Season 05: Drilling Deeper -- Full Preview

Hello Miners,
It’s almost time. Barely two weeks remain before Season 05: Drilling Deeper goes live in Deep Rock Galactic. We just premiered the brand-new Season 05 Narrated Trailer – were you there for the premiere?

You can watch the whole trailer right here:


Season 05 goes live on PC on June 13th. It'll hit consoles up to two weeks after.

Down below, we'll take a closer look at some of the highlight features coming with the new season.
Let’s make like a dwarf and dig into it.

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New mission: Deep Scan


Management has identified a new mineral priority: Morkite Seeds. Rumor has it that these could optimize the Morkite refining process tenfold. The problem is, they’re located much deeper down in Hoxxes than we’re used to.


To start, you’re going to have to locate several Resonance Crystals in the cave system – you’ll hook these up to a Resonance Scanner, and use that information to pinpoint the location of the Morkite Geode. Once you’ve got that, we’ll send in the Drillevator to bring you down there.


It’s on you to protect and maintain the Drillevator as it takes you down to the Geode. Once you’re there, snag the Morkite Seeds, deposit ‘em, strap on a pair of turbocharged Jet Boots, and blast back up for extraction. Then, go to the Abyss Bar, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over.


Should be no problem for a dwarf like you.


New season event: Core Stone

We’re noticing a peculiar new mineral formation in the caves. R&D’s best guess is it’s something from deeper down near the core of Hoxxes. What we know for certain is that these formations contain a Core Stone – and Management wants to get their hands on them.


But beware: Once you disturb the Core Stone, you’re in for a fight. It’ll open up rifts in the cave walls, and summon a hideous new enemy, unlike anything we’ve seen in Hoxxes so far. They’re called Corespawn Crawlers, and they’re not to be underestimated. Fight them off as you neutralize the Core Stone, then deposit in a specialized extraction pod to complete the event.


New enemies The Crawler isn’t the only new threat lurking in the darkness.
With the arrival of Season 05, you’ll also need to contend with three other new foes:

Glyphid Stalker A cunning new Glyphid variant. This enemy is capable of cloaking to near-invisibility, burrowing for rapid repositioning, and launching ambush attacks that temporarily disable your shields.


Vartok Scalebramble An invasive, semi-sentient plant consisting of an impenetrable acid-spitting core, and an array of sensory feeler nodules. Take out the nodules to open up the core.


Barrage Infector A new variant of the Infector species – this one’s bigger, tougher, and shoots a salvo of explosive bile. Aim for the sac, and watch out for splash damage.



New Overclocks
In light of these new threats, we’re expanding your arsenal. 12 new Overclocks are on the way, one for each primary weapon. Plus, we’re reworking one existing Overclock.

Here are the Overclock descriptions we got from R&D’s Munitions Division:


Gunner

• Cluster Munitions (“Hurricane” Rocket System) - Supplies the weapon with innovative new munitions capable of bursting into a rain of explosive bomblets, triggered by holding reload while in the missiles are in flight. The weight of the bomblets reduces the missiles' flight speed, as well as magazine size and carrying capacity. On the bright side, these missiles hit like a truck if you choose not to release their bomblets before impact.
  
• Rotary Overdrive (“Lead Storm” Minigun) - Supertunes the electric drive to push the fire rate to its limit! However, the increase in heat buildup makes it necessary to add a mechanism allowing injections of Quik-Chill coolant fluid by pushing reload. This coolant reduces built-up heat and can rapidly take the weapon out of an overheated state. Only a limited amount of coolant can be carried, however, and must be replenished via resupplies.
  
• Mortar Rounds (“Thunderhead” Autocannon) - The weapon has been reworked to fire heavy mortar projectiles. These modifications slow down the rate of fire significantly -- but even if you can't carry as many, the high-explosive rounds more than make up for it in damage. Just remember to account for drop.

Scout

• Burst Fire (Deepcore GK2) - R&D has fitted a cam mechanism into the GK2's fire control group, putting the rifle into a fixed 3-round burst fire mode. Additional modifications include a small increase to magazine size and reduced recoil.
  
• Marked for Death (M1000 Classic) - Focus Shot now fires a dart loaded with an inflammatory catalyst which causes enemies to temporarily take more damage from all sources. While faster to focus, the direct impact of these darts does negligible damage, and requires an increased Focus Shot ammo cost as well as a smaller magazine.
  
• Conductive Thermals (DRAK-25 Plasma Carbine) - ElectroCryoThermic™ technology makes the plasma projectiles increase enemies' sensitivity to temperature changes and shock. However, the volatile plasma reaction does less direct damage, and generates more heat per shot.

Engineer

• Pump Action (“Warthog” Auto 210) - Converts the weapon into a whopping 6-gauge pump action capable of dealing massive damage and punching through multiple enemies. The intrusive old-school pump mechanism requires a smaller magazine, and you can't fit as many of these big ol' shells in your pockets.
  
• Hyperalloy Assembly (“Stubby” Voltaic SMG) - Precision-tooled hyperalloy components drastically reduce bullet spread. However, the weapon frame no longer absorbs recoil, transferring all force directly to the user's wrist. This means increased recoil, as well as elevated risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.
  
• SmЯt Trigger OS™ (LOK-1 Smart Rifle) - A sleek new operating system from the SmЯt Corporation gives the weapon near-instantaneous lock-on, and automatically fires shots at locked-on targets. This system is quite CPU-intensive, however, lowering the maximum number of lock-ons.
  
• [REWORK] Conductor Bullets (“Stubby” Voltaic SMG) - A conductor has been added to your bullets, enabling them to add electrify to platforms and sentries on impact. Additionally, electrified Sentries work as nodes, creating an electric arc between them. Conductor Bullets are bigger and require a modified firing mechanism, reducing ammo capacity and fire rate.*

*Conductor Bullets is a rework of the 'Turret Arc' Overclock, and is effectively just a plain buff: It adds the ability to electrify your platforms, giving you more options for electric area control.


Driller

• Scorching Tide (CRSPR Flamethrower) - A supercharged injection system and integrated duckbill choke allows the weapon to blast a blistering horizontal wave of flame by holding reload. Using this mechanism eats up additional fuel and makes the weapon unstable, reducing movement speed during charging.
  
• Crystal Nucleation (Cryo Cannon) - A new cryoctane fuel blend creates razor-sharp formations of ice crystals on impact with terrain, which damage and slow enemies attempting to walk through them. These ice crystals melt over time, but can be maintained by cooling them. This modification results in a smaller overall fuel tank capacity in order to make room for a new fuel injector.
  
• Volatile Compound (Corrosive Sludge Pump) - Adding ammonium nitrate to the sludge mixture makes it explode when exposed to high temperatures. This new sludge mix has a thinner consistency, increasing the ammo cost of the pump's charged shot. It also smells even worse.

New difficulty level: Hazard 5+

For the daring, the bold, the foolhardy and the sweaty: we’re upping the difficulty with Hazard 5+. This mode adds four adjustable options to boost the Hazard 5 challenge: Aggressive Enemies (affects speed and attack rate), Player Vulnerability (you take more damage), More Enemies (guess what this one does), and Tough Enemies (bugs are more bullet sponge-y).

Each of the four options can be adjusted individually between two levels of increased intensity. Regardless of which specific modifier switches are active, all Hazard 5+ games will be grouped together in the server list. This difficulty switch feature is only available for Hazard 5+, and it must first be unlocked via an assignment.

It’s like Haz 5 – but Plus!™

New Ommoran Heartstone phase

With Season 05, we’ll be introducing a new attack pattern to the Ommoran Heartstone in the existing Escort Duty mission.

Right now, the Ommoran sequence has four fixed phases: two bug swarms, and two “Heartstone special attack” phases. We’re adding a third special attack, where the Ommoran sends up rock spikes from below to encase you in a stony trap.


If you’re encased in the rock, you’ll have to spend precious time mining yourself free. And if you happen to be on top of Doretta while the rock spikes target you, you’ll end up causing tons of damage to our beloved Drilldozer.

This attack pattern will have an equal, random chance of being one of the Ommoran Heartstone's special attack phases, making each encounter more fresh and unpredictable.


New secondary objectives
Surprise! We’re adding two new secondary objectives to accomplish during your missions.

• Bha Barnacles: This pernicious and rather gross invasive species has taken up residence in the caves, and they prefer to nest in the ceilings. Look up, and shoot them out wherever you see them.
  
• Swarmer Eggs: We’ve noticed new clutches of Glyphid eggs popping up. Like most eggs, they are completely defenseless. Track them down and smash them with any tools at your disposal.

New warnings and anomalies

You’ll be seeing a couple ways to add a twist to your missions:

• [Warning] Duck and Cover: Macteras, Infectors and Spitters, oh my! Jump into a cave packed with an extra helping of projectile-shooting enemies. This time, the bugs shoot back.
  
• [Warning] Ebonite Outbreak: The caves have an unusual concentration of stony-armored Ebonite Glyphids. Their only vulnerability is melee damage. Better keep those pickaxes close at hand.
  
• [Anomaly] Secret Secondary: Management has tacked on another side objective for you. A second secondary, if you will. You’ll find out what it is once you’re down in the dig site.
  
• [Anomaly] Blood Sugar: Bad news: The caves are filled with airborne toxins that constantly drain your health. Good news: These toxins also make Glyphid blood crystallize into healing Red Sugar. You’ll need to kill to survive.

Reactivating seasons

We’re implementing the ability to reactivate any existing season of Deep Rock Galactic, and play through it whenever you like. We’ve done a deep dive on this feature in this Q&A explainer post – but here’s how it works in a nutshell:

• In the Season Terminal, there will be a new tab called ‘Season Selection’. You’ll use this to pick any available DRG season and activate it.
  
• When you select a season, it’ll reload your Space Rig with your selected season’s theme, and activate that season’s Performance Pass.
  
• Party members don’t need to have the same season active in order to join you. You’ll progress on the season you have active, and they’ll progress on the one they have selected.
  
• As part of this, we’re replacing the “Disable Season Content” option with a season simply called Vanilla. This option has no associated Performance Pass, and a balanced chance to spawn Events and Warnings from all seasons.

New Performance Pass

Here at the Deep Rock Galactic Corporation, we know that a motivated employee is a productive employee. That’s why, instead of health insurance or worksite safety measures, we’re introducing an all-new Performance Pass and Cosmetic Tree for Season 05! Deposit Core Stones, complete daily challenges and earn XP to be rewarded with Scrip, which you can use to purchase glimmering new cosmetics, such as the Neo-Tekya weapon framework.


New Weapon Maintenance paint jobs
When we introduced the Weapon Maintenance reward system, we said we’d only add one new paintjob per season. But we’re doing three this time! Pranked ya!

Three new tiers to complete, three new paintjobs to unlock:

1. WM 5.1 'Liberty'
   
2. WM 5.2 'Heavy Metal'
   
3. WM 5.3 'Dragon Scale'

Unlimited promotion tiers
Graybeards rejoice: We’re adding an expanded promotion tracker that will indicate how many times you’ve promoted your dwarf past the (formerly maximum) Red III rank. This system will be retroactive, so it’ll count all promotions you’ve had up to this point.


New dance moves


It wasn’t easy to teach the dwarves to twerk. But it was worth it.
Also busting out on a dance floor near you: the Bully Maguire and the Spongebob Shuffle.


Cosmetic filtering

We’ve implemented a few handy options to keep track of your growing wardrobes. You’ll now be able to filter your cosmetics by subtype, style and season, making it quicker to put the perfect look together. We’ve also introduced a ‘Novelty’ and ‘Company Approved’ toggle for the Randomize option, to give you a bit more control over your randomized outfits.


Loads of new cosmetics
In addition to the cosmetics coming in the Season 05 Cosmetic Tree and Performance Pass, we’re also adding some shiny new unlockables into the Lost Pack and Cargo Crate loot pools, in order to make up for the seasonal cosmetics that are being migrated as part of the season reactivation feature. Oh, and we’re adding some fresh new skin tones, too! Those are going in The Shop.

We can’t wait to see all the fresh and funky new ways you style your dwarves.


Reworked effect overlays
We've reworked, animated and expanded the screen overlays that happen when you get a status effect – like getting webbed, or set on fire, injured, or your shield breaking.

Now all the visuals for different status effects look a bit cooler, and some got animations. Nice!


New DLC: Order of the Deep

Soon, you’ll be able to don the armor of the Order of the Deep, a venerated dwarven mining guild. It’s your turn to represent the Order as you brave the perilous depths – for Rock and Stone.

You can add the Order of the Deep DLC to your wishlist here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2934390/Deep_Rock_Galactic__Order_of_the_Deep_Pack/

Obligatory note: This armor is purely cosmetic, and doesn’t make you better at the game. It simply makes you look like a stone cold baller.

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We’ve got some more smaller stuff coming too, but Management’s telling me to quit typing and get back to the mines. Stay tuned for the Season 05 patch notes for the full breakdown of every single thing we’re adding!

Season 05: Drilling Deeper arrives on Steam on June 13th, launching on consoles up to 2 weeks after.
If you absolutely can't wait to get your hands on it, you might want to check out our experimental branch, which goes live today. You can read more about getting set up with that right here[www.deeprockgalactic.com].

Buckle up, miners. You’ll need all your rocks and stones for this one.

With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew