DRG 6x2ι' EDD: "Gutless Grave" (solo scout)

Yes bosco, three deaths. Featuring min clips m1k + special powder boomstick + IFGs in Sandblasted Corridors.

This week's dive caught my eye - refinery monkey ✅, interesting defensive bubbles (elite/shield disrupt) ✅, barely any dreads ✅✅✅, hard stuff rewarded with a victory lap in stage 3 ✅.

I reset stage 1 twice, partially because I needed time to readjust my brain back into DRG headspace (played extremely sloppy and couldn't aim without a warm up), but mostly because I failed to start the black box before the swarm while trying to get the pipes fully built. In my rusty, crab champions adled state, I couldn't pull that pacing off so in my third attempt I settled for just two pipelines instead and called it good enough.

This dive is part of an ongoing bosco redemption arc, and I'll have you know I even remembered to swap off his light upgrade for an extra rocket while I was at the bosco terminal, so that's how you know it's a hardcore scout/bosco love fest going on. It's a good thing too, because I needed him to make up for my mistakes in stage 2.

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Stage 1: As stated earlier, basically the only goal was to get the black box started before the swarm announcement. Having all three pipes laid and having bosco be building them while black boxing should have been doable on special powder, but unfortunately I'm bad at spowder and my pacing was rank. If the swarm ends up triggering, you risk getting dragged down by tanky elites that waste even more time because starting the black box = holding e = difficult if things are alive. Honestly the worst part of my three stage 1 attempts was just pure menace/elite menace spam, and they slowed me down enough to want to reset. (Talking about the runs you guys won't see is probably something most people don't care about, but fuck it I care for my own archive so you're stuck with it lol).

Anyway, my black box went pretty smoothly for an elite threat hold, and I judge that based on my full expectation of spending iron will near the later half of the bubble to secure a free resupply. Honestly I should be more hesitant to lean into IW in elite threat because elite guards exist and their knockback is brutal, but I didn't really think about that until writing this up. Elite mackies are pretty brutal however, and I was fortunate to only see one badass hombre while in the ring (and this elite brundle was the ultimate cause of my IW).

I'm at the arrogant stage of my pheroless scout career where I feel confident I can brute force it with an IW pop, and so it's really only when you get the full salvage gauntlet of doing it twice (therefore not having IW for both) where things get spicy.

Stage 2: so this is where things get spicy. Skipping the boring room clear portion because I've done it a million times and there's nothing new to say - the bubbles are the main barrier here. My only goal in the uplink: preserve iron will. Managed to pull it off with a clutch red sugar excursion using the brokenness of special powder to get it very quickly without losing time. Overall I got pretty lucky with spawns and it went relatively smoothly.

The refuel bubble is unfortunately where I screwed up royally as this is a splendid example of a run where I misplace the resupply and suffered greatly for it. It was too close to the center and bugs could just shortcut from the resup to the pillar, essentially making BOTH unusable as high ground spots. Making things worse is that my greed to avoid the timed wave / starting quickly means I missed that the slope on the one side also was too close to the pillar, resulting in bugs yet again being able to make that shortcut. This poor planning / anti-terraform laziness is especially punishing because these are easy mistakes made while not under pressure, so it's just on me being a dumb dumb when I really should know better by now.

Dying the second time was very brutal because we see the great villain bosco lazily waste time picking up his lone, handsome, dare I say rogueish hero laying asploon upon the floor. This dipshit robot doesn't understand the time pressure, and just look at the rate that stupid bar ticks down my god man have some self respect you're a robot you should be able to chat gpt me up from the floor instantly while simultaneously creating fake political propaganda to trick boomers and single handedly destroying the heartwarming SEO novel writing industry that plagues online recipe sites.

Stage 3: bosco/scout/spowder/aq/dread to skip swarms. yep

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Loadout:
23112 Minimal Clips
21313 Special Powder
IFG

Perks:
Dash / Iron Will
Resupplier / Deep Pockets / Born Ready

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Highlights:

0:00 Build
0:25 Stage 1
4:16 Black box
14:03 Stage 2
34:18 Uplink
37:34 Refuel
43:51 Stage 3
55:35 Final stats page