Everybody else’s distant relative would know that it’s absolutely vital that you bring a Driller with you whenever you deploy to the hellscape that is Hoxxes IV. With your presence, getting back to the drop pod will be nothing short of a trivial matter due to the likelihood of you disrespecting the level design by simply digging a straight line in reverse.
But this isn’t the only reason your friends brought you along, you can do so much more as the Driller, and you should! This Driller Building Guide will let you in on what you need to have on your digger whenever you clock in, to lessen the mishaps for both you and your teammates of course.
Deep Rock Galactic | Driller Building Guide
Digging has always been a favorite pastime of the Dwarven folk, they’ve been doing it long before they entered the far reaches of space and would gladly do it again to no end.
The only difference this time is now they have more toys to play with, it’s up to you whether you’ll use these toys to help your friends or blow them to pieces “by accident” on purpose.
Here’s what’s best to use to guarantee survival:
Quick Overview
You can do pretty much anything with the Driller that doesn’t involve clearing huge gaps and platforming. This includes helping the Engineer clear out a swarm of Glyphids or going off on your own for a bit to shape the environment according to everyone’s needs.
Do this and all you have to do next is watch your friends make spaghetti out of the pipelines they lay down whenever you’re unfortunate enough to do On-Site Refining missions with them.
Being able to dig around Hoxxes IV means that you and your team will have no excuse whenever positioning is involved. A room is never too tight when you’re in the presence of someone who has an itchy trigger finger and a pack of Satchel Charges, just take a few steps back if you ever see one get planted.
Setting up the Driller
Let’s go over what you can bring and slap onto your Driller and make the most out of your role without blowing your fingers off. Let’s start off with the passive perks!
| Perks | Description |
|---|---|
 Vampire | If you’re constantly short on health but not on fuel and throwing axes then having the Vampire perk will benefit you greatly as this lets you regain the health you lost from not throwing your grenades far enough. This only applies to medium or large-sized creatures, however, and you also have to make sure that the last hit that connects either came from your pickaxe, power drills, or your impact axe for it to work as intended. |
 Friendly | Your friends will hate you less when you have this on and you’re still getting used to the Driller’s loadout. All of your weapons have very high spread and the last thing you may or may not want to be responsible for are injured teammates who keep making the mistake of trusting you with high-powered explosives. You can swap this with Thorns for more survivability as a way to let your team know that the training wheels are off and you’re more than prepared to cause even more harm. |
 Deep Pockets | You wouldn’t be a Driller for nothing if you have shallow pockets, for every tier of the Deep Pockets perk you can hold five extra pieces of rock and stone, minimizing the backtracking you have to do just to get a measly 0.2 unit of Nitra. |
Now for your Active Perks!
| Perks | Description |
|---|---|
 Iron Will | Works well with Vampire as you can get yourself up and drill something to stay up. Your weapons will also be reloaded with magic to make sure you deal the most amount of damage until someone comes over to get you back on your feet. |
 See You In Hell | Whoever said vengeance is a bad thing clearly didn’t have Glyphids tearing into their uniform. Now you can hit back harder right after taking damage and even cause an explosion yourself whenever you go down. Other beasts will simply run at the sight of this and anyone else nearby will simply cease to exist. |
 Dash | If you are ever out of nitra, fuel, and basically everything else because you thought going inside a maximum complexity cave on your own is a good idea then this would be a perk you can get to make that last attempt at survival even sweeter. |
Now to have some meat, your starting weapon is the perfect choice for any aspiring arsonist. Perfect for crown control and letting your friends know that they’re getting in the way. It’s a great option for dealing an insane amount of damage and can be supplemented further through gear modifications and overclocking.
Speaking of modifications, here’s what you can add to your flamethrower once you have the right amount of stone and rock:
- For the first tier you can add either High Capacity Tanks that increases your magazine size, or add a bit of extra range with the High Pressure Ejector. The latter is a better option once you unlock the rest of the upgrades, you’ll see why in a matter of seconds.
- Second tier modifications will get you Unfiltered Fuel which lets you deal more damage, Triple Filtered Fuel helps with overheating your robotic competitors, and Sticky Flame Duration to, well you know. Increase the duration of your already lethal sticky flames. Increased damage sounds good but sticky flames deal even more amounts of damage without your knowledge. Pay attention to wherever you’re deploying as Triple Filtered Fuel is a situational modification that really helps with Industrial Sabotage missions.
- Third tier modifications have Oversized Valves which gives you a higher rate of fire, Sticky Flame Slowdown helps with slowing down creatures that walk through your flames, and More Fuel for even more ammunition. True to crowd control, Sticky Flame Slowdown will be your best friend here if you want to keep everything that has more than two legs at bay.
- In the fourth tier you have It Burns! A modification that scare smaller enemies away which will not always work, but it can save you a bit of ammunition if you have less things to shoot at. You also have another Sticky Flame Duration mod that stacks with the previous tier, the last one for this tier is simply another increase to your ammo carrying capacity so dealing more damage as time goes by is the clear winner here.
- Tier five gets you Heat Radiance, this causes the flamethrower to emit an aura of heat on to all enemies within 4 meters while firing. Make everyone get hot and bothered faster to the point of combustion with this mod choice. Alternatively, you can skip the waiting and use Targets explode, which gives enemies that come in contact with you a 50% chance of exploring whenever direct damage is taken.
For overclocks, the one that really stands out is the Sticky Fuel. It adds a second damage overtime effect to your sticky flames and also increases its duration, causing your sticky flames to be twice as deadly. Just keep in mind for this overclock that your overall ammo and tank size will be significantly reduced.
The Cryo Cannon is obviously the complete opposite of the Flamer, instead of melting your foes with high heat you can freeze them in place and follow up with a swing from your pickaxe to finish the job. Well that’s what most people do anyway during their first time, here’s what you can add to make the experience even better:
- In the First Tier you have the Larger Pressure Chamber, which basically means a bigger magazine. You can also have a faster charge up time by choosing Faster Turbine Spinup, yes this weapon takes at least 1-2 seconds before it spews out white slushy, you can choose the third option instead, which is Stronger Cooling Unit. This allows you to freeze your foes even faster and make them susceptible to follow up damage from your mates, if they’re paying attention to what you’re doing of course.
- Tier two lets you have a Larger Reserve Tank for more ammunition, Overclocked Ejection Turbine which increases your range again, or Bypassed Integrity Check. This ignores the loading time your weapon goes through whenever you hold on to the trigger for too long and drain the pressure completely from your chamber. If you don’t have any problems when it comes to making the most use of your ammunition then the increased range will be your go-to option.
- Tier Three gives you Improved Pump for faster pressure gain rate for a shorter time between fires and Increased Flow Volume for a faster rate of fire. This is one of those rare occasions where you can go with rate of fire, why? Because you’ll freeze enemies faster, which in turn means dealing with less moving objects throughout your descent.
- Now in the Fourth tier, you have mods like Hard Mixture that gives extra damage, Supercooling Mixture for more freezing power, or extra ammunition. You remember that modifications stack right? Good, go for the second option to keep things on ice, literally.
- Same with the modifications for the Flamethrower, in Tier five you can also cause your opponents to shatter without warning with the Fragile modification. Your second option is Cold Radiance, this surrounds you with a freezing aura that will stop anyone in their tracks as long as you’re shooting the Cryo Cannon. The latter option is an easy pick if you’re still after a build that incentivizes crowd control.
For overclocks you have a choice between Ice Spear and Snowball, they almost function the same way with the latter giving you less ammo to work with. They allow you to dump all the fuel into the form of a solid projectile instead of constantly spewing out a stream of white foam. A bit of a risky approach but it does give you more range and damage, which will definitely help if you ever make the mistake of bringing it to fight a Rival Caretaker.
The Sludge Pump is definitely a unique weapon that will be the cause of many workplace related injuries when fired in the wrong direction. You use weapons like this to make possible chokepoints impassable for bugs and Dwarf alike, aside from all of the screaming it also makes for great defense!
- You have access to High Capacity Tanks in the First tier which again, increases your magazine size. Along with that you also have Better Air Pressurizer that increases your projectile velocity and Air Sensitive Compound that gives you larger sized puddles of ooze for your bug friends to play around in.
- Tier two gives you Dyse Nozzle which increases the impact of your charged shots, giving it that extra oompf to let someone know to keep their distance. You also have Potent Goo Mix that affects your normal shots more, and Atomizer Nozzle to add more fragments to a charged shot splatter count.
- Make your puddles last longer in Tier three with Supersaturation or give yourself more ammo to work with instead. Remember, if you need more ammo than usual to take something down then you’re underperforming and will briefly experience a wage reduction!
- You can get either Spillback Extension or Improved Spooling Mechanism for Tier four. The former reduces the amount of ammo a charged shot consumes while the latter decreases the amount of time it takes for you to keep charging and pelting your enemies with toxic sludge.
- Finally in Tier five you have Protein Disruption mix that increases the effect of the slow applied by both the puddles and the damage over time while Fluoroantimonic Acid gets right down to business and just adds more overall damage.
Whenever having fun is your primary objective, you’ll never go wrong with the Sludge Blast Overclock. It basically turns your juice shooter into a shotgun, making it a good way to spread even more sludge as you progress through your dig.
Fancy yourself the gunslinger? Good! It’s time for secondaries. Your first option will be the Subata 120, a total beast of a weapon when fully upgraded. To keep enemies at bay, focus on getting more damage increase modifications to lessen the amount of ammo you use whenever you don’t have enough time to reload. Chain Hit is a good option as the chance your bullets have to bounce off other enemies are pretty high, which keeps the dakka going.
The rate of fire the Subata gives you can always guarantee your safety as you don’t have to reposition every time you have to charge up your shots with weapons like the Plasma Charger or the Wave Cooker. They’re still fun to use when you’re playing on a lower difficulty however!
For your throwables you can stack up the explosive damage you deal by bringing in extra HE Grenades. Neurotoxin Grenades are good for escort missions to keep undesirables from getting too close to Doretta while the Impact Axe can be used along the Vampire perk to get a bit of your health back if there’s no sugar nearby.
You’re not a driller without your Power Drills so make sure to have faster drilling equipped to help ease the panic your miner friends are going through by forcing them to go through tight spaces for the sake of convenience. Pair that with Magnetic Refrigeration and you will never have any reason to have your drills overheat.
This is your best friend and your team’s worst nightmare, and maybe your enemy’s as well. Perfect for both mining and alien slaughter, especially once you increase the blast radius it has for Tier one. Carry more charges with you without the consent of your friends and throw it at their feet to let them know what a good time is!
With all that you now know how to become the most effective driller within the Deep Rock Galactic Corporation. That or you’ll be an absolute menace whenever a plastic explosive ends up in your possession. Now try out the build for yourself and have fun at the expense of others!
ALSO READ: On-site Refining Guide & Rating | Deep Rock Galactic
