You should do a drone only run, no items (except for maybe ones that give you minions, like beetles gland.) Maybe do it on easy mode for a chance to do well. Also with the engineer for more minions. Essentially the goal is you have a swarm of drones.
Wait but if you have already 52 likes that's 52 buffs which means he could already be insane... *New patch* "so we decided TC-280 should shoot preon shots instead of normal bullets which are homing. They then spawn another TC-280 on kill. Also, his health is now decided by the time spent multiplied by both itself and levels completed then multiplied by a small generous amount of 7,000,000."
Counterpoint: giving an equipment drone a milky chrysalis or spinel tonic is hilarious, and the entertainment that provides single-handedly justifies their existence
In general Woolie is sleeping hard on giving your old equipment to a drone when you find better equipment. If all I’ve got is a radar scanner and now I found a preon, you best believe I’m giving that scanner to the drone and reaping the benefits of the pulses it gets. If you’re already getting rid of an equipment, it only makes sense to pick up a free drone even if it’s shit. You’re essentially getting something that draws aggro for absolutely free.
I got one this one time and it spent the whole of my abyssal depths round stuck in the cave system spawn. I had to punch it through the exit as loader only for it to be insta-killed by an Blazing Elder Lemurian
JoySparx, I know the thing that summons 4 missile drones for like 25 seconds. Ever get 2 power cells with that of the missile launcher? I have seen god now :0
i LOVE when those damn magma worms target my gun turret on the other side of the map. It's free dps, while I take out the trash. It's a QoL thing.... really lol
ᐃᑦᑎᓂᖅᓯᐅᑐᖅ ᑕᖅᓴᖅ as if the UI clutter can get any worse lol. I find turning off money and XP particle effects helps with this. Harder to recognize when you open barrels tho
@@marmitaa8619 the spawns for newt altars are specific to them though usually 1-2 spawn out of 3-5 possible locations per stage, while lunar chests are mixed in normal chest spawns. There are a couple stages with spots that always spawn newts (aqueduct, scorched) but require a good bit of movement to reach
Idk if it’s an artifacts 2.0 thing, but drones seem horrendously overpowered if you can get multiple shaped glass. Their damage seems to scale with it, which gets crazy pretty quickly.
Unlocking the blight load out really helps with finishing off those poisoned enemies and it’s actually really easy to get even if your going for a specific run
Kazuhira Miller : Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel my leg... And my arm... even my fingers... The body I've lost... the comrades I've lost... won't stop hurting... It's like they're all still there. You feel it, too, don't you? I'm gonna make them give back our past!
I'm going to pretend I haven't been late into a run and dropped my equipment for backup purely because I had 8 fuel cells and wanted to "release the swarm"
I hadn’t really thought about it, but having captain now with the drones, especially if you a buying emergency drones, will just continue to zap projectiles from the air and make the drones more tanky. They become all that more effective at damage sponge. Sad though, I really enjoy minionmancers and things of that nature.
The bigger brain strat involving drones and the captain is to just get them because they'll also zap down projectiles that are heading towards *you* as well.
May I also add does anyone find that magma worm absolutely loves to target gunner turrets. I activate stage 3 rallypoint delta teleporter and after 5 seconds magma worms like mmm yes I love the look of that gunner turrets on the opposite side of the map
In 1 drones were really useful because you had "Arms Race" (gives drones a chance to fire missiles on action) and "Drone Repair Kit". Besides drones were always close to the player. If they add those 2 items (and make them move faster maybe) they could become useful even after the first loop
@@vaelophisnyx9873 The real fix: make their hitbox not collide with the player. Problem solved. At that point, they're just kind of there for damage sponge and a bit of damage. The sole reason why I don't use drones is because the can collide with the player, and even move the player, which is super annoying for certain builds. If they didn't get in the way, I'd be fine with them.
@shortythecat well in the other games its almost always pvp or some big open world. In risk of rain the characters are the content so maining a single one is like playing one quest in an open world game over and over
I'm pretty sure the only Survivor who can utilize drones effectively even into the late game is Acrid. Reminder that Acrid has practically 0 defensive skills in his kit so taking any amount of fire away from you plus giving you some healing on top of it is choice for poison boi. Attack Drones are also pretty good at helping you get those kill confirms after they've been left at 1 hp from poison stacks. Note that actually spending money on drones late game is still somewhat of a meme cause all of your drones will instantly wipe the moment they decide to prioritize a Boss Imp or Scavenger, so RoI is still pretty low there. But Acrid with "The Backup", Both Heresy items and a butt load of gestures / fuel cells is probably one of the most reliable Acrid builds you can get IMO.
Engineer can do good work with the gunner turret if they go for the age-old mushroom/base turret combo. If you have a lot of mushrooms, it can even start to affect air units!
At the time of the video, equipment drones had the same cooldowns, but now they're much better, reducing cooldown by 5x. With certain equipment you can pretty much have them activated all the time
If there's a turret near the teleporter on the first of second stage I'll usually take it just to help with crowd control on early stages. Its especially worth it if you want to rush the boss or do a mountain challenge on the first stage. The healing drone is great for the first couple stages as well if you don't find any healing items.
one run I got I had like...35ish drones and turrets at stage 20. it was amazing, 3 emergency drones, 1 incinerator, 6 healing drones, and the rest were missile/gunner, none of them were dying because there were so much heals
@@vaelophisnyx9873 Oh Ive already tried that bosses melt sure but it doesnt do shit about the minefield of little guys filling the map with endless peashots
With also a very stupidly short range* Like, IMO, The Engineer's biggest strength is all in the stationary turret. Like yeah, Moving turrets have greater DPS potential, but why have lots of damage when you can instead get more reliable anti-wisp cover? Wisps kill me more often than Templar, Scavengers, or Game Crashes simply due to their ridiculous tracking and multi-shots.
Woolie, I totally agree with everything you said, but I will say gunner turrets (on the first loop) are really good IF they are close to the tele. They can take agro, and their damage is very good. I tested the gunner turrets damage at 2 mins on a beetle queen tele boss, and it took like 15 seconds for it to take out the beetle BY ITSELF.
they could literally just take the old Risk of Rain 1 items that were drone specific, give them some tweaking and that would already hel- oh wait pathing was a none issue back then yeah drones would need their own dedicated update alongside ai to be salvaged
@@Lucyller compared to having a gunner drone stuck literally on the other side of the map or having a vagrant launch it permanently out of the fight for the remainder of the stage today makes those kinda issues trivial by comparison
Honestly the fix isn't that hard to do, hear me out. Give the drones and only the drones a collision box that only corresponds to an invisible barrier around the player. Now, whenever the player moves, the drones are automatically pulled with them as if they were running into terrain. Might look a bit silly, but with a bit of tweaking I think it would be fine.
I’ve found equipment drones to be decently useful, with a radar scanner, or as a free meat shield after getting a useless equipment out of a chance shrine
One thing I would say is that giving a equipment drone a Primordial Cube, was actually pretty decent for me. Not only did it gain agro in the lower stages but when it activated the cube it would sometimes drew enemies across/ off the map and or allow me to gain some nutty proc damage cause of how bunched up they were. Would highly recommend it if and only if you have both the cube as drone on one stage
This video forgot one thing... you can have more then 1 of a drone. This is where they shine, sure a single one deals little damage... but if you can get a large number they will decimate things. This is why individually they suck, imagine if they were worth the price compared to a single item? Getting 2-3 would literally be broken... much more when you get 5-10. Except the equipment drone, those eat time to get and they have extreme down times.
AoE's can still take a bunch of them out at once (thinking Elder Lemurian, Greater Wisp, etc.), but the bigger problem is that their movement is slow and doesn't scale with your own. So when you go to run to the other side of the map to scout or farm for chests, they've fallen behind and get killed by whatever spawns behind you.
Me buys all the drones I can get AFTER the boss with my leftover money: I am the right I also have a tip for the equipment drones... If you see one DONT use it see if you can open another orange box and give THAT item to it if it's not better that what you already have. That way you keep your item But they take a different item that you might not want so it's fine sure you may pay a few hundred but if you already cleared the map but not the boss go for it. Listen I know that was a noobie tip but I think it was useful
They should add an item that increases the effectiveness of drones. Perhaps a common (white) item that adds +10% damage/healing and max health to all drones with +5% per stack, maybe call the item "Blueprints" or something. Additionally, there should be a lunar item that gives you a single powerful drone with unlimited health that constantly follows you, doing large amounts of damage, with the downside of not being able to pick up any other drones, destroying all drones you already have upon picking up this new "Moon Drone" or whatever it might be called.
The problem with the Crowdfunder is that it doesn't turn off until you run out of money, but at the same time the Equipment Drone doesn't generate its own money. I think it would be cool if it did, so you as a player could help kill things to fund its path of destruction.
I'll never forget the time I got an Ifrit's Distinction and ran into an equipment drone for the first time ever 🙃 F for that 1/4000 drop that lasted a solid minute
@@MJelly-yj8kp tbh I think the proc one's are less of a problem than capacitor/missiles, capacitor just outright kills you if not above 90% and missiles outright kill if you don't have enough speed yet. I still like scav though since there's an enemy in the game that can kill you no matter how strong you get but damn some combo's feel so cheese
Yes, and I lost a run like that recently. My friend and I were going for the long road, super swole. Turned the corner with our army of drones and saw a scavenger. Tried to figure out what it had and then suddenly all my drones exploded and I died, tons of knives everywhere. 10/10
I think maybe a new item(probably green) that increases drone strength and help would be a nice addition. And, if they did it right, it would also affect engineer turrets
Well, with the Spare Drone Parts red from the DLC, your wish was granted. Spare Drone Parts are so busted that getting them early on is basically a free win if you just grab all the drones you can.
Personally, I find the assault drones extremely useful when you have the backup equipped. They have a far better fire rate than a standard gunner drone, and are far less hindering and easily disposable
As someone who's extremely good at consistently avoiding damage throughout your runs, you may have a personal bias against their effectiveness as aggro-pulling. Since monsters aggro changes on who has damaged them most recently, for less evasive players such as myself, they are a godsend which has saved many a run. Personally i like to pick up a few every round if ive bought all i wanted, just for their aggro-tanking abilities. They ain't the best for the best, that's all ill say.
Reminds me of that one item that buffed all drones, it was a green from RoR that essentially gave drones an ATG. Probably not enough to justify buying drones, but that's not in RoR2, so I guess all they are good for is decoys.
The game meta will be much more interesting when we get a final level that we can go to after stage 4, or better said you will have a meta for fast end and a meta for looping. I'd say drones would be good if you wanted to win asap
a few days ago my friend and I were grindout eclipse levels. I was playing Railgunner and he was playing Engineer. I died because I'm bad and he made it to Mithrix. Phase 4 Mithrix, we had this weird bug where Mithrix didn't attack us and his Engineer Turrets didn't attack him. what *did* attack him was our Incinerator Drone. Our Incinerator Drone 1v1'd Phase 4 Mithrix. and won. it was hilarious. Incinerator Drone OP
I had kinda the same experience with an incinerator drone where I went to hide behind a pillar the drone charged towards mithrix burned him and died like a hero 07
I once had a run with two equipment drones and they both had Back-ups on them. It was essentially like having two Fuel Cells and made up for the crappy cooldown times.
Equipment Drones with Disposable Missile Launchers are actually pretty good... but when/how do you plan for that if you aren't Multi with Command Artifact
Equipment drones with artifact of enigma is actually a death game, like if you aren't in a good spot and the sky begins turning blue, or it's health begins rapidly decreasing... RUN. Tbf I could always just grapple the ceiling sooooo
well now that we have spare drone parts and empathy cores i’d say drones are very viable ESPECIALLY on captain and acrid. healing drones with mini guns??? bruh say less
i feel like you did them a bit of an injustice by not mentioning captain and his microbots. they make the drones exponentially tankier, especially with attack speed. i still don't think it really makes drones worth it over regular chests, but i would've liked to see that mentioned
I tend to end up with a short-lived army of drones whenever I brainfart and can't find the teleporter since I'm fighting but already looted all the chests in the area.
I actually kinda like equipment drones. If there's a spare activated item laying around and I'm fast enough, I often will go and give the drone the item since it's free and good for a few funny moments.
I find Equipment Drones to be pretty useful with The Back Up or the Radar Scanner. With the Back Up, that equipment doesn’t really do damage to begin with, and it’s great at drawing aggro. With the Radar Scanner, it’s not reliant on damage anyways.
I only start buying drones when generating tons of money happens in a few minutes. Certain equipment like draconis egg with equipment drone is hilarious.
TC-280 is one of those drones that I really want but that the director really doesn't want me to have. When I'm playing captain, it never spawns on the first loop. When I'm playing any other character it does, but the next stage boss is usually a wandering vagrant that instantly kills it. I've never had the 280 for more than two stages.
i've had a horde of missle and gunner drones carry me through the first 2 loops... but even with 2 emergency drones and a plethora of healers, they don't get much farther than that on the other hand, in a game with a buddy of mine, he kept finding equipment drones and decided to give them all of his equipment. they got a little bit farther, but beyond being hilarious to watch, they fell off toward the end of the 3rd loop. still, was fun as hell while it lasted xD
My personal gripe about the equipment drone is there never seems to be any equipment chests when they're around. But if they're not around, I'll have five freaking equipment chests on a level. 🤷♂️
Second personal gripe: They have movement priority over the player. They can push the player around and the player can't push them out of the way. Kind of a pain when they crowd you when you are trying to dial in an artifact code, or when they push you off a cliff.
Better scaling and staying closer to the player, they don’t even need to deal that much damage imo just enough to kill wisps and other smaller enemies consistently and to just deal some extra damage to larger enemies. If they stayed close to you they’d basically just be a distraction and also could take out smaller enemies while you’re distracted fighting larger ones
I really hope TC-280 gets a buff because I love how it looks and I remember how hype I was the first time I found one :) It would be cool if they were more effective
Just found one yesterday in a play with two friends, we spent at least twenty seconds staring at it going WOOAH, I followed with a pretty acute "can we keep it?" Because im dumb like that, man this game's fun
I would love an item (or equipment) that gives all minions (drones, beetle guards, ghosts) your items. I think balancing something like this would be hard though as it would basically make engineer useless and could be extremely op. Maybe the minions can only get items that increase base stats rather than stuff like on-hits. I feel like that a minion based build could be a cool idea and bring a different gameplay dynamic to the game.
Maybe they could only get white items? Would still be really strong though. I’d just like drones to scale a bit better and a white item that increases all drone stats
I did a run the other day with a friend of mine where most of my purchases were drones. I ended up getting a Backup as well with a Fuel Cell. I ended up having so many drones that the list on the side of my screen didnt show all of them, and it was a huge list in general. It was a really fun run.
My experience with the Tc drone: 1st run: oh look it's a big boi drone with a large price it must be good, so I save up and get it. Next stage: dies to the lava worm 2nd run: maby that was just bad luck, let's try it again Next stage: dies to idk what. '_' Although disclaimer it was before the drone aoe dmg reduction, but it still leaves that bad taste in my mouth.
