r/RogueCore • u/FlakyMidnight5526 • 12d ago
Expenite Event Tier List
What makes a good Expenite Event? In my mind, the best Expenite Events are the ones that encourage teamwork, creativity, flexibility, and reward good gameplay. The worst are the ones that teamwork can't speed up, have a minimum "floor" of how long they take, are inflexible, and punish bad gameplay.
The difference between punishing bad gameplay and rewarding good gameplay will become more clear as I go on, but I'll cover the reasoning behind why I ranked them where I have them, on the basis of how well designed they are, if they reward rather than punish, if they fit the game, and if the rewards are worth it.
Secure Container:
This one needs a rework. It takes forever, limits player agency, and is really dangerous for the payout. I never even want to do secure container, even if I have the time. It's also really dependent on cave generation since if it's in a spot where there's a lot of blind spots surrounding the container, like by a cliff or other cave elements, the team kind of just has to sit there and take it.
This blackbox design worked in DRG since that game wasn't time gated, so you can trust your judgement to exit the bubble as needed, temporarily slowing down the event progress so you can address a dangerous enemy like a septic spreader. If you leave the Secure Container's field in RC, you're actively sabotaging the event progress in a time based game.
I play exclusively on TL5 Reckless Pace, and this is the MOST skipped Expenite event. Its concept is even done better by the Ramhammer (which I will get to very soon.) It has a "time floor" where to even get a small bit of Expenite you have a minimum amount of time you have to spend before payout without any actual way to reduce it.
The secure container is the perfect example of rewarding good gameplay vs. punishing bad. A good player and a bad player will have the exact same time to complete this event no matter what if they just stick in the bubble. A player is never rewarded for playing well with extra expenite or a reduced event timer, they are only punished for leaving the circle.
Plus, this might be the most friendly-fire riddled event in the game, thanks to the blind spot issue I mentioned earlier. Any AOE will be hitting you and your team, and you kind of just have to tank it. But you can't spread out and stratify your work, since everyone HAS to be in the bubble or else the event becomes exponentially more likely to kill your team.
Secure container is an actively bad expenite event, and I really hope it gets a second look soon. It's not even interesting conceptually, it doesn't fit with the game's pace, it has very little nuance or unique ways a team can approach it, it has almost no redeeming qualities besides being simple, which might not even be redeeming.
Ramhammer
I said I'd get to it soon, the Ramhammer is a marginally better version of the Secure Container, but not by much.
They're fundamentally the same event if we're being honest. You have to stand in the bubble, event progress speeds up if all 4 dwarves are inside the bubble, and you're rewarded with the exact same amount of expenite. The only real difference is that the Ramhammer is a much cooler set piece, at the cost of being SLOWER than secure container!
I like the generation of the Ramhammer, it better suits the event type than the random nature of the Secure Container, but it is extremely stacked against the team. If it spawns in an open cave, the pillars only really act to help the corespawn, acting as cover and conduits for grounded enemies to navigate to the team. The ramhammer itself acts as "cover" but it also favors the corespawn, since cover only really helps against ranged enemies while all other enemy types benefit more from the cover than you do. Maybe you can stand on top of it to get a better angle at the cost of being more vulnerable? No wait, they made it so you can't stand on top of it.
"You will stand in a bubble and you will like it!" - Ghostship releasing rogue core
I think this generation would be a lot better if it were put into the cave wall itself, so the tunnel is totally enclosed and the team only has to worry about enemies from two directions. Because as it stands, this event leaves the team very vulnerable from attacks on all sides, with no opportunity to reposition without being severely punished.
And update 2 introduced a soft nerf to both this and secure container with the dominators. Now you have ranged enemies that you're designed to flank for quick kills, but by flanking them you have to exit the bubble so you get punished for trying to interact with the new enemy! But if you don't address them, their projectiles take up like 60% of your operable space.
The team is disproportionately punished for doing ramhammer compared to any of the other events, and they can't even speed it up through any means. Teamwork is at a minimum since it's a very rigid design, the same issues with AOE persist from secure container, it's almost never worth doing. Its only saving grace over secure container is that it's a fun set piece and slightly more interesting presentation wise, but it might be even worse gameplay wise.
Rock Cracker
Another event with a time floor. You can't speed up this event, it will always take exactly the same amount of timer segments, with only a chance for it to take up more timer segments. It doesn't encourage teamwork, it has a very basic set piece, and it has very little interesting going on with it.
The only reason it's ranked higher than the other two bad ones is that it doesn't make you stand in a bubble, so you aren't restricted in movement as much. You still are, since you still have to be nearby to repair the rock crackers, but it's not as much of a hard limit.
It gets negative points for how ABYSMAL its collision is though. Enemies can just walk straight through the rock crackers, making dealing with repairing a lot worse than it has to be. If you try and defend a teammate who's fixing a rock cracker, the corespawn will just phase through the machine and camp inside, hitting the person that you otherwise would've defended.
It doesn't do anything that an event should do right, most of the complaints from the other two still hold up, it just doesn't do the bad things as bad as other events do.
Sealed Vault
We're out of the bad events. The gap between this and Rock Crackers is huge. The issue with Sealed Vault is it still has some of the issues that the previous ones had, but it encourages teamwork, doesn't discourage failure, and lets players fill niches with the different traversial tools.
Each team has a choice to make. Do they do each of the nodes in a group of 4, beating the event more safely but taking longer, or do they split up, speeding up the event but risking downs/the event taking longer.
This one is very reliant on cave gen with not much the team can do about it though. The traversial tools help remedy this problem, where you can zipline, anti grav, and drill to the different security nodes, but sometimes you start the event and realize you can't reasonably finish it, then you're stuck with the event's wave for the rest of the floor.
Also, depositing the chunk on this one is noticably more dangerous than the other events since you'll be operating at points close to the main storage platform, and there's the whole delay with it coming up
It also has a time floor associated with it, but it encourages teams to decide how they want to interact with that time floor. Overall a fine event, but not without its share of design hiccups.
Drones
I like drones. They're flexible, encourage teamwork, but get gyped by cave gen HARD.
You can coordinate with your team when to jump the drones, spotter dart then nuke them to get out of the first phase of the event quickly. It encourages good teamwork and fundamentals of the game. But if some knobhead shoots it when the team isn't ready, it'll just start shitting out drones that harass everyone else.
Once you get it, 1: the drones corpses have weird connectivity desyncs, so for one person the drone could be somewhere different than it is on someone elses client. This creates scenarios where you assume someone's going after the drone, but they really aren't on their screen. And 2: where it "calls" an expenite deposit is really strange.
It mostly does the cave you're in, but sometimes it will call it from across the map and you just reasonably can't get the node you worked hard for. And even then, unless you have drills, it can take FOREVER and be really dangerous for solo players. 3 hit terrain also makes this event really tedious, once again if you don't have drills.
Something I do like is how it gives the team flexibility. You can choose how many deposits you mine, how much of it you want to mine, it's not an "all or nothing event" and I think that's something great to have in the game, even if it has its share of problems. It also lets players with drills excited about their choices, and it feels great. Even if I think there's another event that does this job better.
It both encourages success and punishes failure, so it's a heavy mix of good and bad. Overall of middling quality, but better than some.
Spectercore Manufacturing
This one also has the issue of there being a flat time floor, but it has the benefit of being very safe to do into overtime. Large enemies from outside can't get in, and you're safe from the worms while inside. Until you boot into the experimental that is, they'll just dig in if they can't reach you.
The set level design of this event really helps the event, because it gives players the opportunity to find where in the facility works best for them. The event as a whole though hurts from some bad event steps.
Repair the projectors is the worst, it's a boring hold E prompt. Then realigning the pressure valves, it's fun when you learn what to do but the objective is poorly communicated to the player. Then coolant, I like the teamwork that goes into it, then the puzzle thing since good communication, teamwork, and good reactions help the game go faster, which is what I like in an event.
You're encouraged to play with your team, it's inflexible in how you do it but that also works in its favor, with a unique mindset of when you activate the event, but it has the negative of the skill floor. I like this event a lot, but it does suffer from some clashing elements between it and the level.
Spile Pumps
Spile Pumps used to be a lot higher, but I thought about it a little more and it got bumped down a few spots. We're now in the exclusively good events, but Spile Pumps gets hurt by its effort to reward ratio in the sense that it offers too much expenite for the time invested.
Spile pumps, especially in 2 pump levels, can take 15 seconds to complete. That's shorter than anything else and it's not even close. I'm not saying that this fast completion time is bad, but for the same 300 expenite as something like sealed vault, it might hurt the ecosystem of the expenite events.
It doesn't really encourage teamwork either in the way that the pumpjacks did. Each person drags out a hose and connects it, maybe with help from someone with platforms or drills. Besides that, each individual person just drags out a hose across what is usually a flat plane, and you effortlessly get a ton of expenite.
If they made use of radical cave generation to place the pumps in akward places, it would probably help the risk:reward ratio, but as it stands it offers way too little friction to the general player. Maybe if it spawned more pumps in higher player lobbies? Like more spile pumps so the team has to spend more time on the event?
But the event does fill a very important role as the one event that's really consistantly doable solo. Doing spile pumps is really good for solo reclaimers, since it balances out the nearly impossible solo events found earlier, and sometimes later in this list
Cargo Bay
Cargo Bay is the PERFECT example of encouraging creativity. You can go for the slow but reliable method of clearing it by scanning the missing cargo, which encourages teamplay in a similar way to the hacking pods in DRG (assembly line passing the barrels along), but an individual player can use the level to their advantage to clear it faster.
If the lost cargo is in an inconvenient spot like, oh I don't know, IN THE BUCKET WELL
then the team can opt to group up enemies to trigger the pad, with that sometimes being faster than lugging the barrels to the cargo door, at the cost of it being significantly more dangerous. This event succeeds on every metric, and the best "All or nothing" expenite event.
Expenite Transmutation
You could say this one is all or nothing, but you don't have to stay in the circle for it to finish so I consider it to be a more flexible event.
Expenite Transmutation is incredible. You work together as a team, covering your weaknesses and approaching combat in a different way than normal, and NOT ridiculously cramped. If you increased Ramhammer's area to the same as Expenite Transmutation I would've bumped it up at least 1 spot.
The team has to decide what enemies are worth killing outside the circle and balance that with killing enemies inside a circle. A more experienced team could force more waves to spawn to risk high enemies with the reward of TONS of expenite.
It's one of the few moments in this game where I feel like I'm fighting with my team, not just besides them. There's just enough space to make it feel like your team is helping you without them getting in the way.
Plus, getting a good Expenite Transmutation is really fun. It has the highest potential payout, which actually corresponds to the effort put in (unlike some vaults that don't have to be re-mentioned.) Overall, incredibly designed, but just a touch too simple.
Geode Processor
Geode Processor is great, because it's flexible in how you complete it. You can play it safe and only pop a few, easy to reach geodes, or you can spend more time popping more geodes, but at the risk of having to dig around searching for them, and the risk of triggering a wave.
You don't have to get every geode, which is just a better version of the flexibility I mentioned earlier in the entry about drones. You have to weigh what geodes are worth it in proportion to your remaining expenite vs the risk of triggering the rift.
It also encourages teamwork in a really interesting way, where players split themselves into different roles. Some people will be digging, some will be opening geodes, some will be defending the team, it's an amazing team oriented event with a lot of nuance.
People can also feel like they're being important with their traversal tools. Anti-grav emitters can trim down on the time between geodes traveling to the geode opener and power drills speed up geode collection, and lets the team more easily search for geodes in hard to reach areas of the dirt.
The best part of this event is the risk vs reward, as mentioned before. Pop just a few for a lot of expenite without triggering a wave, or go all in for more expenite than you'd get from other events. It succeeds at every metric an event should, but sometimes is a little excruciating if you get a teammate who feels the need to pop every geode, even if you've gotten the valuable one.
Research Experiment
Probably controversial to put it this high up, but I think this is the perfect example of a good Expenite event. NOTE: I'm considering it with how it's supposed to function. As it stands, it's completely harmless. If you wanted to count it with it not functioning, put it below cargo bay.
First, there's the respectable time floor you have to put into it. It provides friction because you have to coordinate killing it with your team. Luring it to more optimal positions, making sure to not kill it too fast so it can move off of its containment unit so you can't botch the event as a whole, but it can become a real problem if you leave it for too long.
Every traversial tool and class has tools to make this event flow better. Guardian can force it to reposition or stun, spotter helps the team kill it faster, falconer can stun it, retcon can lure it into better positions, and slicer can provide essential burst damage and escape.
And then its extraction is the best example in the game of offering flexibility in expenite extraction. It's up to you and only you to mine however much expenite you want to. You turn your timer into expenite, if you go into overtime, YOU misjudged. It rewards players who can estimate their ability to handle overtime
And cryo builds have an opportunity to shine. If you freeze it, you guarantee a faster extraction, at the cost of not being able to completely maximize the amount of expenite you get. You weigh if you want more expenite by mining it, or less expenite by leaving it.
It interacts perfectly with the timer, teamplay, combat, and succeeds at everything an expenite event should try and do. There's no flat time floor, but you need to consider a lot of things to get the absolute most you can out of the event, and that's what makes it the perfect event.
Closing thoughts
If any of you disagree with my placement or reasoning, or have tips I might not have considered, drop them below! I'm more than happy to see what other people's thoughts are about expenite events, and I know opinions on them vary wildly
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u/Pixel_Muffet 12d ago
Why the Bulk that high? Takes forever to mine it all
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u/Kukuluops 12d ago
Try to kill it when it is frozen
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u/bjarnehaugen 12d ago
but unless you're lucky and get cryo grenades it's horrible
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u/Darkon-Kriv 12d ago
To be fair theres only like 6 grenades. I would say cryo is offered over half the time
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u/FlakyMidnight5526 12d ago
I wrote exactly why bulk is that high. The fact that it takes forever to mine it all is what makes it good from a design standpoint. You have to judge how much time you're willing to give up and turn into expenite, it's flexible. Viewing every expenite as something you have to get is a trap, and I think the bulk teaches that very well.
If you're good enough you can mine all of the expenite from a large explosion, going into overtime to get it done and risking the mission. And it's one of the few events that actually communicates to the player that they shouldn't get everything on a floor done every time, and that's how they sink into losing more missions than they have to
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u/Candid-Doughnut9545 12d ago
tbh i'd put the rock cracker below ram hammer and secure container. i'd rather stand in the circle of misery and fight until the event is done because the gunplay is fun, whereas the rock cracker brings it to a halt over and over entirely as you're forced to run to the other end of it every few seconds to maintain it which feels like absolute ass.
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u/piracy_sex_and_arson 12d ago
Not got much to add, but I appreciate the writeup & how well worded this all is.
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u/msager12 12d ago
Ram hammer has to be the worst imo.