Hollow Bough is now on my permanent Ignore List

[Fransens]

What happened to this biome?
I swear ever since I started playing more DRG again at the start of this year over 50% of missions in this biome have been utter CANCER.

The layout turns into an at times incomprihensible clusterFfffflare of confusion that only gets worse when you try to use the map scanner as there are so many layers of "ground" and vines intertwined it makes going places a nightmare at the best of times and when you are alone and the wrong class impossible more often than not.
It is like somebody wrote in a code into Hollow Bough's procedual generation called
"You know what would be fun? Intestine-like terrain where half of the terrain hurts the players!".

But I'm not even done.
I had a mission now, mining Morkite so linear as always.
But was it a path down?
Oh, nononononooo!
My sweet summer child.
It lead me to a dead end and after staring at my terrain scanner in utter disbelief I realized that the way forward, THE ONLY WAY FORWARD, was a to go UP.
Straight up.
In a cylindrical hole over 100m high (can't tell more since the terrain scanner only goes so far and I could not be arsed to go up there all the way) with nothing but teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny ledges at some very generously spread apart intervals.
The ledges to stand on in question were in fact so far away from each other that I could not, even with angle addons, use my zipline (which was almost empty already thanks to the topography being cancer earlier too) to get from one ledge to the next.
I had to zip halfway, mine a tiny hole in the wall and then shoot another zipline up and away from it to get to the next ledge. Which were my last 2 zips.
And even up there it was not possible to spot the END of the entirely vertical hole I was supposed to climb according to the terrain scanner.
I sent Bosco up and it was like 140m from my spot on the 2nd ledge to the top.

I dunno why this crap keeps happening or how but the only thing I know for certain is that only this biome ever does these kind of "impossible" maps.

And I can already hear people going "It's procedual generation, deal with it." or "Get good."
First of all, I have never had Hollow Bough this obnoxiously convoluted before 2022. Yeah it was always "a bit special" in it's layout but it never, not even once, was impossible to navigate for one of the classes in solo before. At least for me.
After 2022 something changed and now it seems to happen over 50% of the time that you simply run out of movement tools unless you are Scout.
Second, yes... I realize I could have spent over half an hour pickaxing a staircase into the wall of the Tube Of Pain to get to the top.
All the while getting swarms and, oh, exploder infestation spawns every 1-3 minutes.

The only time I've abandoned a mission PRE-2022 was when I literally had to just get up and leave the game for RL reasons which is obviously having nothing to do with the game.
This was the sixth time I've had to abandon a mission this year alone because the alternative was ramming my head into a wall again and again until I somehow manage to MAYBE get past the obstacles this biome puts in my way.
Mind you, it is not even guaranteed that I was going to make it as a Gunner.
Especially with half a dozen or so exploders constantly on your arse on ledges so small another dwarf, or worse... Molly, pushes you to your doom 100% of the time if they come near you.

So I did the thing that kept me sane, I abandoned the mission even though it had double XP and I drank a Pots of Gold first.
But the alternative was 30-60 minutes of pure annoyance with the quite large possibility of failing the mission in the end because Molly pushed me off the 140m long cliff-face.

I wish I had made a screenshot of how ridiculous the terrain scanner looked or a screenshot of this hole. It was, btw, so wide it was barely possible to get my zipline to the opposite side.

So yeah, I dunno WHAT exactly happened to Hollow Bough but I will be avoiding it like the damn plague and cancer it is.
Kinda would like to know what the hell is going on with that biome lately though.

Anybody else have constantly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Hollow Bough missions or am I uniquely gifted in getting those obnoxious rolls on cave layout?
People like being special but if my special power is this I would gladly pass on it.

[azumazku]

can't say i avoid hollow bough missions, but if my assignment is in dense biozone, i'm done for the day

[rainee]

Im not reading all of that but i agree that this biome is the worst

[Fransens]

Dense Biozone is sometimes a bit annoying, yeah.
But not even close to the clusterfrag Hollow Bough seems to have become lately.

Whole-heartedly agree though. Sometimes the best reminder to call it a day is seeing your assignment pop up in certain biomes or with certain modificators.

[Fransens]

Originally posted by Rainee:

Im not reading all of that but i agree that this biome is the worst

Fair enough.

[zverozvero]

Thats why i often second thought going solo engineer on mining missions. Its not unique to spiky biome and climbing with more than 30 platforms is quite a trouble.

[Johnno]

20-25 years from now when you get an actual cancer diagnosis... you'll just go "still not as bad as Hollow Bough".

[Frisky]

Hollow bough has never screwed me over to a point where it's made me quit or fail a mission but I do relate with hating the biome overall
the thorns are more obnoxious than magma cores floor imo and the vertical parts of the biome are pretty painful solo but not an issue in a pub usually

I think one part of the bough that doesn't get enough criticism is the tumbleweeds and acrons actually

one wrong step on a tumbleweed can either send you hurling into the air and mach 17 which usually results in unavoidable and lethal fall damage or the tumbleweed won't even give you a fun flight and will just flat out kill you instantly due to the way unreal engine handles physics actors and players with deep rock fall damage, this has happened to me a few times and while it's rare the fact it can still happen from time to time doesn't do this biome any favors in making me enjoy it

some other biomes like Azure can have this issue as well with comba buds but they've never caused issues for me before mainly because they have to be destroyed before they become physics actors instead of just being a part of the map

corpse feeder worms in the biome also unnerve me slightly, nothing like..phobia levels just I can't stand looking at them for more than a few seconds

I'll play the biome if it pops up for an assignment or something but it's easily tied for my least favorite biome alongside sandblasted and I doubt that'll ever change

caustic mire died for this big dumb tree :(

[Chibbity]

I don't mind it, it's certainly one of the "hardest" biomes, but I think that's fine; and it suits the levels theme of being a very nasty place to visit.

Prior to that everyone hated Magma Core, lol.

Some biome has to occupy the slot of being "hated."

[Cruddy]

I don't mind the (supposed) linear levels but if it's a Cavern area mission I just wait until the missions reset, like hell I'm gonna look for Aquaraqs in that area.

[CEPHY]

I just had a Haz 4 morkite mining mission as part of my assignment.

We were 1 gunner (me), 2 drillers and 1 engineer

- double nemesis, one at the start and one at the end
- rival presence
- dense biozone
- horrible map gen, mostly vertical tunnels
- rival turret spam
- 400 morkite btw

We finally made it, when one of us said to wait because we found a lost cache.
So we went for that before extracting.

- Second nemesis wipes us several times
- exploder swarm
- patrol bot city
- engineer had to use iron will and get health and leave us
- frickin' RUN
- engi gets to the pod with 30 seconds remaining


I'm done.

[Fraktal]

Originally posted by Johnno:

20-25 years from now when you get an actual cancer diagnosis... you'll just go "still not as bad as Hollow Bough".

I've had stage 1 renal cell carcinoma, Hollow Bough is worse.

[Issen Nox]

*Goes to Hollow Bough as a gunner, on most likely complexity 3 mission*
*Hurts itself in the confusion*

All of your problems would be solved if you either:
A) Play multiplayer and have a driller on your team
B) Keep playing solo as a driller.

I had no idea people dislike vertical shafts. I always enjoy finding them to see how team will go about it this time. Biome itself is also nice, thorns are not that big of a problem if you let your shield recharge and fight in a decent spot. Vines everywhere allow to do some interesting parkour around the map as any class.

[Zeddy]

I never see this kind of hate for glacial strata, which is the actual worst biome. You can avoid vines, you can't avoid snowstorms or random instances of the ground cracking open. There's 3-hit rocks where there isn't slowdown snow or slippery ground, and all the aquarks blend in with all of the other blue everywhere.

Hollow bough doesn't even normally have jellyfish, automatically disqualifying it from being the worst zone.

[wwwJam]

Originally posted by Zeddy:

I never see this kind of hate for glacial strata, which is the actual worst biome. You can avoid vines, you can't avoid snowstorms or random instances of the ground cracking open. There's 3-hit rocks where there isn't slowdown snow or slippery ground, and all the aquarks blend in with all of the other blue everywhere.

Hollow bough doesn't even normally have jellyfish, automatically disqualifying it from being the worst zone.

I would much, MUCH rather deal with occasional blizzards than try to navigate the hellscape that is the Hollow Bough, and its stabbervines. And just turn your dang flash light off if you're having a hard time seeing aquarks.

Plus, I can actually SEE in the Glacial Strata. I am convinced you could put an actual star within the Hollow Bough and the terrain would still look nearly pitch black.

[RaindropperinG]

It is the one biome where they say Karl was left in, after all.

Must've taken quite a harsh environment, among otha things, for him not to make it back.