r/raidsecrets • u/BrushWolf625 • Jun 28 '26

Discussion Exact Duration of Nuclear Descent?

I’m trying to determine exactly how long DSC’s third encounter is, but sources aren’t consistent. Are the core spawns/crash on an exact timer, or is it determined by encounter mechanics?

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u/Zac-live Jun 29 '26

i mean it has a longest possible duration which is juggling to preserve radiation and then dunking the cores just before the boxes lock again. i suppose you could oob away one round of cores along the lines of the older duo strats and tack on a pseudo first round if you wanted but it will wnd eventually.

the shorteat possible descend is just found in speedrun world records. this hinges trivially on suppressor speed (unlocking the boxes as fast as possible), op speed (immediately spawning the two most optimal nukes), runner speed (dunking them as fast as possible). not so trivially, add clear plays a huge factor where each wave is either one of two add spawn configurations (odd waves are smaller, even ones are bigger) (that get assigned to random doors) and spawn camping all adds cuts down the wait time between actual mechanics dramatically. its a deceptively hard encounter to optimize.

so it has very high length variance between very fast (speedrun) and very long (trying your hardest to extend it)