You should do a drone only run, no items (except for maybe ones that give you minions, like beetles gland.) Maybe do it on easy mode for a chance to do well. Also with the engineer for more minions. Essentially the goal is you have a swarm of drones.
Wait but if you have already 52 likes that's 52 buffs which means he could already be insane... *New patch* "so we decided TC-280 should shoot preon shots instead of normal bullets which are homing. They then spawn another TC-280 on kill. Also, his health is now decided by the time spent multiplied by both itself and levels completed then multiplied by a small generous amount of 7,000,000."
I got one this one time and it spent the whole of my abyssal depths round stuck in the cave system spawn. I had to punch it through the exit as loader only for it to be insta-killed by an Blazing Elder Lemurian
Counterpoint: giving an equipment drone a milky chrysalis or spinel tonic is hilarious, and the entertainment that provides single-handedly justifies their existence
In general Woolie is sleeping hard on giving your old equipment to a drone when you find better equipment. If all I’ve got is a radar scanner and now I found a preon, you best believe I’m giving that scanner to the drone and reaping the benefits of the pulses it gets. If you’re already getting rid of an equipment, it only makes sense to pick up a free drone even if it’s shit. You’re essentially getting something that draws aggro for absolutely free.
JoySparx, I know the thing that summons 4 missile drones for like 25 seconds. Ever get 2 power cells with that of the missile launcher? I have seen god now :0
i LOVE when those damn magma worms target my gun turret on the other side of the map. It's free dps, while I take out the trash. It's a QoL thing.... really lol
ᐃᑦᑎᓂᖅᓯᐅᑐᖅ ᑕᖅᓴᖅ as if the UI clutter can get any worse lol. I find turning off money and XP particle effects helps with this. Harder to recognize when you open barrels tho
@@marmitaa8619 the spawns for newt altars are specific to them though usually 1-2 spawn out of 3-5 possible locations per stage, while lunar chests are mixed in normal chest spawns. There are a couple stages with spots that always spawn newts (aqueduct, scorched) but require a good bit of movement to reach
Idk if it’s an artifacts 2.0 thing, but drones seem horrendously overpowered if you can get multiple shaped glass. Their damage seems to scale with it, which gets crazy pretty quickly.
Unlocking the blight load out really helps with finishing off those poisoned enemies and it’s actually really easy to get even if your going for a specific run
Kazuhira Miller : Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel my leg... And my arm... even my fingers... The body I've lost... the comrades I've lost... won't stop hurting... It's like they're all still there. You feel it, too, don't you? I'm gonna make them give back our past!
I'm going to pretend I haven't been late into a run and dropped my equipment for backup purely because I had 8 fuel cells and wanted to "release the swarm"
I hadn’t really thought about it, but having captain now with the drones, especially if you a buying emergency drones, will just continue to zap projectiles from the air and make the drones more tanky. They become all that more effective at damage sponge. Sad though, I really enjoy minionmancers and things of that nature.
The bigger brain strat involving drones and the captain is to just get them because they'll also zap down projectiles that are heading towards *you* as well.
In 1 drones were really useful because you had "Arms Race" (gives drones a chance to fire missiles on action) and "Drone Repair Kit". Besides drones were always close to the player. If they add those 2 items (and make them move faster maybe) they could become useful even after the first loop
@@vaelophisnyx9873 The real fix: make their hitbox not collide with the player. Problem solved. At that point, they're just kind of there for damage sponge and a bit of damage. The sole reason why I don't use drones is because the can collide with the player, and even move the player, which is super annoying for certain builds. If they didn't get in the way, I'd be fine with them.
May I also add does anyone find that magma worm absolutely loves to target gunner turrets. I activate stage 3 rallypoint delta teleporter and after 5 seconds magma worms like mmm yes I love the look of that gunner turrets on the opposite side of the map
I'm pretty sure the only Survivor who can utilize drones effectively even into the late game is Acrid. Reminder that Acrid has practically 0 defensive skills in his kit so taking any amount of fire away from you plus giving you some healing on top of it is choice for poison boi. Attack Drones are also pretty good at helping you get those kill confirms after they've been left at 1 hp from poison stacks. Note that actually spending money on drones late game is still somewhat of a meme cause all of your drones will instantly wipe the moment they decide to prioritize a Boss Imp or Scavenger, so RoI is still pretty low there. But Acrid with "The Backup", Both Heresy items and a butt load of gestures / fuel cells is probably one of the most reliable Acrid builds you can get IMO.
Engineer can do good work with the gunner turret if they go for the age-old mushroom/base turret combo. If you have a lot of mushrooms, it can even start to affect air units!
@shortythecat well in the other games its almost always pvp or some big open world. In risk of rain the characters are the content so maining a single one is like playing one quest in an open world game over and over
At the time of the video, equipment drones had the same cooldowns, but now they're much better, reducing cooldown by 5x. With certain equipment you can pretty much have them activated all the time
If there's a turret near the teleporter on the first of second stage I'll usually take it just to help with crowd control on early stages. Its especially worth it if you want to rush the boss or do a mountain challenge on the first stage. The healing drone is great for the first couple stages as well if you don't find any healing items.
Woolie, I totally agree with everything you said, but I will say gunner turrets (on the first loop) are really good IF they are close to the tele. They can take agro, and their damage is very good. I tested the gunner turrets damage at 2 mins on a beetle queen tele boss, and it took like 15 seconds for it to take out the beetle BY ITSELF.
One thing I would say is that giving a equipment drone a Primordial Cube, was actually pretty decent for me. Not only did it gain agro in the lower stages but when it activated the cube it would sometimes drew enemies across/ off the map and or allow me to gain some nutty proc damage cause of how bunched up they were. Would highly recommend it if and only if you have both the cube as drone on one stage
one run I got I had like...35ish drones and turrets at stage 20. it was amazing, 3 emergency drones, 1 incinerator, 6 healing drones, and the rest were missile/gunner, none of them were dying because there were so much heals
I’ve found equipment drones to be decently useful, with a radar scanner, or as a free meat shield after getting a useless equipment out of a chance shrine
they could literally just take the old Risk of Rain 1 items that were drone specific, give them some tweaking and that would already hel- oh wait pathing was a none issue back then yeah drones would need their own dedicated update alongside ai to be salvaged
@@Lucyller compared to having a gunner drone stuck literally on the other side of the map or having a vagrant launch it permanently out of the fight for the remainder of the stage today makes those kinda issues trivial by comparison
Honestly the fix isn't that hard to do, hear me out. Give the drones and only the drones a collision box that only corresponds to an invisible barrier around the player. Now, whenever the player moves, the drones are automatically pulled with them as if they were running into terrain. Might look a bit silly, but with a bit of tweaking I think it would be fine.
They should add an item that increases the effectiveness of drones. Perhaps a common (white) item that adds +10% damage/healing and max health to all drones with +5% per stack, maybe call the item "Blueprints" or something. Additionally, there should be a lunar item that gives you a single powerful drone with unlimited health that constantly follows you, doing large amounts of damage, with the downside of not being able to pick up any other drones, destroying all drones you already have upon picking up this new "Moon Drone" or whatever it might be called.
@@vaelophisnyx9873 Oh Ive already tried that bosses melt sure but it doesnt do shit about the minefield of little guys filling the map with endless peashots
With also a very stupidly short range* Like, IMO, The Engineer's biggest strength is all in the stationary turret. Like yeah, Moving turrets have greater DPS potential, but why have lots of damage when you can instead get more reliable anti-wisp cover? Wisps kill me more often than Templar, Scavengers, or Game Crashes simply due to their ridiculous tracking and multi-shots.
I'll never forget the time I got an Ifrit's Distinction and ran into an equipment drone for the first time ever 🙃 F for that 1/4000 drop that lasted a solid minute
Me buys all the drones I can get AFTER the boss with my leftover money: I am the right I also have a tip for the equipment drones... If you see one DONT use it see if you can open another orange box and give THAT item to it if it's not better that what you already have. That way you keep your item But they take a different item that you might not want so it's fine sure you may pay a few hundred but if you already cleared the map but not the boss go for it. Listen I know that was a noobie tip but I think it was useful
Personally, I find the assault drones extremely useful when you have the backup equipped. They have a far better fire rate than a standard gunner drone, and are far less hindering and easily disposable
I think maybe a new item(probably green) that increases drone strength and help would be a nice addition. And, if they did it right, it would also affect engineer turrets
Well, with the Spare Drone Parts red from the DLC, your wish was granted. Spare Drone Parts are so busted that getting them early on is basically a free win if you just grab all the drones you can.
I actually kinda like equipment drones. If there's a spare activated item laying around and I'm fast enough, I often will go and give the drone the item since it's free and good for a few funny moments.
a few days ago my friend and I were grindout eclipse levels. I was playing Railgunner and he was playing Engineer. I died because I'm bad and he made it to Mithrix. Phase 4 Mithrix, we had this weird bug where Mithrix didn't attack us and his Engineer Turrets didn't attack him. what *did* attack him was our Incinerator Drone. Our Incinerator Drone 1v1'd Phase 4 Mithrix. and won. it was hilarious. Incinerator Drone OP
I had kinda the same experience with an incinerator drone where I went to hide behind a pillar the drone charged towards mithrix burned him and died like a hero 07
I once had a run with two equipment drones and they both had Back-ups on them. It was essentially like having two Fuel Cells and made up for the crappy cooldown times.
I did a run the other day with a friend of mine where most of my purchases were drones. I ended up getting a Backup as well with a Fuel Cell. I ended up having so many drones that the list on the side of my screen didnt show all of them, and it was a huge list in general. It was a really fun run.
i feel like you did them a bit of an injustice by not mentioning captain and his microbots. they make the drones exponentially tankier, especially with attack speed. i still don't think it really makes drones worth it over regular chests, but i would've liked to see that mentioned
I tend to end up with a short-lived army of drones whenever I brainfart and can't find the teleporter since I'm fighting but already looted all the chests in the area.
Reminds me of that one item that buffed all drones, it was a green from RoR that essentially gave drones an ATG. Probably not enough to justify buying drones, but that's not in RoR2, so I guess all they are good for is decoys.
i've had a horde of missle and gunner drones carry me through the first 2 loops... but even with 2 emergency drones and a plethora of healers, they don't get much farther than that on the other hand, in a game with a buddy of mine, he kept finding equipment drones and decided to give them all of his equipment. they got a little bit farther, but beyond being hilarious to watch, they fell off toward the end of the 3rd loop. still, was fun as hell while it lasted xD
As someone who's extremely good at consistently avoiding damage throughout your runs, you may have a personal bias against their effectiveness as aggro-pulling. Since monsters aggro changes on who has damaged them most recently, for less evasive players such as myself, they are a godsend which has saved many a run. Personally i like to pick up a few every round if ive bought all i wanted, just for their aggro-tanking abilities. They ain't the best for the best, that's all ill say.
This video forgot one thing... you can have more then 1 of a drone. This is where they shine, sure a single one deals little damage... but if you can get a large number they will decimate things. This is why individually they suck, imagine if they were worth the price compared to a single item? Getting 2-3 would literally be broken... much more when you get 5-10. Except the equipment drone, those eat time to get and they have extreme down times.
AoE's can still take a bunch of them out at once (thinking Elder Lemurian, Greater Wisp, etc.), but the bigger problem is that their movement is slow and doesn't scale with your own. So when you go to run to the other side of the map to scout or farm for chests, they've fallen behind and get killed by whatever spawns behind you.
Equipment drones with artifact of enigma is actually a death game, like if you aren't in a good spot and the sky begins turning blue, or it's health begins rapidly decreasing... RUN. Tbf I could always just grapple the ceiling sooooo
The game meta will be much more interesting when we get a final level that we can go to after stage 4, or better said you will have a meta for fast end and a meta for looping. I'd say drones would be good if you wanted to win asap
Equipment Drone with Spinel Tonic + Col. Droneman. Extra powerful drone. Do note that Equipment drones now have hidden items that MASSIVELY reduce the cooldown of their equipment, by arround 80% Also note that Droneman did not exist when this video was made.
I find Equipment Drones to be pretty useful with The Back Up or the Radar Scanner. With the Back Up, that equipment doesn’t really do damage to begin with, and it’s great at drawing aggro. With the Radar Scanner, it’s not reliant on damage anyways.
TC-280 is one of those drones that I really want but that the director really doesn't want me to have. When I'm playing captain, it never spawns on the first loop. When I'm playing any other character it does, but the next stage boss is usually a wandering vagrant that instantly kills it. I've never had the 280 for more than two stages.
The problem with the Crowdfunder is that it doesn't turn off until you run out of money, but at the same time the Equipment Drone doesn't generate its own money. I think it would be cool if it did, so you as a player could help kill things to fund its path of destruction.
I would love an item (or equipment) that gives all minions (drones, beetle guards, ghosts) your items. I think balancing something like this would be hard though as it would basically make engineer useless and could be extremely op. Maybe the minions can only get items that increase base stats rather than stuff like on-hits. I feel like that a minion based build could be a cool idea and bring a different gameplay dynamic to the game.
Maybe they could only get white items? Would still be really strong though. I’d just like drones to scale a bit better and a white item that increases all drone stats
Not surprised to hear that healing drones were the best type. I would like to add that their usefulness also seems to be related to your survivor’s movement speed as once you have a few goat hoofs and sodas you will be out running them. Adding to the problem of their horrible pathing.
The equipment drones are great with the scanner equipment and the backup, the scanner helps you loot quicker and the backup will almost always be active with 5 drones drawing aggro
Drones are incredible on Captain, as they gain his defensive microbots. With a proportionate number of healing drones to back up the horde you get a small (potentially nigh unending), nearly invincible army of drones. Also if you give an equipment drone the backup equipment you get a drone carrier that spams really potent drones with zero cooldown. For some reason backup had next to no cooldown when used by an equipment drone. The combined damage of all of them is enough to absolutely shit on Mythrix’s day on monsoon. In fact his 3rd phase AOE attack is one of the few things that can actually kill large numbers of them, even on that difficulty. Oh an the Captain’s hacking beacons can give you the TC’s for free. Turns the Captain from a naval captain into an army captain.
Equip drone is good when you have a radar scanner. You can give it to the drone and it will continue to provide scans freeing up your slot. Same with like the ocular hud or any other equip that you don't want in your slot but have
Equipment Drones with Disposable Missile Launchers are actually pretty good... but when/how do you plan for that if you aren't Multi with Command Artifact
I feel like the equipment drone can be pretty good if you have enough healing drones to keep it alive. Not for it to do damage, but for it to use other things, like the scanner to tell you the location of everything on the stage, or the equipment that summons other drones. If you get the item that gives you two of those eye ball drones that increase in damage the more drones you have, then any drone would be worth it aside from TC-280.
@@MJelly-yj8kp tbh I think the proc one's are less of a problem than capacitor/missiles, capacitor just outright kills you if not above 90% and missiles outright kill if you don't have enough speed yet. I still like scav though since there's an enemy in the game that can kill you no matter how strong you get but damn some combo's feel so cheese
Yes, and I lost a run like that recently. My friend and I were going for the long road, super swole. Turned the corner with our army of drones and saw a scavenger. Tried to figure out what it had and then suddenly all my drones exploded and I died, tons of knives everywhere. 10/10
Turrets go really well with Acrid, since he can't kill using poison, only do damage to 1 hp. Stationary turrets usually provide some early kills to save time and get some items as soon as you spawn (in the first two loops), so ALWAYS get them if you are about to leave and you see any near the teleporter. They imo have higher priority over other drones (since they have lower cost), but lower over healing drones.
With the recent changes to the game drones are actually pretty damn strong now. Especially on Captain. Equipment drone has a significantly reduced cooldown time on whatever equipment you give it. Giving something like an Opus (teamwide attack speed buff) or Missile Launcher to it results in a lot of free damage or buff uptime. Drones can't be stolen by Mithrix at phase 4 but can also steal items back for you, making them stupidly powerful if you plan on doing the boss in your run. Especially healing drones since they are basically the only good source of healing you will have available to you during that phase. Popping The Backup right as phase 4 begins is stupidly strong since you can get a bunch of your items back before Mithrix has a chance to actually do anything. As Captain, all drones (including those from The Backup) have a copy of his passive legendary item. Having a bunch of drones can straight up nullify a lot of stuff, such as Greater Wisp, Vultures, Brass Contraptions, Elder Lemurians, Wandering Vagrants, Beetle Queens and Alloy Worship Unit, making them laughably easy to deal with. For this reason alone The Backup has become my go-to equipment for Captain since it lets you have an army of projectile-killing bodyguards at will. Also, since Captain can open boxes for free via hacking you can use that saved money to buy drones.
I like using equipment drones with primordial cubes and the speed up drum. I also often buy lots of drones with the captain because they're much tankier and more helpful. It would be cool if the big boi got an item (or multiple) at the end of each stage so he could help.
Equipment drones are really handy for utility equipment though that you wouldn't necessarily want on yourself such as radar, rally, emergency beacon, and the black hole ability.
i remember running gestures of the drowned with backup, + enough fuel cells to get my cooldown to 25. the amount of drones on stage at once.. absolutely nutty.
In my defense of equipment drones, they're really good at freeing a slot for utility equipment, like the radar or War Drums. Essentially whatever effects the whole team rather than needing to be targeted in anyway
7 months later and I have justification! (for the equipment drone) Void Cube is generically useful to group enemies while you get to use some other different equipment, *however* giving the Back-Up equipment to an Equipment Drone while Captain is absolutely nuts
During a run to get some artifacts,when I was still a noob, I went for the equipment drone with a primordial cube, I had one too, and omg I hated it, it drew monsters away from me. So I tried to get it to die, I finally succeeded. On another run I got a LOT of healing, missile and emergency drones, and they really helped, in fact, they got me my first monsoon win (obliteration)
Id love it if they added a character with drones as an ability kind like engineer turrets except they follow u closely and instead of having a primary attack you have something like a beacon that marks the enemies you want them to shoot at
WOW how things change! The new Captain survivor and his defensive mini drone has given these boys a much needed buff. That being said, I’d like to see other items help out drones too, maybe have it still be limited to items that don’t require being proced like the shield belt or the soldier’s syringe
They should add a couple drone related items but make sure that those items drop only if you have 2 or 3 drones with you at the time of opening chests. I miss having an army of drones on the final stage in the first risk of rain and not having to do anything
Equipment drone is funny with Volcanic Egg, and actually helpful if you give it a radar scanner or primordial cube, giving you the utility of those equipments, but letting you keep using a damage equipment like you like to use.
I would like it if survivors had their own built in passives like some do right now like merc, rex, acrid, etc, but they had an extra slot to put unlockable passives, like what if there was an engineer challenge you do that unlocks a passive that lets drones inherent the items you have at the moment they are bought? I feel like stuff like that would be really cool, something like that might even help fix some of the drones scaling problems
1 like = 1 buff for TC-280 chunky boi
You should do a drone only run, no items (except for maybe ones that give you minions, like beetles gland.) Maybe do it on easy mode for a chance to do well. Also with the engineer for more minions. Essentially the goal is you have a swarm of drones.
@@brooksfaucette296 I don't think it's possible to do a decent run with no item honestly
@@KasesTBW maybe there's a mod for more drones or something
Wait but if you have already 52 likes that's 52 buffs which means he could already be insane...
*New patch* "so we decided TC-280 should shoot preon shots instead of normal bullets which are homing. They then spawn another TC-280 on kill. Also, his health is now decided by the time spent multiplied by both itself and levels completed then multiplied by a small generous amount of 7,000,000."
1 comment = 1 vote to add arms race from risk of rain 1
I remember seeing TC-280 for the first time, farmed a little bit, purchased it, it killed one void reaver and sat inside that instant kill explosion.
first time me and a friend saw them, we each got one... and watched them both suicide to the same void reaver...
Lul
One time I was playing online and me and 3 people found 5 TC-280’s so we bought them all and they didn’t do anything
I got one this one time and it spent the whole of my abyssal depths round stuck in the cave system spawn. I had to punch it through the exit as loader only for it to be insta-killed by an Blazing Elder Lemurian
@@boonanaman7 edgy
Counterpoint: giving an equipment drone a milky chrysalis or spinel tonic is hilarious, and the entertainment that provides single-handedly justifies their existence
Giving one the egg or the elephant is also super fun as well.
In general Woolie is sleeping hard on giving your old equipment to a drone when you find better equipment. If all I’ve got is a radar scanner and now I found a preon, you best believe I’m giving that scanner to the drone and reaping the benefits of the pulses it gets.
If you’re already getting rid of an equipment, it only makes sense to pick up a free drone even if it’s shit. You’re essentially getting something that draws aggro for absolutely free.
I like giving it a Backup. "Yo, Dawg, I heard you like drones!"
Alcoholic drone with 7 stacks of tonic affliction
@@DanChalifouxable Last time I tried giving a scanner to an equipment drone, it would scan... but I couldn't see what it revealed. Did they fix that?
Equipment drones with the Back-Up is a combo I like to call the Mama Drone. Constantly birthing new drones to draw aggro both from you and itself.
I just wish the equipment drone had a small buff to use items somewhat faster than normal.
hahaha i love this combo.
or some usefulness besides having an equipement, like a gunner drone that also has an equipement, but yeah, it takes FOREVER for them to do stuff
Rathburn scape They really should, especially since equipment drones are kinda just an aimless version of Gesture of the Drowned.
JoySparx, I know the thing that summons 4 missile drones for like 25 seconds.
Ever get 2 power cells with that of the missile launcher?
I have seen god now :0
Drone- distracts magma worm across the map
Me- bruh
I think the AI needs a weight system for targeting, and the magma worm should be far less likely to target drones.
The amount of times i missed preon because worm decided to go find the fucking gun turret on the other side of the map is insane lol
Every time
i LOVE when those damn magma worms target my gun turret on the other side of the map. It's free dps, while I take out the trash.
It's a QoL thing.... really lol
@@extremepsykosis I also really love moments, when my turret literally kills magma worm while taking little to no damage
I love giving a Radar Scanner to the Equipment Drones! Nice little thing as long as it lasts :)
It adds so much UI clutter to the game though
pretty good for learning equipment spawn points and for finding Newt Altars, solid choice for beginners
ᐃᑦᑎᓂᖅᓯᐅᑐᖅ ᑕᖅᓴᖅ as if the UI clutter can get any worse lol. I find turning off money and XP particle effects helps with this. Harder to recognize when you open barrels tho
@@yoshikoizumi7851 What do you mean? I'm pretty sure it's as random as any other chest.
@@marmitaa8619 the spawns for newt altars are specific to them though usually 1-2 spawn out of 3-5 possible locations per stage, while lunar chests are mixed in normal chest spawns. There are a couple stages with spots that always spawn newts (aqueduct, scorched) but require a good bit of movement to reach
I like to take a couple of gunner drones early game on Acrid to deal with the 1 hp monsters I leave behind :)
Du1k thats pretty smart actually
BIG BRAIN. I gotta start doing this!
5Head moment
Idk if it’s an artifacts 2.0 thing, but drones seem horrendously overpowered if you can get multiple shaped glass. Their damage seems to scale with it, which gets crazy pretty quickly.
Unlocking the blight load out really helps with finishing off those poisoned enemies and it’s actually really easy to get even if your going for a specific run
Smh, didn't even mention the best use of drones: When you have a ton of fireworks and can use them as impromptu DPS launchers.
Same with barrels lol
I did this today, I had 2 shaped glass and 5 fireworks💀🤣
i was under the impression this was their designed purpose xD
Or, if you're me, just get an army.
I only give equipment drones the elite aspects, props to that Glacial Equipment drone who gave his life to freeze 3 beetles
F
what a hero
The hero that we didn't deserve
Kazuhira Miller : Why are we still here? Just to suffer? Every night, I can feel my leg... And my arm... even my fingers... The body I've lost... the comrades I've lost... won't stop hurting... It's like they're all still there. You feel it, too, don't you? I'm gonna make them give back our past!
Press F to my boi Equipment drone, sacrificed itself to stop the 3 beetles from bitting you.
You know when you're in the endgame when you start buying all drones on the map.
That early game for me. Endgame when I can't keep any drones alive for more then 5 seconds haha
@@TheTyisawesome solution. play captain, projectiles go bye bye.
@@ColetheFlame01 the only time drones are fun late game haha then it's just funny nothing can get to you
I'm going to pretend I haven't been late into a run and dropped my equipment for backup purely because I had 8 fuel cells and wanted to "release the swarm"
No drones dont inherit items
I hadn’t really thought about it, but having captain now with the drones, especially if you a buying emergency drones, will just continue to zap projectiles from the air and make the drones more tanky. They become all that more effective at damage sponge. Sad though, I really enjoy minionmancers and things of that nature.
The bigger brain strat involving drones and the captain is to just get them because they'll also zap down projectiles that are heading towards *you* as well.
@@GlyphicEnigma Yeah, you create a pretty reliable defense matrix around yourself
Captain with an equipment drone with the Back Up makes you close to the tankiest you can get in the game with no items
In 1 drones were really useful because you had "Arms Race" (gives drones a chance to fire missiles on action) and "Drone Repair Kit". Besides drones were always close to the player. If they add those 2 items (and make them move faster maybe) they could become useful even after the first loop
using Drones Inherit Items shows why faster drones are a terrible idea.
The real fix: glue them to the fucking player like in 1.
@@vaelophisnyx9873 The real fix: make their hitbox not collide with the player.
Problem solved. At that point, they're just kind of there for damage sponge and a bit of damage.
The sole reason why I don't use drones is because the can collide with the player, and even move the player, which is super annoying for certain builds. If they didn't get in the way, I'd be fine with them.
Yeah lol drones felt better than items in 1 imo. Many of my providence kills were runs where I just got tons of drones.
@@Nilruin *cough * bungus *cough*
1:52 BOI. That is the best spelling of Aqueducts I've ever seen.
i did an oopsie
@@Woolie that is what i tell my gf
@@tomaspat4392 you don't actually have a girlfriend
@@Aaaaaalakrb do you know me?
@@tomaspat4392 we dont need to know you, we know you dont have one
May I also add does anyone find that magma worm absolutely loves to target gunner turrets. I activate stage 3 rallypoint delta teleporter and after 5 seconds magma worms like mmm yes I love the look of that gunner turrets on the opposite side of the map
I noticed this too, they go right through the middle of gunner turrets all the time.
Every time
Magma worm seems to switch between targets constantly, which would be fine if it prioritized targets in the teleporter zone
I'm pretty sure the only Survivor who can utilize drones effectively even into the late game is Acrid.
Reminder that Acrid has practically 0 defensive skills in his kit so taking any amount of fire away from you plus giving you some healing on top of it is choice for poison boi. Attack Drones are also pretty good at helping you get those kill confirms after they've been left at 1 hp from poison stacks. Note that actually spending money on drones late game is still somewhat of a meme cause all of your drones will instantly wipe the moment they decide to prioritize a Boss Imp or Scavenger, so RoI is still pretty low there. But Acrid with "The Backup", Both Heresy items and a butt load of gestures / fuel cells is probably one of the most reliable Acrid builds you can get IMO.
Acrid's basic attack is a defense ability
It has "regenerative" on the third attack, which quickly regens 10% of her missing health
Engineer can do good work with the gunner turret if they go for the age-old mushroom/base turret combo. If you have a lot of mushrooms, it can even start to affect air units!
the jump is as defensive as any gap closing ability
Now we have captain who can form a strong defense thanks to his passive
As an engineer main, the sheer number of visible mushrooms you ran past has me breathing heavily.
Why would you main a character that sounds boring
@shortythecat well in the other games its almost always pvp or some big open world. In risk of rain the characters are the content so maining a single one is like playing one quest in an open world game over and over
Gunner Turret: Who are you?
Engineer Turret: I'm you, but stronger.
anyone remember when having a swarm of drones in ror1 made it to where you could literally become unkillable?
Yeah that’s due to it being 2D and the drones having simple movement.
Are you on the same horizontal plane as I am?
Yes = die
No = gimme a sec I'll come over to you and then be on the same horizontal plane
@@superceilingfan9741 LOL
didnt play ror1 but lol
One time, a friend and I gave a Glowing Meteorite to an Equipment Drone^^' Fun times were had
Oh god oh fuck
Using the mod "Drones inherit items" makes them OP. Pretty fun for a run or two to see gunner turrets destroy a boss
Why use a mod when you can use engineer?
@@Keyce0013 cause the turret cant fly?
@@mrslewd6763 Why fly when they can *w a l k*
@@melanch0lycat5393 cause greater wisp, elder lemurian, OVERLOADING WORM, scavengers
@@mrslewd6763 If your turrets aren't killing everything in sight by the time those become a threat then your run is over.
At the time of the video, equipment drones had the same cooldowns, but now they're much better, reducing cooldown by 5x. With certain equipment you can pretty much have them activated all the time
If there's a turret near the teleporter on the first of second stage I'll usually take it just to help with crowd control on early stages. Its especially worth it if you want to rush the boss or do a mountain challenge on the first stage.
The healing drone is great for the first couple stages as well if you don't find any healing items.
Woolie, I totally agree with everything you said, but I will say gunner turrets (on the first loop) are really good IF they are close to the tele. They can take agro, and their damage is very good. I tested the gunner turrets damage at 2 mins on a beetle queen tele boss, and it took like 15 seconds for it to take out the beetle BY ITSELF.
One thing I would say is that giving a equipment drone a Primordial Cube, was actually pretty decent for me. Not only did it gain agro in the lower stages but when it activated the cube it would sometimes drew enemies across/ off the map and or allow me to gain some nutty proc damage cause of how bunched up they were.
Would highly recommend it if and only if you have both the cube as drone on one stage
one run I got I had like...35ish drones and turrets at stage 20. it was amazing, 3 emergency drones, 1 incinerator, 6 healing drones, and the rest were missile/gunner, none of them were dying because there were so much heals
NASA called, they want their computer back
Benjamin Lambert under rated
@@Drekromancer comment better than the entire video
They were alot more useful in risk of rain 1, but even then RoR1 items were much more powerful overall
I’ve found equipment drones to be decently useful, with a radar scanner, or as a free meat shield after getting a useless equipment out of a chance shrine
Yea if you have an equipment on the ground you might as well give the drone the one you don’t want and have it as a distraction for a while
Equipment drone making up for its low value by having a suitably low price unlike the others
Last night I watched Mithrix spin in circles looking up trying to kill a singular gunner drone, ignoring me and my friend completely
I think I used to pick up drones more often in RoR 1, not so much in 2. The healing drones did save me before though, but the cost was not worth it
In Risk of Rain 1 they stay much closer to you, so they feel more like an extension of the character.
If they save your run even once that seems worth it too me
they could literally just take the old Risk of Rain 1 items that were drone specific, give them some tweaking and that would already hel- oh wait pathing was a none issue back then
yeah drones would need their own dedicated update alongside ai to be salvaged
Pathing was an issue back then, drone would often fire behind wall or simply not take aggro.
but you had tons more control over them than here, are they in critical condition? just get into a rope, ez
@@Lucyller compared to having a gunner drone stuck literally on the other side of the map or having a vagrant launch it permanently out of the fight for the remainder of the stage today makes those kinda issues trivial by comparison
Honestly the fix isn't that hard to do, hear me out.
Give the drones and only the drones a collision box that only corresponds to an invisible barrier around the player.
Now, whenever the player moves, the drones are automatically pulled with them as if they were running into terrain. Might look a bit silly, but with a bit of tweaking I think it would be fine.
@@JagEterCoola would have to increase in size after like 5 drones though
They should add an item that increases the effectiveness of drones. Perhaps a common (white) item that adds +10% damage/healing and max health to all drones with +5% per stack, maybe call the item "Blueprints" or something.
Additionally, there should be a lunar item that gives you a single powerful drone with unlimited health that constantly follows you, doing large amounts of damage, with the downside of not being able to pick up any other drones, destroying all drones you already have upon picking up this new "Moon Drone" or whatever it might be called.
This sorta exists, the recently added disc thing that charges up with kills and does massive damage.
Basically a lunar souped up tc-280
I wish engineers other turret option was a drone or drones that fly around vs crawling turret that are super slow
honestly its not even how slow they are
they have such piss range they wont laser anything thats not already in facefuck range
@@CaptainPrincess Engi + walking turrets + focus crystals + syringe. Have fun melting bosses
@@vaelophisnyx9873 Oh Ive already tried that
bosses melt sure but it doesnt do shit about the minefield of little guys filling the map with endless peashots
With also a very stupidly short range*
Like, IMO, The Engineer's biggest strength is all in the stationary turret. Like yeah, Moving turrets have greater DPS potential, but why have lots of damage when you can instead get more reliable anti-wisp cover?
Wisps kill me more often than Templar, Scavengers, or Game Crashes simply due to their ridiculous tracking and multi-shots.
@@CaptainPrincess Ukuleles... They shoot 1 and zap the shit out of everything around them. Uke's are op.
I'll never forget the time I got an Ifrit's Distinction and ran into an equipment drone for the first time ever 🙃 F for that 1/4000 drop that lasted a solid minute
Me buys all the drones I can get AFTER the boss with my leftover money: I am the right
I also have a tip for the equipment drones... If you see one DONT use it see if you can open another orange box and give THAT item to it if it's not better that what you already have. That way you keep your item But they take a different item that you might not want so it's fine sure you may pay a few hundred but if you already cleared the map but not the boss go for it.
Listen I know that was a noobie tip but I think it was useful
Personally, I find the assault drones extremely useful when you have the backup equipped. They have a far better fire rate than a standard gunner drone, and are far less hindering and easily disposable
I think maybe a new item(probably green) that increases drone strength and help would be a nice addition. And, if they did it right, it would also affect engineer turrets
Well, with the Spare Drone Parts red from the DLC, your wish was granted.
Spare Drone Parts are so busted that getting them early on is basically a free win if you just grab all the drones you can.
I actually kinda like equipment drones. If there's a spare activated item laying around and I'm fast enough, I often will go and give the drone the item since it's free and good for a few funny moments.
You didn’t take into account the friendship they give you on a solo run
a few days ago my friend and I were grindout eclipse levels. I was playing Railgunner and he was playing Engineer. I died because I'm bad and he made it to Mithrix. Phase 4 Mithrix, we had this weird bug where Mithrix didn't attack us and his Engineer Turrets didn't attack him. what *did* attack him was our Incinerator Drone.
Our Incinerator Drone 1v1'd Phase 4 Mithrix. and won. it was hilarious. Incinerator Drone OP
I had kinda the same experience with an incinerator drone where I went to hide behind a pillar the drone charged towards mithrix burned him and died like a hero 07
I once had a run with two equipment drones and they both had Back-ups on them. It was essentially like having two Fuel Cells and made up for the crappy cooldown times.
I did a run the other day with a friend of mine where most of my purchases were drones. I ended up getting a Backup as well with a Fuel Cell. I ended up having so many drones that the list on the side of my screen didnt show all of them, and it was a huge list in general. It was a really fun run.
Fuel Cell won't affect an equipment drone, just you.
@@Keyce0013 I know it only affects me, I never said it didnt?
i feel like you did them a bit of an injustice by not mentioning captain and his microbots. they make the drones exponentially tankier, especially with attack speed. i still don't think it really makes drones worth it over regular chests, but i would've liked to see that mentioned
I tend to end up with a short-lived army of drones whenever I brainfart and can't find the teleporter since I'm fighting but already looted all the chests in the area.
Reminds me of that one item that buffed all drones, it was a green from RoR that essentially gave drones an ATG. Probably not enough to justify buying drones, but that's not in RoR2, so I guess all they are good for is decoys.
I think it'd be pretty cool if there was some sort of synergy between engineer and drones, since both kind of feel underwhelming atm
According to fandom wiki:
Drones that are repaired and minions spawned via items level up with difficulty level, not player level.
it was changed to this way after the video came out
Ah thanks for the reply.
i've had a horde of missle and gunner drones carry me through the first 2 loops... but even with 2 emergency drones and a plethora of healers, they don't get much farther than that
on the other hand, in a game with a buddy of mine, he kept finding equipment drones and decided to give them all of his equipment. they got a little bit farther, but beyond being hilarious to watch, they fell off toward the end of the 3rd loop. still, was fun as hell while it lasted xD
As someone who's extremely good at consistently avoiding damage throughout your runs, you may have a personal bias against their effectiveness as aggro-pulling. Since monsters aggro changes on who has damaged them most recently, for less evasive players such as myself, they are a godsend which has saved many a run. Personally i like to pick up a few every round if ive bought all i wanted, just for their aggro-tanking abilities. They ain't the best for the best, that's all ill say.
Woolie: 6:03
Me: How dare you talk about my son like that? Shh, it's ok the scary man can't hurt you.
Could be funny if we could feed the big one items.
Would make for an interesting run.
Like sacrifice one of your items to give it to the drone? That’d be cool
A few drones can be very helpful for Acrid to help clean up any 1hp enemies you leave around, which comes up fairly often in the first loop or two.
This video forgot one thing... you can have more then 1 of a drone. This is where they shine, sure a single one deals little damage... but if you can get a large number they will decimate things. This is why individually they suck, imagine if they were worth the price compared to a single item? Getting 2-3 would literally be broken... much more when you get 5-10.
Except the equipment drone, those eat time to get and they have extreme down times.
AoE's can still take a bunch of them out at once (thinking Elder Lemurian, Greater Wisp, etc.), but the bigger problem is that their movement is slow and doesn't scale with your own. So when you go to run to the other side of the map to scout or farm for chests, they've fallen behind and get killed by whatever spawns behind you.
equipment drone is quite good with black hole or back up
This channel deserves more subscribers
Equipment drones with artifact of enigma is actually a death game, like if you aren't in a good spot and the sky begins turning blue, or it's health begins rapidly decreasing...
RUN.
Tbf I could always just grapple the ceiling sooooo
The game meta will be much more interesting when we get a final level that we can go to after stage 4, or better said you will have a meta for fast end and a meta for looping. I'd say drones would be good if you wanted to win asap
Now that we’ll soon get a final stage with a final boss, drones could be more useful
Equipment Drone with Spinel Tonic + Col. Droneman.
Extra powerful drone.
Do note that Equipment drones now have hidden items that MASSIVELY reduce the cooldown of their equipment, by arround 80%
Also note that Droneman did not exist when this video was made.
Give the equipment drone either a Primordial Cube, Radar Scanner or even Back Up. At least it'd be *somewhat* useful.
I find Equipment Drones to be pretty useful with The Back Up or the Radar Scanner.
With the Back Up, that equipment doesn’t really do damage to begin with, and it’s great at drawing aggro.
With the Radar Scanner, it’s not reliant on damage anyways.
gorags opus is great too.
TC-280 is one of those drones that I really want but that the director really doesn't want me to have. When I'm playing captain, it never spawns on the first loop. When I'm playing any other character it does, but the next stage boss is usually a wandering vagrant that instantly kills it. I've never had the 280 for more than two stages.
In my opinon Equipment drone is best with:
Radar Scanner, Woodsprite, and Meteor
Also it cant do anything with Crowdfunder
Crowdfunder °~°
The problem with the Crowdfunder is that it doesn't turn off until you run out of money, but at the same time the Equipment Drone doesn't generate its own money. I think it would be cool if it did, so you as a player could help kill things to fund its path of destruction.
"TC-280 Prototype is a good example of what's wrong with drones right now."
*Shows footage of TC-280 Prototype mowing down monsters one by one*
I would love an item (or equipment) that gives all minions (drones, beetle guards, ghosts) your items. I think balancing something like this would be hard though as it would basically make engineer useless and could be extremely op. Maybe the minions can only get items that increase base stats rather than stuff like on-hits. I feel like that a minion based build could be a cool idea and bring a different gameplay dynamic to the game.
How about giving each minion just a part of your items? Like a 1/3 of your items randomly
Maybe they could only get white items? Would still be really strong though. I’d just like drones to scale a bit better and a white item that increases all drone stats
Question mr. Streamer, do drones have one shot protection
pretty sure they do... but they just sit and take hits repeatedly anyway. so whether they do or not doesn't really matter
No they dont sadly.
Give Equipment Drone a Backup and turn it into a carrier drone
4:00 and this is why i only give the drone primordial cube it may not do dmg but some cc every minute or so ain't so bad.
The hilarity of 8 stacks of squid polyp and bustling fungus/woodland sprite makes up for any downsides drones might have
I remember in risk of rain 1 there were items that helped boost drones. they could bring that back.
I think the equipment drone is good if you get the scanner for it. That's the only time I like that drone.
Not surprised to hear that healing drones were the best type. I would like to add that their usefulness also seems to be related to your survivor’s movement speed as once you have a few goat hoofs and sodas you will be out running them. Adding to the problem of their horrible pathing.
Counterpoint: The drones are cute
but yeah, I only buy them if I have an excess of cash and feel lonely tbh
The equipment drones are great with the scanner equipment and the backup, the scanner helps you loot quicker and the backup will almost always be active with 5 drones drawing aggro
I have a mod that allows drones to get items, currently trying to figure out what amount is fair. Backup turns into a beast of an equipment tho.
With captain, the drones that för near you basically become projectile sponges that just zap stuff out of the air for you, pretty efficient
I believe the equipment drone is actually really good if you give it something like a primordial cube (and also assuming it manages to follow you)
Drones are incredible on Captain, as they gain his defensive microbots. With a proportionate number of healing drones to back up the horde you get a small (potentially nigh unending), nearly invincible army of drones. Also if you give an equipment drone the backup equipment you get a drone carrier that spams really potent drones with zero cooldown. For some reason backup had next to no cooldown when used by an equipment drone. The combined damage of all of them is enough to absolutely shit on Mythrix’s day on monsoon. In fact his 3rd phase AOE attack is one of the few things that can actually kill large numbers of them, even on that difficulty. Oh an the Captain’s hacking beacons can give you the TC’s for free.
Turns the Captain from a naval captain into an army captain.
love giving equipment drones an Eccentric Vase and watching it spew wormholes everywhere lol
Equip drone is good when you have a radar scanner. You can give it to the drone and it will continue to provide scans freeing up your slot. Same with like the ocular hud or any other equip that you don't want in your slot but have
Equipment Drones with Disposable Missile Launchers are actually pretty good... but when/how do you plan for that if you aren't Multi with Command Artifact
I find early in my captain runs its nice to get a few drones to help shoot down projectiles with the special cap provides them.
Bring back arms race!
I feel like the equipment drone can be pretty good if you have enough healing drones to keep it alive. Not for it to do damage, but for it to use other things, like the scanner to tell you the location of everything on the stage, or the equipment that summons other drones. If you get the item that gives you two of those eye ball drones that increase in damage the more drones you have, then any drone would be worth it aside from TC-280.
I've a question: If a Scavenger with ceremonial dagger kills one of your drones, does it spawn daggers?
yes
@@MJelly-yj8kp nice
It's not a problem tho. The real problem is that scav can proc these daggers(or gasoline/willothewisps) using his thqwib attacks
@@MJelly-yj8kp tbh I think the proc one's are less of a problem than capacitor/missiles, capacitor just outright kills you if not above 90% and missiles outright kill if you don't have enough speed yet. I still like scav though since there's an enemy in the game that can kill you no matter how strong you get but damn some combo's feel so cheese
Yes, and I lost a run like that recently. My friend and I were going for the long road, super swole. Turned the corner with our army of drones and saw a scavenger. Tried to figure out what it had and then suddenly all my drones exploded and I died, tons of knives everywhere.
10/10
Turrets go really well with Acrid, since he can't kill using poison, only do damage to 1 hp.
Stationary turrets usually provide some early kills to save time and get some items as soon as you spawn (in the first two loops), so ALWAYS get them if you are about to leave and you see any near the teleporter. They imo have higher priority over other drones (since they have lower cost), but lower over healing drones.
With the recent changes to the game drones are actually pretty damn strong now. Especially on Captain.
Equipment drone has a significantly reduced cooldown time on whatever equipment you give it. Giving something like an Opus (teamwide attack speed buff) or Missile Launcher to it results in a lot of free damage or buff uptime.
Drones can't be stolen by Mithrix at phase 4 but can also steal items back for you, making them stupidly powerful if you plan on doing the boss in your run. Especially healing drones since they are basically the only good source of healing you will have available to you during that phase. Popping The Backup right as phase 4 begins is stupidly strong since you can get a bunch of your items back before Mithrix has a chance to actually do anything.
As Captain, all drones (including those from The Backup) have a copy of his passive legendary item. Having a bunch of drones can straight up nullify a lot of stuff, such as Greater Wisp, Vultures, Brass Contraptions, Elder Lemurians, Wandering Vagrants, Beetle Queens and Alloy Worship Unit, making them laughably easy to deal with. For this reason alone The Backup has become my go-to equipment for Captain since it lets you have an army of projectile-killing bodyguards at will.
Also, since Captain can open boxes for free via hacking you can use that saved money to buy drones.
I like using equipment drones with primordial cubes and the speed up drum. I also often buy lots of drones with the captain because they're much tankier and more helpful. It would be cool if the big boi got an item (or multiple) at the end of each stage so he could help.
Equipment drones are really handy for utility equipment though that you wouldn't necessarily want on yourself such as radar, rally, emergency beacon, and the black hole ability.
i remember running gestures of the drowned with backup, + enough fuel cells to get my cooldown to 25. the amount of drones on stage at once.. absolutely nutty.
In my defense of equipment drones, they're really good at freeing a slot for utility equipment, like the radar or War Drums. Essentially whatever effects the whole team rather than needing to be targeted in anyway
7 months later and I have justification! (for the equipment drone)
Void Cube is generically useful to group enemies while you get to use some other different equipment, *however*
giving the Back-Up equipment to an Equipment Drone while Captain is absolutely nuts
During a run to get some artifacts,when I was still a noob, I went for the equipment drone with a primordial cube, I had one too, and omg I hated it, it drew monsters away from me. So I tried to get it to die, I finally succeeded. On another run I got a LOT of healing, missile and emergency drones, and they really helped, in fact, they got me my first monsoon win (obliteration)
Id love it if they added a character with drones as an ability kind like engineer turrets except they follow u closely and instead of having a primary attack you have something like a beacon that marks the enemies you want them to shoot at
WOW how things change! The new Captain survivor and his defensive mini drone has given these boys a much needed buff. That being said, I’d like to see other items help out drones too, maybe have it still be limited to items that don’t require being proced like the shield belt or the soldier’s syringe
"I've never missed by the way..."
Me already spamming !preon
Fun fact,there's a mod that gives drones and turrets the ability to get items like you do and engi turrets,it's pretty strong
Using the Scanner equipment on the Equipment Drone is actually pretty lit
They should add a couple drone related items but make sure that those items drop only if you have 2 or 3 drones with you at the time of opening chests. I miss having an army of drones on the final stage in the first risk of rain and not having to do anything
Equipment drone is funny with Volcanic Egg, and actually helpful if you give it a radar scanner or primordial cube, giving you the utility of those equipments, but letting you keep using a damage equipment like you like to use.
I would like it if survivors had their own built in passives like some do right now like merc, rex, acrid, etc, but they had an extra slot to put unlockable passives, like what if there was an engineer challenge you do that unlocks a passive that lets drones inherent the items you have at the moment they are bought? I feel like stuff like that would be really cool, something like that might even help fix some of the drones scaling problems