Hi Miners,

It's time to take a look at Update 28: Feeling Perky. The main features of this update are the New Perk System, the first part of the Space Rig Overhaul, and an expansion on how we handle skins for customizing the look of your weapons. Let’s dive in!

One thing that’s been high on our to-do-list for a long while has been to give the Perk System an overhaul, and with update 28 we have finally found the time to do it. When we originally introduced Perks way back in Update 14, it was our first attempt at adding some deeper progression and customization to the gameplay experience. And as with all other features, we release them as soon as we think they are *functional*, rather than necessarily *done* - both to get new content out to you guys as fast as possible, but also because we believe that game features mature best in the hands of the players, and through the valuable feedback we get from you.

When we started designing the Perk System, we had a few clear objectives in mind: We wanted you to get access to a bunch of tasty Perks, but at the same time we had to be careful that they were not overpowered or broke the game balance in general. This, combined with a pretty quick first pass on Perks that were mainly adjustments of existing numbers, resulted in what could seem like underwhelming perks.

And boy, have we gotten a lot of feedback on the Perk System…! An underlying tone regarding feedback on Perks has been that many players felt they were underwhelming. For example, the Weekend Athlete Perk (10% increase in sprint speed) got a lot of flack. And while a 10% increase in run speed is enough to make a very big difference in an actual combat scenario, we hear you - it DID look, sound, and feel less impactful than it actually is.

Another issue arose with the fact that many players started regarding certain Perks as must-haves. Iron Will is such a case - oh yes, let’s talk about the elephant in the room! Iron Will in its original implementation could totally result in epic wins - but more often than not it results in a sort of “soft fail” instead, leaving you beyond salvation but still running around reviving each other endlessly. We’ve also seen some players straight up refusing to play with players unless they had Iron Will equipped. The writing on the wall is clear: The fact that so many players feel they MUST use Iron Will is counter to our design, and it has been unbalanced for a long time. So with Update 28 the functionality of Iron Will will change. We’re quite excited (and a bit anxious) to gauge the reaction from you all from it over the coming weeks.

But just apart from “fixing” Iron Will, we’ve introduced a fairly meaty overhaul to how we regard Perks in general. For Update 28, our overarching goal was to make Perks feel a lot more interesting and varied, and to force you guys to make some tough choices instead of going with the same loadout all the time. And secondly, we wanted to go through all the perks and reevaluate and rebalance them to make them more satisfying to use.

And to facilitate this, all Perks are now split into two categories: Passive and Active Perks.

Passive and Active Perks

With the launch of Update 28, you will be starting the game with 2 Perk slots: 1 Passive and 1 Active. The Perk Tree will allow you to unlock two more Passive Perks and any promoted dwarf will get a second Activated Perk slot. When fully unlocked, your dwarf will be able to equip 3 Passive and 2 Active Perks.

So, you’ll have 5 Perk slots in total, but the choices should now be a lot more impactful. And we believe: Tougher choices = More interesting gameplay!

Passive Perks

Passive Perks are pretty much what the Perks used to be. Equip one of these and you get a passive increase to a given stat - such as Deep Pockets, that allow you to carry more minerals. No interaction or activation needed - equip it and the benefit is just there. Nice and simple.

Active Perks

Active Perks however, requires activation from you, and generally have either a Cooldown on their use, or limited uses - sometimes even both! And since they are limited use, this allows us to make Perks with significantly more powerful effects than we’ve seen so far, or to make less powerful ones be usable more often.

For Activation of the Perks, we decided not to go with a dedicated activation button, but instead map it specifically to each in a contextual manner. Take Iron Will for instance - since it is now an Active Perk.

After being incapacitated, you will have a period where you can activate it by pressing and holding [JUMP]. You can only do this ONCE per mission. Now, before you call on Karl’s wrath because of this change, hear us out: When using Iron Will, you will now have a longer period alive, with less movement speed reduction than before, and you will remain invulnerable for the full duration. All in all, this results in you being more certain that you can actually manage to revive a downed fellow Dwarf, reach some Red Sugar or simply spend your final rage on finishing a Dreadnought. Yes, you can only use it once - but you decide when. And when you do, you will be getting some proper bang for the buck!

With Update 28 we are also introducing a bunch of new Perks, both Passive and Active, and have tweaked the costs and requirements for pretty much all of them. This means that all Perk purchases have been reset, any spent Perk Points have been refunded to you, and all Perks need to be unlocked once more.

We hope you’ll have a lot of fun playing around and experimenting with the new Perk System, and as always we’re looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Space Rig Overhaul

The Space Rig has been another thing we really wanted to update for a long time. It is, however, a large task, and we will be doing it in steps. The first and most crucial step is what we’re doing in Update 28 - the overall rearranging and restructuring of the place, and getting everything in more contextually sound and meaningful positions instead of just having rows of identical terminals next to each other. Work on the Space Rig will continue from now on and up until we end Early Access and launch the game fully, and will include full terminal overhauls such as how we’ve treated the Forge by giving it a fully custom model from the get-go.

Weapon Skins and Meshes

Sometimes good things come out of a bug, and the next new feature I want to highlight is one of those. As some players have pointed out and shared images of, we had a glitch in the Equipment Terminal that allowed you to quickly switch some of the weapon skins together.

This was part of our design discussion ever since we first started talking about Mesh Skins, but after seeing the reaction this glitch got from you guys, we decided to turn it into a proper feature.

This means that Weapon Skins are now divided into two distinct categories: Frameworks and Paintjobs. Frameworks change the actual model - adding or altering stuff on the weapon to make it look different. And Paintjobs is the overall coloring and texturing of the weapon. Making this split allows for a lot more combinations than were available so far, and should serve to make new Paintjobs feel a lot more rewarding to get than before, since you can use it with any Framework. Every existing skin has gone through this revamp, and you get to keep anything you’ve already unlocked.

Wrapping up the game and our next focus

So that’s the meat of Update 28. We are currently in a state where we are working hard on getting the game ready for 1.0. One of the biggest outstanding topics is what we refer to as “Onboarding” and is all about Tutorials and getting a great and smooth start when you play Deep Rock Galactic for the first time. Another topic is the upcoming Miner’s Manual which will give you more insight into the world of Deep Rock Galactic as well as play-tips and instructions to play missions among many other things. And last but not least we’ll be doing a ton of quality of life improvements and bugfixes to the game all over the place.

Update 28: Feeling Perky will drop on the 30th of January. It’s time to sharpen your pickaxes and get back into the mines of Hoxxes.

Rock and Stone, Miners!

Mikkel Martin Pedersen,
Game Director of DRG