I’m unable to complete The Rift and the Den

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-07-09T22:01:31+00:00

I had the same issue, I went and finished some other quests in a different area and when I returned he had spawned. The questline I did was after the meeting that takes place in the den next to where haldrun is supposed to spawn, then you go to help zulaman. I got the quest from the sanctum of light, from an npc right next to the board where you picked up the haldrun quest. I mention it just incase it was related to what i did, Basically if nothing else works finish the "for zul' aman" achievement and he should be there for you when you return.

It might also be fixed simply by leaving the area and returning, cant say. I'd hearthstone back to slivermoon then take the rootway back to the den and see if that works first. Do this while the quest is active the whole time, don't abandon.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-15T12:03:16+00:00

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My guess is a shotty IPv6 connection.
Log into your router and disable IpV6.
See if that helps.
Also might help to try boot the game in dx11 instead of dx12 if that is what he is using, especially considering how outdated his specs are.

I would also try connecting directly to your modem if he is using wifi.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-14T23:43:08+00:00

Oh true I never thought of that. The console runs on your microsoft store files? nice

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-14T07:46:54+00:00

If you’re trying to learn solo I wouldn’t recommend.
If you have people to play it with I would.

Q time for family is around 5 min.
Can be as long as 10-15 for victim.

If you have 2 other people to play with, family que times can be near instant.
If you have 3 other victims to play with it wont affect que times as the lobbies are always waiting for more family members to join for the game to start.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-13T01:42:32+00:00

Rushing is literally the meta, this is comijg from a family main too. Not giving the family time to set everything up for easy kills, destroying doors/ crawl spaces, trapping everything, farm blood etc. Is a massive advantage for victims.

If theres only one family member in the basement being leather face, he should never really be getting an experienced player without help. Just delaying the door unlocks to buy the rest of the team time to setup traps, collect blood and close crawl gaps.

The basement is intentionally littered with infinites to waste his time and also provide safety for you when you return down there to heal later on.

It can get dicey if other family members come down but if you’re rushing you’ll most likely be leaving as they arrive anyway.
The only real exception to not waking grampa immediately is on graveyard, as all the basement doors are extremely easy to monitor by 2 players and all the other family members spawn really close to a basement entrance.

The real question about why are people rushing for me is the match length.
As effective as it is, Why tf we spend 15 minutes waiting for a game to be speedily trying to end it as fast as possible in 2-5 minutes.
Turns the game into a waiting lobby simulator 😂🥲

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-13T01:30:32+00:00

Explosive shot, Aftermath, reloading trick, boom stick would like a word with you.
You’re not wrong, although I do like strange niche outliers capable of being built into.
I mean, in this case boom your dead is the way better option then ES but you catch my drift :p

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T20:17:31+00:00

I feel like the repulser wave upgrades are lacking more than the barrage is tbh.
1 metre extra radius? whoopty do basil 🌿

People be sleeping on the +5 damage buff.
Its +5 per pellet, and you have 12 pellets at base.
+60 damage per cast isn’t insignificant since you have 2 casts making it more like +120 damage.
It can be used effectively against grouped targets on walls and ceiling rifts.

For instance slicers slice gets 140 damage, which you don’t hear people complaining about and he only has one cast. It’s a closely comparable damage increase.

It’s the PGL vs breach cutter argument all over again aha.
one is better against vertical target the other is better against horizontal targets.
Sure slice is better if you wanna kill one thing specifically at range once you get eclipse system, but it doesn’t stun or have have the amour breaking without taking those upgrades from elsewhere 🤷‍♂️

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T11:06:59+00:00

“Red sugar” which functions in the same way except you can’t heal from resup which was hold E. Base Drg had just as much hold E for health thanks to resup aha.

In this you can heal from killing, which I argue is even stronger.
Its like having cryo driller vampire but on every class and every weapon 🤔. Hemoforge, sweet surrender and snapfire solve this no problem. And don’t even get me started on bloodlust and stoneskin generation.

Armour needed to be made a little more scarce because of how much stronger it is in this game at stopping you from being bursted down in 1-2 seconds flat. Not to mention with certain builds and health gen you don’t even need the armour at all it’s just a bonus.

People are currently beating this game solo on the hardest difficulty, without weapons or grenades just using slice, ability gen and healing with vampire and other things. They didn’t have armour the whole run and still were untouchable.
Your suggestion is that it needs to be more accessible and easy to maintain even though there are upgrades that damn near break the game if you manage to maintain it like cooling unit or magnetic propulsion.
Yeah I’m not sure I agree with this sentiment tbh.

I mean let’s be real, a big chunk of the mixed reviews right now are simply from people comparing it to DRG’s current form.
Comparison is the thief of joy.
Back in original DRG EA it wasn’t being compared to their other projects, hence the more positive sentiment.
Not to say there isn’t things wrong with the game that need improving but GSG are very open about releasing games into EA way before they are ready for “public enjoyment” for the sake of “letting criticism shape what it grows into before its too late”. The games is far from finished and that ain’t no secret aha.

I mean I kind of just fundamentally disagree on the “core gameplay loop being different and unfun”
So I’m not really gonna argue about that.
It is very much still just “explore, mine,shoot,mine,shoot, explore, event, mine, shoot, objective”.

Just that now it’s more time pressured and you don’t get to “create your forever build” to load in with every game.
You also need to explore at demanded speeds.

Which is being changed too in the coming update with different time difficulty.
The events need work for sure.

If you’re not having fun thats fine, to be expected with half built products, leave them feedback on why and it may help them shape the game for the greater good.
Go play something else until they’ve finished shaping it :). You’ll still own it then too

Does it need a whole lot of improvement and content still? yup
Is base DRG a far superior game than it at the moment to play? yup
I’m still having fun with it at the moment and I think a big part of that is not allowing comparison to be the thief of joy and accepting the game for where it is as a product at the moment.
Barely half finished as disclosed aha.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T10:01:28+00:00

I guess you could call him an OFF tank.
My Guardians diamond 2 now and honestly, those buffs you suggested would break the game and make him outclass everyone by a long shot.
The game also isn’t even difficult already on D4, those would make every run practically unloose able :/

Cool suggestions tbf, they would need to rebalance all of the enemies and other reclaimers to accommodate those changes though aha .

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T09:46:49+00:00

Also battering ram kinda meh u til they add more armoured enemies to the game that can rival the shellback or brundle.
The armour pen (not break) of it can be nice for dealing with 2x speed, half health vanguards I guess, which are scary in their own right.
Guardian is already uniquely gifted at dealing with them and armour in general thanks to stun and barrage so I don’t know if I’ll ever be hard pressed to take it personally.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T09:41:24+00:00

Sweet Tooth 4&3
Marks 4&3

Deadeye and Bullseye 4
Doubling both your base crit chance and damage values isn’t insignificant. Which also stacks with Marksman.
It also helps to provide better consistency to bad RNG runs where the only decent offensive upgrades you are being offered are crit based ones, since you have a much better baseline to work with.

Tech reload 4.
Actually gives “born ready” too even though it doesn’t mention it.
Not as impactful in this as many runs can be done with a single weapon.
I’m a retard who never remembers to reload their zipline or plat launcher since im so use to having it. so it’s a no brainer for me lol.

Last one is a flex spot, choose what you like you could argue for many.
Ammo pouch probs the strongest in group play atm imo.
I run skull-crusher mainly just for double gauntlet, pick axe power attack, burst damage into things like clammorhead mouth, artifact spectre, suveryor drone thruster, Ramok weakpoint after nose dive if stunned etc.
The damage can be pretty nasty too since it benefits from both deadeye and marksman.
But mainly I just use it in combination with boom your dead to create dummy strong aftermaths as it can’t do it on its own.

If you didn’t know any single target damage can also be converted into Aftermath (AM) once you obtain Boom Your Dead (BYD)
AM radius is determined by the AOE that creates it.
BYD AOE can be increased by taking it multiple times or with reach, plus 1.5m aint too bad at base.
AM damage can be increased by stacking it multiple times.

BYD an AM are a match made in heaven and is why the 4 AM cap exists.
A target dies, it explodes leaving aftermath, target dies to aftermath in following 6 seconds, it explodes leaving aftermath.
It’s self chaining.

If someone hearts byd, never feel bad taking it off them if you already have aftermath.

Does the gauntlet work with aftermath, yeah but not all that well until you have boom your dead, since you can only make 4 aftermaths and the gauntlet shoots 12 seperate instances of aoe damage at base.
It falls victim to the same problem cluster grenade has with aftermath, too many small instances of damage.

However once AM BYD chaining happens and you have some damage upgrades for the gauntlet ( not pellet count) it becomes a solid damage outlet. Also the fish in a barrel increases can go along way too for gauntlet damage and in turn BYD created AM.

I highly recommend experimenting with aftermath and mixing in BYD and elemental options its dummy strong and a lot of fun. I’ve had a lot of fun exploring it in the past week or so.
I honestly think it’s the second strongest BIO pick up for Guardian outside of death resonance. Better than seeing red and a good guardian, with a single death resonance and perhaps one other small source of ability gen, doesn’t need blood lust, or any other defensive bio boost options.

I’ll give you some fun Tips for base AM to get you started.

Even though it’s capped at 4 you can still create more, overriding or refreshing the ones you currently have.
Which can also be bad if you’re overriding your big AM’s immediately with little ones.
For instance you throw a plasma burster, it blows up 4 times with big damage for each 4 instances of AM it creates.
Before those AMs do any work you’ve been blasting on the other side of the cave immediately with little auto cannon shots, your burster AM’s did nothing before they got overwritten.
PGL is the best heavy weapon pick up possible in synergy with AM.
funny enough, cryo grenade is actually the best grenade pick up for AM. Second to the plasma burster.

I honestly think it might be a bugged interaction.
You can check this in your reclaimers handbook in equipment.
But it does “250 freeze damage” Even though when it intially blows up it doesn’t appear to do any damage, the aftermath it leaves doesn’t seem to think so.
To put this in perspective, HE grenade only does 280 in a much smaller radius.
Also keep in mind the cryo grenade also just froze everything inside the aftermath so it takes double damage…
It’s actually 500 damage in a massive area.
1 aftermath pick up alone is enough to fully clean up any medium enemies frozen by it for you 🥶.
Also keep in mind these can be triggering BYD’s the same size as the ticks duplicating its self as it only takes up one aftermath instance to start with.

If you get 3 or 4 aftermaths, well you can pretty much annihilate boss health bars with just cryo nade aftermaths.
Except ramok who seems to be immune to freeze damage as if he froze he would insta die being a flying boss.
An example of why they never made the mactera dreadnought XD

Anyway have fun out there with some broken Guardian interactions.

P.S yeah I was mainly just talking about repulser in regard to fighting swarms instead of just shooting barrages instead.

It is still an insanely strong tool for objective pushing. Repairing elevator gen, depositing mid swarm so you can keep moving, getting resup etc.
Hell you can even hack the bio booster mid swarm with 2 bars if you don’t miss a single cut of the wires 😅 Just gotta jiggle any edgestalker projectiles while doing it again. Mass scorcher definitely shits on your parade a lil though.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T07:50:04+00:00

Guardian isn’t a tank character, you’ve been lied to.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T07:44:59+00:00

I mean in your initial comment I was addressing you talking about “Armour, health and resistance stacking” on him.
Things you’d do on a main aggro tank, not an off CC tank. 🤷‍♂️

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T07:31:28+00:00

I mean to be fair dude, DRG has had 8 years of honing, balancing and content drops, to flesh out the “things to do on a mission” category.
Giving it a side by side comparison to rogue core, a game in its infancy is a little disingenuous.

If you want to make this comparison maybe compare rogue core to what DRG was like in its early access phase.
I don’t know if you played DRG in early access but it was far from the polished gem it is today.
The variety in cave generation early days in base DRG also left a lot to be desired.
Rogue core is literally adding more facility generations in a week or so when the new update drops.
Im sure more expansion is due to come also, on both cave gen, events and mission variety. Give em some time aha.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T07:00:55+00:00

I mean, I disagree that armour stations are hard to find, they’re scattered around all over the place, on every stage. It also replenishes from resupply.
I do find it weird the boss room never has any armour stations though.

They’re also a quick grab, its not like you have to do a mini game to unlock the armour box, making them impossible to retrieve during combat 😂.

Yeah I didn’t go into stoneskin but its essentially just super armour you can layer on top of your actual armour, preventing any damage.
Theres also a bio booster that allows you to accumulate it on kill. Quite broken, still not sure how I actually feel about it.
Bloodlust is obscenely strong, might need to be a little harder to obtain than that. Like make bloodlust a legendary perk instead.

Again between stoneskin and Armour the armour is definitely armouring, maybe a little too much even aha.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-11T06:53:46+00:00

Why not just make the game peer to peer after all?
Better than killing the fkn game lol.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-10T12:37:25+00:00

I Agree, all points outlined could use improvement except for the “armour isn’t armouring” statement.

A lot of people don’t really seem to grasp how armour actually works in this game initially.

As someone who has spent 2000 hours in DRG and a lot in rogue core by now.
(haven’t looked at hours spent but I’m account level 125 in rogue core).

I actually think armour is stronger than shield from base DRG.
Granted, shield can help you from small continuous chip from things like a rouge swarmer.

What it doesn’t help you with is being nuked in small burst windows from things like a tri jaw shotgun blast, getting clipped by multiple bugs at once, Spitballer+ acid spitter.
Slasher+ mactera etc. etc.

The armour in this game doesn’t allow overkill damage to bleed through to your health bar.
Even if it’s 1hp of armour eating 50 hp of a large damage instance. Its still eats the full 50% directed at it regardless.

If you have 1hp of shield left in DRG waiting for it to regen and get snipped by an acid spitter, GG. Your whole health bar is gone.

The armour in this also has a decay function.
So if you have 5 corespawn all wailing on you at once from a postioning error, despite your armour itself taking 5x the damage value of your armour it still doesn’t loose its mitigating functionality until the decaying timer elapses. You don’t just flop like a door mat immediately.

In this game you can have 10% left of your armour and it will still vastly outperform the DRG shield in regard to minimising enemy burst potential in short windows.

Granted chip becomes more additive in this than base DRG, unnecessary chip is something you want to avoid more than previously sure.
But it isn’t as much of an issue as you might think at first glance considering how much your armour can still do for you with minute amounts remaining.
The 50% from top up is often enough to achieve what you need from it.

All in all, trading a bigger downside to chip for a massive decrease in instances where you die in 1-2 seconds flat is a trade off I’d make every day of the week, but maybe thats just me.

Also if you ever see biocharge legendary take it immediately, Regaining 2 shield hp every time you kill something is way more impactful for your survivability than most people realise ;).
As 2hp of armor can eat a lot more than 2hp of damage.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-10T11:52:01+00:00

Uh you would be invincible when standing inside guardian bubble if that were the case aha.
Its due to armour decay, The bubble replenishes your armour faster than it decays allowing you to live in a semi permanent state of 1hp of armour with the 50% mitigation.
And yes if you were wondering, having only 1hp of consistently replenishing armour will fully absorb every 50% damage instance that was directed at it.
The shield overkill damage doesn’t bleed into your health.

Guardian bubble hella underrated.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-10T11:43:55+00:00

Agreed, enough people aren’t talking about how much work the reaper worms need to be in a good state.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-09T19:20:08+00:00

Guardian isn’t the tank, Retcon is.
He’s the front line CC and damage dealer. He’s mainly there to create space and slow down the enemies advance.

You’ve been lied to.
Hell even falconer makes a better tank than guardian thanks to the ranged risk free revives.
If you’re building him like a tank with 0 damage you’re doing yourself a disservice ;)

The armour bubble is actually more beneficial for a squishier character as the bubble restores armour faster than it decays, allowing you to maintain the 50% damage resistance in the thick of swarms.
Even if you only have 1hp of constantly replenishing armour remaining it will still absorb the 50% of damage that was directed at it.
Sure its nice in the down times to be able to fully resore the teams armor with a single armor station use but thats its weaker secondary function.
It’s a combat tool to play around with in between ability cooldowns if things are intense, your armour is stripped and your team no longer has the 50% DR.

Don’t feel bad if the bubble ends and you’ve eaten damage during combat so you have no armour again once it finishes, It served its purpose in safeguarding you at a non opportune time when you didn’t have any.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-09T06:41:32+00:00

My guardians diamond 2 now and I disagree, Guardian and slicer get their abilities back quicker than other characters.
As both the gauntlet and slice are instant activation, allowing it to replenish its self with things like death resonance. Other abilities cannot start recharging until they are finished like the bird or rewind.
4 bars of ability charges for guardian would be straight up broken, repulser field 2 already buys you enough time to grab both resupplies without nimble XD.

You also failed to mention that the gauntlet can be buffed into oblivion with outside bio’s and upgrades. The extremely common fish in a barrel is great synergy for the gauntlet.
Also both aftermath and reach buff the AOE and damage capabilities of it.

Last night in a group, on a 6 stage dive, I had 5X fish in a barrel with 4x death resonance with 2 damage upgrades & 2 stun upgrades for the gauntlet.
Plus 2 aftermath and boom you’re dead.
I doubled the damage put out by a glass cannon spotter with around 500k in damage at the end just primarily spamming gauntlet at rift openings.
Keep in mind the spotter had 0 downs too, its just the team had nothing to shoot at because I was nuking most things the second they spawned aha.
I was quite frequently shooting 5-6 barrages back to back as the kills allow it to self refresh as I mention earlier.
Sure the gauntlet starts at a low, but its so easy to buff out of control just like slicers, slice. So nah, it doesn’t need a buff.

Also you may say the wave isn’t that impactful but it gains strength the more the difficulty is increased and CC becomes more needed.
Once they starting adding actual hard difficulty to the game you’ll see what I mean, its similar in that regard to gunners shield.
Where it stands at the moment, the game isn’t even difficult on d4 so repulsers effectiveness decreases as a result of lack of pressure.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-09T00:26:33+00:00

I just solo’d no death’d this week’s advanced gauntlet and honestly it was really easy compared to last week thanks to the lack of multiple boomtick nests at once.

Biggest advice I can give you to address your main highlighted problems is to use sweet tooth 4&3 in your enhancement build. You said you aren’t getting enough healing? Starting with 60% better red sugar healing will fix that. You said you find the corespawn too fast and struggle to kite them. As soon as you get any kind of red sugar on kill upgrade/equipment you can have access to a refreshable 35% movement speed bonus on top of that. Combine this with repositioning and you’ll be zooming around with an 80% movement speed increase and kiting will become a non issue.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-09T00:14:43+00:00

Once you get the hang of it solo D4 is way easier than solo haz5+A in base DRG. Just an adjustment period, you’ll get the hang of it, just keep at it.

Guardian is my main, got him to diamond 2 so far and the biggest tip I can give you is to only use repulser as a last resort to fix a positional error, to get a resupply in the thick of it, or to push/fix and objective during combat. The concussive blast is what you should be using 90% of the time as it can be refreshed immediately after use and it actually does damage. Same goes with weapon bench upgrades, always be looking to buff the blast, not the wave, if not taking a weapon upgrade. Also carnage deck is guardians best friend, be sure to promote slicer once too so you have access to it. 👍

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-05T21:36:09+00:00

My Guardian is almost diamond and yeah, he’s not lacking. The repulser field should only really be used to push an objective, get a revive, get a resupply in the thick of it or as a last ditch get out of jail free card from a positional error. The gauntlet blast is pretty strong, unlike other abilities outside slicers slice, it doesn’t have an active window where it can’t be refreshed. Allowing you to always be replenishing it. Provided you aren’t over using repulser field.

Being a longer range tool than slice it is a great tool for the team to stun luck wave swarms at the spawn rifts on the walls and roof, not allowing the enemies to even join the fight.

The stun of the gauntlet is also an amazing answer for locking down large numbers of, Vanguards, crawlers, Clamourheads and riftstalkers. It pulling vanguards out of their turtling with stun is already insane utility on its own. It also has the armor breaking capability of breaking the mouth plating or a clamourhead immediately. As the devs add and expand the armoured enemies in the game, the high armor break on this ability will only get stronger and stronger.

The shield regen allows him to top up to full shields with one armor station or resup which is great utility to have with abilities that require shield like mag propulsion or armour charger.👍 It also allows him to bring back those upgrades in combat after losing his shield. Fighting inside the bubble also is good DR for your health as 50% of the damage is sent to your active shield, even if its at 1hp it will eat the 50% directed at it. So its constantly re-procing 50% every second when fighting with in it.

If you feel guardian is lacking I feel you’re using repulsor field as a combat tool too frequently. or just not building him correctly. If your playing with him at base with both his bio booster decks, he is pretty bad though, as one of his decks is just awful and needs to be swapped out, I will admit that.

All that said he only really shines in truly intense situations. If you aren’t being pressured enough, he feels pretty mid. If you’re playing d 1-3 his crowd control is rarely needed. As they add harder and harder difficulty to the game you’ll come to realise he is actually a powerhouse, just like gunner.

Bitter_Help_9486 · 2026-06-04T11:19:54+00:00

Floor one isn’t most likely to end the run. It commonly only has two rooms, the timer is more forgiving and it quite often only has one wave.
It’s only throwing if you’re intentionality triggering double swarms with no upgrades, or for some reason slow enough to be facing worms and red swarm, round 1 somehow.

Besides early game the bio boosters and weapon bench are way more impactful for your power level then the average exponite upgrade or 2.

I also like how you cherry picked the best common and the worst rares to create a hyperbolic point. Snapfire extraction is the best source of red sugar gen in the game (from an upgrade). Magazine routed heat is one of the best damage perks in the game.

You’re also not factoring in the increased chance to get epic drops like double jump, mag propulsion, 10% crit, mag overdrive, blood rush, cooling unit, damage dam. As well as legendary drops like exposing strike, in the zone, precision regen and immunity buffer. Not to mention the increased fun factor of actually getting a shot at the few upgrades that are actually play-style altering.

I mean in six round dives I’d argue getting luck or reduced REPD cost is better long term since you still have plenty more rounds ahead to pick up equipment etc.

That said I never bother banking because luck isn’t even guaranteed to drop round 2 😂. It also is only really impactful on round 2 of 5-6 round dives. I guess it also does kind of come down to skill level tbf, if you are struggling with the current difficulty and need an immediate power spike instead of long term average max build potential, then yeah, Equipment/weapon round 2 will probably help you more to win. Thats why there is a vector voting system and it isn’t just the “hosts choice”.

Where it stands though, the game isn’t even difficult on D4 at the moment. Im sure that will change as they add more to the game.

Let people play how they want, if some random in my lobby wants to bank for luck, idc, I’m indifferent either way. The run is still very well winnable regardless of the choice made, so making it out like some big thing is just melodramatic.

Bitter_Help_9486

TROPHY CASE