DRG h5a: new hyperalloy stubby OC vs haz 5 all modifiers (true solo engy)

No bosco, one iron will revive. Featuring hyperalloy assembly stubby + overdrive booster shard diffractor + plasma bursters in Magma Core.

NOTE: The opening build overlay mistakenly shows born ready instead of strong arm. I am lazy so that error is staying in :)

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This is my magnum opus: the greatest run I've ever played, and I'll never top it. Time to unsub because it's all down hill from here.

This is the culmination of about a week's worth of intense failed attempts, clocking in at about ~175ish runs to secure the win (it was so many I stopped counting). Yes - actually that many, although lots of attempts died within the first minute because this difficulty is cursed with a defenseless build like this one.

This is a horrific challenge run the likes of which I will try and stop myself from attempting ever again. It broke me.

The goal was simple: beat a 10 aquarq magma core mission with hyperalloy/overdrive/plursters (boscoless) on haz5 with all modifiers. Perks and exact builds are free to tweak as desired, but I (in my infinite evilness) restricted the use of any buff beers / jetboots / any positive modifiers. It's just pain and suffering the whole way through.

And by golly was it a nightmare.

Player vulnerability makes plasma bursters much more dangerous than ever, but the real kicker is that the 90% grunt composition that h5a throws at you simply don't die in a reasonable amount of time with this build. The lack of breach cutter safety is extremely noticeable and death is a split second away at any time. I had to tweak this stubby setup about a dozen times until I found something that worked for this specific challenge (the secret was trying to maximize electricity and ignore weakpoints, because the initial recoil makes you miss weakpoints anyway). Things that needed to die fast were for the shard, and plursters were basically just to try and buy a little bit of breathing room or attempt to destroy swarmer waves that I couldn't handle otherwise. It's a loadout that cruises through haz5 and is competent through 6x2, but is utterly wrecked by h5a and requires every fiber of brain cells turned up to 11 to survive.

Thankfully platforms are overpowered. This run only survives because of some real fancy bug repellent placements and plat parkour and plat mining and other niche techniques like "plat scaffolding to combat earthquakes". I was constantly out of platforms and just about every single one I placed was critical to buying me the space needed to breathe. There are some really neat technical subtleties in this video to keep an eye out for if you're into that sorta thing, and I highly recommend paying a close eye to what my platforms ended up doing as that's really how I ended up winning. When I say this run is my magnum opus, I kinda mean it. I reached some serious flow state and I think my platform usage definitely was in a top form that I've never hit before nor will I likely hit again. I hope that doesn't sound egotistical because I actually want to describe the opposite: I am so impressed watching back my own run (holy narcissist) that I'm confident future runs will fail to live up to the heights this suffering forged out of me. (Still sounds egotistical lmao)

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Hyperalloy OC:

It's decent. I think I like EM-Refire better (especially into h5a) because the initial recoil spike basically adds a short delay for when you actually start dealing damage. Once it cools off and you get it under control it has some nice sustain against tanks with decent range (though in this instance everything is so tanky that my shard diffractor really had to take over for this usual strength). Attempting to shoot down a menace or a praetorian on this difficulty makes it feel very, very weak. And it honestly is horrific into grunt guards too lol (and you see a lot of those here).

For h5a specifically: it's not enough for grunt waves on its own, and is absolutely abysmal into swarmers. You'll see me weaken things with a plasma burster or turrets in order to get anywhere close to the threshold where it cleans up, because on its own it simply doesn't cut it. Some of this is just the recoil downside making grunt clear worse as the heads are difficult to flick through in the time you get before they munch. I'm sure it feels better on a much more balanced difficulty like 6x2, but here it was very noticeably painful to use.

I'd probably tweak the build a bit (taking both damage mods, for instance) if not on h5a / not on this particular challenge run.

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If you ever feel the desire to get humbled by the vanilla game, try this challenge out. Seriously. It broke my brain. It broke my spirit. I'm glad it's over. I think the final run turned out super fun to watch - enjoy :)

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Loadout:
21211 Hyperalloy Assembly
21313 over jrive boosta
Plasma Bursters

Perks:
Dash / Iron Will
Resupplier / Deep Pockets / Strong Arm

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Highlights:

0:00 Build
20:35 Final stats page