DRG 6x2: Escort - no sides lost (true solo scout)

No deaths, no bosco. Featuring min clips M1k + double barrel boomstick + pheromone grenades in Sandblasted Corridors.

This is a "flawless" doretta run, i.e. not losing a single side. I encountered a bulk, a nemesis, a few grabbers, several spitballers and breeders, and the new septic spreader. There's nothing really all that impressive about managing to keep all sides intact, and calling it flawless is really pretentious as hell, but I guess it's something. A flawless doretta is absolutely NOT a good thing nor is it worth aspiring to. HP is a resource, and you should spend it. The final plate is tanky as hell so you have a substantial buffer so it's okay to lose some, and losing a plate sets out a damage wave that clears a LOT of enemies nearby. Just beware dets and position accordingly if you're down to your last plate. In optimal gameplay (for solo at least), you should be using this resource aggressively and not really care too much about repairs in most cases.

I thought escort might be another decent stress test for double barrel, and it certainly passed with flying colors. It slaps. It's good. Unless it gets nerfed I sincerely doubt I am going to return to jumbo shells. The AOE wave is also really nice against enemies on the drilldozer in particular, because they tend to clump up naturally and will all easily die. It's fantastic against praetorians, which make killing those threats MUCH quicker and thus lets you move on to the next threats ASAP. This gives you faster access to ignite their death clouds for rapid clear, as well as gives you more free time to do other things that need doing. The speed gains over jumbo are particularly strong in escort, where you're on a constant hidden clock and have a lot to do all at once.

Double barrel also deletes sand sharks from existence even while they are buried underground, which is something that jumbo can't really do. This is quite fast and easy/consistent to accomplish, which is another plus.

I know my last (non EDD) 6x2 escort was sandblasted as well; I wanted a different biome but unfortunately this was the only escort on the entire map at the time I was able to play. The run itself had a fair number of mistakes throughout. Lots of missed shots and questionable positioning choices, but luckily pheromones remain disgustingly overpowered when spammed.

P.S.
I'm taking credit for the cheeky nemesis kill because I had a feeling doretta would run it over and she did. Don't hate the player but I'm taking full credit. 100% skill B)

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Random things:
I forgot about the mini meteor plagueheart(s) :( In fairness, I hate the small ones because they're super annoying solo without slayer stout.
Not quite sure if breaking around the oil shale to drop it on the ground like I did for the first fuel tank is actually faster or not. It felt okay, but I'm not convinced it bought any time. In multiplayer, I'm a firm believer in the following fuel stop distribution: scout goes off and mines, driller EPCs/C4s/drills out shale onto the ground, and engy/gunner each pick up a canister and pick up the driller's handiwork from the floor. EPC in particular is a must have IMO, as it speeds up fuel stops immensely. Chunks on the ground go much much faster than directly from the wall. With that particular setup, you can be in and out of the fuel stop in no more than 30-40 seconds flat, launching doretta before scout can even finish or before bugs spawn. Without driller in solo, I'm not quite sure if its worth mining the wall around shale (if you have one tap terrain). It's definitely worth dropping the bulk of it using gravity by shaleing strategically, but whether or not you do that by hand I think needs more testing.
I went down to 1hp on the side during rock phase. Pretty close to losing flawless lol.
Unfortunately, I think it's official that the season 4 patch degraded my performance a fair bit. It's par for the course of the game getting tougher to run with each major patch, but it's still disappointing. The septic spreader is laggier than the sludge pump, and even though I don't find them to be particularly dangerous enemies, I focus them early because they ARE dangerous to my framerate lmao. I've reenabled most of my perf mods and I'm still getting like 30-40 fps even with only like 30 bugs on screen :(. It's unfortunate the devs don't really care to optimize much like they used to back in the day, but oh well. It's mostly on me for having a 2010 CPU and not a supercomputer I guess...

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Loadout:
23112 Minimal Clips
12233 Double Barrel
Pheromone Grenades

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

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Highlights:

0:00 Build
0:51 Mission start
2:26 Starting doretta
4:06 Breaching into refuel room
6:44 Beginning refuel
7:35 End refuel
15:26 Stabilized at heartstone
17:47 Air vent nitra lmao
18:52 Starting heartstone
25:04 Extract
26:16 Final stats page