DRG EDD: "Green Sanctuary" (true solo scout)
Channel: ojb
Date: 2024-01-26

No deaths, no bosco. Featuring min clips M1k + jumbo shells boomstick + IFGs in Hollow Bough.

A vanilla EDD??? What year is it?!?!

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I went into this run attempting to do a "blind speedrun". Although the time wasn't super competitive or anything (I'm not great at going fast), I think it's actually okay for a true solo. I kinda got held back by my loadout not synergizing with the map types as I built for potential dreads/sabo and lost. The trick with a blind speedrun is you don't get the time to find a decent route and you don't get to see what's coming.

There were some interesting decisions to be made in the space rig prior to starting the dive, and the loadout I ended up with is a solid all rounder that goes heavy on the single target just in case I saw something beefy. This dive would have loved pheros unfortunately.

I did spend a fair bit of time mulling over which beer I wanted to drink. For going fast, it's really down to two options: one-hit terrain or the morkite beer. Not knowing what the map types are really throws a wrench into that planning, since if you see multiple morkite objectives the morkite beer can easily shave off 10s of minutes. I ended up on terrain beer and after thinking about it more, this is probably the proper choice when blind because if you get a morkite map, you're going to be slowed down by dirt regardless and at least you can never whiff on the rocky mountain being useful. You may not get the crazy fast times on EDDs with lots of mining, but I think on average you're going to be happy on all classes except driller (and maybe engy with plat strats lol). It was kinda a wash in this dive though, and nothing mattered.

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Stage 1: I think it's probably correct to go directly to the mules before popping any eggs (i.e. NOT what I ended up doing). I wasn't really thinking about this in the moment, but after watching back the footage I think there are definite risks of serious slowdown caused by my choices. If I had pulled a swarm egg early, I probably end up screwing myself over and needing to waste lots of time fighting that I can't use to skip objectives. I wasn't really expecting to need a resupply here but I guess I underestimated the impact of poor aim and stingtails being in the pool (alongside the occasional elite which I couldn't run away from because of their roided up speed juice). 

I invested the time at the end of stage 1 to collect enough nitra that I wouldn't actually need to mine any more the rest of the dive. Unfortunately, it didn't end up mattering and was just a waste of time. Stage 2 had more mules (free nitra) and was a drilldozer map which has loads of downtime as you wait on dottie to move around. I did at least skip nitra in stage 3, but the couple minutes mucking about at the end of stage 1 (and being forced to heal because of self harm, wasting more time) really wasn't productive.

Stage 2: my hazard 5 drilldozer ability is quite pathetic. I never really enjoyed escort missions on vanilla, and didn't really dedicate a lot of time to them until I started playing modded/6x2. Unfortunately, lots of the muscle memory and minutia of 6x2 escort doesn't seamlessly translate down into haz5 land, and as a result I wasn't sure how much I could actually push things. The goal wasn't just to win fast, but to do it blind; a failure with dotty dying means future attempts wouldn't be blind, so I had to dial it back a bit and play more conservatively than I'd have wanted.

The big adjustment for me really is dottie's tankiness. It just feels so awful in vanilla how SLOW it takes to repair her back up to full, especially when a SINGLE grunt is capable of literally deleting an entire plate if you leave it for barely any time at all. It's one of the balance things that I wish GSG would change; 6x2 escort is so much more engaging because you spend more of the map actually playing the game and having fun in combat; in vanilla, you're stuck standing still and holding e on a platform no melee bugs can reach for literal minutes of the mission and it's so boring and lame lol. I want to play the game! But that's what vanilla brings and so yeah, that's that.

Stage 3: a very messy and confusing layout. Dropped a few minutes just being lost and trying to find the black box. Maps with eggs/black boxes I've found I always want to get the box out of the way first, because you can just skip eggs and ignore the spawns if you're quick enough. You can't do that the other way around, so it's best to do the slow part first so you can go fast later. There's also the argument that black boxes can be very sketchy on scout especially, so doing it early when you're fresher/less tired is safer.

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Loadout:
23112 Minimal Clips
21313 Jumbo Shells
IFG

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

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Highlights:

0:00 Build
0:42 Stage 1
10:45 Stage 2
26:20 Stage 3
36:24 Final stats page

thumbnail guard make stinky fart haha