Deep Rock Galactic – How to Properly Support Your Teammates with Support Tools

This guide explains how to support teammates in detail.

Guide to Support Teammates with Support Tools

Please note: all credit goes to Djungelskog!

How-To

Each of the four dwarf classes in the game have unique weapons, traversal tools, and support tools. Knowing what you can do to help your teammates effectively is essential to playing the game efficiently. For example…

If You’re Playing Scout

  • Light up the godforsaken caves.
  • Keeping yourself and your fellow dwarfs in the loop about what is in the cave is practically mandatory to succeed. Every dwarf comes with flares but you alone have the power of the sun itself in your pocket. Light the place up when first entering a room, or if you’re currently in or about to be in combat.

For a further breakdown of when it’s likely a good idea to use a flare, if you answer yes to any of the following questions, light the place up:

  • Are we fighting bugs right now?
  • Did mission control just alert us of a swarm?
  • Was a dreadnaught egg just popped, or other mini-boss activated?
  • Are my teammates shooting eachother because they cannot see?
  • Are we low on minerals in a room that is not quite cleared?
  • Time and practice will help you get a better sense of where to shoot flares, so to maximize the light output by each one.
  • But it’s also worth noting, this isn’t Minecraft, keeping a room totally lit won’t prevent bug spawns, so you don’t have to go crazy with it and waste all of your flares at once.

If You’re Playing as Engineer

  • This bad boy right here is one of your best friends.
  • The scout is your other best friend. Together, you and your scout can scrub caves clean and keep those pockets full of enough nitra to get you through the mission, and enough gold to pack your wallet to bursting.
  • If you see minerals on the wall? Platform them. End of story. If you have a scout, give the minerals in question a ping if he hasn’t already jumped on them, and they’re as good as yours.
  • Don’t have a scout? Well that’s fine too, as it just so happens you’re playing the only Builder class in the game. Make yourself a neat little stairwell, or practice some jump timing and you’ll be able to make yourself a defacto-elevator to minerals in no time.
    This can be accomplished easily by shooting the floor or side of the wall underneath you as you jump, repeating the process for exponentially increasing height.

If You’re Playing Driller

These bad boys here are some of the most helpful utility tools in the game. Not to tarnish the usefulness of any other tools, but these can be real handy.

Taking up the role as driller can effectively make you the Dwarf in Charge at several points during missions, for example.

  • On Site Refining missions: Drillers can make easy tunnels to pump jacks. You must let them do this. A shorter, more direct pipeline will be one less prone to break, and bugs in an enclosed tunnel will often be easy pickings.
  • Crassus Detonator Encounters: I’ll detail a useful driller strategy for these things further down in the guide, but for Crassus Cleanup purposes, having a driller to clear out the top half of a Crassus Crater can be extremely helpful, provided you’ve got the drill fuel for it.
  • The Pathmaker Class: The bottom line of playing Driller is that the caves basically bow to you, in many cases.
  • Need a shortcut between rooms? Easy as pie.
  • Did a teammate get hopelessly lost, or downed in the middle of nowhere and needing a revive? You can head right on over.
  • Is the drop-pod several rooms and quite a bit of verticality away? This is what you’re here for, pal. Get that tunnel going, and inform your fellow dwarfs as to where you’re starting it, so that they may tag along with you in your efficient retreat.

Terrain Manipulation

An incredibly important and often overlooked role of the Driller.

  • Flattening out spaces you’ll be spending time fighting bugs in is incredibly helpful towards your teammates (and especially yourself, as the DRG spray-n-pray class). Many biome types have environmental obstructions shooting out of the ground.
  • Be it thermal vents, spires of solid rock, frozen stalagmites, or various plant-like creatures (which can be dealt with quickly by means of throwing axes or power attacks, no need to waste drill fuel on plants)
  • The curved, pointed spires that surround the Hearthstone on Escort missions are also good to get rid of, so to open the playing field a bit.
  • Clearing these out provide a clearer shot on approaching bugs, and more consistent ground to blast with ice, flame or goo.

Point Defense Situations

  • At times of repairing a black box, satellite up-link, or fuel rods, it is required to stand within a certain radius to keep the event timer progressing. Sometimes however, there are big stupid walls of rock in the way that cut your standing space in half. If there isn’t a big open area on the other side, clear out that wall and give yourself and your team a nice little mini-cave to stand in. This will give you more space to stand and shoot, as well as a tiny bit of space to fall back to if absolutely necessary.
  • That said, sometimes up-link boxes or fuel rods just drop in terrible, inconvenient spots. You, however, can fix this with your mighty power drills. Over time you’ll likely develop a game-sense as to where to take point-objectives, be it drilling them down off of a ledge, or creating a full on bunker with the help of an engineer.

If You’re Playing Gunner

  • The gunner’s support tool is arguably the most circumstantially useful of the bunch.
  • The zipline launcher can be great for getting you, your teammates, and a heavy objector or two across a gap or up an incline, however these feats can also be accomplished by assistance from either the Engineer or Driller with their support tools.
  • That said, you’re welcome to beat them to the challenge by ziplining a mini-mule leg up to the mini-mule high up on a ledge before they can make it there, just make sure you’ve got the angles figured out.

It is also rather possible to be knocked off of your zipline by various means. That said, be on the look out for the following hazards before firing that zipline:

  • Fire or Magma jets of the Magma Core.
  • Wind or Frost tunnels in the Sandblasted Corridors or Glacial Strata.
  • Fume vents from the Fungus Bogs.
  • Web or Acid spitters on nearby ceilings of walls.
  • Groups of pesky Naedocytes that can knock you down in fractions of a second.

The zipline tool can also be an extreme personally useful tool to guide you, the gunner, towards your main purpose: Shoot Bug.

  • Having a birds-eye view of a room can make fighting swarms or dreadnaughts a breeze. Granted, this is especially effective when running with the Autocannon or the Hurricane, as the minigun tends to require a bit more on-the-ground accuracy.
  • Protecting the Drill-Dozer: Having a zipline or two to provide angles above Dotty can be extremely useful for protecting her properly. A zipline shooting directly above her (provided the cave allows this) can give you a good angle on the dozer for the entirety of the swarm, and your teammates the chance to get on top of the Hearthstone if they should want to do that for whatever reason.

Like the other support tools, game-sense for when to use them will develop over time.

Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 8066 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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