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Escort Duty
Escort icon
Mission Details
Cave Type Linear
Deposit Type M.U.L.E
Objective(s) Escort the Drill,
Crack the Shell,
Return Ommoran Heartstone
Payout Credit 900
XP Payout Experience Points 2500
This page is possibly not up to date.
This page is possibly not up to date. It was last updated for Update 33: New Frontiers

Escort Duty is a mission type in Deep Rock Galactic.

Escort the Drilldozer while it makes its way to the Ommoran Heartstone.

Protect the Drilldozer

Escort Duty involves escorting a Drilldozer (also known as the Dozer, and affectionately named "Doretta" by the Dwarves), a large automated drilling machine, protecting it from attacking Creatures and repairing damage done to it. The Drilldozer's health is segmented into three parts: the left side, right side, and body. The left side will take damage until it breaks, then the right side, then the body. Damage dealt to any part of the Drilldozer will only affect the active segment. However, it can only be repaired from the area of the Drilldozer it maps to. When a segment reaches 0%, Mission Control will announce that the Drilldozer has taken permanent damage. The damaged segment cannot be repaired anymore and the next segment will begin taking damage. If the Drilldozer's body runs out of health, the mission fails.

The Drilldozer's speed is determined by how many Creatures and Dwarves are nearby. The more Creatures are present, the slower it will move, leaving it vulnerable to attack.

Fuel tank in use

Fuel tank in use.

When the Drilldozer runs out of fuel, it must be refueled by extracting oil from Oil Shale. This is done using the Fuel Canisters taken from back of the Drilldozer. The beams emitted from the Canisters liquefy the shale, which automatically collects the fuel. Oil Shale can be mined normally (though it requires four pickaxe hits to break), but Dwarves cannot pick up the chunks. A delay similar to laser mining the ore is also applied when chunks are collected with the Canisters. It is faster to use the Canisters on the Oil Shale directly. Once a Canister is filled, it must be inserted back into the Drilldozer. When it is fully refueled, the Drilldozer must be manually restarted to let it continue on to the Ommoran Heartstone.

The Drilldozer will eventually arrive at the Ommoran Heartstone, a large spherical structure. The Drilldozer must be manually started again to begin drilling into the Heartstone. Swarms will spawn frequently throughout this entire process. The Ommoran Shell's lifebar is divided in 4 parts, the first two phases last about 60s, the second phase last about 75s, the last phase last about 100s, for a total of ~300 seconds (5 minutes) with the interval between the different phases. Each time a phase ends, the heartstone releases an explosion which will heavily damage the players the closer they are to the drilled part of the core.

Ommoran beamer

Doretta being damaged by an Ommoran Beamer.

Phase One: Swarm trigger.
Phase Two: Summons floating rocks to slam into Doretta - these deal extreme damage but can be destroyed before they hit the Dozer.
Phase Three: No longer throws rocks but causes another swarm trigger with increased enemy presence.
Phase Four: Starts spawning Ommoran Beamers: large destructible crystal towers which fire laser beams at the Dozer, dealing constant damage. On top of this, a slow trickle of huge swarms of enemies constantly spawn in until the drilldozer is either destroyed or if 'till the Ommoran Heartstone is ours.

At the conclusion of Phase 4, The Heartstone will emit a shockwave that instantly kills all nearby enemies and without any friendly fire. The Heartstone can then be extracted and strapped onto the back of the M.U.L.E., where Drop Pod extraction process can begin. The Drilldozer is retired at this point and must be left behind.

Combat

Health and Armor

Flying Rock

Effective

Health Scaling

Hazard Level
Normal Mission DD EDD
1 2 3 4 5 3 3.5 4.5 5 5.5
Player Count Dwarfcount1 to Dwarfcount4 175 250 275 300 300 275 275 300 300 300

Attacks

Flying Rock

Suicide Slam
AoE Attack
Area Damage Hazard Level
Normal Mission DD EDD
1 2 3 4 5 3 3.5 4.5 5 5.5
Player Count Dwarfcount1 25 35 60 100 140 60 75 115 140 150
Dwarfcount2 25 40 65 107.5 150 65 80 122.5 150 160
Dwarfcount3 25 45 70 115 160 70 85 130 160 170
Dwarfcount4 25 50 75 125 170 75 90 140 170 180
Details
Damage Type Kinetic
Dwarf for scale (1

Radius: 2.5 m
Maximum Damage Radius: 2.5 m
Minimum Area Damage: 100 %

Cave

Compared to the caves seen in other mission types, most of the "rooms" are not connected by tunnels or Compressed Dirt barriers. The only three ways to proceed it is by accompanying the Drilldozer, which is programmed to follow a path to the Ommoran Hearthstone or if pickaxed or drilled through it if you played by driller. This encourages the team to stay by the Dozer and protect it. Wherever the Dozer digs creates large tunnels in its wake, which can be navigated through later and are often necessary to use for the Extraction phase. The Dozer will only ever run out of fuel in the middle of a room, making Oil Shales easier to locate and collect. The Heartstone itself is found in a larger room and is fairly easy to spot given its dark red glow.

Big potential cautious warnings

One big danger with the drilldozer if that if there is a Glyphid Bulk Detonator after it, it will actually take immediately instant permanent damage to the drilldozer no matter how much hull it has on any of it’s three segments if the last final blow was in the damage radius zone.

One other potential pitfall with dorreta is that you can actually do segment damage but not enough for permanent damage but %45 of it is gone, %55 is there if you order a Resupply Pod and landed directly on the Drilldozer, that is not even half way down from destroyed, but still be careful on where you place it in the first place.

Comparison on each fatal attacks

If we compare the differences between each other and another, the bulk detonator’s final blow does 100% to 0% even on lowest difficulty where as Resupplier does 45% doing not nearly as much. Repairing it will still take less time than building a single pipeline on On-site Refining, but it is still enough to down a dwarf standing in the danger zone and you will die.

Objectives

Primary Objective

  • Push button on Heavy Cargo Drop
  • Escort the Drilldozer
  • Refuel the Drilldozer 1-2 times
    • Continue escort
  • Crack the Shell of the Ommoran Heartstone
  • Return the Ommoran Heartstone

The amount of times the Drilldozer will need to be refueled depends on the mission length.

Length Complexity Refueling Stops Caverns
Cave length 2 Cave complexity 2 1 5 cave rooms
Cave length 3 Cave complexity 3 2 7 cave rooms

Secondary Objective

Fossil Collect 10 Alien Fossil

Apoca bloom Collect 15 Apoca Bloom

Boolo cap Collect 20 Boolo Cap

Ebonut Collect 14 Ebonut

Fleas Exterminate 10 Fester Flea

Gunk Seed Collect 12 Gunk Seed

Hollomite Collect 35 Hollomite

Gallery

Trivia

  • This mission type was added in Update 32: Roughnecks At Work.
  • Repairing the Drilldozer uses various tools instead of the typical hammer used when constructing/repairing objects, including a pipe wrench and an oil can.
  • It is possible to pet the Drilldozer by pressing the [USE] ("E" by default) key on its "head", found at the top of its body behind the drill.
  • Pressing the Salute key while holding a Fuel Canister causes the dwarf to say a beer-holding salute line.


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