Yep! Well with Bosco you can.
Developed by R&D to support solo miners with mining, lighting, and fighting. The APD is not meant as a true replacement of a co-worker, but it is known to be a bit more reliable. The APD is popularly referred to as ‘Bosco’, but management strongly disapproves of the use of nicknames for equipment. Personification is known to cause depression among workers in the event of malfunctioning equipment.
I would say soloing (provided you aren’t the engineer) is extremely doable and enjoyable actually. You point bosco at any thing to mine, regardless of terrain or height, and he’ll mine it for you. Eggs can sometimes be problematic because they don’t always dislodge after he’s mined.
I would say playing with 2 people is the most frustrating. I’ve had way too many wipes with 2 people, so I really don’t recommend that.
4 players is where this game shines. The problem rounds I’ve seen are very rare. Most people are in it for fun & play it straight.
Many times I’ll start a public game by myself hoping others will join, but when I reach a certain point - where I think things will get dicey, you can change it to be solo only if no others have joined.
Nothing is more frustrating that getting into a firefight and then getting downed and bosco disappears and the new guy that spawns in really doesn’t have their bearings. I wish they’d let Bosco stay alive for 60 seconds when the 2nd person spawns in.
After a while I guess the game will get stale if you play solo, while it will have a longer shelf life with other players. It’s really a coop game after all.
That said, I think it’s very commendable that the devs have made a drone with its own upgrades and everything just for solo plays. It also helps the difficulty scale up and down properly with the number of players.
As Tman comments there is a weird bump when you go from 1 to 2 to 3-4 players. With one player (solo), you get an invulnerable drone that can revive you and have no ammo limit, and can mine where you point at. Very useful. And with 3-4 players you have several humans helping. It’s with two players where things get weird, as you will lose the drone and a normal human player, if he is a new player at least, won’t be as useful as the drone.
Some nice wallpapers here:
New update tomorrow
https://twitter.com/JoinDeepRock/status/1107935904541360129
It includes several new enemies:
GLYPHID MENACE - This distant cousin of the Glyphid Acidspitter is both smarter, faster, and more aggressive. It’ll burrow into the ground between firing off devastating volleys of corrosive goo, making for a high-priority target when spotted.
GLYPHID WARDEN - This mysterious Glyphid sends out waves of spores to its nearby kin, reinvigorating and buffing them. Better take it out quick.
GLYPHID BULK DETONATOR - A sickening horror of the deep. It’s Bulky and it Detonates. You’ll know it when you see it - and then you’ll likely die. You have been warned.
NAYAKA TRAWLER - The first species encountered of this awful breed of Hoxxes wildlife. The Trawler has been observed in the Sandblasted Corridor Region and it burrows through sand at high speeds, aiming to catch prey in its’ extended maws as it passes. Don’t stand in front of it.
GLYPHID GRUNT SLASHER - A more durable version of its weaker cousin, the Grunt. Plus…its long-bladed legs deal thrice the damage. Nasty buggers
GLYPHID GRUNT GUARD - Another variation of the Glyphid Grunt. This one is heavily armored and has twice the health.
RADIOACTIVE GLYPHID PRAETORIAN - In the Radioactive Zone, Praetorians have mutated and now do radiation damage! Better keep your distance.
RADIOACTIVE GLYPHID EXPLODER - Exploding with radiation! ‘Nough said!
RADIOACTIVE GLYPHID SWARMERS - They glow in the dark and are radioactive - they’re small enough that the radiation they emit isn’t enough to affect a healthy dwarf, however.
An overhaul for the Dreadnaught, and new gear mods for
LMG GUN PLATFORM - Number of turrets, target prioritization, build speed, scan angle. You are a special snowflake and now your automated killing machine can be too.
SATCHEL CHARGE - Have you ever thrown down a Satchel Charge only to regret it immediately? Well, now you can install a kill switch for safe disarming and retrieval. Plus many other mods like carve size and fear effects.
FLARE GUN - More flares? Longer burn time? Auto-reload? Illuminate the situation with these and other mods.
SHIELD GENERATOR
Customize the size, duration and recharge time of your happy place.
I’ve been having a pretty good time with this one playing with a friend. Things can get hairy with only 2 people, and I suspect we’ll hit a level where it might become undo-able, but meanwhile we’re having fun.
I doubt you will have that problem, there are 5 difficulty settings to choose from for something.
Good to hear, sort of wish you could take the bot along as a 3rd man like you can when playing solo.
It would be interesting to have real Dwarves bots instead of Bosco, but at least the game scale properly. With 2 players you are a having already a lower difficulty than a group of 4 players, even if you both select the same difficulty setting.
Official changelog
Reminder of price increase
As we mentioned during the One Year celebrations, we’ll be raising the price of the game to $29.99/€27.99€/£24.99 on March 28th!
Update 24 tease
Onwards to 24! We still have some design ahead of us before we can fully commit to the headlines on this one (some key members of the team are out of town, attending conferences), but 24 will likely be a less feature-oriented Update, and more focused on polish and improvement of current stuff while we put work into more long-term stuff in the background. So far it looks like Update 24 will bring things like yet more Mods to unlock, at least one new enemy type, and a bunch of UI improvements such as revamped Mission Load and Mission Complete screens, but we’ll have something concrete to share with you soon.
Nifty trailer, too
Yep looks great, and fleshes out one of the few areas that needed more content.
25 hours on this one, feels like way too much of the same thing on missions and too grindy on class progression.
Hoped it was an L4D fix, but it’s just not, so moving on to other things till Turtle Rock finishes Back 4 Blood.
Aren’t all L4D mission kill zombies and reach the exit point? With some variations of ‘kill this miniboss’ and ‘collect x items’?
Yep, so it would seem I’d find one as grindy as the other, but I don’t.
I’m guessing that’s because there’s no glacially slow equipment/character progression in L4D and the settings change more thanks to different campaign maps. And the game mechanics in L4D forced player cooperation and sticking together, I really liked that.
Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’ve had some fun in this one and I’m still playing it occasionally, I just feel myself drifting away from it sooner than I did L4D.
Really? I would say the progression is pretty smooth, the opposite of grindy. It doles out new perks or weapon upgrades at a good pace, a good bunch after only 4 fours, and now one every 1-2 games. In just 10 hours I got 7 perks, 3 perk slots and around 14 upgrades per class, for the 4 classes. In fact for people who like to level up their character as a core pillar of their games, DRG will be disappointing, as after a while, you unlock almost everything.
Although there is some ‘gating’, and it’s how the alternative weapons are locked until you reach level 10 and level 15, they could have lowered at level 7 and level 12.
In any case all these upgrades aren’t needed to play, the game have 5 difficulties for something, and it’s totally possible to play without upgrades in Hazard 3 directly, and as you upgrade yourself, switch to Haz4.
In fact it’s that low difficulty the thing that makes people to not stick together, in hazard 4-5 on the other hand it’s a bit better as it needs more teamwork.
I also would say the game change more in the different biomes, as each one has different unique gameplay elements, and because it has 4 different classes. /shrug.
What it makes the game repetitive, it’s the mining itself. Clicking on the ore gets old after a time, while killing bugs or zombies is much more ever lasting…
Hey it’s cool you’re enjoying it. Reviews I’ve seen all appear to agree with your take on it.
For me, I’m just bored by the game design loop in this one and for whatever reason find it way less entertaining than L4D. Could be the setting and mining thing just played out a bit quickly for me.
Ditto, unfortunately. I’m not sure what’s missing, but I got about 15 hours out of it with a friend before we both got bored and wandered off. There’s something missing here that makes other games like this compelling, and I honestly don’t know what it is.
It could be that L4D games are more… directed, more funneled. It gives a clear objective, where you are rushed to go through it or the big hordes will spawn. It’s another style.