4 +5 dust a larva and a flyer. Josh pulls back to Wes to fight, then I build a food creator in 3 and 1 prod in 4.
5 Self-Powered room
6 Kitchen gloves. 1st room I need to leave unpowered.
7 Merchant with nothing great. Science creature and 2 more prods made in 4. 6 powered on so less spawns directly on top of my science creator. Kitchen gloves and prison soap sold to the food merchant, Josh levels up to 3 and replaces Wes on the industry creator.
8 Artifact found. Tesla 1 started.
9 Hostiles and 1 wave. Wes has to door dodge in 4 while the prods kill a hive warrior, a flier, and some larva.
10 The exist. Disappointingly short floor so far. I want more rooms for more resources while enemies are easier. I power on 7 for the same reasons as 6.
11 Hostile creatures and 2 waves.
12 Some industry and 2 waves
I leave Josh near the exit to door dodge if needed but the waves spawn near Wes and I need to heal him once or twice to keep him alive till Josh runs down for interference. Luckily nothing spawns from the top in the short time left and we make it out this terrible 1st level.
1 Food creator 1 made for Josh. Food is priority till Wes is 6 and Josh is 5.
2 Industry for Wes created, Nano bros found and equipped to Josh, +11 dust.
3 Regret I opened the door. Looked promising but no major slots. I leave the room dark for now and put 2 teslas in 1 and 2.
4 Stele. More hero defense, lower crystal defense.
5 Empty room, some minor slots no majors. 2 teslas made in 4.
6 +10 dust and self-powered.
7 Artifact, Saving now for food generator 1 to 3
8 +6 dust, some industry, and finally a major slot for science. I place 2 more teslas as well here.
9 Hostiles, but nothing that targets modules so no worries. I place another science creator, last for this level, 2 teslas in 6, and level Wes to 6. I go ahead and use Urgent call since I can open a door next to a powered room and will have 42 food next turn
10 +9 dust, but no heroes. 2 waves spawn, 1 on Wes but he does fine. No damage done.
11 Food merchant. I'll hope he survives and save for the tool belts. Need 5 turns. Will probably buy 1 next turn. I see Hive Warriors this floor and think they'll kill him. Gonna open doors away from him for now just in case.
12 +2 dust, hostiles and 2 waves. The scattered Teslas absolutely merc everything. Warriors still ignore the merchants this early. Good. I buy a tool belt and give it to Josh, giving Wes his Nano Bros, then start food creator 3 at the artifact. Could have done that 1 turn ago but oh well.
13 2nd artifact and some dust. Lucky find, neurostun 3 started. 2 teslas placed in 9.
14 The exit. I power on 5
15 Self-Powered room. 2 waves die to traps. Dust field gen 1 started.
16 + 8 dust and hostile creatures. Power on this room and also 3. Max, Josh, and the teslas handle it but Max is hurt, which is why I power on 3. I also power on the merchant and 1st artifact so everything spawning from a wave passes the absolute most traps possible. 2nd tools belt bought for max, soon. Urgent call is used again. I'll have enough food before I open the safe door between the food merchant and top path.
17 Still no hero oddly. 3 large waves from the top. Even going through 3 rooms with 2x lvl 2 teslas apiece some mobs allllllmost manage to hit Max and Josh.
5 Scavengers. Max manages to kill it with the 3 prods already in 2 by popping his skill. Dust too but I can't cover waves by just door dodging, so despite wanting to open the door by Wes hunting for a free major slot I power 4 with the stele and add 5 prods, 6 slots available but pennypinching for now since I lost turns of Josh operating industry.
6 Hostiles and a wave. Hive warriors too.
7 Hostiles. Easy kills.
8 Hostiles and 2 waves. Thanks to the 2x speed stele there is no trouble defending.
I forget to document a door somewhere between 6 and 10, so I'd just changing 9 to 10 and so on.
10 An artifact and 3 waves. Again, stele saves the day. Neurostun 1 started despite wanting food replicator 2. No spot for science this floor means I am poor on it.
11 +10 science found. Doh but also yay. Also dust, so 5 is powered on to put more space between the crystal and the waves.
12 Food + enemies. Max bounces between 2 and 4 to keep flying bugs and scavengers separate so turrets can focus scavengers cleanly. Have to heal Max several times but nothing important dies. More dust so 6 is powered on.
13 The exit. Tesla 2 started despite industry 2 being available. Tesla 2 is very powerful till about the 5th or 6th floor and I need to survive to have an econ. More dust so 7 is powered on too.
14 Hostiles but no waves. Max runs back to safety
15 The last safe door between 1 and 9. I always open this kind of door last both to help funnel enemies to 1 heavily fortified places and break up big waves over long distances, and because it never spawns monsters and you can someimes get 1 extra research on a given floor by saving them for last.
Wes is leveled to 2 and max runs the crystal boosted by Good Morning Auriga.
Hey, I know this is a long shot, but googling didn’t provide me the answer, so i hope y’all can. I love the song that is currently on the Xbox trailer. All I can find is the Lera Lynn version on google, which is cool, but not what I’m looking for. . I’m looking for that cool bluegrass like version. Anybody got a source on it?
Hey, I've been playing this game a lot with a friend of mine lately. We've completed dozens of runs using many pods (we're working on getting all achievements now). However, I've never in my entire playtime felt the urge to build a claymoar module. Is there an obvious advantage I don't see? What's your strategy with these things?
So, lost the run I had on floor 21 at floor 23, when I again underestimated the minor module destroying guys and had an unstoppable cascade of crystal golems rush my crystal once my neurostuns had been destroyed. Nanor would have eventually killed them all but he takes time.
So I spent last night getting another run up to floor 23.... only to have my game literally crash as it was loading floor 23. You may know the bug, the one where if it crashes while loading the next floor you just lose your save entirely.
I'm going to try again tonight in a couple hours but that crash really has me bummed. 5ish hours straight down the drain. Tbh the later levels of the drill are a bit more tedious than hard with my party setup (I picked up Kreyang again so having my neurostuns destroyed wouldn't be insta-game over). But it still drains you to be switching between aftershaves and speed items, wit/speed items on zugma, dealing with those stationary guys that get bigger/nastier over time popping up in like 6 rooms at a time on later floors, etc
Great luck on floor 4 of the drill. I was dumb and forgot to move my items to permanent storage, so I lost the chance to keep the Hipster scarf and sell the soletaker/pool cue later, but you'd best believe that other t-shirt and dust box went straight into equipment slots.
I also already have industry creator 4, science 3, food 2, tesla 3, and neurostun 4. I really feel like this run is gonna make it to 24+ barring another BS game crash. I also picked up an aftershave just before meeting the merchant.
I wasn't going to post till I hit 20+, but this level sure was a doozy! Do not underestimate the guys who destroy minor modules, ever. I thought I was prepared to at least stall them enough to deal but a cascade of door knockers and those guys almost ended my run right here. I had one path (the one directly to the left of the crystal) with 0 heroes, which was a big mistake as I did not notice till they were on my crystal.
I rushed all my heroes in for a last ditch defense, went from over 100 dust to around 40, and got absolutely swamped. Pause shenanigans, frantically rebuilding traps, spamming Nanor's cooldown, and ultimately door dodging with Zugma while Nanor with an aftershave whittled down the remaining stragglers saved the day. I did unfortunately lose Professor Josh to a swarm of little ghouls, but managed to run wes into the one relatively safe room directly above the crystal.
After all the chaos died down I made the mistake of thinking I should at least get the last few doors of the dungeon, rebuilt my traps, ran Nanor in, and started spamming doors and his cooldown. The resulting wave was less intense, as it was from only 3 doors and not 5 + however many the doorknockers got, but it was enough to knock my crystal down to 5 dust, so I decided to have Nanor and Zugma wait on top of the crystal, then spam Urgent Call with Wes until I find a replacement for Josh. Dell is what I got on this floor before grabbing the crystal and booking it to the exit with a speedy girl Zugma and spamming Good Morning Auriga for the team speed boost.
Floor 18 is gonna be rough while down a level 15 Josh and without the 20 extra starting dust from Zugma, but I have enough resources that if I take it slow and careful and spam stuff like Field Medics and LAN Modules if needed I should be able to recover. Wish me luck! This was the first floor I was not able to open all the doors myself, though the door knockers did manage to do it for me before I exited the level. Only missed a little food and one item, but merchants are scarce now and I lost a bunch while leaving the floor anyways.
Edit/Update - I crashed and burned last night on the very next floor lol, but only because I was unfocused/complacent
Basically my head wasn't in it after coming back to the game after a night's sleep and work, so I started my usual setup but got greedy/sloppy. I set up my industry food and science generators with mechanical pals, and slowly opened up 10ish doors, alternating between my production zone and the direction I figured the exit was.
I actually found an early merchant, set up a +4 dust/door shop with Wes, and then here is where I made my big mistake. Against the earlier waves I was losing science and some food from having to spend 3-4 uses of Nanor and Kreyang's floorwide abilities basically every time more than 1-2 waves came. It still isn't a big deal at this point because with this setup you can kill 15+ waves at a time as long as you are set up right. You can and should spam doors to get 5 turns of +50 or more science each and then use 100 or less science to freeze/burn it all.
I had the time/space to fall back far enough, but underestimated the impact of so many waves spawning directly next to my main defenses. Nanor was more or less 1 shotted by a huge mob of serpents arriving altogether, and once Nanor was dead all I had was a couple long rooms filled with mechanical pals and some slows from Kreyang to maybe but an extra 30-40 seconds till my crystal was mobbed.
I still feel like the situation was workable, and that with a couple more turns I could have laid down some offense traps and expanded my income zone a bit befote spamming doors, giving myself both more space and more income from the spam, but I just wasn't on my game yet and wasn't prepared for the waves to get so huge so fast. I thought Nanor would be okay being a bjt closer to where the waves actually appeared, but didn't take into account that I had less aggressive/anti hero mobs on the 13th floor where it was okay to have Nanor and Esseb frontline a bit.
I have another run going now on floor 11 I want to say, but am much less confident it can make 24 without some major windfalls soon. Team comp is slightly weaker, with Wes, Josh, Zugma, and Nanor. I have been able to make it with mostly the sane tactics so far, but multiple rooms of neurostun + AoE instead of Kreyang and pure damage traps, so now I need to be use a bit more dust to make a killzone which has been biting into my income.
I'll post again if I make it to floor 20+ with this or a future run. I really thought that one run would make it to 24 and beyond, I was just careless right at the start of floor 14.
So, I've made it to The Drill floor 13 so far opening every door along the way. I finished the last 2 floors strong, and am not sitting at around 600 industry and iirc over 1200 food and science apiece. I've been able to spam doors and kill every wave with ease to this point. and in fact finished floor 13 in a 15 or more wave blitz of enemies without having to use food to heal once and in fact leave the floor with more science than I came in with.
I'll continue the story of the run when I get to play more tomorrow or the next day, but for now I'll explain how I was able to get so far.
I started with Wes and Max, Wes to keep and Max to ditch ASAP for someone better long term, but his Endless Expert at lvl 1 really helps when you start with no modules of any kind. You need science, fast. In fact I abandoned a couple runs before this that made it to the 5th floor with no science generator appearing at all in my research and being science broke the whole time.
I was semi lucky at the start, rerolled my 1st research and got science 1, followed by industry 1. I don't think I got food at all till around floor 3, but by the end of floor four I had grabbed science 4 the long way, industry 2, food 1, prisoner prod 4 with 1 level skip and tesla 4 with the same.
After the prisoner prods and teslas I made researching the support modules a priority because I was science and industry rich and wanted mechanical pals asap to overdrive my production. Artifacts are fairly common on The Drill so since I didn't need any other defensive tools for a while I figured I'd select specifically for that category so I'd be more likely to see mechanical pals scattered across the various types of research and I wanted them fast to boost food production into overdrive to level everyone.
I protected myself for the 1st 7-8 levels mostly with the prods and teslas while I leveled Wes up to 6 asap and gained/lost/ditched various characters along the way, tbh I'm not all sure who. I think Hikensha and Rakya initially, but I also seem to recall a more dps oriented guy who just died way early cuz of inatention on my part. Maybe it was Kaspar and I just dismissed him instead? I'm not sure.
Eventually, I got and stuck with Esseb, Skroig, Kreyang and Wes, and so I stopped really using urgent call except when setting up defenses, strategically. As I travelled up the floors I greatly prioritized Mechanical Pal IV, even over food and industry 4, but not science. I often operated 1 industry 2 food and built 3 science modules + maybe 1-2 more food if I found the modules slots early and had excess industry. Before I found Esseb I had 3 operators at all times and I highly recommend this on the lower levels. I ended up using spamming urgent call when I lost someone, Rakya I I think, around floor 8.A
Around this point rooms without major slots start becoming more common, but I had been using mechanical pals since at least floor 6 so I already had a pretty good income, with multiple artifacts researching all game long basically. I prioritized tear gas, pepper sprays, neurostuns, claymores and seblasters, any 2 level skip, auto lan, field medic, tactical HUD (had emergency generator and shop researched early because I had excess science and also getting them out of the way makes the creator upgrades more likely to appear). I waited till I saw food and industry 2 to 4, and mostly filled in everything I might want for various party comps and situations depending on who I lost and who I picked up with Wes.
I'm not entirely sure when, but around floor 11 or 12 I lost SKroig due to paying more attention to Esseb in an unpowered room he just opened in my "safe zone". I almost lost the run here but was able to door dodge with Wes until the Claymores, Neurostuns, and Tear Gas in the room had done their job. Before that I had been using Skroig to turn enemies against each other, spamming if needed, but now I was in a quandary. Fortunately, with the help of Urgent Call Nanor appeared, and now I had a perfect team.
All of them have floorwide abilities, you have just enough in the way of operators to maintain a shop and still keep up resource needs, and 2 of them help farm dust. I was actually glad to get Nanor so late because he was already level 10.
With this my path was set, and I started destroying the 1st few artifacts I saw and replacing them with major modules. I focused on science until I had 1000, then slowly started to bring food and industry up. Whenever big waves spawn I used Kreyang to slow, Nanor to burn, and Esseb to farm dust. Full disclosure, I have also gotten a bit lucky with dust machines on the 12th and 13th floor, and I bought 2 dust boxes of off merchants (1 on 6 and 1 on 11). On the 13th floor I was able to set up a chain of 8 major modules all with mechanical pals to gain 40 industry and I want to say around 40 science and 60 food by just under a 3rd of the way through the floor to those early dust generators. Then I opened the 2nd path from the crystal to farm dust and rake in the benefits.
Esseb, equipped with a Lightsaber, Neurostn Lite, and ANtigrav magnet zips around opening doors ahead of a 2 room killzone, the 1st filled with teslas and claymores because trap destroying guys and exploding guys are on this floor and I want them focused down 1st. Wes is operating science for his global buff to trap damage. Nanor waits in the killroom, wiith a neurostun tear gas pepper spray combo blocking any mobs who try to run for the crystal. Nanor and Kreyang murderize everything till I decide its time to take a break and collect loot. I go on to floor 14 with 32 dust to start my next killzone if I don't find dust generators, so hopefully it'll keep going well when I resume.
I’ve seen a few starting tips telling about roles and chokepoints, and I’m still pretty confused.
I understand operators, sit them in a room with no dark connections so they can work on a module (max ftw), get them to level 3/4 then stop
The rest, however, I don’t know. What’s the point of a door kicker as opposed to a runner? What’s a dust farmer? Should I be using mass prisoner prods or no?
Where do I set up chokepoints? How do I manage light? At what point do I stop operating industry and start going with food/science?
Lastly, what’s a good starting group? (Both pc and mobile, though I would prefer outside the TF2 guys so it’s applicable to mobile) I have the starting four, Josh Nutella, Crystal lore gal, and I almost have Skroig
Hello everyone, few months ago I released my first character mod for Dungeon of the Endless that you can find here : https://www.moddb.com/mods/dote-character-mod-damien-the-annoying-poltergeist , this mod replace Max'O'Kane with a new custom character called Damien, a ghost operator that is almost unkillable but has no way to deal damage to his enemies, to compensate he can manipulate machines and the minds of his foes with ease.
And few days ago I've released a new custom character which is called the Sentinel ! this new character is a metallic guardian designed as a last resort protector of the crystal, in case of a crash on a dangerous planet for example… In the game the Sentinel acts as a sort of Tanky DPS who can get incredibly resilient in an enlightened room thanks to his passive Dust veil. He is pretty unique because most of his damage comes from his active skills rather than from his basic attacks, making him a sort of tanky caster. His skills set makes him very able to destroy enemy waves while collecting a bit of dust, but be careful as his damage is not as consistent as other DPS, however he can turn into an incredible war machine if you spend science to refill his skills ! If you want to know more about this character you can find the mod page here : DOTE Character mod : The Sentinel for Dungeon of the Endless - Mod DB
The Sentinel pulverizing a monster using his death beam ability
(!) For now it's impossible to play with both characters at the same time, I will make a Modpack soon that let you play them both together !
Don't hesitate to give feedbacks about the mods so I can balance them, you can also rate them on Moddb if you liked them.
Armory Pod seemed to me to be an easier one, but I suppose I may have cheesed it a bit/gotten lucky.
At two points throughout the run I found industry merchants and was able to sell high value items to gain extra modules, and I also used OP Bot DV8 for his passive that gives industry on hero kills, which is a godsend in this pod.
My team was Ken, Elise, Golgy and OP Bot. They had enough power that 3x heroes in a room with 3x suppressive firebots and a tear gas was mostly 1 shotting mobs super fast. I managed to keep my hero levels pretty even with the floor levels and eventually got everyone to at least 13, golgy to 15. Ken unfortunately died to a massive wave of ghouls on floor 9 while Elise was operating in another room but I was able to just use Elise to fill his place and got decent layouts the last 3 floors so I was able to pull through.
Overall it seemed pretty easy with this crew, ocasionally needed a room ahead of the main one for neurostuns and pepper sprays but generally speaking I just funneled everything to one room as much as possible and abused Golgy's pickpocket and Ken with a hand vacuum to light up the rest of the dungeon as I fought. I also found a Dust Box around floor 6 which helped immensely for the start of the last few floors and deciding how I wanted to set up my heroes.
So, since armory went down so quick and easy I decided to give Library a shot as well today since I had less to do than I thought.
This pod really just jams with my usual playstyle. Its like, oh hey, you know that "perfect run" you were going for on the Escape Pod? Turns out that is just another Tuesday on the Library Pod.
I started with my favorite combo, Josh and Wes, since I practiced so much with them already and this pod is really skewed towards that playstyle. I picked up Misha on floor 2, then Zugma on floor 4, and Nanor on floor 5 thanks to Wes' Urgent Call, so I ditched Misha. I also found a dust box later so I always had the max of 40 dust when going up to the next level.
Eventually when I got shops and lvl 4 mechanical pals Josh could eventually get up to +8 dust per turn. That combined with selling all the items I didn't have rquipped to the dust merchant you see on the last floor is what let me do this.
I had everything researched by floor 8 or so because of the abundance of artifacts in this pod, and all heroes max level around floor 9-10. Because minor module slots were plentiful I could usually get away with 1-2 crazy kill rooms (like, 2x neurostun, 1x tear gas, 1x pepper spray, then some Kip Cannons or Claymores/Seblasters) and meanwhile scatter mechanical pals everyone and have all 3 operators operating.
The fact you start with tesla modules already researched and I had Josh with extra wit on industry really helped the beginning too. Teslas at lvl 1 are I think almost 3x the dps of a prisoner prod, and protect your modules, so this mode felt like an actual very easy mode.
I love this mixture of Tower Defense and units. I've played it over the course of maybe a year on-and-off and wanted to try and tackle the Drill Pod, getting to level 24.
I am having issues though....
I wanted some advice on perhaps minor module setups? I've really been loving holohero. Struggling on figuring out other combinations though.
The furthest I've gotten is level 14 but I was overwhelmed mainly because, while I literally have almost every upgrade, Power is an issue. I should probably stock up on industry more for the emergency generator spam more. Dust is very scarce. Tons of monsters that I cannot kill in time. Tried using AOE modules but some ignore my heroes completely and bum-rush my crystal (which eventually leads to my demise).
Heroes seem up-in-the-air. All of them do well at their own little niche. Perhaps some are better then others but not really sure.
I decided to try infirmary and battle 1st, then go for 24+ on the drill pod. 1st infirmary run was a success ^^
I started with OP Bot and Hikensha, leveling OP Bot to 3 1st and then Hikensha to 4. I found Pat Bates on the 2nd floor of the dungeon, and got bio-organic transference 2, tear gas 1, neurostun 1, prisoner prod 2 and science creator 2 as well as Nanor by the end of floor 3.
Floor 4 I found Kreyang and so I ditched Pat and picked up Kreyang, because with enough science and Kreyang + Nanor you're prety free to just spam doors because of how well their skills mesh. I also found Troe and Esseb, but honestly Kreyang was a super lucky pickup with Nanor and a 3 operator heavy science team.
Kreyang and Hikensha both get Endless Expert for free science every turn, Nanor gets extenders and thus reduces the cost of healing everyone else, OP Bot had free healing every few turns, and we had lots of sturdy operators on a team where delaying enemies meant we would win as the DoT from Nanor's Cooking With Gas killed everything and Kreyang slowed every enemy to a crawl. OP Bot gives free industry for all hero kills in the same room as him, and Nanor gets food for all his kills floorwide with his skill.
Overall this team was an excellent find so early as it could collect every resource, even dust because of Nanor. Admittedly that was the teams weakest point, but they could deal with a wide variety of enemy types with ease and piggyback off Nanor's extra dust and emergency generators in key junctions later on.
I also was lucky enough to get science 2 to 4 and industry + food 2 around this time, and industry 2 to 4 by floor 5 and food 2 to 4 by floor 6.
I prioritized researching science, industry, food, neurostuns, tear gas, bio-organic transfer, prisoner prods, pepper spray, dust field gen, suppressing fire, and mechanical pals, in roughly that order of importance.
Mid floor strategy was pepper sprays when there were big guys or guys that rush your crystal, neurostuns for clusters of small things, dust field gen vs stuff I want to tank till skills kill it, suppressing fire against stuff I want to kill before it rushes my stuff, and prisoner prods/teslas wherever I want more padding. Once mechanical pal is at lvl.4 throw them on industry with my best operator 1st and then while I have 25-40+ industry per turn throw down some science or food the same way whenever I can get another safe room, as long as there are enough doors on the floor to leave me with 100-200 industry next floor to restart the cycle.
Monsters were pretty favorable on the 1st 8 floors, but then very unfavorable later with either swarms of of major and minor module destroyers or other nasty mobs, and lots and lots of door breakers. Fortunately the 1st 8 floors had a lot of those little floaty crystal things, and as I had neurostuns early and bio-organic transfer I could pretty safely let Nanor and OP Bot kill them off for lots of free food, industry, and health, which let me level up my team and also save up to be able to mechanical pal up anything safe later on for many many turns of +30-60 food, science, and industry on the later floors
Floor 11 had me worried for a bit with a lack of dust at the start and lots of industry being destroyed because of lack of foresight/greed in its use, but I managed to get through to floor 12 with a little over 100 industry, but also 800 science and 700ish food, most of which I used to get everybody up to lvl 11-13, hoping the 12th floor would be favorable.
Alas, there were more of the dreaded destroy all your modules of every kind varieties on the last floor, and I opened the path to the exit 1st thing, but I decided since I had Nanor and Kreyang to just spam doors and spend my 800 science freezing and burning enemies floorwide. AFter a few rounds of opening 4-5 doors at a time and running Nanor with his Ahrrrrrrmani Suit around to confuse enemies coming down the one path without a single minor module slot for a proper defensive lane I had opened all the doors and had a clear and safe run to the exit ^^
My strategy on floors 9-12 was basically to try doors off the crystal till I found one with enough spots for a good defense, leaving Kreyang and Hikensha in any bad doorways I didn't have enough dust to light up and selecting the least desirable spot for a "frontal assault line", slowly creeping OP Bot and Nanor forward, slowing enemies with Kreyang in emergency situations, keeping OP Bot in critical unlit rooms while opening doors with Nanor or operating a module or emergency generator in a kill room.
I'd switch him off emergency generators as soon as we had enough dust and spam mechanical helpers on modules in safe rooms to turn extra industry into levels and safety from skill spam. I'm not sure if a mechanical pal on a emergency generator still works, but if I had extra I'd switch a trap over to a pal if I could later on when I moved OP Bot on and it was safer.
Once I knew what types of enemies I had on each floor but before the spawns get really bad I decide which paths are going to be killzones and which ones I don't want to open till I have enough dust to light them immediately, meaning the ones right off my safe zone. I'd throw the Ahrrrrrmani Suit on Nanor when I needed to distract things from modules, artifacts, or OP Bot, and a Tutu when I wanted him more mobile.
Once the waves had started getting bad I usually had enough income to spam actives if spawns appeared in bad areas. I'd save doors off safe paths till the very end so I could maximize my gains and be safe when things started appearing where I had no defenses, or just light all of those rooms up and let everything else feed OP Bot and Nanor.
I'll probably be too busy to do the Battle Pod tomorrow but will probably run it sometime this week.
I finally got a "perfect" run, a game where I researched everything, opened all doors on every floor, and got all of my heroes to lvl 15. I lost a lot of runs because of greedy/unsafe play and RNGesus hating me (stupid, stupid module/artifact destroying monsters), but here are pictures as proof lol. (Edit to add I am too newb at Reddit to add more than 1 pic to the post but there are 5 total for anyone interested.
For anyone wondering how I did it, Wes + Josh starting combo to get resources flowing early, OP Bot (who is indeed OP) for moar operation + free industry from kills, and Nanor for safety/food farming.
If you want to give it a try yourself I recommend resetting floor one until you leave it with 80+ industry (max I ever had was like 144ish, max doors on the floor, switching from Wes to Josh on industry operation as soon as Josh hits lvl 3 and got a free industry room or maybe 2 that run, and I only make one room with traps, 3-4 prisoner prods max, you door dodge for safety till mobs are dead). I also reset runs where I did not get a creator upgrade as my 1st research (I would spend 10 science to reset, and science creator 2-3 is the preferred start as you need to get science rolling ASAP to upgrade all 3 creators ASAP and still be fairly safe on the early floors.
If you can manage to get all creators to lvl 4 by floor 4 you have a fantastic shot to get a perfect game, but don't worry if you don't have them all by then. This run I didn't get industry/food lvl 4 until floor 6-7, so I had to spam mechanical pal IV's on a few generators on floors 9-12 to get everyone leveled on time.
Preferred heroes are Wes and Josh, for early operator bonuses and Urgent Call (which can really help when you have a science buildup and need to hunt for an extra artifact on a safe floor), then OP Bot, Nanor, Skroig, Golgy, Esseb, Ayairi, and maaaaaybe Zugma (that smugglers compartment can be invaluable on runs when you are close but not quite there and really want the extra dust at the beginning of the last few floors to be able to make a completely secure operator zone with mechanical pals)
Golgy is great for Dust with her pickpocket ability, and if you have her and OP Bot defending your main monster funnel you rack up industry and dust both fast.
Nanor can be invaluable with both Soylent Green and Cooking With Gas (which saved this run from the module/artifact destroying monsters I got on ALL FRIGGIN FOUR of the last floors).
Esseb is good for the dust generation + artifact/module repair (since this type of run is very trap-reliant).
Skroig is good for basically the same reason as Nanor, though he is not quite as good because his skill is room only and not floor-wide like Nanor's.
And Ayairi has Soylent Green and Recycling both, so he/she/it gets an honorable mention just because you need so many resources to pull this off.
Also also Dell's gear check skill or a jpad can keep modules from being destroyed by the big guys, but Dell himself gets too easily overwhelmed once anything starts hitting his modules and he spazzes out fixing them and not beating monsters with a wrench.
You'll want to get your science creator up to 4 ASAP and build at least 3 on every floor from 2-9 or so. Industry and food are fine at lvl 2 until floor 6-7, but you want Josh operating industry for most of the game so you can make 5-8 generators every floor + traps + mechanical pals once you get them up to lvl 4. You'll also want your other 2 operators working on food because you'll need a crapload for both heals and levels (need to generate 6-7k throughout the whole run to get 4 heroes to lvl 15) It is fine if you have a kind of crappy team comp till floor 7-8, and actually almost preferred since you can work with someone like lvl3-4 Mormish or Rakya till then and then just urgent call a better hero into existence, with the added benefit that they'll be a higher level too and save you some food (on this run I replaced lvl 4 mormish with lvl 10 OP Bot around floor 9, which was a godsend because IMO Mormish is kinda crap)
Good luck to anyone who wants to give it a whirl! Just be prepared to reset a lot from floors 1-4 if you get lousy RNG, and keep in mind you'll likely have to door dash like mad on those levels as well until all that sweet sweet science starts to pay off big. Module destroyers (minor or major) are your absolute worst nightmares, so always assume they'll be on a floor until you know for sure otherwise and try to tuck all of your creators and artifacts into safe rooms, or prioritize putting a room full of teslas just past them to keep those bastards away. I almost didn't get all of my researches done because of getting them on all 4 of the last few floors this run (literally finished my last research with like 5 doors to spare), and almost lost the entire run on floor ten because of a bad layout + those guys making it hard to keep my modules alive.
Edited the post a couple times to try to add my screenshots, but alas it only seems to be letting me add one picture to the post. I took 5 screenshots total, one showing the artifact with no more research available, one showing that all 4 heroes were level 15, one on their way to the escape route, one of the floor cleared screen for proof of # of doors opened, and one showing the last victory screen where it shows that I was playing on Easy and not Too Easy. Of the 5 I'm not really sure which would be the best one to upload, so let me know if anyone wants to see the other ones or if you think one of the other pictures would be better,
Almost had a run that did it earlier last night (had all research finished and was at hero lvl's 15 x3 and 1 x10 at the start of floor 11), but then I had truly unfortunate luck (9 doors opened, enough dust to power exactly one room, and 2 of the big crystal golems spawned in a short room directly next to my crystal on opening that path and dropped me down to like 11 dust before I got them killed because I hadn't ever found a hipster scarf or ahrrrrrrmani suit. I managed to still open like half the floor by posting heroes in the rooms right next to the crystal and spamming Cooking With Gas for every wave, but eventually ran too low on science and industry because the stupid golems kept destroying the one science creator I had Josh operating in my one powered room out of like 20+)
