Video Game / Deep Rock Galactic

"Rock and Stone!"

The richest mine ever discovered just happens to be on the deadliest planet in the galaxy.
It's also where you work.

Located in the lawless Outer Rim, Hoxxes IV is home to the richest motherlode of valuable minerals in the galaxy. The problem? It is a Death World par excellence. Many have tried to tame this world, greedily seeking her riches; all have failed — all but one. Deep Rock Galactic, one of the biggest and most stubborn space mining conglomerates in the galaxy, has set its sights upon Hoxxes IV.

Their goal is nothing less than — in their own words — the "complete subjugation" of the planet. This will be no easy feat; the natives of Hoxxes are endless and hungry, and they have the home field advantage. In the lightless depths, intruders must contend not only with the native Glyphids, but also the many geographic hazards Hoxxes has to offer; subterranean jungle, ice caverns, even the churning tectonics of the planet's very core. Who do you call on to undertake such an insanely dangerous excavation?

Space dwarves, of course!

Deep Rock Galactic is a cooperative First-Person Shooter and the debut game of Danish studio Ghost Ship Games. It was released on Steam Early Access on February 28, 2018. On May 13th, 2020, it entered full release on Steam. It has also been released on Xbox One and the Windows 10 Store, and in early 2022 released on the Playstation 4 and 5. In it, you play as a team of 1 to 4 heavily-armed Space Dwarves on a mission to the most dangerous (and most lucrative) planet in the galaxy. The game consists of randomly generated and fully destructible cave systems, containing a variety of environmental obstacles and swarming with hungry bug-aliens. Players are tasked with completing a variety of objectives, such as mining as much mineral wealth as possible, escorting a Drill Tank or pumping liquid minerals into an orbitally inserted refinement facility. Ideally, this should be accomplished without dying to the locals.

Luckily, the Deep Rock Dwarves traded in their old forefathers' pickaxes, crossbows and mules for more advanced kit long ago. To combat the Glyphid hordes, Deep Rock Galactic fields four specialists, each with their own abilities and equipment:

• The Scout specializes in mobility, exploration, and resource gathering. His flare gun provides the best source of lighting in the game, and his grappling hook allows him unparalleled movement, making him a good choice for locating objectives or obtaining valuable items and minerals. In combat, he's best used for single-target elimination: combined with his mobility, he's able to pick off far-away, high-value enemies, or circle around to attack weak spots.

• The Driller specializes in excavating, mining, and tunneling. Everyone has pickaxes to mine with, but the Driller's massive power drills cut through stone like butter and his satchel charges can carve massive craters in the surrounding landscape. Against enemies, he specializes in debuffs and crowd control. His primary weapons all have associated status effects that can affect large groups of enemies at a time, weakening them for his allies to finish the job easily.

• The Engineer specializes in long-term, automated defenses. His claim to fame is a Sentry Gun that will lock on to targets and can easily deal with lone enemies while the rest of the team works on objectives. He also has a platform gun to shape the terrain around him, creating bridges, points of access to high-up minerals, and creating arenas suitable to fight the bug hordes in. When a fight does break out, he can repel his opponents with powerful burst damage tools: his secondary weapons are especially powerful and capable of wiping out large groups of weaker mooks simultaneously.

• The Gunner specializes in, well — what else? He naturally packs the biggest guns on the team, from a giant minigun and a rocket launcher to a coilgun and a massive revolver. Appropriately, he's the best suited to fighting any enemy in any situation, as all the other dwarves have limitations (such as inability to handle crowds, short range, or low ammo counts) that hold them back. Besides that, he provides multiple utility functions as well: his shield generator creates breathing room from large crowds when things start looking dicey, and his zipline gun allows the whole team to traverse long distances over large gaps.

You can visit the website here.

A Kickstarter campaign to fund Deep Rock Galactic: The Board Game was held in 2022.

A spin off Bullet Hell Roguelike Deep Rock Galactic Survivor went into early access on Windows on February 14, 2024.

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Scanners detect examples of the following tropes:

#-D

• Achievement Mockery: There are several hidden achievements awarded for doing particularly Dwarvish things.
  • "Without A Paddle," for being the last dwarf standing, with no ammo, while a Dreadnought is active.
  • "The A-Team," for stuffing a barrel into all four seats of the Drop Pod.
  • "Time Well Spent," for stuffing every barrel in the Space Rig into the drop pod. "Management weeps."
  • "Foreign Objects in the Launch Bay", for kicking every last barrel in the Space Rig into the launch bay forcefield. "You are why Mission Control drinks"
  • "Self Control," for taming your barrel-kicking urges for ten consecutive digs.
  • "Darwin Award," for jumping into the fiery, barrel-disintegrating barrel game hoop. While drunk.
  • "Party Time!," for everyone toasting and then drinking their drinks in unison, while on the dancefloor, while a song is playing.
  • "I Like It Down Here," for staying in one mission for over an hour.
• Acid Attack:
  • Several enemies have the ability to spit acid at a range, such as the Glyphid Acid Spitter, Glyphid Menace, Glyphid Praetorian, and the Spitball Infector.
  • The Driller's Corrosive Sludge Pump fires caustic sludge that sticks to enemies or surfaces and causes a Damage Over Time effect on enemies caught in it. Enemies killed by this will melt away with No Body Left Behind.
• Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: Due to how fast the game's pace is or might be groups tend to keep chat conversations short and to the point using abbreviations to quickly relay important information to the team.
  • "R" is meant to tell everyone you're "ready". Usually said before progressing important parts of the mission ^note This is very important in Escort Duty, Salvage Operation and Industrial Sabotage and ignoring or starting missions umprompted without warning the team is generally considered a huge faux pas, as they will always call huge swarms to be fought and Industrial Sabotage's last objective is a tough boss fight. or calling the Drop Pod which sets off a time limit to escape the map and an endless horde of bugs to impede your escape.
  • "Bulk" or "Det" is usually said when warning about a Bulk Detonators without pinging.
  • "Leech" is used to warn if you get grabbed by a Cave Leech and prevent the same thing from happening to anyone coming to rescue you.
  • "Event" means Machine Events, optional missions that, with 3+ more people, usually requires some coordination to clear without issues. In case of an Omen Extermination Tower it's incredibly difficult to finish without everyone in the team present for the fight.
• Advanced Tech 2000: The M1000 Classic, somewhat paradoxically at first glance given the weapon is clearly an Expy of the World War II-era M1 Garand rifle. However, text from the modifications or overclocks indicate that the weapon is actually a railgun.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: Added in Update 25 is the Haunted Cave mission modifier, in which your dwarves must complete their mission while being chased relentlessly by a ghostly horror in the shape of a Bulk Detonator. While certain status effects can slow it down, it's completely invulnerable, and the only thing that can keep you safe is running away and completing your mission before it can catch up.
• A.K.A.-47: The M1000 Classic is unashamedly based on the iconic M1-Garand, one of the most well-known firearms in American history. It even comes with the Garand's trademark 'Ping!' sound while reloading.
• Alien Catnip: Inverted. This is the in-universe justification for why your dwarves are eating the health-restoring mineral known as red sugar.
• Alien Invasion: An unusual example where the players are the alien invaders. Deep Rock Galactic is launching what amounts to a full-scale orbital invasion of Hoxxes IV; they openly state that their goal is "the complete subjugation" of the planet. All of the usual tropes are present—the Dwarves have an overwhelming technological superiority, they travel to and from the planet in indestructible ships, and they are exploiting the planet for resources and abducting some of the inhabitants by way of Egg Hunts. The catch is that the only native inhabitants seen so far are (presumably) nonsentient, animalistic bugs.
• Alien Kudzu:
  • The woody chambers and passageways of the Hollow Bough are absolutely covered in overgrowths of an invasive red thorny vine. It appears to all be of the same species (Dwarves even comment that it "looks like one big thorny organism") but differentiates into three different forms. Creeper Vines are the most common and spawl across rooms and tunnels, sprouting from holes in the wall, which they will slither back into if damaged. Short contact with creeper vines deals a bit of Scratch Damage. Bloated Vines are sessile and much larger than the other forms. They act as part of the terrain and can be mined, but beware of the large protruding thorns, which they will eject if damaged. Last and certainly not least are the Stabber Vines, which look similar to a cluster of three creeper vines but with enormous sharp blades at the tips. These will target any dwarf that gets too close, lining up the blade before lunging forward to deal massive damage. Once all three vines are defeated, it will let out a enormous howl.
  • Season 3 introduces the Lithophage, also known as Rockpox. Originating from an infected meteor that broke apart from Hoxxes' gravity, the meteor pieces contain Plague Hearts that grow into Contagion Spikes, infecting the rock around it with dark, reddish-brown spikes and causing it to grow sickly yellow boils. The contagion can spread further into the native wildlife, transforming Glyphids into nigh-invulnerable boil-ridden monstrosities that can only be damaged properly by popping the boils.
• All-Natural Gem Polish: You can pull Enor Pearl, which is always perfectly spherical, out of the ground. As these "pearls" are found buried in the earth rather than inside a giant mollusk, it's anyone's guess as to how they're supposed to form, although the name is probably just a figure of speech.
  • One of the randomly-selected Flavor Text lines for a Deep Dive in the Sandblasted Corridors states that the region's high winds are responsible for shaping them, implying a process akin to the smoothing of river rocks.
• Ambiguously Human: Deep Rock Galactic itself. According to the website, they have "long relied on" Dwarves when it comes to dangerous excavations. This implies that the company itself is actually run by humans or at least non-Dwarves. Mission Control is never revealed to be a human or a dwarf as well. When Update 18 added the bar, it also added "Leaf Lover's Special", a sobriety-inducing anti-beer maligned by the workers because it's implied to be brewed by Elves. The description also says it was only shipped in to "please Management". This might imply that there's Elven management at DRG.
• And This Is for...: "For Karl!" is a common rallying cry by the dwarves. While it's one of several slogans they can shout when you hit the "salute" button, they can also snarl "This one's for Karl!" when mowing down Glyphids. Who Karl is, however, remains one of the game's biggest mysteries.
• Animal Lover: The dwarves, surprisingly, are quite friendly with any wildlife that isn't actively attacking them. They have the option to pet most of it too — Lootbugs, cave vines, breather plants, hexawing gniffers, and tamed glyphids can all be the recipients of a dwarven Affectionate Gesture to the Head. Downplayed in that they also don't necessarily mind killing that wildlife if it happens to get caught in the crossfire or earn them money and they're very enthusiastic about slaughtering hostile critters.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The game has been designed with multiplayer as the primary focus, but the AI assistant Bosco makes singleplayer missions more palatable:
    • Bosco can be assigned to do some of the more onerous tasks that would be annoying or even dangerous for a lone player to do. For example, he can be tasked to protect Doretta during Escort Duty missions so the player can run into a previous cavern to grab minerals or secondary objectives, and in On-Site Refining he can be assigned to automatically construct all the segments in a pipeline, which would take a long time to complete for a single player.
    • In solo missions, Bosco's floating capabilities help to make up for movement options lost by not having allies to provide them for you; primarily the Engineer's platform gun, which Bosco doesn't need to mine objects on vertical walls. And he doesn't dig just veins; he can excavate to and reach buried chunks like Aquarq and Gold Nuggets by himself just fine if you point him at the proper patches of stone, so you can get the troublesome ones out of the ceiling and such.
    • Bosco can also carry heavy objects for you (such as Enor Pearls and Mini-M.U.L.E parts) to keep your hands free while you dig or to fetch them from a distance. He can also carry the Hacking Pods on Industrial Sabotage missions and can carry Doretta's head during the extraction on Escort Duty missions.
  • The M.U.L.E. has a manual call button, so depositing ore from a large vein won't eat up much time from going back and forth.
  • When the M.U.L.E. is recalled to the drop pod, it'll leave behind glowing markers that blink in a sequence leading to its direction, giving a lifeline to players who attempted to go ahead of it and got lost or players who have been left behind and don't know where the M.U.L.E. went. A later update added holographic arrows to the marker, meaning players don't have to waste precious seconds searching for the direction of the sequence.
  • If the M.U.L.E. has already been claimed by the drop pod but the player still has resources on them, their minerals will automatically be added to the totals after the drop pod launches. If they have more resources than they can carry at once, however, they can deposit resources on a chute on the side of the drop pod instead.
  • In the event that the M.U.L.E. is stuck or otherwise unable to find its way back to the drop pod (usually due to pathing errors or passage obstruction by platforms), it will directly teleport to the pod in the last 15 seconds. No matter what happens, so long as the team stays alive throughout the countdown the doors will ALWAYS open before time runs out.
  • Once the drop pod has landed, anyone standing inside of it is relatively safe from harm, as enemies cannot enter it and players take reduced damage when inside. Very useful if your team has agreed on only getting through a Sole Survivor to succeed on the mission proper, or if rescuing the rest of the team would mean a Senseless Sacrifice.
  • Flares don't have an infinite lifespan, but they don't disappear once they run out, either. Burnt-out flares can thus be used as a navigational tool, indicating areas that have already been visited.
    • Flares also regenerate over time, meaning you'll never have to worry about running out. This wasn't the case in the game's closed Alpha, where each Dwarf had a limited supply of flares and would have to rely on their headlight to navigate the caves after running out.
  • In co-op mode, clicking on an item with the Laser Pointer will have the character exclaim a line of dialogue, and many of these are designed to be hints to guide the player (such as "worthless, but fun to destroy!" when digging at non-gem-producing crystals, or "It's a Warden! Shoot the glowing thing on its back!") Sometimes these hint lines will be said when making a boss appear.
  • Heavy objects like Aquarqs and alien eggs only prevent carriers from shooting their guns and throwing grenades. Hanging onto ziplines, throwing flares, and even climbing up ledges can be done like normal (that last one omits the animation, though).
  • Holding the laser pointer tool will show additional indicators on the screen that show the location of teammates, ammo resupplies, the M.U.L.E., etc.
  • On Egg Hunt and Elimination missions, opening up the terrain map will show glowing indicators of where you can find your mission objectives, which is helpful since unlike other mission types, the objectives are located at specific locations instead of being equally spaced out around the cave.
  • A similar concept is applied to Point Extraction and On-site Refining, but someone will need to locate the resources before they appear on the radar; a task that is much more feasible given how these missions generate smaller caves than Egg Hunt and Elimination. On-site Refining showing the locations of pumpjacks and the refinery when players pull out the ping tool is especially useful for Drillers who want to create the straightest path from one to the other.
  • The Naedocyte Shockers spawned by the Breeder are purple, unlike naturally-occurring ones, which are blue. This helps players determine when they're just being brutalized by the AI director and when there's an active Breeder on the map. Likewise, Swarmers spawned by brood nexuses are green instead of purple, so you know when one is nearby spawning them.
  • Leaf Lover's Special is by far the cheapest brew at 25 credits and no beer materials, an amount that no matter how much you dump on upgrades you'll have unless you've cut it extremely close. This lets you get rid of any Interface Screw from more intoxicating brews in case you don't want to go in smashed or said interface screw is too nauseating to play with. Additionally, if you really can't afford the drink, you may instead jump into the barrel hoop in order to respawn as sober.
  • Additionally, none of the buff-granting beers will induce any intoxication if only one is drank and no other beers have been consumed.
  • If something dangerous is directly behind you and about to attack, the game volume will mute itself pretty much entirely. This can serve as a forewarning for an exploder that you didn't see, or a praetorian about to start breathing on you.
  • Temperature Shock happens when a frozen enemy is suddenly hit with a fire damage, or when a burning enemy gets frozen, causing a sudden influx of instant damage to trade off for cancelling out the element's effect. This way it doesn't become harmful to your team's overall efficiency if different dwarves are running Molotovs/Flamethrower or Freeze Grenade/Cryo Cannon at the same time (It can also be a strategy for a cryo cannon using Driller to trip it on purpose with the Experimental Plasma Charger perk that does burning on a full charge).
  • There is no cost in terms of resources required to construct pipe segments during On-Site Refinery missions. This helps keep the gameplay of the mission streamlined; there's no need to scour the caves for material to slowly build up your pipelines one segment at a time, and prevents any scenarios where you may not have enough resources to complete the pipe from the refinery to the well. The only limits to pipe building are segment length, angle, and terrain.
  • Speaking of which, the pipe nodes are fairly lenient on being placed with regards to terrain blocking the pipe itself, and can only get blocked if there's a significant amount of terrain touching the pipe itself. In fact, successfully placing down nodes clears out the surrounding terrain, so dwarves will always be able to successfully grind on top of the pipes given that it's not built underneath a structure such as a resupply pod or another pipe segment.
  • The Magma Core biome has frequent earthquakes, which can potentially open up scorching cracks in the ground that players can fall into. They can easily be fatal, but all of these cracks will generate safe platforms inside them, so quick players can save themselves from getting cooked and escape without having to dig their way out. The Glacial Strata has a similar obstacle (crevasses that open up when stepped on) that function in the same way.
  • The Shield Disruption hazard completely removes the Dwarves' shields for the level, meaning that all damage will hit health. To mitigate the danger, the Dwarves take 30% less damage from non-friendly sources when this hazard is active.
  • Bulk Detonators do not attack for the first 3-4 seconds of spawning unless damaged, giving you ample time to run away. This stops cheap downs or failed missions by unlucky spawns.
    • Bulk Detonators will also never target the Drilldozer intentionally, allowing you and your team to safely lure it away and detonate it elsewhere.
  • Cave Leeches killed while grabbing a Dwarf will politely lower their victim back to ground level before bursting, instead of just dropping him from a potentially lethal height.
  • Both the LithoFoamer and the LithoVac have infinite ammunition, meaning that you don't have to worry about running out of ammo when cleaning the Rockpox.
  • For most primary and secondary objectives, the required resources will usually spawn in greater amounts than is necessary to complete the quota, reducing the need to look through every single inch of the caves to find the last piece. This also extends to Lithophage Outbreak warnings; cleaning a certain amount of Rockpox boils will cause the associated Contagion Spike to die and automatically clear out any remaining boils.
  • If you're extremely low on health, you'll regenerate some health back after a while so that you can endure a few more hits rather than be in danger of going down from even the smallest amount of damage. This is doubly handy in missions where the Shield Disruptor modifier is in play.
  • Machine events can infuse blank matrix cores with overclocks or cosmetic cores as a reward for completing the event. If a player doesn't have a blank core to use, they (along with everyone else) will obtain experience points so they can still be rewarded for helping out.
  • When playing in a mission that has the Haunted Cave modifier, no Bulk Detonators will ever spawn since it would be unfair to have two Detonators active at once (one regular and one ghost).
  • Mactera Grabbers are programmed to find a suitable height for them to dump you at so you suffer fall damage. If they can't find a suitable height after a minute or so, it'll automatically let you go so you aren't helpless indefinitely.
  • If a player disconnects while they have resources in their inventory, the game will drop a Resource Bag in their place, allowing their teammates to deposit whatever they were carrying and preventing primary/secondary objectives from becoming Unintentionally Unwinnable.
  • If someone joins mid game, their drop pod will always land near another player so that they aren't just dropped into the caves by themselves or in a group of enemies.
  • During missions where Low O2 is in play, if a player becomes incapacitated from running out of air, they'll regain half of their maximum oxygen upon being revived so they don't go down again from lack of air.
• Anti-Grinding: At endgame levels, normal missions stop being quite enough to fuel upgrades and you have to rely on weekly missions and once-a-week deep dives for both overclock cores and the crafting resources they demand. These missions are designed so that they can be completed in one or two long play sessions, after which you must wait for the next weekly reset or grind away for low returns from non assignment missions. Most players simply choose to stop playing for a bit and wait until the next reset. This is intentional on the part of the devs, and keeps the game from becoming a second job, or from making players feeling burnt out, or forced to play a lot to keep up with other players.
• Anvil on Head: While hardly practical due to the set-up required, you can use ammo drops and other droppables to kill bugs. It deals quite a hefty damage too, potentially one-shotting non-Dreadnought bugs. Of course, it can also happen to you, if you ignore Mission Contro's notification that he's sending a drop on that spot on the ground.
• Apologetic Attacker: Dwarves remark that Loot Bugs are adorable and it makes them feel bad to kill them... but also, if the Loot Bugs didn't want to get murdered, they shouldn't have gorged themselves with valuable minerals.
• Armor Is Useless:
  • The dwarves' armor suits range from the Driller's, which is heavy-plated Powered Armor, to the Scout's, which is little more than a flak jacket over a skintight space suit. All dwarves have the exact same amount of base health and shielding, regardless of class; all armor upgrades shared between the four dwarves are equally protective as well.
  • Alternate armor skins purchased from the accessory shop or downloaded as DLC allow dwarves to change the equipment they wear on missions, but these have no effect on gameplay either, even if their description says it does (like the increased armor of the Mk 4 Driller suit, or the decreased armor of the Roughneck getup).
• The Artifact: Some official artwork, as well as the statues that appear in the Memorial Hall, depict the Dwarves with their first-generation gun models, rather than the updated ones that are actually used in-game. This may be a deliberate Call-Back, as a form of recognition for the players who were playing way back then (aiding this theory is a terminal in the Memorial Hall that lists every tester of the closed alpha.)
• Artificial Brilliance:
  • Glyphids challenge traditional tactics, as they are able to Wall Crawl and attack from any direction. They will utilize the borehole left by a supply drop as a surprise attack vector, take routes that maximize cover from the Engineer's sentries, make pincer movements to force Gunners into leaving a flank open, and skirt around flames left by the Driller rather than suicidally charge through them.
  • Webspitter and Acidspitter Glyphids aren't intended for direct combat, and are instead better at spitting webs and acid from afar and debuffing anyone they hit. As such, they tend to stick to walls and ceilings, far away from the fracas at large.
  • Praetorians that take a lot of damage all at once (such as losing their armor or taking a high explosive to the schnoz) will immediately stop charging their target and start running away, only to charge from another angle or passage so they can possibly surprise their target.
  • Glyphids that are carrying a live sticky grenade or are in the blast radius of one will flee and scatter in an attempt to minimize the grenade's effects.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Molly's pathing on occasion can get a bit... derpy, especially around small holes or openings. Thankfully, if she gets stuck too long, the hatch will open without her so her pathing derping out won't cost you a mission. Sadly, there's nothing to be done if Molly realizes she's far away from everyone and decides to come from the direction you're running down a tunnel for while you're being pursued by a swarm of enemies.
  • Bosco won't attempt to aim for the weak spots of enemies. Normally, this is passable, since either it or the player will be able to bust through most enemies' armor easily, but against enemies that are flat out immune to attacks that aren't on weak spots, like a scrambled BET-C or a Glyphid Oppressor, Bosco struggles. This issue is thankfully averted against OMEN Exterminator towers, where Bosco will home in on their weakpoints once exposed.
    • Further adding insult to injury, if a player orders Bosco to use his secondary rocket attack while he's in the midst of navigating past an obstacle, it occasionally results in him staying in place and blankley staring through the wall. Mercifully enough, ordering him to follow you can result in him firing the rocket the moment the highlighted enemy is in his sight.
  • The Drilldozer's pathing doesn't account for potentially damaging obstacles in its path. It won't try to avoid exploding plants, it sees no issue in running over Bulk Detonators, and it will happily run over lava spouts in the Magma Core (that said, it one-shots all of these obstacles, including BET-C.) The Drilldozer can get very confused about its route to the Ommoran Heartstone, resulting in it doubling back on itself or taking bizarre routes (bonus points for getting itself stuck in the air on tiny pieces of rock while doing so). As you spend the majority of an Escort Duty mission fighting off bugs, these issues can potentially sink a mission. Though the devs thought it was fun(ny) that the Drilldozer could go vertical or drive on thin air, they eventually reined in these "glitches" by Update 33.
• Artistic License – Chemistry: If you destroy Christmas decorations on the space rig, management might threaten to flood the rig with radon gas. All of radon's isotopes are radioactive, with the longest-lived one (radon-222) having a half-life of 3.8 days before decaying into polonium-218. Radon-222 is part of the uranium-238 series, and directly comes from radium-226, meaning if management really insists on gassing its employees with radon they'd need to keep a large supply of radium so it can decay into gas, but they'd need to use it quickly before it decays into polonium. There are a lot more practical options available than radon gas.
• Artistic License – Geology:
  • Instead of having ice caps, Hoxxes has a layer of permafrost deep beneath the surface of its continental plates. Which makes no sense. This is even lampshaded in the biome description, as it's driven at least one scientist on DRG's payroll to quit his job at the sheer affront to science done by this find.
    "At least one of our xenogeologists quit in a rage when research started on this region. Instead of having conventional polar ice caps, and in violation of all physical laws we know of, the continental plates of Hoxxes rest on top of a planetwide permafrost layer several miles deep. As always, DRG recommends a "don't ask" approach when dealing with the peculiarities of Hoxxes' makeup."
  • Uranium is depicted as vibrant, glowing green crystal. In reality, uranium is a dull-gray metal^note While there are green minerals that contain uranium such as Torbernite, they don't glow. Also you render the harmful radiation of it inert by breaking part of the crystal; suffice to say, in reality you can't unprime uranium by physically breaking it.
• Artistic License – Nuclear Physics:
  • Virtually everything related to the Radioactive Exclusion Zone. The radiation Hoxxes is suffering from has apparently given the local glyphids superpowers, and somehow mutated the stone of the cavern itself into forming tumors and walls of living eyes. This is a particularily egregious example, given that the radiation in question is stated to be gamma radiation — i.e., nuclear radiation. Somehow. It could possibly be all the crystalline Uranium scattered about the place, except that Uranium is a gray, non-lustrous metal, not a green, glowing crystalline mineral.^note As mentioned under Artistic License – Geology, there are green minerals that contain Uranium such as Torbernite, they just don't glow.
  • Somehow, the grenade launcher's "Fat Boy" overclock manages to pack enough plutonium into a man-portable shell to cause a tiny mushroom cloud and area of Damage Over Time fallout. In reality, mushroom clouds result from any sufficiently powerful explosion, they are not an exclusive property of nuclear blasts.
• Artistic License – Space: The altitude readout on the insertion pod while it's on the space rig reads 37 000 meters. In real life on Earth space officially is considered to begin at 80 000 meters from sea level, with the ISS orbiting at a whopping 408 000 meters, and even then the ISS and other satellites have to account for (extremely) thin traces of the atmosphere gradually slowing down their orbital speed. It's possible Hoxxes IV has no surface atmosphere to speak off, which wouldn't cause drag, but the high orbital speed of an orbit at 37 000m would cause problems for any vehicle trying to rendez-vous with the space station (such as a pod full of dwarves and minerals trying to return to the base). Subverted, however, when one considers the consistent failure of Cargo Shuttles to arrive safely at the Rig - every holiday they crash into Hoxxes.
• Ascended Meme:
  • The common fan saying "If they don't rock and stone, they ain't coming home!" (referring to the common expectation of dwarf players returning salutes) was eventually added as one of the possible lines the dwarves will say when saluting.
  • For a while, Bismor was the only crafting mineral to not have a unique shoutout from the dwarves when using the terrain scanner, which eventually became a joke among fans. Some of the new lines reference this.
    "Bismor! Feels so good to say it."
    "I'm so glad to announce that I've found some Bismor!"
  • In-Universe, the dwarves would call the Drop Pod "our very own express elevator to Hell." Come Update 34, Mission Control would occasionally call it this during Deep Dives.
  • Season 3 acknowledged the players' tendencies to crowd around xenofungus and compressed gold to chant "Mushwoom"/"WE'RE RICH", by way of Mission Control snapping and telling you to get a move on already if you try. In addition, the Rival Nemesis' lure lines also now include "Mushrum" and "WE'RE RICH".
• Assist Character: Bosco, a small drone who will accompany you if there are no other dwarves in your lobby. He doesn't bring as much firepower as another dwarf would, and lacks any mobility tools that the player can take advantage of; in exchange, he's able to fly, mine, fight, and revive a certain number of times per dig. He is also indestructible.
• Attack! Attack! Attack!: The Glyphids, as a race of giant carnivorous insects, will never stop attacking Dwarves that invade their territory until the miners finally die or leave. This is likely why that Deep Rock Galactic's mining operation is based on an orbiting space station, rather than a more conventional base on the planet, since the Glyphids would eventually wear down even their defenses.
• Attack Drone
  • Bosco functions as one during Solo Missions in addition to providing illumination, handling certain mission specific tasks, as well as digging dirt and/or mining minerals for the player.
  • Beginning in Season 1, the dwarves come up against swarms of Rival Tech Shredders which attack by charging at then shredding them. By Season 3 however enough Shredders were salvaged from dwarven beards and reverse engineered to develop the Engineer's Shredder Swarm Grenade, which deploys 5 allied Shredders that temporarily go after the closest enemies in the immediate vicinity.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Glyphid Praetorians only take damage when struck in the face or thorax, as they have layers upon layers of heavy chitin plate. Oppressors go beyond that and can't take damage from the front at all, and Dreadnoughts take it even further as even their head is bulletproof, requiring that you shoot their vulnerable thorax (though see Multiple Life Bars below) and demanding teamwork be used to take them down; someone needs to draw its attention whilst everyone else attacks it from behind.
  • Generally speaking, if it's a bright and glowing part of a creature, or a head, you can bet shooting it in that spot will deal far more damage than normal.
• A-Team Firing: Downplayed, but present. The Glyphids are so fast and numerous that you're often rewarded far more for blasting away at the horde than you are for trying to aim; most engagements will be at danger-close range anyways. This is encouraged by the weapon design; the Engineer is packing a shotgun, the Gunner has a minigun, and the Driller has a flamethrower — not exactly precision weaponry. Even the Scout, who is the most lightly armed, has a fully-fledged assault rifle; it's the most accurate of the default primary weapons, but that isn't saying much. Somewhat averted by the Scout's unlockable M1000 Classic, a more traditional (but still scopeless) sniper rifle, and the Gunner's Bulldog Revolver, an extremely powerful, accurate Hand Cannon.
• Auto-Revive: Downplayed by the Iron Will perk, which allows the player to choose to get back up for a temporary damage-immune last stand after being downed, once per map. After this last stand runs out, the player is downed again, unless they receive any sort of healing before the buff ends.
• Bad Boss: Zig-zagged. Deep Rock Galactic openly admits that they value their equipment considerably more than their employees' lives. Mission Control is entirely honest about this, and the dwarves appear to share the same attitude, not being particularly upset if they're left behind on a dig. That being said, DRG also goes out of its way to ensure that their employees are equipped to deal with whatever hazards they're expected to face, supports them with regular supply drops in exchange for Nitra, and fields a well-equipped space rig to dispatch them from. There's also the fact that dwarves who fail a mission or are left behind will respawn in the medical bay with a line suggesting they remember their previous experience and were somehow rescued, leaving it ambiguous whether fallen or abandoned dwarves actually suffer the consequences of their situation.
• The Bait:
  • You can get the "Designated Decoy" achievement for becoming this during a Dreadnought battle, by taking the most damage from it out of everyone else in your team.
  • The Engineer's L.U.R.E. grenade is specifically designed for this purpose, projecting a holographic image of a dancing dwarf that attracts hostile aliens to attack it before zapping them with a burst of electricity when its duration expires.
  • The Unknown Horror in missions with the "Haunted Cave" hazard is an Invincible Boogeyman of a Bulk Detonator that cannot be damaged, but can get its attention drawn towards a player that shoots it. Many multiplayer missions often have one player act as the designated bait to draw it away from the rest of the team.
• The Beastmaster: Any player can become this, thanks to the aptly-named 'Beast Master' perk. Players with this perk can tame one of the three basic Glyphid Grunt variants to assist them in battle, causing it to immediately turn on its pack and become extremely loyal to the dwarf that tamed it, following them anywhere they go and attacking any enemy that threatens them — even Bulk Detonators.
• Beating A Dead Player: The bugs will just as readily target downed dwarves as living ones, eventually resulting in a huge swarm around them if they aren't revived in short order. This, it turns out, is really useful, because it means less bugs going after the remaining teammates and also makes them an easy target for a well-thrown grenade or three. Meanwhile the downed dwarf is no worse off for it, since they are effectively invincible in this state and there's no time limit on reviving them.
• Berserk Button: Management's priorities are not quite in order when it comes to punishing dwarves for rowdiness in the space rig. Kicking barrels into the Launch Bay or even the Drop Pod will get you threatened with vandalism fines and generally just berated, even when these can damage the equipment and dwarves. But breaking holiday decorations is what gets management to threaten to close the Abyss Bar down, cancel the holidays even for Mission Control, and flood the rig with Radon gas, going by Mission Control's exasperated lines.
• BFG: There are constant implications that the armaments your dwarves get for their missions, mostly properly sized if not a little too huge for them, is waaaaaay oversized for mere humans. Even the Scout's assault rifle is apparently pretty huge. In fact, pretty much all of the guns DRG fields qualify; even the turret guns sport barrels that look sized to fire entire carbines of smaller calibres for breakfast.
  Gunner: "It ain't a gun if it don't weigh at least one hundred pounds!"
• Bizarre and Improbable Ballistics: The Engineer's LOK-1 Smart Rifle can lock onto enemies, showing a curved trajectory from the gun barrel to each locked-on target. It then fires bullets that take those exact curved trajectories, making it useful at hitting weakpoints by adjusting the aim.
• Blaming the Victim: When you kill a Loot Bug, your dwarf will often claim it's their fault for being full of valuables.
• Booze-Based Buff: As of Update 18, certain varieties of liquor available at the Abyss Bar like the Red Rock Blaster or Dark Morkite will grant your dwarves a stat buff, the former giving a hefty health buff and the later an increase to resource gathering capabilities, for the next mission. Anything that isn't made of Barley Bulbs, though, will just get you plastered at best.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Compared to the enormous minigun toted by the Gunner, the Scout's assault rifle has a tiny magazine and a much slower rate of fire. However, it does more damage per bullet than the minigun, doesn't have to deal with heat buildup, and starts out fairly accurate without upgrades; whereas the minigun has to chew through a good amount of ammo as it gets more accurate. This suits the Scout as a forward roving class, equipped to handle the infrequent skirmish and use his Grappling-Hook Pistol if he gets in over his head.
  • The Gunner himself qualifies. None of his skills are particularly flashy; in contrast to The Driller, The Scout, and The Engineer, he has no gimmick other than shooting. His primary weapon is a Minigun, with all the subtlety and nuance that implies; his secondary is a massive revolver; his utility item is a spherical shield generator, and his mobility item is a zipline launcher. Compared to the Scout with his Grappling Gun, the Engineer's turrets, or the Driller's flamethrower, these all seem fairly mundane, even if they are incredibly satisfying to use. Try getting through any high-level digs without at least one Gunner on your team and see how long you last without his firepower and shield to back you up against swarms.
  • The Dash perk. Compared to getting a glyphid companion, reviving yourself through sheer willpower or having a sixth sense for anything trying to grab you (and killing it when upgraded), all this one does is just make you move faster briefly. However it has a very short cooldown and unlimited uses, and it is a very good general perk. Some very nice applications for dash are: A) Escaping a dreadnought's shockwave attack. B) Escaping mactera bomber/Fungus Bogs goo. C) Cross a larger gap. D) Moving heavy objects like Aquarqs or eggs faster. E) Giving yourself more space to work with when fighting a horde. F) Rushing to teammates when something threatening like a bulk detonator or dreadnought is on you. G) Quickly retreating from a Nemesis' "Instant Death" Radius, and so many more!
  • "Bunker"-type strategies, in which players drill into a wall and carve out a room they stand in and fend off hordes from. Compared to jumping around and shooting bugs in a big arena, it's a lot more boring to stand in place and shoot down a single corridor, but funneling bugs through a chokepoint using this technique makes swarms a lot more manageable since it's impossible for them to surround the player and Area of Effect or One-Hit Polykill weapons can maximize their benefits.
  • Born Ready makes your inactive weapons to automatically reload after 5 seconds. Mostly a convenience perk, but you'll be glad that you will never have to draw a Secondary with an empty clip. It also allows your Dwarf to theoretically fire without ever having to manually reload simply by rotating your Primary and Secondary every 5 seconds. And as a bonus, weapons with reload times longer than five seconds (such as the Thunderhead) will still be reloaded after Born Ready triggers, effectively shortening their reloads.
  • Clean overclocks provide a small buff with no strings attached. Nothing fancy like turning your grenade launcher's ammo into pocket nukes, or adding electricity to your shots, but sometimes a little extra ammo or magazine size is just what a weapon needs.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Several of them can appear as rare random spawns in the caves, and usually are just as threatening as you would expect.
  • Menaces are much less subtle than their fellow ranged brethren, glowing bright blue with a distinctive bulbous shape and burbling warcries. They attack with a rapid-fire barrage of blue/white spitballs and will continue to fire for several seconds without moving unless interrupted. Menaces also have a significantly beefier health pool just under or equivalent to a Glyphid Praetorian, coupled with a unique ability to flee and reposition themselves and retreat from damage near-instantly by burrowing into the cave walls, making them one of the highest mobility attrition units in the Glyphid family.
  • Glyphid Oppressor: A much more durable variant of the Glyphid Praetorian intended to be a new variant of the Mighty Glacier. It is completely invincible from the front with its abdomen being the only vulnerable spot, meaning you can't just use More Dakka to chew through the armor. It is also significantly wider than a standard Praetorian, with an upward flaring head plate that can completely block a Driller's standard tunnels as it advances. If stunned it will retaliate by performing a loud radial knockback attack much akin to that of a Dreadnought. Otherwise, it's just another Praetorian variant that dies like any other with enough bullets and skill.
  • Glyphid Bulk Detonator: A thankfully rare variant of the Glyphid Exploder about the size of the Glyphid Dreadnaught and with about as much health. It also has resistance towards special damage types including fire, electricity, and other explosives; So it can almost No-Sell most of the heavy or otherwise armor-ignoring weapons the dwarves carry. Unlike the mook variant, this guy can use explosive melee attacks with no damage to itself and can use this to dig towards targets if its path is blocked. Upon death, the Bulk Detonator stops, primes for three seconds, and explodes in a ten-meter radius that launches smaller (head-sized as opposed to car-sized) explosive pustules that detonate on contact. It leaves quite the impressive crater on the terrain too, sometimes deep enough to register fall damage. If you spot one of these, mark it for your team and then run. These monsters will end runs if not dealt with properly. In-universe, DRG considers these to be one of the most dangerous threats to its operations, and notes that their explosion upon death is on the kiloton scale (i.e. equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT).
  • Rival Nemesis: A floating killer robot deployed by the Rival Corporation with the specific purpose of killing the dwarves. It can fire a moving force field from its "eye" that blocks most shots, and has an "Instant Death" Radius where it grabs up to two Dwarves within a sizeable range and incapacitates them while dealing constant damage to them. It has a lot of health, and although it is instantly destroyed when it catches fire, it's a lot more difficult to set it ablaze than other enemies. Finally, upon destruction, it will teleport a bunch of Phase Bombs near the Dwarves in a Last Ditch Move to blow them up.
• Bottomless Magazines:
  • Averted very thoroughly; even the engineer's turrets need to be reloaded. The only gun in the entire game that has infinite ammo is Bosco's primary weapon, while the only infinite-supply item the Dwarves have are their flares, which regenerate over time. Ammo management is a critical part of getting through more difficult operations. Special mention goes to the Gunner's revolver, which holds only four shots in contrast to the usual six—the rounds are so freakin' huge that there's no space in the cylinder for ONE more, let alone two! Then comes the Unstable Overclock Elephant Rounds which has the revolver use modified autocannon shells so big the cylinder can only hold 3 at a time.
  • Played straight for both Lithophage contagion-cleansing tools in the LithoFoamer and the LithoVac. Both have an infinite amount of ammunition needed to clean the Lithophage, and do not need reloading. The LithoFoamer is capable of dealing damage, however, at 0.1 damage per hit it struggles to kill even a Swarmer.
• Bottomless Pit: Averted, every pit and fissure actually does have a bottom, though some can be so deep you can barely see a flare thrown down there. Jumping down is generally not advised, though — apart from Falling Damage, getting back out can be an ordeal.
• Brick Joke: One of the possible voice lines a Dwarf will say when fighting shredder drones is "Shredders! Don't get them in your beard!". Come Season 3 and the description for the Engineer's new Shredder Drone Grenade states that R&D created it by reverse-engineering shredder drones found tangled in the beards of Dwarves who recently fought Rival robots on a mission.
  • Similarly, one of the Smart Stout voice lines has a Dwarf ponder why they don't put guns on the M.U.L.E. for extra support. Later on, the game was introduced to BET-C, essentially an early version of Molly that traded mineral storage for weaponization... And you find out it wasn't the smartest idea after all because the reason BET-C was discontinued was because a native lifeform to Hoxxes was able to feed on her battery supply and turn her on the miners.
• Brutal Honesty: Mission Control, and by extension Deep Rock Galactic, make absolutely no bones about the fact that they consider the Drop Pod and the M.U.L.E. far more valuable than their employees' lives. The dwarves themselves appear to be completely fine with this stance; if left behind while the rest of the team escapes, their response is effectively to calmly shrug and admit that sometimes you win, and sometimes you die.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: The Fungus Bogs are complete with pools of sticky goo, noxious gas, and big ol' mushrooms.
• Bug War: A Corporate Warfare version between Deep Rock Galactic and the various insect-like creatures of Hoxxes. Unlike most examples, however, the Glyphids and other creatures don't seem to be a Hive Mind or have an overarching goal. They're just reacting to the dwarves' extremely disruptive presence and swarming in reaction to the mining operations. Deep Rock's main goal is gathering the planet's abundant minerals, which the glyphids themselves don't seem to care about in the least, and the dwarves would probably just ignore the insects if they could. Also, it's virtually impossible for the dwarves to hold ground for very long, and the few missions involving large-scale equipment involve dropping in with disposable short-term mining platforms to quickly extract a high-value resource and then beat a hasty retreat before their position is overrun by the Glyphids.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: DRG's employees constantly curse and whine, get drunk on the job, play with anti-gravity on the space station, and blow up hundreds of precious fuel barrels for fun. They always get away with this because the company does not have any other employees who are skilled and/or insane enough to take their place.
• Caps Lock, Num Lock, Missiles Lock: On the PC version the all-important flare button "f", used to provide most of your light in the caverns, is also directly next to the grenade button "g." Woe befall you should these be mixed up in a volatile environment or a tight tunnel with teammates, but thankfully the controls can be rebound.
• Cat Scare: Cave Leeches are incredibly threatening enemies that can single out dwarves and kill them off one at a time; if they aren't immediately saved by their teammates, a single leech can easily take down one or two dwarves, or even pull a Total Party Kill if encountered during a critical moment or nobody says there's a cave leech above. The incredibly similar but docile Cave Vine, on the other hand, is liable to be mistaken for a Cave Leech and blasted into next week if people see its tendril descending.
• Chainsaw-Grip BFG: Sported as the primary weapons of both the Gunner and the Driller. The Engineer gets one as an unlockable secondary weapon.
• Character Select Forcing: All of the dwarves can be played for any mission, (unless the server host enables the setting to prevent duplicate classes,) but at high enough hazard levels, Onsite Refining all but explicitly requires a Driller on the team, especially if the caves are complex enough. If the team doesn't pack a Driller, they're going to spend a ton of time digging paths for Morkite pipes and will likely get overrun if they aren't hasty enough.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Any class can use any cosmetic item, but their suit colors cannot be changed so that they can be easily identified: Blue for Scout, Red for Engineer, Yellow for Driller, and Green for Gunner. Flares are also color-coded.
• Combat Medic: The only kind of medics you can expect to see on Hoxxes. All dwarves can revive their teammates, and the aptly-named Field Medic perk makes the process substantially faster, in addition to giving you one free instant revive per dig.
• Combat Tentacles: The Rival Corporation's Caretaker robot posesses several bladed mechanical tendrils, connected to the base of the data vault it is defending. They can lash out at Dwarves with a a melee attack or shoot out a flurry of projectiles from the claw located on the end of each. They can be damaged and will retract, but will return again after a short while, ready to lash out again.
• Companion Cube: The Dwarves appear to be rather prone to this mentality. The M.U.L.E, All-Purpose Drone, and Drilldozer all receive affectionate nicknames from the miners, and they often treat them like friends, with Molly, Bosco and Doretta/Dotty being their respective names. The dwarves can also salute with Bosco and give Doretta pats. Management has taken steps to crack down on this behavior — by which we mean "they lecture the dwarves about it every so often, very sternly, and then look the other way." Mission Control even refers to the M.U.L.E. as Molly in several of his lines.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: Subverted: While cryo is still incredibly reliable for the majority of enemies encountered in the caves, Dreadnoughts, detonators, and all of their variants are highly resistant to freezing. While they can be frozen, it will last only for fractions of a second. Korlok Tyrant Weeds and BET-C play this straight and are completely immune to being frozen.
  • Rival Company enemies are VERY weak to fire, with most of their units being destroyed outright upon being ignited. The Caretaker though is immune to fire, so no insta-killing a 3 phase boss fight for you.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: More like "Start your mission, Dammit!" Goofing off for too long on the Space Rig will elicit a response or two from Mission Control telling you to get to work. While in the caves, pinging a compressed gold nugget, bittergem or certain xenofungus in the Fungus Bogs will cause Mission Control to practically beg the player(s) to get back to work.
• Cores-and-Turrets Boss:
  • The Korlok Tyrant Weed is a menacing collective of symbiotic alien plant life organized around a central bulb. Korlok Sprouts serve as its biological turrets, spitting a barrage of acid shots at any dwarven team who disturbs one. The Healing Pods continually replenish the core's health, so they're a high-priority target. And finally the Korlok's core, a heavily-armored bulb with a strange, almost crystalline center, is the only part that is vulnerable. It will only become exposed after enough Healing Pods and Sprouts have been killed, and will quickly re-armor before sending out more sprouts and pods.
  • The OMEN Modular Exterminators are three-tiered towers that DRG created as an experimental means of dealing with hostile wildlife that was deemed too unstable. When the Machine Event is activated, one such Modular Extermination Tower must be destroyed within a time limit. A Dwarf must stand on one of three maintenance platforms to expose and destroy cooling tanks that are the cores of each Module. All three sections have their own weapons, and apart from the bottom Module which is always a Radial Pulse-Gun the individual weaponry varies: Drone Replicator, Heavy Burster and Twin Slicer. The cooling tanks take several seconds to expose and remain vulnerable for only a few seconds each time, and depending on how many Modules are still active, staying alive long enough on the platforms to access the tanks can be difficult.
  • The Caretaker is an upside-down mechanical pyramid with four Robotic Appendages that act as turrets which respawn some time after being taken out, one vent at each of its four top corners, and four eye-like cores in the center with one on each side. In order to damage the boss, the four vents need to be taken down, which causes one of the cores to open and close. Attacking the opened core deals damage to the Caretaker, although removing every third of its health will cause it to close all its cores, repair its vents, and summon enemies before the vents turn vulnerable again.
• Corporate Warfare: In the Season 1 update, an unnamed Rival Company started to muscle into Hoxxes IV with fully unmanned, AI-directed operations and hardware; DRG's response to this (after several attempts at communication, which the rival refused to answer) was to immediately begin industrial sabotage operations, commanding the Dwarves to attack Rival Company installations on sight, sack them for all their worth, be it minerals or data, and destroy everything that they can't steal.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Subverted. DRG considers their hardware more valuable than their employees, and the promo shows how a mission where a full Molly is retrieved but everyone else is killed is considered a success. But they never hide this priority to their employees, the Dwarves themselves seem to have no issue in it, and Mission Control does try to provide the best support as he could to the team. All in all, it's probable that the Dwarves just have a different mindset than humans. Played straight when the Dwarves drink Smart Stout, where they start to realize they're being exploited... before deciding not to think about it and drink more.
• Crosshair Aware: If Mission Control sends a supply drop or other tools, he will mark the ground where it lands. Don't linger on it, lest it falls on your head and likely oneshots you.
• Crystal Landscape: Comes in two flavors.
  • The Crystalline Caverns: massive caverns teeming with crystals and a vast amount of other valuable resources, making it a particularly good spot for farming. Its caves are wide (making a Gunner almost a necessity for proper navigation), and the place is filled with energy crystals that arc chains of high-voltage electricity between each other at regular intervals, which can fry a Dwarf in seconds.
  • The Salt Pits are a variant, in that everything down to the majority terrain is made of solidified and sometimes petrified salt crystals, in both red and white varieties.
• Cuteness Proximity: The Dwarves are typically extremely jaded and gruff, but they'll still occasionally comment on how cute the Loot Bug is when you pet one. They also pet and babytalk tamed Glyphids as if they're big friendly dogs, rather than murderous space spiders.
  • In the stunningly gorgeous Azure Weald biome, the dwarves actually take a liking to a few of the plants there, calling the Nectar Rind "pretty", and "asking for a friend" if they can take a plant home in a pot for their bunk.
  • The Radioactive Exclusion Zone likewise has the Breather plants and the Cave Vines, which can both be petted just like lootbugs. Doing so will typically have the Dwarves express their fondness towards the Breather/vine as well.
• Cutting the Knot: The destructible terrain means you have many opportunities for this. The Driller is particularly well-suited to doing so, given that his dual drills allow him to tear through even the toughest terrain in no time flat.
  • During Extraction, you have to backtrack through the cavern, which can often be a one-way trip without the use of ziplines or engineer platforms, never mind how many obstacles lie in your way. Alternatively, if you have a Driller, you can just dig straight towards the Drop Pod.
  • Some caves will be littered with poisonous plants, lava geysers, crystals that shoot lightning, or pits of sludge that slow you down. Well-placed ziplines and/or engineer platforms will let you move over and around them with no trouble.
  • The Praetorian is heavily armored and immune to gunfire, except for its glowing thorax and face. But explosives or fire ignore armor, so you can always just bomb the hell out of them instead.
  • The Glyphids will happily use this against you as well, as mentioned above. Glyphids will pour out of driller holes and drop/resupply pod tunnels, and Bulk Detonators and Dreadnoughts will dig towards you by exploding massive holes in the wall if you try to outmaneuver them by going into a space too tiny for them.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
  • Do not play this game for too long before switching to a game that's similarly ill-lit. You will find yourself spamming F (or whatever button you have mapped) to toss Flares as soon as it gets even slightly dark, even outside FPS games.
  • In a similar vein, if you're used to shooters that let you aim down the sights with the right mouse button / right trigger, you'll want to shake that habit quick, as that instead brings out your pickaxe.
  • The Rival Incursion season terminal has a horizontal bar that can be scrolled through to see rewards for the entire season. When forced to translate the vertically-aligned scroll wheel to be horizontal, many software applications have it set so that mouse wheel down will scroll right, and mouse wheel up will scroll left; Google Chrome is one example of this: on pages that are wider than the screen or when zoomed into an image very closely, scrolling right or left when inputting shift and mouse wheel down or up respectively. Deep Rock Galactic does it in the opposite direction, i.e., mouse wheel up will scroll right and mouse wheel down will scroll left. Anyone who uses software where scrolling horizontally is a frequent action will find themselves screwing up in this menu often.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Wiping on a dig just causes everyone to wake up in the infirmary. The only thing you lose is any mission rewards. You even get to keep whatever resources you deposited in the M.U.L.E. before the wipe (but only a fraction of them).
• Death World: Hoxxes is described as the most dangerous planet in the galaxy, and it earned that reputation. This is the reason Hoxxes is still teeming with scores of rich minerals — nobody except Deep Rock has had the balls to successfully launch mining operations on it. Many have tried before and failed. To wit:
  • The surface of Hoxxes is a scorched wasteland that is incapable of supporting any life; the underground is more hospitable, except that the place is infested with giant, vicious bug aliens.
  • If they don't get you, the geography of the planet isn't much more cuddly than the Glyphids are; radioactive crystals, carnivorous jungles, frozen underground tundras, magma-filled caverns that undergo tectonic shifts — and on top of all that, no matter where you are on the planet, bone-shattering drops are an everyday sight in the caves of Hoxxes.
• Die, Chair, Die!: A hard instinct to resist when you can swing a pickaxe just by holding a button in a fully destructible environment. The dwarves will even blurt out lines about it.
  "Die, worthless crystal!"
• Diegetic Interface: The game is generally designed such that most of the UI's information is also shown on the in-game objects. Guns carry visible ammo counters on them, a hologram icon shows Bosco's current task and a screen on his back shows how many revives he has left, checking the map requires the Dwarf to hold up and stare at their terrain scanner while pinging and identifying requires holding the laser pointer and pointing at things, Doretta Shows Damage on her parts, a giant green meter on the Onsite Refinery's side indicates how much progress has been made to refine minerals, etc. This can make it possible to play the game entirely HUD-less if you're willing to be unsure of how much health exactly you have.
  • To a more minor extent, every thing available to the player in the Space Rig requires interacting with a suitable object (character customization can only be done by a wardrobe, upgrades are equipped by a computer, perks are unlocked while looking at a KPI terminal, missions can be chosen through the 3D display in front of the drop pod, etc.)
• Drill Tank: The Escort Duty mission tasks you with protecting and maintaining one of these as the tank tunnels its way to a valuable deposit. The dwarves affectionately refer to it as "Doretta".
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer: Additional players can join a job in progress, being delivered near the leader via a smaller drop pod. Players can also leave at any time, and will leave the minerals that were on their person in a heavy bag. The AI director will scale the number and durability of bugs appropriately.
• Due to the Dead: The Dwarves kill bugs in Karl's name and make toasts in his honor. Occasionally when finding Lost Packs they'll quickly mourn their fellow fallen Dwarf.
  Dwarf: (solemnly) Rest in peace, whale-piper. We'll make sure to bring this back to surface.
• Dug Too Deep: Subverted. The Dwarves are equipped for exactly this scenario, and digging too deep is the express goal of their mission.
  • With the addition of Deep Dives, you do this intentionally in a single outing, digging in for a mission, completing it, then digging in deeper for part 2, and then on for part 3, each one more difficult than the previous. And if you're feeling courageous, you get Elite Deep Dives.
  • The Escort Duty mission is a more straight example, as Doretta will eventually drill her way to the Ommoran Heartstone, a living rock which does its damndest to destroy her. The Dwarves just have to protect her long enough for her to break through the Heartstone's exterior and expose its core.
• Dual Boss: The Dreadnought Arbalest and Dreadnought Lacerator, collectively the "Dreadnought twins", are a pair of miniature Dreadnoughts which pupated inside the same cocoon. They complement each other in battle, with the Lacerator getting up close and personal with melee and short-range fire breath attacks, and the Arbalest attempting to flank the team of dwarves and attacking from a distance by spitting explosive projectiles. Periodically, or when one is damaged enough, the twins will burrow into the ground, reappear next to each other connected by a tether of energy, which evenly divides their health between each Twin's separate life bar, and regenerates their armor. If one of the two is killed, the other will become more aggressive.
• Dungeon Bypass: It's a game about mining with destructible terrain, this is an inevitability. One strategy frequently used by Drillers (and expected of them by other players) is to save their fuel until the escape pod is called, then drill the team an express tunnel to the escape point, skipping all the backtracking. Quite frequently, this can result in the team beating Molly back to the drop pod!

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• Earthquakes Cause Fissures: A trope present in Magma Core and Glacial Strata, with the fissures opening in random places near the dwarves, and making the mining work that much more difficult, if they don't kill you outright from fall damage.
• Easter Egg:
  • Mission Control has several hidden voice lines responding to various shenanigans particularly inventive dwarves get up to in the space rig, including kicking barrels into the launch bay, or into the drop pod. He also has several unique responses if you manage to kick all of the barrels in the Space Rig into either of the aforementioned places, although this is much easier said than done.
  • Managing to kick one of the hammers left lying around the Space Rig into the barrel hoop will make the score counter display "HAMMER TIME".
  • There's (currently) no visible prompt to do so, but pressing E on a Lootbug will cause your Dwarf to pet them, resulting in an appreciative wriggle and a purr.
  • Season 3 focuses around a passing comet infested with a lithophage virus. If you drink a Wormhole Special and teleport outside the station you can see the comet passing underneath and behind the station, still shedding the lithophage meteoroids you have to deal with on Hoxxes.
  • If the Driller fires his flamethrower at a plasticrete platform or the ice in Glacial Strata for long enough they'll melt a hole in it.
  • Jetty Boots shoot out jets of fire when activated and those jets will set anything directly below the wearer on fire. Creative dwarves can kill small packs of glyphids this way.
• Easy Level Trick:
  • The final objectives of Salvage missions are to have the whole team huddle around large machines as they power up the drop pod; said machines can be repositioned by mining out the terrain from underneath and letting them fall straight down. This is something that can be exploited by an Engineer and a Driller (or, alternatively, just an Engineer and some extreme patience): players can mine out the floor from underneath the machine and create a small room in the floor, then seal the hole in the ceiling. They're now situated in an airtight bunker that enemies can't spawn in nor pathfind their way into, and when the players want to leave, tunnelling a new exit creates the perfect chokepoint to kill the horde of monsters in. The only way this strategy can be thwarted is by the very-rare Bulk Detonator blasting its own path into the bunker (though the team is screwed six ways from Sunday if this happens and the Driller isn't tunneling out), or an Oppressor digging its way in, and neither are even guaranteed to appear in the mission at all.
  • Industrial Sabotage's final objective is to destroy The Caretaker, a massive Rival Company robot, which you need to break four parts of it to expose its eye and finally damage it. Drillers can dig a hole above the Caretaker and drop their Satchel Charges (C4) on top of the boss. If done right this damage all four parts at once and two well placed charges will outright destroy them saving the team a lot of ammo and trouble. The only thing Drillers doing this need to be careful about are about their own ammo, the Phase Bombs and the occasional robots the Caretaker can send on their way.
• Eat Dirt, Cheap:
  • The space rig's notification boards occasionally mention "morkite ale" and Dark Morkite is a drink at the Abyss Bar; either that's just a name, the Morkite is mined as nourishment for the dwarves, or Morkite is used as an ingredient, vaguely like real life Goldschläger.
  • There's also Red Sugar, which crystalizes on the walls of the caves and is usable as medicine; callouts describe it as "highly addictive," indicating that it may be a potent painkiller or anesthetic.
  • The adorable Loot Bugs of Hoxxes eat the minerals around them, meaning they'll drop small amounts of gold and nitra when killed.
• Effortless Achievement: There's an achievement for not messing with the barrels for 10 missions consecutively. It runs under the assumption that you're willingly holding yourself back, but the trope still applies because it requires absolutely no effort at all to get. Hell, you could probably got for 10 missions without even realizing you can kick the barrels around, and then be surprised when you're rewarded for unknowingly refusing the urge to do so.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: Contrasting the icons shown for everything else in the game, The Unknown Horror is shown on the Terrain Scanner as a black void in the Scanner's mapping system.
• Elite Mook: The Elite Threat warning makes the game occasionally spawn elite versions of several enemies. Elite enemies universally get more health, become slightly larger, resistance to status effects like freeze or on fire, and increased move speed, and depending on the enemy in question, some additional enhancements. The elite grunt guard for example gets knockback added to its attacks, and the elite mactera spawn shoots two acid spines instead of a single one.
• Elves Versus Dwarves: Elves do not make an appearance, but friendly fire may result in a dwarf calling his coworkers "pointy-eared leaf lovers", implying this trope is in full swing. One of the battle-preparedness lines when starting a mission is, "Come on lads, are we elves or dwarves?" The Flavor Text of a certain hated organic beer at the Abyss Bar implies Elves brew it, making the Dwarves absolutely despise it (usually, if one orders the beer, they'll whisper the order to Lloyd the bartender, or suggest that they hate it so much that they'll also request it be thinned with some water.)
• Embarrassing Hospital Gown: Ever since Rival Escalation, players who fail a mission or get badly injured on the Space Rig will respawn in their home base's medbay, with their normally professional gear being swapped out for a hospital gown as a way to humiliate them. While the dwarves' backsides are thankfully covered in this case, the fact the dwarves' only other article of clothing is a set of Goofy Print Underwear debatably makes it worse.
• Emergency Weapon: Pickaxes can be swung to damage enemies as well as mine, and pickaxes will never dull in a mission, but one probably shouldn't considering using it for that purpose other than some swarmers or maybe a grunt of two at most. Swinging it slows you down for a little while and prevents sprinting. That being said, a few perks can make for using the pickaxe for more than very occasional ammunition conservation a bit more feasible.
• The Engineer: Obviously The Engineer, but every Dwarf is this, regardless of class. They can fight and mine, but also repair mini-mules, do field repairs on a Drill Tank, build pipelines, and so on.
• Equipment-Based Progression: Your strength doesn't come from ranks or character levels per se. It comes your gear and Dwarf Rank merely allows them to buy more upgrades to make their weapons stronger and the first promotion gives them the ability to start getting Overclocks which further enhances their guns.
• Escort Mission: Update 32 added the Escort Duty mission, where your job is to defend a Drilldozer (a mobile drilling machine on tank tracks, affectionately referred to by the dwarves as "Doretta") as it drills a tunnel towards a valuable Ommoran Heartstone buried deep in the planet. Bugs will target the Drilldozer as it moves from cave to cave, and it periodically stops and needs to be refueled by mining oil shale with a special fuel canister/mining laser device. Fortunately, after the Heartstone is retrieved, the Drilldozer does not need to be escorted back out, all you need to do is make it to the drop pod with the Heartstone intact. Update 33 made it so players can bring Dorretta's head to the drop pod to bring it back with them, but management don't care either way. Heartstones are reportedly worth a fortune, to the point where using heavy machinery in a one-off disposable manner just to get one of these rocks more than pays for itself.
• Everything Fades: Played straight for enemies, but averted for the utility tools. If you can keep your ammo up there's no limit to the number of platforms and ziplines that can exist (ziplines will even persist if everything that it was attached to was destroyed). Standard flares and the Scout's Flare Gun zigzag this — while they will never disappear from the game world, the light they give off will eventually dissipate over time, necessitating repeatedly deploying more to keep the area well lit.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: The number of harmless life-forms on Hoxxes are massively outnumbered by hostile ones. Space mining is a competitive business, but Hoxxes hasn't been touched due to its incredibly hostile inhabitants even though it's extremely rich in minerals. Hazards besides the Glyphid and Mactera include, but are not limited to;
  • Radioactive/electrified crystals.
  • Bees.
  • Cave Leeches; picture Half-Life's Barnacles, but with more reach.
  • Fungal "vents" that release poisonous gas when you move near them.
  • Plants that explode (and/or release freezing gas) when shot.
  • Lava, sand, and cryo geysers, which can burn you, launch you to your doom, or freeze you solid.
  • Ommoran Heartstones start trying to blow up a Drilldozer that's gotten close to extracting it from its deposit by growing crystal spires that emit deadly lasers, which can kill a dwarf that doesn't get rid of them in time.
  • The first two seasons add a Killer Robot faction to the mix. The third and fourth have a comet spreading The Virus over Hoxxes, infecting the rock and the Glyphids to make things even more hazardous.
• Excuse Plot: You work for Deep Rock Galactic aaaand that's about it. There's no overarching plot beyond the extra content of the season.
• Exploding Barrels: Exploding Plants and Cryo Bulbs.
• Explosive Overclocking: Update 25 introduced Overclocks, which are craftable at the Forge from Matrix Cores (awarded for completing special endgame missions). Some of them are "clean" or "balanced" overclocks, averting this trope. The unstable ones play it perfectly straight with huge improvements and penalties both, though.
• Explosive Stupidity: A rather common occurrence especially with characters carrying potent ones like Gunner's Sticky Bomb or the Driller's C4. Reckless usage of these things will result in someone getting downed by Unfriendly Fire, especially in higher hazards.
• Fantastic Flora: The collectible Apoca Bloom flowers and Boolo Cap mushrooms — as well as everything you might see in Dense Biozone, Azure Weald, and Fungus Bogs, and the exploding plants that can be seen all over the playable locations.
• Fantasy Metals: Surprisingly enough, this is completely averted so far. The only metal in the entire game that can actually be mined is gold, and maybe Dystrum. ^ExplanationDystrum looks like purple-tinted gold, and shares its mining sound effects, but is never explicitly identified as being a metal. There haven't even been any mentions of the usual fare, such as Adamantite. However, there is a wide roster of Fantasy Minerals. Croppa, Jadiz, Magnite, Umanite, Enor Pearls, and Bismor are used as crafting materials. Nitra is used to call in supply drops. Morkite, Hollomite, and Dystrum are used as objectives with no other in-game purpose ... although the news screens in the Space Rig sometimes mention "Morkite Ale".
• Fantastic Slurs: '(Pointy-Eared) Leaf-Lover' is presumably one for Elves. Of course it's Elves.
• Face Death with Dignity: If a dwarf is left behind on Hoxxes while the rest of the team escapes, they take a surprisingly philosophical approach to it instead of panicking or getting angry. This may be excused by the fact that the med-bay implies DRG is somehow rescuing their employees from death.
  Dwarf: (resigned) Well, sometimes you live, sometimes you die...
• Fast Tunneling: The game. Most kinds of rock take, at most, three strikes with a pickaxe to dig a dwarf-sized hole in it, with softer minerals taking even less effort. This is basically the Driller's department, as he can just drill a tunnel big enough for a team to comfortably run through in no time at all.
• Fighter, Mage, Thief:
  • The Gunner is Fighter. With the biggest guns, most useful damage resistance, and multiple Damage Reduction options, he can stand in the frontline, gun down the incoming Glyphids, and facetank a lot of things.
  • The Scout is Thief. With unparalleled mobility and great single-target damage, he can be expected to flank and pump the tougher Glyphid's backside full of lead. He's also great to explore and gather minerals at hard-to-reach places.
  • The Driller is Mage. His primary either applies Fire, Ice, or Poison, and he has the unique capacity to vaporize terrains and make things easier for his teammates.
  • The Engineer is a Support Mage, able to do a lot of things at once, but especially best at plugging the other classes' weak points.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Some of your weapons are elemental-oriented or can be modded to shoot elemental ammo. Incendiary and Cryo grenades are available for certain classes, and Bosco's main weapon can be upgraded with a lightning effect.
  • Fire causes damage over time (if the enemy's heat gauge reaches maximum) and ignores armor.
  • Ice freezes enemies in place and makes them take more damage.
  • Lightning slows enemies, does some damage over time and has a small chance to spread in an electric arc with certain weapon modifications.
• Floating Continent: Overlaps with Shattered World. Something, or someone, appears to have blown an enormous chunk of Hoxxes into orbit, leaving behind an enormous crater that seems to extend straight down to the planet's core. According to the loading screens, this chunk is where the Dense Biozone is. It has yet to be explained why this chunk has yet to crash back down.
• Flowery Insults: The dwarves are surprisingly erudite when it comes to insulting their teammates for shooting them in the ass by accident.
  Any dwarf: (upon getting shot) YOU LEAF-FONDLING SON OF A MUD GOLEM!
• Fluffy Tamer: One of the perks added in Update 28 allows Dwarves to tame a single Glyphid Grunt at a time. You can even pet them.
• Freeze Ray:
  • The Driller's alternate primary weapon, the Cryo Cannon. It's not a focused ray-type weapon, though; it's more akin to a reverse flamethrower, with short range but a wide area of effect.
  • The Scout has Cryo Grenades, which act as Freeze Bombs.
  • The Glacial Strata has Cryo Bulbs—plants which explode and release freezing gas when hit—and Glyphid Frost Praetorians that breathe freezing gas instead of acid.
• Friendly Fireproof: Averted for the most part. Getting in a Gunner's firing line will not end well for anyone, bug or dwarf. You do take less damage from allies, depending on Hazard level— for example, 70% of full damage at the highest level. So while you can probably withstand a few bullets if you accidentally get in your buddy's crosshairs, it's still a bad idea to be in the way when firing full auto. This also goes for explosive weapons as well and it's not hard to find tales of Engineers downing their own teammates by reckless usage of the Fat Boy overclock, and, of course, there's the old tale of Drillers blowing up Scouts (accidentally or not) with C4.
  • Played straight with the Driller's Neurotoxin Grenade, which releases a gas that slowly kills everything but dwarves.
  • Also played straight by DRG-issue Turret Guns, either the Engineer's or those found on the Minehead in Point Extract operations; their rounds go right through dwarves with no damage.
  • Played increasingly straight depending on levels of the Friendly perk worn, which mitigates friendly fire coming and going; at high enough levels on both dwarves involved, bombing your friend with a Satchel Charge is a valid option and will probably just tickle him.
  • Also interestingly played straight by the Gunner's Autocannon, which despite firing high-explosive rounds that carve chunks out of terrain and bugs, will do absolutely zero damage to other dwarves, possibly because the knockback effect on other players would be too severe and difficult to account for.
  • Interestingly, the natives of Hoxxes aren't exempt from this either. This is especially noticeable when playing a mission with the Mactera Plague warning, as the huge swarms of mactera spawn/tri-jaws body-block each others' shots, neutrialzing some of their lethality.
• Fungus Humongous: Par for the course in the Fungus Bogs. They go from simply large to enormous caps that can hold up the entire team and take three pickaxe hits to break, like the hardiest of terrain. Always remember to ping a certain xenofungus when you see it until Mission Control is annoyed.
• Gatling Good: The Gunner's namesake is the monstrous three-barreled "Lead Storm" Powered Minigun. While it has the odd property of getting more accurate the longer it's fired, it will also Overheat if the trigger is held down too long.
• Gargle Blaster: The aptly-named Blackout Stout, one of the unlockable beers at the Abyss Bar. Instant and total intoxication awaits the hardy dwarf brave enough to quaff a tankard of this stuff; it instantly knocks you out cold, no questions asked, even if you were sober before drinking it. A variety of other craftable beers have even more extreme and amusing effects (for the player, that is), such as the Wormhole Special which can teleport you outside the Space Rig.
• Game-Breaking Bug: If the host has a poor connection, then the collision physics for everything but the terrain ceases to exist, including bullets and the drop pod, meaning that if they don't eventually kick back in then the mission is doomed to failure. This can even occur during solo missions.
• Gameplay Ally Immortality: The NPC replacement for a second player, Bosco packs as much firepower as a dwarf (and with the right upgrades, twice the mining power), with the added benefits of full 3D flight and total invincibility. His lackluster free will is the only thing keeping him from straight-up stealing your job.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Getting drunk enough at the Abyss Bar makes your vision blurry and your Dwarf stumble around in a daze. Think it'll wear off if you go into a mission right after? Nope — you start that mission while still intoxicated and therefore with a major Interface Screw until it eventually fades away as the mission progresses.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The Miner's Handbook entry for the Fester Fleas says that employees who fail to kill a fester flea on sight will be punished by management. However, in a mission, fester fleas can appear as a bonus objective where you have to kill them — typically, if you complete that objective, there will still be fleas left over, and not killing those does not punish you.
• Game Mod: Deep Rock Galactic has an active modding community, with the mods running the gamut. From reskinning dwarves into kobolds, to new overclocks, adding in a firing range or adding in hazard 6, there's something for everyone.
• Giant Spider: The Glyphids occupy a grey area between this and Giant Enemy Crab, being hard-shelled subterranean insectoids. The game itself refers to them as "arachnids."
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The Prospector doesn't directly attack the players, instead zooming all over the map while deploying bots to fight for it and becoming invulnerable when it gets damaged enough, and will eventually escape if not killed quickly. This becomes a nightmare during level/biomes that are prone to having gigantic open spaces like the Glacial Caverns and the Sandblasted Corridors.
• Glass Cannon:
  • On the player side of things, the Scout qualifies if he equips the unlockable M1000 Classic, which allows him to shred through pretty much any target in the game as long as he's accurate enough; it doesn't make him any more resilient, though, and aiming leaves you open to attack from other glyphids.
  • The glyphids, meanwhile, have the Acidspitter and Webspitter variants. Both are fairly fragile, and will flee from direct contact, hugging distant walls of the cavern so they can spit acid or vision-obscuring webbing at you; the Acidspitter's projectiles in particular hurt.
• Glitch Entity: Played with.
  • Very rarely, you can find strange glowing black cubes buried in deposits within the depths of Hoxxes, with a name that seems like an error code — but those familiar with game development know that this is too coherent and functional to be an actual bug. (And it is your scanner displaying the code, suggesting in-universe anomalous readings rather than a bug.) Nobody knows what they actually are; theories run rampant, and the developers have only said that they should be held onto (not that they can be gotten rid of without a full account reset) as they might become useful in future updates. For now, the cubes give an extra 2,000 XP, multiplied by your hazard bonus.
  • In the Azure Weald, one can find mysterious light-emitting pillars that buff both Dwarves and creatures with a huge damage reduction. Using the scanner on them gives the glitchy result of "p[[[[[{0}]]]]]q".
• Good-Guy Bar: To let the players partake in the "drink-loving" side of the "standard-issue dwarves" archetype embodied by their characters, the Oktoberfest update added the Abyss Bar, a shipboard drinking establishment where the player characters can drink, dance, and compete in precision barrel-kicking.
• Grappling-Hook Pistol: The Scout gets a grapple gun that can zip him around the vast caverns of Hoxxes. It's the only "traversal tool" with unlimited use, and the only one that none of the user's teammates can benefit from.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • You can hold the "action" button to grab ziplines mid-air or objects thrown your way without needing to time it perfectly. Both things are usually very useful if a Gunner is working on a Point Extraction mission.
  • Some missions have subtle mechanics that summons enemies to your location with no warning from Mission Control.
    • Salvage Mission: Going near broken Mini-M.U.L.Es will always spawn a swarm with no warning. Additionally, one of the legs for each Mini-Mule will also trigger a swarm when mined out. These swarms stack. If you run to all Mini-M.U.L.Es, you might have a nasty combined swarm of bugs on you.
    • Point Extraction: Besides the regular swarms, unannounced swarms will occour every so often, between 4~5 minutes, getting bigger the more time you spend in the mission. It's generally agreed upon that spending more than 15~20 minutes in these missions on higher hazards is a very bad idea as the unannounced swarms might grow bigger than the ones Mission Control alerts you about.
    • Egg Hunt: Mining eggs can spawn a swarm; the amount is normally one egg less than half of the total. If you have 6 eggs to mine, two of them will spawn swarms. And, like in Salvage Mission, they can stack. If everyone ends up pulling all eggs at the same time you'll be facing a legion of glyphids coming at you.
• Guilt-Free Extermination War: Suffice to say, none of the dwarves feel guilty about exterminating the Glyphids and other hostile lifeforms on Hoxxes IV. Often, they taunt their enemies with lines like "Have some extinction!" or "Pesticide, coming up!" DRG management encourages such behavior, framing the "Complete Subjugation" of the planet as the only way to keep their mining operations safe.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way:
  • A minor example with the Engineer's Warthog Auto 210 shotgun. It's a semi-automatic shotgun that uses a magazine, and is pumped after reloading it. Possibly hand-waved by having the pump work the bolt to chamber the first shell. Especially when considering the eclectic tastes of firearms the dwarves have, some guns may be designed the way they are just for user satisfaction.
  • The Gunner's Bulldog Heavy Revolver is a Hand Cannon firing 26mm bullets. It's also a top-break revolver and it's reloaded by having the Gunner take out the entire cylinder and putting in a new one. Top-break revolvers were more common in the days of relatively weak black powder loads, but having all the recoil focus on the hinge made those designs impractical when more powerful rounds came into being (possibly hand-waved by dwarven metallurgy and gunsmithing just being that good). Removing the entire cylinder to reload the revolver is also pure Cool, but Inefficient, as it would require precisely machining extra cylinders that can properly engage with the revolver's mechanism when a simple speedloader would be sufficient to reload the cylinder (there's a reason no practical revolver models are reloaded by removing the cylinder).
• Hacking Minigame: Starting with the Rival Incursion update, there are several objects which can be hacked.
  • The rival company patrol bots have a chance to fall to the ground, disabled after a dwarf kills them. A disabled bot can be approached to hack it. The hacking minigame is a 4-stage timing puzzle, where the player must quickly click as a scanner passes a designated point on the hacking screen. Once completed, the patrol bot will reactivate, and aid the dwarves in fighting bugs or its former robot comrades.
  • Rival Turret Controllers and Antenna Nodes have a different hacking minigame, involving multiple 3-stage timing puzzles to select and cut wires.
  • In Season 04, Jet Boots were introduced and can randomly appear in a mission. Opening them up requires you to play "Jetty Boot" a mercifully short Flappy Bird clone.
• Hair-Trigger Explosive: The Volatile Compound mod for the Driller's Satchel Charge makes it sensitive to weapons fire in addition to increasing its explosive power.
• Hand Cannon:
  • The Flavor Text for the Gunner's sidearm claims that the gun is chambered for 26mm ammunition. To put that into perspective, the largest developed small arms cartridge in real life is the .950 JDJ, a rifle round measuring about 24mm. The Bulldog's bullets are bigger than that.
  • As of Season 2 the Gunner gets the even more ludicrous ArmsKore Coil Gun, a handheld coilgun that fires inch-long spheres with such force that it blows through solid bedrock. An Overclock gives it even more damage if it fires through layers of terrain before hitting the target.
• Hard Mode Perks: The hazard level, mission length, cave complexity, and any additional hazards all have a difficulty value which is added up to get the end of mission "Hazard Bonus". This is a percentage that all your money, EXP, and resource earnings are multiplied by, so the harder the mission, the more you'll make from it. Even getting the hazard bonus up to 100% is quite stiff — a Hazard 3 (of 5) run of a mission with maximum length and complexity but no other modifiers is only 105%.
• Harder Than Hard: Hazard 5, the highest difficulty pushes players to the extreme. Enemies deal extreme damage (the common slashers can take a full health dwarf down to 0 health in just 5 attacks, while exploders straight up one shot at point blank range) and move absurdly quickly, their projectiles zip across the map in a fraction of a second, certain enemies attack much faster (The dreadnought's spike stomp attack comes out in less than a second) The first swarm wave can show up as early as three minutes and future swarms occur more frequently, friendly fire is cranked up to lethal levels, the environmental hazards kill you quicker than ever and so much more. However, on its own, hazard 5 awards players 2.33x rewards, making hazard 5 runs a lucrative if dangerous method of getting rich.
  • Elite Deep Dives are even worse. They start on hazard 4.5, and end on hazard 5.5, and there can be up to 3 warnings. Fail on the last stage, and it's all the way back to the beginning if you want that cosmetic overclock.
  • Rarely, missions can have two warnings. Depending on the combo, this can be arguably harder than an EDD's hazard 5.5. Fancy facing off against elite enemies that deal double damage? That Elite Slasher will kill you in just two hits. How about having no shields and a constant spawning of swarmers? They'll attrition you down rather quickly if you don't pay attention.
• Harmless Freezing:
  • Zig-zagged. Getting frozen turns the player into a blue/white ice statue in whatever position they froze in, but it's possible to free yourself by either "shaking off" the ice with inputs or having a friend break the ice with their pickaxe, with no damage to the victim. Frozen Glyphids, on the other hand, become vulnerable and shatter when sufficiently damaged, ignoring any armor resistances.
  • Played with by the Driller's Cryo Cannon in Update 19; it can freeze enemies solid with minimal damage dealt, but one of the high-end upgrades gives any enemy you freeze with it a chance to just shatter immediately.
  • This is averted with any organic Airborne Mook; if they get frozen they'll fall to the ground and instantly shatter, killing them regardless of their health. This makes freezing immensely powerful against Grabbers who tend to run once damaged, and Naedocyte Breeders who normally have beefy HP pools to chew through. However, mechanical fliers enemies such as Shredders and Patrol Bots are far more resistant to freezing, making it less effective against them (while instantly and terminally short-circuiting if they're fully ignited to compensate).
• Helium Speech: The "Rich Atmosphere" anomaly increases Dwarf movement speed, and also makes everyone's voices 50% more high-pitched as a hilarious side effect. The 5 year anniversary event also added helium tanks on the space rig where you can huff some and gain the same squeaky voice effect.
• Hell Is That Noise:
  • When a large group of Glyphids emerges from the rock, they will give a collective screech as a battlecry. Hearing a large horde of bugs sound the attack off in the distance can be an Oh, Crap! moment bar none.
  • Glyphid Menaces give off throaty, bass-filled gurgles that instantly indicate their presence before they unleash a torrent of projectiles in your face. You might end up mistaking it for a Bulk Detonator, which doesn't help.
  • The warbling cry of a Bulk Detonator is enough to send quite a few players into a panic state. See the above entry in Boss in Mook's Clothing for why. To a lesser scale, the gurgled hiss of a regular Exploder about to go off is a more immediate panic-inducer if you hear it very close.
  • The hissing sounds of a Cave Leech that's about to latch onto you. It doesn't help that you'll often only hear it when it's too late.
  • Similarly, though much more frequently, the warbled screech of a Mactera Grabber that's targeted you. Good news, it's usually not too late if you hear it. Bad news, you will hear it closer and closer as it approaches, and it could be coming from any angle.
  • Rival Nemeses mimic a dwarf calling for help to lure players towards them. While it's obviously fake (the calls lack the dwarves' accent and sound very digitalized), the fact that it's a Nemesis producing them is worrying enough.
  • The rumbling of the caves in Magma Core, signifying a chasm will be opening up under you within a few seconds.
• Have I Mentioned I Am a Dwarf Today?: The Dwarves will frequently remind the Glyphids that "DWARVES DON'T DIE EASILY," among other things.
  "Mining is hard work. Good thing we're dwarves."
• Hideous Hangover Cure: Leaf Lover's Special will "kill your buzz faster than a pay cut, and leave you with the same empty feeling in your gut." Sure enough, drinking one removes all drunkenness immediately. The dwarves despise it, but not for its taste, apparently; it's because it's a Leaf Lover's Special.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: What every mission boils down to. It's totally impossible to hold any ground on Hoxxes, as the dwarves will inevitably run out of ammunition and be swarmed to death eventually. Instead, they drop in, hit whatever resource deposits that they can find, and retreat once the quota is met. In the few cases where there has to be a facility deployed into the caverns of Hoxxes, it's a short term, disposable platform that allows the dwarves to very briefly hold the area and extract a high-value resource before they retreat.
  • Rival Prospector fights go this way. It runs away and calls for backup when shot and can turn itself invulnerable twice to give it more time to run, all while calling in shredder drones and patrol bots to defend it and slow your pursuit.
• Hitbox Dissonance: Molly, mini-Mules, Bosco, and BET-C all have smaller collision boxes than their models. Handy for making it easy for them to follow dwarves while being less likely to accidentally shove them off cliffs. Potentially a problem if Molly decides the best way to the escape pod is through a tiny gap in the ceiling of a high cavern.
• Hit the Ground Harder: As the Scout, you can evade all fall damage by grappling the ground before you hit.
• Hired Guns: The Dwarves are all mercenaries as much as they are miners. This appears to be fairly common in the setting, going by the Flavor Text on the "Corporate Marine" helmet.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: Rival Prospectors will call in Patrol Bots to defend themselves, and sometimes you can hack one of these patrol drones to fight for you. Hacked Patrol Bots are exceptionally good at killing the Prospector that called them.
• Hold the Line:
  • At the end of most mission types, the Drop Pod will only open once the slow-moving M.U.L.E. has reached and docked with it. Until then, any Dwarves who arrive early have to hold off the constantly-spawning bugs.
  • The actual salvaging in Salvage missions is easy. The difficulty is staying alive during the lengthy bug-magnet process of uplinking and refueling the Drop Pod, while being forced to stay in a small zone both times or risk jeopardizing the mission. After that, there's still a minute and a half of waiting for the Drop Pod to open while bugs swarm all around.
  • The tail end of Point Extraction missions. After collecting the required Aquarqs and pressing the button, the Dwarves need to survive 2 minutes before the Drop Pod arrives and immediately opens for them.
• Holiday Mode: There are special events for the Lunar New Year, the game's anniversary, Easter, summer, Oktoberfest, Halloween, and Christmas. During these events, the space rig gains fitting decorations, players have the opportunity to obtain themed cosmetics, and missions gain a collectible that doubles the season pass performance points gained from that mission.
• Holler Button:
  • Press the taunt button (V by default) to raise your pickaxe and ROCK AND STONE! The exact line may vary, but that is among the more common lines. Press the taunt button while holding a mug of beer makes your dwarf of choice deliver a toast instead.
  • Press X instead and your dwarf yells out for attention. Good for indicating your position to your squadmates, who are shown the location of the holler-er. This button is similarly context-sensitive; use it while grabbed by an enemy or after being downed, and your dwarf's lines change to more urgent ones. When used in the Home Base, the Dwarves will just make utterances, such as clearing their throat or burping.
• Hollywood Darkness: Averted. While most biomes have at least a few native features that naturally luminesce to aid in orientation, these tend not to actually project much light and the engine is perfectly capable of rendering pitch black. You have an infinite supply of flares (and the Scout's Flare Gun) for a reason.
• Hollywood Hacking: Played for Laughs. You sometimes need to call in a hacking drone and guard it while it hacks into a system. The drone is a robot Rapid-Fire Typing on a physical keyboard.
• Hot Blooded Sideburns: An option for your Dwarves, and the Gunner has them by default.
• I Call It "Vera": The MULE, the APD Drone, and the Drilldozer all have technical classifications, classifications DRG would much prefer the dwarves use. Instead, the dwarves refer to them respectively as Molly, Bosco, and Dorretta. Even Mission Control gets in on the fun at some points!
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: All over the place! Come and visit Hoxxes IV; begin your trip with a scientific expedition to the Radioactive Exclusion Zone! Looking to relax? Why not go on a safari through the Fungus Bogs! If you're tired of all that moisture, finish things off with a visit to the Magma Core!
• Implausible Boarding Skills: While grinding on pipes from On-Site Refinery missions, dwarves can rotate their body in any direction, shoot high-power firearms without falling off, and grind up slopes without building momentum first.
• Impossible Insurance: A little downplayed, but there are several very particular yet unfortunately common situations a dwarf can face that are explicitly not covered by his employee insurance. With things like "Overconfidence", breaking your knees because you shot to the roof with your Grappling-Hook Pistol, getting crunched under a resupply pod or any environmental burns acquired in the Magma Core, it seems the only things it covers are bug bites and inebriation (which is admittedly a lot).
• Infinite Supplies: Entirely averted — once your Dwarf's ammunition or other tools have ran out, you have to refresh it from a resupply pod to use it again. If the group lacks the nitra to call a resupply pod in, all they can do now is use their pickaxes to get more nitra (or in the Scout's case, also his grappling hook), extract to the drop pod, or die trying to do these things. Indeed, compared to other co-op shooters (such as Left 4 Dead), a harder limit on the player's supplies rendering them unable to effectively fight back is more likely to be Deep Rock Galactic's catalyst for a game ending in defeat, as also unlike those games, players can never be rendered outright impossible to revive for any point in time (...usually) and enemies that render a single player helpless until they or the player are killed are much, much more rarely encountered.
• Intoxication Mechanic: The in-game graphics blur as your dwarf gets drunker, and will eventually double. This even includes your dwarf in the Status tab, or the shot of the game's dwarves in the post-game results.
• It Came from the Fridge: On the spacerig, there is a fridge next to the Abyss Bar with Rockpox seeping out of it and several chains wrapped around it. A sticky note attached to it says "DO NOT OPEN".
• I Want My Mommy!: Dwarves may cry out a little "Mommy!" if they have been falling down through the air long enough.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • The Dwarves are all extremely jaded and gruff as can be expected of dwarves, freely insulting the glyphids, their mining equipment, and each other. That being said, a more tender side shines through when they help each other up, pet lootbugs or tamed glyphids, or get drunk, and their primary motto is "Leave no dwarf behind."
  • Mission Control is something of a Mean Boss, lambasting the dwarves for doing virtually anything aboard the spacerig that isn't drinking or prepping for a dig. However, he's always respectful and polite with the dwarves when they're planetside, he shows a lot of concern for their health while they're on the job, he never lies about the company's intentions or priorities, and he sincerely compliments your dwarf's skills if you get promoted.
• Jump Scare: Cave Leeches are prone to causing this especially since the hapless Dwarf grabbed by one will also yell.
• Jungle Japes: The Fungus Bogs are half this and half Bubblegloop Swamp.
• Kaizo Trap: Even if the team completes the mission objectives, gets the Mule to the Drop Pod, and enters the Drop Pod, there's a bug that can cause Grabbers to abduct players inside the Drop Pod and drag them out. If that was the last surviving player in the Drop Pod, the Pod will take off without them and the mission is counted as a failure. An exploding Bulk Detonator right in front of the door can sometimes cause enough damage to kill players within the Drop Pod even with the damage reduction by being within, and cause a mission failure. Sometimes, the Drop Pod can even take off without any of the Dwarves that were in it, causing a failure as well.
• Kill It with Fire: Most of the Rival Corporation's mechanical units are instantly destroyed should they be fully ignited. This is quite useful as their flying units are resistant to cold, unlike most Airborne Mooks, which are instantly killed when frozen.
• Kill It with Ice:
  • Exploders do not explode if they're killed while frozen. Bulk Detonators will not lethally explode when frozen, but will instead send out a non-damaging shockwave that sends Dwarves flying.
  • Organic Airborne Mooks will drop to the ground and shatter when frozen, be it a small Mactera Spawn to the large and durable Naedocyte Breeder. Averted with mechanical fliers like Shredders and Patrol Bots, who are highly cold-resistant but are instead destroyed when ignited.
• Killer Robot:
  • Bosco. Even after he was nerfed, he can still take out a whole group of Swarmers and most mid-range glyphids before they can even touch you.
  • Most of the Rival Corporation's mechanical units are robots with deadly weaponry like sniper guns, homing missiles, burst fire cannons and even deadly forcefields. All these robots are not hesitant to attack Dwarves on sight.
• Klatchian Coffee: Leaf Lover’s Special is “anti-beer” that instantly makes you sober. It’s there for if you don’t want to enter a mission with drunk effects on you.
• Kneel Before Zod: Downplayed, but present; Deep Rock Galactic's stated objective for Hoxxes IV is nothing less than "the complete subjugation" of the planet. Their propaganda contains such imagery as a hand seizing the planet in a way that would do the Forresters proud.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: A decision that has to be taken by Dwarves sometimes. There's no shame in running away from a Machine Event and let it time out or run from that Korlok Tyrant-Weed if they feel it's going to end with everyone either dead or dry on ammo and unable to finish the main mission.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Zig-zagged: Generally enemies native to a certain biome have resistances to elemental hazards found within that biome For example enemies in the glacial strata are harder to freeze, enemies in magma core don't burn as easily, enemies in the radioactive exclusion zone are hardened against the radiation, and so forth. However, there are some notable exceptions to these rules that apply regardless of biome:
  • Glyphid Bulk detonators are highly resistant to explosives, somewhat resistant to cryo and thaw quickly, and flat-out immune to stuns and fear effects.
  • While most bugs have some form of breakable armor that can be stubbornly chewed through given enough firepower, Glyphid Oppressors' plates and heads are indestructible requiring you to Attack Its Weak Point.
  • All Q'ronar Shellbacks are completely immune to being frozen, stunned, feared/scared, webbed, or gooped. While neurotoxin will still damage them over time, they do not appear to slow down at all to it.
• Lag Cancel: The wind-downs from animations can be canceled by momentarily doing another context-sensitive action (like depositing) or using your pickaxe. This can allow players to speed up reloading after the point that their magazine is refilled or even throw multiple grenades faster.
• Lethal Lava Land: The Magma Core is an underground version, with lava geysers, flame vents, and patches of molten rock that burn to walk on.
• Long Song, Short Scene: The music that plays during the post-game scoreboard is a few minutes long, but players will probably only ever listen to the entire thing if they decide to keep in it out of curiosity; otherwise, they'll just be hitting continue after the seconds it takes them to read out all of the stats on the scoreboard. "The Descent" plays while you're waiting to load into the match, so you'll only ever hear the entire thing by listening to the soundtrack if your computer has decent specs for playing the game.

M-Z

• Macross Missile Massacre: A Gunner can achieve this by choosing the right mods and overclocks to max out the fire rate of the Hurricane rocket launcher, alternatively the Salvo Module overclock allows for a salvo of up to 9 high-damage rockets to be launched all at once, at the cost of guidance for the rockets launched in the salvo.
• Made of Explodium: Where to begin?
  • The lava geysers in the Magma Core and steam geysers in the Fungus Bogs are under pressure and will explode if disturbed, though that at least is logical.
  • Numerous bulbous flowers found in the Magma Core, Dense Biozone and Fungus Bog will glow, swell up, and explode if they take damage.
  • The Glyphid Exploders and Bulk Detonators glow orange with angry, unstable pustules on their back, and will explode (catastrophically in the Bulk's case) on death.
  • One mission modifier, Volatile Guts, makes every alien explode. What's more, this explosion damages other nearby enemies, which can result in chain detonations where one dead alien sets off all its allies in sequence.
  • The Driller has an optional flamethrower modifier that can allow him to explode aliens if he kills them with direct damage.
  • During Season 1, once the team establishes a connection from Hack-C to a Data Deposit or a Power Station, any Transmitter Nodes that weren't used to build said connection spontaneously detonate (doing no damage).
  • The Scout's Season 2 weapon is the Nishanka Boltshark X-80, a crossbow that fires Trick Arrows. One possible type is the Chemical Explosion bolt, filled with a compound that reacts to bug blood and turns them into explodium.
• Made of Indestructium: The only standard-issue Deep Rock Galactic property that can be damaged in any way is you. Molly, Bosco, the Escape Pod, Supply Drops, and the Point Extraction Rig are all completely invincible. Even the BET-C is indestructible, and can only be taken down by killing the energy-sapping parasites causing it to go haywire. The aversions in the game are rather few:
  • The Drilldozer, despite its bulky, metal-plated frame, can get killed fairly quickly if it's swarmed by bugs and nobody's doing anything about it. Damage from players, on the other hand, barely even scratches it.
  • Onsite Refinery pipe nodes can be deconstructed by the player by hitting them with a pickaxe, as long as said node is the most recently-placed one in the pipeline and the pipeline hasn't connected to a pumpjack yet. Also, they spring leaks during the extraction process, but these are scripted to occur at set times, not caused by enemy attacks.
  • Finally, the Project OMEN Towers feature indestructible outer shells; the coolant tanks within, however, can be exposed to take down the tower proper.
• Magnetic Weapons:
  • The Scout's M-1000 Classic is a railgun.
  • The Gunner's ArmsKore Coilgun is a Hand Cannon that fires magnetically-accelerated shots at such fast velocities that they not only penetrate rock and Oppressor armor, but also leave a damaging residual trail behind.
• Major Injury Underreaction: The dwarves tend to have a rather subdued statement to say in response to standing on nearly-molten rock, like just going "ouch" or "hot" repeatedly not very loudly like someone who finds they're touching something unexpectedly hot, complaining about their boots, or saying morosely that they smell bacon, rather than screaming in agony as one would expect.
• Makes Just as Much Sense in Context: One of the lines a dwarf can deliver while killing a glyphid is "Die like your mother did!" This line has yet to receive an explanation; perhaps the dwarf is merely boasting he kills so many bugs that he must have killed that one's mother by now.
• Manchild: All of the dwarves. There is not an ounce of professionalism in their stubby little bodies, and they will run amok on the spacerig doing whatever they feel like, no matter how strenuously Mission Control objects. This includes kicking barrels into the launch bay, breaking seasonal decorations, turning off the artificial gravity, and getting wasted at the Abyss Bar. Of course, since the dwarves are controlled by players, that probably says something about you.
  Mission Control: How old are you? You are behaving like ill-mannered children! Please, stop it!
• Marathon Level: Deep Dives take the form of two runs per week, each with three pre-seeded missions one after the other with no break in between. Each mission has two "main" objectives that must be completed, and your health, ammo count, and stored minerals persist between missions. Resource expenditure must be carefully managed, as wastefulness early on can screw you over hard later. Promotional material describes the Deep Dives as "the sort of ultimate Deep Rock fantasy," as it puts all of your combat mining skills to the test.
• The Medic: Averted for all the dwarves. This class archetype is completely absent from the set of classes a player can choose to be. Dwarves of any class are perfectly capable of reviving downed allies, and directly healing your teammates is impossible (although you can boost their shields or heal yourself). The perks you'd expect a Medic to bring are available to dwarves of any class, and Red Sugar healing crystals appear in the caverns where any dwarf can mine them. Somewhat defied/parodied in a voice line where a dwarf reviving himself with the Iron Will perk will shout "Medics are for pansies!" Bosco, on the other hand, comes equipped with the capability to revive any downed dwarf in a Solo mission. He will fearlessly charge into a swarm to revive you, robotic ambulance sound effects blaring, should you fall to the Glyphid hordes.
  • The closest you have to a Medic class is The Gunner, as he's the only one who can directly refill another Dwarf's life bar; in this case, the Shield bar. A Shield Generator deployed in the right time can provide a clutch burst of healing to survive a bad situation. Tellingly, the de facto Medic is also armed with the biggest guns available.
  • Of course, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from making a D.I.Y Medic if you're so inclined; the Gunner and the Engineer tend to be the most suited to this, due to their excellent crowd-control and ability to defend themselves against hordes while they're reviving the downed dwarf. Scouts can also be very good at reviving the team when the chips are down since as long as they kill off any ranged enemies, their grappling hook can allow them to kite the other enemies toward them before they grapple over to a downed ally and get them back up before the chasing enemies reach them.
• Meaningful Name: "Morkite" literally means "dark mineral", referencing its dark turquoise color. According to Mikkel (Mekill), Co-Founder and Game Director of Deep Rock Galactic, this was on purpose.
  "Basically, it's 'Murk', which in Danish means 'Darkness', and then we added 'ite', as in stalactite, so it becomes 'Morkite'... the "Dark Mineral."
  • The Rockpox Lithophage is a virus that literally infects and corrupts solid rock. Complete with nasty boils found wherever a Contagion Spike is located.
• MegaCorp: Downplayed, but present. Deep Rock Galactic is a self-described interplanetary mining conglomerate, and none of the technology they're directly shown to possess contradicts this. That being said, they have the resources and manpower to effectively stage an orbital invasion of a Death World like Hoxxes IV, and the Flavor Text on a few cosmetic items suggest that they're infamous, or at least feared, among the more far-flung reaches of the galaxy.
  • Update 27 brings this into greater focus with the introduction of Project OMEN, which are explicitly described as "a massive network of modular extermination towers." They appear to be military-grade weapon platforms, definitely overkill even by the standards of Hoxxes IV; this suggests DRG is involved in some projects that are only tangentially related to mining. Even before then, there was the lingering question of what exactly the company wants with the Alien Eggs extracted via Egg Hunt operations, one that remains unanswered so far.
  • Releasing alongside the game's launch from Early Access are two mega-corp themed cosmetic packs that intentionally invoke this trope, making the dwarves resemble a squadron of Elite Mooks you'd expect to be going up against in a different videogame, like so.
  • Season 1 includes good old Megacorporate warfare in the form of a rival company trying to muscle into Hoxxes; Industrial Sabotage missions are issued to keep them out by wrecking their operations and stealing their assets. The last unlockable helmet from Season 1, the Shock Trooper, lampshades the trope with its description: "Perfect for that 'faceless corpo goon' aesthetic."
• Mellow Mantas: Mobula Cave Angels are flying alien manta rays that float harmlessly high above certain underground caverns. The player dwarves are able to hitch rides underneath their claws and even control them.
• Memetic Badass: The late In-Universe example, Karl, personifies this trope. Many of the salutes, toasts, and other one-liners in the game reference Karl and how badass he was — and how he would be proud.
• Metal Slime:
  • Huuli Hoarders. Cowardly bugs who run from players when attacked or spotted, eventually disappearing if they get far enough away. Successfully popping one will cause a heap of crafting materials to scatter across the cave.
  • The rare Golden Loot Bugs variants don't run away like other Metal Slimes but they do produce an incredible amount of gold when killed.
  • A patch added Crassus Detonators, a variant of the standard Bulk Detonator. Unlike regular Metal Slimes they are highly aggressive and highly dangerous. But when they die the crater they leave behind is coated in gold instead of slag. Killing one in the open is a decent payout; killing one in a tight tunnels will result in a near-perfect sphere and several missions' worth of gold payout.
  • Rival Prospector is a mini-boss that constantly runs from players when attacked but if destroyed drops a valuable Memory Cell item.
  • The Yule 2022 event introduces Yuletide Elves, malfunctioning toys that must be shot to be immobilized and then desposited.
• Mini-Boss: These can appear as cave generation spawns in either regular missions or either variation of deep dive.
  • BET-C: An experimental combat variant of the M.U.L.E. that has gone rogue because of a Xynarch Charge-Sucker infestation scrambling its friend-foe identification system. It's as mobile as Molly is but is equipped with a portable shield generator, machine gun, and a grenade launcher that can and will chew through your shields in one burst. If you manage to kill the parasites, BET-C can be re-booted as a friendly support unit but with reduced damage output and no shield projector. It makes a warbling sound on a one-second interval while idle and hostile, you will hear it before you see it.
  • Korlok Tyrant Weed: A network of stationary hostile flora with a centralized core. It grows shoots that either attack with projectiles like miniature Spitball Infectors, or pods that heal itself. Kill anything that CAN take damage and the core will expose itself. It can only be truly damaged when the core is exposed and only for a brief period before it snaps shut and regrows its defenses. Kill it and it will drop tyrant shards, a valuable gem.
  • The Rival Prospector is this combined with a Metal Slime, constantly running away from the dwarves while it calls drones to defend itself.
• Min Maxers Delight:
  • Certain mutations are cycled throughout missions to spice up the difficulty. In exchange, these mutations apply a reward bonus upon completion. Most mutations can be difficult to deal with. Others, not so much...
    • Parasites involve little worm things popping out of defeated enemies. It's just another annoyance to deal with and involves more killing. It's a breeze to deal with even as a Scout.
    • Regenerative Bugs allow the bugs to heal after not being damaged for some time. But what kind of dwarf leaves a bug simply injured and not slain? This also has the side effect of making any Steeves a dwarf has basically immortal unless they get stepped on by a Bulk Detonator.
  • Resupplier is a perk with little to no bad points. It makes you grab ammo 20/30/40/50% faster which in 95% of you missions you will need to, and in higher hazards, or just in the middle of a plain gunfight, you'll want to do it as fast as you can. On top of that it restores more health on resupply and health is premium, especially in higher hazards where you don't regenerate nearly as much naturally.
• Minimalist Cast: Not counting Bosco, Molly, Lloyd, Doretta and Hacksy, there's a grand total of five main characters in the game: the four Dwarves and the Mission Control.
• Minor Injury Overreaction: The dwarves can be surprisingly perturbed over getting poked by thorns. Compare this to their reactions of being standing on nearly molten rock.
• Misapplied Phlebotinum: Deep Rock Galactic has figured out teleportation technology and apparently decided that the best use of it is to make it into a craft beer. The dwarfs are more than happy to point out how ridiculous this is.
• Mission Control: His name is Mission Control, and he guides you in your objectives.
• Money Spider:
  • Huuli Hoarders drop loads of crafting materials when they die. Taking one on, though, needs some mild coordination; it'll squirm and skitter away as soon as it's attacked, and given enough time, it burrows into the wall and escapes.
  • Golden Loot Bugs are golden recolors of normal loot bugs that explode into multiple chunks of gold when taken down. Unlike Huuli Hoarders, their passivity makes them a lot easier to take out for their drops.
  • Crassus Detonators are Bulk Detonators but covered in gold. They still explode with a huge radius, but rather than leaving just rubble behind, they coat their immediate surroundings in gold. Kill one in a small room and watch as you get a massive payday once it dies.
  • With "Golden Bugs" anything that can be killed will be guaranteed to drop chunks of gold no matter what size, including glyphid spawn, exploders, nadocytes, and even parasites if that hazard exists within the same mission.
• More Predators Than Prey: How Hoxxes' ecosystem functions are anyone's guess. The Glyphids are so numerous that dying by the hundreds in any given operation doesn't put a dent in their numbers, and the only lifeforms present that could be considered prey are the Loot Bugs (which the game explicitly notes as inedible due to their diet), Silicate Harvesters, Maggots, and Huuli Hoarders, all of whom are typically rare to the tune of "only a couple dozen in any given cave system."
  • That said, Glyphids aren't actually carnivores if the description of the Dense Biozone is any indication. It says that said region has an overabundance of flora due to being on the blasted-off chunk of the planet, which means that the Glyphids can't get up there to eat all the plants. Then again glyphids spawn just as abundantly there as in any other zone during actual gameplay, so take that with a grain of salt.
• MST3K Mantra: An in-universe example; this is DRG's attitude towards the fact that Hoxxes has a several-miles-thick core of frozen underground ice plates, rather than conventional polar regions, as well as the implied attitude at its other various bits of impossible weirdness. At least one of their xenogeologists didn't share the same viewpoint.
  Description: As always, DRG recommends a "don't ask" approach when dealing with the peculiarities of Hoxxes' makeup.
• Multi-Directional Barrage: In Season 3, one of the throwables added is the Tactical Leadburster for the Gunner. It sticks into whatever surface it lands on and proceeds to unload three barrages into the area around it.
• Multiple Life Bars:
  • The Drilldozer has three separate life bars. The left side takes all incoming damage until it's destroyed, followed by the right side, and then the main body, which gives a Non-Standard Game Over if it's destroyed. The Dwarves can repair the current bar to gradually heal it, but any side that's destroyed is gone for good. Also, no matter how strong a single hit is, its damage cannot carry over to the next part, meaning that a Bulk Detonator's devastating explosion will only remove a single one of Doretta's health bars instead of one-shotting her.
  • Dreadnoughts have an extra life bar in addition to their normal one, representing the hardened shell over their thorax. Once this bar is depleted, the shell breaks off, leaving the vulnerable flesh underneath exposed. Put enough rounds in that, and the Dreadnought finally dies.
  • Hiveguards work a bit differently — after all its minions are down, it will expose three weakpoints that each have their own health bar. Once those are shot down, it'll temporarily open up its actual weakspot which must be shot at to kill it, before closing it up and spawning minions again to repeat the cycle.
  • The Facility Caretaker has four exhaust ports on top with their own health bars. Once those are down, it'll open its vents which must be shot at to deplete a its actual health. After a third of its healthbar is depleted, it closes all vents, summons a few minions, and the exhaust ports become vulnerable again. Unlike Glyphid Dreadnoughts, you cannot defeat the Caretaker in one go with a particularly powerful attack (i.e. a Bulk Detonator's explosion) — it will become invulnerable immediately after a third of a health bar is depleted, with no damage being carried over to the next third.
  • Korlok Tyrant Weed has its health bar divided into three sections, limiting how much it can heal itself with its healing pod.
  • The Corruptor has six bars of extra health in addition to its main health bar. As you peel off its armored segments, its core can take damage and said damage can increase if you keep removing its armor.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Many. Enemy classifications do not mince words about the danger of Hoxxes IV's wildlife.
  • Oppressors are larger, mutated alpha Praetorians that make up for their slower speed with much tougher, bullet-resistant front armor and the added damage to match.
  • Dreadnoughts, elite Glyphid enemies dangerous enough to be treated as boss battles. While the strongest and toughest of them all, the Hiveguard, ironically doesn't have that threatening a name, the twin threats of the Lacerator (slashing ground damage) and Arbalest (ranged explosive projectiles) definitely do.
  • The Bulk Detonator. Ordinary Detonators are already irritating when they explode, but this thing's Dreadnought-sized and, unlike its smaller counterpart, more than willing to fight for its life; when you finally whittle its giant healthbar down, make sure you get far away from the blast radius.
    • Haunted Cave mutator events spawn a ghostly Bulk Detonator, named the "Unknown Horror", that stalks miners across the map. Completely unkillable, it's like a curse from beyond the grave, and all players can do is run from it in fear.
  • The Nemesis, introduced in Season 2, has a fitting name, as it's one of the most powerful robots the Rival Corporation has produced, and its sole purpose is to lure the Dwarves in so it can destroy them violently.
• Nameless Narrative: The player characters have job descriptions, not names. Mission Control's name is never given. The aliens obviously don't have names (save for Steeve, but they're all named Steeve). The only "characters" who do are Molly, Bosco and Doretta, where Management would rather its employees to not give names to the equipment to begin with, and Karl himself.
• Necessary Drawback:
  • All of the unlockable guns suffer from one of these compared to the vanilla weapons. This is because they are intended to be sidegrades that give the class tactical flexibility, moreso than straight upgrades. For instance, the Gunner's unlockable primary, the Autocannon, deals splash damage, matches the Minigun's single-target DPS, and carries roughly as much, if not more ammo when accounting for total damage. However, it's significantly less precise than the Minigun and relies on slow, manual reloads, whereas the Minigun can simply stop shooting to naturally cool off.
  • Overclocks other than Clean offer better performance at a cost. Clean Overclocks offer minor bonuses without any penalty. Balanced Overclocks offer bigger bonuses with a drawback. Unstable Overclocks offer the biggest bonuses with significant drawbacks that can truly change how the weapon is used.
• No Body Left Behind:
  • Most enemies killed when frozen will shatter, leaving no body behind. This also prevents most of them from using any effects that usually occur upon death, such as Praetorians leaving a poison cloud or Exploders blowing up.
  • Enemies killed by the Corrosive Sludge Pump's acid damage will melt away, leaving no body behind.
  • Enemies killed by most energy weapons such as plasma weaponry, the Flamethrower, and the Shard Diffractor have a tendency of having their bodies rapidly combust and disintegrate, though this does not stop certain death effects such as poison clouds from triggering.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: One line your dwarf can deliver while grinding on a refinery pipeline is "Look at me, I'm Stony Rock!"
• No Fair Cheating: The Pots O' Gold special brew greatly increases the amount of gold you collect when mining them. However, the bonus only applies if you mine the gold yourself with a pickaxe. Using other methods to mine the gold like having Bosco doing the mining or using the Driller's drills to pop the gold veins won't count. This also applies to Morkite with the Dark Morkite brew.
• No Kill like Overkill: The Dwarves appear to adhere closely to The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. Even the resident Fragile Speedster, the Scout, is packing an assault rifle and a sawn-off shotgun. He's the most lightly armed of the bunch. The Smart Guy is packing a grenade launcher, and don't even get us started on the Gunner. Given that they're up against an endless horde of ravenous, heavily-armored bug monsters, however, this is fully understandable.
• No Name Given: The other corporation exploring Hoxxes and filling it with killer robots is only referred to as "(Our) Rival".
• Non-Standard Game Over: There are a few ways to fail a mission without everyone being wiped out or running out of revives from Bosco.
  • At the end of a mission, the Drop Pod will take off after a period of time. If there are no Dwarves in it, the mission ends in failure even if there are surviving Dwarves outside.
  • For Salvage Operations, failing to stand in the Triangulation zone's or Fuel Cells' proximity will cause the progress to decrease. If this hits zero, the mission fails.
  • For Escort Duty, failing to prevent the Drilldozer from getting destroyed will fail the Escort Mission.
• No One Gets Left Behind: The Dwarves will frequently rally around the cry of "Leave No Dwarf Behind!" It applies to gameplay as well, as it's very common to see players risk their lives and the mission itself to make sure everyone gets topside safely, even despite their fallen teammates' protestations to go on without them.
• Noodle Incident:
  • One of the messages that can appear on the Deep Rock Galactic Information Channel: "PSA: Please flush after using the restrooms. Let's not have a repeat of The Incident." A possibly related message in the same Information Channel: "PSA: The L4 bathrooms remain closed for extensive maintenance. The clog is not yet cleared."
  • Whatever it is that happened to Karl. So far, the only things we know are that it was apparently the stuff of legend, that some amount of Skull Crusher Ale may have been involved, that he's either missing or in hiding, and that the four dwarves still bear a grudge against the local wildlife for it all.
  • When you get the Colette Wave Cooker, Mission Control reminds you that using armaments in the Mess Hall, or for anything that isn't as weaponry, is strictly prohibited; going by his statement, someone (presumably a Driller) tried to cook with a flamethrower before and it didn't end well.
• No Such Thing as Space Jesus: Averted. Lines such as "Let there be light!" from the Scout and "Light 'em up like Christmas trees!" from Mission Control mean that, intentionally or not, Ghostship Games has included Christianity as we understand it in their Space-faring Standard Fantasy Setting. The jukebox even has an acoustic guitar version of "What Child Is This?" loaded on it. One can't help but wonder how Deep Rock's version of The Book of Genesis describes God creating the Elves and Dwarves. It's notable that during Christmas the Coorporate Assignments and accessories will prefer to use the term 'Yuletide.' It isn't abundantly clear if this is meant to be an irreligious designation for the season, refers to the Germanic holiday, or the Christian adoption of the name. Mission Control can sometimes say the scanner is "Lit up like a Christmas Tree" when a swarm is coming.
• No Swastikas: When the achievement icons were originally rolled out, there were complains over how certain achievements had icons which resembled a Rising Sun flag (due to the color scheme and prominent sun ray patterns), which lead to the devs having to alter them slightly.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Whenever you gather an egg on egg hunt missions, the entire cave groans and shudders. All that happens is maybe a glyphid swarm comes for you, but it's worth noting that Mission control has never said what species laid these eggs ...
• Notice This:
  • Morkite, the objective mineral in Mining Expeditions, has a shimmer that makes it visible even in pitch-black conditions. In general, resources that have been mined but not collected glow faintly to make them easier to spot.
  • Glowing spots on the wall or floor indicate the presence of a buried gem or egg, and said gems/eggs will also give off a lot of light so you don't lose track of them.
  • Secondary objective resources all glow faintly in the dark, making them easier to find. Similarly, Fester Fleas glow in the dark and leave a trail behind them when they fly, helping you track of them when they try to escape from you.
• Not the Intended Use:
  • Supply Drops are meant to be just that: supply drops containing ammo and health for the dwarves. However, they will also gib anything they land on, be it a dwarf or a bug; the only exceptions are Dreadnoughts, who will still lose a respectable chunk of HP. As such, it's entirely possible to use them as makeshift orbital strikes rather than simple resupplies. Also applies to pipelines to some degree, although the rail grinding is completely intentional (and the dwarves even comment that Deep Rock's R&D department "did good work with the pipe riding") Management probably doesn't approve when you decide to ignore the mission objective in favor of using pipes to build a subterranean roller coaster...
  • Believe it or not, the soundtrack can be used like this. Obviously it was purely intended as atmospherical flavor, but having various songs memorized will let a miner roughly be able to tell how long a swarm has been going and when it will end.
  • Enor Pearls are mere minable resources like anything else, but thanks to their bright glow, they can be used as inexhaustible flares. They never go out, can be thrown respectably far, and can light up anything short of a fully-fledged cave. Just make sure to put them in Molly before calling extraction.
  • The Fat Boy overclock for the Engineer's PGL turns its modest stock of small grenades into a small number of miniature nuclear bombs. The devastating damage radius and the bug-melting radiation they leave behind are well-suited to staunching large swarms of Glyphids with one well-placed shot, but they also happen to leave gaping craters that can knock holes in walls, ore chunks out of terrain or even veins of minerals loose off of high ceilings, similar to EPC mining. Just... don't mind the radioactivity.
  • The LithoFoamer is normally made to cover the Rockpox Infection for the LithoVac to suck up. However, the LithoFoamer deals 0.1 damage per hit, which still causes Loot Bugs to drop minerals they have eaten since they have a chance to do so upon taking any damage. Players thus can use the LithoFoamer to obtain minerals from Loot Bugs the "humane"/"pacifistic" way.
• Nuclear Mutant: On Hoxxes, the Radioactive Exclusion Zone, which is full of mutated, radioactive Glyphids. The local Praetorian variant makes its immediate surroundings suffer radiation poisoning when it attacks; same applies to the Exploder.
• Oddly Small Organization: Despite the fact that they are conducting wide-reaching mining operations of an entire planet, Deep Rock Galactic's space rig has accommodations for a crew of four dwarves, not counting Mission Control. It isn't clear whether the Space Rig as it appears in-game is just meant to be one of many on the same ship. Season 3 does confirm there are more miners, though the numbers aren't clear besides establishing losing three teams of dwarves in the space of one of your missions missions is an unusual and painful loss, financially and otherwise. The easiest explanation is that the Spacerig is pragmatically scaled down, given that from in-game details such as the PSA messages it to scale would be a company town IN SPACE! if not a small city.
• Oh, Crap!: The Dwarves have voicelines reflecting this whenever they are falling down through the air long enough. And when a Bulk Detonator shows up.
  "Aw, shite... DETONATOR! REPEAT, DETONATOR!!
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Voice actor Javier O'Neill is Puerto Rican, and there are some times where the Danish/British accent of his dwarf voice slips. Especially so during the dialogue spoken after drinking the Smart Stout beer.
• ...Or So I Heard: When unlocking the Cryo-Cannon for the Driller, Mission Control remarks that, in addition to its obvious use, it's "also handy for keeping drinks cold... or so I'm told."
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Played so straight you could use it for precision measurement. Our heroes are a group of surly, stout-bodied, drink-loving, honor-bound warrior miners. Some of the more ornate weapon skins feature time-honored Dwarven standards such as foaming mugs and fists. Recent updates have also been steadily adding ever-more-magnificent beards, some of which are braided. On the other hand, beards are optional, with two of the classes starting beardless by default, and their accents are Danish rather than Scottish (and the Ambiguously Human Misson Control has an upper-class English accent).
  • Literally so: if you take away the class specializations, the four dwarves are physically identical.
• Our Elves Are Different: Implied. Elves never make an appearance, but their presence in the setting is alluded by "pointy-eared leaf lover" being a common insult among dwarves, with Leaf Lover's Special being a much derided flavor of beer in the bar.
• Overheating: The Gunner's minigun, the Scout's Plasma Carbine, the Driller's Experimental Plasma Charger and his drills all draw directly from their ammo stores, but jam if they're used for too long without cooling off. The Driller's Cryocannon works similarly, but loses pressure rather than building heat. If it runs out, it simply needs to repressurize a bit to fire again.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: Industrial Sabotage is generally a bad thing, but given how the mysterious Rival Corporation is literally trying to steal a claim Deep Rock Galactic owns with a robot legion, it's hard to blame wrecking their stuff to gum up their operations.
• Percussive Maintenance:
  • Several scenarios in the game present the player with some broken piece of machinery that needs to be fixed or activated. Examples include broken mini-Mules that have been left in an abandoned mine, Uplink and black boxes, cargo crates, and fuel cell pods. The animation for most of these has you simply whack the machinery in question with a hammer until it turns on, good as new.
  • Constructing pipes and fixing the Drilldozer share a unique animation featuring somewhat more sensible tools, but also includes a few less sensible ones, and often includes whacking it with the back side of a wrench as well.
  • Inverted with dislodging the backup power batteries for the Caretaker's force field. It uses the same "whacking it with a hammer" animation as broken mini-Mules, cargo crates, fuel cells, etc. but doing this breaks the machine instead of powering it.
• Pet the Dog: Or pet the bug, as the case may be; an update eventually gave players the ability to pet the Lootbugs, although the prompt to do so is currently invisible; you can still do it by pressing E on them, however. As of Update 28, you can also pet tamed Glyphids, and with her introduction in Update 32, Doretta can be petted.
• Planet Heck: The Magma Core. Lava vents, flaming geysers, tectonic shifts that cause chasms to open up with barely any warning... not a fun place to visit.
• Plasma Cannon: In multiple unique forms!
  • First is the Engineer's Breach Cutter unlockable secondary weapon. Explicitly described as a mining tool repurposed as a weapon, it fires a pair (or with an upgrade, three pairs) of nodes that fly straight forward, stringing a horizontal arc of plasma between them that passes through terrain and enemies and damages anything it touches.
  • Next is the Driller's unlockable secondary, the Experimental Plasma Charger or EPC. A (large) pistol-sized weapon, it is a Flawed Prototype par excellence, as in its stock form it's an even less practical weapon than his normal Subata 120 due to the slow projectiles, poor accuracy, terrible battery capacity, and tendency to overheat at the slightest provocation (including every time you fire a charged shot). With the Thin Containment Field upgrade, however, it becomes extremely useful as a ranged mining tool (even after the update that made the implosion fling minerals caught in the blast all over the cave).
  • The Scout has access to the DRAK-25 Plasma Carbine, which is a production model automatic weapon that seems to function very similarly to the EPC's primary fire but with all the kinks worked out (well, other than the fact that it can't be fired continuously for more than a couple of seconds at a time without overheating).
  • While not quite a "cannon", there is also the Engineer's Plasma Burster grenade, which appears to be a set of four plasma containment capsules haphazardly strapped together. When thrown, they will explode one-by-one as the grenade bounces along the ground.
• Player-Guided Missile: The Gunner's "Hurricane" Guided Rocket System fires out a slew of missiles that are guided by the player's targeting reticule via a laser pointer.
• Player Tic: The game almost seems designed to generate these.
  • Pinging certain objects, not to bring attention to them like pings usually do, but to hear the funny-sounding associated voice line. Most commonly done with compressed gold and goo sacks.
  • Once everyone gets in the drop pod but before the mission is ended properly, emptying one's pockets of grenades. And for Driller players, throwing down all of his remaining Satchel Charges.
  • After drinking beer, throwing the empty mug so that it gets lodged in the beams in the pod's ceiling.
  • Repeatedly slapping the fuzzy dice in the Drop Pod when waiting for players. And to a lesser extent, the dwarf-like spring toy at the bar.
• Poor Communication Kills: This is a 4-player co-op game, after all. Activating a swarm, machine event or miniboss before everyone is prepared and near each other is a surefire way to lose a mission. Canny dwarves will therefore always check with their teammates that everyone is ready before starting anything. Players usually just type "R" (for "Ready") in the chat before hand to signify that they wish to continue with the mission, and not obeying this rule is seen as a major faux pas.
  • It is also crucial that dwarves do not accidentally or otherwise take another dwarf's resupply unless they explicity say it's ok, as every bullet counts and you do not want to have a Gunner with an empty turbocannon when the glyphids are on the move.
• Power Crystal: The ultimate goal of any Escort Duty mission is to defend a mobile drill as it makes its way towards the prize: an Ommoran Heartstone buried deep in Hoxxes. The Heartstone is not only valuable, it is apparently powerful and possibly sentient, as drilling into its outer shell causes the crystal to fight back. It is capable of smashing levitating rocks into the drill, erecting beam towers to burn it with lasers, and creating bursts of energy that push away dwarves and clear out the Engineer's platforms. Once the drilling is complete and the Heartstone itself has been extracted from the shell, it seems to lose its power (or at least the will to fight back) and it can be safely carried back to the Drop Pod by tying it to the M.U.L.E.
• Powerful Pick: Naturally, the pickaxe can be used as a melee attack against enemies, though it can't match up to the guns. An upgrade for it lets players unleash an even stronger attack with it, but on a cooldown timer.
• Praetorian Guard: Dwarves who reach Player Rank 60 can unlock the Regal Aegis armor paintjob. The assignment description implies that the colors are worn by special guards who protect Deep Rock's holdings and enforce their rules. It's worth noting that the color scheme involved — blue, black and white — matches the weapon skins unlocked for buying every mod a weapon has.
  • There's a Glyphid known as the Praetorian, and it's the largest one before Dreadnoughts.
• Precursors:
  • Rarely, on deep, high-level digs, strange black cubes can be dug out of the ground, much like gemstones. They are clearly manufactured objects of some kind, and neither the Dwarves nor their scanners recognize them, suggesting they weren't made by dwarven, human, or elven hands; this suggests that space-mining companies are not the first to visit Hoxxes. The game files even refer to them as "Precursor Artifact."
  • Similarly, large double-helix structures may occasionally spawn in the Radioactive Exclusion Zone. They share the same scrambled name as the cubes, aiming a pointer at them makes the dwarves say similar lines as if they pointed a cube, and their smooth uniformness indicates that these things aren't naturally-made.
  • The Azure Weald has two forms of glowing structures that provide health and zero-gravity buffs, and they too bring up the scrambled name of "p[[[[[{0}]]]]]q" when scanned. These ones even let out serene and eerie hums.
  • Dwarves at the bar will occasionally toast to "the empires of old," which may potentially be another example of this trope.
• Press X to Die: Go ahead, jump into the barrel hoop. The exact same barrel hoop you see violently explodes barrels that pass through it. See what happens.
• Protection Mission:
  • The tail end of every Escort Duty mission turns from an Escort Mission into one of these, where the Drilldozer becomes immobile drilling into the Ommoran Heartstone. The Dwarves need to protect her from huge waves of enemies entering the field, while the Heartstone itself attempts to destroy her with geologial attacks.
  • In Industrial Sabotage missions, the Dwarves need to protect a Hacking Drone for a time period in order to take down the Caretaker's shields. Mercifully, Hacksy can't be destroyed, but if they take too much damage in a short period they will be forced to hide and pause progress until the Dwarves reactivate them.
• Pupating Peril: Glyphid Dreadnoughts, basically the game's bosses, are usually found inside of cocoons that need to be actively popped. According to Mission Control, this is necessary because having them ambulatory and ready to crash other mining operations (as they may rarely do to you) is bad news, and because their cocooning means they're trying to turn into something even worse than the chitinous, fiery juggernauts themselves.
• Quick Melee: An odd variant where the actual intended use is for digging, but swinging your pickaxe is as easy as holding a button and it goes through enemies as well as dirt. There are also several perks that can amplify the combat effectiveness of this feature.
• Ranged Emergency Weapon:
  • The Driller's piddly Subata 120 pistol counts, being a semi automatic peashooter (by dwarven standards at least) on a class all about getting up close and personal. Again, by dwarven standards; it's still packing a ton of ammo and good damage and can put the hurt in anything's weak spots if you can aim it right.
  • The Gunner's Bulldog revolver is an odd case. Unlike most examples of this trope, it is extremely powerful and accurate, fully capable of one-shotting standard enemies and making short work of big bugs such as Praetorians. However, it still fits the trope for two reasons. Firstly, it has a very limited magazine size of only four shots, and its base ammo pool is a petite 24 rounds. Secondly, being able to one-shot enemies only gets you so far when you're dealing with enemies like the Glyphids, meaning that all but the most eagle-eyed players will have to switch back to their Minigun as soon as the bugs close in; the Bulldog won't help hold off a swarm. It's mostly for picking off distant enemies too far away for the Minigun to reach without wasting a lot of ammo.
• Randomly Generated Levels: The layout of each cavern is generated every time. Missions have "Mission Length" and "Cave Complexity" modifiers that make them deeper or twistier.
• Rated M for Manly: Can't be more manly than a team of foul-mouth, beer-guzzling space Dwarves sent to a dark Death World to mine for rare minerals and mow down entire swarms of giant, monstrous bugs with military-graded weapons. And if that's not manly enough, there's the Abyss Bar where you can order beers for you and your teammates to either get buffs or get stone-drunk on your arses. And if you order the Leaf Lover's Special, you'll be shamed by your dwarven brethren for ordering a tree-hugging elf drink and not being a true, manly dwarf.
• Real Is Brown: Averted, each of the biome landscapes is a particular dominant colour once you light it up. It makes the actual brown patches of soft dirt (which mark passages between caverns) stand out.
• Recoil Boost: Scout's Boomstick has an overclock mod, "Special Powder", that allows him to do this.
• Redemption Demotion: The corrupted BET-C automatic combat rigs that can be encountered in the caverns will put up a decent fight, but once the Charge-Suckers are killed and the robot restored to working order, it won't fight as effectively as it did before. It entirely loses the ability to use its shield, and while it retains both the machine gun and grenade launcher, its rate of fire is reduced and it will no longer do the close-range volley attacks it does when you fight it.^note Though that last attack is generally more dangerous to the dwarves than to the bugs, so perhaps that's for the best.
• Redemption Promotion: The Beast Master perk allows you to tame a Glyphid Grunt to your side that will be called Steeve. Steeve can have 100% to 300% extra damage dealt at perk levels 2-4, will take much less damage from players, is twice as resistant to freezing and unfreezes twice as fast, and is immune to sticky flames.
• Refuge in Audacity: Sometimes it rains in this game. Be reminded that this game is set in underground caves.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: Dwarves are equipped with an upgradeable shield rig that recharges after a period of not taking damage, but can only restore health with supply drops and Red Sugar. If a dwarf's health is particularly low, he'll slowly regain up to about a sixth of his health bar while his shield is up.
  • The bugs get in on this as well. A Dreadnought has two sets of hit points, (see Multiple Life Bars above), both tied to its glowing abdomen. The abdomen has a hard shell that must be broken off, and soft flesh underneath. The shell always grows back after a short duration, instantly resetting to 100% health. Any damage to the fleshy bits remains, however.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The Gunner's sidearm is the "Bulldog" Heavy Revolver, boasting the highest damage per shot of any bullet-based weapon, at the cost of only having a four-shot cylinder (See Hand Cannon above). It can even be upgraded to fire explosive rounds.
• Riddle for the Ages: Who was Karl? What happened to him? What did he do that was so awesome/badass/memorable that the already very tough and very badass dwarves constantly pay deference to his memory? The devs have all but publicly said that they'll never reveal the answer, at one point saying "Maybe the real Karl was the friends we made along the way."
• Rocket Jump:
  • The RJ250 Compound Overclock for the Engineer's Grenade Launcher allows him to perform this feat at the cost of some damage in the weapon itself.
  • The Special Powder Overclock for the Scout's Jury-Rigged Boomstick gives it a nasty kickback... Which can be used to propel himself across the maps.
• Rollercoaster Mine: Update 32 added in two new missions, one of which revolves around building pipelines to pump liquid Morkite back to an on-site refinery. These pipes can be built in any direction as long as terrain exists to build it off of, and there is no resource cost for building pipe segments. The "roller coaster" element comes in when the dwarves ride the rails along the top of the pipes. Many teams playing on low hazard levels go out of their way to build and ride the most ridiculous pipe roller coasters they can because it's just as (if not more) entertaining than actually completing the mission!^note And there's also a hidden achievement for riding a rail in one direction for two uninterrupted minutes.
• Satchel Charge: The Driller's unique Utility Tool. The Satchel Charge is able to stick onto vertical as well as horizontal surfaces at any height provided you can throw it far enough. Once set, a single charge can be detonated by a remote unit held in the Driller's hand. These can be customized to the player's tastes in terms of raw explosive power, blast radius, disarming switch for retrieval, and even sensitivity to weapons fire.
• Science Fantasy: There are vague hints that DRG takes place in a Standard Fantasy Setting that averted Medieval Stasis long enough to become an outright galaxy-spanning civilization. One of the toasts the dwarves will give mention "empires of old". The clean-shaven option is described as "progressive", implying that going beardless is against Dwarven tradition, but that times are changing. Various weapon cosmetics such as "First Relic" and "Scale Brigade" feature golden crests in medieval European and Nordic rune styles, respectively. Magic hasn't made an appearance (with the possible exception of the Ommoran Heartstone), but the presence of Elves is alluded to, and the Dwarves will insult those who commit friendly fire with comparisons to Goblins and Trolls.
• Schmuck Bait: Machine Events on Point Extraction missions. These missions spawn bug waves without warning at random intervals, and at faster ones than with Mining missions. Machine Events do not prevent additional waves from spawning on top of the usual enemies it does. Starting a Machine Event on this type of mission can be a death sentence if you are on a high hazard level and/or don't have a competent team to back you up.
  • Additionally, Point Extraction missions punish slowness moreso than any other mission type, as swarms will get larger and larger as time passes. Taking an extra five minutes to do a machine event can make the rest of the mission a living hell.
  • This also applies to Escort missions. Keep in mind that failing to protect the Drilldozer results in a Non-Standard Game Over. The best tactic is to extract the heartstone before doing the event, as by this point, the Drilldozer no longer needs to be defended.
• Scratch Damage:
  • The LithoFoamer's primary purpose is to clean the Rockpox infestation, however, it is capable of dealing damage to enemies it hits — but at 0.1 damage per "hit", it's not going to be killing things like Swarmers anytime soon.
  • Rockpox Grunts and Rockpox Praetorians have such insanely high defense that all damage they receive in non-weakspots is turned into this. However, they suffer massive damage when their pustules are damaged and exploded.
• Screw Learning, I Have Phlebotinum!: When a dwarf drinks Smart Stout, he briefly suddenly knows specific things like how to make the Drop Pod land where needed, Karl's whereabouts, why gold has its color and so on.
• Secondary Fire:
  • The Scout's M1000 can hipfire as fast as you can pull the trigger, but holding the fire button down allows a charged shot with more power, accuracy, or special effects with the right overclock.
  • The Driller's Cryo Cannon has two optional overclocks enabling special fire modes that trade ammo efficiency for long range power shots. His Sludge Pump also does this by default.
  • The Engineer's LMG Gun Platform can have three different ones powered by the Primary Weapons:
    • The "Warthog" Auto 210 Shotgun has the Turret Whip mod, which lets you shoot any deployed LMG - not just yours, but other players' as well - and have it expend 5 rounds to fire off a supercharged explosive shot.
    • The "Stubby" Voltaic SMG's Turret EM Discharge Unstable Overclock lets you shoot any deployed LMG to unleash a burst of electricity without expending any of the LMG's rounds, useful when swarms reach your turret(s).
    • The SMG also has the Turret Arc Unstable Overclock, which lets you charge turrets with electricity. When a pair of charged turrets are close enough, they conduct a stream of electricity between them just like the Electrocrystals in the Crystalline Caverns, frying anything near or in the path.
• Sentry Gun: Present to assist or oppose the Dwarves:
  • The Engineer's unique Support Tool, the LMG Gun Platform. Customizable with purchasable mods.
    • First Tier mods let you choose between the Gemini System which gives you two sentry guns and additional ammo, or the (single) LMG Mk II which has improved range, ammo capacity, and damage.
    • Second Tier offers increased ammo count, quicker setup time or quicker reload.
    • Third Tier includes armor piercing, stun modifier, or increased ammo capacity for the sentry gun(s).
    • Fourth Tier offers two different Systems for the LMG: The Defender System, which limits the gun to a (still wide) forward arc but increases the damage, and the Hawkeye System which extends the firing range and also turns your Laser Pointer into a target designator for the gun(s).
    • Gemini System + Defender System = UA 571-C Automated Sentry Gun
  • The Minehead Platforms in Point Extraction missions come equipped with 3 LMG Mk II turrets mounted in triangular formation for defense.
  • Rival Burst Turrets and Sniper Turrets will attack the Dwarves in Industrial Sabotage missions and (formerly) missions with the Rival Presence mutator.
• Serial Numbers Filed Off: Jetty Boot, an arcade game available to play on the Spacerig, is a pretty obvious one of Flappy Bird. Gameplay consists of tapping a single button to go up and trying to fit through oncoming pipes. The game is also meant to train players to unlock the occasional Jet Boots crate on Hoxxes.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Since Friendly Fireproof is generally averted, this is a legitimate way to fight the swarm. The Scout has the Pheromone Canister that attracts other bugs to target the unlucky ones covered in it, and Exploders' explosions will harm nearby bugs as well, potentially setting up a chain reaction if there are multiple Exploders around. The biggest of this is popping off a Bulk Detonator next to a Dreadnought; as long the Dreadnought is in its vulnerable state, it will die in one hit from the Detonator's massive explosion.
• Shattered World: Combined with Floating Continent — a solid 20%-30% of Hoxxes has been forcibly ripped off of the rest of the planet, leaving it orbiting over the massive crater it used to occupy; it even seems to have its own biome inside it, the Dense Biozone. Important questions, such as who did this, why they did it, how they did it, how Hoxxes is still intact, and why the debris has not simply crashed back to the surface as its gravity is the same as the rest of the planet's yet remain unanswered. As always, DRG recommends a "don't ask" approach when dealing with the peculiarities of Hoxxes' makeup.
• Shifting Sand Land: The Sandblasted Corridors. It has the softest terrain, making it the easiest to dig in, but it's home to aggressive swarmers and sand jets that can launch you across a room to your death-by-fall-damage.
• Shock and Awe: Both in service of the players and against them.
  • Engineer:
    • The "Stubby" Voltaic SMG. Also the Unstable Overclocks Turret Arc and Turret EM Discharge.
    • The Breach Cutter's High Voltage Crossover Balanced Overclock.
  • Scout:
    • The Electrifying Reload Unstable Overclock for the Deepcore GK2 Asssault Rifle.
    • The M1000 Classic's Electrocuting Focus Shots Unstable Overclock.
  • The Gunner has the Electro Minelets Unstable Overclock for the BRT7 Burst Fire Gun.
  • The Crystalline Caverns contains the "electrocrystal" stage hazard which are glowing blue crystals that will arc lethal electricity between each other, also sporatically changing which crystal they arc to.
  • Naedocyte Shockers (obviously) and Hatchlings will attempt to swarm Dwarves and zap them repeatedly like Darker and Edgier Bikini Bottom Jellyfish.
  • The Facility Caretaker will punish dwarves who try standing on the vault platform by charging up a set of tesla coils that electrocutes any dwarves still standing on it when they discharge.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Zig-zagged depending on which class is being played. The Scout's Boomstock is incredibly deadly at close range, but is more or less useless past that, due to how short the barrel is. However, the Engineer's default combat shotgun is quite reliable from anywhere up to 30 meters. This can be greatly extended if the player chooses accuracy and recoil focused upgrades, and pushed even further with the Magnetic Pellet Alignment overclock.
• Shoot the Bullet: The Spitball Infector's acid blobs can be shot out of the air by your weapons, negating the danger of being hit by their highly damaging projectile. Don't try this with Glyphid Acidspitters or Web Spitters however.
• Shotguns Are Just Better:
  • The Scout's "Jury-Rigged Boomstick" is a double-barrel break action sawed-off that can kill a Praetorian in two shots at close range.
  • The Engineer's "Warthog" Auto 210 Shotgun is a versatile weapon that's handy at all ranges (but the closer the better), which helps him mop up any enemies that get past his sentries.
• Shout-Out: Has its own page.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Each and every one of the classes' platforming tools. Yes, they aren't anywhere near as flashy as the weapons, but just try and complete any high-level digs without them and see how long you last. In general, any of them are a necessity for traversing the dark caves of the planet, and having all of them at your team's disposal means no obstacle will get in your way with proper use.
• Single-Biome Planet: Averted. Hoxxes is home to several biomes and climates, although they're all underground. The surface is a lifeless wasteland.
• Situational Sword: Heightened Senses perk is only useful when there is a grabber enemy (cave leech, mactera grabber, trawler, nemesis) around, but since they are infrequent spawns (or in the case of the grabber, loudly telegraphed), the perk is mostly deadweight. But when they do spawn and get the drop on you, you'd be glad you've got it.
• Sleeves Are for Wimps: Introduced in Season 04, certain armors can toggle between sleevless options for most of the sets. Barring those that are already sleeveless to begin with. Certain sleeveless armors are even complimented with alternate handwear such as tough guy finger-less gloves.
• Skewed Priorities: Played for Laughs at every turn. Deep Rock Galactic is very blunt about the fact that they view the lives of their employees as substantially less important than making money, but the dwarves don't seem to care about this at all; they aren't even particularly upset if they're left behind on a dig. Possibly handwaved by the implications that the medbay is rescuing fallen dwarves from death somehow.
  Fungus Bogs description: "We're almost sorry to send employees in here, but the rewards are too great to ignore. So therefore: welcome to the Fungus Bogs! A truly awful region, built mostly from slime, mold, stinging insects, fungus, stinking mud, and corrosive lichen."
• Smart Gun:
  • The Scout's Deepcore GK2 rifle can be converted into one with the Unstable Overclock A.I. Stability Engine. Recoil is removed completely, spread recovery is at 1000% speed, and weak point damage is increased. However the system and specialized ammunition reduces default firing rate and damage.
  • An even more involved example is the Engineer's LOK-1 Smart Rifle, which can lock onto a whole series of enemies and let loose all at once with bursts of homing bullets, Panzer Dragoon or RAY Series style.
• Socialization Bonus:
  • The price for everything sold at the bar is for one round of drinks, rather than for a single beer, so it's the most cost-efficient to always buy for a team of four (given that your teammates will reciprocate your generousness, that is).
  • The end-of-mission bounty includes a stacking credit bonus for every dwarf who made it back to the drop pod alive, giving you good reason to play with a full team and make sure no dwarf is left behind.
• Speedrun: Played straight and inverted with two achievements. "Deep for Speed" asks you to complete a Deep Dive (three consecutive maps) in under forty-five minutes, while "I Like it Here" asks you to stay in one map for at least an hour.
• Spider-Sense: The Heightened Sense perk has the top portion of the screen illuminate in white if the player is about to be grabbed by an enemy so they can get out of the way in time. In the event that you're grabbed anyway, you can use the perk to break free, but it only works twice per mission.
  My beard sense is tingling!
• Stalactite Spite: Stalactites made of salt appear in the Salt Pits biome, and will fall to deal damage if shot or disrupted via explosion. The green icicles in the Glacial Strata do the same thing (though they shatter on landing instead of sticking into the ground), but any other type of icicle found there won't.
• Stalked by the Bell: Point Extraction missions start off with only a minor enemy presence, but the longer you and your team stay, the larger the enemy swarms are. It escalates to the point where 30 minutes in, there's at least 30-50 glyphids pouring out of the walls every 30 seconds.
• Standard Fantasy Setting: Subverted. There are implications throughout the game that the setting was this historically, but it averted Medieval Stasis long enough to transition to Science Fantasy.
• Stealth Pun: The M1000 Classic is an M1 Garand futurized. Or in other words...it's an M-One-Grand.
  • The Smart Rifle's LOK-1 designation seems a lot like "lock-on", considering 1 represents "on" in boolean algebra (versus 0 for "off").
• Sticky Bomb: The Gunner's Sticky Grenade can adhere to any surface or creature before detonating. The Engineer's Proximity Mine and the Driller's Satchel Charge can also stick to surfaces.
• Stop Poking Me!: When you use your laser pointer to highlight something for your team, your dwarf will voice an alert to the team members about it, such as "Mushroom!" If you keep spamming this on the same thing, Mission Control will react, usually with a reprimand.
  "Mushroom, mushroom!" Shut it, get back to work!
  • Similarly, if you're playing with other players and you all happen to find a chunk of compressed gold or bittergem and stand around, repeatedly scanning it with your laser-scanner, Mission Control will eventually chime-in with a very exasperated demand for you to get back to your jobs.
• Stout Strength: Well, these are dwarves we're talking about. The Gunner and the Driller are the most noticeable examples, but all four of the playable Dwarves are short, strong enough to cave in a Glyphid's skull with a pickaxe, and tough enough to take a serious beating. Molly also qualifies, being a squat, virtually-indestructible "minecart on legs" who is around the same height as the Dwarves are.
• Subsystem Damage: Many bugs have a hard outer shell, which reduces or negates damage to the bug's Hit Points when shot. However, the shell itself takes damage and can be cracked and blown off, leaving the bug's flesh exposed. The Drilldozer also takes damage systematically, starting with Left Tread then Right Tread and finally the Main Body.
• Super-Persistent Predator: Glyphids constantly swarm at the dwarves relentlessly. If they ever flee or get stunned, it's only temporary and they'll be back to chasing you down in short order. The only way to get them to stop permanently is by befriending them, or with bullets.
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity:
  • Point Extraction missions have a lot of Nitra lying around the level, and the Mine Head you need to deposit the Aquarqs into even come with a triplet of heavy autocannons to fend off any nearby bugs. This is of course merely to offset the fact that the aliens in Point Extractions are much more aggressive than in any other mission, and you will be swarmed every few minutes at minimum with the swarms getting bigger and deadlier each time.
  • Escort missions also have quite a bit of Nitra (and have a lot of it concentrated in the starting room, unlike other missions), but this is more due to the levels being far more linear and requiring the Drilldozer to be escorted to the endpoint. Which of course, means a lot of ammo needed to protect it against the bugs and not a lot of time to grab Nitra for it while the Drilldozer is moving.
  • Industrial Sabotage missions also tend to have huge amounts of Nitra, to the benefit of Dwarves keeping bugs and robots away from Hack-C and eventually taking down the Caretaker, this is probably justified in the rival corporation presumably needing to use said Nitra to keep their robots and turrets stocked with ammo as well even though they seemingly do not have to during gameplay.
• Take Your Time: On most mission types, periodic enemy waves are the only time pressure put on the team until the call for extraction. Even once objectives are complete it can be wise to look for crafting ores and establish ways back up cliffs before starting the countdown (Which can become moot if you have a Driller). Point Extraction missions don't offer this luxury, however, and the unannounced bug waves will become more and more frequent until the team is overrun or leaves. Mining, Escort, and Refining missions have unpredictable enemy waves appearing at random, though not as aggressively as in Point Extraction missions.
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: Leaf Lover's Special is an "organic" beer available only due to the insistence of Management. Dwarves despise it both due to its Elven origin and its ability to turn you stone-cold sober with a single swig. Ironically, this last effect is quite useful due to the effects of drunkenness in normal gameplay, although many players have found and chosen their own ways of getting sober.
• Timed Mission: Every mission is ultimately this, though most of them are on a very soft timer limited only by Nitra availability, and the hard timer is only during extraction phase. Point Extraction has the distinction of being the hardest on the soft timers, though.
• Tree Trunk Tour: Update 33 brings the new Hollow Bough biome, a biological anomaly beneath the planet's surface filled with cavernous growths resembling the inside of hollow trees, complete with bark coating the "cave" walls. The area is also infested with writhing thorny red vines, which appear to be an invasive species eating away at the wood that makes up the caverns.
• Trick Arrow: Season 2 gives the Scout the Nishanka Boltshark, a crossbow that fires normal reusable bolts as well as your choice of three special bolts that explode or inflict status effects. Overclocks allow replacing your normal bolts with even more trick arrows that set bugs on fire, freeze them, ricochet and more.
• Trick Bomb: Every class gets a number of throwable devices that either explode or otherwise hinder the Glyphid hordes. At first, these were mostly standard frags, but Update 24 added a diverse selection of grenades and grenade-like objects to each class's loadout.
  • The Scout gets the Inhibitor Field Grenades (or IFG's), which initially were the only nonstandard grenade in the game — creating a slowing field that increased damage against targets within it. With the update, he has two other options that fulfill the crowd-control role: the bug-baiting Pheremone Canister and the Cryo Grenade.
  • The Gunner has a number of high-yield area-of-effect tools, including the notoriously friendly-fire-prone Cluster Grenade, the intense but short-lived Incendiary Grenade, and the spike-covered Sticky Grenade.
  • The Engineer's options are focused on area denial and battlefield control. There's the startlingly lifelike L.U.R.E., the multiple-detonation-capable Proximity Mine, and the chaotic, bouncy Plasma Burster.
  • The Driller has the weirdest assortment, with the sharp-edged and recoverable Impact Axe, the bog-standard HE Grenade, and the highly flammable and non-dwarf-affecting Neurotoxin Grenade.
• Tunnel King: Every dwarf worth his salt can dig, but the Driller is the best at it, digging wide, un-cramped tunnels faster than anyone else.
• Ultimate Job Security: No matter what kind of shenanigans the dwarves get into in the level hub, Mission Control always sounds like he's on his last straw but never acts on his threats. Kicking dozens of barrels into the launch platform, bringing them into the drop pod, getting drunk off your ass and pass out at the bar, playing with the gravity control, and entering restricted areas are all things you can repeatedly do without a punishment harsher than being told off over comms. All this is because DRG's operations simply cannot function without the dwarves going on their digging missions, and there's no replacing them since no one else is crazy enough, or badass enough, to try digging on Hoxxes IV.
• Underground Level: The space rig is the only area in the game that ISN'T underground.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Season 3 introduces the Rockpox Lithophage, which has infested areas that need to be removed. In-game, cleaning a Lithophage infestation turns part of cave exploration into a cleaning game like Powerwash Simulator, where you need to equip a LithoFoamer to spray foam onto the infection, then use the LithoVac to suck it up along with the infection. Cleansing a high enough percentage of Rockpox around a Plague Spike will destroy it and remove any remaining infestation generated by it.
• Unwanted Assistance: Defeating and rebooting the BET-C gives you a powerful allied mobile gun platform that shoots and throws bombs, but unlike engineer turrets or Bosco, its grenade launcher can hurt you with friendly fire.
• Useless Useful Spell: Subverted with Fear. At first glance one would wonder "why make creeps afraid when you can just kill them?", which is true on lower hazard levels, but higher hazards level, or just bigger groups, can have the glyphid swarms attacking in larger numbers and potentially on a very bad place to fight the swarm, so having a way to apply fear and make even a handful of enemies to go away can give you a much needed breathing room and maybe prevent your group from being overran.
• Video Game Caring Potential:
  • Update 33 added, at the request of players during the experimental branch, the option to carry Doretta's head back to the escape pod after an Escort Mission was completed. Of course, in the developer's own words, "Just don't expect any rewards or praise for doing so — Management couldn't care less!". Indeed, there's no exprience or credits rewards for doing so, but dwarf dialogue expresses a desire to bring her home, and the dwarf that walks it into the drop pod will be ecstatic about it. Doretta's head will then appear on the mission completion screen alongside the party and even on the Space Rig.
  • Season 3 adds the LithoFoamer, which is normally used to clean Lithophage infestations — but it also deals 0.1 damage per hit on things. This still triggers a Loot Bug's chance to drop minerals on a hit, meaning that it's now possible to use the LithoFoamer to extract the minerals from Loot Bugs while leaving them relatively unharmed.
  • For as trigger-happy as the dwarves get, it's also possible to pet pretty much any living creature that doesn't attack on sight, with the Lootbugs — put-upon Chew Toys that they are — even wriggling happily and purring when you pet them. Keying into Doretta's Caring Potential, you can even pet her on the trip to the Heartstone to reassure her.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • Virtually every dig you go on will feature Loot Bugs — bulbous, slug-like aliens who explode into a shower of gold and nitra when killed, but are completely harmless. It's up to the player whether they're left unmolested, popped for the rewards, or petted by the dwarves.
  • For that matter, there are several species of neutral wildlife on Hoxxes IV, such as the Silicate Harvester, Cave Cruiser, and Cave Vine, who pose no threat to the Dwarves. This doesn't stop you from shooting or smashing them to death if you're so inclined. If one kills the Mobula Cave Angel and Hexawing Gniffer in Azure Weald, the dwarves will even lampshade the fact that they're "being such a badass" for killing a harmless creature.
  • Even when hostile bugs are involved you can still be a complete bastard. The Driller's arsenal in particular is full of weapons that would get him tried in the Hague for just showing up around a battlefield, like the microwave emitter that cooks enemies from the inside out until they pop like kernels or the corrosive waste cannon that melts them alive; you can even hear glyphids cry out in agony while they turn into puddles with that last one. The microwave emitter even has an overclock that gives organic enemies cancerous tumors which can be popped for amplified damage.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Averted. The Driller's CRSPR Flamethrower can wash over an oncoming tide of swarmers and leave nothing but a carpet of charred ashes in its wake. Not only that, it has an effective range of ten meters and fires in a tight stream, meaning it's plenty effeective at shooting flying enemies at medium range.
  • One upgrade path allows the CRSPR to set the ground on fire, called Sticky Flames, creating a potentially massive Damage Over Time field that ignites Glyphids that charge through it.
  • A later optional upgrade also adds the feature of causing enemies killed via direct damage to explode into a shower of fire and boiling hot viscera; Quite useful for quickly killing lots of small and/or bunched-up things.
  • The Sticky Fuel overclock takes the potency of the field of fire example above to the logical extreme by extending both the duration and the damage of sticky fire. Combined with the upgrade that causes the sticky fire to slow enemies a Driller can create walls of fire and simply watch as glyphids try in vain to reach them and are incinerated.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • If a teammate's been knocked down by bugs and are surrounded by them, one common tactic is to throw a grenade at them; if the crowd is big enough, said teammate might be the epicenter of a satchel charge instead. This only works because downed teammates are immune to all damage until revived, and realistically, an explosive would have a way higher chance to further injure the teammate than bullets.
  • Players who take a dislike to using Leaf Lover's Special to sober up but don't want to be drunk on duty can use various techniques to achieve sobriety:
    • The primary method of doing so being to get even more drunk by drinking Blackout Stout to instantly pass out, because being revived resets your drunkenness completely (and, as a bonus, Blackout Stout uses Starch Nuts exclusively, which appear everywhere, so you get to save on the paltry cost of a Leaf Lover's). Of course, passing out won't suddenly eliminate all the alcohol in your body if this were attempted in real life, although we don't exactly know what the liquid used to revive a dwarf is comprised of.
    • Alternatively, you can dive into the barrel hoop and die (respawning in the medbay also resets your drunkeness). You shouldn't need to be told why blowing yourself up in the barrel hoop is an overkill solution, but most players don't really care.
• Wall Crawl: A trademark ability of Glyphids and the MULE, allowing the former to attack from every conceivable direction and enabling the latter to follow the team wherever they go. However in the latter's case this can cause problems, especially when the drop pod is recalled, as Molly will sometimes only take paths that only she can take (unless someone is playing the Scout or the team has access to Jet boots).
• The Walls Have Eyes: A semi-common terrain feature in the Radioactive Exclusion Zone and rarely the Crystalline Caverns consists of large, seemingly-aware clusters of eyes covering the walls, blinking and looking around or at the dwarves. You can mine them to destroy them.
• Weaponized Exhaust: Several of the weapons that utilize the overheating system instead of reloading include an optional upgrade for "Aggressive Venting," which on the weapon overheating will output a large area of effect burning attack around the player at the cost of the weapon being rendered non-functional until it cools off completely. On the less intentional side, the Hover Boots perk lets you arrest your fall and walk on air for a few seconds, burning any enemies unlucky enough to be beneath you, same goes for Jet Boots.
• We Do the Impossible: Deep Rock prides itself in actively seeking out the toughest mining operations and successfully making a killing from them. The whole reason they've come to Hoxxes is specifically because its considered the most dangerous planet in the galaxy.
• Weird Trade Union: The Interplanetary Miner's Union, a trade union for extraterrestrial miners. Being a part of one of their three chapters will grant players a monthly bonus if they achieve certain objectives. If all three chapters complete all their objectives, the Abyss Bar starts serving Glyphid Slammers, Oily Oafs, and Leaf Lover's for free.
• What the Hell, Player?: Regarding the few bugs that aren't hostile, the Dwarves may occasionally remark that they don't like shooting Lootbugs and only do so for their minerals, and are apathetic towards the disgusting Maggots. Towards the Hexawing Gniffer and Mobula Cave Angel though, killing them will result in their remarking that they have no reason to attack them.
  Dwarf: I killed the Cave Angel for no good reason! / (Audibly confused) Why am I shooting the wildlife!?
• With This Herring: DRG will give the barest minimum of equipment to their employees so long as it's cost-efficient, which means that employees have to prove their ability to use the guns and then buy upgrades for those DRG-supplied guns separately, DRG equipment like the Morkite Refinery and M.U.L.E. are insanely prone to malfunction or other weird behaviors, and they're stingy to the point of refusing you precious ammo and health resupplies unless you can collect enough Nitra in the caves.
• Wreaking Havok: Not very much in actual gameplay, but the kickable barrels provide a nice distraction between matches. Don't kick them into the launch tube, though, or you'll get chewed out for it. Apparently the dwarves love kicking the barrels around so much that they made a sport out of it when the Abyss Bar opened.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: A graphic posted by Ghost Ship Games in 2021 declared that fall damage was the overwhelmingly most-common cause of players' deaths◊ (though with the enemies each being listed as a cause separately on the graphic, in total, enemies would be responsible for around 34 million deaths to fall damage's 20 million...which is still a lot for fall damage). It's not for nothing the Scout's grappling hook says "Risk of Accidental Death: HIGH" on the equipment screen.
• Yin-Yang Bomb: Temperature Shock happens when a burning enemy is hit with an attack that induces cold, or a frozen enemy hit with an attack that warms them. The effect of this status is that the enemy takes a large amount of damage and instantly returns to neutral temperature and thaws/extinguishes. It's most relevant when two teammates have clashing temperature weapons, but certain builds can exploit it without outside help, such as Scout with Cryo Grenades and his double barrel's white phosphorus shells upgrade, or any solo dwarf that has a heat weapon when combined with Bosco's ice missiles.

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Last one to the bottom of the page pays for the first round!