Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor Starter Guide

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is now available and in true horde-survivor fashion, it lacks a tutorial and you mostly learn through baptism-by-fire. If you are familiar with games like Vampire Survivors, however, you probably know what to do. Still, there are some key differences in both games. So whether you’re a horde-survivor veteran or a newbie, here’s our Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor starter guide to help.

How to Play

At the start of the game, once you select ‘Play,’ you have access to only one Biome, one class, and one difficulty level. Don’t worry as you’ll get to unlock more options as you progress.

Once in-game, you control a sci-fi dwarf with a gun. And despite the twin-stick shooter perspective, you don’t get to control your dwarf’s attacks. At best, you only get to control their movements. You also can’t dodge manually.

The game will take care of the shooting for you. All you have to worry about is where to go. Guns also have a long reload time, and while they’re reloading, you’re more vulnerable. Additionally, some guns can only shoot enemies when you’re facing them so positioning is vastly important.

If you stick close enough to rock formations, your character will start mining and breaking off rock and ore deposits. This way, you can create some makeshift paths and chokepoints as well as gather resources for upgrades (more on those later).

To help you survive, you get a mini-map on the top-left corner of the screen so you can see if you’re heading to a dead end or to check ores or power-ups.

Differences from Vampire Survivors

Although you might be familiar with Vampire Survivors, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor can still blindside you at times. It has different mechanics that shake up the formula.

• There’s a mining mechanic and side activity, meaning your attention is split between surviving and mining.
• Upgrades have rarity levels on top of being random and how powerful you can become depends a lot on your luck.
• The terrain is transformable and you can set up enemy chokepoints and kill zones by mining pathways, as we mentioned above.
• There’s an added layer of risk and reward with the extraction or escape mechanic, and finishing levels won’t mean anything if you can’t escape.
• It’s sci-fi, and the guns need to reload; thus, there’s a notable downtime to your attacks early in levels.

As for the game’s difficulty, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is somewhat harder than Vampire Survivors though it’s still an early-access game so that might change. Even if it does, however, you can still count on our Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor starter guide.

The Objective of Each Dive

There’s really only one progress bar on the HUD that matters the most, and that would be the yellow-orange bar at the top center. This shows how close you are to bringing out the dive’s Elite enemy, which you then have to slay in a good old-fashioned boss fight. You can fill up this meter faster by killing enemies.

So while Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor drops you off on an alien planet along with a myriad of orders and objectives, the main goal is more or less the same for each dive (the game’s fancy name for stages or levels). You have to draw out the Elite enemy and kill them, then escape afterward before the timer runs out.

Once you have killed the Elite of each dive, you have to run to the Drop Pod before the timer runs out, otherwise, the mission will fail. Yes, it’s way above your job description. Suddenly the mining run became an assassination gig, but hey, those aliens were in the way.

Supply Pod, Swarm, & Mini-elite Icons

Along the way to the Elite enemy or boss, you’ll see other icons. The most notable one is the Drop Pod icon, followed by Swarm and mini-bosses.

Supply Pods – These are practically power-ups and you have to clear the landing zone of rocks and other blockades to get the reward. It’s a risky maneuver so you’ll have to kite enemies around. However, you can use the Supply Pod to your advantage as it can instantly kill mini-bosses once it drops.

Swarm – Once you reach this threshold in the main objective meter, the enemy number will swell up and actively seek you out. You can have multiple swarms chasing you in later levels.

Mini-elite– These are lesser versions of bosses and once killed, they can drop a lot of leveling pickups.

How to Become Stronger

Speaking of leveling, there’s a separate metric for progress in Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor. If you look at the bottom of the screen, there’s a blue bar that fills up whenever you pick up the blue or purple items dropped by slain enemies. This is the XP bar. You gain one level for every bar filled up.

So while the main objective is to draw out and kill the Elite in every dive, you must not neglect your leveling. Because apart from getting new weapons at levels 5, 15, and 25, each level will also grant you a randomized option of upgrades to either your weapons or your dwarf.

Other Ways to Become Stronger

The ‘Mission Failed’ screen doesn’t mean you should quit. Because outside of dives or missions, you can still improve your dwarves through the ‘Upgrades‘ menu.

Here, you can upgrade the following aspects of any dwarf and their weapons such as overall damage and even movement speed. However, you have to purchase them with currency as well as the various ores and crystals you can mine during dives. Mouse over each upgrade to see what requirements they have.

It’s also worth noting that you don’t exactly need to mine these ores and crystals to get them. You can buy them in the Upgrade menu, provided you have enough currency.

This is where most of the grind in the game comes from. Without these upgrades, you’ll end up dying and failing each dive, unless you’re really skilled.

Side Objectives

Killing the Elite and leveling up or unlocking other classes through repetition aren’t the only goals you can set. There are side objectives as well with each dive, which we’ve pointed out in the image above.

• You can collect some extra resources (plants, ores, etc.) on the map for additional rewards.
• There are milestone objectives that you can fulfill, such as leveling your guns to 12 (through upgrades), and these can unlock more powerful versions of the guns on the next dive.
• You can also mine Gold and Nitra (red crystal clusters) as you can use them to buy upgrades at the end of each successful dive.
• Look for Red Sugars (lone glowing red crystals) if your health is low as they can heal.
• Additionally, you can mine for ores and crystals that you need to purchase the upgrades on the Upgrade menu we’ve detailed above.

There are plenty of other things to do while being chased by hungry aliens and risking your life for a mining company. You might just manage with the help of our Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor starter guide.

At the moment, Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is rather difficult and is merely in its early access phase so the game might become different in the near future. So expect to die or fail a lot. No day off for dwarves until the Elite aliens are dead, back to work short kings!