General Tips for Reducing Difficulty and Having Fun

[Kagetora]

I've gotten pretty far into the game despite my short playtime, and am having lots of fun with it. I noticed a lot of complaints in reviews and in here about difficulty, or about being underpowered, etc. Just thought I'd offer a casual few thoughts on the way I started playing to actually start making real progress.

1. MINE CONSTANTLY. Lots of players seem to run around just trying to kill things and level up that way. Mining is a core game mechanic to get upgrades. If you aren't spending every moment trying to find new gold and nitre nodes to mine, that's probably a big part of why you feel weak.
2. MOVE CONSTANTLY. Lots of players will also sit still to try to farm enemies with front-facing weapons, and they'll also complain that front-facing weapons are stupid. I disagree. The gunner is probably my favorite class because it lends itself to constant movement. Constantly circle around to dish out damage to enemies WHILE YOU'RE EN ROUTE to your next mineral node. I rarely get cornered as the gunner, because he can always clear out a path ahead of me. Speaking of which...
3. DON'T GET CORNERED. Especially by a boss/elite. Remember where you are in the map and make sure you're always headed in a direction that will allow you to circle back around the mass of enemies.
4. USE THE TERRAIN. If a large group is coming, you can mine your way through to put a barrier between yourself and them, and buy time to circle back around them.
5. LET THE ENEMIES HELP YOU MINE. As you're trying to get your mineral nodes, and the mob is closing up behind you, pull away and around to the front of the node. Let the crush of enemies push through it, and then collect what remains.
6. DON'T NECESSARILY SELECT THE "RAREST" UPGRADE. It's tempting to just automatically click the blues and purples, but sometimes your best move is to take a more common upgrade to make progress on overcharging your weapons.
7. DON'T MINE SUGAR IF YOU DON'T NEED IT. You're wasting time. Spend that time looking for nitre, and wait until you need the sugar. Just make a mental note of where it is and circle back to it.
8. DON'T BE AFRAID TO TAKE DAMAGE. Sometimes there's no way out that doesn't involve charging right through the enemy. There's a brief pause after taking damage before you can take it again, so use a thin point in the enemy mob to make a tactical, if painful retreat. You can always heal later.
9. DON'T RUSH TO KILL THE ELITE. As you really make progress, this will actually be a problem--they'll die too quickly. I run away from them not to save my life, to extend the amount of time I have to keep mining, killing, and collecting XP. Kite them around for as long as you can while attacking the underlings. This will help you upgrade faster. Likewise, I don't use the supply pod as a weapon against the elites--I just grab it as soon as I can, and maybe use it to kill a swarm.
10. EVERY WEAPON CAN BE USEFUL. All of them have pretty cool overclock upgrades that can complement another set of weapons. As you start getting new weapons in the levels, you need to take a moment to think about how these complementary relationships will work, and what you hope to see happen.
11. KILL THE LOOT BUGS. You won't be proud of it, but it's their fault for eating precious minerals. 'nuff said.

I think my favorite run so far was as the gunner with a fully upgraded minigun with overclocked fire, damage, and rate of fire, and also the four-sided gun with massively upgraded rate of fire and damage (also upgraded for fire damage), flame grenades, and I don't even remember the last weapon because that trifecta was wiping out everything within seconds.

[Tyyne]

This could be a pinned post imo. Thank you for your thoughts.

[Naumy]

As a general rule of thumb, try to always have a planned escape route. and understand how long it will take you to mine through the wall you're planning to escape through.

[gay moth aunt]

As an addon to #3, i'd say a sub-tip of this is keep an eye on the progress bar. Don't go down dead ends when a swarm's about to hit - you'll have way less routes of movement to get away from the deathclump.

[Metro]

Great post. Tips 6 and 10 are the most useful. In reading some threads here I've seen people excessively stack health and armor and then say the boss has an inordinate amount of health. Sometimes the best option is picking the white upgrade of 3% increase to crit chance versus a blue health or armor upgrade. There are also a ton of weapon synergies. As people play hopefully they will notice which weapons can be converted to lightning on upgrade and with multiple lightning weapons you can do some serious damage selecting lightning-specific upgrades, etc.

[Lanka]

If you are having early game difficulties to kill stuff, choose reload speed upgrades. Most weapons have enough damage to kill the small bugs but long reloads between bursts make the game frustrating early on since you don't have even near constant and reliable DPS. After it looks like stuff doesn't die in couple of hits start picking up damage/fire rate/critical chance upgrades (depends somewhat of the starting weapons - like M1000 benefits most from fire rate early on since it already pierces & does high damage)

Common upgrades are fine for weapons but +2% speed or +10 health are kinda pointless for your character so unless they are your only option, fine. Otherwise pick rare or higher speed/hp/pick up range. Pick up range makes you level up faster and safer because you don't need to stay as close to enemies or make risky loops to pick up the exp.

Once you get OC upgrades, paint jobs and common upgrades are better than investing to your character - leveling up weapons fast to get OCs is easily more powerful than waiting for the perfect upgrades.

Something I've learnt so far.

/ed: Oh, and if you don't see anything good in the shop it's better to save gold for next shop in case you can't mine enough and need a heal. Or reroll upgrades once if it's all garbage. And if you really have mined well, unlike many games like this, rerolling the shop refills all the slots so you can spend more.

[Casey]

Most important of all: pray the game doesn't crash right after you've killed the boss.

[Kagetora]

I think another thing I'd add onto this is that I think a lot of players are fighting against the very nature of the game, which is that you need to be able to make good decisions in a very short timeframe.

"If only we had an extra thirty seconds before extraction so we could get more stuff..." You don't. You don't have that time. That's why you need to be making good use of the time that IS available to you to collect resources, and you need to prioritize some resources before others depending on where you're at.

"It's so frustrating that the mobs keep coming with so little time between them..." Yeah. That's why you need to think ahead about what's soon to happen and make sure you're positioned to receive it.

"I just feel so slow moving around..." You are. You need to compensate for this by using the terrain and constant movement to manipulate the enemy into a position disadvantageous to them. You corral the bugs--don't let them corral you.

[Boiledteabag]

Problem being, one of the unlocks is killing bugs while standing still xD

[Kagetora]

Originally posted by HammyBread:

Problem being, one of the unlocks is killing bugs while standing still xD

Haha yeah. I just used the Engineer for that one though with fully upgraded electric pylons, turrets, drones, and a gun. Make myself a nice little fence right as a swarm masses and then just wait a few seconds until they're all gone.

[MasterZalm]

#9 is problematic because ♥♥♥♥ goes way to fast of a buildup if you DONT kill them quickly.

ALL the bugs on a stage start getting worse if you dont immediately kill the elite. They gain some really nasty buffs that continue to get worse.

1. More Health
2. More Damage Resistance
3. More Move Speed
4. More Damage Output
5. Larger Swarms

And they do so exponentially faster. To the point that is you arent able to kill the elite/boss fast enough, you wont ever be able to.

[Kagetora]

Originally posted by MasterZalm:

#9 is problematic because ♥♥♥♥ goes way to fast of a buildup if you DONT kill them quickly.

ALL the bugs on a stage start getting worse if you dont immediately kill the elite. They gain some really nasty buffs that continue to get worse.

1. More Health
2. More Damage Resistance
3. More Move Speed
4. More Damage Output
5. Larger Swarms

And they do so exponentially faster. To the point that is you arent able to kill the elite/boss fast enough, you wont ever be able to.

I don't really run into that issue at all anymore... by the end of the first stage, I've usually already overclocked at least one weapon, and have another one or two working with complementary stats. If anything, like I mentioned, I'm running away from the elite because it will die way too quickly if I fight it. I try to keep it alive for at least another couple minutes while I farm the small bugs and go after any mineral nodes I missed, but sometimes I can't even keep alive for more than 30 seconds because my rear-facing weapons or turrets are too powerful. Maybe I'll need to change my strategy once I get into the fourth and fifth difficulty levels, but yeah, normally I want the elite alive as long as possible since the only time constraint at that point is my own comfort level with my survivability.

[Lanka]

There are tricks like going to clear the supply pod when it lands but leave it alone until "you need it". Go explore the map, mine stuff, let elites spawn and kite them around for more exp, then return to supply drop and squish the elite, grab the upgrade (& usually 1~3 levels worth of exp just comes to you for killing stuff with the drop) and head out. Depending how far the extraction is you can mine stuff on way out or sit at the edge of extraction and kill stuff. Sometimes the explodey-bugs also "path find" you to inside of the pod and explode outside dealing no damage but giving exp from them - and in best case from a lot of bugs around them.

[siteliner]

I would highly suggest upgrading Health Regeneration. Besides the obvious healing it also 'conserves' Red Sugar by topping off minor heath deficits. Mining Sugar partially and when it gets dicey you still see that Sugar in the wall but most of it lies ready on the floor. This I do in regular DRG as well. Always one swing of when I come along Red Sugar.

[Stidsholt]

These are some excellent tips, so I've gone ahead and pinned your post.

[Simon soupshark]

feel like this could use a short addendum regarding using explorers to your advantage.
if you have any amount of move speed you can dip into there attack radius and out again before they explode, if you kite a bunch at once and set them off you can often clear HUGE groups