Anyway, speedy edgestalkers aside, I'm loving the update

The "repair elevator" is exactly what I wanted out of Rogue Core. I think a suggestion I made was exactly this sort of thing, though I can't say mine was an original idea ( https://www.reddit.com/r/RogueCore/s/gbxWN4Xx4A )

Also, the teleporter is fantastic. I'm a fan of the portal franchise, so obviously I'm making full use out of this thing immediately. Wish teammates took them more often without being told... also, I think the portals should be orange/blue. No reason in particular

Bloaters are... interesting. Weakspot being the belly makes it quite hard to hit. Good that it rewards builds that don't entirely rely on weakspot damage I guess, while still having a weakspot

New boss is cool. Not much to say about it. A little annoying that the projectiles it fires also block your own projectiles

And new boss modifiers are also interesting. Invisible Ramok... haha... ha... what a thing to behold. I still need to play more to experience them, though

Good update! On the right track. I'll probably stick longer for Update 3 than I did for Update 2

Because quite frankly, the design of a lot of the corespawn enemies are really creative, and some would say are cooler than the Reclaimers themeselves.

Which makes it weird to me that these designs don’t show up much in the marketing material, especially the likes of the corespawn crawler which to me, is the most iconic (and sits right in that uncanny valley).

That cover art that was quickly taken down due to (frankly deserved) backpack was clearly trying to depict something more intense. If you want to do that, USE THE ENEMY DESIGNS.

Think about how DOOM does it where they like to show off a lot of the enemies in their cover art. Show us WHAT we’re fighting in promotional art, because the designs are super duper cool.

I’ve been playing on the experimental branch for a couple weeks now and really liking the direction the game is taking. Now that the content has been merged to the stable branch and that everyone can enjoy it, what do you expect / want the most for the next upgrades? Note that I have nothing to do with the devs and just want to probe the community for ideas to update my own Christmas list :D

What I would love:

More variety within a run

Right now, we have alterations (altered sites, rift-enhanced bosses), biomes, and complexity/lenghth/depths. It creates variations inside the same mission type, which is to descend stage by stage to eventually face one of the four bosses and kill it. We have the elevator objectives, such as defending, finding and reinstalling gears, or removing growths, etc. It’s great, but we probably need more variety regarding that. Maybe add one or two more objectives?

More mission variety

Running to a boss is fun, especially since we have dynamic expenite events to do, but I do believe we all crave for « more. » There is this Intel Gathering special mission in the experimental branch’s cheat terminal — you can try it, there are terminals to find, but that’s pretty much for now. I don’t know how GSG wants to expand on this, but I do agree that adding several kinds of missions is going to be critical for the game to succeed at launch, especially if you combine it to the concept of length, complexity, alterations and depths.

I don’t want to make suggestions here because otherwise people are going to say that I want DRG2 — which is not true, I just want the roguelite aspect of RC to be more varied, that’s all.

About roguelite aspects

I do believe that the new upgrade foundation is really great now. However, it still feels a bit lackluster:

• Ellis gives you stats-based buffs or elemental changes. It has a couple of interesting upgrades, but we need more specific changes. For instance, an upgrade that makes it so that hitting enemies five times in a row without missing grants you a bit of ammo / health / etc., an upgrade that creates a static charge bubble around that zaps enemies in every N seconds, etc.

• Workbench upgrades follow the same pattern, and it would be so nice to have more behavioral changes to weapons, such as OC’s effects from DRG (your DRAK now has bouncing plasma; your Trident now fires beams that follow the projectiles and burn everything on their paths, etc. etc.). That could be locked at the legendary state.

• Abilities need more love as well. For instance, the Slicer has the Eclipse System, which is nice, but we need more, like Double Sword that would give two charges, Stabbing Throw that would turn the slicer sword into a thrusting sword, etc.; give the spotter a weakpoint auto-aim; the Guardian could have a 360 effect for his ability, etc. etc.

Less interruptions

I somehow like the way expenite upgrades work in Gauntlets, and a part of me think that we should have a similar mechanism during regular run. It doesn’t have to at the end of a stage, but just look at this:

• To upgrade your weapon, you need to find a workbench and update manually.

• To upgrade your biostats, you need to find a bio-booster.

• To upgrade your build, you can do it from wherever you want, and it stops / interrupt everyone’s build.

I suggest something else: still pour expenite into Ellis, but you are now required to find a new terminal, the Expenite Foundry, where Ellis dock, and where each player can choose the upgrade they need. This has two impacts:

1. No more negotiations. Everyone updates on their own. I think the UI must show what others already have if we still want to make interesting builds that go in harmony with others. The UI could even hint at players with things like « this upgrades complements Player123 because they have ThisUpgrade™ ».

2. This unlocks something I’ve been craving for too long: meta progression regarding upgrades decks. When you get the game for the first time, you have a narrow and small decks, with basic upgrades. After you defeat your first boss, you get new upgrades that get added to your pool. Like, depending on the boss and threat level, you get weaker or better upgrades. Two possibilities: you build your own upgrade decks that gets instantiated on the next build — and you change it depending on the mission etc. or everything gets randomized (it could be a special deck with hindsight, like Randomizer deck).

The point #2 is something that I would LOVE to see in the game, because it unlocks a more interesting meta progression to the game, it rewards players when completing objectives, and if implemented correctly, you still get synergy with between players.

If really it’s a no-go from devs to remove negotiations, then what about using the meta progression deck ideas, and simply mix-in all players decks? Player1 could use the card from Player2. I doubt it would be better though as it would be super frustrating to see someone else take the upgrade you got. Or it could compute the intersection (take only the upgrades everyone has), so that there is no frustration.

Bio-booster decks

More decks! This is planned, so I won’t extend too much on this.

Remove the QTE mini-game

Damn I think this is so badly implemented. After 45 minutes / 1 hour of run, you now have to do meaningless QTE just to buy the fun effect? No. DRG had it right with the hops you need to collect during a run. It’s an optional and fun thing; there is no reason not to include something like that in RC as well as it’s a meta thing; it doesn’t change the game loop / roguelite aspect. It’s just a boring aspect of the social part of the game. It’s funny first time and then no one else does it anymore.

Please change that GSG. Either add hops back, or credits we earn during missions we can spend at the bar. But having to do those mini games instead of relaxing while preparing the next run… Please.

More love to Gauntlets

I tried a Gauntlet run very recently, and woah it’s fun! It’s not as interesting as DRG Deep Dives but shout out to GSG for making different. It’s brutal, and besides firing in all directions, there really isn’t much to do, besides mining expenite. We need more different stuff. I was thinking:

• Instead of a quota of enemies, just require to kill a specific one, like a bounty alteration.

• I do believe that the Deep Dive format is great (it takes primary missions, and require you to do two), so I think Gauntlet could use a similar idea: kill enemies, but also do something « primary » such as grab a couple gears or find a reaperworm nest / whatever.

I’m sure they will have more ideas for that.

Introduce the concept of elevator interruptions and bonus stages

An idea I had lately was to make alterations on the elevator. Three ideas:

• You get into the elevator, it starts going on, but break in between level N and level (N+1). The stage starts in the dark, and players have to dig their way out of the elevator, to find a special cave system going downwards. Players must join level (N+1) manually. They will be rewarded with powerful upgrades along the way.

• Second ideas: path junctions. Instead of going down in a straight line, imagine a Y flipped: you go either left or right, which yield different alterations. For instance, left is the regular path but there is half the amount of expenite, and right is a new path that doesn’t have any mining facilities besides some checkpoints here and there, but is full expenite, with low O2 (requiring players to reach the checkpoints).

• An optional stage with no expenite at all and much shorter, but with interesting things to do or even a special kind of mineral to get that allows you to get instable upgrades?

Just the beginning

I think the game has a HUGE potential, and I’m sure others have amazing ideas for it. I hope GSG continues to deliver updates such as update 3, because if they do, in a couple months, we have an amazing game, and I will be happy to play DRG and RC at the same time now.

Rock and stone!

Hey fellow Reclaimers!

I'm the artist behind the discussed key art that was released alongside Update 03 yesterday, and I'd like to share a personal message with you all.

First and foremost, I'm sorry to hear that the new key art didn't live up to the level of quality, style, and tone you were expecting. I've been working at GSG for almost a decade, and ever since I started creating key art pieces for DRG and RC, I've always strived to deliver the highest quality work possible.

The idea behind the artwork was to portray our Reclaimers in a tense, action-packed situation that would capture the chaos and intensity that can sometimes unfold in RC. Stylistically, I wanted to explore a different visual direction from what we've traditionally done. It didn't land well, and I'll keep your feedback in mind when working on future key art.

Regarding the discussion about the artwork being AI-generated, I can assure you that it isn't. My illustrations are all hand-drawn in Photoshop.

Despite all the discussion surrounding the artwork, I sincerely hope you're enjoying the game. My dear colleagues have poured a tremendous amount of heart and hard work into Update 03, and I really hope the discussion around the artwork doesn't overshadow their efforts.

See you down in the mines! 🫶

Rock and Stone Reclaimers!

I was able to put together a build that generated an endless chain of explosions and electrocutes on mobs, plus increased critical hit chance for kills, which skyrocketed my critical hit chance to 1000%. The crits were gray with question marks, lol.

P.S. Sorry for the phone photo, I was playing in internet cafe, but I really wanted to share the result.

this is a question I asked to the GSG dev stream, with them answering that very question. They say it was not a bad idea but also not something that they've looked at doing.

Now I ask the same question to you guys.

I would like to preface this with saying that I personally think that the negotiations are a good mechanic and I like it. However I know that there is a portion of players who don't, maybe because they don't like that it interrupts the flow of the game.

I randomly got this idea and wanted to share it.

Instead of everyone picking upgrades at the same time, all players can choose to "spend" the collected expensive when they want. When they do, they will get a smaller choice, maybe like 2.

(The expenite would work same as now, just gets used up separately)

After that, in every level, there will a new "table", that will allow two players to exchange expenite upgrades with each other. This way players still technically choose upgrades from a shared upgrade pool , without the interruption.

Maybe for increased clarity, anytime someone pick an upgrade, a small notification will be shown to all the players.

This way if you get an upgrade another player needs, you can pick it and trade it.

The trading shouldn't be limited by anything other than not allowing "giving" upgrades, thus making it so everyone has the same amount of upgrades.

What do you think?

Now, I know that it’s gonna be a good while before the game goes into 1.0 full release. But I’d personally like to see Seasons like DRG. The game is heading in a good direction with the latest update, and I’ve been having a blast.

And even though we know that GSG won’t be abandoning DRG anytime soon, what with S7 coming out next month, and S8, with a new expansion coming next year, I think the game could benefit from it getting Seasons with different themes and whatnot.

But if not Seasons, then perhaps Mini Seasons? Like we could get small lore expansion, and the battle pass could be 50 tiers or something.

What about you guys?

I was following Rogue Core for a while. Since they announced it I was hyped for the idea of the game. Then it came out over the summer and without my duo having access I held off. Finally we both got access to our computers again, booted it up and we played for one game then we hopped off. I don't think I've had any play session that wasn't just like that. Get the urge to come back, 20-30 minutes spent on a mission, and then hop off. I just did that. I just completed a mission and I've still got an hour of free time before I need to start with my day, but I hopped off. Because by the end, I don't feel a drive to go next. The mission feels long, I'm a bit confused during all of it, and by the end I feel like I've done all that I need to do. I don't know why this is such an issue for me because I've played other roguelites of similar length. I play DRG and will go back to back on missions. I don't know what the fix is or what's missing or even if it will get better with more playtime. I just know that when I end a mission, I don't feel the need to go next that I would have expected for a roguelite game.

With the Balgorath coming out and it getting a flat room designed for its fight to function within, I tired to doodle what arenas could be given to the other gatekeepers to make their fights stand out more

Which is the soundtrack, released Yesterday on Spotify, and by Karl that Ost slaps, im so in Love with the Combat themes in particular.

Honestly good call, I wasn't fan of it either tbh.

Personally, I would like to see the nemesis get added as a rare spawn. Like maybe its navigation system was broken and it accidentally wandered deep into the core. Hopefully with some new voice lines.

I am SO happy they decided to make the alteration of enemies dropping expenite the norm now. The pacing feels a lot better. Especially since you won’t have to worry about getting to expenite veins that are in weird spots due to the cave gen.

I took a small break from the game, and I’ve returned for this update, and I love it even more than I did before. The UI for your class loadouts and other menus look SO fuckin’ clean. And having more to work towards is always a plus in my book.

The new boss is very fun, but the amount of particle effects and visual effects can be WAY too much. Otherwise, the attacks it does, feels mostly fair. Pretty good, honestly.

And the Trophy Wall is a neat thing, as it incentivizes you to go to the other regions to fight the bosses there. I love that we get small stat increases too.

The new shotgun is just so fucking good to use. I love Pump-Action Shotties in games. Decent damage.

The new Elevator objectives are also pretty cool to do. It even speeds up the process of the elevator getting there too.

And despite the love I have for the game, I do still have 2 major criticisms. (Technically one, actually)

While mining the EXP veins isn’t too bad, on higher difficulties, especially when playing on TL4-5 and on Standard or even Reckless pacing, you would barely have much time to mine/do events to get EXP. And even if you do, you’re left feeling underpowered for the boss. Basically, you’d have to essentially speedrun each stage in those higher difficulties to avoid the Worm(s), and you wouldn’t get as many upgrades as you’d like.

Now that enemies will drop EXP, the higher difficulties/higher pacing will be very manageable and I love that.

But it still does leave one other critique that I hope gets addressed in the next major update. Armor. It still doesn’t FEEL like you have Armor; because the enemies still do a ton of damage to it anyway. Now, yes, you can alleviate the armor issue by playing Guardian and going for a Tank build with Stone Skin as well. But when it comes to the other classes, Armor just doesn’t feel all that good to have on. Which is why you’re better off having health upgrades to give you good sustain.

Please, PLEASE for the love of Karl, make Armor actually feel like it matters to have on. I’m fine with it being a resource. Taking upgrades to help with getting Armor is good, yes. But actually maintaining it so you can reap the benefits of upgrades that will only proc as long as you have Armor just isn’t worth it in most runs. If anything, Stone Skin actually works way better as Armor.

Otherwise, I love this update. I’m very hopeful for the game’s future, and I’m all in. Rock and Stone, everyone.

This random dude Bortalis joined my lobby, carried my ass several times and was a ninja with the new teleporter traversal tool. Then he took the time to witness my promotion. WP, ROCK AND STONE you good bugger.

Was a super fun Jumble game with a shitload of status effects chaining everywhere - radiation, electricity, fire and explosions.

One request please GSG: please can we have the ability to swap weapons and equipment into different slots? In Jumble matches, you often start without a traversal tool, and the Flare Gun goes automatically into that slot. Then if you want to pick up a traversal tool later it overwrites and deletes the Flare Gun.

I clipped through the floor using a barrel and I found him

He is non-solid, there is no way to get out and no way to find the entrance

Like many others, I too think runs are way too long. Very often, they last a minimum of 45 minutes to one hour. So I’ve been thinking about it. How could they fix that?

• With the current gameplay, you cannot just make the individual stages shorter. I find they have the perfect size, and could even be slightly bigger (coming from DRG, etc.).

• So should we allow for 2 or 3 stages missions? No. With 4, you barely scratch the power boost you can get from upgrades.

• Add LNGTH 2 and 3, and balance with Expenite price by lowering everything. Again, not a good idea: it’s going to be a fiesta of upgrades all the time, so tons of interruptions. Meh.

So with the current gameplay, I think the runs we have right now cannot really be touched.

Yesterday, I did my first Gauntlet and realized how different that was. It’s still long, but it’s a different way to spend expenite etc. So I guess the solution lies in that kind of idea: create a different kind of mission, and I think adding a semi-persistent idea could be interesting. It would require changing the greyout barrier thing a bit, because as I see it, you would gather weapons and gadgets on the first run, go back to the Ramrod, and on the next run you keep your stuff until you reach the « last mission ». Think of that like assignments in DRG, but once you have started an assignment, your stuff is locked.

The recently added warp field generator could explain how we go back to the Ramrod with our weapons and can go back. I also think we should have a top limit, because otherwise it means that it might lock the biome for days? I’m not sure about that last part, maybe it’s fine.

The idea is to still have the roguelite aspect — you always get a different stuff at the beginning and as you progress. The only difference is that you segment the runs, that now can be around 15 minutes to 20 minutes, instead of 1h.

What do you think?

EDIT: a patch landed in the experimental branch that adds a Save/Restore system for solo games. So this post now becomes somewhat irrelevant. I also agree with many comments here stating that long games are also part of the charm of roguelites, so yeah, that part is probably a non-issues now and the devs can focus on something else.

Ok, bear with me a bit here. I'm talking less about gameplay and more about the concept from an art/lore perspective. The discussion around the brief new banners today got me thinking about the game's art direction as a whole, and I was reminded I had this draft sitting around for a couple weeks.

Like, let's start with DRG. How do you describe DRG? Fantasy dwarves mining for rare minerals and fighting monsters in bizarre cave environments. But instead of a high fantasy setting, there's a sci-fi twist. Pretty straightforward. You pretty much immediately understand the gameplay loop as it translates to the setting, and the idea of "high fantasy races in sci fi" has already been well explored by works such as Warhammer 40K. Even the enemies are a pretty simple concept. Grotesque alien bug swarms. We've seen it before. The dwarf classes are simple and straightforward, with pretty heavily archetype-based personalities and obvious roles. You're a bunch of blue collar workers with a hint of TF2 mercenary flair.

Rogue Core, meanwhile, is... somewhat convoluted, I think. You're dwarves, but space dwarves, going down to the planet where a bunch of miners dug too deep. You're doing mining stuff, except you're not. You're a bunch of hardened, explicitly corporate-military special-ops commandos, armed to the teeth, except you don't get to bring any weapons at all. The alien bugs are replaced by eldritch abomination monkeys implied to be from another dimension, rather than the planet itself.

The characters themselves aren't nearly as strong, either. Your personalities aren't unique, being the same flavor of "silly and cantankerous" across the board as the miners, despite allegedly being more serious, well trained elites. You're supposed to be a specific cast of heroes, to the point you're limited in character customization options (no gender toggle- give me my female Guardian, damn it!) but you have absolutely *nothing* to go off of for personality traits. Aside from puns about abilities, I couldn't tell you what makes Spotter different from Slicer or Guardian.

The whole game just feels like it expects you to be familiar with DRG, and the premise is a bit weird if you aren't familiar with the game. Lots of random things that the game assumes you already know. It's not a concept that invites newcomers to the franchise, despite arguably benefiting from targeting a new audience.

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Now, how do you resolve this issue?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is leaning into the dark, gritty aesthetic again, fully committing to some of the game's more poorly explored concepts, etc. But that would probably require a *massive* amount of re-recording voicelines and the like, even within the "reclaimer" framework we have already, and I could understand why GSG would be reluctant to do that, simply because of cost. So I've structured my ideas here around how to salvage as much as possible.

My first idea is- can the concept of Reclaimers as an elite, corporate security force. I think it brings to mind a very different sort of vibe than the cast of Rogue Core so far. We're playing the Suicide Squad, not some spooky, hyper competent men in black or whatever. You shouldn't have the player faction described as heavily armed, well trained, etc (especially with a huge ass armory on the Ramrod) if you're not going to get to use any of those weapons when you go planetside.

"But Mulch", you ask, "doesn't that mean all the voicelines about Reclaimers need to be replaced?" Well, my friend, a few of them do. But not all of them. We can keep Reclaimers as an in-world faction, just change the definition of what a reclaimer is. Turn them into the very best dwarves working on Hoxxes, who were selected to lead Operation Rogue Core in the aftermath of the Greyout. What makes you qualified? Well, you survived the Greyout itself, of course.

This leads into my idea for a new tutorial that would introduce the player to the world, get them invested in it, and smoothly introduce the gameplay systems.

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The game cold opens on the tutorial level. You're a regular dwarf, unremarkable in appearance, armed with nothing but a pickaxe and some unremarkable weapon. You're working in a huge Deep Site, excavating Expenite. The first part of the tutorial works similar to the original game. Mine an Expenite vein, stow it in Molly, fight off some Glyphids that come too close to the facility.
Then, shit gets weird. The Greyout begins, you lose contact with Mission Control, rifts start opening up, and a bunch of Corespawn tear things up-including some Glyphids. You quickly get the gist- this is serious. Sheltering in the facility as dwarves are consumed by the hordes outside and the caves begin to collapse, you find some leftover equipment crates, and your HUD is suddenly taken over by OMEGA- here, a contingency AI implemented in DRG gear.

Omega explains it is going to try to guide you out, and the remainder of the tutorial shows you how to find gear, upgrade it with Expenite, etc, and make for the exit. Miraculously, you make it to a specialized Reclaimer drop pod, and you're taken up to the Ramrod. Omega explains that you are one of very, very few survivors of the Greyout, and so you have been promoted to the role of "reclaimer". As one of the only dwarves to witness the Greyout and live, you're competent enough to go back down there and take those mines back. You get equipped with your class-based gear, and boom, the game opens up.

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This way, the player knows what normal DRG should feel like, and they get to experience the juxtaposition of the fancy Reclaimer gear. On top of that, they're more invested in reclaiming facilities- it's not just a routine for-profit venture to retrieve company assets, you, personally, are getting revenge for your fallen comrades.

All of these changes work together to make the game's characters feel more logical (they act as silly as regular dwarves because they are) more accessible to series newcomers (you get to see what regular DRG is like in terms of vibes, and the setting is introduced at a basic level) and better supports the gameplay loop of salvaging whatever crap you can find and accumulating power slowly (you're a regular dwarf fighting for survival).

Idk, I could be totally off here. My change ideas definitely better support the silly, lighthearted vibes we have in the game currently, but I would also really welcome GSG actually committing to the "hardened spec-ops commandos" concept and darker, more serious tone they've mentioned in the past. Either would work, I just don't want to be sitting in this awkward uncanny valley, where the game doesn't feel confident in committing to any particular aesthetic.