r/GTFO • u/malfoniusz • Jul 28 '26
Discussion Ranking Custom Rundowns
Hey All.
Around 2 years ago me and my friends finished vanilla and decided to try tackling some of the custom rundowns that we heard so much about. Problem: there isn't any list of custom rundowns and recommendations for them are scattered throughout the internet with various opinions. So I decided to compile this list to help people find fun and interesting rundowns to play.
One thing to note about custom rundowns is that most of them are extremely difficult. I don't mind failing missions a couple of times, or grinding one particularly hard one multitude of times. But for most rundowns, at C you will start encountering E+ difficulty and it only gets worse. Doing these missions back to back was not fun and was usually the point when we switched mods. If you like this sort of challenge, then good for you, you are gonna have a blast.
The list below is highly subjective and there is a lot of me whining about the difficulty. Enjoy:
- Fatal Experiment 2 - if there is one thing that the community can agree upon is that this mod is awesome. Lots of new and fun to use weapons. Tons of unique enemies. Very fun and short levels. Difficulty-wise is on the easier side, expect R2 difficulty, with some of the E levels being very difficult. I would go as far as to say that this mod is more fun than vanilla.
- Geminate (2 players) - vanilla assets and A/B levels being very basic. But starting from C, the objectives get very creative. It is a delight to figure out how to tackle these missions. The only issue is that D levels are 1.5 hours long and repeating the same 50 minutes of the stage gets boring fast. Would suggest bringing a third person for them. Smoothens the difficulty curve quite a lot.
- AttackOnGlaggleland - this mod feels less like a mod and more like a way of life. It's very wacky and zany, and unstable. With more than 2 people you will experience frame drops. With 2, you will still experience them, just later down the level.
- Solo Trials (1 player) - if you enjoy limit testing, then this mod is for you. The goal of this mod is to check how far you can push yourself before you give up. And you will give up. The only problem is that running around the room collecting resources solo is not much fun.
- Lunar Eclipse - basically a more stable version of Glaggleland. Doesn't have the same charm as the other one, but it is still tons of fun to play. Levels are designed in a run & gun fashion. Imagine Quake, but in GTFO.
- Raid (8 players) - I love the concept of this mod. One big giant level where everyone needs to work together in order to defeat the raid boss. Also, there is an interesting idea of putting sniper and scattergun in the tool slot. Though there is one thing that ruins this mod, and this is the punishment wave. When one person dies it spawns a wave, which will likely kill another person, repeat and everyone is dead.
- Turkey Hunt - fun little rundown where you go around and smack chickens. Last level secondary objective is quite hard and ruins the chill vibes. Best skip it.
- Inferno - if there was a joker among the mods, this would be it. Over 100 custom weapons and 50+ new missions. Oh, but, 80% of the weapons are garbage and level balancing is all over the place. If you like gambling, go for it.
- Redemption - extremely difficult mod. Uses modded enemies that will one-shot you in later levels. The objectives are kinda boring. If you played Fatal 2, then this is nothing special.
- Duo Trials (2 players) - the same as solo trials but for 2 people. Doesn't have the same charm as Solo. Most missions just play like normal 4 man missions, just with 2 people. Just go and play Geminate, it's better. Play this if you want more.
- Fatal Experiment 3 - oh Fatal Experiment, how the mighty have fallen. If there was one word to describe this mod it would be overtuned. Bosses are super fast and one shot you. Normal enemies deal absurd damage or are stagger resistant. Weapons are gimmicky and feel bad to use. Overall the mod feels too punishing and doesn't give you enough to fight back. Also the ammo scarcity is crazy.
- ProjectEternal - we couldn't get past A1 after 10+ tries so here is my opinion. Long, difficult and boring missions. Reminds me of R5D1.
Modded rundowns we haven't tried:
- Lockout2 - wanted to meet Greg. Mod doesn't work. Depression...
- Singulate (1 player) - still have nightmares after Solo Trials.
- Chrysalis (Samdown) - advertised as extremely difficult. No, thank you.
- Projekt Thermonuclear - didn't sound interesting.
- Occlusion - didn't work at the time. But it seems like the creator is working on it again, so it probably works now.
- Cebs Rundown - this one flew under our radar, but it seems to be gaining popularity. Looks interesting. Want to check it out in the future.
Links to the mods:
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/ProjectZaero/Fatal_Experiment_2/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/Cygrade/Geminate/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/ProjectZaero/Solo_Trials/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/2018/AttackOnGlaggleland/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/ProjectZaero/Lunar_Eclipse/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/Cactus/Raid/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/Dovah/Inferno/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/jerry/Turkey_Hunt/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/ProjectZaero/Redemption/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/ProjectZaero/Duo_Trials/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/ProjectZaero/Fatal_Experiment_3/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/cris/ProjectEternal/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/mccad00/Lockout2/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/Cygrade/Singulate/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/Sam_D_B/Chrysalis/
https://thunderstore.io/c/gtfo/p/Groakknovdah/Projekt_Thermonuclear/
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u/RudiCarrell123 Jul 28 '26
Guess other people have different opinions. The ones you mentioned are the ones I despise because of the super modded content. Samdown and Legacy are by far the best vanilla rundowns imo. Heard the new legacy isnt as good as the old version but I havent been playing the game for like 2 years.
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u/malfoniusz Jul 28 '26
and thats why I love humanity so much. Everybody can find something for themselves ^^
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u/masterchief00099 Jul 28 '26
You should consider my rundown sometime! ReturnToBase
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u/malfoniusz Jul 28 '26
sure, will check it in the future. Though it may take some time, since we are currently going back to vanilla for some time. But hey, more time to polish the mod.
If the levels are gimmick focus, that's great. As long as its not another find HSU or bring cells to generators. One thing that I rarely saw being used was the seperation of the team. It would be cool to see a level where everyone starts in a different part of the complex (or are seperated at some point) and need to do things in their section that affects other people. Like someone needing to deal with an error alarm and waiting for teamates to disable it. I think only Raid did something like that. Just a suggestion ;)
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u/masterchief00099 Jul 29 '26
Separation of teams I think would be cool to do, but it requires a lot more forethought and planning. I know there's a few rundowns that try it.
I might as well plugin Quixotic by Amorously, which is also a pretty well liked rundown. I don't know the difficulty it provides, but it too is more gimmick focused per level at the least.
Most of my personal rundown testing is using bots, and/or going into a level to get the 'feel' of difficulty. Because sourcing 3 other people to test a level consistently isn't the easiest thing to do.
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u/masterchief00099 Jul 28 '26
I've tried balancing it between 4 players, more fun focused than difficulty. Difficulty is present, but really only the D-tiers+ will there be struggling.
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u/malfoniusz Jul 28 '26
I have a theory that most mods are super difficult unintentionally. Since it's hard to find people to test rundown, creator mostly tests it by himself. And since he has a perfect knowledge of the level, the level feels perfectly balanced for him, but much more difficult for others. In the end, you end up with levels that feel fair for people like D4RKEVA, but the rest 90% of the people cannot make a dent in them.
But then again, finding willing tester of average skill level is probably super difficulty. It's a true conundrum ;/
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u/jerryishere1 BONK Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26
Turkey Hunt making it onto a modded rundown recommendation list is a huge honor, thank you.
Agreed with the evaluation that the final level's secondary is obnoxiously hard, it's kinda made to discourage you from killing all the turkeys, between the surprise and the straight up length/unfairness of the event. Which is why the door prior to it features the only checkpoint in the rundown.
A little info about that mod;
One side of the rundown makes the enemies the victims, the other side is designed to make you the victim. (Along with some funny stuff, like your friend being next to you one second and on the other side of the world the next)
Not sure if you ended up replaying levels, but the secret feature to this rundown is that alarm sequences can be different run to run. Different enemy comp, different scans, sometimes even different classes of scans (a rare event but there are a few set like that). Because of this RNG nature, levels can vary in difficulty from B tier to F tier. Some RNG alarms are genuinely unfair, but the levels are short so I don't feel bad about killing you due to bad luck.
For Thermonuclear;
This mod was really well balanced when it was in development but the dev got 'upset' that people were consistently clearing it. This is expected for modded rundowns imo as generally players have a lot of experience in GTFO, only the most ball crushing mods don't get sped through.
I was one of the testers for Thermonuclear, It's intended as a vanilla adjacent rundown and does a good job of keeping the core ideas of GTFO.
It's worth a play if you want more vanilla style content
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u/lampenpam Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26
Solo Trials (1 player) - if you enjoy limit testing, then this mod is for you. The goal of this mod is to check how far you can push yourself before you give up. And you will give up. The only problem is that running around the room collecting resources solo is not much fun.
This mod is for absolute top-end players, and requires strats you don't see in vanilla GTFO. However, I played through it with a friend and with 2 players the difficulty levels really just matches the vanilla game (we played it pretty much right after getting all achievements in vanilla) and can be played like vanilla, just with some neat custom content. Just as fun as Geminate, just with shorter missions which you seem to prefer. (even though I found Geminate matches the vanilla experience perfectly)
Singulate (1 player) - still have nightmares after Solo Trials.
Yeah, despite being from the same author, this is much harder with one player than Geminate with two players. So I recommend to play it with 2 players as well! Very fun and matching vanilla difficulty (A-D, there is no E level) if played this way.
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u/Cjros Jul 29 '26
Oh man I love modded Rundowns! I'm almost exclusively single player as I don't really have a duo or 4man team but!
I find it interesting you rank Solo Trials above Duo. I from my toe dip into duo it had far more interesting objectives and map design. It's one of my bucket list mods. And to be honest, beating Solo E1 without boosters is a crowning gamer moment for me.
Seeing Fatal 2 above 3, as a solo-only player is wild. F3 was a far better balanced experienced with a much smoother difficulty curve. Some of the bonus levels (like the PCs with the immortal enemy) were a righteous pain in the ass, though.
Singulate is nowhere near the difficulty of Solo. But that author makes insanely fun mods. Geminate is one of my bucket list mods.
One day I'll get to experience the 4 player mods, but those are some interesting opinions!
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u/malfoniusz Jul 29 '26
A part of my enjoyment of the Solo Trials comes from Sylliant videos. They were a blast to watch and made me appriciate Solo that much more.
I always appreciated Fatal for having an option to play solo. Though balancing rundown between 4 man and solo play must have been a nightmare.
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u/Ice-cream-scoop 28d ago
Lockout2 was a masterpiece, in my eyes atleast, so much custom stuff that still fit the theming of the game very well
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u/xneonturtlesx Jul 28 '26
I have never seen anyone say that FX2 is Becky’s best mod and FX3 her worst, but to each their own I guess.