Common Misconceptions

This is a collection of myths and misconceptions commonly passed along from player to player in lobbies. Some of these are based on real bugs that have been long since fixed, but the tale outlived its origin. Others stem from players misunderstanding game mechanics in DRG or assuming their similarity to mechanics from other video games. Others still are simply examples of confirmation bias and various fallacies around the nature of random chance and probability.

## "Enemy spawns in Point Extraction increase as more Aquarqs are deposited"

**FALSE**

Mission progress has no effect on enemy spawns in Point Extractions. The big (announced) waves come at regular intervals; the smaller (unannounced and more frequent) enemy spawns increase in *size* - but not in *frequency* - as time goes on. Since growing mini-waves take longer and longer to clear, the miners will have less and less breathing room between big swarms, eventually reaching a point of constant onslaught. It makes no difference whether dwarves deposit Aquarqs as they find them or pile them up near the Mine Head to deposit them all at once.

## "Spending Nitra on resupply pods reduces the XP reward at the end of the mission"

**FALSE**

The "Minerals Mined by Team" part of the experience reward counts the total *maximum* of all minerals that entered the dwarves' shared pocket. Calling down no resupply pods at all and spending every bit of Nitra on resupplies will have the same result as far as minerals mined are concerned.

## "Carving out a mineral vein with explosions reduces its mineral yield"

**FALSE**

This myth is directly related to the technique of EPC-mining, but is often extrapolated to Satchel Charges and the Engineer's grenade launcher. There used to be a bug like this introduced with one of the updates, but it was swiftly patched out in a hotfix update. No matter the mining method, a mineral vein will always drop the same amount. It also used to have a nerf on Oil Shale yield with explosive but it was reverted.

It should be noted that explosion-mining will not generate *bonus* gold or Morkite granted by Pots o' Gold or Dark Morkite, respectively. Only minerals mined by the pickaxe will drop in increased amounts.

## "Machine Events are more likely to spawn in length-3 missions"

**TRUE**

This has been false for the first two years of Machine Events existing in the game - they had a flat 25% to be generated regardless of anything. However, with the Season 1 release all randomly-generated bonus events, including Machine Events, Lost Packs and Cargo Crates were modified to appear more frequently depending on mission length. For Machine Events, the odds are 15%/20%/35% for length 1/2/3 respectively.

## "Random Dreadnought and bulk spawns become more common as the timer progresses"

**FALSE**

This is false, it is an illusion that can be explained with statistics. The longer you spend in a mission, the more likely it is for a random event to trigger, as there are more chances for it to happen. But, the actual chance of it happening does not increase after an hour.

## "Reloading Power Drills and Lead Storm makes them cool down faster"

**FALSE**

The "reload" animations for the Driller's traversal tool and Gunner's minigun are just that - animations. They do not affect how quickly the equipment cools down.

## "Pots o' Gold requires empty space in the pockets, or else it won't trigger"

**FALSE**

Pots o' Gold does not make gold veins generate more chunks - instead, it increases how much each chunk is worth. A chunk's value is assigned the moment it's mined out; whether it goes into a pocket immediately or a minute later doesn't matter. When a miner's pockets are full, they are free to let gold chunks drop to the ground and pick them up later. The *actual* limitation of Pots o' Gold, however, is that it only triggers when mining with the pickaxe. Explosion mining does not produce more gold under this beer's effect, and neither does carving around the gold vein to let it instantly collapse to the ground in chunks.

## "Deep Dives are hand-picked by the developers every week"

**FALSE**

Once they set up the algorithm that generates Deep Dives, they let it do its job. There can be rare exceptions, like a Deep Dive refresh coinciding with the release of a new mission type - then GSG can pick one that features the new content. Otherwise, the team that streams themselves playing the Deep Dives just after rollover sees them for the first time, just like the players.

## "The game manually spawns Oppressors or Bulk Detonators if dwarves build a bunker"

**FALSE**

There doesn't seem to be any code in the game capable of recognizing and reacting to player tactics. Although Bulk Detonators are indeed drawn from a special spawn pool, it doesn't depend on the presence of bunkers. Oppressors have a percentage-based chance to replace normal Praetorians in a wave and do not reuse the special spawn pool rules. Neither of those enemies are more or less likely to appear in response to how the players approach combat.

## "Resources held by the players in the escape pod don't count towards rewards"

**FALSE**

All resources held in the player's inventory when entering the drop will count towards minerals, minerals mined, gold mined etc.

The only two exceptions to this are that

1. Secondary objectives do not get completed when resources are not deposited.
2. Large minerals (such as Jadiz or Enor) do not count if not deposited.

## "Double XP gives double the Performance Points"

**FALSE**

While the Double XP anomaly does contribute to the total mission  Experience, it does not translate into the double  Performance Points because of the reward algorithm using diminishing returns.

Approximated example, in that case Double XP only increased the reward by 480 :

* 10 000  1240
* 20 000  1720