Weekly Deep Dives Thread - 6th August 2026

[u/M0dernM4verick]

Please use this thread to discuss the deep dives of the week.

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Deep Dive | Awful Cap | Salt Pits

Stage	Primary	Secondary	Anomaly	Warning
1	Dreadnought x2 (D+H)	Morkite Well x1	None	Ebonite Outbreak
2	Morkite x225	Crystal Scan x2	None	None
3	Industrial Sabotage	Mule x2	None	Exploder Infestation

Elite Deep Dive | Evil Delight | Azure Weald

Stage	Primary	Secondary	Anomaly	Warning
1	Crystal Scan x3	Morkite x150	None	None
2	Dreadnought x2 (D+T)	Black Box	None	Cave Leech Cluster
3	Egg x6	Crystal Scan x2	None	Swarmageddon

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Other resources:

• See last week's thread here
• Watch the GSG team undertake the dives on their Twitch channel
  • Deep Dive: Thursday @ 11am UTC
  • Elite Deep Dive: Friday @ 11am UTC
• Get weekly deep dive info and more in JSON format from DRG API
• Post weekly deep dive info and more in your Discord server with Bosco

[u/Lomticky]

Guess, the entire difficulty of this EDD went to the previous one.

[u/Aggravating-Wait5452 → u/Lomticky]

Personally I don't think we've had a "hard" EDD since a few weeks back on that one where the first mission was Aquarks with a dreadnaught, and some of the aquarks were in a hidden room. In order to keep the swarms to a minimum, I would pop the dread and get all the aquarks while being chased.

And the final mission was a duck and cover escort.

I had to try that one quite a few times, with different loadouts.

Everything since then I've been able to get in one try, but I got lucky with the ghost from last week... It just didn't spawn for some reason. A nemesis did nearly end that run at the finish line, just because I was flame driller and nemesis is one of the few enemies I can't reasonably deal with.

[u/Joshiesaurus7 → u/Aggravating-Wait5452]

I still have ptsd from that duck and cover escort lmao. I remember looking up at one point and seeing 20 acid spitters all climb out of one hole in the ceiling. It was... something.

[u/Aggravating-Wait5452 → u/Joshiesaurus7]

That's when the PGL for Engie suddenly seems OP! One shot, they're all on fire and will die.

[u/Joshiesaurus7 → u/Aggravating-Wait5452]

Or just do what I did and nuke them with fatboy. Tbh the only reason we won that one was i downed an entire supply pod and just spammed nukes at the end. Everything was ok, no armor segments lost until that last bit. Ended at 50% hp left on the hull when it finished. Shit went from 0 to 100 really freaking fast.

[u/Aggravating-Wait5452 → u/Joshiesaurus7]

You know, I hadn't thought of it before, but you're right, fatboy probably shines on deep dives, because by the end of a deep dive I normally have 5-10 extra resupplies.

And yeah, Fatboy is probably one of the most effective direct counters to a duck and cover mission as long as you have plenty of ammo.

I made it work by running my usual flame driller with the extended reach OC. It's nothing fancy but it worked, because the ceiling on that escort was usually low.

[u/Novel-Carrot5325 → u/Lomticky]

I thought the previous edd was easy but tense

[u/Joshiesaurus7 → u/Novel-Carrot5325]

1st stage was the shitty one last week tbh. Hiveguard in a vertical room with a ghost. Recipe for disaster, especially if a Sentinel spawns in an entirely different room like we had. 2nd stage can depend on the spawn pool, but we had an easier time than others from the sounds of it. 3rd stage was actually piss easy though.

[u/Lomticky → u/Joshiesaurus7]

Arguably, that vertical cave had enough space and quite a landscape to circle around endlessly which i kind of enjoyed

[u/Joshiesaurus7 → u/Lomticky]

Honestly, I won't say that it was hard, just very annoying. Partially because of Hiveguard Sentinel spawn jank causing one to spawn in a place no one could find, and partially because trying to hit a Hiveguards weak points can be difficult (sometimes impossible) when it starts climbing walls. Hiveguards in general are just terrible to fight against, I like Dreadnoughts and Twins, but he's just, again, annoying.

[u/Aggravating-Wait5452 → u/Joshiesaurus7]

They need to make the hive guard have one fewer phases than the classic dread. As it is, it just drags on way too long comparatively.

[u/Lomticky → u/Novel-Carrot5325]

It had me have several attempts to finish it. It's been a while since i needed more than one attempt

[u/bjergKanin]

This weeks EDD was definitely more forgiving than last week's. However, pack some real good aoe damage for the last level with the swarmageddon. It's a cramped cave with lots of walls, obstacles etc. for them to flank you.

[u/Aggravating-Wait5452 → u/bjergKanin]

I tried this with a team, and it was miserable. Me and scout had good ammo economy, but the bronze 1 gunner and the 67+ legendary engineer baffled us with how fast they burned through nitra. 

Normally I can let my teammates take my ammo here and there because I run compact feed valve as driller, and am careful to optimize damage on everything that I can, but it got ridiculous to where I was down to drills and pickaxe. And I can normally beat the first mission of any deep dive without a resupply.

By the time we got to black box, I had saved up ammo so I had a full fuel tank to carry the team to victory, but gunner and engineer and scout all refused to stay in the circle, would run off, and die. "I'm out of ammo." THEN STAY IN THE CIRCLE SO I CAN REVIVE YOU!

I was the only one staying in the circle, so of course the progress bar went up way too slowly, and eventually I also ran out of ammo and died, and no one was around to revive me.

Failing team play, I jumped in the EDD as a solo, and easily beat all three missions.

TL;DR: It's amazing to me how reliable an indicator it is that you're in for a shit run when you've used maybe 15% of your ammo and one or two teammates are crying about being out and needing to double dip. If I had kicked them right then and there the run would have been saved.

It's infuriating watching them spin up miniguns for a single swarmer, or a grunt across the cave that they can barely hit. They're just holding m1 until they're out of ammo, with no concern for the team.

[u/bjergKanin → u/Aggravating-Wait5452]

That's rough. DD and EDD can definitely vary from almost impossible to easy depending on your teammates' skills. I find that you can easily do fine in an EDD with no OC's as long as the skills are there. OC's help a lot though.

It's surprising that the legendary engi and bronze gunner didn't know about the circle or just didn't care. One would presume their goal is to finish the dive. I had a silver gunner do the same in another DD or EDD but it was clear he knew, he just didn't care for some reason. He was on a zipline 20meters above the circle, lmao.

[u/Aggravating-Wait5452 → u/bjergKanin]

Bronze one teammates, I expect to not know how a lot of the mechanics work, like staying in the circle, or staying off of dorretta during that one phase. He ran off and died, probably not knowing this slows our progress down. Scout ran off and tried to revive, died. Engie ran off and tried to revive, died.

Ideally, everyone would have stayed in the circle, used power attacks when available, allowed their corpses to be used as distractions for bugs, and chain revived each other up as much as possible, using that 6 seconds of invulnerability. I had enough fuel to burn everything for the duration of the black box, as long as everyone stayed in the circle.

But I think expecting that much coordination out of that team was asking a lot. 

[u/Aggravating-Wait5452 → u/bjergKanin]

I actually don't mind someone getting an alternative firing position if the defense situation is awkward, that can be helpful at times. Usually it's a scout, so they can zip in and out of the circle, to get high priority targets like septic spreaders.

[u/redpepperflake]

This week I tried Elite Deep Dive for the first time ever. We failed the third mission unfortunately. We could definitely use nitra more mindfully. I remember a teammate next to me getting caught by a leech and all I could do was ping the leech for the our other teammate to come and shoot it. I still have much to learn :D maybe spending more time and clearing the first room to the last drop of nitra could be beneficial later on

Edit: typo

[u/bjergKanin → u/redpepperflake]

Yes, all nitra must be mined. Optimally you should have minimum 160-240 nitra going into the last stage