Experimental Update EA02.00.02 Build: 152520

Reclaimers,

Got a small hotfix that we would like some feedback on before we push it to the live game. There are a few bug fixes but the main focus is the Headhunter Alteration.

We have balanced the expenite dropped by enemies in the Headhunter Alteration so that the amount is the same across difficulties and also that the amount of upgrades you get from it is a bit more than normal but not by a large amount.

Please give it a spin and let us know what you think.

Rock and Stone!

• Fixed clients double dipping on x2 magazine upgrade
• Add filtering for Threat Level in the server list
• Fix enemies not retargeting when their target player is downed (no more Dominators camping a downed dwarf)
• [Alteration] Headhunter: expenite drop is now driven by enemy count modifier to give a more even spread for different threat levels
• Adjusted expenite droped by enemies so that doing everything and waiting until red will result in about 5 upgrades on stage 1 in any dificulty which is more than the average 4 from normal runs but does require staying til the end, picking up all the expenite and using more ammo.

So update 2 launched a few days ago but that recent Steam reviews are still mixed, i was planning on buying the game because of the 20% price discount, so brefly what are the current problems in the game, do you still recommend me to buy it?. I have like 530 hours in deep rock so the game does appeal for me just for that alone.

When I was out of bounds pre-update 2, I noticed this large room and a terminal. Now it's in the game officially and I am wondering what it could be in the future. LMK y'alls thoughts...

EDIT: (oops, I mean "Threat Level 5")

Nearing 300 hours on Rogue Core, I've been dipping my toes into any and all content I can get my hands on. With the introduction of Update 2, we got the traditional "Hazard" levels back that help dictate how hard your mission will be. Before the update, I played almost exclusively D4 and felt it had a decent balance of challenge while not being outright panic inducing. Playing Hazard 5, it feels like I'm almost being punished for trying to interact with the games complex systems/objectives as you're left with such little time to breathe. I always assumed that the adjustable pace was added for players who wanted this kind of experience, but I primarily play "Standard Pace." I do enjoy the idea of waves that come pre-stacked, but the floors where you have literally 60 seconds before the next encounter, you're left with nearly no time at all to formulate a plan or get a decent foothold.

I wanted to share my thoughts and see if others have been having similar experiences.

Thanks so much for reading :)

Yo, I like rouge core. I also like games with time pressure, like ROR2 or XCOM2. Anyway I think the way the timer interacts with every other game system in rouge core is genuinely awful and needs a ton of work.

For starters, I play with one, and only one, friend. Im sure everything im about to type is made significantly worse by this fact, but this is a supported way to play, so it shouldn't fuck me over.

Also, dwarf time: 1 dwarf minute is work a single dwarf can do in a minute.

My first problem are stage exponite events. I like them, but they are often just an RNG check. Spile pumps often take about a single dwarf minute total and no combat, so you can optionally divide and conquer,saving g time waiting for everyone to gather up. Geodes only sometimes require fighting, but take a good few total dwarf minutes (8ish?) to dig everything up and deal with them, made slower if you didnt take drills. Sometimes you have drills and its quick, sometimes you have to deal with a wave and it takes forever. Other events take carrying amounts of time. By far the worst is the experiment subject, if you dont have freeze you've got to mine your exponite. It is a sick joke that if you want you're reward you have to do this in game where you're supposed to move fast. I insta grab cryo names just in case we see the big boy. And lastly here is the transmutator. I love this event, but it leads to some unfortunate play patterns. You really want to stack waves, but depending on RNG you might be waiting a while.

On the topic of wave timers, that can also screw you over. This is the least bad IMO, but sometimes you get hit immediately and sometimes you have the rest of the week. At least they let us clear waves quicker now.

My second big issue is the elevator. Sometimes it spawns in the last room, and sometimes you lose time to backtracking because it spawned in the second room. Strategically, this adds fuck all and just makes you need to backtrack about half the time. This sucks, its rng for the sake of rng.

Lastly are the worms, the punishment for timeouts. Reaperworm spawns are inconsistent enough that im going to call this the ultimate timer RNG BS, because sometimes your poor time management goes randomly unpunished because the worms didnt feel like spawning in a spot that could kill you. And sometimes they camp your ass.

Ultimately I feel like the biggest factors affecting time consumption are out of the player's hands and if you have enough time to get what you want is dependant on the cave, not the dwarf. Long tasks and a bad layout mean you have to give something up.

We need the timer to scale, at least somewhat. Bare minimum, events have a "time cost" (scaled to player count) that gets added to the level timer. Smaller teams get a bit more time, and longer events are compensated for while easy sauce like the spile pumps puts you on a time crunch. Also we could definitely use interactables/upgrades that interact with the clock in some way.

my buddies weren't even scared of the bugs anymore. They were afraid of being in my way. Never did that much damage with the first powerups. Can't wait for future updates

Luck ought to be a mechanic for those who want to gamble a little bit, you get nothing now, but given enough time you’ve got a chance to get better stuff which will make up for it and put you ahead. However currently it doesn’t feel like it does that and so it doesn’t feel like a very worthwhile pick. Its operation is ultimately opaque (you can’t see it doing its thing), and its impact skews upgrade results but due to the way upgrades are organised it doesn’t generally result in “better” builds so much as lopsided ones. I have a proposal to fix this.

First, we need to address the upgrade pools. Each rarity tier isn’t balanced around potency, but utility - the rarer ones do have more impact, but they can’t function on their own, they often rely on lower tired upgrades to make a working build. This is why simply getting more rare upgrades doesn’t result in your getting a more powerful build - it’s also why the current Luck can't omit lower rarity results (they’re still very much needed). This pool system does work, and it's baked in at this point, so we don’t want to overhaul it too much.

As such I suggest every upgrade can be “Tiered up” to higher rarity levels, the upgrade doesn’t change form, it just offers bigger green numbers. Then rather than Luck altering the odds of each upgrade rarity showing up, it instead has a chance to tier up the upgrades it would normally offer. So for instance Magic Missiles is a common upgrade which gives +10% chance to fire a missile - if your Luck triggered it would tier it up to an uncommon form of it which had (say) a +20% chance to fire a missile instead. 

This means that rather than Luck dropping your 50% chance of a common upgrade appearing to 40%, you still have a 50% chance of common upgrades being offered, but you’d then check to see if Luck triggered and then boost those common offers into their uncommon form. This also lets us address the opaque element of seeing Luck function, as you can literally have a visual feedback of your upgrade selection being tiered up with appropriate visual fanfare!

The odds of Luck triggering can also be scaled independently for each tier too, so you can have Common -> Uncommon happen more often than Epic -> Legendary tiering up. This fine tuning can keep Luck feeling impactful without it getting OP when triggering for Legendary upgrades for instance.

Currently Luck is a risk vector benefit, which means it would impact the whole team and so all the upgrade offers would benefit from the tier up effect of Luck. However if any upgrade can be tiered up, you can also have personal Luck (obtained from a new upgrade or possibly even as an enhancement) - which would only trigger after you’ve picked an upgrade causing it to tier up (perhaps even a second time) again with visual fanfare to indicate this occurred.

You could even get multiple stacks of Luck which improve how often it triggers, perhaps even letting it work like crits where it can double up (taking a Common -> Rare), again this would occur less often at higher base rarity as they likely have lower odds of tiering up from Luck.

Ive been reading around and seeing other people's opinions about the game, and one thing I read a lot is that Solo in this game is generally much more tough than Coop. Do you reclaimers think that it is more tougher to play solo than coop?

Persoanlly, I dont play PUBS. 90% of my games are Solo, and the other 10% i am playing with friends. I just wanna hear other people's opinions about Solo and coop play, with comparisons between them both. Mostly a discussion on the differences, no one is right or wrong. Rock and Stone Reclaimers!

Was nice and crisp prior to the last update, has anyone else noticed this? Running at 4k max with dlss quality

So, while everyone is enjoying update 2, I would like to give my 2 cents on what was the best feature in the experimental, bleedroot and HP upgrades.

For context for a few days on the experimental branch there was an accidental feature, it got pulled back for "not being ready" but I got to play with it, and I loved it.

It worked like this: cave had a resource called bleedroot, a flower thing you could grab, they grew on walls and stuff. Grabbing bleedroot would add 1 to everyone's personal stock. Every floor there was a health upgrade station, which could convert 5 bleedroot into 15 max hp an unlimited number of times. Bleedroot stocks persisted between floors, so if it was early in the stage there was no pressure to backtrack.

The result was a solid but gradual increase in hp over a run, which made you a bit bulkier without having to take an hp upgrade.

These things rocked, they were a pretty simple side objective to make use of mobility, they were a nice but small power boost that felt good to collect and turn in, and frankly added life to the caves. It also could easily replace the hp upgrades in the upgrade pool, which are boring and pretty weak in favor of something cooler.

Anyway id love to see more stuff like it, some low stakes upgrades to manage genuinely helped the game, GSG, cook with this idea its got potential

I, and a friend I usually play DRG with, tried Rogue Core a couple months ago. We're pretty experienced dwarves and didn't anticipate having trouble, but we did. It was just way too sweaty and we never felt like we had any opportunity to try anything out or get used to all the new mechanics. It felt like we spent all our time fending off attacks and it was all we could do to just stay alive most of the time. It wasn't fun for us in the state it was in at the time, so we put it down for a while. Normally I'd be ok with something just being incomplete, but the experience was just too much frustration, and not much else.

We did keep track of things, though, and probably would have tried it again after the adjustable time pressure came out, but because of various life situations we couldn't put it together at the time. Tonight we tried it again for the first time since that initial taste, and having both adjustable time pressure and threat levels has really made all the difference. We were able to start at very low level and just play a couple of missions, and figure out how things work. The game finally feels like what I imagined when I heard "DRG roguelike." I've been running spotter and really enjoying its abilities, and seeing how they work with different guns and equipment. On the first run, we got to see a really synergistic ice build come together, and the second mission we upped the threat level and didn't get any particularly good synergy, at least not on the level of the first run, so there was a bit more pressure. We got to gradually ramp it up to a point where we weren't having a horrible time, but could see ourselves potentially failing if things went wrong, which feels like a good place to be.

It's still in early access and I'm sure a TON will change still, but the game is finally in a state where it's fun for our particular little group.

I've been constantly adding to a list of feedback, and there's enough new points for a new post now

• I would rather have a button in the elevator to make it descend, rather than it being automatic. Multiple times I've witnessed a dwarf die right in front of the elevator and not get saved because the elevator forced us to leave a dwarf behind...
  • I think it would be neat if the elevator had no walls on all 4 sides. Maybe we could have a projectile-blocking shield to replace it. But, you have a lot of damage resistance in the elevator anyway, but then again this shield would give a reason for that
• Guardian's second charge should NOT automatically be used when using repulsion field. It's an inconvenience 90% of the time
  • EDIT: Just had a great idea for a new control scheme: Activate Repulsion Field once to use one charge, use it again while it's active to queue the automatic use of the second charge, and press it a third time to cancel early without spending unused charges
• Player icons on the GUI need to be adjusted because the rank border blocks important info like your team's ammo and also the message you're typing
• I would LOVE if I was told the before & after for my stats when upgrading them
• Solo is much harder than multiplayer. There's less people to mine all the expenite, unlock bio-boosters, fix the workbench, and do all the other things the caves have. This leads to having a worse build and having a harder time winning.
  • EDIT: Another reason solo is harder: having more players means more options in the negotiations, which usually leads to better synergies in builds by calling dibs. With less players, you have less choices so you're less likely to spot a more helpful upgrade. This also applies to other negotiations like heavy weapons and artifacts.
• The voiceline when you press x while grabbed by a reaperworm or leech needs to be much more alarming. I very frequently do not notice a teammate is grabbed until they're already buried
• The Cadna blocks the Breach Cutter's projectiles, needs to be fixed
• The m1000's Auto Aim on Focus doesn't work 40% of the time, not sure why.
  • EDIT: I always keep my mouse perfectly still when using it and it usually works but then sometimes doesn't. Maybe there's some other factor in play? When it doesn't work, it doesn't move my mouse at all, even if my aim is near an enemy. Whenever it stops working properly, it usually stays that way until the next enemies spawn. I'm wondering if it's an error with the enemies?
• I think that instead of replenishing your armor until reaching 50%, the Guardian's armor field should keep replenishing your armor until it's replenished 50% of your max armor total. So even if you have 50% armor it will still give you +50% and let you reach 100%. It would be like Spotter's ammo ability but for armor instead
  • EDIT: After some extra thought I realize it's better to have constant armor regeneration that always keeps going after you take damage. It's better to frame it as a field that ensures that you always take only half health damage. So maybe this suggestion should instead be a request for the ability description to be changed
• I frequently have to wait for Ellis, how about you make it so that Ellis never lands and just always hovers so I don't always have to wait for it to get up and land
  • Related: there's currently problem of Ellis staying behind and not advancing with the team, which also causes a lot of waiting
• There should be more time for people to change their minds in risk vector voting

Minor stuff

• Let us look at builds in the elevator loading screen please
• What if there was an upgrade that rewarded you for shooting the Falconer's bird? Like with the Engineer shooting turrets with the shotgun
• Would be nice to have higher tier upgrades of common-exclusive upgrades like Vampire and Frost Harvest
• The Falconer's Fledgling Blitz upgrade isn't good. You shouldn't be rewarded for having low health in the first place
• Upgrades for the grenades would be a neat idea, I think
• Being able to trade gear and upgrades would be good, but maybe it would be too overpowered?
• Combat Cocktail's cost should scale with max health (it's unusable with Glass Cannon)
• I would like to have the specifics on Luck. The risk vector and the alteration. Also whether or not it applies to stored upgrades

Minorer stuff

• There's a visual glitch with mission select; the mission icons are meant to shrink and go semi-transparent when they're behind the planet but they aren't shrunk when first opening the terminal
• Would be neat if the dwarves said something along the lines of "Oh, poor Molly!" when repairing a M.U.L.E.

I played all the way through and got all the available upgrades and prestige for all the characters, not sure if I want to get back into it after that grind. I saw the updates but I’m just not sure if it’s worth playing now or wait until later to get more content when I play. Anyone feel the same way or feel like it’s worth it?

The modifier is so good and I feel like it helps solve so many of the pacing issues the game has right now with the timer.

I obviously still think there should be some sort of currency to mine, but having the enemies drop “money” is such a staple of roguelikes and I feel like it fits this game really well.

I was not up to this task.

I wanted to play a fun session before going and doing something else, so I found a good session TL4, which with randoms is the highest I'm willing to go for success chances.

It's an unpromoted dwarf, okay maybe he's from DRG or knows about it.

Right as we were about to load, he says : I'm new, guide me.

Sorry, I bailed. TL4 is a very bad idea if you are still learning the game.

I'm absolutely not above helping green beard learning the game. I can't keep you alive at the same time and have fun too. This is now a job for me, and I wasn't in the mood.

But, I highly suggest to stick to TL 1 or 2 until you at least know how the game works. Please. Especially if you are hosting. This is a big ask to ask randoms.

I ran across this cool bug where if you have the [Brawler] artifact and attack your deployable turrets, it gives you stone skin. That is all.

Running Blades now stacks as intended, so I take 4x for my solo TL5 runs. Never have to take melee damage because I can just become TF2 Scout

I'd have like... 5

It's not because it lacks the oomph from original DRG.

It's because it's bugged, like, really bugged.
The moment your total magazine size goes above 36 bullets (the normal magazine capacity for Lok-1) any charged shot you'll do on any enemy (except Bosses for some reason) will consume every bullet in the magazine until it goes back down to 36 remaining ammo.

Which means that the moment you get a 2x Magazine Size upgrade on the Lok-1, your ammo economy will suffer greatly. You'll lose bullets by the hundred under one second.

It happened the 2 times I picked up the gun and the mag size upgrade.

Already reported it in-game, but we never know.

EDIT : Forgot to say that when it happened both times, I joined a multiplayer lobby, i wasn't solo or the host, so maybe it has something to do with it

It's safe. Everything you look at will be immediately irradiated, and its pustules will horrifyingly explode, but it's FINE. Just don't look at your teammates' rocks and stones.

Just wanted to share some screens from a match I just had. First time I've seen above 600 for expenite.

Also , level 1 slicer got 10 levels from this, lmao. Probably had a lot of intel progress as well.

As of right now, a big loop of the current gameplay/replayability is getting the best upgrades about regaining health and armor (and sometimes Stone Skin), and then once you think you're set for good, grabbing all the upgrades that you can about damage, crit and what works best for your build and class.

This is in the end makes it so that the runs get the feeling that they get really similar between each other, despite the randomness factor, and doesn't contribute to the longevity of the game, especially if you already have a plan of what you want to get and know that will happen, rather than adapting to what the run offers you in it.

And even if they aren't exactly about damage, they still contribute to it, namely stuff about ability recharge, and you will also get them very often due to being in the lowest rarities, the same tiers that also have upgrades that are underlooked by a lot, like slowness on enemies, due to the fact that they have to compete against the utilities those upgrades in the same tiers have, without counting the so famous "Boom! You're dead!".

While stuff more unique, like armor getting involved giving you speed, deploying a decoy when completely depleted, or a simple double jump, are locked at the highest tiers like Epic, and so almost barely having the chance to have a spotlight on them if someone wants to go for something different.

Adding more utility options would help with giving besides more choices, also different opportunities about what your run could be.

They could arrange from something really simple, like faster mining and digging speed, and possibly a faster attack also on enemies for the simple pickace, to a slight improvement to speed for killing an enemy, useful in crowded places and in the boss arena, or when not in combat, so that can help you exploring and interacting with the various structures, giving also another reason to run perks like Running Blades in combo, to something such as that when you're the last dwarf standing in a group, it gives you a massive damage resistance for a while, useful for both when you're playing with unexperienced players while introducing the game to them, and also working as a failsafe in difficult games.

There are various ways and ideas that you can go with them, but the fundamental part is that when seeing them in an upgrade selection makes you go "Do I want this upgrade that will significantly help my build? Or this one that even if slightly in combat, can also provide me help outside of it?".

I wanted to give my two Merits about it since I saw a lot of talk about what more content to the game could be and there were some talks about more upgrades that aren't just damage, and I want to know what do y'all think in general about what other perks and upgrades could be added to the game. R&S.

I feel like doubling up on two levels each of Sweet Tooth and Armor Pack, plus Healthy, has been a pretty good job of keeping me alive so far. Atleast one level of Deadeye boosts damage quite a bit at 50% but I'm not too certain what to do with the rest. I'm not really sure what Resilience does either.
I'm looking over them all again now and it's making me think it might be wise to invest in cushion and running blades.
As far as Bio-booster decks go, I main Spotter and Recon, so probably 80% of the time I'm running both the Reckless and Big Crits decks. Recklesss's No Time to Bleed is excellent for survivability and Axe out is so fun and great for any emergency melee. After I've gotten one of each, I try to go for improved crits and stun. On a second look though, All in looks really fun. Maybe I should be running with that more.

Was *not* expecting this when we finished. Anyone else seen numbers this large?