The grind continues in Deep Rock Galactic and it has now resulted in me being able to promote my first character and class. The Engineer. As mentioned in my last post about Deep Rock Galactic the Engineer has been my favorite class pretty much from the get go. Traversing the caves with selfmade platforms while blowing up bugs and building turrets just never gets old. I'm gonna take my chance with this post to talk more about the Engineer and promotions in Deep Rock Galactic.
Who is the Engineer?
The engineer is pretty much essential to any team composition in Deep Rock Galactic. He's a great team player and anyone playing a Scout will hate not having an Engineer on their team. One of the Engineers main features is his Platform Gun that he can use to create platforms. These platforms are great for helping the Scout reach out of reach mineral veins with the help of his Grappling Gun. Without platforms he will fall down and die, or at least take some damage, most of the time.
These platforms can also be used to eliminate a lot of the floor hazards you'll find in this game. If the ground is burning you can put down some platforms to make the ground safe to walk on. If there are holes in the ground you can cover them up with platforms to avoid yourself or other dwarves from falling to their deaths. They can also be used to completely trivialize some of the special events that can randomly spawn during a mission. Spinning turret tower shooting lasers? Just build a small platform tower to elevate yourself and you're fine. Platforms can also be used as landing pads that soften fall damage. This combined with quick thinking has saved me on many an occasion.
Another unique feature about the Engineer is his ability to build turrets. Depending on how you mod your turret you can choose to have either two short range turrets or one long range turret that deals more damage. These are great contributors to the teams overall damage and their auto targetting is great for taking out enemies that you yourself can't see in the darkness of the caves.
When it comes to weapons the Engineer has quite a few to choose from. For primary weapon you can choose between a pretty standard shotgun, an electrified SMG and a smart rifle. The shotgun sucks and I haven't touched it after unlocking the SMG. For most missions the SMG is my go-to-gun as it's simply the most versatile of the primary weapons. It shoots fast, it can be modded to deal some serious damage and its electrified shots both slow down enemies and deal damage to them over time.
The smart rifle is pretty cool though and definitely the most unique of the bunch. This thing can curve bullets. By holding in the shooting button while aiming at an enemy you'll see a number go up indicating how many bullets you're going to shoot. At the same time you'll see a line going from the gun to the enemy that you can manipulate by aiming in different directions. This indicates where on the enemy the bullets will hit. I always bring this gun to missions where we have to take down Juggernauts seeing as they have weak points on their backs. Being able to curve bullets around them to hit that weak point is just brilliant.
When it comes to secondary weapons the Engineer is, almost, all about dealing damage in an area. Either using a grenade launcher, a wide laser beam or, as the exception, the narrow laser beam that channels tons of damage into a single enemy. As with the SMG I mostly stick to the grenade launcher as a secondary as it's simply the most versatile. It's great for taking out large groups of smaller enemies and with armor piercing rounds modded in it can also deal some serious damage to the large armored bugs.
What are promotions in Deep Rock Galactic?
Promotions in Deep Rock Galactic are pretty much like prestige in other games. When you reach max level with a class you get the option to play a set of missions to promote them. This resets the class' level back down to 1 and gives you a fancy star above your character portrait. Luckily the levels are the only things that are reset. All your guns, mods, upgrades, perks and potential overclocks are kept across all promotions. I would have been pretty mad if I had lost out on 10+ hours of mods and upgrades due to this. Luckily everything you unlock or buy in Deep Rock Galactic is permanent.
What makes promotions pretty much essential though is the things they unlock. By promoting your first class you'll unlock Deep Dives which are a challenging but also quite rewarding new mission type. By completing Deep Dives you'll earn Matrix Cores which will help you unlock Overclocks for your weapons that can either buff or completely alter the behavior of your weapons. I'm gonna have to delve a bit deeper into this system before talking much more about it. For now all I know is that these overclocks are pretty much essential for being able to complete missions on the hardest difficulties.
Expect to see a post about Deep Dices and Overclocks in Deep Rock Galactic coming up soon!
Rock and stone!
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.