Swarm Grinder – How to Grind the Swarm

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Guide to Grind the Swarm

All credit goes to >//The_FALCON!

Enemies and Environment

Alien Cells

Move around to open Alien Cells within range. White Alien Cells have a chance to spawn an enemy, depending how long the game lasted (longer -> higher). Purple Alien Cells spawn an enemy guranteed.

Conclusion:

• Go near Alien Cells to spawn enemies. Don’t spawn too many enemies at once.

Enemies

Enemies move towards player and attack when in melee range. There are some types that attack differently, but the vast majority of enemies attack in melee range. Being attacked lowers your health. If your health reaches 0 you lose the game.

Enemy Types:

• Grunt: Least amount of health, deals low amount of damage in melee range
• Bigger Grunt: more health and damage than the grunt, bigger in size, still melee range
• Exploder: will explode when you get close to it, dealing damage in an area
• Charger: will telegraph a line towards the enemy, then dash across the line to deal damage
• Burrower Boss: will spawn after each 10 cleared mining zones. Has an aoe melee attack and sometimes burrows underground to unburrow and deal damage in an area. Will drop 2 upgrades upon death.

Conclusion:

• Avoid enemy attacks by moving away from them.

Items

Dead enemies have a chance of dropping some fuel or some health. The fuel item refuels your character, and the health item heals your character. Picking up healing when already full health does nothing. Picking up fuel when at full fuel overcharges your character. Picking them up requires you to move close to them. These items will disappear after a short time.

Conclusion:

• Move in a circle around the enemies to avoid their attacks, then collect the dropped items. Keep the radius tight to not lose too many items and the number of enemies manageable so you won’t have nowhere to run.

Alien Rocks

Alien Rocks are yellow rocks that can be found around the arena. They can be damaged, however they will trigger Alien Cells around them if damaged, the size depends on how long the mission has been played for. If dealt enough damage, they will be destroyed and will drop Bio Shards.

Conclusion:

• Destroy the rocks only if you are comfortably ahead with the upgrades. They drop a low amount of shards, so they should only be seen as bonus shards, not prioritized over upgrades which allows you to survive longer and get a bigger shard payout.

Characters

Currently, there are two characters. Bulletstorm and Butcher.

Bulletstorm

• Starts with Gatling Gun
• Skill Perk: Each bullet fired from the same magaine of the Gatling Gun inflicts 1 more damage than the previous.
• Overcharge perk 1 (>100 fuel): Movement speed +10%
• Overcharge perk 2 (>125 fuel): Gatling Gun attack delay -33%

Butcher

• Starts with Cleaver
• Skill Perk: The tip of Cleaver deals double damage
• Overcharge perk 1: Cleaver area +20%
• Overcharge perk 2: Global Damage +20%
• Lower health and higher movement speed than Bulletstorm

Conclusion:

• Due to the high base movement speed, enemies can be walked around. The faster you can kill enemies, the faster you can get to the items they drop and the less enemies will be chasing you around. Gatling Gun can only target one enemy at a time, but deals more damage than Cleave. Cleave deals damage to a lot of enemies at the same time, but takes longer to kill an enemy. Thus Bulletstorm is the best choice.

Skills

Weapons

Your character has skills. Active and Passive skills. Active skills are weapons that automatically target and damage enemies, and require fuel to be powered. Passive skills increase certain stats, typically of multiple active skills. You can aquire skills by clearing a mining post of Alien Cells, then you can pick between 3 random skills, or if you already picked 5 unique skills it will present you with a random choice of those 5.

Conclusion:

• Clear mining outposts to increase your power but don’t summon too many enemies.
• If you have a choice between a new skill and a skill you already have, you should pick up the new skill. You will have a high chance of getting a skill you already have as a reward, especially after having picked 5, thus you should focus on completing your lineup before upgrading your skills.

Skills

There are serveral skills right now. Skills can affect local or global stats. Local means the stat within the skill, global means the same stat on every skill. Every stat manipulation listed here is local unless specified as global. Each unique sctive skill increases the global fuel consumption by +3/s

Actives:

• Gatling Gun. Tags: Rapid FIre. Effect: Automaticalls targets and shoots at the nearest enemy. Shoots each bullet in the magazine one after another, then stops shooting for a short time depending on cooldown. Base damage: 8. Base magazine size: 10. Base cooldown:
  1s.Upgrades:
  • Burst Gun (Cooldown -30%, Magazine Size -1)
  • Minigun (Firing Angle +1,25x, Magazine Size +2, Range +1,25x)
  • Crit Chance (Crit Chance +10%)
  • Reload Frenzy (Movement Speed +10% while Gatling Gun on cooldown)
  • Rapid Fire Damage (Rapid Fire Damage +35%)
• Scatter Shot. Tags: Rapid FIre. Effect: Randomly fires all bullets in the magazine in a circular pattern, then stops shooting for a short amount depending on cooldown. Base damage: 10. Base magazine size: 10. Base cooldown:
  2s. Upgrades:
  • Shotgun (Firing interval -33%, Cooldown +5%)
  • Homing Bullets (Seeking Power x3)
  • Spam (Firing Interval +20%, Projectile Spread -15%, Cooldown -25%)
  • Double Burst (After emptying the magazine, fires 5 bullets)
  • Rapid Fire Magazine Size (Rapid Fire magazine +33%)
• Homing Missles. Tags: Launcher. Effect: Launches missles that target enemies, then stops shooting for a short time depending on cooldown. Base damage: 14. Base cooldown: 3s. Base count: 3. Upgrades:
• Mortar. Tags: Launcher, Explosivel. Effect: Fires a missle with a big area of damage, then stops shooting for a short time depending on cooldown. Base damage: 9. Base cooldown: 2.5s. Base count: 1. Upgrades:
• Cleaver. Tags: Blade. Effect: Swings a big blade that deals damage around the character once, then stops for a short time depending on cooldown. Base damage: 10. Base cooldown: 1.5s. Base count: 1. Upgrades:
  • Executioner Blades (+50% Damage, +10% Cooldown)
  • Helicopter Blades (-15% Cooldown, -10% Damage)
• Vortex Blade. Tags: Blade. Effect: Shoots a persistent spinning blade at the nearest enemy that deals damage with a small area, then returns. It will be deployed again after a short time depending on cooldown.

Passives:

• Arsenal. Buffs all active skills. Global Damage +30%. Upgrades:
  • Blades Damage (Blades Damage +25%)
  • Rapid Fire Explosion (Rapid Fire Explosion Chance +5%)
  • Global Count (Blades Count +1, Launcher Count +1, Active Damage -15%)
• Torch. Amplifies Burn effects. Burn is a stackable damage over time effect.
• Lucky Charm. Enhances Critical Hits. +10% Global critical chance. Upgrades:
• Detonator. Enhances Explosives. Active Explosion Chance +5%, Base explosion damage: 6. Base area: 0.6x. Upgrades.

Conclusion:

• Assuming you picked Bulletstorm, you have great single target dps with your Gatling Gun.
• However there will be a lot of low health enemies around. You will need area of effect damage. Thus Mortar is the best second active skill choice.
• Due to the fact that active skills increase the fuel consumption, it is recommended to add no more active skills to your character.
• Arsenal has a heal on kill choice. Heal on kill massively increases your survivability, so it’s recommended. Arsenal also has other generally good choices like more damage.
• Lucky genreally increases your damage output, thus it is recommmended.
• Detonator adds some area of effect damage and improves those you already have, thus it is recommended.