Im feeling like the game is too hard for me.

[THUGLIF3]

I'm probably just bad but I have experienced survival roguelikes like Vampire survivors, Death must die, Halls of Torment and managed beat them without too much trouble. DRG however I'm struggling already at 2nd difficulty and cannot get one run complete.
My weapons don't do enough damage to clear the screen, there are so many creeps I can barely see whats happening and find myself getting hit a lot while trying to go through the narrow gaps. Add terrain obstacles/dangers to that and I'm really getting cooked.
I unlocked some great trinkets but often can't use them them since the trinket pool is already so large and you get just 3 random ones per supply drop.
I'm feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty and kind of frustrated.
What am I doing wrong guys ?

[GoReFeST]

Probably impatience and practice. Keep playing so you upgrade your dwarf, things will get a lot easier. Vanilla is tough.

[jaqenZann]

DRG:S can be a difficult game, especially when just starting out. I struggled at first, too, and got frustrated, but I loved the game so much that I kept playing, and now I'm not the best player, but have beaten level 5s. How are you doing on the meta upgrades from the minerals you mine? Mining those minerals is important so you can get the upgrades, even if you fail the mission. The incremental bonuses from the masteries might not look like much, but they are multiplicative, I believe, and can actually help. Or at least give you a different thing to focus on so you don't just feel like you're bashing your head against the same thing over and over.

[Blazer Wifle]

Start out with Weapon mastery so you can push each weapon bit by bit.
Its fun to see how broken some weapons can become. Also helps you get a feel for each weapon.

That Daily mode is great for 300% exp & Cash.
In my personal opinion you should max "luck" first in the upgrade menu. The higher your luck, the higher the chance of legendary upgrades during a dive.
Something purple or legendary early is a total game changer.

[THUGLIF3]

Thanks for the tips boys

[InterWill]

Originally posted by THUGLIF3:

I'm probably just bad but I have experienced survival roguelikes like Vampire survivors, Death must die, Halls of Torment and managed beat them without too much trouble. DRG however I'm struggling already at 2nd difficulty and cannot get one run complete.
My weapons don't do enough damage to clear the screen, there are so many creeps I can barely see whats happening and find myself getting hit a lot while trying to go through the narrow gaps. Add terrain obstacles/dangers to that and I'm really getting cooked.
I unlocked some great trinkets but often can't use them them since the trinket pool is already so large and you get just 3 random ones per supply drop.
I'm feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty and kind of frustrated.
What am I doing wrong guys ?

The game is hard. You are not alone.

Keep in mind that as soon as you exit the drop pod, you're on a timer. It's not like in some of the other games where you just need to survive, here there's pressure from the first second.

You have a couple of things you want to achieve.

You want to gain as much gold and nitra (and crafting resources) as you can.
You want to complete secondary objectives.
You want to make sure that you clear the supply pod and pick up an artifact.
You want to get as much XP and levels as you can.

You will have a grace period in the beginning of a run before the enemies start coming to overwhelm you. Use this time to find and mine any resources you can find. These initial resources also give XP and can give you a level or two before you face enemies. This is crucial because it let's you get slightly ahead of the enemies, making it easier to kill them, which makes it easier to gain XP setting this whole thing in motion.

Second: always have a plan. Think of what your current objective is, what you're trying to achieve. Do not stand your ground and fight unless for a specific reason. If you don't know whether you should stay to fight or run to try to find resources or secondary objectives, you should probably not stay and fight.

Then there's the weapons. Getting one to 6 or 12 or 18 is better than spreading your levels so that none of your weapons have Overclocks. It's good to have some weapon that's better at killing bosses (M1000, Nishanka Boltshark are good examples) so you don't end up getting overwhelmed at the end of the stage as the swarm grows stronger.

[Novantico]

Originally posted by jaqenZann:

DRG:S can be a difficult game, especially when just starting out. I struggled at first, too, and got frustrated, but I loved the game so much that I kept playing, and now I'm not the best player, but have beaten level 5s. How are you doing on the meta upgrades from the minerals you mine? Mining those minerals is important so you can get the upgrades, even if you fail the mission. The incremental bonuses from the masteries might not look like much, but they are multiplicative, I believe, and can actually help. Or at least give you a different thing to focus on so you don't just feel like you're bashing your head against the same thing over and over.

Damn, how the hell do people do 4s let alone 5

[Somesharky]

man, if you punched through the higher tiers of DMD and HOT you know what suffering is, particularly for the crazy, class breaking challenges in HOT. Trust me, you are not bad at the game, you just have to learn to make do with what little the game gives you.

Just, realize this: you are not supposed to clear the screen and you are not supposed to get hit.

Best advice i can give you, for normal runs, is either the m1000 scout (can bolster up to 25k dmg in one single shot and fire fast af if you upgrade reload time with the last one bullet upgrade, and punch straight paths through enemies) and the interrogator driller with any amount of beam weapons (more or less a full zone denial unit)

[Neomare]

Originally posted by THUGLIF3:

I'm probably just bad but I have experienced survival roguelikes like Vampire survivors, Death must die, Halls of Torment and managed beat them without too much trouble. DRG however I'm struggling already at 2nd difficulty and cannot get one run complete.
My weapons don't do enough damage to clear the screen, there are so many creeps I can barely see whats happening and find myself getting hit a lot while trying to go through the narrow gaps. Add terrain obstacles/dangers to that and I'm really getting cooked.
I unlocked some great trinkets but often can't use them them since the trinket pool is already so large and you get just 3 random ones per supply drop.
I'm feeling overwhelmed by the difficulty and kind of frustrated.
What am I doing wrong guys ?

1.What "InterWill" wrote is a very good answer of what you should be doing


I'l add a bit of how I do it.


For me what works best is to aggresivly avoid fighting and circle around the edge of the map trying to mine as much gold and nitra as i can before things get heated up.

Once it does get to the midle, mine yourself a bit of an open space, run tight circles around the horde and try to avoid killing the elites for a bit if you can.

Oh and I like to level up a single weapon as much as I can. 1 Strong weapon and 3 crappy ones always felt easier to make work than 4 average weapons. Those who know the game way better than I do can make even the 4 level 1 weapons work with general upgrades.. but for inexperienced i would always say just pump everything into 1 weapon, get it to 18 as soon as you can and as long as it is one of the weapons that has strong damage output and not a support weapon it will feel really nice.



Also find yourself a favorite dwarf and some likable weapons. This helped me a lot. My first Hazard 4 and Hazard 5 clears were with the thunderhead. The weapon is a beast.


In the meantime i have more favorites but I do not want to fill your head with to much information. Try thunderhead if you did not already, heavy gunner starts with it. If you do not like it try something else.


Oh and do a Hazard 1 class mastery for your dwarf, it is not much but it helps. Also do the all 4 biome masteries and maybe a couple of weapons you like. The difference does add up.



Also do not forget to be suspicious of any advice including mine. Just play and see what works for yourself.

For example what "Somesharky" advised.. i always went the oposite final overclock of the one he is suggesting because i think it is far more reliable.

I also consider interoggator driller one of the weakest classes. so yea. Different people have different preferences,

We can't both be right so you will have to just play and figure some things out for yourself.


Win or lose try to just remember you are playing a game and having fun, that is how i dealt with my first 6 hazard 1 loses and now i probably have over 90% + win rate on vanilla hazard 5. So if the game clicks you will get there. If not.. well plenty of great games out there!


I would say this one is definitely a bit tougher than most survivor games which are very often almost idle shooters after a certain point. Especially on the start. But i would also say it is very fair and for me it was well worth it to keep playing it :).


Good luck!

[THUGLIF3]

Thanks guys for effort really appreciate it. After reading great amounts of information I decided the best path for me is to stop trying to push difficulty levels I can't handle and focus a lot more on the weapon mods and class mods challenges. They do look like tiny little buffs but it adds up when combined with the general upgrades you're getting at the same time. Once I fully complete a class to tier 2 i'll give hazard 2 biomes another try and maybe that should do the trick.

I'll make sure to put the practical tips to good use too.
Rock'n stone!

[Metro]

Think Binding of Isaac. Almost everyone struggles to consistently win (most not even reaching anywhere close to the end) until they've unlocked a decent amount of items/upgrades. Same is generally true for this game -- the more weapons and artifacts you unlock the stronger you can become.

[Wheredoyoukeepthechocolate?]

Lots of good advice in this thread so far! I'd add that picking strong weapons to use as your main damage dealers is crucial. These are the ones I'd put at the top: M1000, thunderhead autocannon, leadburster grenade, warthog shotgun (with plasma overclock). Basically any weapon can carry the run, but some are far stronger than others.

Since you're challenging haz 2, you're probably not very far with the meta upgrades. These, along with the bonuses from the mastery missions, will improve your power a lot. Haz 3 vanilla anomaly dives used to be available in the game and they were extremely difficult because they remove all the meta and mastery bonuses from your character. Once you have everything maxed out, haz 5 is relatively easy. That's how much of a difference these make.

I'd focus on meta upgrades in this order: artifact rerolls, life regen, damage, luck, crit chance and crit damage. The starting gold and nitra are probably the least relevant. Since the costs go up so fast, you'll probably have to keep things fairly even, but the first few artifact rerolls and the first few life regen upgrades are game changers.

It might also be worth your time to go out of your way to unlock some of the artifacts. Many of these are run-definingly powerful. When you're doing mastery missions, try to focus on biome and class masteries first since these will give you bonuses to a higher percentage of your runs. If you feel like going in depth, there's a community google doc pinned at the top of the discussions that will tell you a lot about how the in-game mechanics work.

The game is pretty hard at the start, but keep at it and you'll do just fine. Rock and stone!