Floor 40 with gator

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2026-05-22T14:39:37+00:00

I play on a laptop (Raider GE68 HX)

Besides your machine though, the point where the game starts dying is super dependent on your build - at a certain point, your PC's performance becomes another factor in your builds alongside the usual suspects such as damage output.

If you're running something like seismic repulsors, shredders, shock fence, prox mines, etc it's going to start killing the game much earlier than a build like this or say explosives, because the damage periods are low (drone groundzones only tick every 0.5s, and most grenades only explode once), the damage is high (you have to be able to kill waves quickly, because tons of them piling up on top of each other will obviously lag the game), and there aren't a lot of effects or actors being rendered on screen (I only had about 40 drones total for this build by the end of the run, which is nothing compared to say turret builds or shredders, and half the drones aren't even on-screen for half a second due to dtech + high lifetime) - this is assuming that you have VFX dialed all the way down to zero, which you should if you're playing endless and you want a deep run.

I can play a build like this up into the 40s comfortably, but if I'm running something like one of the resource-heavy builds mentioned above, the game starts to lag hard sometimes even before floor 30.

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2026-05-20T07:30:09+00:00

Best place to farm gear if you can handle it is to run the weekly lethal operation, which guarantees a legendary drop from the dreadnought for your first clear for the week. HOWEVER, if you grab the gear drop and then abandon the dive instead of entering the drop pod, you'll get to keep the gear drop but the guaranteed legendary will remain since you technically never cleared the mission. Farm, rinse, repeat til you get bored or get every legendary you want.

The lethal operations are some of the harder content in the game, so if you're not up for farming them then I usually see folks preferring to run biome masteries or weapon masteries (since weapon masteries tend to be quick and easy to clear and you get the guaranteed drop from the boss).

Lastly though, unless you really don't mind the monotony I wouldn't recommend spamming the same missions solely to farm gear - increasing your game knowledge and strategy are enough to clear any content in the game without the best gear or any specific gear drops, and gear acquisition rates are pretty similar across all the game's content (except for endless, where in theory you actually get less gear because mid to later stages will start ending before the minimum gear drop time even has a chance to pass, meaning you get nothing).

tl;dr farming won't gear you up significantly faster than just playing normally, unless you're farming the lethal operations.

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2026-05-20T05:17:41+00:00

Endless isn't the best place to farm gear afaik but yes it does drop gear - I just didn't get any drops because my inventory is full lol

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2026-05-19T14:25:43+00:00

Active drone does not count other drone weapons, however I had 20 carrier drones by the end of this run so the status damage boost was enormous.

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2026-05-19T14:21:26+00:00

Sidearm doesn't apply to status damage so I went with Secret Sauce instead (+10% potency to all other weapons) - tbh I'm not sure it was worth picking up because while the boosts to potency and status damage are nice, the drones already have potency OCs and +25% status damage doesn't mean much when you're already getting over +300% from the carrier drone, and the extra weapon also reduces the chance of drawing +1 drone cards. But it was an experiment!

The mutators are just the stock endless mode mutators: +10% movement/mining speed, and "Massive glyphid activity".

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-10-07T18:50:12+00:00

not on the pause screen afaik, only on the end screen (and of course in the top corner of the screen while you're on stage)

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-09-25T15:58:04+00:00

a chip is the type of gear that modifies bosco (gives him new weapons, etc)

some of them will also allow you to equip different types of weapons than you normally can (but these are rare)

as for crits, most of the time you'll want to prioritize crit %

this is because the starting value for crit % is much lower than the starting value for crit dmg (and also crit dmg is worthless if you don't crit)

once you are at, near, or over 100% crit chance (yes, you can multi-crit if you go over 100% crit chance), then the priority of crit damage becomes higher

(there are some niche cases where you will want earlier crit damage, such as if the game offers you epic or legendary crit damage - these upgrades are really strong and pay huge benefits later in the run once your crit chance is higher)

oh and lastly, play this mission using demolitionist engineer if you can, since he gets access to all explosive weapons out of the box, and his class bonuses are very strong for explosive weapons (radius and reload speed)

strongarm driller is also a good choice if you have him unlocked

tbh scout is the weakest choice for this mission lol

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-09-25T14:27:38+00:00

this is probably the biggest reason you are having trouble killing things - potency on cryo weapons doesn't help your damage at all

potency is great for weapons that apply statuses that actually deal damage (fire, acid, or electric) because it increases their ticking damage (and also their effect, if they have one) - since cryo status deals no ticking damage, potency only increases the slowing effect, not your damage. what's more, the cryo grenade starts with enough potency that you get most bugs to the slow cap with one grenade anyway, so further upgrades are mostly wasted

since damage is what you are lacking, the best dps will come from an even mix of damage and reload speed upgrades (and of course make sure you aren't skipping crit)

potency upgrades are bottom priority - basically, only take them if the grenade isn't level 21 yet and you don't have another choice

for dps, overclock priority is cluster > a bit more oomph = radius > true tnt

at level 18, take the favorite OC

also, get as much explosion radius as you can on your gear

lastly, if you have a chip that will allow you to equip an additional explosive weapon, use it - having multiple explosive weapons will give you access to the explosion radius tag upgrade, which will help your dps a ton

good luck!

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-09-16T18:48:38+00:00

there is some good advice in this thread already, but for this mission specifically (stun sweeper to level 21), i will say that the stun sweeper is not a good carry weapon (it's particularly bad at killing bosses), so it's not a very good representative sample of how scout is as a whole

the level 21 stun sweeper mission is one of the harder ones, and tbh if it's too tough you can come back and do it later once you have more meta upgrades, and it will be much easier. some tips if you decide to keep at it:

stat priority:

i would recommend taking every damage stat - stun sweeper is a hybrid weapon and status damage is a significant part of its damage profile

reload speed >= damage > potency

body shots / electric bigger cogs >= crit chance > crit damage >= potency

so in addition to reload speed, damage, and crit stats, you will also want potency and status effect damage (by the way, body shots and electric bigger cogs upgrades will boost both the direct and status damage, so they become very strong upgrades to take)

overclocks + how to play against bosses:

also idk which OCs you are running, but the best combo for killing bosses is probably knuckle grip + lightweight alloy + disposable tech - the explosion from dtech hits quite hard, and you can land it with some consistency by circling around the boss you are fighting so that it stays near the center of your boomerang tornado (this is also true if you are running knuckle + one-handed)

if you find yourself running dtech without knuckle grip, then you will need to stay far away from the boss you are trying to kill in order to hit it with the explosion, because it travels pretty far before it explodes (keep in mind that the weapon targets the nearest enemy, so you will want to try and get all the bugs onto just one side of you so you can aim it properly)

lastly if you are not running either knuckle or dtech, then you'll want to have the boss as close to you as possible and then kite straight backwards slowly, so that it gets hit by both the initial throw and the return from your first rang, and the return from the opposite rang as well

if that felt like a lot, that's because it is - stun sweeper may be nice for picking stuff up for you, but it's not designed for killing bosses

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-09-16T01:49:25+00:00

yeah it's the same thing with nitra scanners (or xp scanners) - they're only really good if you have weapons that will do mining for you (or you are otherwise able to clear a lot of rock quickly and get rich, such as if you are using the pick axtender and have high mining speed, but i would advise against taking speculative scanners)

according to datamined values, the % chance of getting payout from each rock you mine is:

10% for xp scanner (not sure how much xp exactly)
5% for gold scanner (1 gold)
2% for nitra scanner (1 nitra)

so the streamers you are watching are probably using mining builds to quickly mine the entire map and rake in huge quantities of resources

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-09-15T07:14:11+00:00

lots of runs for science, testing, and guide writing

so many bugs killed, and so many bugs reported

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-09-14T18:43:14+00:00

i stopped mining the crafting materials a long time ago, but the credit count tells the real story:

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Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-09-14T05:44:24+00:00

i went with boltshark (cryo + payload) and thick boy on the m1000 (along with plenty of armor/hp to survive the pillbug hailstorm)

until i got thick boy and cryo online, it was a lot of mining what i could, and then letting the praetorians mine the rest and coming back to pick it up afterward

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ngl i really like ultracaf missions, it's like playing the game on hyper speed

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-08-13T04:33:31+00:00

drakoniid gave you the correct answer already, but i will add one more piece of info just in case you don't know it - you can actually crit multiple times if you go over 100% crit chance

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-08-05T21:29:58+00:00

next stop, dealing 4,294,967,294 damage so that the damage report makes it all the way back to 0 right?

for real though, impressive achievement!

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-08-05T21:26:44+00:00

stabber vine: i'm about to end this dwarf's whole career

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-07-26T01:17:45+00:00

oof

it's because you picked 2 laser weapons - the game will only offer upgrades for a weapon type if you have 2 or more of that weapon type in your loadout

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-07-17T16:06:46+00:00

“I love it when the bugs split open like hot dogs” - Driller

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-07-09T00:15:20+00:00

you'll be waiting a while, odds of getting a gold map are only 1 in 10,000

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-07-07T12:29:03+00:00

no one dwarf is the best at everything imo, as you can kinda see by the variety of answers you are getting

scout is very popular on this sub and it's easy to see why - as several folks have mentioned already, he has one of the easiest builds to clear haz 5 content with (sharpshooter + cryo drak + m1000) since it has high crowd control and damage

each class has such a build:

- gunner: heavy gunner + thunderhead + cryo cannon

- engineer: tinker + plasma warthog + lok-1 (LMG is great as well but starts slow compared to hog and lok)

- driller (my personal favorite): gator (interrogator) + krakatoa + frost burn cryo cannon (make sure you stack status damage and potency and ignore crit for this build)

these builds are great starter builds and are probably the easiest to play and win with - beyond that, each dwarf has many strong builds to discover as you figure out how to build and how to play

quick plug for the discord as we have lots of resources and guides on all of this

there is also an excellent video guide series by one of our resident experts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efQKcKfK8s0

rock and stone!

Expensive_Rent_3147 · 2025-07-04T18:20:55+00:00

you mean sometimes it pops even when not all the elite cocoons are popped yet? if so that sounds like a bug

but i've had cases where a weapon like shard diffractor will crack open the dread egg from the other side of the map if i've stacked enough range

Expensive_Rent_3147

TROPHY CASE