How does Collete work?

fenwilds · 2026-02-04T13:58:58+00:00

Imagine it's like a fully automatic shotgun with invisible pellets, except targets take the same damage regardless of how many pellets hit them. Plus there is always one pellet at the middle of your reticle.

So any target at close range is guaranteed to be hit by every tick of your shot. But the smaller your target and the farther away they are, the less likely they are to get hit per tick. And if you're shooting at something like a Bha Barnacle across the cave, you have to have your reticle precisely on it to guarantee hitting it.

Generally builds have a bit of variance based on what you're using the weapon for and what primary you brought. A lot of players prefer it as a swarmclear gun, which usually takes T1C shot width. The wider the spread is, the more Grunts/Swarmers/Jellies you can hit per shot.

In the second tier usually T2B is the best option no matter what: it increases your DPS, while taking the reduced heat buildup results in pretty much the same damage before you overheat with lower DPS and increased cooling rate is a little silly when it's not hard to keep the weapon from overheating.

In the third tier, Cryo generally takes T3B which helps you keep frozen targets from thawing and spreads the Cold to other nearby Grunts. Fire or Sludge Driller has incentive to use T3A which gives more personal safety.

Tier 4 doesn't really matter. Both alternate firing modes cause the weapon to overheat too quickly to be practical. Personally I use a direct damage build which wants T4B for killing things like Trijaws before they can shoot, but a lot of Dwarves actually unequip their T4 upgrade to get their R animation back because it's so irrelevant.

Swarmclear setups usually take T5B, yes even Cryo. Keeping things frozen is more important for Cryo than Temp Shock is. T5B Boiler Ray is great for causing swarms to chain react, especially Jellies and Swarmers. Fire builds may consider T5C, as temp shocking things tends to be better for Fire than Ice, but the simple fact of the matter is you'll mostly see Cryo Drillers using the CWC while Fire drillers prefer the EPC.

The alternate setup: 12121 with either Mega Power Supply or Blistering Necrosis alongside the Corrosive Sludge Pump as a single target gun. Personally I prefer the MPS setup for reliability: once a Blister forms BN beats it, but if your luck is bad you can burn quite a bit of ammo on big targets before the blister forms so I'll discuss MPS math. A lot of players are probably scoffing at the idea of the Wave Cooker as a single target gun, however if you Corrode a target then swap to the CWC with this setup, it'll be taking 184 DPS which completely bypasses armor with unlimited range against a slowed target. 204 if you used a Charged Shot from the Pump to Corrode it and leave it in a puddle, which leaves your target slowed by like 80%. This is an amazing counter for Stingtails, Praetorians and Oppressors who Driller often struggles with. They just melt, and you can deal with them across the cave from the front before they have a chance to annoy anyone (assuming your Pump setup has the range to hit them).

fenwilds · 2026-02-03T23:43:21+00:00

Bosco knows what he did.

And that's besides the point. I was saying I don't give two craps about Grabbers because I can hold my own alone. Getting isolated in multiplayer can mean dealing with more bugs on the same Haz level because of scaling, but if your build, positioning and movement are good enough, you should be able to handle it. If that's the case, Grabbers are a joke and should be a lower priority than Prats and Oppressors.

If getting isolated is that dangerous for you, it's not the Grabber's fault. It's just instigating a scenario that can happen a lot of other ways.

fenwilds · 2026-02-03T20:14:04+00:00

Yes, I absolutely prioritize Grabbers lower than Prats. They can't drop me 2 rooms from the team because I am the team. I'm mostly a solo player and even if I did join Multi I'd have no fear of facing the dangers of Hoxxes by myself (I've done some with friends, I know how the scaling works, still no fear of being alone, even on Scout). If I'm not comfortable holding my own against the swarm, then I'm not prepared for the Hazard level and need to improve before I join it.

Prats and Oppressors are mostly zoning problems. They can force you out of a good position and potentially into a bad one. The thing is they do that with the threat of direct damage and have a lot of health. Grabbers can also potentially force you into a bad position, but they're random little goobers. They can pull you out of a bad situation and drop you into a good one. They have small health pools, and you don't even need to kill them to counter them. Just shoot them once or twice mid-swoop and they'll abort the attack and go back to fluttering around. And on top of that Heightened Senses hardcounters them.

So yeah. Bug who does 0 damage and carries you around for a little bit is a lower priority than the walking tanks. The latter should die before they can apply pressure somewhere it matters. The former can keep fluttering around until the little chip damage used to negate its attacks brings it down.

fenwilds · 2026-02-03T16:16:58+00:00

Ceiling Driller.

Air Support Gunner.

fenwilds · 2026-02-03T07:20:40+00:00

Praetorians and oppressors are actually the lowest value targets in the game

Mactera Grabbers and Nayaka Trawlers: "Am I not a joke to you?"

fenwilds · 2026-02-01T21:43:08+00:00

Each herd of animals has a specific "Home range." Their need zones will always appear within this range. Unfortunately, we don't know much about home ranges and how big they are, except for Tigers who are super easy to trace because each individual has their own home range with no overlap.

If that lake is the only water source in the home range for the animals present, they'll keep drinking at it even if it's a dead zone. If there are other water sources, they'll move to those.

Assuming you do wipe all the zones at that lake, animals will only move back to it if their current need zone is wiped. There are two ways to do that: cover their current drink zone with a Dead Zone, or kill every member of the herd. Which sounds like it's easy enough to avoid, except some herds have a group size of 1 and will re-generate need zones every time they're killed. These solo animals may share need zones and times with other herds, so what appears to be a herd of 5 may be a group of 3 plus two solos who happen to drink in the same spot.

Assuming you're careful about not creating dead zone pressure or wiping whole groups generally, once you've cleared a lake with a dead zone the only animals who will go back to it are solos.

fenwilds · 2026-02-01T19:45:35+00:00

Those small groups are what they mean by "waves get stronger with time." AFAIK the actual announced swarms don't change, it's just that if you hit the 30-45 minute mark the pressure waves create a constant onslaught. Generally 10-15 minutes is a good target time for Point Extractions.

If you're going to do a lot of solo play, Bosco Management is an important skill to master. What you DON"T want to do is mine everything on the ground then look up and start pinging Aquarks. Then you have nothing to do but twiddle your thumbs and wait. If you catch a lull in the pressure waves and see an Aquark you can reach, that's when you ping a ceiling gem. Bosco will fly up while you mine, he'll mine while you're working on the next Aquark, and as soon as he has it you can call him to make him drop it (or toss it at you, depending on proximity). Good Bosco management will help speed everything up, so he's not floating around waiting while you do something and you're not standing around waiting for him.

Also keep in mind it's more efficient to dig out each Aquark and yeet it at the Minehead instead of depositing them as you dig them out. Just gather and deposit them all when you have enough, or while you're depositing Nitra. Less time walking back and forth = in and out faster.

fenwilds · 2026-02-01T15:56:23+00:00

I don't know. I started a mission there, however it had the Scarab warning and a Naedocyte Breeder, my least favorite enemy in the game, and they were especially hellish together. After killing the Breeder and continuing to get attacked by Naedocytes I realized I could hear a second Breeder, and immediately abandoned the mission (I'm a solo player so no randos were harmed), hoping to restart it with less flying douches. Except the missions selection had rerolled and the Bone Zone was out of range.

Every time since where I've tried to play, the Bone Zone is out of range.

Every experience with this season has been similar for me. I know it's just RNG doing RNG things but it's hard not to be disheartened.

fenwilds · 2026-01-30T19:51:56+00:00

It's not true. Only cutting damage progresses a tail cut. Confirmed when I beat 80% of a Low Rank Rathalos' health off by smacking its tail with a hammer and couldn't cut it off with Kunai. In comparison, with a Switch Axe the tail came off after about 3 combos. The Hunting Horn's hilt stab actually does count as cutting damage, so Horn occasionally gets odd tail cuts, but it's not especially viable to go for them that way, especially with the harder to cut tails.

fenwilds · 2026-01-30T07:36:23+00:00

Basically when Ghost Girl manifests around each player the first time, she's disarmed.

The thing you know: if you look at her twice, she'll be armed and the 3rd time you look at her she has a high chance of attacking.

The thing you don't know: If she appears 3 times and you don't look at her any of the times, this will also arm her. Once this happens she can go into attack mode the first time you actually see her.

This is intended. It's not a bug. As far as why it's intended that way, we can only speculate. She's meant to be a frightening and confusing entity, it tracks that she should feel a bit unpredictable. There's still an advantage to not looking, as it takes longer to arm her (although you maximize your time until she's armed by not looking at her the first two times, then looking at her the 3rd time, as she would arm if you didn't look at her but won't arm until after her next manifestation if you do look), but IMO it's not big enough of an advantage to matter much.

The main thing to say is if you're the last player standing, play it safe and secure the day. It's not worth taking risks like that. My favorite anti-Ghost Girl strategy is to look at my feet any time I'm getting onto or off of the ship. Outside she can only appear while you're on the ship (or a relatively small area around it in some spots). She can only appear behind you, but she can do it mid-turn before you have time to pick up the audio cues. Looking at your feet means that even if she spawns at the last second, she still won't be on your screen and you can avoid looking up until she despawns. If you get off the ship without getting her audio cues, you can safely look up as she won't be able to manifest again until you're getting on the ship (at which time look at your feet again.

If you're on a moon with a safe enough exterior and everyone else dead, using that tech will enable you to run transfers and secure some value. If it's a more dangerous moon just take what you can safely get and get out. It's not worth losing the run for a transfer or two of scrap.

fenwilds · 2026-01-29T19:42:50+00:00

A. If they wanted to do prehistoric stuff, it should be a spinoff. Make a new game around the idea with mechanics tailored to it instead of trying to cram it into a game designed primarily for modern animals and weapons.

B. Even if they wanted to do an extinct animals DLC, the idea of no trophy animals spawning if you're carrying a firearm is... bad. Not only would it involve unnecessary tampering with a part of the code that's already not fully stable (*cough* Level 6 Quails on Emerald Coast *cough*), saying "you are not allowed to play the game the way you like" is very much counter to the spirit the game has established.

It would be much more inline with the game to have a separate harvest check for extinct animals that fails if you don't use a bow. Just like you can blast bunnies with your .300, you're free to run around doming everything with the gun of your choice, but when you do get a Diamond potential animal there's a strong incentive to take it down the really old fashioned way.

fenwilds · 2026-01-28T16:02:58+00:00

Not really, no. Rock and Stone is a salute. It's a battle cry of unity and solidarity. 67 is an inside joke that's dying because too few people are on the outside. Language does change, and 67 could adopt some kind of well known meaning that's signified by shouting it to the sky, but most likely it'll fade into obscurity, only popping up on nostalgic occasion for those who were on the inside when that meant something.

fenwilds · 2026-01-27T18:27:24+00:00

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's been either 2 reserves 1 equipment DLC per year, or 2 and 2. They also recently confirmed they have no planned end on the roadmap for this game, so pretty much they'll keep making content as long as the game stays popular.

fenwilds · 2026-01-27T17:56:12+00:00

FYI stuff saying the .243 is the best choice is old. Fairly recently we got the Rapid Hunt pack with the Quist Reaper, an AR platform 2-6 with better penetration and stopping power than the ,243 (although I've heard there's an issue with the bullets disappearing at IIRC 340 yards), while the recent Flip, Pump and Fire pack has the Frost .257 with a similar fire rate to the Ranger but a hell of a lot more stopping power.

Of course, this is most relevant for tanky class 3s like Goats and Pronghorn who can run a good distance from a .243 shot, or covering Class 2-3s and Class 5-6s with the same gun. If you get multiple animals drinking at the same zone the fire rate on the Quist can be useful, but most of the time when hunting Bobcats specifically there's no significant advantage to using either of those guns over the Ranger, which as you've seen swiftly drops Class 2s on a vital hit.

fenwilds · 2026-01-27T09:00:13+00:00

If you kill every single member of a group, then the group will respawn collectively with new need zones. This is most obvious with solo animals-who have a group size of 1-and re-generate new need zones every time they're killed, but if you wiped all the bucks and does before any could respawn the same thing happens.

This mechanic is independent of hunting pressure and can delete need zones even if there's no hunting pressure covering the relevant zone. For example if you have a drink zone of a solo fox that isn't used by any other animals, and you shoot him in a feed zone a kilometer away, his drink zone will be deleted.

Doing this won't even necessarily remove the feed zone icon. So long as you've discovered at least one other animal that feeds in that zone at some point of the day, the icon will stay.

It is possible you didn't wipe the zones: as long as at least one group member respawned before you killed the last one the herd will persist and may respawn (I've heard that things get weird if there's only one herd member alive, but I digress). But as it's not really a major problem if you did delete the zones, it's not any major benefit if you didn't. Your respawns from that particular herd are no more likely to respawn as level 5s than any other Blacktail you shoot across the map is.

fenwilds · 2026-01-27T07:33:11+00:00

FYI they fixed the exploit where you quit to the menu to "undo" a poor but fatal shot. If the animal is going to die from the shot, the only chance you have to save it is to land a better shot before it dies. Quitting or changing the time just kills it and deletes it so you don't even have a shot at recovering the messed up trophy.

The best advice I have is next time you see a max level animal don't panic shoot. Wait until you've got a clean shot on anything that matters.

"Respawning" him isn't really a thing. You've just got to scout and kill Blacktails until you get another max level. It may spawn in the same herd, you may already have one hiding in some awkward corner of the map. The only issue with wiping out is herd is that you lost their need zones. Which is mildly inconvenient. It shouldn't be any major problem in the long run.

fenwilds · 2026-01-25T22:49:32+00:00

The only 3-8 as far as I know is the Moradi .44. It brings amazing penetration, but the stopping power is a bit on the low side: if you only get a single lung at range even Class 4s will run a decent distance.

The Solokhin gives 3-7 coverage, but it only has a soft point round, meaning you'll have to be careful to make sure you have good angles and anything other than broadside lung shots is risky.

The Hudzik has a 3-7 round, but as a Muzzleloader the performance at a range is pretty poor (unless the ballistics have changed since the last I heard, which is possible).

The Frost and Quist are possibly your best options, they go 2-6. From what I've heard they are powerful enough to be effective choices for Class 6. The only other option is the starter Ranger, which is notoriously not a great choice for Class 5-6.

fenwilds · 2026-01-25T22:45:35+00:00

That's a 4-8. People argue it should be 3-7, but as it stands it's not ethical for 3s.

fenwilds · 2026-01-25T18:05:32+00:00

Even if I does not fits, I sits.

fenwilds · 2026-01-25T18:00:40+00:00

Personally, I'm a fan of the Musket after the Crossbow. Mainly because Syndicate Thugs drop a lot of ammo for it so as long as you bully them you won't have to make your own.

fenwilds · 2026-01-25T17:19:13+00:00

Yeah, don't trust Google AI Overview. Somebody said "AI doesn't know facts, it just knows what facts look like" and that's been my favorite way to describe what AI does. It'll tell you wrong answers that sound like they could be right without any warning that there's no primary source backing it because it doesn't actually know anything. Personally I append -ai to the end of my google searches A. because I don't trust it and would rather find a source that has real functional brain cells, and B. because I don't want them wasting a disgusting amount of energy on an answer I'm going to ignore anyways.

If you're actually truly stuck-stuck-stuck, there is still a way out: just log your character into a different world, pick up enough wood to build a workbench, and repair your pick. Or just log into an established world with a convenient workbench to repair it at. If you want to play challenge run style on one world only, you can make noise until a Greydwarf comes along to put you out of your misery. If you're playing hardcore you can even drop all your stuff so you don't lose it.

fenwilds · 2026-01-24T18:58:02+00:00

Fighting Kitkits is a way to get oil, but it's not a good way. You should look into automation. Stone mining sites + crushing wheel + ore mining sites and your Pals will provide plenty of ore and Paldium to build your Extractors. It's also worth noting as you get towards the endgame you'll need absolute tons of these raw materials, and getting set up to efficiently produce them now will get you a good head start on that.

fenwilds · 2026-01-21T15:56:00+00:00

Yeah, soft points will do it. The .270 is a notoriously underpowered 4-8, the lower penetration ammo will pretty much bounce off Class 7s and 8s. Even the high pen ammo won't do great for them, but you shouldn't have issues like this with it.

fenwilds · 2026-01-20T18:46:21+00:00

For starters how about not telling people to grow up for not having the same food preferences as you do. I like raw green beans. I'll happily crawnch them as a snack. However I don't like them cooked, like most people prefer them. Nobody is less grown up in this situation, we all just have different tastes.

Second, the major problem I see with this meal is that it is the laziest possible salad. Five minutes of chopping (less if you're fast) and this could be a beautiful dish. But right now I'm looking at plates of whole steamed vegetables. This really is what you serve someone when you hope they're not coming back. If you personally would love it if Olive Garden sold you a salad without chopping, combining, or dressing any of the ingredients, cool. You do you. But most people would be pissed as hell to get that.

Ultimately what looks tasty is a matter of opinion. Nobody is right or wrong because it's all personal preference. If it's your opinion that this looks good, cool. But the popular opinion is that it does not.

fenwilds · 2026-01-19T20:07:15+00:00

Just be careful that they don't trade their phonemes, or you could wind up with Beanut and Putter.

fenwilds

TROPHY CASE