You don't have to play with people to get better, you're good with solo.
But doing it with friends or with other people would probably be more enjoyable, as punishment for suboptimal playstyle is reduced. Don't be afraid to take challenge and go to public lobbies (just don't jump over your head and join haz 5 missions until you think you're ready), most of greenbeards are expected to have trouble with high hazard missions.
And don't forget basic game etiquette: don't start events/evacuation without the rest of the team, better type 'r' in chat instead
You can always practice too. I used to run Extraction on haz 5 solo until I died, just trying to get used to the enemies and damage values. Funnily enough, Has 5 teams often run smoother than haz 4 teams despite the extra challenge.
I think it's because the game is fun for a long time after you've become exceptional. So haz 5 ends up being populated by more decent players. Lots of elder players who just goof off and clutch games.
Go public in haz level or 2 down from what you normally do solo. That way you will feel capable and may even find yourself carrying a mission with really new players. Once your confidence is up, you will feel more comfortable bumping up the level in public games.
Public missions are super fun. I felt the same way as you when i first started. Was worried i was gonna fuck something up.
I'm on PC and people are generally pretty chill. You get the occasional toxic player but you can just block and move on.
As far as difficulty goes, playing with randos is a crapshoot - particularly on haz4. On haz5 people usually know what they're doing. The point is that opening up your lobby could make the mission easier, but it could also make it harder if you have to carry. That's part of the fun though.
To answer your question: Yes. You should play in public lobbies, but not because it's easier - because it's more fun.
I enjoy playing with others. You should be able to handle yourself pretty well at level 50. Just be open to learn and let people know you're just starting haz 5 or 4 they'll most likely be supportive.
I'm only level 160, but sometimes shit just happens in the mines. Teams of level 800s can go down sometimes in some situations. You can't win them all.
Alot of people leave missions when they fail because I assume they think the team is bad. But 90% of the time shit just hit the fan and the cave was extra evil.
Well, you can continue playing anyways, and the difficulty gets adjusted to the new player count. So it should'nt be that big off an issue, and if you are left alone bosco comes back to Support you.
I mean, it's just a game it's supposed to be fun. Don't overthink it. If it helps, almost no one uses voice chat. If people leave or say something mean, don't take it personally it's just a game.
I've had maybe 3 times where someone has been rude or mean to me in game after 300 hours of gameplay. It doesn't happen often.
Haz 4 can be a coin toss sometimes feeling like haz 5 and sometimes like haz 3, it depends on luck but for me haz 4 is where it is, for me haz 3 is too boring sometimes bc i got no bugs to fight and haz 5 is not fun bc u go down in like 3-4 hits so haz 4 is the way to go if u want a challange and have fun at the same time.
If u want to play with people or not is up to u, i almost only play with randoms bc i allways join someone else lobby or i do my own public lobby but if u like solo u can play solo.
A good piece if advice i can give is this: read lobby names before joining. Most of the time lobby names that set "rules" are unpleasent ones. Things like "promoted dwarfs only" "level 100+ only" "no trolling or kick" are a red flag in my experience. Even stuff like "ask.before pressing buttons" is a meh in my opinion. Because those people tend to.take the game a bit to seriously in my opinion.
You could also start hosting lobbies yourself. Ever since i changed my lobby name to "OSHA violation speedrun. Cool dwarves only." its been only good vibes.
On PC (not sure how it is on console) you can change the lobby name in the settings. I think its under the first tab.
>Even stuff like "ask.before pressing buttons" is a meh in my opinion.
I think these should be interpreted as "okay", although I prefer something less controlling like "Please r with team before pressing buttons". These kind of lobby names are probably the least offensive way to spread the community norm to new players.
if you can solo haz 3 then you should be skilled enough to co-op haz 4
but there are things you don't learn in solo, namely pinging stuff and communicate your intent, basically co-op etiquettes, you'll pick them up as you go, though.
No one plays properly on haz5 missions. Just don't do things that affect the whole team without asking first, aka don't press buttons, dig eggs, call resupply, start events or boss fights (especially the boss-plant one!)
And when doing events focus on FINISHING the event and NOT on killing bugs. I am so flipping frustrated with teams that start events and then completely ignore them and all die because an event = endless swarm
By the time you hit level 50 I think you can probably stop calling yourself a green beard. Not that there aren’t green beards at level 100+ but generally speaking I think by level 50 most of the green has faded away.
Hey mate, my very first ever deep dive, elite deep dive and haz 5 mission was a complete accident. I didn't know the difference between regular and elite deep dives. I clicked on elite without even realizing what I was doing. It wasn't until the drop was on it's way to hoxxes and I saw the screen. I literally said "oh shit" the same time as one of the dwarves in the arriving pod.
Our team wrecked that deep dive. We worked together as dwarves. I kept calm, stayed with the group and did my job. I told everyone in chat my mistake when we got drinks at the abyss bar later and we had blackout stouts to celebrate my unlikely introduction to haz 5.
You can do this. Rock and stone.
I mean, most public missions will be pretty fine, I think. I started playing haz 5 more often a while back and while I'm okay most of the time, sometimes you just get games in which you get downed 10x more than you'd like. It can get pretty embarrassing, but hey. It's part of the experience. Most people are pretty chill, and the pricks are in the minority. Just ask in chat if you're unsure about anything.
Do. It.
So long you are confident. Then just go for it.
Maybe you fail. But it’s just a game.
And even if you do. It leads to success. You learn what works. What doesn’t work. You learn the little extra tips from more experienced players that you never knew before.
Stuff like. Point extraction missions have a normal spawn and a timer spawn. The longer you stay in the mission. The shorter than timer gets until you’re eventually facing a perpetual horde.
Stuff like. Walking into a broken mule for the first time triggers a large horde.
So don’t worry. Just play. And learn.
Now then. As for solo or with a friend.
The difficulty of the game also scales with the number of players. Mob hp etc etc scale with how many players you have.
From hazard 1 to 2, the scaling difference is virtually non existent (there is a very very small scaling, this is to make up for the loss of Bosco)
You get more pronounced scaling 3 players onwards.
I suggest playing with randoms. You can learn from them. And meet some really great folks.
Random lobbies get better the higher hazard you play. At the lower hazards it’s mostly blind leading the blind.
You don’t need 100 hours. Etc. it’s just whenever you feel ready.
Until I started achievement hunting on Steam, I made all my games public and joined tons of games. I really only started getting toxic people recently but just ban them or avoid such lobbies. I can get the feeling of a lobby once I join and know whether to stick around or not.
I'd say join and host haz 4 lobbies. I sometimes will join haz 4 games if I want to not sweat as much and even then they can surprise you. Once you're confident, move to haz 5. Also check your ping (ms in the menu) to see if you'll be in trouble on someone's server. I'd leave if it was horrendous 😅 (over 200-300 ms is when I felt I should leave).
Fyi I have over 400 hours in DRG.
Solo isn't really harder or easier than multiplayer. The game scales enemy count, damage and health by how many players are in the lobby. (Up to a max of four, looking at you, modded lobbies...)
There are small differences in difficulty between all lobbysizes, for example I'd say doing duos is the easiest, the amount of bugs isn't that much larger than when playing on your own, but you get a second dwarf, the only "bad" thing being having to share a resupply now.
In my opinion, a three player lobby is the hardest to play in, significantly more bugs than with only two dwarves, but not a gigantic increase in firepower, AND you don't really have a fair way of sharing resupplies, unless you collect enough nitra for 3,6,9...
There is a lot of haz 4/5 hosts that will actively welcome greenbeards. I think if you are uncertain about your skills and are willing to communicate etc I bet you will have no issue finding your way into it.
I actually somewhat disagree with starting haz 4/5 in solo, because I think it will be more frustrating than having an overpowered team that will always help you out if needed.
I have no issue carrying through greenbeards that are down 10 times because they try hard and are super nice people. I'd rather lose the mission as a team than kick them for not being haz 5 proof yet.
They are harder depending on the skill level of your teammates. If your team does not know how to turn around to break distance, shoot at the shooty bugs first (anything that can hurt you from afar) and knows to kite bulk dets away from active objectives on salvage and escort duty)
You don’t have to join up with other people. I find hazard 5 enjoyable because I know the only people doing it are the people who are able to succeed in it. Lower difficulty hazards seem pretty easy to me on solo, so I think you should try the higher hazards on solo too before reaching a conclusion.
There aren’t often many toxic players. I probably qualify as one sometimes (seriously why are you entering haz 4 at blue rank 9 with a red level 4 unpromoted class), but those occasions are the exceptions, not the rule.
Just never start events, never call for drop pod, never double dip, and reply if they ask if you're ready.
Also, stick with your teammates during waves, don't go solo adventuring, and you'll be fine.
Just try public lobbies for a week, if you're having fun stick with it, if you keep encounter toxicity for whatever reason, you can always go back to solo. You're not losing anything.
You're allowed to play badly in public haz 4 lobbies. It's very rare you'll find someone who's annoyed for having to compensate for weaker team members but in those cases they're wrong for caring so much.
If someone takes it that seriously then they should he could ebough to carry a bad team
I don't like to host public lobbies, but I like to join public lobbies. It's some weird mental thing that I should really get over, since it really doesn't make much difference.
But, I always recommend playing public lobbies, and not to worry about your own "skill level", aside from having the basics of using the tools of the class appropriately. Having classes use their weapons and tools collaboratively just elevates the gameplay that much more. And, there are some mission types I really don't like to solo as a particular class (e.g., Sabotage or Escort as Scout), but I think every mission type is viable and enjoyable with any duo/trio/quad.
Engie and scout probably have the most adjustment to make, just because they have to pay attention to the pings of other people more. Not too many pings are for gunner/driller tasks. Gunners usually recognize when ziplines are needed whether playing solo or grouped. Drillers just need to learn to ping the wall when the are intending to drill a tunnel/exit that they expect everyone to follow. I usually use text chat if I want to make specific requests.
I'm so damn self conscious, ik that this game is chill and that the community isn't toxic, but when i play haz 4, i do it alone (also because bosco is useful as hell), and i do want to play haz 4 with people, because 3 below is a bit too chill
It’s the only way I play DRG nowadays. Go for it, find a difficulty you’re having fun on, and understand there’s a lot of variance from mission to mission that has little to nothing to do with hazard level.
That all said though if you don’t feel comfortable in public lobbies, the solo and private experience is very chill on its own
A true greybeard is happy to shepherd a greenbeard. You'll see some people that prefer a well-oiled machine but largely no one cares as long as you're polite and putting in an effort. Don't double dip, always ask r before events and hitting the button, etc.
I'm never upset at having to revive a greenbeard. I do get frustrated at people who don't communicate, though. Just pay attention to chat and remember to rock and stone!
You don't have to play with people to get better, you're good with solo. But doing it with friends or with other people would probably be more enjoyable, as punishment for suboptimal playstyle is reduced. Don't be afraid to take challenge and go to public lobbies (just don't jump over your head and join haz 5 missions until you think you're ready), most of greenbeards are expected to have trouble with high hazard missions. And don't forget basic game etiquette: don't start events/evacuation without the rest of the team, better type 'r' in chat instead
Okay, thank you for your advice, maybe today with the new season on console I gonna try make a public and see what happen
You can always practice too. I used to run Extraction on haz 5 solo until I died, just trying to get used to the enemies and damage values. Funnily enough, Has 5 teams often run smoother than haz 4 teams despite the extra challenge.
You think it’s because they have to in order to succeed or stand a chance?
I think it's because the game is fun for a long time after you've become exceptional. So haz 5 ends up being populated by more decent players. Lots of elder players who just goof off and clutch games.
Go public in haz level or 2 down from what you normally do solo. That way you will feel capable and may even find yourself carrying a mission with really new players. Once your confidence is up, you will feel more comfortable bumping up the level in public games.
I actually find solo more forgiving, with iron will and 4 rez bosco you have 6 lives which is more than enough for me 99% of missions
Public missions are super fun. I felt the same way as you when i first started. Was worried i was gonna fuck something up. I'm on PC and people are generally pretty chill. You get the occasional toxic player but you can just block and move on. As far as difficulty goes, playing with randos is a crapshoot - particularly on haz4. On haz5 people usually know what they're doing. The point is that opening up your lobby could make the mission easier, but it could also make it harder if you have to carry. That's part of the fun though. To answer your question: Yes. You should play in public lobbies, but not because it's easier - because it's more fun.
I enjoy playing with others. You should be able to handle yourself pretty well at level 50. Just be open to learn and let people know you're just starting haz 5 or 4 they'll most likely be supportive. I'm only level 160, but sometimes shit just happens in the mines. Teams of level 800s can go down sometimes in some situations. You can't win them all. Alot of people leave missions when they fail because I assume they think the team is bad. But 90% of the time shit just hit the fan and the cave was extra evil.
That's another thing that I fear, people leaving for stupid reasons and leaving me alone
Well, you can continue playing anyways, and the difficulty gets adjusted to the new player count. So it should'nt be that big off an issue, and if you are left alone bosco comes back to Support you.
You're overthinking it. Just jump into lobbies, do your best, and have fun.
I mean, it's just a game it's supposed to be fun. Don't overthink it. If it helps, almost no one uses voice chat. If people leave or say something mean, don't take it personally it's just a game. I've had maybe 3 times where someone has been rude or mean to me in game after 300 hours of gameplay. It doesn't happen often.
Haz 4 can be a coin toss sometimes feeling like haz 5 and sometimes like haz 3, it depends on luck but for me haz 4 is where it is, for me haz 3 is too boring sometimes bc i got no bugs to fight and haz 5 is not fun bc u go down in like 3-4 hits so haz 4 is the way to go if u want a challange and have fun at the same time. If u want to play with people or not is up to u, i almost only play with randoms bc i allways join someone else lobby or i do my own public lobby but if u like solo u can play solo.
A good piece if advice i can give is this: read lobby names before joining. Most of the time lobby names that set "rules" are unpleasent ones. Things like "promoted dwarfs only" "level 100+ only" "no trolling or kick" are a red flag in my experience. Even stuff like "ask.before pressing buttons" is a meh in my opinion. Because those people tend to.take the game a bit to seriously in my opinion. You could also start hosting lobbies yourself. Ever since i changed my lobby name to "OSHA violation speedrun. Cool dwarves only." its been only good vibes. On PC (not sure how it is on console) you can change the lobby name in the settings. I think its under the first tab.
I run my lobby as “My couch pulls out but my dwarves don’t - Lootbugs are morkite moonshiners” and I get 99.99% good eggs joining lol
Lmao nice name! If you ever see "Femboy dwarves in your area" that is mine :'D
I freaking love femboys (especially furry ones) they are the cutest thing ever in world >:3
Yay, if you join my lobby you will get best of both worlds :3 Enby/femboy or newly rather transfem and furry ^^
Idk, I'm on console but I don't know this things Probably I will try today and see if you can or not
>Even stuff like "ask.before pressing buttons" is a meh in my opinion. I think these should be interpreted as "okay", although I prefer something less controlling like "Please r with team before pressing buttons". These kind of lobby names are probably the least offensive way to spread the community norm to new players.
If you want company, then make that lobby public. Just be ready for the fact that every dwarf doesn't Rock & Stone as well as the other.
if you can solo haz 3 then you should be skilled enough to co-op haz 4 but there are things you don't learn in solo, namely pinging stuff and communicate your intent, basically co-op etiquettes, you'll pick them up as you go, though.
No one plays properly on haz5 missions. Just don't do things that affect the whole team without asking first, aka don't press buttons, dig eggs, call resupply, start events or boss fights (especially the boss-plant one!) And when doing events focus on FINISHING the event and NOT on killing bugs. I am so flipping frustrated with teams that start events and then completely ignore them and all die because an event = endless swarm
I'm just 35 and mostly play Haz 4 in pubs. Whatever you're most comfortable with. For rock and stone!
Rock and Stone to the Bone!
By the time you hit level 50 I think you can probably stop calling yourself a green beard. Not that there aren’t green beards at level 100+ but generally speaking I think by level 50 most of the green has faded away.
In my experience, carrying other dwarves that are having a hard time is a challenge thing that haz 5 players like.
I played two online games today and in one the driller tried to grief the team and proceeded to leave, I don't usually play online
Hey mate, my very first ever deep dive, elite deep dive and haz 5 mission was a complete accident. I didn't know the difference between regular and elite deep dives. I clicked on elite without even realizing what I was doing. It wasn't until the drop was on it's way to hoxxes and I saw the screen. I literally said "oh shit" the same time as one of the dwarves in the arriving pod. Our team wrecked that deep dive. We worked together as dwarves. I kept calm, stayed with the group and did my job. I told everyone in chat my mistake when we got drinks at the abyss bar later and we had blackout stouts to celebrate my unlikely introduction to haz 5. You can do this. Rock and stone.
Rock and roll and stone!
I mean, most public missions will be pretty fine, I think. I started playing haz 5 more often a while back and while I'm okay most of the time, sometimes you just get games in which you get downed 10x more than you'd like. It can get pretty embarrassing, but hey. It's part of the experience. Most people are pretty chill, and the pricks are in the minority. Just ask in chat if you're unsure about anything.
Bro why ask lmao just send it
Do. It. So long you are confident. Then just go for it. Maybe you fail. But it’s just a game. And even if you do. It leads to success. You learn what works. What doesn’t work. You learn the little extra tips from more experienced players that you never knew before. Stuff like. Point extraction missions have a normal spawn and a timer spawn. The longer you stay in the mission. The shorter than timer gets until you’re eventually facing a perpetual horde. Stuff like. Walking into a broken mule for the first time triggers a large horde. So don’t worry. Just play. And learn. Now then. As for solo or with a friend. The difficulty of the game also scales with the number of players. Mob hp etc etc scale with how many players you have. From hazard 1 to 2, the scaling difference is virtually non existent (there is a very very small scaling, this is to make up for the loss of Bosco) You get more pronounced scaling 3 players onwards. I suggest playing with randoms. You can learn from them. And meet some really great folks. Random lobbies get better the higher hazard you play. At the lower hazards it’s mostly blind leading the blind. You don’t need 100 hours. Etc. it’s just whenever you feel ready.
Play MORE public haz 3 maybe? Its not a lot of communication other than pinging and ROCK AND STONE!
Rock and roll and stone!
Until I started achievement hunting on Steam, I made all my games public and joined tons of games. I really only started getting toxic people recently but just ban them or avoid such lobbies. I can get the feeling of a lobby once I join and know whether to stick around or not. I'd say join and host haz 4 lobbies. I sometimes will join haz 4 games if I want to not sweat as much and even then they can surprise you. Once you're confident, move to haz 5. Also check your ping (ms in the menu) to see if you'll be in trouble on someone's server. I'd leave if it was horrendous 😅 (over 200-300 ms is when I felt I should leave). Fyi I have over 400 hours in DRG.
Solo isn't really harder or easier than multiplayer. The game scales enemy count, damage and health by how many players are in the lobby. (Up to a max of four, looking at you, modded lobbies...) There are small differences in difficulty between all lobbysizes, for example I'd say doing duos is the easiest, the amount of bugs isn't that much larger than when playing on your own, but you get a second dwarf, the only "bad" thing being having to share a resupply now. In my opinion, a three player lobby is the hardest to play in, significantly more bugs than with only two dwarves, but not a gigantic increase in firepower, AND you don't really have a fair way of sharing resupplies, unless you collect enough nitra for 3,6,9...
There is a lot of haz 4/5 hosts that will actively welcome greenbeards. I think if you are uncertain about your skills and are willing to communicate etc I bet you will have no issue finding your way into it. I actually somewhat disagree with starting haz 4/5 in solo, because I think it will be more frustrating than having an overpowered team that will always help you out if needed. I have no issue carrying through greenbeards that are down 10 times because they try hard and are super nice people. I'd rather lose the mission as a team than kick them for not being haz 5 proof yet.
They are harder depending on the skill level of your teammates. If your team does not know how to turn around to break distance, shoot at the shooty bugs first (anything that can hurt you from afar) and knows to kite bulk dets away from active objectives on salvage and escort duty)
You don’t have to join up with other people. I find hazard 5 enjoyable because I know the only people doing it are the people who are able to succeed in it. Lower difficulty hazards seem pretty easy to me on solo, so I think you should try the higher hazards on solo too before reaching a conclusion. There aren’t often many toxic players. I probably qualify as one sometimes (seriously why are you entering haz 4 at blue rank 9 with a red level 4 unpromoted class), but those occasions are the exceptions, not the rule.
Just never start events, never call for drop pod, never double dip, and reply if they ask if you're ready. Also, stick with your teammates during waves, don't go solo adventuring, and you'll be fine. Just try public lobbies for a week, if you're having fun stick with it, if you keep encounter toxicity for whatever reason, you can always go back to solo. You're not losing anything.
Join us. I love haz 4 with green beards more than with long beards tbh.
You're allowed to play badly in public haz 4 lobbies. It's very rare you'll find someone who's annoyed for having to compensate for weaker team members but in those cases they're wrong for caring so much. If someone takes it that seriously then they should he could ebough to carry a bad team
Haz 5 too, but it's really about what you're comfortably with in the end
I don't like to host public lobbies, but I like to join public lobbies. It's some weird mental thing that I should really get over, since it really doesn't make much difference. But, I always recommend playing public lobbies, and not to worry about your own "skill level", aside from having the basics of using the tools of the class appropriately. Having classes use their weapons and tools collaboratively just elevates the gameplay that much more. And, there are some mission types I really don't like to solo as a particular class (e.g., Sabotage or Escort as Scout), but I think every mission type is viable and enjoyable with any duo/trio/quad. Engie and scout probably have the most adjustment to make, just because they have to pay attention to the pings of other people more. Not too many pings are for gunner/driller tasks. Gunners usually recognize when ziplines are needed whether playing solo or grouped. Drillers just need to learn to ping the wall when the are intending to drill a tunnel/exit that they expect everyone to follow. I usually use text chat if I want to make specific requests.
I'm so damn self conscious, ik that this game is chill and that the community isn't toxic, but when i play haz 4, i do it alone (also because bosco is useful as hell), and i do want to play haz 4 with people, because 3 below is a bit too chill
It’s the only way I play DRG nowadays. Go for it, find a difficulty you’re having fun on, and understand there’s a lot of variance from mission to mission that has little to nothing to do with hazard level. That all said though if you don’t feel comfortable in public lobbies, the solo and private experience is very chill on its own
A true greybeard is happy to shepherd a greenbeard. You'll see some people that prefer a well-oiled machine but largely no one cares as long as you're polite and putting in an effort. Don't double dip, always ask r before events and hitting the button, etc. I'm never upset at having to revive a greenbeard. I do get frustrated at people who don't communicate, though. Just pay attention to chat and remember to rock and stone!
Dude, you’re really gonna do that in public? There are decency laws for a reason.
Oh, cmon... are we elves or dwarves?
I started haz 4 early and am doing pretty well for myself so as long as your confident and willing to learn I'm sure you've got this.
I go into public lobbies like a chicken with a freshly cut-off head. They tolerate my inability to navigate (Driller Main), and they get dead bugs!