Duskers

Duskers

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Salvager's Guide to the Galaxy
By Jackpine Savage
Though it looks insanely complicated to operate...
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Introduction
So you've decided to wake up from your cryosleep and have discovered that, lo and behold, your ship is low on fuel and as far as you can tell, you're the last human alive in the galaxy. At least you've got some drones and some basic tools on them. Well, nothing left to do but try and find out what happened to humanity!

In this guide I'll have pointers and tips to help you valiant galactic explorers get through yet another derelict.
Starting Out
The Noob Cave
The first derelict, unless you've changed your settings to make the game even harder, will always be clear of infestations and is a good place to get a feel for the controls and entering commands quickly.


The Console and You
When you are entering a command that is common such as navigate, gather, interface or others you will notice that the word will self-fill. When you see the grey letters appear after typing two or three letters of the word, simply hit enter and it will execute the command, or hit space and it will finish the word for you if you want to add specifics to the command.

You can also make a chain of commands using the semicolon (;). If you want to open a door and move a drone with a single line, simply list the door you want, put a semicolon, and then navigate the drone you want to the room number you just opened.
Example: d12;navigate 1 r14
This would open door 12 and then immediately move your #1 drone to room 14 (assuming room 14 is the one that was accessable through door 12).

The console is also very forgiving of spaces in syntax when attemping to chain commands together using the semicolon. Since the spacebar is what toggles between birds-eye view and individual drone view, this is a very good thing as you will be going back and forth quite a bit. It is good to be quick with your typing of commands, but it is essential to be accurate. Misspelled words will simply yield an error and get you nothing. Master getting the commands right, then work on your speed of entry. Both are essential for your drones' survival.


The Maps
The System map lets you see what derelicts are nearby that you can travel to using P-fuel in order to salvage them. The Galaxy map lets you see nearby star systems that you can use J-fuel to jump to in order to loot more derelicts. Every time you use a J-fuel it replenishes your P-fuel to its maximum number. The Universe map lets you see what different universes you can travel to once you have discovered and flown to a Stargate. You can view nearby Galaxies by selecting them, then pressing 3 to go to the System map.


Derelict Ratings
Each derelict you can board will have a brief readout of its statistics on the right hand side of the screen.
  1. Class: Tells you what classification the vessel is and what it's relative size is. D is the smallest, A is the largest.
  2. Infestation Types: Tells you how many different kinds of critters are aboard. Does not give you an exact count of said critters.
  3. Age: Tells you how old in days the derelict is. 0-199 is Stable, 200-299 is Volatile, 300-399 is Hazardous and 400+ is Fatal. This will let you know how likely or frequently degredation events (breaking pipes, doors not responding, airlocks bursting) will occur when onboard.
  4. Distance: How much P-fuel it will take you to get from your current location to the selected one.
  5. Visited: Yes or No option. Once you have visited a derelict and have exited from it, you cannot return to it. You can however return to an Autotrade as many times as you wish to trade with it.
In addition, Hull Integrity is noted in the pre-boarding screen where you select your drones and their upgrades. Hull Integrity is related to the Age of the derelict and will give you a rough estimate of how likely things are to break overall.
Drone Upgrades part 1
As you will discover, there are a variety of upgrades that your drones can mount and use for salvaging purposes. Some are absolute essentials, others are useful but nonessential. The maximum number you can bring to each boarding action is, typically, twelve (3 per drone, 4 drones max). You may on occasion discover a disabled drone that can carry four upgrades- try to acquire and maintain these as best as you can!

When you first start off or reset you will get a randomized set of upgrades. However you will always start with a Gather, Generator and Tow upgrade.


Essential Upgrades
  • Gather: Lets you pick up scrap for repairs and fuel for going new places. Thankfully these break down slowly so you probably won't need to repair or replace your Gather upgrade unless you last a long time.

  • Generator: Unless there is some reason you don't want to power a derelict, this is absolutely essential to navigating through the ships and getting anything of use from them.

  • Something to help you detect enemies: Whether by manual or remote detection you need something to let you know where the baddies are. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages.
    • Motion: Gives constant report of the room the drone is in and all adjacent rooms. Great for covering a large area without risking your drones, but rooms may come back inconclusive and it doesn't detect Slimes because of their slow spread. Also requires your drone to sit still, although you can pivot in place and it won't shut off.

    • Sensor: Guaranteed to detect every enemy within a room and doesn't require one of your drones to maintain it. It can also be teleported into distant rooms with an upgraded Teleport. However, it can be attacked and destroyed, and if you don't have an upgraded Teleport on hand it requires you to manually place it into each room which can be hazardous.

    • Stealth: Allows you to enter hostile rooms and get past baddies undetected so long as the stealth field holds and so long as your drone doesn't get too close. The downside is using almost any other upgrade will deactivate Stealth, rendering you a visible target for anything hostile in the room. I recommend using a double command like this while having your drone pressed against the door and holding forward
      d#;stealth
      in order to maximize your Stealth duration. Make sure you quickly close the doors behind your stealthed drones, as an enemy might wander into the room you just left! The upgrade reduces the overall time you remain invisible but drastically increases the recharge rate, making it more suited for quick jaunts in and out of rooms but less so for long duration observation of critter movements.

  • Tow: This is one of only two ways to get disabled drones and ship upgrades off derelicts (aside from commandeering). The other, Transporter, is a ship upgrade which is much harder to get and much more expensive to maintain, so Tow will be your usual mode of operation.
Drone Upgrades part 2
This is the continuation of the upgrade list. It has things that, while valuable on missions, are not absolutely essential for the completion of your salvage operations.

Useful Upgrades
  • Something to kill baddies with: while not absolutely essential as you can almost always find a way to vent critters into space, having a method with which to dispatch them yourself is very helpful.
    • Turret: Carries a heap of ammo compared to Mine or Trap, lets you see firsthand your wetwork to make sure it's done. However, it needs to be activated and reactivated every time your drone moves, even if just to pivot. Also, it only fires in the frontal arc and the damage it deals is mediocre, so a Leaper may hit your drone before it manages to shoot it dead and a Swarm will damage your drone before it can finish the job. Turret can target Slimes but it takes ten rounds of ammo to kill one square so this method is not recommended.

    • Mine: Proximity explosive. Place in a room, leave room, close door behind you, open door you think baddie might be behind, wait. If you get an alert that your mine was triggered, you were successful. Maybe. I say maybe because it takes two mines to kill a Leaper. Other than the low ammo count, Mine is probably one of the easier methods of dispatching enemies as, essentially, the baddies do the work for you with little risk to yourself. A downside to both Mine and Trap is the explosion can potentially destroy things like generator points, interfaces, fuel access points, ship upgrades and disabled drones. Can be picked up if not used.

    • Trap: A manual version of Mine, more or less. Lets you detonate a bomb on command; note that all traps planted detonate simultaneously when given the command. Great to combo with a Lure to get multiple baddies into a single room, then blow them away. Like Mine, it has a low ammo count so you must be judicious with their use. Also like Mine it has a chance to destroy useful things in the room it goes off in. Can be picked up if not used.

    • Cannon: If you're absolutely certain you need to remove a threat in a room and you happen to be piloting a ship that has one mounted, this is one hell of a way to go about it. On the upside, it is a 100% guarantee that whatever is in the room you target will be eliminiated. On the downside, that room is now a vaccuum and irradiated, and the impact will destroy (or worse, open and destroy) doors to adjacent rooms, spreading the vaccuum and radiation further. Cannon is also limited to two shots, and refilling them costs 4 scrap. Unless there's something you absolutely need on a ship, you're probably better off cutting whatever losses you've sustained and just leaving.

  • Interface: Allows you to connect to the ship computers via an interface point and control the turrets or scan the interior of the vessel. Great if you can herd enemies into rooms with ship turrets so you can grease 'em. Make sure you turn the turrets off before you go exploring in their rooms, as they target everything.

  • Lure: Great for getting baddies to congregate in a single room. Alerts you when it is under attack. Upgrade it with the anchor, plant it in a room with an airlock or a ship turret and let the critters fly! Can be picked up if undamaged. I haven't tested this personally but apparently a Lure will overrule typical enemy targeting, so if you have a drone under attack with a Lure nearby, bring the drone into the Lured room and the enemy will apparently divert to attack the it instead. Also untested but don't think that Slimes go for Lures. (Dev comment on these please?) An upgrade for this adds an anchor so that it doesn't get sucked out into space when you void the critters attacking it next to an airlock.

  • Probe: A little autonomous bot that rolls through open doors and automatically Scans rooms. Can be upgraded with a heap of extra HP (makes it useful for letting you know if there are baddies in a given room and can also be used to train them into specific areas) and/or with a permanent Stealth upgrade, allowing it to survey the vessel at your leisure. Can be picked up.

  • Pry: Allows drones to gain access to unpowered areas of a derelict by wedging the doors open. I highly recommend using this in combination with Stealth, as it does not break Stealth and it may lead to something dangerous behind the door you just opened. Note that unless you power a vessel, you cannot close Pryed doors.

  • Scan: Useful once you've cleared a ship of baddies, Scan gives you a second chance to "explore" a room and find extra scrap that a cursory drive-through won't detect. It won't reveal enemies, so I recommend only using it on cleared rooms (or better, entirely cleared derelicts!).

  • Shield: Once turned on, absorbs damage that would otherwise go directly to a drone's hitpoints. Useful for your Gather drone if you have no other means of detecting enemies in rooms; also useful for protecting Generator drones from an unnoticed Slime intrusion. Remember, it has to be turned on to be of any use! Upgrades include making the drone using it immune to the effects of radiation and reducing the overall shield strength from 500 to 100 but giving it regeneration in return.

  • Sonic: Forces biological enemies to flee a room. Requires the drone to sit still to use. Useful for herding Leapers out of areas or temporarily making Slime disappear from a room to Tow a disabled drone from the Slimed room. Doesn't actually kill anything; Slime will reappear en masse about ten seconds after the Sonic is deactivated.

  • Speed Boost I: Increases the speed of a drone. Used in combination with the 35% speed upgrade, this can make a drone extremely quick, allowing them to outrun Swarms. Possibly handy for your Gather or Tow drone, as the speed increase is useful but takes up a slot for something else.

  • Stun: Works like a Mine, but temporarily stops a critter from moving instead of killing it. Not sure why you'd use this instead of something that can kill, perhaps there's a reason I have yet to discover.

  • Teleport: Great for getting out of (and into) trouble in a flash. Upgraded it allows you to teleport Traps and Sensors to other rooms, but not Mines or Lures. I highly recommend having a Teleport on your Generator drone so if it gets attacked by Slime or Swarm it can quickly bamf back to the boarding ship. A useful alias:
    alias aaaaa "teleport 1 2 3 4 r1"
    This will bring all your drones with teleport back to the boarding ship with simply pounding the A key and enter.
Building A Better Bot
Now that you've got a bunch of these fancy upgrades, how should you use them? It is a good idea to specialize your drones to do certain tasks, but not to the point of exclusion should one of them go down.

Good Ideas
  • Making a dedicated Gather drone for scouting. Stealth and Sensor work wonders on your Gatherer.

  • Making a dedicated Tow drone for salvaging disabled drones. Speed Boost or Shield (or both!) are good additions to it if you're going into a hotspot, otherwise Interface is a good secondary use for a Tow drone.

  • Making a dedicated Generator drone. Motion, Probe or any other ability that doesn't require them to leave their Generator duties are good additions. A Generator that can back into a corner and activate a Turret isn't a bad idea either!

  • Make a dedicated combat drone. Turret, Mine, Trap (or all three). Also good for a secondary Tow or an Interface upgrade. More aggressive players may wish to combine a Shield configured to regenerate and a Turret along with a third upgrade that suits their playstyle; I would recommend Teleport in case things get too hairy!
    • If you don't have the parts to make a combat drone, make your fourth drone a jack of all trades. Lure, Sensor, Interface, a backup Generator or Gather, whatever you've got leftover that could be of use to take over should one of your primary three go down.

Bad Ideas
  • Randomly putting upgrades on whatever drone you feel like.

  • Putting Gather and Tow on the same drone and using it for scouting.

  • Using upgrades that require a drone to be immobile on a drone that does your scouting.

  • Using two of the same upgrade on a single drone*
*this does not apply to a combat drone, as having two Mines or Traps can be very useful
Ship Upgrades
Like drones, your ship can be outfitted with upgrades. Ships have a certain number of slots which can hold upgrades. Some are permanently mounted aboard and cannot be moved. While these slots are unavailable, permanent upgrades do not degrade over time. While none of these are "essential", a few of them are very, very useful; I have italicized those choices.

Installed Upgrades
  • Long Range Scanner: Allows you to see one 'ring' further on the Galaxy map. Useful for charting jumps and looking for Stargates or derelicts that may be essential to completing missions.

  • Quarantine Bypass: Lets you board ships with the QUARANTINE label across them. Useful for getting mission lines moved along or for broadening your available scavenging options.

  • Remote Power: Allows your boarding vessel to act as a free Generator to any known power inlet on the derelict. Very useful for keeping Generator drones safe from harm.

  • Reroute Power: Allows you to direct the flow of power from any power inlet; as long as a room is adjacent to one that is currently powered you may redirect power from a room you don't need into an adjacent, unpowered one. Each inlet has a maximum number of rooms it can support.

  • Ship Surveyor: Shows you the entirety of the derelict layout upon boarding. An upgrade to this can also display weakened rooms that are more likely to suffer pipe breaks than others.

  • Transporter: Not to be confused with Teleport, Transporter allows drones to instantly travel to and from highlighted rooms aboard a derelict. Transporter signals will strengthen and weaken at random, sometimes fading out entirely or appearing in new rooms; r1 (your boarding vessel) will always have a Transporter signal. Useful items (disabled drones, ship upgrades) in rooms with a Transporter signal will be brought aboard your ship when the "exit" command is used.

Permanent Upgrades

  • Cannon: Military/Private class only. Cannon destroys a single targeted room, permanently exposing it to vaccuum and irradiating it. It may also destroy or open and destroy doors connecting to the targeted room. This is useful for taking out a stubborn enemy, but you must weigh the risks versus the rewards of this action. It can have a maximum of 2 shells and a full refill costs 4 scrap no matter if you've fired one or both shots.

  • Collector: Barge/Salvage class only. Gives a chance for anything useful swept out of an airlock to be caught and returned to the ship upon exiting the mission. Don't rely on it.

  • Decontaminate: Barge/Medical class only: Allows you to purge radiation from a room. Very useful for older derelicts where pipe breaches are common. Make sure any room you are going to Decontaminate is sealed off from other rooms, otherwise radiation will simply spread back into it. Has 3 charges, each charge costs 2 scrap to replenish.

  • Overload: Government/Muteki class only. Lets you destroy a ship device (defense turret, interface, generator, fuel access point) in a powered room to kill anything in the room. Handy if you don't have Interface and can herd critters into places with ship devices. Has 4 charges, costs 3 scrap to totally recharge.
Wear and Tear - Upgrades, Drones and Ships
The more missions you bring all these cool toys on, the more likely they are to break. Each time you bring an upgrade on a mission and use it once (the amount of total use it sees on a mission has no bearing on the percentage after the first usage, so Teleport spam all day after you've done it once), the percentage chance for it to permanently break is increased. You can repair these upgrades using scrap, bringing the percentage back down to zero. Upgrades can, theoretically, break at any time, even with a percentage as low as 1%. As you use them and their percentages get higher you will be notified at the end of missions and the upgrade will change color from white to yellow with a single exclamation point beside it, then to orange with two exclamation points beside it. The earlier you repair an upgrade the cheaper it is, so it's a good idea to keep your things well maintained if you can afford it. If you don't think you'll need a particular drone upgrade on a salvage mission, don't bring it! It will keep them working for you longer. Ship upgrades are particularly unfortunate; they are considered 'brought' on every mission you undertake even if they aren't installed, making them break down much more quickly.

If (and when) an upgrade finally breaks for good you can turn it into 1 point of scrap. Unless you are desperate for scrap or flush with upgrades, however, I don't recommend doing this. If you can find an Autotrade platform you can sell it your broken upgrades for 3 scrap apiece, the amount you'd get if you scrapped it before it was entirely broken.

The same is true for drones and your boarding ship. Each mission you bring them on increases the chance that you will lose video feed for them for a certain length of time, both percentange of loss and length of loss getting worse with each consecutive mission they are brought on. You can repair this damage in the Modifications screen. Your ship can also lose its main video feed, requiring you to use drone feed to navigate and chart until the main video is restored. Ship upgrades and the upgrade slots themselves will also deteriorate over time and eventually permanently break, just like drone upgrades. Both can also be repaired in the Modifications screen. Note that while it will get very, very bad, a ship or drone's video feed will never be permanently severed.
Bad Guys and Hazards
Of course this is a hostile universe. What fun would it be if it wasn't? Plenty of things out there can kill your drones; this will be a list of (known) entities and their abilities, how to detect them without extrasensory help, how to avoid them and how best to eliminate them with upgrades. Always assume that venting bad guys is the best way to go unless stated otherwise.

Baddies
  • Leapers: Appearing as a bright orange crystalline creature, Leapers normally move slowly and will also slowly traverse rooms if you open doors for them. When provoked, Leapers will do as their name suggest and can clear large distances very quickly to do a whopping 90 damage to a drone. Fortunately they take a moment to recover from their attack, so if you can weather the first hit and escape you'll be OK. Leapers will sit still and shake when recovering from an attack jump. If a Leaper is injured or has lost sight of something it attacked it will regularly emit a telltale roar audible when you are in direct control of a drone, making it relatively easy to track where they are. 1 Trap, 2 Mines, or 10 rounds of Turret ammo will kill a Leaper.

  • Security Drone: Appearing as a boxy purple creature emitting a bright cone in front of it, Security Drones will actively look around any room they are in for a target. They move slightly faster than Leapers and are usually quick to go toward open doors. They only spot drones within their light cone; upon detecting one of your drones they take about a second and a half to engage, and will follow a target they have lost sight of to its last known position. Though their guns do not do much damage, they will continually attack until the target is destroyed, lost or they are destroyed. Security drones can also be heard while in direct control mode; they make quiet radio squelch noises that have no point of origin (possibly due to the similarity of your drones' communication systems?). If you can destroy a Security Drone without spacing it, it will drop 1-3 scrap, making them a relatively nonthreatening and lucrative enemy to hunt. 1 Mine, 1 Trap or 10 rounds of Turret ammo will kill a Security Drone. Radiation will also kill Security Drones.

  • Slime: Slimes appear as a bright green splatter on the floor of a ship. They spread throughout the vessel over time in a line toward your drones, do damage only by touch and slow any drone they've come into contact with temporarily down to a fifth of its top speed. While seemingly innocuous, it is my opinion that Slimes are the second most dangerous enemy in the game. It is their stealth that makes them deadly; they make no noise, Motion doesn't detect them and they can spawn out of walls and through closed doors. They have a propensity to target stationary drones such as ones using Generator or Motion. Slimes are immune to Lure but will be temporarily driven from a room with the use of Sonic, reappearing all at once in approximately 10 seconds after Sonic is deactivated. 1 Trap will clear 1 room of Slimes; this does not stop Slimes in other rooms from growing back into the just cleared room however. 10 rounds of Turret ammo will kill one slime square; this is an extremely inefficient method of getting rid of Slime, though it can be used to clear a doorway in a pinch. Mines are not detonated by Slime. Ship turrets will eliminate any Slime in their respective rooms, but it may continue to grow back in after a brief period.

  • Swarm: Swarms appear just as their name suggests, as a mass of ~20 small creatures swarming around a single point. Swarms have a larger search radius than Leapers or Security Drones and are highly aggressive. They will occasionally attack doors, opening and destroying them after about 15 seconds. They can also travel through vents into any other room with a vent in it, making them highly unpredictable enemies and harder to corral than the others. As if that wasn't bad enough, those same vents can also spawn new Swarms on occasion. Swarms emit a very noticable buzzing sound when in direct control mode, giving you ample warning of their presence in adjacent rooms. If you should happen to hear the buzzing stop, be very aware of all rooms with vents in them and close them off as necessary. Swarms move faster than unupgraded drones and will swiftly overwhelm them; if you have a drone being attacked by a Swarm, move it away from your other drones and try to lock it in a room with no available exits. Do not try to bring a drone under attack by a Swarm into your ship! 1 Trap, 1 Mine and 20-40 rounds of Turret ammo will kill a Swarm; the Turreted drone will take damage however. Swarms are vulnerable to and will die from extended exposure to radiation.

Environmental Hazards
  • Vaccuum: Nature abhors this; so does everything else on a derelict. A room under the effects of vaccuum is denoted by diagonal yellow lines. When you open an airlock that isn't connected to your boarding ship or shoot a room with Cannon, everything inside that room will be instantly and irretrievably sucked out into space. Anything entering a vaccuumed room will be obliterated. Ship components such as fuel access ports, computer interfaces, ship upgrade slots and generator ports also run the risk of being damaged when the initial vaccuum event takes place. Never navigate your drones into a room under the effects of vaccuum. Ever.

  • Radiation: shown as diagonal red lines, radiation will slowly flood a room exposed to space or suffering the effects of a pipe breach. Radiation does damage to drones over time; the more filled with radition a room is the faster it deals damage. Eventually a room will be noted as completely filled with radiation in your console. These rooms are very hazardous; either use a drone with an upgraded Shield to ignore radiation's effects, use the ship upgrade Decontaminate on the room (and make sure more radiation won't just simply spread into it) or avoid the room altogether. Radiation, like vaccuum, will spread into adjacent rooms if the doors are open.
Commandeering and You
Your starting ship is in pretty good shape, but it will inevitably break down. Upgrade slots will cease functioning and the video feed will start to cut out more often. What do you do? Why, you hijack another derelict and make it yours! Commandeering a new vessel will always give you a fresh video feed, but there are some other things to consider when taking over a new ship.

Requirements
To sucessfully commandeer a derelict, the ship must:
1) Be free of all hostile life forms
2) Have no uncontrollable vacuums (asteroid or Cannon hits)
3) Have no uncontrolled radiation spread
4) Have no failing airlocks; note that while docked with a derelict you can dock with a failing airlock to stabilize it, but once you leave it will continue to destabilize and eventually break, leading to problem 2, uncontrollable vacuum.

Scrap Load
Does this new vessel have the capacity to carry as much scrap as your current one? Some of the bigger Barges can carry hundreds of scrap; this is a bit excessive in my opinion. Try to aim for at least 30-40 minimum, unless it's a ship that has upgrades you really want and can afford the storage squeeze on.

Fuel Load
More important than any other aspect of commandeering is how much propulsion and jump fuel your ship can hold. Going lower than your current ship's amount is not recommended.

Upgrade Slots

Does the ship you're about to commandeer have at least enough upgrade slots to run the upgrades you currently possess? Does this ship have a "firmly installed" or permanent upgrade that you really want but can't tow to your current ship?
When to Hold, When to Fold
Sometimes it just isn't worth exploring the entirety of a derelict. You dock, there's a room chock full of goodies and fuel, but it's a 400+ year old Lethal-rating with 4 infestation types. Maybe it's better to just take what you can easily reach and get out with all your drones intact? Or perhaps you forgot to close a door somewhere and now your Gather/Stealth/Tow drone is a smoking wreck with a Swarm hovering over it. When is it prudent to cut your losses and move on?

It's up to you to judge whether or not sticking around is a good idea. One thing to very seriously consider is the longer you hang around on a derelict, the odds of doors breaking, pipes breaking and airlocks failing gets higher. Also, if Slime is one of the infestation types the longer you wait the more it will block off the vessel from your drones. Keep these things in mind while you are scrounging around for scrap or a couple points of fuel; will the risk you take be worth what you can earn?
DON'T PANIC (Read here if panicked)
Something is happening! You don't know what it is! What do you do?! Well for one, don't freeze up or panic. I've listed here some common occurences that you'll see or hear for quick reference.


A loud groaning noise
That means there's about to be a radiation leak somewhere on the derelict. If you have a Ship Surveyor with the weakspot upgrade, rooms with yellow, orange or red dashed lines will give you a good estimate of what rooms might suffer the breakdown. Get all of your drones out of those rooms ASAP. If you're not sure, "end" to bring your drones back to the safety of r1, then wait for the breach to occur and deal with it accordingly.


A loud PIP-PIP noise
This means your console is telling you something cautionary. It could be a door that can't close, radiation filling a room completely, a vaccuum in a room or a number of other things. When you hear the PIP PIP, look at your console for any alerts.


A bell sounding
Indicates that radiation is spreading somewhere in the derelict you're salvaging. Look at your main video feed to determine where the radiation is, close doors and change your plans accordingly.


Whirrr, pause, whirrr coming from one room
Did you remember to turn off the ship turrets?


Constant whirring or thrumming in a room
Indeterminate. Harmless background noise, but could potentially mask something hazardous.


Door d# has stopped responding/door has turned red
This means the door cannot be used anymore. If it is closed and you need it open, Pry will work. However, once Pryed open it cannot be closed again. Be mindful of any unresponsive open doors when trying to herd critters around.


Door d# is under attack/door is blinking red
This means a Swarm is attacking the door and within about 15 seconds will break it open and move into the adjacent room! Get your drones out of the room! Close all other adjacent rooms off ASAP! Make sure to check for vents in any of the rooms you're fleeing to, or vents in the room they're attempting to break into.


Asteroid on collision course
Note the time left and the percentages of each room getting hit. As the time gets closer the percentages will change, usually going down for all but one room. Get whatever you may need from those rooms and then avoid them, or herd a critter into a room with a high hit chance to space it. If the rooms listed are question marks, bring your drones back to r1, close r1, wait for it to hit or miss and then continue accordingly.


Distant gunfire when in drone camera feed
You have killed something using one of your drones with a Turret upgrade or with the ship turrets. Make sure to turn the ship turrets off before you go exploring in their room!


A buzzing noise nearby when in drone camera feed
There is a Swarm nearby. Attempt to discern what room the Swarm is in (if it is safe to do so) by adjusting the facing of your drone; when you can hear it equally in both ears/from both speakers, the direction your drone is facing is the room the Swarm is in. Plan accordingly.


Brief radio static when in drone camera feed
Sounds made by Security Drones. If you hear intermittent radio noises you can almost be certain one of your infestations is Security Drones.


Nearby roar when in drone camera feed
You've probably injured or irritated a Leaper somewhere close. Remember that if using Mines, they take two to kill!


4 PIPs along with squiggly static noise
One of your drones is under attack! Quickly look at the console to determine which one it is and do something fast!
Conclusion
Duskers is a great game and one I enjoy immensely. The replayability of this game is fantastic due to the random nature of the systems, universes and upgrades. I hope this guide will be of use to players both new and old! Feel free to comment (especially you Dev types out there that can correct things) and add your suggestions!

AND REMEMBER:

Close those doors!
Turn off those ship turrets!
Turn on those Shields!
76 Comments
Jackpine Savage  [author] 1 Mar, 2024 @ 9:26pm 
Be smart about your travels, and prioritize collecting fuel and returning it to your ship. Otherwise you have restart!
kittyboi 23 Feb, 2024 @ 11:27am 
how to avoid getting softlocked by lack of fuel? :d
Abarai Renji 18 Aug, 2022 @ 8:14pm 
Thanks for the tips! This game for me is awesome. Hope this game can go further and enhance more. The concept is awesome!
Moist_Evaporation 5 Jul, 2022 @ 9:36pm 
bro gaming
Spamton 1 May, 2022 @ 3:45am 
i was exploring a ship that had no turrets but i could distinctly hear the whir, pause, whir, of a powered turret. the only enemy was a leaper and it had already been launched into space through the best weapon ever, THE AIRLOCK. any ideas of what could cause the sound to play in the absence of a turret or enemy?
Rieux 4 Dec, 2021 @ 7:53pm 
Just one quibble, Swarms can't actually use vents to travel between rooms, nor even enter vents. Vents act purely as spawners for Swarms (though they'll only spawn one big 20-unit Swarm or two small 10-unit Swarms--for anyone curious, the exact rules are on the Vent page on the Duskers wikia/fandom.) And an upgrade can break at 1% damaged, but only if it's already turned yellow with one exclamation mark. No white upgrade will ever break regardless of the failure percentage, it always turns yellow first.

Great content other than that minor stuff, lots of solid advice for new players.
SovereignRogue 28 Oct, 2021 @ 11:53am 
Would be good to mention the risks involved with exploring outposts. Transporter receiver signals are unreliable and can cause several drones to be lost, unless you have several drones with the teleport upgrade...
8ball 22 Oct, 2021 @ 1:22pm 
i forgot i changed my setting and ran into a swarm immediately upon a reset
CaptainZ & the A.L.P.H.A.s 4 Oct, 2021 @ 6:25pm 
Also no entry on planetside bases REQUIRING an transporter to access, and how some bases require you to pilot a specific type of ship (e.g. Government or Military)? Would think that would be helpful info to have here. Otherwise great guide.
CaptainZ & the A.L.P.H.A.s 4 Oct, 2021 @ 6:22pm 
@Jackpine Salvage @Tracker Enemies CAN enter your boarding ship. I know that Leapers can, and is in fact required for one of the missions (though you know how Leapers are in that regard, Lure is recommended). There is also a fifth "enemy" type that you can bring home with you: the Dog!

Dogs are both enemies and yet not at the same time. Dogs ARE enemies in that they prevent ship commendeering, and they CAN be killed by anything that kills enemies (traps/turrets/etc.), sadly sometimes neccesary to commendeer. They are NOT hostile however, and so do NOT appear on your infestation counter when starting a mission for this reason. They move as fast as swarms between open doors, so try to keep them confined near your docking ship. IF you manage to bring one aboard your docking ship as you leave, you will get a "non hostile entity detected" message on the summary screen, and you will be rewarded by panting and barking noises on your main map screen.