your BEST to WORST mission types [ranked]

[ɩɲɳǒ {тн}]

#1. Collect Morkite - truest form of dwarven mining fantasy, easiest going pace, great exploration of vast caverns
#2. Salvage Mules - good hunt and seek mode, has interesting end-game mechanic.
#3. Aquarq's - good base defense mode, challenging elevation puzzles, can be slow pace
#4. Elimination - good hunt and kill mode, bosses can be annoying however, fast paced
#5. Egg collection - decent blend of hunt and seek, but eggs trigger waves so faster paced
#6. Escort Duty - decent cargo defense mode but highly scripted and formulaic, always uses same sequence, very frantic end-game mechanic.
#7, On-Site Refinery - decent concept but overly scripted and formulaic, always follows same pattern of pipe bursting irrespective of your teams actual performance in defending the pipes, or pipe defense strategy (eg. placing foam at the pipe junctions to prevent bugs from biting or great defense of pipes through teamwork makes 0 difference, the pipes will always burst in pairs and must be repaired exactly 3 times no matter what) this mode does not reward skill or strategy.

so those are my best to worst mission types that I enjoy playing, what are yours and why?

[Bogan]

1. PE - fastest XP/machine event farm, fun to speedrun. Gets more hectic the longer you stay which is cool.

2. Morkite - It's a classic. Never gets old and has the most interesting cave generation most of the time especially on higher complexity and lengths.

3. Elimination - The dreads are fun well designed boss fights. Love the concept and the execution is wonderful. They're perfect Hyper Propellant food which is also a big plus.

4. Salvage - First half recovery of mules is fun, second half not so much. Defending in a small zone is kinda lame.

5. Egg Hunt - It's ok.

6. Liquid Morkite - Takes too long to build pipes and repair them...

7. Escort - Here let me wait 30 mins for this machine to slowly crawl towards the objective. Zzz mission type, easily the worst in the game.

[CCShad]

My list goes something like:

#1) Point Extraction, I’m a fan of the fast paced missions!

#2) On-site Refinery, Good paced mission, similar to Point Extraction in terms of a “limited area” that you must explore and memorize. I’d argue it’s final phase is just as repetitive as other missions (Following Molly, fighting the heartstone) but it does seem like it’d be an obvious upgrade the devs could make to change it to be less predictable.

#3) Mining Expedition, pretty much exactly what the OP said, this is what DRG is all about!

#4) Salvage Operation, while it’s not one of my top picks, I throughly enjoy these missions. My favorite part has gotta be entering the “main area”, it’s always packed full of enemies and stuff to fight. I like to clear out EVERYTHING until it’s empty!

#5) Escort missions, It’s #5 but I certainly wouldn’t call it “bad”, in fact I feel it’s the MOST balanced gamemode; every dwarf has a critical role that makes a BIG difference. Scout clears the drive-by tunnels, Driller sticky flames/ices the tunnels to kill off the grunts, Gunner takes out the stronger boys that get through driller’s wall, and Engi secures the drilldozer for refuels and the final battle. I absolutely love it, but my issue is the FORCED slow pace, you’re looking at 30 minutes if it needs 2 refuels.

#6) Elimination, Not sure exactly why, but I’ve never been a huge fan of these. The dreadnought update certainly made it more exciting, maybe it’s the lack of mining? Playing as driller feels almost useless here, flamethrower is next to useless and the cryo cannon takes a whole lotta time to freeze them for only enough time to axe them once or twice. So I’d criticize the balance as well.

#7) Egg Hunt, I really don’t hate any missions but this is definitely my least favorite. You go around, collect nitra, then start grabbing eggs and preparing for waves. The 3-length and complexity ones are just that, a lotta prep time then a fight, for 20 - 30 mins. I suppose it’s just not my cup of tea, and the xp payout for these missions is… awful. But xp isn’t everything! One thing I’ll always enjoy: Triggering 2 or 3 waves within seconds of each other and getting ready for an ultimate BATTLE!

[Frisky]

#1) Point extraction - it's simple, it's fun, it has lots of combat, and it's great for finding machine events

#2) Mining - the original DRG mission, also lots of fun, great exploring a linear cave with a simple task and timed swarms

#5) Salvage operation - Somewhat combat heavy and very fun when you set up the defense zone properly and have a tight game where the whole team pulls through after a bulk shows up near the uplink, very memorable mission type for me

#4) Escort duty - super combat heavy mission, very fun to shoot glyphids chasing you down a tunnel, the ommeran phase has lots of little tricks that are fun to get good at and whole mission flows pretty well. It's a bit lengthy but I usually have more good things to say about an escort run than bad things. Used to be bottom of my list until doretta's AI got fixed

#5) Egg hunt - this is where mission types for me start to fall short, egg hunt is boring as you'll either burn through a 4 egg mission in seconds or during an 8 egg mission you'll get all 3 swarms at the very start then have a slow and dull run with the rest of the eggs featuring zero combat

#6) Elimination - God elimination. I was originally just indifferent to elimination but after the hiveguard was introduced this mission tanked in enjoyment just due to my poor luck of how often that time wasting oversized ebonut wannabe spawns

#7) On site refinery - This one's probably the weirdest one to some, everyone else seems to love on site refinery but i personally can't stand it, seeing it pop up for an assignment almost makes me wanna stop playing, for me it's a less fun point extraction where you spend tons of time holding E slowly building pipelines, (bonus boring points if you're the only one building the pipelines while the rest of the pup only lays pipes or does nothing else) the mission speed slows to a mind numbing crawl if no one picked engineer or driller and the pipe breaking part is the same every time with no real variety besides what enemies the game spawned

[Zaddy]

1. Point Extraction
2. Salvage
3. Egg Hunt
4. Mining
5. Elimination
6. Escort
7. OSR

Sad that the two new mission type additions are my least favorite. :(

[Bork]

Played at Hazard 4 -
1. Mining - easy breezy, relaxing, sometimes you get lovely vertical maps and or vast caverns
2. Point Extraction - probably my favourite challenge, but not a great exploration mode. I like the way the waves ramp up over time.
3. Egg Hunt - S'alright. When playing as driller this is great.
4. Salvage / Escort / On site refinery - Alright. They are a bit samey to me, less exploration and travel problems to solve. They fall into a different yet similar feel to me. Pipe building is fun.
99. Elimination. Since the boss update I can't stand elimination. Tiresome. Takes too long. Just a grindy boredom ammo sink. The twins are probably the worst example. Pop up. Shoot. Bury. Repeat. Yeesh. Rather watch paint dry. But they're all pretty bad imho. Strongest possible thumbs down. I tend to not bother with Elimination at all anymore.