Evading Dreadnought: Basics

The biggest problem in dives (or one of them) solved. Basic tactics and strategy to achieve easy win.

Most common situations of dying

As you may know, Dreadnought are huge chunks of meat you need to kill. Their hp is biggest amongst all enemies and it will take some time to make one perish, with mechanic of aliens getting angry each time you kill constant amount of bugs, it makes most encounters end in a bad way if you are not ready to deal with not only Dreadnoughts, but also hordes of hundreds of bugs.

Most cases of run ending - being jumped by Dreadnought when mining through rocks or when trying to make your way through nasty bugs, eww.

More rare cases - being cornered in the corner of the map OR while getting some health from red sugar, which takes some time to mine.

Don't forget about bugs - each time Dreadnought spawns, it summons or increases spawn rate of bugs. Dreadnought itself is a huge(literally) problem that easily can decrease your health in a half in just two touches. Bugs like normal ones don't actually show huge problem, but I can't say same about groups of bugs or special bugs: Acid spewers, praetorians, detonators(Everyone hates/loves them), elite bugs, macteras.

Dealing with prephase(before summoning big boi)

Let's take a look before starting the run -

Classes, not even subclasses. I'm not going to tell which class is good or bad, they all are made perfectly fair balanced. Each player gets same amount of freedom and builds for the run. Feel free to try every class and every build in your mind.
The one reason why I won't make a tierlist of classes, is because I play them all. For example: I think engineer is a great class because of his electric overlocks on most of the weapons, which provides easy clearing through all 5 stages, but then we have a gunner - his minigun with right overlocks can easily destroy everyone without a need to worry about other weapons and etc.

Most things you need to have - hp and/or move speed. Being tanky is never good, since hordes will eat you so fast you won't even notice you are already dead. But it also hard to live with low amount of max hp, since bugs increase their damage and hp over time or over layers. It's great to have around 220 max hp at stage 5 with +25% to move speed. Even better to have more.

At the start of stage 5(or layer 5) - if you have problems with hp: go and mine as much as you need. Don't waste time on mining gold or nitra, but if you have literally 0 gold - mine some. You can trade gold if some of the upgrades on level up is not what you are looking for and plus maybe up some stats or get additional damage from golden boolets. If you see minerals - try to mine them. But most of the minerals took a lot of hits before you could break them - or try and get a lot of mining speed, or use Driller. It's never bad to spend some time getting resources to level your starting stats, but with how much bugs and hordes stage 5 starts - you have almost no time for this.

If you feel comfortable with your build - try to kill elites before they spawn from eggs, they are not a huge deal, but exp is still exp so gettin maybe couple of level ups is gonna ease the problems if you have some.

Already mentioned it, but try to level up as much as possible, more time you spend during last fight - more powerful, faster and chunkier Dreadnought and bugs become. It never hurts to deal a lot of damage only to deal even more.

Dreadnoughts deadliest problem...

... is his hitbox and dashes.

It will literally rush in you at the start, but as it gets closer to the player, speed will decrease.

Dashes on other hand is way too big problem, in order to evade his fast attack, that most of the times will get you if you don't pay enough attention, you will need to run in the direction he will dash in, so you can try and outrun his dash range OR you can wait for a bit and then run in a side, so it will dash forward, while you are going in a side from his movement. This is in my opinion safest and easiest way to avoid getting damage, but there is some problems with that.

Gonna explain problems of both ways with pictures

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2495626893885695519/670B70639BD842014E2A14C80D155F7BFCA0EB56/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

(im not a great artist, don't you dare to blame me) This is the look on how Dreadnought dashes, during this phase it will stand still and wait before rushing forward - a signal, that you are about getting strucked by big boi.

On one hand, you can easily go to the end of his dash, creating little tiny gap between you and him.(already big problem) It's a great solution if you have weapons that shoot from back or that deals damage in close range
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2495626893885727045/20323ED634CF0692F4BCD45729F94DD79981584D/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

On other hand, you can completely evade it's dash by going to a side with right timing which will give you a lot more space to move and to deal damage or mine some health/path through rocks
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2495626893885757443/FD206E4743F1FD646813EBA3229A2561FEFB476D/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

I need to mention, that Dreadnought WILL rotate it's angle before dashing, that's why you need to time when to run in a side, so you won't get in bad situation because of being cornered or because of bugs/environment, You need to always think about your environment and your enemies, let's take a look at picture of what you can possibly meet -
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2495626893885807870/33B64E8CA7B8B91D03E22ED51B21871F28E7A578/?imw=256&&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

If you eager to try - imagine how you will act in this situation, try to find a solution. Here is what I would try to do - Best is gonna be obviously avoiding handholding dash by going up, then I would mine rocks on the left top so I won't meet bugs on left bottom of the screen
I hate that I can't simply add pictures as pictures, so enjoy links.

And that's all

Of course, you still need to deal damage in a little time, so bugs won't get angrier, but this is not problem of Dreadnought, this is problem of your build if you can't kill Dreadnought in less than 5 minutes after his spawn.

Try different solutions and tactics, maybe in future updates devs will add more and more content so dodging and killing Dreadnought will get much and much more easier, but for now, that's all we can do.

idk maybe give a rate to this guide, maybe you learned something, but feel free to leave a comment.

[DarthSidious666]

I tend to use electrical attacks on my weapon upgrades which seem to work well against the bugs too which also allows me to clear room so I can carry on kiting the Dreadnought.

[god's drunkest driver]

@DarthSidious666 that works too, but this method is a bit risky, since going in circles most of the times will result in paying not enough attention to bugs, this is why you should always run from Dreadnought. your tactic works for fast and powerful attack, it's great if you know that you will kill Dreadnought before bugs will get you, otherwise won't use it in battle, since main boss of the each stage increases spawn rate of the bugs and plus your damage will be concentrated on the main enemy, not on little guys.

[DarthSidious666]

A tactic I've found that works well is find an area where you can just kite him in a circle each time he jumps he'll miss.

[Boomerwow]

I didn't read the whole thing. You didn't read the whole thing. And now you're here.

Just keep yourself fairly close (a dwarf height or two) from his head. He'll start a jump, you pick a direction that is perpendicular and run. He will not only jump over you, doing no damage, but he'll jump past you so you don't have to run so much.

The only thing that makes this tricky is having the damage to clear a lot of enemies before he spawns. The boss itself is ridiculously easy. They should give us more types of dreadnoughts

[75338]

Hollow Bough you can fool him into jumping to the other side of the red vines. You can also take 25% or more of his hp with the Supply Pod dropping on top of him. Killing him with it is hilarious. Plus you can just kite him around the Supply Pod, or a convenient gap in the level. Safest simplest strategy is to just wait a bit when he pauses, then run perpendicular to his leap attack.

[RAGE Constus]

Good guide !
I'll also add to the possible strategies dealing with him :
When the supply pod (giving you artifacts) dropping area is shown to you, I like to mine out the area so I can call it whenever I want, but I wait for the Dreadnought to spawn first and lure him to the drop zone. If you manage to make the pod drop down on him (which is fairly easy to do, just run circles around him inside the drop zone), it'll damage him for around half his HP bar, which helps A LOT as this damn bug is tanky as hell !
The pod also oneshot all elites, it can be very useful in previous layers !
Hope it'll help someone, and as always ROCK AND STONE BROTHERS