Driller Building Guide | Deep Rock Galactic | Pro Tips

Lets dig deep into what makes this adept spelunker so good at what he does. The driller is a jack of all trades who can assist his allies in many different ways. Today we set ourselves up to do just that.

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CHAPTERS

Intro: 00:06
Special Thank You: 00:55
Overview: 01:35
Class Setup: 03:09
Weapons: 04:25
Support Tools: 16:00
Put it All Together: 18:30
Outro: 19:08

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ABOUT

Hi there, I'm Jay! I'm here to help you with all the latest video game tips and tricks.

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DISCLAIMER

This video is made for entertainment purposes only.

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ATTRIBUTION

Deep Rock Galactic:
Publishers: Coffee Stain Studios, Coffee Stain Publishing
Developer: Ghost Ship Games

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SONG

"Avocado Street" by: Wes Hutchinson

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#gaming #drghostgaming #deeprockgalactic

[javarakgaming]

So what kind of builds have you done for the Driller? Let me know your thoughts! Rock and Stone!

[karlvoythulla]

Cant forget about Drillers main task, which is taking "care" of Scouts

[pokebronyborn]

Driller main since my first mission.
Nothing, not even Scout's grapple, compares to the sheer Chad energy of walking straight through a mountain of rock and stone _just because you can._

[Niciusaoe]

Small hint for c4, either use both ammo Upgrades or none. So you get either 2 c4 per resupply or 1 c4 per resupply. As when you have 3 c4s the Game rounds down so you only get one c4 per resupply
edit:
Its not the case anymore as it has been changed, now when you have 3 c4 on max, and have one c4 remaining, the game rounds up now to 2 - means you get 2 instead of one breviously.
as lokerazo pointed out :)

[isaacgatto]

Going full melee is always fun, get max freeze with the cryo canon since freezing enemies gets you 3x damage so the barbed drill is very effective. Pair that with vampire and you get health back very quickly

[simplyyunak]

A most often overlooked feature of the driller: in the machine event with ebonite enemies you can use your throw axe and drills to kill these enemies since voth drills and axe count as melee damage

[noblevi]

FYI: Drilling In The Name Of (great Youtube channel, BTW) figured out that stacking both mining efficiency mods (hardened drill tips T1 + supercharged motor T3) equates to nearly zero difference than using either one individually, you'll literally be walking into the wall you're trying to drill out waiting for the next tick when the material is removed and wasting precious fuel while doing so. And since T3's Supercharged Motor is the only one available in that tier, you're better off running more fuel or barbed drills in T1. This also effects how quickly you drain fuel: the base mining rate is 1.5 ticks/s, and consumes 0.25 litres of fuel per tick. Taking both making mods doubles your tick rate to 3.0/s equating to 0.75 litres drawn, where as taking just one (i.e. only T3 supercharged motor) increases it from 1.5 to 2.25: or 0.5625 litres per second for nearly the same effective mining rate. That's right, it is actually MORE fuel efficient to just run ONE of the mods instead of both.

As for Magnetic Refridgeration vs. Streamlined Integrity Check in T2: the Drills have a heat cap of 5.5, and gain 1 heat per second while in use. They shed by default, 2 heat per second. If you overheat, the drills take 8 full seconds to cool down. SIC shaves off 3 seconds of overheat time: from 8 to 5 seconds, where as MR increases your cooling rate by 1, from 2 to 3.

So if you redline your dills at 5.49 (99%) heat using MR, they'll have reset to zero heat within 1.83 seconds or 8 seconds if you actually over heat vs. 2.75s redline or a 5 second cool down if you overheat using SIC. Redlining your drills can be done with practice as you'll build up a muscle memory for it, (and if you play with mods, you can get a heat metre around your reticle). So say it with me "Overheating is a skill issue."

When dealing damage to enemies, the fuel draw is actually changed: 0.2 litres of fuel per tick at 8 ticks/s: 1.6 litres a second. That equates to 40 DPS by default. And because of the aformentioned relationship between T1's HDT, and T3's SM, you may as well just nab Barbed Drills since it literally doubles your damage, and therefore doubles your DPS from 40 to 80. Additionally the Drills benefit from good aim and CAN pick up weakpoint modifiers, 1x for Oppressors/Praetorians, 2x for most regular Glyphids, and 3x for mactera. Additionally, Mactera have a 100% damaage vulnerability to melee, Goo Bombers 50% vulnerability, and Grabbers have no weaknesses/resistances. What that means for Mactera is that melee damage is effectively multiplied by 6 if you hit their weakpoints with melee, i.e. impact axes, power attacks, regular pickaxe swings, AND your drills.

Lastly, a frozen enemy takes 3x the damage applied, but loses weakpoints. This means that 80 DPS turns into 240 DPS against any frozen enemy.

[jaysonmoore]

Ahh the driller. My favorite class to play. Driller excels in all sorts of missions. When it comes to dreadnaught missions, driller can seem underwhelming at first but some overclocks and specs on cryo cannon and sludge pumps make him very capable there as well. Sludge blast can wreck dreads. So does ice spear.

Mining with the EPC is also very useful for getting hard to reach minerals or objectives. It takes practice, and it doesn't work as well as it used to, but it's still very handy to know how to do. The wave cooker deletes swarmers and jellies because it has infinite range.

Lastly, I would strongly encourage every driller to try a cryo melee driller. Go for maximum freezing power on your cryo cannon. Freeze bugs, swap to barbed drills, then delete the bugs. Do this with vampire on, and you'll have a hard time dying. You can even take on oppressors if you learn how to spam axes with animation cancelling. You'll be able to freeze the oppressor then kill it with two axes before it thaws.

There's a lot more I could add, but I'll leave it there for today. Great video!

[lentgraph]

I recently started a month ago an driller is what I picked up first, me an my friend went in blind, my friend finished the tutorial first and when i said that i wish i had something like a flamethrower my friend said i was about to be very happy. My friend stuck with gunner and i have basically only played driller.

[thorne]

I'm still working on building out my different driller builds with each weapon; this video was really great for explaining each upgrade in detail. I agree 100% that more explosives equals more fun!

[markanthonybowen]

Perfectly timed I really need this one right now.
Been slacking on my Driller.

[julio]

Glad to know you're feeling better Jay, welcome back!
This is definetly a better execution of the video format eager to see more of if and i'm curious to see how much your opinions on Gunner's secondaries changed and how much you have to talk about em :v

Some tipty tips
- The flamethrower is beyond versatile, whoever designed it (and all the other weapons really) deserves a medal.
You can build the flamethrower however you want but i would suggest aiming for the terrain enemies are walking over if you're using sticky flames, they stick to the terrain which basically applie all the effects, heat build up is faster on terrain (w/ sticky flames!) not only builds up faster this way but also prevents enemies from cooling their temperature, slow down too.
-tl/dr = aim for the face for direct dmg/heat builds - aim for the floor and walls for sticky

- The volatile bullets (t5) on the subata not only adds heat DAMAGE but also extends/resets the burning timer on a enemy, is specially usefull on enemies that cool faster or robots, aka Nemesis since it's a pain in ass to burn em. This same effect applies to Gunner's revolver and its overclock of the same name - but is extra powerfull borderline broken.

- Cryo Canon, a little extra info on this beauty - The C.Canon can be built both for crowd control and raw damage, only useful against Dreadnoughts (Regulars and Hiveguards, the twins can be fought using it but is not a great experience specially not on Haz5) and robots, raw cryo is just as good against them as heat, consider using the Snow Storm OC for that specific use
-Snowball - better for crowd control as the ball will freeze anything in a 4m radius (idk if the radius is affected by the tier2 skill, but is not a big deal since bugs are always swarming you) this is my go2 OC for escort duty.
- Ice Spear i didn't use this one enough to form a opinion or tip, but thru my experience is a option for driller to deal high raw damage against long range targes, since thats the main weakness of the canon, you can still kill groups of bugs with it specially if they're lined up
- Axes and drills can heal you thru vampire as shown in the video, but what if you're low hp and have no axes? Cryo canon is your answer, freeze them up and show them what a real osha violation is (enemies take 3x more damage when frozen, basically a feast for your drills)

- You can 'axe cancel' with G + Q or the laser pointer, pretty good to spam axes against melee weak targets or some annoying to hit enemies like Menace.

- The sludge goo can be set on fire with the EPC shots - CC + Damage all together

- a few weapon combos
- C. Canon (snowball/tuned cooler/flow rate exp) Subata (automatic fire) OCs - remember enemies take 3x more damage when frozen? freeze them up and let your subata do the work (you can use the CC without OCs, the subata however requires the auto fire overclock, unless you're using a macro or have the fastest trigger finger in hoxxes)

- C. Canon - EPC w/ Plasma Burn = You can one/two shot grunts with this one and 3/4 shot a Praetorian

- Sludge Pump + EPC - Shot the goo with the epc, you don't have to use charged shots for this - the goo will slow the enemies down and the epc will light the goo on fire, basically sticky flames with extra steps but just for variety sake. Try the Dispenser Compound or Goo Bomber Special OC's for a more interesting visual and gameplay interaction, the goo covers a much bigger area them the flames - BUT this is all just a suggestion - is your game and your build, have fun.

[macdjord]

The pistol pairs especially well with the cryo cannon. For mid-sized enemies (e.g. Praetorians), you can freeze them with the cannon, the switch to the pistol, empty a mag into them, and kill them much faster and more ammo-efficiently than just hosing them down with the cannon constantly. (This isn't necessary for small enemies, which are mostly dead by the time they freeze, and doesn't work well for huge ones like Oppressors and Dreads, where the short freeze time means you'll only get a couple shots off before they unfreeze; you really need an ally to do the shooting while you keep them frozen.)

[gustavomolinari]

Just gonna put my loadout here, it plays very well with my tactics and is quite balanced overall.

Main: flamethrower full damage with clean damage overclock. Reach or tank capacity on taste. Burn everything mod.

Subata full damage, except for stability mod. Clean damage overclock.

Full damage on C4.

Toxic grenade.

I use thorns, strong arm and red sugar passive, but for new players thorns, elemental defense and deep pockets might be more viable.

[Potatertot]

Love the vid! One thing I will say about wave cooker as I feel the final perk slot needs a bit more explanation on the 3rd perk, exothermic reaction. This perk is so good if you are running cryo cannon or flamethrower as when the enemy is frozen or on fire (completely, bar must be full) the OPPOSITE happens to them, applying the temperature shock effect. Temperature does I believe a flat 300 damage unaffected by resistances (again correct me if I’m wrong). So you can get into a cycle of freezing enemies and then applying temp shock with the wave cannon. Super useful for burst damage. I use this in my fav driller combo of: cryo cannon, wave cooker, axes, and vampire, as frozen enemies take more melee damage. Hope this helps!

[brodyd]

Great video. Driller best class. you gotta fix your compression tho. If its happening on YouTube's end try uploading at 2k even if this video is not 2k. it tricks youtube to processing your video on a different server and poops out a much less compressed video. tried it on my channel and it works! good luck to ya ROCK AND STONE!!!!

[ImAlpharius]

Cryo + Axe is so good
The sludge blast is shotgun pretty much, doesn't really spread puddles around. You want goo bomber special or dispersal compound

[ngastakvakis]

16:15 HE grenade isn't a fragmentation grenade, It's a High Explosive grenade.

[tmoney]

Hey just downloaded the game and it’s amazing. Just wanted to say your content is great! It’s cool to see such a new YouTuber have quality videos!

[carbonwolf]

Another thing with the wave cooker is that the negative side effects of its T4 upgrades sound like they would be awful, you really don't notice any difference in its regular fire mode. Ive found that the radiation overclock combined with the wide-angle lens is great for large hordes of those ankle biters, but you do run a higher risk of irradiating your buddies so i wouldn't recommend it on salvage missions.

However, the same overclock combined with the focused lens is excellent at single target damage, and you have a much lower chance of hitting your buddies, and you can always swap back to its regular fire mode if you need more area. This config is really good for dreadnought hunting, and can make short work of praetorians. (**Wispers** it can also deal damage through armor)