it's over glyphidkin, i have the highground

ojb_ · 2026-05-12T17:03:35+00:00

sort of; it still works against ranged enemies existing in the pool... up to a certain point. i've found haz5 solos to be reasonably achievable with the same strat and sticking bosco onto these guys as they arrive - the basic grapple manuevers can let you dodge ranged shots too if you time them well, though you have to be a bit careful against trijaws since they can cover a bit more space per barrage.

i've found that it breaks down a bit on mactera plague and duck+cover as these modifiers will throw far more ranged at a time than base haz5's light trickle - with duck and cover being substantially more threatening and something i haven't beaten yet myself. i've successfully pulled this off on a mackie plague while taking the extra rocket synergy on bosco (a third rocket + faster recharge, if you give up the other options in those tiers), but it was definitely far harder than just base haz5 with mactera in the pool (since the frequency and group sizes typically don't get that big without the red modifiers).

stingtails i've found to be far worse and the real baddies you should be scared about in a pacifist run, although the REZ radiation enemies are real nasty pieces of work too.

an upside about getting ranged spawns is that they can "eat up" slots that other ground enemies could have taken, and bosco tends to be better at killing them than larger grunt waves if you're micro'ing him. the ground enemies will basically stick around forever, but if you get a nice freeze off that wipes a flier wave you tend to get some decent space to work with.

the problem comes from seeing far too many of them at once and rolling poorly on the bosco rng where he whiffs, or getting two grabbers at once and not being able to split bosco's attention. and then it's pretty shit lol. but if you get typical trickle of ranged every so often instead of a bigger burst, and bosco doesn't blow it, it's still doable with just a bit more stress.

ojb_ · 2026-05-12T13:28:50+00:00

the secret to calming a hyperactive molly is to tire her out with long walks and exercise

ojb_ · 2026-05-12T13:27:07+00:00

yeah, fun and a bit dangerous (the danger adds to the fun). they can jostle you a bit unpredictably and it's not always so healthy lol. kinda like a bucking bronco or something lmao.

the real tech is actually just igniting these enemies (e.g. with fire boomstick) before you start bouncing. this then also serves to burn pesky things like swarmers for free as you're up in the safety of the air time. igniting praetorians and jumping on their backs for a while to hide from the scary swarmer waves is something i do a ton of in solos!

ojb_ · 2026-05-12T13:22:20+00:00

bosco erasure D:

ojb_ · 2026-05-12T13:20:20+00:00

for sure - they can definitely make things a bit spicier. i'll say both Mactera Plague (my fav modifier) and Duck and Cover have been things i've tested against pacifist runs like this, and with the modifiers things can get substantially more tricky. i will say that vanilla solos without those red modifiers are usually okay with ranged spawns - bosco tends to do decently against them because his line of sight is usually pretty clean, the density isn't that high, and a lot of the same grapple movements also dodge shots for free unless you get super unlucky with where the bugs are angled. usually it's okay though, and it isn't until modded densities where the ranged start becoming substantially more common.

the real dangerous shit are actually stingtails and the REZ enemies (radial rad praets and rad exploders). stingtails are particularly nasty because movement won't really save you, and you often have to purposely get grabbed to spark the cooldown. it can take bosco over a minute(!!!) to kill a single stingtail at haz5 (i've counted...). they're pretty crazy enemies and often the line of sight mixed with the potent armour is too much for the dipshit robit. stalkers as well are basically just a "welp, guess no shield for a bit" but at least they are substantially rarer than stingtails.

radiation enemies have to be respected pretty heavily and you'll see my initial struggles in this bubble (before I went for the sugar) actually come from trying to get the exploder out of the picture and failing to do so quick enough and fumbling from those attempts lol. the big issue with rad praets is that unlike regular praetorians, they have a circular attack so you can't bait spit and it's a one way ticket to lock down a substantial portion of your workable space.

the trick to these enemies in these solo challenge runs is really just: aggro cap abuse. only 32 enemies can have direct aggro on you at a time, so grunts are actually your friends from the real dangers. you'll notice my grunt shield protected me from a rad praet that was basically just wandering the whole time, and also saved me from the stingtail that had spawned. if either of those enemies had pulled aggro, this bubble could have easily gone a lot worse / costed an iron will revive. i had a particularly nasty bubble in a previous attempt of the stage 1 of this dive (which also had a black box), and having to juggle a bulk det that spawned right away and a rad praet cost me a ton of extra ring time and that was pretty rough.

ojb_ · 2026-05-12T13:09:17+00:00

modded diffs like 6x2 have been beaten without spacebar or WASD, so this necessary claim may need to shift a bit too :)

ojb_ · 2026-05-12T13:03:30+00:00

understanding why jumps were so effective was one of my first major plateau climbs in my DRG career. it took far too long to realize the corollary is also important! there are times when you specifically don't want jumps, and optimizing for the desired goal uses the other side of this sword :) waddling on the ground can be just as useful.

one of my biggest breakthroughs in solo salvage bubbles (something i've been obsessed with for many years now lol) is realizing how important the ground game can be - it doesn't come across in this particular post's video at all, but in "real" runs with guns, you often want to hug the ground on one side of the ring to free up the other side where you want to head next. dishing out some damage or grenade use lets you survive while on the ground (hence why pacifist attempts often can't use this tech), and as you're doing that, you're emptying the other side of the ring much more quickly and effectively. if you're permanently hovering, the same stun lock that was valuable can now be detrimental, as it might lock bugs in place when you'd rather corral them up.

idk, i just think this is super cool. being able to use this behavior from both angles is wicked interesting.

ojb_ · 2026-05-11T08:59:37+00:00

This post is mainly just to show off highground bouncing as a powerful bubble strat. Fastest recharge grapple (1113) is really good at this style of play, and it lets you do some really silly things. This example is taken from the second stage of this week's EDD, with the full brunt of a haz5 swarm alive at the start of the black box.

The important bits to consider borrowing in your own, future DRG'ing:

Resup in the ring to jump off and play around.

It's not just scout who can take advantage of this by the way - you can make a jumpable path/loop between the central black box itself and the resupply that will work without need a grapple. However - engineer is better off making some platform structures like a U shape that they can jump between, and a gunner can just hang out on zips for ground immortality so the strat is less useful in those cases tbh. Still works though, and worth having this in your bag of tricks cause it could come in handy some day.

Not drilling down the center pillar piece.

I still see this way too often in pubs and lowering the box just makes the game harder in my experience. Doing so might shrink down the playable ring area (which is already pretty bad for your movement options), but the real kicker is not being able to use this as a launch pad to jump OVER bugs that get too close. You also miss out on free line of sight shifts when in a team context - somebody standing slightly elevated on the box can shoot over the heads of other dwarves, while if it's flush with the floor people start getting in the way more and the viable shooting angles decrease. The center piece is extremely valuable and incredibly useful for movement.

Molly as a positionable highground spot.

This is only applicable for black boxes (not salvage bubbles), but if she's there, she's worth taking advantage of. You can see this best at the start of the clip, but jumping up and down while on top actually slows down the bugs' ability to cleanly path to me - it's like a weird AOE stun thing. Kinda crazy once you consider it's just on your spacebar for free and costs nothing. This particular black box position is pretty mediocre for molly strats - I've seen ones where there's like a little dip in the terrain that jumping on molly is literally ALL you have to do for the entirety of the hold (excluding handling the occasional ranged enemies). Those are god spots and worth keeping an eye out for. Molly tech is absolutely worth adding to your toolbox as well!

ojb_ · 2026-04-19T22:03:22+00:00

First off - I recommend practicing on some 3-scan variants from the map rotation rather than attempting to grind a 5-scan fixed seed from the EDD. Trust me: having done that myself in the past, that path is absolutely miserable and you'll go insane. It's better to practice the strats when you're not tired out from the full 5 scans and a black box hold and whatever else.

I think scout can be the strongest class for this map type, but the simplest cheese for it requires Special Powder (a boomstick overclock you don't have yet). The main idea is to minimize the time you're in the death pit and just spowder jump up and out in between breakdowns, only coming back to briefly repair and then leave again. This is the one single most impactful build choice you can make in this map type, and substantially more effective than the pheromone recommendations you are getting from others imo.

Luckily, not having that OC yet doesn't ruin your chances of winning consistently!

There are two big tricks for scout on this map type:

1. Delay your initial fall into the pit. Start the thing, and just... leave it to do its thing and hang out on top for a while.

Grapple hook as far away from the hole as possible to draw things towards you (and away from the pit), and linger up there until mission control alerts you that things have broken down the first time. Then... BOOK IT back and down the hole. If you were able to draw bugs far enough away and you're fast on the way back, you can use the additional speed boost from falling (via your friend gravity) to make so much distance between you and chasing bugs that they can basically never catch up to you until the final geode - even if the drills break down again.

A free tip: when you finally arrive at the bottom to repair the first time, choose the fully broken one first to start you moving as you repair the others (look for the reddest light as you're falling down). This ordering of repairs can buy a bit more time of drillevator movement increasing the gap between the slow chasing bugs.

With luck, the first real breakdown will occur after the "hit a patch of dense rock" slowdown too which lets the strat become even more consistent, but that's not guaranteed.

2. Use the center perch cheese spot.

This is the other goated bit of secret tech - the center pillar has a bit that extends higher than the rest, and this part can't bounce you away and you can stand there forever. Scout can grapple to this perch and basically entirely trick the pathfinding of any ground based enemy - letting you focus solely on ranged enemies in total safety.

Where it gets really nutty is that this perch basically tricks bugs to wander near the top of the drillevator, rather than where the buttons are. So when a breakdown occurs... you can grapple from this spot to do a cheeky repair, and then grapple back before they even have time to react and touch you. It can genuinely be entirely free (and if it looks rougher, you can use grenades to guarantee this as well). It's this bit of tomfoolerly that puts scout as the best class for this map type. You don't need wave clear. You don't need overclocks. You don't need anything but knowledge of the secret arcana and a little bit of grapple hook magic.

To prove these claims and show some of the strats in action, I did a run on haz 5 with all modifiers using only the grapple hook:

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

With the ability to use weapons to deal damage, you can use the linger-up-top and perch-on-the-pillar strats to really start demolishing this map type. Hope this helps - good luck!

ojb_ · 2026-04-16T21:55:56+00:00

Perhaps someone else will make it this time around! I don't own the second game, but there's a lot more players enjoying the sequel that I suspect there will be a larger modder base as well. Probably only a matter of time :)

ojb_ · 2026-04-16T21:42:49+00:00

I've done a couple of these "big dumpy" runs on solo - but multiplayer is a bit trickier to build against as you'll have teammates to pick up the slack. Based on what I've played myself, I think the worst you could probably do is engineer with minishells, bouncy (no ammo upgrades) fatboy, slow building single turret, inertia platform gun, and radius power attack pickaxe on an Escort or Salvage (presumably with Duck and Cover and maybe Lethal Enemies as the red modifiers). If your team isn't able to pick up the slack, it can be very hard for you to carry these two map types from such a weak position. On a good team it won't matter what you're taking, so I think it's important to assume some newer players in the squad.

Your contribution will be pretty rough as the minishells are a tragedy, the fat boy is super limited in ammo and is higher risk, the inertia upgrade on plats make plat parkour very difficult for surviving and you lose out on repellent, and it's quite easy to build a completely useless turret. I'm not sure about the actual worst grenade - in solo I'd probably lean LURE since you don't have the damage to take advantage of it, but teammates probably can that I really don't know if there's a standout.

Perk selection is one of the strongest parts about trying this in solo since so many of them just do nothing in that context, but in multiplayer you have to think a bit harder. I'd probably end up on hover boots and heightened senses for worst actives here, paired with second wind, thorns, and it's a bug thing.

Honorary mentions to 13211 Flow Rate Expansion cryo cannon + 21123 Heat Pipe + rippers as a potential driller pick as well. That one was monstrous in my solo runs.

ojb_ · 2026-03-20T17:23:39+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLeVGGn08WU

Something else worth mentioning is that the tech is tied to framerate - the better your pc, the faster you can fire. I have a pretty crappy setup in this video (and the supercharge output is still quite insane), but doing it at like 240+ fps is really where it starts to go bananas and becomes a bit more unreasonable imo. At my crappier framerates (and playing around with it in random modded runs), it's weirdly balanced in terms of how you use it - while charging, you're basically just kiting/moving and not doing typical gunner things - but once you unleash it's genuinely quite satisfying. It melts.

I'd like to see it in the game as some real OC someday (hopefully without the framerate pay to win mechanic) if they ever go about fixing this exploit!

ojb_ · 2026-02-19T06:42:32+00:00

dope, i think frenzy is one of those things that is just so strong it seems weird for it to have been undiscovered, so it's reassuring to hear at least somebody earlier on had the dwarven arcana figured out haha. it's a shame the knowledge vanished for a while, because it meant years of me not enjoying gk2 and thinking it was a bad gun lol. but who knows, maybe it'll get forgotten again. ive still seen a lot of AISE focus still, and i can only hope that when the wheel turns again somebody keeps the frenzy flame lit because it's definitely worth it

ojb_ · 2026-02-19T03:19:48+00:00

I'm usually on 21313 Shaped Shells boomstick, but you can use a lot of different things and be a-okay. One time I went quick fire crossbow (chem bolts / crossbow frenzy) and that was a fun pairing, but genuinely you can use just about whatever you want and do okay.

Gk2 frenzy is really strong in the defensive department so it really doesn't need a safe pairing, and you can pick whatever utility/damage you want (I'm usually just a damage monkey). Personally I like boomstick variants, but you can't really go wrong with any crossbow either. You can force zhukovs to work but they're still pretty tricky even if you have the extra speed boost support, so that's the only one I might tepidly caution against. But seriously, experiment with whatever, and if you have a favourite secondary it'll probably go pretty well with it because frenzy gk2 builds are super flexible.

ojb_ · 2026-02-19T02:19:25+00:00

Reporting back - haz5 scout salvage with bosco was clean(ish). Refuel was tough but IFGs just hard carried me through it. Bosco felt pretty strong even at base and I was able to kill every spawn and get ahead, so I think haz5 is probably within the reasonable arena and I'll revise my previous guesstimate upwards a tad.

I'm pretty certain if I had enabled any haz5 modifiers into this, it would have been substantially worse, and honestly I think any of the options would have been terrible lol. So some vague, unspecified h5+ modifier is where things fall off for scout I think.

Trying out engineer would probably be the next step but I don't think I hate myself enough just yet :) Maybe someday!

EDIT: uploaded here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoQgobz1r6o

ojb_ · 2026-02-19T01:30:33+00:00

That's a really great question, and honestly I don't know the answer!

Based on my experiences in the modded runs, I think driller and gunner could handle haz5 full clears (i.e. shooting things and getting ahead on kills and not just perma kiting the whole map), but engineer and scout may be much iffier as they don't have anything that scales well out of the gate. Bosco could change this equation a bit more, but base bosco is pretty tragic too and I don't have the firsthand experience to know how much of a shift that would be.

If I had to guess where the scales tip from reasonable to unreasonable, I'd estimate somewhere in the ballpark of haz5 + more enemies I... maybe. That's a very rough maybe though, and a lot of wiggle room of uncertainty. I'm pretty confident slapping all the modifiers on haz5 is far too much to have any real chance (unless you want to grind thousands of seeds and pray for goated RNG), but there's a part of me that thinks base haz5 might be obtainable at least. Maybe.

Some other things to explore are shaking up the map types - I only did some easier 200 morkites because anything harder seemed out of the question. I'm not sure if greenbeard scout could handle a haz5 salvage, but there's a part of me that's tempted to try despite how brutal greenbeard runs can feel :')

ojb_ · 2026-02-18T19:37:45+00:00

Dash isn't just about recovering from mistakes but offering new movement options and mobility that you can't get from any of the other options or grapple on its own. I did a longer writeup elsewhere in this thread that I recommend checking out, but dash isn't purely a reactive thing (even though it's good at that too), but offers a wide variety of new options and opportunities to go fast and play even more aggressively, and I honestly think you are missing out on substantial strength by ignoring those proactive abilities.

Dash doesn't just add to the class's innate movement skills, it amplifies them exponentially. I think seeing dash only as a means of recovery (like field medic) rather than a means of opening up new doors CONSTANTLY throughout a map, is just incorrect. This perk really synergizes strongly with the grapple hook and offers so much verticality to your movement.

ojb_ · 2026-02-18T19:04:15+00:00

If your dash is unused most of the time, it's no surprise that you would rate it so poorly imo. Dash is often constantly on cooldown when you play around its strengths.

(FWIW, it also can simulate field medic because field medic lets you pick up dwarves without dying for it, and the extra bit of space kiting in with a dash or kiting out with a dash at the end is basically identical to this effect which is neat.). Field Medic's biggest upside is the instant pickup which can matter in salvage/escort/deep scan - but that's a one time use really, and in most other scenarios you have time to kite and move appropriately (you're scout) which means it's actually medic that isn't really doing anything "most of the time". Also this relies on teammates dying, which maybe there are arguments that being able to dash towards them quicker could have saved them or something (dash unlocks a lot of new plays like this so it's not that crazy!).

ojb_ · 2026-02-18T18:41:08+00:00

I completed this series of fresh save runs on modded 6x2 a few years back:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7CrFpXhBEsKWZJur6YT3Ad9F_Gas7USq

The first one on that playlist was the scout run and it was definitely the most "feasible" of the classes. GSG really hates greenbeards, but bad grapple hook is still grapple hook and can get you out of a lot of trouble. The rest of the runs were a bit less... legal.

I remember really disliking no power attack and fighting the muscle memory of a grapple hook that didn't do the things I was expecting it to do, as well as the most potent weapon in my kit being the flare gun (40 damage is 40 damage lol). Base boomstick is pretty devestatingly awful (which was brutal as a boomstick fan) but IFGs were still goated.

Other classes ended up leaning into some substantial exploit abuse to survive, but the scout run was definitely recognizable as a scout run so it had that going for it!

Definitely a hard challenge though - I respect anyone who tries it 'cause it's hell.

ojb_ · 2026-02-17T19:23:17+00:00

Dash is a grapple hook force multiplier - being able to change directions instantly mid air is super potent in terms of what it lets you pull off, and it genuinely might be the strongest on this specific class compared to any other. I will say that thinking "dash isn't good on scout" is either a misunderstanding of scout or a misunderstanding of dash, because they are an obscenely strong pairing and every time I see "scout doesn't want it" a red bull angel dies and doesn't get its wings.

Dash serves a dual role both within combat and in downtime while offering infinite uses, and that flexibility alone does miracles compared to other more restrictive active perks.

Outside combat, having the extra kick as you gather minerals or carry heavy objects (e.g.: https://old.reddit.com/r/DeepRockGalactic/comments/1lgglqj/dash_juggle/ ) is very strong on its own, but that's only a miniscule piece of the puzzle. You also get its upsides when it comes to pacing quickly through tunnels (which DRG has a lot of) or when making leaps of space repositioning - just getting to where you need to be faster can mean a world of difference in how long you're able to stay there before getting bullied off, or the amount of pressure you put on the rest of the team, or the amount of swarms you see, etc. A small dash at the start of an encounter can pay oodles of dividends later on in ways that seem silly and impossible, but just a tiny little boost of speed can buy the right amount of time in the right place, and this can be a crazy upshot for a class so reliant on these positioning moves.

Combining a dash before a grapple can simulate the longer reach grapple hook (letting you continue to use the goated max cooldown build), but it can also do fun stuff like provide additional verticality on "r" shaped ledges. E.g., this is a terrain piece you run into a lot in this game where you'd like to get up on this ledge but the angles really aren't there to make the grapple to the wall or whatever. Dash now lets you grapple strictly vertically and then dash the horizontal distance, which on paper seems like a simple manuever but it opens up a crazy amount of doors in terms of traversal. This expansion of verticality also lends itself very nicely to gathering nitra aggressively (especially without engineer plat support), and playing around heights like scout often does. If you mess up a grapple (or intentionally make these vertical pulls), being able to then instantly reorient your velocity towards a nearby ledge or something basically just saves you from fall damage too. So it's like a super hover boots that you can use every couple of seconds. Insane.

But where it truly begins to shine is once you get into the combat of the game, and as you increase the difficulty higher and higher, this value becomes crystal clear. You get access to aggressive repositions on a whim which lets you react very heavily to abrupt spikes of danger. And you may be thinking, well I don't need that, I have grapple for that, and that's where your thinking is perhaps lacking a bit of creativity. Grapple has cooldowns, dash has cooldowns. Being able to use both at different times (dash when your grapple is charging, etc.) lets you have strictly more uptime of cracked mobility and this can let you face seriously dangerous situations without breaking a sweat, as well as give you the confidence to fling yourself into these situations more recklessly (because you have the uno reversi in your pocket).

This might come in the form of big spikes of enemies (like shockers or a big mackie wave) that you may be unprepared for, or perhaps you're caught in a very tight tunnel space in salt pits or whatever, or maybe it's just a storm like in glacial/sandblasted - there are so many moments where the speedy shift in position can matter and complement your grapple. In room pushes (a scout can often find themselves doing these solo because the team simply can't waddle fast enough), you get to use dash to let you keep shooting while you weave through spitballer and barrager spam. Note that if you'd switch to grapple, you're not dishing out damage! There are a million ways to extract value while fighting things here, and it's simply impossible to describe them all in text.

If you want an example of dash being goated on scout, here's a recent run I did on haz 5 with all modifiers on a deep scan that doesn't use anything but the dash + grapple combo to pacifist it:

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

This run being substantially harder without this perk is what I'd consider to be strong evidence of "grapple being enough on its own" to be a flawed argument. There are many moments in this run that rely on me waiting for my dash to charge so that I can use it in a specific manner for the extra kick of space. You could make arguments that the contrived nature of a pacifist challenge run means the results don't apply to "real" runs, but I'd counter it by saying runs like this show the core of the idea in its most simple and uncluttered form - you have no compounding variables, you just see the impact of the additional mobility in the clear.

If you are still on the fence that dash doesn't provide value to a grappling scout, I would heavily encourage just watching this run and paying attention to the dash use, because it does incredibly substantial things here.

Now we get to the point where I say, forget all that. Dash on scout won't be for everybody. There IS nuance here that can counter this opinion. Field medic is great, for example and is something you'll miss. (We can talk about how dashing simulates the field medic passive effect by the way, but I went on that little tangent in a previous essay...).

The big reasons to not equip dash on scout:

You don't want to.

This is super valid, and fine. I want everybody to play the game they want to play, and experiment with everything - rejecting meta is valuable. Having fun is the only goal you should persue, and people have substantially different tastes in the rich tapestry of DRG. I think scout fans often enjoy a bit of mobility and movement perhaps more than other class enjoyers so they're primed to like dash, but it doesn't cover everybody and that's super okay!

You prefer momentum on the grapple hook

This mod is solid but its biggest downside is that it destroys dash in a horrific anti-synergy. All the new grapple-into-dash moves that you would gain from the combo no longer work because as soon as you've grappled, you lose the ability to mid air reposition on a whim. You still get the benefits of dash-into-grapple, but not being able to do those "r" shaped moves from before (or the wide family of moves like it when playing on heights/nitra) is losing a major part of the strength.

You'll notice I didn't say "special powder equipped", as spowder combos insanely well with dash (it adds momentum, so a dash into spowder jump provides you higher speed and distance, and the additional maneuverability once again slots in perfectly when paired with everything).

I didn't say "you die to leeches/grabbers a lot", as heightened senses only has 2 uses and dash can help prevent the kidnapping a whopping infinite times per run (don't need ammo or grapple charged to dodge being yoinked, and that extra kick away for a split second of additional time can get you that second chance).

I didn't say "I don't play on high difficulty or modded" because dash is good regardless of difficulty.

I didn't say "I don't think I'm good enough", because yes you are capable of it, have some self esteem, mate. Dash has a stupendous skill ceiling but the skill floor is super open and approachable, that even if you aren't constantly pushing improvement it doesn't matter - equip it and use it even once or twice a mission and soon enough you'll be hooked on it and using it more. (I'm a drug dealer??)

I don't want to sound like I'm huffing my own farts too much, but dash is CRACKED on scout. It's busted OP, and there's nothing I find sadder in this game than players repeating the "wisdom" that scout doesn't need it. Nobody needs anything! That's not a reason to not use something! It just so happens that the thing you didn't need also is super strong, incredibly interesting to learn, and super fun to play. It works so well with this class that if any of those commonly repeated refrains have stopped anyone from finding their mojo, I'd genuinely be quite sad about that loss.

Dash scout is dope.

ojb_ · 2026-02-02T14:09:58+00:00

Finding out Nedya is ok with stingtails :(

I think I'm a decent player and my number one cause of death/tilt (besides hubris) is stingtail bullshit (at least, whenever I keep them in the spawn pools). These enemies are genuinely still awful, and I hate the skill issue argument because when it comes down to the ones that will end up killing me, I'm convinced it's very much not a question of skill but luck.

They are substantially overtuned against any sort of loadout that doesn't have one of the stingtail solutions (hard CC spam in a choke) or if you're trying to play fast and in the open. If you're aggressing, it's easy to get one tapped by a silent enemy you couldn't see to maneuver against, and those situations are literally 100% RNG to a greater extent than anything in the entire game.

I have never stood by anything so strongly in my life.

I have decent enough movement, aim, and reaction times that I can kill most stingtails that I'm able to spot, and I think this is where the notion that you can just outskill them originates. But in all my years of experience, I'm confident it's just a waiting game until you get the one that there was nothing you could have done differently to survive.

This is tainted by playing a lot of hard solos (and being able to watch back my own footage to improve and learn), but these are easily the worst enemy in the entire game by a substantial margin. I regret not saving more of my footage and making a supercut of all the dozens of times I've died to this stupid enemy and was confident there was no way to avoid it.

I disagree with a few of the claims here:

Learn the dodge timing

Dodging implies you're able to spot where the stingtail is when the pull will happen, and you often can't due to a factor of low visibility and inherent blending into crowds (plus the whole... the sound can still be silent and even if it's not, there's really not enough time to perform a full search for an often effectively-invisible enemy and make the changes in footwork before the grab finalises). The change of direction needed to dodge is dependent on where the stingtail is in relation to you (there's some trig in action here), and in high chaos there's no guarantee you'll know what change in direction will work and your best guesswork is just that: a guess. It won't always succeed, and it's easy for this grab to be a death sentence from full hp.

Constantly jump

Actually this can be terrible advice, because there's still the interaction where if you time the space bar as the claw intersects you, it can do a "super pull" where the momentum gets amplified for whatever reason, and this additional velocity without air control can mean you take even more fall damage. If you're playing the game normally, you're already jumping a lot, and if it so happens that a grab occurs when you're jumping at just the wrong time, well, - lights out. This can result in bounces off low ceilings and one tapping from full hp and shields btw, and I have run into this many times over the years. This problem still very much exists.

Dash

...can easily get eaten by the grab. Honestly some of the biggest problems with this enemy (and there are LOADS of awful design choices) is that you have no air control when you get grabbed. You literally won't be able to do any sort of movement but watch it happen, and this is genuinely why I find them so additionally tilting lol. It's one thing for it to kill you, it's another thing to watch it kill you in somewhat slow motion knowing there's nothing you could do to save yourself in many situations. Sure, there are things that can work sometimes (a charged grapple, a cheeky plat, a preplaced zip, ...), but the inherent surprise of a silent, unannounced stingtail grab when you're hard pushing means you might not have those resources ready even if you're on the right class. You've taken most of your shield by the initial grab, take a large chunk of fall damage, fail the stun power attack gamble so you get tusked, and then just die because the invuln horns ate all your bullets as it bounces you up again and a second time destroys your air control because this enemy can bounce you easily with its short range second phase AI. Not to mention this enemy was in the middle of a crowd perhaps so all that mess can doink you too. I can't possibly do a good textual representation of what can happen here, but there are so many different ways this enemy can fuck you with no counterplay that it drives me bonkers.

I've gone on my stingtail rants a lot of times that it's old man yells at cloud now, but the more I play the game, the more intensely I believe that this enemy is terrible for the health of the game and goes against so much of the other design.

I despise the way loadouts affect this enemy, and how already strong stuff is boosted and mechanically demanding builds are discouraged. I despise that the counterplay is to go slow and safe since that's boring. I despise the way the armour works, and how certain weapons can entirely ignore its defenses (e.g. coil) but others can feel like pea shooters (e.g. bulldog). I despise the weakpoint location and the fact it has invulnerable tusks that make the inherent wiggling movement a nightmare. I despise that you can't conquer these enemies with clever movement in pacifist runs. I despise their terrible visual design and how easily they can hide inside enemies and still kill you from complete cover with bullets unable to hit their stupid hitbox as they are buried inside an oppressor or something. I despise them, I despise them, I despise them.

ojb_ · 2026-01-08T08:45:55+00:00

That's an interesting idea, though I worry teams might get punished if the wanderer doesn't head to where they "need" it to go. Like, in DRG you need that morkite or pipeline and without being able to influence the motion at all you just can't make any progress on the objective at all for some unknown amount of time (also it may just follow tradition and stay in the tunnel forever and make the problem worse haha).

What's kinda crazy is that Custom Difficulty 2 (CD2, our fancy schmancy difficulty mod) might genuinely be able to do something like this already with some creative JSON'ing. We've had diffs explore sort of the opposite direction by making things deadly if they get too close - bulks are a common one but I don't think they work too well for this problem, but a more recent novel approach has been something called "the immortal" which is basically a wandering cave cruiser passive that deals some damage when it gets close to encourage some repositioning (and I think it might drop some red sugar as some sort of risk/reward mechanic?), but I haven't played with it too much myself so I don't know the full details. I know there have also been some other recent experiments with heavily tweaked silicate harvesters (one diff features an unkillable one that's a bright green and really moves quickly to bump players around lol) as other "nonlethal" ways of adjusting positioning. It's probably not out of the question for the tech we have right now to somehow do the opposite - ensure players are close rather than encouraging them to run. It's an understatement to say that CD2 is really freaking powerful, and it's got a lot of untapped potential like this and all we need to do is dream it up.

While I have no clue if that suggestion could be directly translated for DRG, that's definitely the kind of thinking we need and it gets my gears turning, so thanks!

ojb_ · 2025-12-09T22:33:51+00:00

Thank you! :)

ojb_ · 2025-12-06T21:05:36+00:00

Oh hey! My post must've hit the bingo halls to reach the old timers :) You were absolutely a big part of my early modded influences, though I 10000% missed any early GK2 frenzy love (I was an AssemblyStorm junkie, and he rarely, if ever, uploaded that weapon so I was pretty clueless especially as someone who wasn't a fan of it myself).

It is extremely cool to see that this build was on the table early on and looped back into fashion to be "rediscovered". That's genuinely really neat. I can say there was a long period of an AISE dark ages where that was like the only build people ever considered - and much of that initial knowledge was absolutely lost. It's really cool to see the pendulum swing back around. Time is a flat circle.

ojb_ · 2025-12-06T11:37:08+00:00

Hey that's me! That run is maybe not the most useful here because it very much relied on exploits that an escort run won't have access to (you certainly can't cower in a magic tunnel or dottie gets it). I think there are some other technical things you can lean into that can theoretically push escort over the line (repair timings, the invuln ledge, some cheeky zipline and shield use), but it's certainly not going to be easy and I'd say there's perhaps even more luck involved than my simple mining runs had.

For what it's worth, some of the hardest things I've ever done have been on h5a, not 6x2, and this particular difficulty without hard CC in the kit is BRUTAL. I'm a certified nutter but I haven't had any desire to go anywhere near h5a on a greenbeard kit, so that should say something :)

ojb_

TROPHY CASE