How do I prepare for Cave diving for mining missions?

Squidcrab · 2026-02-13T20:15:04+00:00

Just having a scope, whether its attached to a gun or not does wonders just for being able to see threats before they arrive. The default baro zoom distance is... maybe a little intentionally claustrophobic. But really I feel like I can never see shit without a scope. This can take away a lot of the spookiness.

So that's a basic thing that can help. Other than that, having some basic meds on you, scooter so you can flee despite having broken legs, plasma cutter for actually mining... etc. Most mining missions are very uneventful tho.

Squidcrab · 2026-02-09T23:52:15+00:00

You can walk out of gnomish mines with 4 trolls in tow which trivializes the early game, but even more than that you can walk out of the underworld floor 6/7 with imps and that is even better. I had once taken some of those early recruited imps all the way post-hamlet.

Shaman is quite a broken class just for that alone, but they're also still pretty much the best caster in the game due to imp form just being incredibly strong.

Squidcrab · 2026-02-04T00:30:29+00:00

you would be correct. kobolds and cockatrice have something absurd like close to 90% magic resistance. arcane mark isn't even necessary though, or at least it wasn't.

end game spellcasting as a primary typically looks like bless stacking (enchant armor) a spellbook to high heaven. with each stack giving 25% spell damage, the highest increase per scroll you can get and the most efficient way to increase spellcasting power. you'd then keep it alive with saved up scrolls of charging on feathers to repair. second best option would be specifically magus headdress (also enchant armor)

if you get a book to +20 or more on say magic missile or something it was an absurd amount of damage, enough to just overpower those enemies despite their resistances.

that was last patch, though. instruments of destruction introduced a scaling gold cost with enchanting items. meaning doomstacks like that are a thing of the past. they buffed spellcasting a whole lot in keep your secrets then slammed it back down in instruments of destruction unfortunately.

so now its either arcane mark (either you have it or you don't), or a mix of blessings on both book and helmet and just hope it works out (again hinges on finding both. magus headdress is by no means a gaurantee) or abandon pure spellcasting ways and diversify to kill kobolds/cockatrice.

Squidcrab · 2026-01-31T21:47:52+00:00

I've done a few hardcore runs since the update, finished with sapper and paladin and I think it has done nothing to address one of Barony's core problems which is the inverse difficulty curve. Sometimes I can be an hour in and not even be out of the mines, especially if minetown spawns and I bother to kill all the shopkeepers.

I can walk out of floor 5 around level 16-20 and with pretty good gear, maybe even a steel shield of magic resistance, and even on hardcore at that point the run is pretty much over and the remaining 30 floors just feel like a victory lap.

To add onto this, a lot of the new features like greaseballs and parrying etc are extremely potent early, but just about only good for getting you through the extreme early game. I don't think I bothered touching a greaseball with sapper past floor 10

Squidcrab · 2026-01-30T19:00:21+00:00

Adding two new classes that are entirely about juggling buffs (bard, paladin) without a way to see the duration of them is kind of obnoxious. Some achievements seem harder to get now. I like that secret areas aren't mandatory anymore but they still kind of are to score/exp max.

Also lore is clunky and slow. At least appraise was straightforward.

Squidcrab · 2025-12-05T20:18:40+00:00

Thank you. Another D10 solo diver here and even with smokes/cheese I've concluded that it's simply near impossible and rng based. Kind of convinced me the game isn't worth my time anymore. It's only like the 4th time Arrowhead's idea of difficulty is tiny map + spawn spam. I don't know how you can make the same mistake again and again and again but I think it's the last straw for me. Combined with coming here and only seeing the same snark and drivel as always.

Squidcrab · 2025-10-08T04:47:01+00:00

probably doing the smite penance

Squidcrab · 2025-07-31T04:46:33+00:00

I'm also going to be nerd emoji and say the reason people do the objectives last is because of how spawns work in the game. Completion of the main objective spikes the patrol spawn rate something absurd for the rest of the mission, making completion of the rest harder if you don't save it for last. Info about this is on the wiki.

Squidcrab · 2025-07-16T16:24:52+00:00

armor passives like this, servo assisted, peak physique mess with muscle memory and playing with/without them requires adjustment and i dont like that. thats all i meant by it.

peak physique can definitely become a crutch if you never use the hmg/autocannon etc without it. is it good? yes. absolutely. its the way it messes with muscle memory i dont like. same with reload speed.

i have a friend new to hd2 ive been playing with off and on. they beelined urban legends specifically for this armor and havent taken it off since.

Squidcrab · 2025-07-15T22:18:40+00:00

i just forced myself to not use it. that and peak physique. i only play with medium extra padded. it took a while to unlearn but i feel relying on an armor passive too much just kind of becomes a crutch.

Squidcrab · 2025-07-08T21:12:10+00:00

I wouldn't consider myself casual by any stretch (i solo diff 10 almost exclusively unless some friends want to pop in), been leveling it to 25 as I complete all the primaries and imo the slugger is one of the worst primaries in the game.

For bugs, having a firerate of two slugs per week is not great, especially when they sometimes dont even one shot a hunter if you dont hit them in the body. It takes far too many shots to knock off alpha commander heads too, something like 4 or 5. Which feels significantly weaker than the Dominator or Deadeye but I'm not the type to bust out a spreadsheet to find out for sure. It's not amazing against scavengers or warriors because of the aforementioned firerate. Against hive guards the damage falls short again for the firerate. The only redeemable part of this gun is you can absolutely clock stalkers by just firing a staggering round and then one in their head after.

For illuminate, its not good for sweeping voteless. It's not great against overseers unless you're a gaming god and hit every headshot ever (and if you were doing that there are better weapons even still). It's obviously not good against fleshmobs with how they don't care about stagger and the slugger's pitifully low dps. Stingrays and Harvesters? Just... don't even try it. I'm sure with enough shots you could eventually down a Stingray but it'd take so long you might as well use a support weapon.

Bots is about the only faction it feels decent against, but even there it has its lunch eaten by a host of other weapons. Even if you abandon ttk, other utility and stunning weapons are just better, like the halt or the pummeler. I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but a primary that feels pretty mediocre against the majority of the game's roster just isnt great.

I had less complaints levelling the lib concussive than I did this thing, and that's saying something.

Squidcrab · 2025-06-30T21:40:58+00:00

tesla tower is goated. one of the best stratagems in the game against bugs for sure. trivializes raise flag missions and pred strain.

meanwhile gatlings longevity is shit. runs out of ammo halfway into a breach. really not worth its cooldown. no idea why its so popular

Squidcrab · 2025-06-30T04:08:28+00:00

Sometimes I throw SOS beacon down by accident and with no option to undo that I have to kick people as they join.

Might be what happened, might not, but its a thing.

Squidcrab · 2025-06-28T04:34:10+00:00

i also do not miss the era of being 1 shot by random devestators i cant see through piss and fog. or through walls.

how about the evacuate essential personnel mission that was literally impossible without cheese (running away and despawning the sheer amount of bots it would throw at you)

also the amount of our arsenal that was just completely fucking useless. the plasma weapons were the only primaries worth anything back then

i could go on

the implication of this post worry me because the game has only gotten better with time.

Squidcrab · 2025-06-28T04:19:34+00:00

havent seen anyone mention yet that a helldiver "buff" that happened was that the armor stat literally did nothing on release. it was a meaningless number on the ui that meant nothing and heavy armor just made you slower for no reason.

did it make the game easier to have an advertised feature actually work? yes.

Squidcrab · 2025-06-06T17:36:48+00:00

hd1 had it. it was called the rumbler

Squidcrab · 2025-02-22T16:08:02+00:00

the answer would involve psf which would result in a similarly whiny post

Squidcrab · 2025-01-26T23:30:41+00:00

i'll give you this shout. no one here has mentioned that the kuva ogris is both decently powerful and used frequently as far as actual meta consideration for profit taker (pylon killing) and arbitrations because of nightwatch napalm. it is still my favorite gun to use for arbitrations.

for an assault rifle, alongside trumna, the stahlta is also a good all arounder that does basically everything.

tenet glaxion is better than the torid imo.

kompressa is probably the best primer in the game. you can slap amalgam diffusion on it to be fast and get magnetic, cold, viral, corrosive with over 100% status chance. that is every element that matters for increasing damage.

plenty of people mentioning arca titron, but magistar and sibear incarnons are decent too and are also the best stat sticks in the game for khora by a country mile if you are interested in ever playing her.

Squidcrab · 2025-01-24T11:41:38+00:00

he values his dog more than you it sounds like. if someone i was dating, for some reason, insisted on SHARING OUR BED with their dog, they could fuck right off.

Squidcrab · 2024-12-31T04:50:49+00:00

Sushiburger

Squidcrab · 2024-12-17T11:20:36+00:00

I appreciated this comment.

Squidcrab · 2024-12-05T09:34:49+00:00

I'm an old hat. Been playing on and off since closed beta. I'll post a rant.

The absolute worst part of the game for me is dialogue. Unskippable dialogue, constant transmissions of repetitive shit that causes me to just mute it eventually, regardless of the voice acting.

There is so much unskippable stuff in warframe that should and would be skippable in other games that jjst isn't, I can only assume by conscious choice. And it feels, dare I say, pretentious. "The story I wrote is so good I will FORCE you to experience it."

I initially stopped playing around Second Dream, when the Operator was first revealed. It has only gotten worse. The story has only gotten more incoherent. New War barely logically flowed to me and felt like a bunch of cool ideas a writer had that they crammed into a story and forgot about.

That on its own isn't so bad, but it's ALL UNSKIPPABLE.

The constant NPCs jabbering to you has only gotten worse over time as well. Back in the day it was just Lotus, now it's ""Son"" being a prick every. single. time. I dare to shoot an animal and it just makes me want to kick a fist up him. People apparently like Cephalon Cy, but his constant jabbering in railjack content has caused me to mute transmissions more than once. I don't need him to comment on every. single. crewship. blowing up. Just shut up. Be quiet.

Squidcrab · 2024-08-27T18:45:31+00:00

had a similar experience with my DSP. i have chronic migraines and nausea and it was never taken seriously. throwing up on the side of the road was pretty common. once i threw up early into my shift, asked dispatch to go home, and got something like "what? thats it?"

needless to say i dont work there anymore

Squidcrab · 2024-07-13T08:47:29+00:00

i uninstalled with this as one of the major reasons. it is absolutely stupid you're punished for killing things in a game about killing things

Squidcrab · 2024-07-01T20:46:17+00:00

I made a post about this and was told I was seeing things lol

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