It’s been a while, hasn’t it? After what feels like years, the rockpox infestation has finally been defeated, leaving the dwarves free to go back down to the mines to do what they do best.
Fittingly, Deep Rock Galactic: Season 5 takes us deeper into the bowels of Hoxxes with its new Deep Scan mission type. Not only that but it brings with it heaps of content such as new cosmetics, a performance pass, primary weapon overclocks, enemies, paintjobs, cave generations…just about everything except new guns. In this article, we’ll go over what the new season brings with it in a brief and succinct manner. However, you’ll still want to buckle up because as there’s so much to cover…this’ll be a long one. If you’re new to the game and want to know what’s it all about, check out our Deep Rock Galactic Beginner Guide.
Deep Scan – New Mission Type
Deep Rock Galactic season 5 brings with it a new mission type that has the dwarves track down a resource called “morkite seeds” and then dig down to them by using a large “Drillevator” machine. The first step is to help mission control triangulate the location of said seeds.
The geode containing the morkite seeds.
This is done through the use of a scanner you get at the start of the mission. In proper videogame fashion, the scanner will beep faster the closer you are to your objective. The scanner also has it own UI element that shows you the distance from your target as well as its elevation relative to you. With a bit of terrain scanner skills, locating this objective should be an easy affair. Once you find it, dig the terrain under you to reveal the resonance crystal.
Interact with it, call down the scanner pod, and then connect it to the crystal in the same fashion you would the drop pod to the fuel cells. Mission control will send you the drillevator and the hard part can now begin. Defend the drillevator while it drills to the main objective since much like with the drilldozer the loud noises will attract the bugs. Unlike the dozer, the drillevator can’t be destroyed, but it will stop drilling if it gets too damaged, so make sure to keep it repaired as it does its job.
This is easier said than done when the bugs start pouring into the hole, especially if they have ranged units in the swarm or bulks, so some gunner shields might be good to have there. Make sure you stock up on ammo before you begin drilling, as you can’t summon a resupply pod on top of the elevator. Once you make it all the way down, pickaxe the seeds to release them from the wall, deposit them into molly, and you can call the drop pod to take you home. There are special new jet boots on the drillevator, use them to leave the hole.
Core Stone – New Seasonal Event
Season 5 brings with it a new event to Deep Rock Galactic, the Core Stone. While exploring the caves of Hoxxes IV, you might stumble upon a peculiar purple monolith jutting out of the floor. The core stone is concealed within, and to get to it, you simply have to dig it out. Of course, this wouldn’t be Hoxxes if things went easy, so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when the freshly excavated core stone starts levitating and blasting open dimensional rifts.
Dig out the core stone to start the event.
These rifts will flood the map with Core Spawn, one of the new enemies which we’ll cover in more detail in the upcoming part of this article. To defend itself, the core will also reform the monolith and hide within. In short, shoot the core, survive the core spawn onslaught, and dig out the core when it hides. Once the core has been pacified, deposit it for a nice chunk of performance points.
New enemies
This part of the article covers the new enemies that came to Deep Rock Galactic with season 5 as well as some additional info we’ve gleaned from some quick and dirty testing.
Glyphid Stalker
The latest addition to the glyphid genus, the stalker is a rare enemy that has the ability to become near-invisible as well as to shut down dwarven shields for 20s with its attack. Those with a keen eye can still spot the bug approaching but this is easier said than done in the heat of combat. Thankfully, the stalker always announces its presence with an unusual echoing sound. This bug is an ambush predator and as such it will slowly creep up to its target before finally attacking.
If I had a nickel for every coop game where nearly invisible bugs called “stalkers” hunted their players, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Its cloak can be deactivated by damaging the bug or by pinging it with the laser pointer. Once it’s exposed, the stalker will sprint to its target at incredible speeds (730 units according to our mods, for reference the sprint speed of dwarves is 435). If it takes too much damage, the bug will attempt to flee by burrowing into the ground. It will then pop up in a random place with its cloak restored and start hunting once more. Interestingly, if the bug was pinged before it burrowed it loses the red outline but not its [Glyphid Stalker] name tag, so you can still track it once it resurfaces. It’s not clear if this was intended or a dev oversight at the time of writing.
Some other interesting stats:
- The stalker has 360 base HP. It uses normal enemy scaling, so it will have 432 effective HP in a vanilla Haz5 mission.
- It has no resistance/weaknesses to most damage types with electricity and melee damage being the exception.
- 25% resistance to electricity damage.
- 50% weakness to melee damage. Despite this, even a T2B power attack (240 melee damage) won’t deal enough damage to instakill it above hazard 2. (Will still deal heavy damage to it of course)
- Immune to stuns and has a high resistance to slows.
- Large weakpoint on its head. Body covered in unbreakable armor that reduces damage from bullets. The green flesh on its abdomen that takes regular damage being the exception. (all in all, no fancy tricks here, just shoot the head)
- Burns at 30 heat, same as with all grunt variants. Freezes at 50 cold and thaws quite slowly, making freezing a powerful way to get rid of it
Barrage Infector
After a long while, the Infector genus finally gets its second member, the stocky Barrage Infector. Much like the other member in its family, the infector is a stationary enemy that relies on its large HP pool and powerful long range attack to keep it safe. Unlike the Spitballer, the attack of this enemy is an inaccurate but a lot more deadly shotgun-like blast consisting of several acid globules. These acid projectiles deal some contact damage but explode shortly after coming in contact with a surface. The blast is larger and more powerful than it looks, so keep your distance, even when inside a gunner’s shield.
Some other interesting stats:
- Some quick and dirty testing on haz 4 and 5 seems to indicate that it has a base HP value of 1200. On a 4-player vanilla haz 5 this went up to 1800 effective HP, which lines up with this enemy having large enemy scaling (1.5x for 4 players on haz 5).
- No resistances or weaknesses whatsoever. This enemy is a large bunch of HP you just have to blast your way through.
- Obvious weakpoint under its mouth. It would seem to have no armor anywhere…unlike its predecessor whose lower body was protected by heavy unbreakable armor.
- Burns at 60 heat, freezes at 80 cold. Freezing is a pretty effective way of neutralizing this enemy.
- The infectors projectiles can be destroyed by shooting them.
Corespawn Crawler
The first and for the time being only “corespawn” enemy type. These things come out of the rifts after starting a core hunt event and on their own present a mid-tier threat. In large swarms they can be quite dangerous, as on a 4 man haz5 they do just enough damage to break through player shields. They move quickly, often strafing left or right, and can even leap great distances to either get to the player quickly or dodge after taking damage. Crawlers move on walls with equal ease as on the ground, and will often jump from one surface to another. After they get a hit in, they will usually run a way for a bit before continuing to attack the player.
The open weakpoint of a corespawn crawler.
Some more interesting stats:
- The crawler has a base HP value of 280. On a vanilla haz 5 this would be 336 effective HP.
- It has no particular weaknesses or resistances.
- It ignites at 60 heat and freezes at 150 cold.
- Its weakpoint is its head, but it’s protected by tough armor. You either have to break through said armor or wait for it to open its head on its own. The only other armored body part is its back, the rest of the body takes normal damage.
- It is affected by slows, but it has some amount of resistance to them. Slows won’t diminish its ability to leap.
- It can be stunned, but once again it has a moderate amount of stun resistance (stuns last shorter). After it recovers from a stun, it gets a brief window of stun immunity.
- It leaves behind a puddle of an unknown substance that damages those who stand in it. It doesn’t deal much damage but that’s one extra bit of damage that can prevent your shields from charging.
Vartok Scalebramble
The last and simplest enemy of the lot. The scalebramble is the devs way to add some new blood (alongside the barrage infector) to the long, stagnant list of stationary enemies. The vartok is a strange plant that fires a burst of three fast moving acid projectiles that deal moderate damage. The twist with this enemy is that it’s hidden inside its armored core. In this state, it’s immune to all forms of attack and status effects (except freezing). To have it come out you need to find and destroy the feeler nodes it spread throughout the cave in search of prey. Both the core and its tentacles are extremely weak and will fall apart even under lightest damage. The challenge is finding the tentacles while avoiding the near constant fire from the core.
The Vartoks core and feeler nodes, destroy them to make the Vartok vulnerable. Deadspace players should feel right at home with this one.
New Overclocks
12 new overclocks, one for each primary weapon, came with season 5 to Deep Rock Galactic. Additionally, the stubby has had one of its old ones reworked.
Engineer
Pump Action – Warthog Unstable OC – A pretty cool OC that does exactly what its name implies. When equipped, it grants 2 extra pellets per shot and +5 extra damage per pellet. Naturally the engineer will pump the shotgun after every trigger pull. As an obvious downside this means a halved rate of fire which results in less DPS against bigger targets, which is also its biggest downside. These beefy shells also mean you can only carry 2/3 of the ammo you could before, and you take a small penalty to magazine size.
What makes this one interesting is that it’s the only OC that can instakill grunts on bodyshots. The rest of the OC needs to rely on a number of pellets coming in contact with the grunts head for that. Add to this the +1 blowthrough and the gun can deal with basic bugs reasonably well in close quarters combat. Additionally, the blowthrough has a neat effect where you can shoot through your turrets to trigger turret whip on both for the price of just one shell.
SMRT trigger OS(tm) – LOK-1 Unstable OC – This OC makes your lockons insanely fast (down to just 5% of base) and the gun will fire automatically at its targets. As a downside, the amount of locks you can have is greatly reduced…that being said, that’s a positive change in our book as the last thing we want is the gun auto firing at half the swarm.
While the lockons are extremely fast, they still retain some of their functionality, so you can slightly curve bullet trajectories to help your projectiles hit enemy weakpoints. Interestingly, it only takes two locks to trigger the electric generator mod in T5A making it extremely consistent. Since there is no wait time for lockons and no need to release the trigger to begin firing, the end result is that it makes the gun much easier to use, at the expense of the great amount of control that holding onto lockons/adjusting trajectories can sometimes provide.
The Pump Action OC taking out two grunts at the same time.
Hyperalloy Assembly -Voltaic SMG Balanced OC – Hyperalloy assembly will give the gun a +30% damage bonus to weakpoint damage and greatly reduce the smg’s spread and horizontal spread. This means that not only will its shots be more tightly grouped together, but fewer of them will go to the left or right. Shooting at a wall will now see its pattern be almost entirely vertical.
However, this comes at a tradeoff of increased gun recoil and -10 mag size. The insane recoil was always a big issue on the stubby, and if you thought it kicked like a mule before, now it kicks like an elephant. Using it with a recoil reduction mod in T2B feels almost mandatory. With it, it’s usable, but you’ll still need to learn to properly counteract the recoil by pulling the mouse down. All in all, it’s nice to see some direct damage OCs for the SMG, as for the longest time we’ve only had EM Refire Booster to fill that role.
Micro-Conductor Add-On – Voltaic SMG Unstable OC – This OC is the rework of the old Turret Arc OC. The turret arc part of the OC still works the same as before. Hitting a turret with stubbies electricity proc creates a 2-meter electric sphere around it that deals moderate damage and slows down by 80%. If two electrified turrets are within 15 meters of each other, an electric arc will be formed between them.
What’s new is that now you can shoot your platforms with the stubby and its electric procs will create a small zone that also deals damage and slows. (at the time of writing the electrified platforms seem to do the same damage/slow as the turrets). A nice bit of functionality to be honest, as turret arc often ran into problems where you need to put the turrets in extremely suboptimal places for them to act as an electric barrier.
Driller
Scorching Tide – CRISPR Unstable OC – By holding down the reload button, Scorching Tide will unleash a line of several flaming projectiles that will fan out the longer they travel. This charged attack costs 25 fuel and will slow you down noticeably while being performed. The line of projectiles is affected by gravity, which ultimately limits its range. That being said, this flaming projectile can do decent damage to quite a number of bugs. Enemies at point-blank range will take massive amounts of damage, provided they don’t have fire resistance. Such as a haz 5 praetorian losing 60% of its HP, and that’s before the fire DoT.
That being said, 25 fuel goes a long way in the hands of an experienced Driller, so treat the OC as a utility that gives you a nice burst of damage when needed rather than a core function of your weapon. It’s one of those OCs whose downside is the opportunity cost of not taking another flamethrower OC. In a world where Fuel stream Diffuser and Sticky Fuel OCs exist, this can be a tall order for some.
Combustive Goo Mix – Sludge Pump Unstable OC – A simple but powerful one. Shooting Goo at an ignited enemy or igniting puddles causes an explosion (2.5m radius approx, slightly less for puddles)that deals moderate damage. (needs more testing but seems to be 2×50 damage for direct explosions and 50 for puddles). Both the direct explosion and the puddle explosion also spread 50 heat. This means that enemies affected by corrosion can potentially act as a source of ignition to enemies around them.
Additionally, the heat from one puddle exploding will trigger other puddles around it, causing a powerful chain explosion that can deal a solid chunk of damage. The downside is that flaming enemies will be doused and the charged shot consumes +2 more ammo. Your only heat source would be the EPC with this setup, try the Heavy Hitter OC with the normal shot damage mod…that way you can impart 20heat to enemies per shot.
Crystal nucleation – Cryo Cannon Balanced OC – This OC buffs the sticky ice so that it lasts considerably longer, slows down enemies by 30% and deals a small amount of damage to enemies standing/frozen in it. The sticky ice will still slowly cool enemies, but the rate at which it does that depends on whether T1C or T4B mods are equipped. The T4A mod will increase the damage done to enemies caught in the ice. In exchange, the cryo cannon has 20% less ammo.
Honestly, a nice change of pace for those of us that use the flamethrower all the time. The sticky ice lasts long enough to kill the smaller bugs, so you don’t have to expend as much effort and ammo manually getting rid of the frozen enemies. And the OC slots into the average cold radiance build so you still have a fast burst of cold to freeze larger targets as usual, making this a pretty efficient setup at times. Keep in mind that the sticky ice can be broken by enemies walking over it, so you’ll have to reapply it from time to time.
Gunner
Rotary Overdrive – Leadstorm Balanced OC – This OC will boost the weapon’s fire rate by +6, but it will also increase heat generation by +75%. To help deal with the increased heat, you now get 12 coolant charges, which you can activate at any time by pressing the reload button. A single coolant charge will remove around 25% total heat from the weapon, and if overheated it will instantly unjam the gun. Resupply to get coolant back.
This one’s in an odd place. The damage boost from the fire rate is only a moderate damage buff, and it comes at the expense of draining your ammo reserves faster. It is therefore less ammo efficient over taking an OC that simply buffs damage like Leadstorm. On the other hand, the extra heat generation can be used to trigger Aggressive Venting and Hot bullets much easier. Aggressive venting in particular works well with this OC because it can be spammed by unjamming the gun. Even then, this OC finds itself in competition with the Burning Hell OC for those who like an aggressive playstyle that involves setting bugs on fire in close quarters combat. Only time will tell if it’ll manage to carve a place for itself in the current OC roster.
Mortar Rounds – Thunderhead Unstable OC – Ditch your conventional ammo and replace it with mortar shells. With this OC equipped, your AoE damage is increased by a whopping 700% and AoE explosion radius by 25%. However, as a downside your shells no longer deal any kinetic damage, the gun’s fire rate is halved and the larger ammo means a severe reduction in mag size and total ammo carried.
There’s not much to say about it, as it’s a pretty straightforward crowd clear OC. Build for AoE and explode the caves and everyone in them. Although crowd clear is the primary purpose, the shells can do good damage to just about anything that doesn’t have explosive resistance. Just be aware that in terms of accuracy, we have none…this OC makes the gun even more inaccurate than before.
Cluster missiles carpet bombing the area.
Cluster Charges – Hurricane Unstable OC – Another fun one for the gunner. Your standard missiles are replaced by cluster missiles. By holding the reload button for a very brief period, these missiles will fall apart into 7 explosive fragments that deal 18 damage each. (damage probably doubled by the OC itself as T4B gives +8 AoE damage instead of the usual +4). The clusters also benefit from the stun mod in Tier 5, giving them some potent crowd control. That’s a lot of potential damage, and it gives this OC the Mine Layer System quality where despite its negatives, in the hand of an experienced gunner it’s able to do catastrophic amounts of damage on the battlefield.
Speaking of downsides -1 RoF, your mag size and missile velocity are all cut in half, and you take a severe ammo penalty. Once again, those experienced in guiding the Hurricane’s missiles will find a lot to enjoy here, as this OC greatly rewards those skills. Placing missiles where they can do the most damage, keeping rockets in air as a way to store damage, spinning them to fuse several rockets into one frame rate melting explosion shower…you get the point.
Scout
Marked for death – M1000 unstable OC – A support OC if there ever was one. Your charged shot is faster, and it now marks the target for 8 seconds (half for bosses). Marked targets take 55% more damage from all sources, including your own guns and DoT effects. In exchange, your charged shot no longer deals damage, it costs 3 ammo instead of 2 and the m1k’s clip size is reduces by 2. Interestingly, armor won’t stop your charged shot from applying its mark. This is a niche OC that works best in a team setting, and only time will tell if it’ll catch on with DRG players.
Conductive Thermals – DRAK-25 Balanced OC – The weirdest OC to come to Deep Rock Galactic in season 5. Each shot grants a stacking new debuff that increases the damage done by Ice, fire and electrical damage while also reducing the amount of cold/heat it takes to freeze/ignite the affected target. Each shot increases vulnerability to said elements by 5% and caps out at 20 stacks (100% more damage done by ice/fire/electricity). This also affects the electrical mod on the gun itself, which comes highly recommend with this OC.
The splash damage mod on the gun, on the other hand, lets the gun apply two stacks per shot. The reduction to the freeze/ignition threshold can be stacked a lot more, and to a significant effect…to the point where it’s possible to freeze a dreadnought with a single ice grenade. As a downside, -3 damage done and the gun generates +37% more heat. Pairing it with the crossbows elemental bolt OCs is probably your best bet with this one. At the time of writing, we have no strong opinions one way or the other.
Enemies marked by the Marked for Death OC get a fancy red aura so that even the blindest of teammates can’t miss them.
Burst Fire – Gk2 Balanced OC – No weird nonsense with this one – it does exactly what it says on the tin. The GK2 now fires a 3 round burst and can no longer auto-fire. The gun also gets a +2 damage bonus and a small increase to magazine size, as well as a small buff to stun chance on weakpoint hits. The downside is a massively reduced fire rate. While the burst itself has a high fire rate, the time between bursts is quite long and will significantly cut into the gun’s DPS as a result. Another big flaw is that firing in a 3 round burst introduces ammo efficiency issues as many times you’ll simply end up wasting bullets. Still, it feels great to use, and the burst is easy to control, so it will probably find some popularity among newer scouts.
Season Reactivation Feature
The old seasons terminal will now get an extra tab where you can reactivate old seasons. This means you’ll gain access to that season’s performance pass and cosmetic tree, but also that the game will adjust the chance of encountering enemies, warnings and events from that season accordingly. For instance, this means that someone who has season 4 selected is going to see a lot more rockpox while someone else hosting season 2 is going to see a lot more robots.
The server browser has also received an update and will now show what season the host has selected to help you find the content you like. What’s important to know is that you don’t need to have the same season active as the host to join them. In fact, the progress you earn upon mission completion goes into your own season no matter what the host has selected, so you can grind what you want. For the record, regardless of which season you selected it’s still possible to encounter content from the other seasons, just at a greatly reduced chance.
Season selector at the seasonal terminal.
It’s basically how the game has always worked when a season ended. The content is still there, it just has a very low chance to appear randomly. Keep in mind that assignments from past seasons won’t be making a comeback. Furthermore, the items that were placed back into the game (into the shop or cargo crates) when a season ended will now be returned to the performance pass of the season they originally came from. (The ones you’ve acquired will stay with you – don’t worry)
The game will remember the progress you already had on a season you did previously, so you won’t have to grind all over again if you reactivate a season you’ve done before. If you already acquired some of the rewards from older seasons, they will be replaced by a small credit bonus instead. Finally, if you’re not interested in any season, the game now has an “unseasoned” mode that comes with no performance pass and gives an equal chance to encounter content from all seasons.
New mission modifiers and secondary objectives
Season 5 brought to Deep Rock Galactic a set of Hazard 5+ modifiers you can turn on to make the game even harder, as well as new warnings, anomalies and secondaries.
Hazard 5+
You’ll need to unlock this one via the “Beyond Lethal” assignment. This will grant you access to a set of modifiers you can switch on in the mission selection screen. There are four of them and they come in two levels of severity. These would be:
Aggressive Enemies – Makes the bugs move and atack faster.
- Lvl 1: Increased enemy projectile speed by 10%, attack rate by 33% and movement speed by approx 20%.
- Lvl 2:Increased enemy projectile speed by 20%, attack rate by 100% and movement speed by approx 30%.
More enemies – Self-explanatory
- Lvl 1: 20% more enemies and one extra enemy from the disruptive pool (greater variety of fancier bugs).
- Lvl 2: 50% more enemies and two extra enemies from the disruptive pool, as well as +1 enemy from the special enemy pool.
Player Vulnerability – Take more damage from just about everything.
- Lvl 1: 50% more damage from bugs, dwarves take heavy damage from teammates and 25% from environmental effects including fall damage.
- Lvl 2: 100% more damage from bugs, dwarves take catastrophic damage from teammates and 50% from environmental effects including fall damage.
Tough Enemies – Self-explanatory, the increase to enemy resistance will no doubt mess with your weapons breakpoints, so build accordingly.
- Lvl 1: Large bugs and bosses gain 50% more resistance to damage.
- Lvl 2: Large bugs and bosses gain 75% more resistance to damage. Small bugs gain 33% resistance.
To unlock Haz 5+ modifiers, you’ll need to complete the “Beyond Lethal” assignment, which is a series of several haz 5 missions.
Secondary objectives
Both regular and Deep Dive missions have received two new secondary objectives to spice things up. In regular missions, you’ll now sometimes be tasked with destroying glyphid eggs. These are the same small eggs containing swarmers that can often be found in the caves. The second secondary objective will see you eradicating “Bha barnacles”, an ugly worm-like creature that hides in holes in the ceiling.
In Deep dives, you can find resonance crystal scanning as a secondary objective (without the drillevator part). The second secondary is a single liquid morkite well that will have you call down a mini refinery and then build a pipeline between them.
Warnings and anomalies
Two new warnings and anomalies have made their way to Deep Rock Galactic with season 5. These would be:
- Duck and Cover – Warning – Extra ranged enemies.
- Ebonite Outbreak – Warning – Ebonite enemies will now spawn in the mission. These enemies are immune to just about all forms of damage and must be destroyed via melee attacks. Molly will now deploy power attack cooldown capsules, much like those from the Ebonite machine event.
- Secret Secondary – Anomaly – A second secondary objective…a fine opportunity to get some more XP.
- Blood Sugar – Anomaly – The toxic air constantly damages your health. Killed bugs drop red sugar. Keep killing to live.
And a lot more cool stuff
Because we already broke our fingers writing everything that came with season 5 to Deep Rock Galactic…this is the fast recap.
More cosmetics
Cargo crates, Lost packs and Cosmetic-infused cores – have been updated with three new weapon and armor paint jobs, a weapon framework, as well as two sets of pickaxe parts for you to find. If you’re a veteran miner that got tired from all the “Good job” texts when opening crates, now’s a good time to jump in.
Weapon maintenance – At the seasonal terminal, you’ll now find three new paint jobs waiting to be unlocked in the maintenance tab. The 7th and final one will require 70k Xp to unlock, though, so be prepared to spam those 2Xp missions when they pop up.
The “Bubblegum” weapon paint job. One of the three new ones found in infused matrix cores. A weapon of true warriors.
Skin tones – If that was not enough, several new skin tones have been added to the game to help you create your perfect dwarf. Most of these are free, but some of them will have to be bought for credits in the shop.
Cosmetic Filtering – With more cosmetics being added each update, it should come as no surprise that it’s getting difficult to find what you need. Thankfully, now you can use the cosmetic filtering option to make sorting through your inventory a lot easier and a lot less time-consuming. Now in each cosmetic category you’ll find a small button that lets you filter gear by season, event, style and much more. Additionally, the armory UI is now collapsible to make the weapon viewing experience a lot easier.
Game systems
Promotion tracker – dwarves who hit maximum promotion rank will now get a number above their head to tell other how many promotions above maximum they have. Hover the mouse HERE to see what it looks like. A minute of silence to the more promotions mod, you’ve served us well.
New Ommoran Heartstone phase – The chance for it to appear is random, but now the Ommoran will sometimes attempt to encase the dwarves within cocoon-like crystal formations.
For those who want a more reasonable paint job for their weapons of mass destruction, the game has you covered, don’t worry. This is the new “Heavy metal” paint job from the weapon maintenance system.
Enemy damage type modification – Q’ronar shellback and Spitball infector attacks are now a mix of explosive and poison instead of being pure explosion damage. Glyphid dreadnought “fireball” attacks are no longer purely explosive and are now a mix of explosive and fire (go figure). Naedocyte shockers deal pure electric damage, and the acid spitters DoT is pure poison damage (the direct attack is still the dangerous part).
This isn’t going to mean much in gameplay, and to most dwarves, these enemies will deal the same amount of damage. To the gunner this is a small nerf as his passive lets him resist 50% explosive damage. A minute boon to the driller who has fire resistance, as before there was only one single fire-based attack in the game. And the elemental insulation perk is a bit more viable now.
Chemical explosion bolt buff – a small buff to the crossbows chemical bolts so that the explosion can hit glyphid slasher and mactera spawn breakpoints.
Reworked Status effect overlays – These are the on-screen effects you see when your character is under effect by various enemy and environmental effects. These were getting a bit old in the tooth so its no surprise the devs chose to refresh them.
More Graphical Options – Fancy Nvidia DLSS 3.0 tech added to the game to boost your framerate, only available to 40xx cards. There is also now a ragdoll lifetime feature that modifies how long enemy corpses stay on screen. The last one comes in handy for machines with older CPUs.
Did we forget to say the devs put in three new dances in the game? And that those included a dance from Spongebob, Peter Parkers evil dance from Spider-Man 3 and twerking? Despite the warning the devs gave us…we refuse to use this power responsibly.
Conclusion
Season 5 plays it safe and simply brings a lot of new content to Deep Rock Galactic. This might sound like a criticism, but it’s actually not. A common sentiment among players is that the game already offers a solid core gameplay experience. Fans of the game simply wanted GSG to expand it with more missions, overclocks and so on. And with season 5, the devs delivered. Interestingly, this season is also supposed to set up the events that lead into “Rogue Core” the next game in the Deep Rock Galactic series that the devs are currently working on, so we’re wondering where this is all going to lead to. For the time being, though, we’re happy with what we got. Rock ‘n’ Stone, miner.
Image Credit: Ghost Ship Games.
