Difficulty Spike or Not Understanding Mechanics? Stuck on Iron Mines & Magma Furnace

[Jackson]

Hey folks,

I've hit a wall in the second set of maps and wanted to get a sanity check from others. Specifically, I'm stuck on both the Iron Mines and Magma Furnace. These levels feel like a serious spike in difficulty compared to everything before them — and honestly, they’re kind of annoying. I feel like I’m just getting pummeled without much feedback on what’s going wrong.

It also feels like there are just too many enemies. I’ve never felt like any level was easy in this game, but these two feel like hard stops. I’ve tried switching up my trap layouts several times, but nothing’s really working — progress is basically zero.

So I have to ask: are you actually supposed to grind before tackling these? Because if that’s the intended solution, I think that’s where my journey ends. Grinding in this game doesn't sound fun, and I'd rather not spend hours doing trial and error if I’m missing a core mechanic or strategy that makes this smoother.

Has anyone else hit this same roadblock? Would love to hear what worked for you — trap strategies, upgrades, unit types, or maybe just a mindset shift I’m missing.

Thanks in advance!

[The Mighty Salmon]

Spamming 4 mechanicals traps, decent aoe damage and damage over time. Well it feels like cheesing the game a bit, but it's not free win either.

[Jackson]

Originally posted by The Mighty Salmon:

Spamming 4 mechanicals traps, decent aoe damage and damage over time. Well it feels like cheesing the game a bit, but it's not free win either.

I'm into it, thank you. I was under the impression you could only have one out, but perhaps it's one per slot, or I"m just entirely mistaken. I am surprised how punishing the difficulty feels in general, but could be skill issue on my end.

[Dreaducate]

For whats its worth I'm wiping on Magma Reserves right now. My build was level 5 vial tosser, and alot of poison/elec traps.

[Dreaducate]

Just beat it after 4 runs. I interconnected every trap as a conduit and had an electric turret. Made some choke points with acid traps and had a swinging sledge on each of my combat points to pile them up a bit more.

Lobbed every grenade, including my mark damage multiplier, off CD. Ugly win

[Dreaducate]

Didn't use my melee once and kept moving the whole time. The blinking assassin guys if not killed quickly were super troublesome. Always stand on a trap

[Jackson]

Good job Dreaducate, sounds like it was tough for you too, I appreciate you sharing your experience. I only was able to scrape by by ignoring melee attacks and using 3 mechanical traps (all the same to share cooldown) and then a turret. I had to respec my Mutate a few times which felt painful due to the resource costs.

[geo981010]

This was the hardest part of the game for me by far, but right after that you get the second boss and he gives you the Peg Top trap which IMO is by far the best trap. One of them in a good hallway can hit everyone in a long string of mobs repeatedly (instead of only hitting the vanguard and doing nothing for the next 20+ seconds of mobs), and they get bumped around which further slows them down. They have a large trigger range too, so pretty much the only trap from then on you need.

[yyflame]

my strategy has been to set up zigzag mazes using the barricade traps and using a blunderbuss with piercing +3.

What this does is slowdown & funnel the enemies, forcing them to bunch up, so I can get the maximum amount of damage out of each shot. I add additional traps as necessary, but the main strategy is the zigzag. This has worked great for me and I win basically everything on the first attempt

[Dreaducate]

It really did get alot easier after Magma Reserve

[?_? HERMY]

If you want something that trivializes the entire game, spam craft the blunderbuss with more precision and mag size aiming for pierce. For your skill tree 5points first into phys damage% on right side then if you have more crit damage on body mutation. Now you have a semi auto shotgun that nearly one-shots all mobs. Craft one with crit chance and now you can suddenly kill all the bosses under 2-3mins. I dont know why the blunderbluss deals like 5-10x more dmg than any other weapon in the game(at least before boss3) but it does.

I also found that early on burning ground is really good against all enemies even those that are resistant to it since its kinda hard to beat 100dps so building choke holds based around that is very strong.