DRG 6x2ι: Boomerang Salvage - no pheromones (true solo scout)
Channel: ojb
Date: 20/11/2023

No deaths, no bosco, no pheromones. Featuring thermal exhaust feedback drak + double barrel boomstick + boomerangs in Fungus Bogs.

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I have collected the last infinity stone.

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This was attempt #3, with #2 losing to the uplink with poor play. In fairness to the currently bugged status of wardens in this patch, I will very likely be attempting this challenge again sometime in the near future to really prove to myself that I'm a gamer. 

It could just be biome related, but out of the "pheroless" challenge runs (cryo, ifg, and boomerangs), this one was maybe the easiest and I got away with the sloppiest play. The IFG success in particular was serious hell, and I think most of the relative ease of this completion is on the back of a pretty decent layout. Fungus bogs was a strategic choice because you very often get holds made easy by the presence of goo floors slowing down incoming bugs and that paid off during the uplink at least. The terrain is not always the best beyond that synergy (I think azure weald and sandblasted usually have the nicest "scout friendly" hold spots) and typically requires a least a wee bit of terraforming because it often ends up in quite tight quarters.

I don't love winning a challenge run while not playing at my best. It's a sad reality of the levels of RNG in salvage missions that you could play like Karl incarnate and still lose, but then there are other runs like this one where I play like a complete dunce and scrape by. Some of that relative ease is on the back of wardens being broken (again, it's a bit of an unfair playing field and this challenge series I want to say is not yet completed), but a lot of that is just me getting lucky and rolling loads of swarmers while on TEF drak (which tends to not struggle against swarmers as much as something like m1k does). But this happens, and that's just part of the game unfortunately.

Strategy-wise, nothing's really changed in my pheroless challenge attempts. It's still very much clear phase: kill stationaries (breeder whales/spitballers), pop mules in a big batch and fight using AOE effects like gas explosions, and then complete the busy work to get at least one resup per bubble (with maybe one spare). It's really just the bubbles that are actually difficult for me now, and the initial phase of the map is very much rote clearing.

Bubble strats on boomerangs I didn't quite get enough attempts to refine as much as my other grenade runs. I basically just dish them out like candy whenever I see anything vaguely threatening, and hope that they actually hit. I don't rely on them too much because I've been burned before and know they can miss the important things, but I try and hit at least one useful thing per toss and definitely try and avoid holding on to them forever because they're worth even less when unused. Something I've been doing on rang runs is clearing out brood nexuses purely to try and coerce the rangs to NOT hit a stupid green swarmer that is just vibing and not being a threat at all. Because rangs are so limited in the number of bounces, if you have a green dumbo hopping about you might lose out a bounce that should have gone to something like a stingtail or septic spreader instead, and so I've been trying to avoid that. Does it work? Idk you tell me. I don't upload videos because I'm good at this game. I'm just a big dumb idiot who has random ideas on shit and no real followthrough to put the effort in to evaluate whether or not it actually works at all. I mean seriously, it's not like people are coming here to see einstein work on a blackboard with some physics wizz kid shit, you're here to watch the janitor's son scribble in crayon while everybody feels obligated to clap because at least he didn't poo in his pants today!!!! I say shit and don't have tthe motivational drive to verify how accurate it is. It's like a color by number for toddlers except there are no colors and the numbers are stupid and the picture is of a poop emoji.

I don't know. I hope you enjoy boomerang salvage runs because there will probably be another in the future once wardens are patched and I feel up to it again.

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Loadout:
32112 Thermal exhaust feedback
12233 Double barrel
Voltaic stun sweeper

Perks: 
Dash / Iron Will
Resupplier / Deep Pockets / Born Ready


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Highlights:

0:00 Build
0:41 Mission start
14:16 Uplink
20:46 Refuel
24:18 Final stats page

P.S. I tried to drill down the refuel with a resup but I'm bad and I missed okay. Ignore that part of the video please.