no other weapon slots will unlock in the dive. If you complete the run, you will unlock a permanent upgrade to the weapon that will apply to all game modes. This reward scales with the Mastery's hazard level.



Class Mod Masteries unlock after completing a Hazard 2 dive with a specific class mod, and there are of course 12 of them - one for each class mod. These masteries are regular 5-stage dives, but they come with an array of added challenges, most notably the inability to heal during a stage. That’s right: No red sugar, no life regeneration, and no healing when you level up. The rewards are worth it though. Each completed Class Mod Mastery will permanently increase the class mod’s passive bonuses across all game modes.



Finally, we have the Biome Masteries which unlock after beating a specific biome on Hazard 3. The challenge here is straightforward: There are 10 stages instead of the usual 5. This might not be Endless Mode, but it can sure feel like it when you dive that deep. It’s all worth it though, because the reward is a permanent upgrade to the specific biome that will carry through all game modes. What the upgrade is exactly, you will have to wait and see.

We’re super excited to bring Masteries into the game. They add a lot of variety to the core gameplay, and the passive stat rewards add a way for players to boost their power level outside the regular meta upgrade shop. In the next post, we’ll talk about Anomaly Dives which is another new game mode, and Morkite Reactor Cores which is a new meta upgrade currency.

Rock and Stone
The Funday Dwarves

Hello Survivors,

Thanks for being patient with us, as we finalized our plans for Update 03! We are now ready to share those plans in rough headlines. As always, we will start revealing more details about our headline features in the weeks and days leading up to the update. Update 03 is still on track for a (late) June release, and it will of course have many smaller features and fixes that don't exactly fit in a bullet point list on a roadmap.

Thanks for your rocks and your stones,

The Funday Dwarves

Hello survivors!

We just updated the game with a quick hotfix. Make sure you have the latest version of the game 0.2.226d

List of fixes:

Q'ronar Shellback:
- Fixed issues where his audio would keep looping in the background
- Fixed missing Elite Kill audio cue when killing him
- Reduced the width of the acid attack hitbox, it was a little larger than the visuals

Huuli Hoarder:
- Fixed an animation glitch with the Huuli Hoarder where he would slide on the ground

Overclocks:
- Fixed an issue where the Disposable Tech overclock stats were calculated as part of the Skill modifier group instead of the Overclock modifier group

Lighting:
- Fixed an issue where the dwarf shadow would disappear when going behind the Drop Pod

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


Welcome to the second content update for Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. This update features several new enemies, new/revamped boss encounters, tons of new overclocks, and much more! If you want to play the update spoiler-free, you should just go ahead and close these update notes and fire up the game. We hope you enjoy it!

[h2]Features[/h2]
[h3]New Boss Encounter: The Dreadnought Twins[/h3]
There is now a chance that you will meet The Dreadnought Twins instead of the Dreadnought at the end of a dive. The twins consist of two smaller Glyphid Dreadnoughts: An Arbalest and a Lacerator. The Lacerator will charge you and deal damage in melee range. The Arbalest shoots deadly fireballs at you from range. In higher hazard levels these abilities become more and more intense. The twins have separate health bars and will heal each other if the difference in their remaining health becomes too large.

[h3]Reworked Dreadnought Encounter[/h3]
In an effort to not make the old Dreadnought jealous of the newborn twins, we have given it some new abilities. You'll always be our special bug The first new ability is the Trembling Stomp which shoots out a tight cone of spikes that trap you until you dig through them. The second is the Swarm Bladder attack: A ranged projectile attack where the Dreadnought spits out a cocoon that bursts open and spawns a pack of Glyphids. Much like the twins, these abilities scale with hazard levels.

[h3]New Elite: Q’ronar Shellback[/h3]
In Update 01 we added the Q'ronar Youngling and a mini-elite version of it. Now we have the Elite Q'ronar Shellback ready, and it's toxic as hell!
Like its younger sibling, it can roll through rocks, but it has also evolved an Acid Spit attack that shoots a beam of acid towards you.
The Q'ronar Shellback elite can be found on Hazard 2 and up, but only in Crystalline Caverns, Magma Core, and Salt Pits.

[h3]New Enemy: Huuli Hoarder[/h3]
Get ready to hear the characteristic jingling of the clown car! The Huuli Hoarder has made its way into the game, and you don't want to miss this one. The Loot Crate it drops when you exterminate it can contain gold, nitra, weapon upgrades, and even rare artifacts.
Finally an enemy that doesn't run towards you.

[h3]New Weapon Inspect screen[/h3]
We have had a ton of requests for more information about damage calculations, so we have added a weapon inspection screen that can be accessed by pausing a run. On this screen, you can see how the weapon works, how the damage of the weapon is calculated, what the overclocks are doing, etc.

[h3]New Weapon Stats[/h3]
We are introducing two new keywords in weapon descriptions: Pierce and Potency.

Pierce is now a stat on projectile weapons. Increasing the pierce stat will increase the amount of enemies that can be pierced by that weapon's projectiles.

Potency is a new stat that affects the amount of status effect stacks that is applied by a weapon (Fire, Electric, Cold, Acid). For example, if you want to increase your chance to freeze an enemy, you want to apply as many stacks of cold as possible, and increasing Potency is a great way to do that.

[h2]New Overclocks[/h2]
We have added a bunch of new overclocks. Formatted here with the name and description of the overclock, and then a bullet point list of what weapons can receive the particular overclock.

[h3]Storm E-Mag[/h3]
The last bullet in the clip fires in all directions.

• DRAK-25 Plasma Carbine
  
• "Thunderhead" Heavy Autocannon
  
• "Stubby" Voltaic SMG

[h3]Knuckle Grip[/h3]
Boomerang flies in an outward spiral before returning

• Voltaic Stun Sweeper

[h3]Crisis Protocol[/h3]
Drones rush to protect you when you take damage

• Electrical Defense Drone
  
• Cryo Defense Drone
  
• Acid Viper Drone

[h3]Feedback Harness[/h3]
Throws grenades when you take damage

• Incendiary Grenade
  
• High Explosive Grenade
  
• Neurotoxin Grenade

[h3]The Favourite[/h3]
You really like this one (different stat upgrades)

• Cryo Grenade
  
• "Hurricane" Guided Rocket System
  
• Seismic Repulsor
  
• LOK-1 Smart Rifle
  
• Deepcore 40mm PGL
  
• Plasma Burster

[h3]Omni Barrel[/h3]
Fires in 8 directions

• Zhukov
  
• BRT7 Burst Fire Gun

[h3]Spliced Emitter[/h3]
Increased beam length and duration

• CRSPR Flamethrower
  
• Cryo Cannon

[h3]Runic Warhead[/h3]
Even bigger explosions

• "Hurricane" Guided Rocket System

[h3]Potent Juice[/h3]
Greatly increase potency at the cost of impact damage

• Cryo Cannon
  
• Neurotoxin Grenade

[h3]Impact Punch[/h3]
Greatly increase impact damage at the cost of potency

• "Stubby" Voltaic SMG

[h3]Unlimited Power[/h3]
Splits into multiple beams

• TH-0R Bug Taser

[h2]General Improvements[/h2]

• Worked with the transparency of the stats system, highlighting different stat modifier groups with different colors
  
• Added a stage and hazard level widget, so it is now visible at all times during a run
  
• Added more tooltips
  
• TH-0R Bug Taser got a rework and is now a lot cooler
  
• Plasma projectiles works with the piercing stat
  
• Worked on a bunch of explosion and ground zone VFX to reduce screen clutter and improve visibility of other gameplay elements
  
• Added a retry button to the end screen if the mission failed
  
• Equipped Overclocks can now be viewed on pause and weapon inspect screens

[h2]Balance[/h2]

• We have fixed a long standing issue where enemies that were under the effect of knockback would take double damage from most sources.
  
• Rebalanced weapons with knockback to account for the knockback fix
  
• Fire, Electrical and Acid weapon tag upgrades now apply extra stacks
  
• LOK-1 locks on way faster, has knockback and improved fire rate, damage and reload speed
  
• LMG Gun Platform now has a clip size of 20 and an internal reload speed of 0.5 sec
  
• Decreased the corrosion spread effect radius from 2 to 1
  
• OC Drone Mining Damage: Increased mining damage from 10 to 15
  
• OC Lead Wrapped Ammo: Reduces fire rate and reload speed by 20%
  
• OC The Favourite: Now modifies both reload speed and fire rate
  
• OC Cluster Grenade: Now also affects potency if the weapon applies status effects
  
• OC Drone Mining Damage: Increased the amount of damage done from 10 to 15
  
• Reduced the HP of regenerating vines in Hollow Bough significantly
  
• Changed the way cold damage can freeze enemies. This results in a slight nerf for fast firing cold weapons, while retaining the awesome freezing power of high potency cold weapons
  
• Rebalanced the number of Cryo status effects a weapons applies to make the new freeze status feel cool

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed an issue where the player could re-enter the drop pod just after arriving
  
• Fixed a bunch of weapons showing too few stats on the pause screen
  
• Fixed an issue where Spitball Infector would shoot once when spawning even from outside the screen
  
• Fixed an issue where loot bugs would absorb all projectiles
  
• Fixed a rare issue where first-time players would not be able to choose a class mod, and had to manually delete their save to continue
  
• Plasma Burster: Fixed Explosion VFX was not affected by explosion range upgrades (visuals only)
  
• Experimental Plasma Charger: Fixed an issue where the projectile would not pierce through big swarms.
  
• Armskore Coilgun: Fixed Beam angle calculation so when using multiple beams, is now properly centered around the target
  
• Shredder Swarm Grenade: Fixed several performance issues with this weapon.
  
• OC Conduit: Fixed several performance issues with this overclock. We now limit how often the lightning explosion VFX can appear when hitting friendly targets, but the damage logic still executes as often as before
  
• OC Conduit: Fixed an issue that could actually cause a game freeze. FPS drops might still occur, but the game should recover. This was especially prevalent when used in combination with Shredder Swarm
  
• OC Drone Mining Damage: Fixed an issue where it would not show up in the UI and could be equipped more than once
  
• OC True TNT: Fixed an issue where grenades with mining damage would do very little mining damage
  
• Audio: Fixed very loud Vine destruction sound when drop pod lands on a whole bunch of them
  
• Audio: Fixed the wrong pickaxe sound playing when mining certain minerals

Last week we let you in on some upcoming changes to the Dreadnought encounter. In the post, we alluded to another exciting addition to the game: A brand-new boss battle. Today we’re going to reveal more details about that particular encounter. Even though we spoiled it in the headline, if you want to be surprised about the exact details of this encounter you should probably stop reading now.

When you get to Stage 5 in a dive, there is now a chance that you will meet The Dreadnought Twins instead of the Dreadnought. The twins consist of two smaller Glyphid Dreadnoughts: An Arbalest and a Lacerator that work together in sweet symbiosis. The twins have separate health bars and will heal each other if the difference in their remaining health becomes too large.


The Lacerator is the most aggressive one. Much like the regular Dreadnought it will charge you and deal damage in melee range. Even though they came out of the same egg, the Arbalest is quite the opposite. It will fire deadly fireballs at you from range while your attention is on its sibling. In higher hazard levels these abilities become more and more intense.


We’ve got a lot more features coming in Update 02 including two new enemies and a truckload of new overclocks, but you will have to wait for the update notes to read about those. We’re happy to reveal that you won't have to wait much longer. In fact, we plan to release Update 02 NEXT WEEK!

Rock and Stone
The Funday Dwarves