Update 28: Feeling Perky

Release Date
 External Link(s)

 — DRG Update Page

**Update 28: Feeling Perky** focused on overhauling the Perk System, separating Weapon Frameworks and Paintjobs, and redesigning the Space Rig interior. It was released on January 30th, 2020.

## Update Changes

### Perk System Overhaul

Perks can now either be Passive or Active. 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. No activation needed - equip it and the benefit is just there. Active Perks, however, requires activation from you, and generally have either a Cooldown on their use or limited uses - sometimes even both! Their limited usability is compensated for by letting us make them more powerful.

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.

#### New Perks - some Active, some Passive, some are both

**Beastmaster**
Ever wanted to have a loyal Glyphid companion following you around? Well, this Active Perk lets you tame a Glyphid Grunt. Your loyal many-legged sidekick will help you in combat and keep you company during the quiet periods.

**Born Ready**
If you hate reloading then this new Passive Perk is for you. All of your weapons will automatically reload when not equipped for a few seconds.

**Dash**
This Active combat mobility Perk will quickly get you out of trouble with an extreme burst of speed for a short duration.

**Jump Boots**
Dwarves may not be known for their jumping ability, but, with the aid of technology, this Active Perk lets you soar through the air. Useful both in combat and for quick vertical traversal. Just remember: what goes up must come down.

**See You in Hell**
Go out with a bang with an Active Perk that lets you detonate a plasma charge after going down taking the bastards with you. For gameplay purposes, the explosion was made to trigger quickly, so you’ll have to do the Predator laugh yourself.

**Shield Link**
This co-op focused Active Perk lets you overcharge a teammate’s shield to 300% for about 15 seconds. It also has a passive effect: when you are close to a teammate it increases the shield recharge rate for both of you.

**Temperature Insulation**
Do you hate the cold? Is your Driller teammate constantly burning your behind? Do you want to see what is at the bottom of a lava geyser? Then get this Passive Perk and enjoy a large resistance to extreme temperature fluctuations.

**Thorns**
A Passive perk that will deal damage to any critter foolish enough to bite you. Especially effective against swarmers and other small nuisances, but keep in mind that it will not prevent you from taking damage from the attack.

#### Old Perks converted into Active Perks

**Active Impact Compensators**
We have transformed the old Passive Impact Compensators perk into something a little more powerful with fall damage reduction reaching 75% at Rank 3! As an Active perk, it now requires that you hold the Jump button while landing to activate the effect and there is a cooldown after each use.

**Berzerker**
Another Passive to Active conversion. This perk now greatly reduces your Power Attack cooldown along with boosting normal melee damage. It is no longer dependent on your health but is instead activated by doing two Power Attacks in a row.

**Field Medic**
The old co-op favourite is now an Active perk and it gives you the ability to instantly revive a teammate once per mission. The perk’s old passive effect of speeding up the normal revive process is still there along with the Fear AoE that triggers when you finish reviving someone.

**Heightened Senses**
We have expanded Heightened Senses to include all enemies that can grab you and it has become an Active perk with a limited-use ability to escape after being grabbed - killing your captor in the process.

**Iron Will**
This is now an Active perk that can only be triggered once per mission. We gave Iron Will a longer duration and it now grants a movement speed bonus instead of a penalty. The effect also gives stronger melee attacks, a faster power attack cooldown, resistance to slow-down effects and all of your weapons will be automatically reloaded when you activate this perk, so you get up ready to take names and kick ass.

#### Modified Perks - all Passive

**Friendly**
Formerly known as Loveable, now reduces both your incoming and outgoing friendly-fire damage. It still doesn’t completely remove it though, so remember to watch where you are shooting.

**Resupplier**
On top of the original reduction to the time it takes to resupply and the automatic weapon reload, this passive perk now also increases the amount of healing you get when resupplying.

**Second Wind**
A reincarnation of the Weekend Athlete perk, Second Wind is a Passive perk that will boost your sprint speed after running for a few seconds. Great for getting to point B faster or for making distance between you and the murderous horde.

**Strong Arm**
Now this Passive perk also grants a bonus to throwing heavy objects like Gems on top of it’s old bonus to throwing flares.

**Unstoppable**
We took the Strong Back perk and slapped on a resistance to all environmental slow effects. The result is a Perk that keeps you moving in all situations.

**Veteran Depositor**
We’ve given this old-boy an increase in the damage reduction radius and buffed the deposit speed to a maximum bonus of +50%.

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 Redesign

The Space Rig is something we’ve 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.

### Paintjobs & Frameworks [Community Request]

Sometimes good things come out of a bug! As some players have pointed out, a bug in the Equipment Terminal allowed you to merge some of the weapon skins together. We’ve decided to implement it as a full feature after seeing the response it’s been getting.

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.

### Blank Cores Vs. Resource Canisters [Community Request]

If you have obtained all Overclocks you used to get a resource core in place of an Overclock. You now get a blank core instead. We agree with you that it makes so much more sense, though it will make you guys who play a lot, burn through the content that much faster.

### Qol, Bugfixes And Misc.

* Lootbugs can now seek out and eat loose mineral chunks!!!
* Overhauled the damage direction indicator
* Added loadout selection to the Character Selection Terminal
* Added loadout selection to the Character Selection screen when joining a mission in progress
* Added new shield regeneration sound
* Added a new headbutt attack to the Glyphid Oppressor
* Added a new sound that plays if you have no flares when you try to throw one
* Resupply Pods are now on a shared (short) cooldown to prevent multiple people accidentally ordering at the same time
* M.U.L.E. and Bosco are now visible on the Terrain Scanner
* Dwarves are now less attractive to walking enemies and more attractive to flying enemies when using a zipline
* Added a first and third-person pickup animation to the Impact Axe
* Added a first and third-person pickup animation to the Satchel Charge
* Black Box objectives are now affected by gravity
* Golden Bugs now drop a chunk of gold when they die instead of just adding it to the Team Depository
* Space Rig: Fixed escape-holes around the window (shame on you!)
* Increased the volume of the battery sounds for Cargo Crates
* Improved the collider of the Cargo Crates
* Cargo Crate outline is now visible on hold Tab from when you insert the first battery until the loot is collected for the local player
* Fixed some networking problems with the Cargo Crate that made it have the wrong color for clients
* Mactera Grabbers and Nayaka Trawlers can no longer grab Spitball Infectors and Brood Nexuses if they have been hit by a Pheromone Grenade
* Fixed a bug that zipline can impact characters and enemies when it’s not supposed to, creating really short and silly ziplines
* Fixed “Lead Storm” Powered Minigun getting extra heat if you fire in small bursts
* Fixed Mactera Spawns not dropping Kursite if frozen
* Fixed a bug that made some Omen Modular Exterminator module combinations rarer than others
* Fixed Homing Drone modules of the Omen Modular Exterminator all tilting in the same direction when opened
* LMG Gun Platform: Changed the Manual Targeting mod to the Hawkeye System mod which increases the effective range of the turret(s) on top of offering manual target prioritization
* Proximity Mine now has a 3-minute lifespan after being triggered once
* Disabled dwarves being outlined when shouting
* Changed text from pickup to disarm when retrieving a Satchel Charge
* [Translation] Fixed Weakpoint Stun Chance / Duration could not be translated correctly
* Fixed a camera shake issue with the Resupply Pod when the terrain beneath it got removed
* Fixed a crash caused by the Pheromone Grenade
* Fixed a bug that caused a grenade to stick to the player's hands if you are grabbed while throwing a grenade
* Customizable HUD: Perk HUD icons now hide/show along with player health bar
* Loadout selector added to The Accessory Shop
* New Molly Waypoint markers with direction indication
* Added a chance to find an old Resupply Pod in the Salvage mission

### Known Issues

* Impact Compensator Perk audio cue activates every time the player presses JUMP while airborne, regardless of the distance fallen
* Second Wind Perk audio cue and visual HUD effect reactivate when the player lands after a jump
* Beer mugs disappear when thrown and reappear in the Drop Pod
* Some weapon paintjob/framework combinations are work in progress

# Post Update Hotfixes

## Hotfix 1

*30th January, 2020*

* Fixed the Shield Link visual effect. Hamster Ball is gone.
* Tweaked the glass material on the Personal Drop Pods
* Improved the sound of Second Wind
* Second Wind activation sound no longer triggers when landing from a sprinting jump
* Berzerk and Dash spelling fix
* Added some more screens to the Space Rig
* Impact Compensators now only play activation sound after you have reached a certain vertical velocity
* Sweet Tooth Perk formatting fix
* Attempt to fix pickaxe power attack being audible from very far away
* If a character with shield link leaves the game, players affected by it will no longer have the effect for the rest of the session
* Terminals now support proper showing of very long names for specific languages
* Fixed spelling error in Iron Will Perk description
* Shield link particles are now only active when your shield is not full
* Fixed the distance text in the Beastmaster Perk description

## Hotfix 2

*31st January, 2020*

*This hotfix includes a crucial fix to poor performance which was mostly prevalent on some GPUs. We have also per request updated and moved the Abyss Bar Menu to a more intuitive location as well as changed the key to activate Dash to double tap on SPRINT. Beer mug throwing is back and Iron Will now properly resets between Deep Dive stages. Read the patch notes below for all the juicy details!*

* Changed the key to activate Dash to double tap on SPRINT. You have to be moving forward for it to activate.
* [COMMUNITY REQUEST] Space Rig - Bar Menu updated and moved to more intuitive position
* Gems that are taken directly from Bosco will no longer fall through the floor if you press X while carrying it
* Fixed snow/sand storm effects applying permanently if you go down during a storm and disabled the player from sprinting
* Attempt to fix a bug where players would sometimes fall through the map
* Berzerker Perk description cooldown error fixed
* Fixed performance issues that were mostly prevalent on AMD GPUs
* Fixed glowing spots not spawning on clients when digging around embedded gems
* Fixed a bug that enabled other Beastmasters to "charm" other peoples pets
* Beer mugs will no longer teleport into the Drop Pod. However, the throwing is jankier than usual which will be fixed soon!
* Reduced the risk of resource chunks from Bosco digging falling out of world
* Improved the mesh skin separation of the Deepcore 40MM PGL Grenade Launcher
* Space Rig - Missing colliders fixed, holes in walls fixed
* Misc. Space Rig optimization
* Improved spawning of enemies so they no longer spawn on non-terrain objects (Minehead etc.)
* Gave Steeve 15% movement speed bonus
* Iron Will now properly resets on each stage of Deep Dives
* Changed Steeve's colours to avoid confusions with some other enemies

**Known Issues:**

* Sometimes Perks on cooldown will show as ready on Host player

## Hotfix 3

*3rd February, 2020*

*This hotfix includes another attempt at resolving the performance issues some of you are regrettably still experiencing. We have also made some minor tweaks and bug fixes to Steeve and tuned the timing of how beer mugs are thrown.*

* Fixed more performance issues
* Optimized Sticky Goo on Fungus Bogs biome
* Optimized the Goo the Mactera Bomber drops
* Fixed Steeve’s overconfidence that caused him to attack the Unknown Horror to no avail. Silly Steeve!
* Fixed timing on throwing the beer mugs
* Fixed a bug that caused some status effects to be stuck on Steeve after taming

## Hotfix 4

*6th February, 2020*

*Hello Miners,*

*Before we get to the patch notes, let’s talk about Jump Boots and why we are removing them in their current form.*

*So, why do we remove something that almost all of you regard as a lot of fun and one of the better Perks? Basically, we have a quite specific vision in mind for Deep Rock Galactic. We have always stated that this is a Co-op First game and every design decision has to be with the co-op aspect in mind. But the Jump Boots detracted from the class dependencies unless everybody had them on. From a design point of view, we might as well give everybody Jump Boots as a default movement mechanic. So, let’s talk about why we believe that’s not a good idea for this game.*

*Apart from the co-op aspect, we have a punchline called “Danger Darkness Dwarves”. This is the very core of Deep Rock Galactic. You play as hardy dwarves working their way through danger and darkness. It’s never easy. It’s slow and hard work. But you have the weapons, tools, and skills to overcome the challenges. You are tough and you never give up. We have used this as guidelines when designing features for the game.*

*But, while some features can be fun in isolation, they can affect other aspects of the game that are fun. When that happens, we have to decide which features have priority. In this case, altering the terrain and creating paths for yourself and your teammates as you traverse is considered a core principle of DRG and what sets it apart from other titles. Therefore, although a high mobility skill can be apparently fun, it can remove the fun from many other situations - situations that support the fantasy of playing a hard-working, space-mining dwarf.*
So, why did we include them in the first place? In short, it was a miscalculation on our part. Our approach to Early Access has always been to release what we have as soon as possible and then fix and tweak based on your feedback. But for Jump Boots, this was the wrong approach. Most of you rightfully fell in love with their easy-fun and general-purpose abilities, both useful in traversal and combat. And individually, there is nothing wrong with that, but seen as a whole (as we must do as Devs), this turned out to be a huge risk to the core of the game. We should have foreseen this and kept Jump Boots in the cooker a bit longer before making a decision on them.

*We hope you understand and can forgive us for this mistake*

*We do expect to bring Jump Boots back later, maybe as a reworked Perk, maybe as Mutator or maybe as part of a power-up system. But for now, they are gone.*

*Many of you have pointed out that the removal of Weekend Athlete was too much of a change. Even with the introduction of Second Wind and Dash, it is clear from the mission-success metric that the higher hazard levels increased in difficulty beyond what was intended. Therefore, we are lowering the enemy speed boost on the highest difficulty a little bit and then we’ll check the metric in a few days again.*

*As written above, we are removing Jump Boots for now. Related to this, we are reworking Active Impact Compensators. They were not as useful as we intended, so we are now merging in a bit of the idea from Jump Boots and turning this into a Perk called Hover Boots. Their main purpose is to halt your flying movement when you activate them. You can use this to avoid falling damage or any environmental effect that pushes you around.*

*The rest of the Perk changes are smaller improvements and QoL fixes. We’ll keep reading the feedback and monitoring our metrics to see if further tweaks are needed.*

**Perk related changes**

* Rebalanced Perk Points and Milestones economy
* Reduced Enemy Speed boost a little bit for Hazard 5 and Elite Deep Dive
* Iron Will: If you heal while on Iron Will, you will be invulnerable until the Iron Will buff wears off
* Fixed an issue with Iron Will if the whole team goes down. The game could stall and not progress to the end-screen.
* Vampire Perk - no longer works on swarmers from brood nexus
* Fixed an old bug that unintentionally caused the old Berzerker effect to still affect the Vampire Perk. We will now monitor this Perk and evaluate it again later.
* Fixed a bug with the sound triggering when using the Vampire Perk. The sound was always playing for the host, not the player actually using the perk.
* Born Ready now also reloads the Flaregun and the Platform Gun
* Born Ready Perk - Added unequipped reload sounds to all weapons
* Steeve will no longer be removed if the enemy cap is hit and new enemies have to spawn in
* Fixed a bug with petting sounds not playing when petting Steeve
* Added a new animation for Steeve when he is petted
* Perks are no longer usable on the Spacerig. Management kindly reminds all employees that the Spacerig is a workspace and not a playground!
* Second Wind Perk - Particles no longer trigger if you jump and land while it is active
* Iron Will Perk - Removed activation time window from Iron Will
* Beast Master Perk - Steeve's friendly fire reduction set to 2% damage (before he received 25% friendly fire damage). Long Live Steeve!
* See You In Hell Perk - Damage and radius increased and is increased more with the ranks
* See You In Hell Perk: increased damage, range, and limited to 3 uses per mission
* Fixed sound for See You In Hell explosion
* Dash Perk - Added slowdown resistance and updated the Perk description to reflect this
* Removed Jump Boots Perk
* Removed Active Impact Compensators Perk and moved See You In Hell Perk up to take its place
* Added a new Perk: Hover Boots
* Relocated Iron Will and See You In Hell in the perk graph

**Misc bug-fixes and QoL**

* Latejoin pods now avoid Machine Events, Escape Pods and Mineheads when searching for a landing location to prevent players from getting stuck
* Crassus Detonator can no longer spawn in Deep Dives.
* Fixed spelling in Auto Cannon Radius upgrade
* Crassus Detonator Gold is no longer different from regular Gold
* Dwarves now have a shout (only audible for the local player) and sound for when they are out of flares and attempt to throw one
* Fixed a bug with the base Weakpoint Damage bonus of 10% not showing on the Deepcore GK2 Assault Rifle
* Fixed a bug that caused Kursite Infection Praetorians to shoot acid spray without playing the animation. They no longer shoot acid.
* Fixed a bug that caused the first row of perk icons to be unaligned in the Equipment Terminal
* Fixed a crash that occurred when pointing the laser pointer at Explosive Barrels
* Improved the beacons the MULE drops on her way to the Escape Pod to better indicate the direction of the Escape Pod
* Fixed a bug that caused the Satchel Charge to be picked up too late in the pick-up animation
* Improved location of music and dance zone for the Jukebox on the Spacerig
* Fixed a visual issue with the Neurotoxin gas cloud particles
* Added debris to explosion craters
* Fixed Scout falling through the world if killed while using the grappling hook
* Quick-join can no longer join Deep Dives
* Power Attacks now instantly defrosts players if they are frozen.
* Fixed a bug that caused an unbuilt Sentry Gun to block bullets before it was built

## Hotfix 5

*7th February, 2020*

*This hotfix includes more Paint Job / Framework separation improvements and additional perk tweaks. We have also addressed an issue that caused Characters Volume to default to 0 on Xbox, which will arrive later today once the update has passed certification.*

* More Paint Job / Framework separation improvements
* Veteran Depositor Perk - Increased the range of the damage reduction bonus
* Activating Hover Boots no longer calls the MULE
* Fixed a bug that caused Characters Volume to default to 0 on Xbox

## Hotfix 6

*12th February, 2020*

*This hotfix includes several miscellaneous bugfixes and improvements to the sound, visuals and functionality of certain perks. Look out for a new animation for taming Glyphids, improved effects for Shield Link, and damage reduction of the Veteran Depositor perk to now also apply near the Minehead! We have also managed to resolve an issue which prevented perk cooldowns from properly showing in the UI.*

* More Paint Job / Framework separation improvements
* Unstoppable Perk now affects a lot more slowing effects
* Added a new animation when the player tames a Glyphid
* Added effects to Shield Link perk
* Improved Shield Link perk sounds
* Fixed a bug with Driller and Engineer level up milestone set to 4 for the first step
* Impact Axes can now be picked up while the player is airborne
* Fixed a crash caused by latejoining
* Damage Reduction of the Veteran Depositor perk now also applies to the Minehead on Point Extraction missions
* Added Beastmaster activation particles
* Fixed a bug that broke the perk cooldown display after someone latejoins
* Fixed a bug that made enemies completely ignore dead players

## Hotfix 7

*14th February, 2020*

*This hotfix includes an attempt to fix a bug that caused the crosshair to mysteriously disappear. We have also made more Paint Job / Framework separation improvements and fixed a bug that prevented enemies from spawning under special Management-disapproved circumstances.*

* More Paint Job / Framework separation improvements
* Attempted to fix a bug that caused the crosshair to vanish and not return
* Fixed a bug that enabled multiple people to tame the same enemy using the Beastmaster perk, applying the buff several times
* Fixed a bug that caused the Drop Pod to land in the same location every time when you escape from a Point Extraction mission
* Fixed a bug that enabled the player to tame frozen enemies
* Fixed Iron Will slowdown reduction being broken and making the player move extremely fast
* Fixed a bug that prevented enemies from spawning if all the players hid in a small hole and covered the entrance

## Hotfix 8

*21th February, 2020*

*We are back with yet another hotfix for Update 28. This hotfix will most likely (fingers crossed) be the last one before we fully start to focus on Update 29.*

When we launched Update 28, we had removed two perks: Weekend Athlete and Souped Up Zipline Motor. We were super focused on explaining some of the other perk changes we had made (guess which!) and we forgot to tell you some of the reasoning behind why these two were pulled. So here it goes:

When we were rethinking the perk system, there were two things that we wanted to change: perks that were boring because they presented an obvious choice to the player and perks that were causing uninteresting and not enjoyable in the long run gameplay. In the case of Zipline Motor, we just thought that everyone should be able to use a speed increase and it should not be a choice against other perks. Unfortunately, we didn’t implement it in time, but here it is!

For Weekend Athlete, the conversation was similar. More speed was too strong to allow the rest of the perks to compete and that was the reason for its removal. However, we didn’t realize the big impact it would have for all the players who have enjoyed the game at that speed for so long (including many of us devs). We have spent these weeks trying to find out what we think is the ideal speed for the game and we have decided to increase the base sprint for everyone to a value similar to what the first stage of Weekend Athlete was.

Hotfix 8 also has a lot of other perk-improvements visually as well as functionally. Look in the notes below for details.

And finally, thank you for all your feedback! It really helps us shape the game, and even though all of you are not always happy with the changes we do, we do listen and decisions we make are never set in stone. Please keep it coming. Cheers,

* General Sprint Speed increased
* Enemy Movement Speed has been slightly increased for Haz 4 and 5 and on Elite Deep Dives now that player Sprint Speed has gone up
* Added a new mechanic to Ziplines. All dwarves can now slide fast on Ziplines that are angled downwards. Simply look down the zipline and press and hold forward to let go of the break. Release forward to slow down again. Sliding speed is relative to the angle of the Zipline.
* Fixed a bug that prevented Machine Events from being interactable when the FIRE button is remapped
* Fixed text overflow for certain languages on elements in Mission Selection
* Improved the logic of how enemies select a target and distribute themselves between the player, Steeve, Pheromones and the Lure
* Reverted a previous change which has since caused M.U.L.E. to be more likely to walk through terrain
* Slightly reduced the size of perk pop-up icons

**PERK TWEAKS**

SHIELD LINK

* Shield Boost now lasts for 30 seconds at final rank
* Added first person effect to Shield Boost when giving and receiving it.

BERZERKER

* Updated the Perk description, old text could be misunderstood.
* Added a new first person effect overlay to give you a better feeling of how long it lasts.

THORNS

* Added a small cooldown so that a large group of swarmers does not get killed in a single pass and can still pose a minor threat to the player.
* Added a 4th tier to the perk bringing the damage assigned up to 24 HP.

HOVER BOOTS

* Hold to activate time decreased to be way more snappy
* Cooldown decreased to a 75 secs when max upgraded
* Hangtime Increased to 3.5 when fully upgraded
* Improved the Hoverboots visual effects

FIELD MEDIC

* Instant Revive now activates instant on button press instead of hold.

DASH

* Reduced cooldown of Dash on all tiers
* Increased the speed of Dash slightly
* Added new third person effects to Dash
* Added a new sound for when Dash is activated
* Fixed a bug that caused Dash to sometimes not activate, it should be way more reliable now.

SWEET TOOTH

* Changed Sweet Tooth to give you more health from Red Sugar

BEAST MASTER

* Steeve can no longer be affected by Sticky Flames
* Added new sound and particle effects when you tame a Grunt
* Steeve is no longer ignored by other enemies. This means he will actually start taking damage when fighting his siblings.

ELEMENTAL INSULATION

* Temperature insulation is now called Elemental Insulation and gives resistance to all elemental damage: fire, cold, poison/acid, radiation, and electricity.
* Percentage bonuses on the tiers have been reduced to +20%, +25%, +30% -to not make this perk too OP with the changes listed above.

SECOND WIND

* Speed percentage bonus of Second Wind has been reduced. The percentage increase on Second Wind is based on the general sprint speed, and since that has been tweaked up, we had to tweak the percentage bonus down in order to have the effect of Second Wind stay the same as it was.