With the resounding success of Deep Rock Galactic and its first season, the community is gearing up for Ghost Ship Games’ most significant update yet. The newest season, Rival Escalation, builds upon what the first season intruded with the rival robotic mining faction. We will go through everything we know about Deep Rock Galactic Season 2 to prepare you for the Rival Escalation patch set to drop at the end of April.
What is Rival Tech?
In season one, Deep Rock Galactic was introduced to the Rival Tech faction with the robots they bring. The rewards for continuing the fight against these robots are numerous, but mainly the goal is to steal their Data Cells. If you have yet to fight the new Rival Tech faction or just getting into Deep Rock Galactic, Data Cells reward extra credits and experience but mainly give tons of XP for the “Performance Pass” for each one you collect.
Data Cells can be extracted out of Data Deposits, in which you will guard a Hacking Pod while it cracks the deposit open. Another likely encounter to find in the caves of Hoxxes is the giant Prospector Drone, which acts as a mini-boss. Both events spawn Patrol Bots to fight you and Shredders to dive directly at you. However, on the chance one of these Patrol Bots doesn’t explode after defeating it, you have a chance to hack it and use their tech against them. The hacking mini-game is simple, and it is a basic timing challenge where you need to line up visuals on the PDA your dwarf pulls out.
Caretaker Boss Fights Coming to Deep Rock Galactic Season 2
The previous season of Deep Rock Galactic also introduced The Caretaker, which is only fought on the new Industrial Sabotage missions. These new missions involve calling down hacking pods to disable Power Stations; the combat scenarios are the same as Data Deposits. Once both Power Stations are disabled, you have access to The Caretaker boss. This boss fight has three phases, each becoming increasingly difficult. The Caretaker will summon Patrol Bots and various turrets while using plasma bursts and force fields. Hit the corner weak points on The Caretaker to bring them down. Once the boss is defeated, the vault they guard is opened, and you can steal the Data Rack for yourself.
The Robots Are Back
Season 2 of Deep Rock Galactic adds even more threats, events, and robots for the crew of dwarfs to fight through. A new warning has been added to the mission table, Rival Presence. Playing missions with this new warning adds swarms of Rival Robots on top of the usual swarms of bugs.
A new event has been added as well, The Rival Signal. This unique event involves hacking a Communications Router, which involves multiple new hacking mini-games on several different parts of the machine. This event seems to have a time limit, and management advises to complete it quickly, or the Communications Router might explode.
A new mini-boss now stalks the caves of Hoxxes, The Nemesis. A giant robot with two long claws explicitly designed to deal with dwarfs now actively seeks you out. These huge claws grab and restrain up to two of your teammates while using forcefields and bombs like The Caretaker boss fight. No information has been given on where or when they will spawn, but we will find out soon enough.
New Performance Pass
The new Performance Pass has seen improvements from the previous season, including a new pathing for the cosmetic tree. Instead of working from a branching path going from left to right, you will be able to work your way down to claim your rewards using Scrip. One improvement made to the Performance Pass is the amount of free Scrip you can earn from your first batch of Data Cells. The amount of free Scrip has doubled. This allows you to progress further in the tree before relying on the Performance Pass tiers.
New Weapons to Be Found in Season 2 of Deep Rock Galactic
The first season of Deep Rock Galactic brought forth new primaries for every Deep Rock Galactic class. This update now brings four new secondaries to the player’s arsenal.
New Scout Crossbow Weapon
The Scout gets a new crossbow called the Nishanka Boltshark X-80 in Deep Rock Galactic Season 2. This weapon is unique compared to other crossbows because it carries different arrows. Fire, Acid, Frost, Electric, and triple bolts come stocked with this new crossbow. With all these bolt options, the Nishanka Boltshark X-80 is one of the most versatile weapons in the game. That’s true even without Overclocks.
New Engineer Secondary Weapon
The Engineer’s new secondary is a Shard Diffractor. Using a piece of Ommoran Heartstone, this new secondary fires out a bug-obliterating laser beam. When enemies are killed using this gun, they disintegrate in under a few seconds, which no other weapon has done. However, this weapon can only be used in short bursts, or it could explode.
New Gunner Coil Gun
The Gunner has received an Armskore Coil Gun, which fires small tungsten balls. Pulling the trigger charges the coil gun before firing, causing the small ball to launch with enough force to pierce through rock and multiple bugs. Its primary limitation is the ammo capacity, just like Gunner’s default revolver.
New Driller Microwave Weapon
Lastly, the Driller has obtained the Colette Wave Cooker, a pocket-sized microwave gun. Much like the rest of Driller’s weapons, this microwave gun overheats. So, managing that meter will get the best use out of this gun. The Colette Wave Cooker also sports a new kill animation with bugs violently exploding from the inside out.
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Extra Additions Coming to Deep Rock Galactic Season 2
With season one rotating out soon, make sure to get all the cosmetics and weapons skins you can. If you can’t get them, all Ghost Ship Games has done the brilliant job of shuffling any cosmetics you have yet to unlock from past seasons into Lost Packs, Cargo Crates, Matrix Cores, and even the regular shop.
Speaking of the shop, a new resource material is being added called Phazyonite. This new resource is an alternative way to purchase cosmetics instead of credits. There is also a new shop mastery system that rewards you with Phazyonite for buying armor and hats.
Expect Drunken Dwarves in Medical Gowns in Season 2 of Deep Rock Galactic
If you are ever unsuccessful in your previous mission, when you make up in the medical bay back on the Space Rig, your dwarf will be wearing a medical gown. It’s a small humorous touch that doesn’t affect gameplay, but you can redeploy into another mission while still wearing it. Drunken dwarfs wearing nothing but a thin gown battling against bugs and robots is something you will only find in Deep Rock Galactic.
Lastly, Forge mastery has had a slight upgrade. Whenever you are given a new level of mastery from using Matrix cores at the forge, your reward is always random. You will have two options to pick from in season two whenever you receive another mastery level.
That’s everything we know about season two for Deep Rock Galactic. You can expect this patch to drop on April 28th for PC while on May 5th for consoles. Rock and Stone. If you want, you can check out Deep Rock Galactic’s Season 2 reveal trailer below. Enjoy!
