Shellback, Stingtail, Core Spawn, Cave Leech /
Grabber, Guard, a Glyphid with no conscience /

Question, what do these things have all in common?

Everybody knows I’m a motherfit’s almost time for Hoxxes Halloween 2024!

You heard it here first: the seasonal spook-tacular is coming back! Hoxxes Halloween 2024 kicks off on Thursday, October 24th at 13:00 CET, and it’ll run until Thursday, November 7th. It’s the most terrifying thing to happen to Deep Rock Galactic since that one time a random joined your lobby, ordered a full round of Leaf Lover’s Special, and then left.

Let’s take a ghastly glimpse at the horrors that await you.


The full moon shines with an ominous glare, its frigid light taking a hostile sheen as it filters through the Space Rig bay window. You feel the hair on your neck stand up, your skin itching with a restless violence. A sharp animal rage flares through your limbs. What is this madness?

Not to worry! It’s simply a harmless side effect of the asbestos fireproofing used in the new Creeper Wolf Mask headgear, which you can unlock during this year’s Halloween event. All you have to do is complete a special assignment, and this completely harmless hat is yours to keep!


Is this your first Hoxxes Halloween? Have you been too terrified to step foot in the caves during previous years? Not to worry, you’ve got the chance to earn all the Halloween cosmetics from past events. And this year, we’re pretty sure we didn’t forget to include the jack-o-lantern hat! Complete the Last Year’s Horrors assignment, and this creepy clutch of headgear will be yours forever.


In a disturbing turn of paranormal events, there seem to be cackling skulls flying around the caves. While alarming on a spiritual level, Management sees a golden business opportunity: These skulls represent a free source of valuable bone meal! Shoot down the skulls and deposit them during your mission, and we’ll reward your team with a double mission performance point bonus.

Please disregard any rumors that these skulls are the restless ghosts of former DRG employees. This is completely unfounded gossip, likely started by labor agitators to disrupt productivity. Remember: shoot first, ask questions never.


We’re getting the Space Rig all dressed up for Halloween!
We spent a lot of money on it, too. Here’s the budget for the decorations:

Bats $200
Pumpkins $150
Ghosts $800
Candles $3,600
Lights $150

Someone who is good at the economy please help us budget this better next time. Management is pissed

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That’s all for now! Remember, Hoxxes Halloween 2024 kicks off on Thursday, October 24th at 13:00.
See you there – if you dare.

With Love,
-The Spooky Ghost Ship Crew

Wondering what video to watch while you eat today? We’ve got you covered. In just a few hours, Ghost Ship Games is going live as part of The Spill – a brand new joint developer stream from a bunch of cool game studios across Scandinavia.

We’ll be joining the developers behind Satisfactory, Valheim, Goat Simulator, and plenty others (including a couple Ghost Ship Publishing studios) for a big ‘ol dev talk jamboree. Part hangout, part showcase, all good stuff. The Spill kicks off today (Tuesday, October 8th) at 17:00 CEST.

You can expect things like:

• Developer Q&As
  
• Exciting announcements
  
• A goofy segment we suggested as a joke but they let us put it in the program

The Spill will be hosted by Snutt Treptow, Community Manager at Coffee Stain Studios. Here’s Snutt now, to explain what the event’s all about!

For our part, we’ll be joining with a couple different segments – one talking about Ghost Ship Publishing (and the business of game publishing in general), another talking about our community and weekly streams, and then that silly one we mentioned above. Hehe

Down below is the full schedule (please note all times are in CEST). If you want to see it with times adjusted to your own time zone, you can click right here[www.the-spill.com].

Once again, it all starts today at 17:00 CEST. You can tune in via our own platforms, as we’ll be broadcasting it directly to the Ghost Ship Games Twitch[www.twitch.tv] and Youtube channels. And of course, if you can’t catch it live, a recording of the whole thing will be available after.

Hope to see you there!

With love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

P.S. if the Steam post says the event is live now (even if it's before 17:00 CEST), it's because I forgot to check a box before publishing, to note the correct start time. and now it won't let me change that start time without deleting the whole event, which sounds like a hassle plus it's time for lunch

Button up your Lederhosen, put on your cherished Tyrolean hat, and report for duty. The first-ever official ROCKTOBERFEST is live! The celebrations will run for two weeks – Rocktoberfest ends at 13:00 CEST on October 10th.

All the meaty details are in the preview post, but here’s the quick run-down:

• The brand-new Brass Wurstblower hat is now available, provided you’re willing to work for it. Unlock it and dazzle your colleagues with brassy extravagance.
  
• All previous Rocktoberfest headgear is available, too – just finish the ‘Last Year’s Lager’ assignment.
  
• Forget your Lederhosen at home? Fret not. If you don’t have it already, you can earn this armor set by completing the ‘Hunt for Lederhosen’ assignment.
  
• Enjoy the proteinaceous taste of Best Wurst Beer – this meaty delight is back on tap at the Abyss Bar. It’s the beer you can chew!™
  
• Earn double Performance Pass points each mission by locating and depositing a Lost Mug while you’re down in the mines.
  
• Sit back and savor the brand-new ROCKTOBERFEST banners hanging in the Space Rig, along with all the other seasonal decorations. But remember to clock out before you savor them. No savoring on the company’s dime.

All the riches of Hoxxes await you. Last one in the mines is a leaf lover!

With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

You did it.

Your prayers and protests have been answered. After years of trying, you finally pulled it off.

The chorus of a thousand dwarven voices finally reached the rigid ear of Management – who have, after much deliberation, agreed to rename the annual Oktoberfest celebration to “ROCKTOBERFEST.”


While the name is new and shiny, the traditions of Rocktoberfest remain the same: the Space Rig decorations are still coming back, Best Wurst Bier is on tap in the Abyss Bar in all its meaty glory, and a whole harvest of event rewards are up for grabs once again.

The first-ever official Rocktoberfest event goes live on Thursday, September 26th at 13:00 CEST. It’ll run until October 10th.

Time for a sneak peek at what's in store.

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The first-ever Rocktoberfest demands a magnificent hat to mark such an occasion. It is with great pleasure that we present this year’s special seasonal headgear: the Brass Wurstblower.

While Rocktoberfest is active, you can unlock the Brass Wurstblower by completing an assignment, at which point the hat will be permanently added to your inventory. Call it the meats of your labor.


It wouldn’t be Rocktoberfest without a big stein of Best Wurst Bier! Beer critics have described it as “baffling,” medical experts have called it “inadvisable,” and Miner’s Union representatives have called it “a liquid affront to labor.” We call it a meal in a mug!

Best Wurst Bier will be on tap at the Abyss Bar during all of Rocktoberfest. Finally, you can have your meat and drink it too.


After a recent safety certification course, we thought our precious shipment of Best Wurst Beer mugs would be safe in the hands of Longbeard Freight. But alas – those buffoons have dashed it once again! Countless beer mugs now lay scattered through the caves of Hoxxes.

We need your help to save Rocktoberfest. Recover a lost mug during your mission, and we’ll grant your whole team a doubled Mission Performance Point bonus as a reward. The mugs should show up on your Terrain Scanner when you get close due to all the lead-based paint.


Did you miss last year’s chance to snag the Lederhosen outfit? Fear not – we’re bringing ‘em back. If they’re not already in your inventory, the ‘Hunt for Lederhosen’ assignment will be available for you, so these delightful dungarees can be yours forever. Management is not responsible for explaining nor removing the musky smell associated with these lederhosen.


Seasoned miners may remember the Oktoberfests of years past, and the seasonal hats that came with them. But, as always, you’ve got another chance to scoop up those historic old hats. Complete the “Last Year’s Lager” assignment, and you’ll permanently unlock all past hats associated with Oktoberfest/Rocktoberfest!


As always, we’ve dressed up the Space Rig to suit the festivities. You’ll find beautiful harvest-time flowers and hay bales, inflatable sausages and pretzels, and of course, freshly-printed ‘ROCKTOBERFEST’ banners!

These banners didn’t come cheap, though. Due to the significant expenses related to reprinting the merchandise, Management will be suspending all pension payouts for retired employees. We trust everyone can agree this is a fair deal.

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There’s lots to look forward to! We can’t wait to see you next week to celebrate the first-ever Rocktoberfest in style. Remember, the event kicks off on Thursday, September 26th at 13:00 CEST.

Rock and Stone, and yodelay-hee-hoo!

With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

We are preparing for fun events and included a number of bugs fixes and weapon tweaks.

With Love,
The Ghost Ship Crew

- Fixed Gunner Shields being able to mess with rift spawning and ruin the encounter
- Fixed Boltshark's T5 Magnetic Shafts upgrade only affecting the direct damage
- Significantly increased the fear chance of the T5 Banshee Module upgrade on the Boltshark
- Removed the lock-on speed penalty and extended the lock duration on the Lok-1 Neuro-Lasso OC and changed it from Unstable to Balanced
- Made the Lok-1 Neuro-Lasso slowdown effect stack properly when taking the T4 Aperture Extension upgrade
- Fixed the Lok-1 Armor Breaking Module OC not showing up in the stats list in the equipment terminal
- Fixed missing footstep sounds and particles on Glyphids
- Fixed the rift crystal taking damage way before the health bar appeared on screen
- Fixed Sticky Flames making praetorian death gas unexplodable sometimes
- Fixed Season 1 data cores not redeeming for Season 1 scrip
- Fixed Data Rack challenges do not appear in Season 1 unless you completed the original Industrial Sabotage that is no longer available
- Fixed Shield Link goes into negative numbers upon wearing out
- Fixed that Destroy Eggs can spawn as a secondary in Dense Biozone biome
- Fixed that Sludge Pump AG Mixture Tier 5 mods have no effect on puddles
- Fixed dreadnaught pheromones making it less likely for enemies to target the player rather than more likely
- Drillevator tracking icon now disappears when it has landed

We’ve got another behind the scenes peek for you, this time on one of your most requested topics: cave generation. Let’s explore how the caves of Hoxxes get formed, thousands of times over again, every single day. Hope you like it!

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The moment you select a mission in Deep Rock Galactic, a cave is born.

Out in some invisible abstract, the game generates a seed. This is a procedurally-generated string of numbers containing the instructions for a brand new cave system. This random number decides what the caverns will look like, where you’ll find mineral deposits, and which fiends await you within. All of this is determined in a fraction of a second, flash generated when you lock in a mission.

This new cave is entirely unique. There are many like it, but this one is yours.

Caves – or more specifically, procedurally-generated caves – are what define Deep Rock Galactic. They set the stage for the action, giving life and lore to the game. They’re what make each dwarf’s traversal tools relevant, enabling each class’ function and identity. And the game owes a great deal of its replayability to the limitless pool of possible caves to explore.

So how’s it all work?
Let's dig into it.


Your cave seed gets generated right when you select a mission, but the actual cave comes together once you hop in the Drop Pod.

As you hurtle toward Hoxxes, the cave generator really gets to work. Cave systems come together like pearls on a string: one room at a time, connected by narrow, winding tunnels.

While the overall cave system is a unique result of random generation, the individual cave rooms are hand-crafted. If you imagine the cave generator as our automated chef, we still want real people to make sure it's cooking with high-quality ingredients. There are over 100 cave room templates to pick from -- but many of these templates also contain multiple internal 'randomizer' variants, so spawning the same template 20 different times would still produce 20 unique rooms.

Depending on the mission type, length and difficulty, these room templates could get warped, mirrored, or overlapped as the cave generator strings them together. On-site Refinery missions, for example, mash multiple rooms into one massive cavern. This is why you're likely to see huge herds of Lootbugs during these missions, because the entire cave's population all gets spawned at the same point.

But to understand how this generation really works, we need to take a closer look at one of these cave room templates.


A cave room template? A Windows 98 screensaver? There's no way to be sure.Every cave room template is composed of intersecting spheres, half spheres and flat planes. This cluster of shapes tells the cave generation engine what sort of volume to carve out of the solid rock, creating the rooms where each mission takes place.

The image above is the template for a cave room -- it’s the instructions that the procedural generator uses to create a unique cavern.

Here’s what you’re looking at:

• Green and yellow lines - These lines determine the general shape of the room. The yellow lines act as the outer boundary, the base layer upon which the cave generator applies ‘noise’ like textured surfaces and biome-specific rock patterns. The green lines are the inner boundary, limiting how far this ‘noise’ is allowed to fluctuate and push into the space itself.
  
• Small orange orbs - You can see these clustered in the center, surrounded by an outer yellow wireframe. They act as randomizer elements: they mark space that might either be hollowed out to create extra volume, or filled in with a random protruding rock formation. When this cave room is created, each of these has a random chance to be ‘activated’ or not. This way, each individual cave room can have an even greater degree of unique and unpredictable variety.
  
• Medium orange half-spheres - These half-domes, seen around the outer perimeter of the cave room, mark potential exit paths for the room. In game, these are the areas filled with compacted dirt. The cave generator engine uses these as nodes to link this room to the rest of the cave system via tunnels.
  
• Orange wireframe globe - The orange sphere in the background limits the size of the cavern. In the game, various cavern templates are sorted by different sizes. If the template in question pushes beyond this orange globe, we’ve got to either re-categorize its size, or cut it down to fit within the globe.

For comparison, directly below is this same cavern template once it’s been fed through the procedural generator and rendered in the game. This one template has dozens of possible major iterations, and would never look quite the same if we loaded it again.


A single cavern, viewed from the outside using the power of Developer Magic™.Early version of cavern and tunnel generation. Simplified wireframe structure elements are clearly visible.While a computer brain is great at randomly stitching a cave system together, it’s not so good at deciding what sort of cave is actually fun to play. That’s why we have human brains in charge of that part.

Anders Heindorff Frederiksen, Senior Game Designer at Ghost Ship Games, has been the human brain (and complete human person) designing the cave rooms since Season 03. In his words, he makes the building blocks that feed into the cave generator. He’s the one putting together the cave wireframes like we looked at just above.

As he sees it, there are a few key considerations in making a good cave: traversal, natural wayfinding, and dramatic experience.

A cave should require players to carve out terrain and use their traversal tools to get around, but it shouldn’t feel like a maze. While larger cave systems can get a little labyrinthine, individual rooms should still feel intuitive, with their shapes “funneling” players through to the next exit point. It’s about balance: not so simple that it gets boring, not so complex that it feels punishing. On top of all that, a cave room should just seem cool. That one comes down to gut feeling.

However, Anders can’t guarantee all of this by hand-sculpting it. He’s still got to make design decisions that can withstand random variation from the cave generator.

“Once I make a new room, I’ll load in and play it a bunch of times with Scout, then Driller, and so on. Sometimes I play through it and it really sucks. Then I’ve got to figure out what doesn’t work, and why,” he says. “It might be that the visibility’s bad, or the room is basically unplayable as some classes. I can only set the framework for the space before the generator gives its own spin on it, so there’s a lot of trial and error.”


Early experiments with room generation, and shaping cave surface textures.Concept sketches for different cave rooms and rock formations.Once we’ve got a cave all shaped and laid out, it needs noise and debris.

‘Noise’ is the technical term for shaping the cave’s walls, ceilings and floors. Basically, it’s about taking the perfect spherical shapes of the cave framework, and crumpling those surfaces into something more interesting and rock-like. ‘Debris’ refers to the process of sprinkling in assets like smaller rock formations, cobwebs, hazards, and the flora and fauna unique to the selected biome. Every biome has its own distinct patterns of noise and debris.

Robert Friis, Studio Art Director and co-founder of Ghost Ship Games (and also the voice of Mission Control) began working on different biomes just a few months into the game’s development. As he sees it, Hoxxes’ different biomes are an essential dimension of the game’s procedural generation.

"Firstly, they give a lot of character to the planet of Hoxxes. But it's also a big way for us to boost the game's replayability,” he says. “The exact same level will look and play differently depending on which biome is then added on top. It determines the enemies and interactive hazards you'll meet, things like fog and lighting can be completely different, even the shapes of the caves themselves will be different, and it's then up to the player to figure out how to navigate it.”

Your selected biome tells the procedural generator how to sculpt the cave’s surfaces, and how to populate it with flora and fauna. Each biome has a distinct texture palette: Magma Core, for example, applies sharp, ridged ceilings and craggy, jagged edges to most surfaces. Sandblasted Corridors, by contrast, is appropriately smoothed, eroded, and sparse.

Nobody at Ghost Ship Games is a professional geologist, so most aesthetic choices here come down to what looks and feels cool. Hoxxes’ biomes draw from real-world caves as well as fiction. Areas like Salt Pits, Glacial Strata, or even Crystalline Caverns (see the Naica Mine[en.wikipedia.org]) resemble something you might find here on earth – while a biome like Azure Weald reflects inspiration from the luminous landscapes of Avatar.

In essence, you could view biomes as the “finishing touches” department in cave generation. If the wireframe structure decides the shape of the cave, the noise and debris are the wallpaper and furnishings.


Very early versions of the game experimented with a blockier, Minecraft-esque terrain system.A prototype 'debris' test from early in development, experimenting with cave surface meshes.There’s some statistic out there about how you can connect six standard LEGO bricks in about a billion different ways.

You might think about Deep Rock Galactic’s procedural cave generator as working in a similar way. But instead of six bricks, it’s got a pool of 119 hand-crafted rooms and 10 biomes to pick from. Plus, it can warp and tweak and overlap all these elements before snapping them together.

The infinite cave engine runs around the clock, day in and day out, 365 days a year. On an average day, the cave generator produces about 150,000 new cave systems for players on Steam. Since the game launched to Early Access in 2018, Deep Rock Galactic players have generated and explored well over half a billion unique cave systems.

In some way, you could say this cave machine is the game’s main character. In any case, it’s the playmaker and dungeon master, setting the stage for all the rest. It’s the one to thank for the gigantic, dramatic caverns that stretch out into the darkness, as well as the idiotically narrow corridors that cost you the mission when you’re rushing to extract. It’s with you on every mission, whether it’s your first or your millionth.

It’ll be there as long as Hoxxes has minerals to mine, knitting new caves out in the endless dark.

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What was the biggest cave you’ve ever come across in Deep Rock Galactic? Let us know in the comments.

Also, if there’s another subject you’d like to learn about in the next Below Decks, we’d be happy to hear it. Thanks for reading!

It's a known fact that dwarves were riding barrels way before surfers stole the term.

And it's also a fact that the 2024 Space Beach Party seasonal event is now live!

You can drop in to Big Wave Galactic and enjoy the bodacious beach vibes until the event ends on August 15th at 13:00 CEST.

We put all the details in the preview post. But real quick, here’s what’s happening:

• Complete the Hoxxes Summer Cruise assignment to earn the new Tentacle Topper seasonal headgear.
  
• Collect all the previous Beach Party reward hats (yes, including the shark hat) via the Last Year’s Summer Fashion assignment.
  
• Collect the lost inflatable pool toys during your missions to earn a totally radical Double Point Bonus for your Performance Pass progress.
  
• Kick back in the Space Rig and enjoy all the bodacious beach decorations but don’t enjoy them too hard because Management has been very clear that this event is not a vacation

Have fun out there, and watch out for sand sharks!

Hang loose,
-The Ghost Ship Crew

The salty scent of surf wafts in from the nearby beach. There’s sand between your toes. A seagull calls as it flies overhead. You’re eating a big bowl of sunscreen with a spoon.

This can only mean one thing: It’s time for the Space Beach Party seasonal event in Deep Rock Galactic, which is a game about surfing. The Beach Party kicks off on Thursday, August 1st at 13:00 CEST and makes waves until August 15th.

Let’s take a quick peek at what’s coming!

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It ain’t summer vacation without a bit of hard work! Only joking, folks – the DRG company handbook doesn’t say anything about vacation. Anyway, there’s a new assignment for you: the Hoxxes Summer Cruise.

Complete it, and we’ll reward you with our wettest hat yet: The Tentacle Topper.

The flower helps mask the smell.
New to the Space Beach Party? You can still earn all the other cosmetic rewards from previous Beach Party events. Just complete the Last Year's Summer Fashion assignment, and you’ll earn all the old ones in one fell swoop. Might have to shake the sand out of ‘em, though.


In yet another black mark on the shipping record of Longbeard Freight, those buffoons have fumbled a big load of fun inflatable pool floaties, scattering them throughout the caves. These pool toys are critical for mining operations, so we need them back. Deposit one during a mission, and your whole team will earn a Double Performance Pass Point Bonus. Totally tubular!



Although Management didn’t approve our budget request for a wave pool, we’ve still got the Space Rig looking beachy. You’ll see it and say, “Lu-wow!” Get it? Like luau. Moving right along, the Rig’s been decorated with holiday lights, (slappable!) inflatable palm trees, beach-tastic audio ambiance, big buckets of water balloons, and several tons of coarse, rough, irritating sand.

Management requests that all employees handle the water balloons responsibly, as the insurance policy on the Space Rig doesn't cover water damage.

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The 2024 Space Beach Party kicks off in just two days, on August 1st at 13:00 CEST. It might come to consoles just a teeny bit later.

Make sure to ask your teammates for help putting sunscreen on your back!

With Love,
-The Ghost Ship Beach Bums

We've got a mid-summer surprise for you.

For a while now, we've had fans asking about a collaboration with the dwarven power metal band Wind Rose. Their hit track "Diggy Diggy Hole" has struck a chord with many brave dwarven hearts, and had folks excited about crossover possibilities between their music and Deep Rock Galactic.

Well, we heard you. And we reached out to them to see if we could cook something up together. Turns out the answer was yes, we absolutely could cook something up together.

We're very happy to share their latest single -- "Rock and Stone" -- inspired by the Deep Rock Galactic universe. Check out the music video above! Great work, Wind Rose. <3

Hope everyone's having a great summer out there. Don't forget to check for cave leeches.

With love,
-The Ghost Ship Crew