DRG: illegal core stone crimes

hi GSG if you see this please do an optimization pass on the crawlers. they are rough on a potato pc. k thx hi future people from the world of tomorrow after GSG inevitably patches the main gunner shield exploit. sorry. it was fun while it lasted and should have been kept secret. as of july 22 it works though so who knows how long the gravy train will carry gravy --- This is a collection of some cheesy exploits for the season 5 core stone event. I don’t take credit for any of this dwarven arcana as I didn’t discover any of the cool tech myself; this is just a compilation of some different techniques I’ve seen from others on PDRG (shoutouts to wondy for sharing the shield exploit) and reddit. --- 1st clip: coilgun enhanced cheese 1. get to the top of the pillar (you can climb it or just zipline up if you’re lazy) 2. place a shield 3. coilgun downwards to break open the core. you may need multiple coilgun shots because it’s easy to miss, but you have a fair bit of time to get it right before the shield expires observations: * coilgun can open up the pillar without any specific overclock. you don’t need the mole (this footage was hellfire). i’m not sure if you need the full level 3 charge or can even just level 1 charge it (i didn’t test and i’m lazy) * if the core stone spawns inside a gunner shield in the current patch it gives a large lag spike and then falls to the ground, ready to deposit (skipping the whole event) * gunners stay winning --- 2nd clip: no coilgun and lazy dwarf doesn’t want to climb no stinkin tower (gut full of beer enhances gravity and makes vertical ascent unappealing) 1. break open most of the pillar 2. jump and throw shield near the top (plenty of leeway here) 3. break open final bit observations: * ojb still hasn’t bothered to learn how to break open the pillar efficiently with a pickaxe and spends a lot more hits than probably necessary. what a clown * teamwork makes the dream work (have driller open pillar after shield) --- 3rd clip: engy’s massive shaft protects from monkey infection except it’s jank and kinda bad 1. dig directly under pillar about 30 terrain breaks / 20 meters 2. climb back up. (bonus points if you struggle doing it and embarrass yourself in front of your youtube audience and awkwardly miss plats and jumps) 3. break open core 4. quickly get down as low as possible until going lower means you can’t shoot the thing 5. this first shaft tends to always be monkey proof, probably because of the plat remnants and weird pathfinding interactions. (it’s the next two phases that are trickier) 6. kill the core, and then try and drop lower while angling slightly off to the side so you don’t get absorbed by the new pillar 7. fail to move slightly off to the side and get absorbed by the new pillar which bounces you around and makes it hard to get out of the way 8. repeat the vertical shaft prep and pillar break and core clear and downward retreat 9. if you mess up and don’t get a decent shaft under the pillar, you will see the cylindrical carve room around the stone. monkeys can very easily get in here and swarm, so seal it up with plats or die 10. a sealed room brings the deposit point right on top of you which is convenient observations: * easy to screw up and die in a coffin due to monkey avalanche * terrible strat compared to gunner’s (gunners stay winning) * core stone pillar regenerates on the highest terrain underneath it if floating. if you dig a shaft under, you can drop it substantially. * breaking open the pillar to expose the stone carves a cylindrical room about 10m in height. so if you’ve buried it say, 11m down from the last carved area, you can seal up the top portion with a single plat and never see monkeys. * digging a taller shaft gives you more leeway for screwups, which are surprisingly easy to do * this is a technique that can be workshopped still and is basically just a proof of concept * i don’t recommend doing this in a real run you care about because it’s easy to trap yourself in a death hole --- other thoughts: * the core has a weakpoint on its bottom. i honestly didn’t realize this until someone said something, and it’s definitely worth aiming for lol * engy plats can’t mimic the shield exploit. i tried a lot of configurations of plats above the pillar and it never worked. maybe it’s possible but i doubt it based on many failed attempts * trying to obscure the core stone with molly to maybe get a free skip also fails. you can get a floating molly for stage 1 by sitting her on top of the pillar making you immune to the first wave of monkeys, but she always moved during the first pillar regrowth * i spent a fair bit of time trying to find something that worked well for solo driller and found nothing. this isn’t to say that there isn’t an exploit out there, but if there was one i couldn’t figure it out. so driller basically needs to bunker and pray on the hard difficulties out there * gunners can’t keep getting away with this