Alloyed Collective: A Rebirth of Trust

    Man, it only feels like 6 months ago I was talking about SotS and expressing my concern over a new dlc being announced so quickly. Wait a minute. Hi, My name is 61% human and today you’re going to witness my descent into insanity… and also talk about Alloyed Collective. Yeah, allow me to eat past me’s words for a second: Is Alloyed Collective good? YES. It’s a stellar expansion that is definitely worth the price. Ignore the fact that I probably just spoiled the title and thumbnail–I actually haven’t made them yet. BUT enough stalling, you probably want to know why Alloyed Collective is good and that’s exactly what I’m here to do.

SURVIVORS

Operator is the default survivor and this might be my new favorite character. If you told me that a survivor who’s kit is 95% drones would end up being my favorite, I'd probably call you insane. I believe he only has one skill that doesn’t relate to drones and that’s his primary, which is a little weird. It has a charge system but unlike other primaries that use charges you can actually spam this one, the charges just improve the damage. I like this idea because it solves one of the issues I have with charged primaries, that being once you run out of charges you just can’t do anything. Granted most of them have fast enough charges it’s not too much of a problem–especially since most of their recharge speed scales with attack speed–but it can still be a small problem early game. Operator’s primary also ricochets the bullet on kill and this is such a satisfying feature, it’s so addicting to charge the primary and just watch a bunch of trash mobs die in one shot. For the secondaries, the only one I’ve really used is the default, where you command your drones to use a specific ability. Most of them just make your drone do their specific action but it’s still very neat being able to have some control over them, even if I just end up spamming this button at whatever enemy has the most health. Oh yeah I forgot to mention that Operator also spawns with two special drones that are just retextured versions of the gunner, healing and transport drones but their admin override skills are slightly different. Crosshair has a 50% increase to the ricochet bullet’s damage, Doc grants shield instead of health and Chirp can pick up and move chests, which I didn’t even know it could do until writing this in the script. These drones will also automatically revive when destroyed, meaning you will always have at least two drones available, which is kind of necessary when every skill on this character needs a drone to work. The alternate secondary allows you to command your drones to ram into whatever enemy you select and this is an okay ability. I personally don’t use it much because I find it more fun to spam my drones at whatever scares me, and I’m scared of a lot of things. [bit here maybe] Ascent Protocol is your base utility and I don’t quite understand it that well. You get lifted into the air by your drone and you can leap off of it to be caught by another one but sometimes it just… doesn’t work? It’s a little unclear when you’re supposed to be able to leap to another drone and I’m not sure if I’m doing something wrong or if it’s not working properly. The alternate lets you summon a shield with your drone and fire it at an enemy while being pushed back. This isn’t nearly as cool as the default so I personally don’t find myself using it but it’s still neat, definitely easier to understand. Ejection Core fires your currently equipped drone forward and suspends all enemies caught in the blast radius. This also inflicts the nano-bugged debuff, which increases their damage taken from skills by 100% that are split into hits that do 120% damage. Why it’s split up this way I have no clue but it’s a really fun ability. I love just suspending a bunch of enemies and having my ricochet shot just bounce between all of them OH it’s so nice. You also get a little hop when you activate the ability and can even use this as a mobility tool, which makes it really to mess with. Finally, your alternate special is a similar concept, but instead of being an aoe skill your drone will absorb damage and detonate, even allowing your own shots to build up the damage. It’s a neat idea for sure and I could see myself using it in the future, but for now my preference lies with the default special. Actually, that’s how I feel about Operator as a whole. I much prefer their default kit over taking any alternate abilities and for drones I tend to take the gunner and transport drone. Also much like the SotS survivors, Operator and Drifter only get one alternate skin to unlock and it’s just the standard “beat the game on monsoon” unlock while the base-game characters all got new skins for interacting with the dlc final boss. While I understand why they didn’t want to do cross-dlc skins (SotV survivors getting AC skins for example) why didn’t the dlc characters get skins for interacting with their own dlc? This was something I never understood about the previous dlc either, why those characters didn’t get prime meridian skins. Again I get if they don’t want every character to get new skins with every dlc because I’m assuming we’re getting semi-regular dlc but can’t the new characters get skins related to their content? It’s a really weird decision and I hope they maybe add the missing skins in a future update but I don’t have high hopes for that.

Drifter is the returning survivor and was kind of the last survivor I was hoping they’d add from the first game as I wasn’t a super big fan of her there and also her coming back almost certainly meant temp items would come back alongside her. While I’m saving temp items for later, safe to say my first impressions of Drifter weren’t very positive. Thankfully I reserved judgement and it’s safe to say my opinions on Drifter have changed substantially. My only real issue is the fact she’s a melee character, which I historically don’t like in this game. She does have a lot of unique mechanics with her, starting with her passive, which lets scrap give you bonuses depending on the rarity of the scrap. White scrap gives 6% movement speed, green scrap gives 3 health regen, red scrap gives 30% attack speed and yellow scrap lowers skill cooldowns by 15%. These are really neat bonuses that I find super fun to synergize around, especially with one of her skills I’ll talk about later. This–and something else we’ll talk about later–has really changed the way I interact with the game to a small degree, introducing even more micro-managing which I really love. The best part is that this level of min-maxing is completely optional, meaning you can just choose to not interact with it. Her primary makes her swing her sack around to generate junk on hit. It’s a 3 hit combo, with the 3rd hit dealing more damage and stunning enemies, as well as having a 40% chance to generate junk. Unfortunately you can’t sprint-cancel this like you can with Acrid but otherwise this ability is pretty good, although the animation feels just a bit weird. However it’s also really funny when used at high speeds. Cleanup is her default secondary and is her only real ranged attack, where you throw debris at enemies. This attack also features a nice gambling mode, where it has 14 different items it can spawn, each with their own rarity and special effects. I’m just gonna flash these all on screen because if I went over everything this video would take even longer than it’s already taking (ahahahahahaha) but some of the stuff here is pretty neat. You can also spam this ability if you have junk, which has led me to affectionately call this move “random bullshit go” as everything on screen (hopefully) gets obliterated. Her alternate secondary is the ever beloved junk cube and I actually don’t care for this ability. It’s certainly neat and has some cool tech, however I can’t just spam-click it and obliterate whatever is on screen so it’s just okay. You can stand on the cube and hit it, which is a really cool interaction that allows her to deal with flying enemies a bit better. This also used to have an exploit where you could gain junk from the cube, allowing for infinite temporary items. This has sadly been patched out, which is unfortunate because it was pretty funny but I also get why they did this. Repossess might be the single greatest ability ever added to this game, as it allows me to deal with my demons the only way I know how to: tossing them off the map and letting the world kill them. Why confront them when I can just toss them away? Works everytime. This ability can pick up nearly anything in the game, from enemies to allies to chests and printers. The only thing I can think of that it can’t grab are mission-critical objects, like teleporters, halcyon shrines and the like. Grabbing a thing also lets you use them as an attack, with each item and monster having a weight system that affects the damage they deal and how much you’re slowed. Monsters only take 3 hits before they break out, but they can also break out on their own. Avoid grabbing fire elites as they can still damage you through the bag. The alternative to this is… Tornado Slam. I don’t have much to say about this ability because it’s honestly kind of lame, but my friend wants me to tell you that this attack has a value internally called “bounceTuah” that effectively does nothing. But it’s there. Just thought you should know :). Salvage is her default special and allows you to consume 8 junk to spawn 4 temporary items. There’s a small quirk with temporary items where they don’t actually start their expiration timer until you pick them up, meaning with enough patience you can just stack a bunch of temporary items near the teleporter and pick them all up at once for a big boost of power. My opinion on this ability matches my opinion on temporary items as a whole, in that I don’t really like it. Plus her alternate special is infinitely better because it allows for a lot better synergy with her kit. Tinker is one of the most broken skills in the game but not because it does a lot of damage or wipes the screen or files your taxes no no no, you don’t use this skill for the combat utility–not that there’s much there anyway–you use it to gamble. This ability allows you to reroll multishops, printers/cauldrons, void potentials and aurelionite fragments. The rarity of the items in the latter 2 stay the same and this only works twice, but it’s still incredibly powerful. You can also use this ability on an item on the ground to scrap it and gain a temporary copy of it, basically allowing you to become a portable scrapper. The ability also has a fair amount of width to it, meaning if you position things correctly you can use this on multiple things at once. This ties back into her passive of scrap granting you benefits based on the rarity and because you don’t have to rely on the rng of a scrapper spawning, you can always use her passive AND have scrap ready for any 3D printer you may run across. Although there’s now some consideration to scrapping items, which I’ll have to talk about later because this section is already long enough and there’s so much more to go over.

ITEMS

This DLC adds in 20 normal items and for the most part, they’re all perfectly fine. There’s two new item tiers; temporary and meal. Temporary items are, well, temporary versions of items. They last about 80 seconds and then expire. They can be obtained through various means: shops, junk drones, Drifter’s specials and Substandard Duplicator. These were originally introduced in Risk of Rain Returns and my opinion on them in that game reflects my opinion of them in this game; I don’t like them. I’m not big into the power fantasy of these items and I’m sure they’re good in the right hands. Unfortunately my hands aren’t the right ones so I’m gonna pass them off as whatever. Meal items are an interesting item tier because they’re not normally obtainable from a chest but instead from a new mechanic introduced in this DLC: The Wandering CHEF. Can’t believe it took them a year and a new DLC to make CHEF good in this game. This CHEF acts as a crafting system, allowing you to combine two items to make one. You can access CHEF after defeating the Solus Wing and brings a whole new level of item management because you could scrap that useless Wax Quail orrrr you could save it to use at the CHEF to get a better item. 

The meal items are a unique tier to this system, with them being a bit more difficult to get but very worth it. Hearty Stew increases health regen and at full health your regen is added to your damage. This item always requires a Lepton Daisy to craft and is well worth it, as Lepton Daisy isn’t that great of an item. Quick Fix requires a white scrap to craft and increases bonus health and regen gains by 50%. This item is pretty alright but really shines through on False Son, as he loves gaining health. Sautéed Worms are crafted by using both of the perforators and gives a 10% chance on hit to summon a wyrm that does 500% damage with a life-span of 10 seconds. The cost for this item is very high–as the perforators are already really good and rare–but I think the trade-off is well worth it. The spectacle alone makes it worth the cost but it’s also just a good item. Seared Steak is just the cooler Bison Steak. It gives 50 max health plus an additional 5% of your max health. There’s basically no reason to not make this item, considering it requires a Bison Steak and more max health never hurt anybody. It’s definitely the weakest of the items–unless you play Big and Greedy Son–but it’s still worth it if you have nothing better to craft. Ultimate Meal is another high cost item that gives +2 luck when you’re at full health. This is also generally worth crafting, especially since it doubles your clover as long as you stay at full health. I don’t know if you knew this, but shields don’t count as health so if you stack those you’ll be chilling. Overall these items are a very welcome addition to the game, as well as this system in general, and I’d love to see more of these in the future. A lot of potential lies here and I hope they don’t get neglected like the void items have been.

We’re already out of the order I wanted to go over the items in, so why not continue that trend and cover the legendaries? There’s only 3 this time and the first one is the biggest industry plant I’ve ever seen. Orphaned Core spawns the so-called “Best Buddy” and it is… a companion of all time. It launches itself at enemies for 400% damage but has Loader’s quirk of doing more damage the faster it moves. It also inherits your movement speed items, making this easier to take advantage of. However, since it’s a Solus Invalidator it's a little… uh… how do I say this nicely- STUPID. You can pet it to get a free blast shower but like, eh. It’s whatever I guess. Substandard Duplicator works exactly the same as it does in RoR:R. Picking up an item grants you a temporary copy of it, as well as making all temporary items last 10 seconds longer. It’s a fine item, huge if you’re into temporary items but I’ve spoken my peace on them already, no point in going over it again. What is neat is that this is the first item from Returns to… return. I wonder if we’ll see more returns items return, as there’s some neat items there that I think would do well in this game. To round off the legendaries, we have Networked Suffering and this might be one of the best items added this entire DLC. So good it’s the only item to get nerfed post-release. It allows to tag 4 enemies and spreads a portion of the damage to each affected enemy. [cue the false son clip] This is Busted with a capital b. It got hit with a 5% nerf but even then this thing still feels insanely strong, especially if you play a burst-heavy survivor. It’s useful no matter who you play but put on a burst survivor and watch the world crumble before you.

Continuing this really jank order, let's talk about the yellow items, as well as the one equipment and lunar. Deus Ex Machina allows you to parry and might actually be the most busted item added in this DLC. Successfully parrying damage nullifies the damage, reduces equipment cooldown by 75% and makes your next attack guarantee your on-hit effects to activate. A little quirk with this is when it tells you that you can parry any and all damage, it means it. Fall damage. Void Fog. REX’s self damage. Any. Damage. And you know that blessing buff that makes your next attack trigger your on-hit effects? If your blessed attack kills an enemy, it also activates any on-kill effects. Also having two fuel cells is enough for your entire cooldown to be refreshed. You can also stack enough Gestures to have permanent parry window uptime but that takes a while and by that point you’re probably killing the entire map by existing anyway. But hey, at least you get to glow green. Neutronium Weight is the new lunar and I just don’t understand why it exists? While in combat, your stats are reduced but you can send the weight to an enemy when you hit them and whoever holds the weight has their stats reduced. On death, whoever killed the weight holder now gains the weight. Why? It’s just too much work for little benefit, especially because this thing has travel time, meaning it can just be outran or not even get to the enemy before it dies. I just… don’t understand this item’s purpose. Let’s move on before my head explodes, into the yellow items. Functional Coupler is an item that gives you an extra equipment slot. This is a really versatile item, as it allows you to macro out of your mind or have two separate builds going on at the same time. The way you swap is a little weird but it makes sense. Although I don’t really like to stack more of these than just one because cycling through equipment isn’t something I particularly want to do in the midst of combat. Faulty Conductor is an item that releases electricity to energize your nearby allies, granting buffs and making all electric damage deal critical hits. It’s an alright item, I don’t really have much more to say than that since this item is quite rare. You’re probably only going to see one of these per run, if even that, as it drops from the Alloy Hunter, a boss you can only fight once per run as far as I’m aware. It can still be printed but I can count on one hand the amount of boss item printers I’ve seen in my entire time playing this game. 

The next 4 items are interesting because they aren’t your traditional yellow items, instead acting more as key items for the Alloyed Collective content. The Sentry Key is dropped from Collective Elites on Conduit Canyon and gives 15% movespeed, although this effect doesn’t stack. The primary use for these are to use on sentry terminals to progress in the stage. Prism Matrix gives 50% armor and also does not stack, although this sounds good on paper it doesn’t do anything for most of the cast since it scales on base armor for some reason. The primary use for this item is to unlock Drifter. Finally, the last two yellows are pointless outside of the Alloyed Collective content, granting no benefit to the player. The Encrypted Cerebellum drops after defeating the Solus Wing and its only purpose is to be combined with the Sentry Key or Prison Matrix at the Wandering CHEF to transform it into the Exposed Cerebellum. This item allows you to access the true final boss of the DLC, but more on that later.

There’s only two uncommon items this time around, and they’re alright. Eclipse Lite grants barrier when your skill comes off cooldown, but the values are far too low. It’s 1% for the first stack, and then a WHOPPING 0.25% per stack. Really? This is something I feel Gearbox has dropped the ball on with this DLC, some of these items just don’t feel like they were designed to stack well. I really don’t think this item would be broken if it gave 1% extra per stack. I get they want to combat power-creep but this feels like the opposite direction we should be heading in. Also recharging abilities in chunks with something like Laser Burst doesn’t work either? Except it does work because Hungering Gaze gives a large chunk of barrier when it reloads? I don’t know anymore, my head is going to explode thinking about it. The other common item is Hiker’s Boots and these are a really good addition, increasing your critical hit chance and damage when you hit an enemy that is below you. Thankfully there’s no weird interactions with this one, it works as you would expect. 

Box of Dynamite grants you Lt. Droneboy and also allows your drones to drop sticks of dynamite onto enemies every 10 seconds. It’s basically the little brother of Spare Drone Parts and it’s awesome, coupled with the better drone ai this is a very neat item. Faraday Spur is a movement item that builds up charge, granting 160% movement speed and 200% jump height at 100%. When you get 25% charge, you can jump and explode for 400% damage. I’m not a super big fan of the jump being the thing that triggers the explosion because otherwise, this is a really good item. Although for some reason, this item only builds up charge while grounded? Again with these weird caveats that aren’t mentioned anywhere, what is going on? Kinetic Dampener is another shield item that grants 30 armor while you have a shield. Upon your shield breaking, it explodes for 100% damage plus an extra amount of damage that I just can’t comprehend right now. You also gain 4% of your health as a shield. This is a very powerful item, especially in combination with something like Ultimate Meal. Finally, Collector’s Compulsion gives 3% to all stats when you pick up an item or collectible. This item is really good as most things in the game activate it, meaning its uptime will be pretty high. Combine it with an item like Growth Nectar–since it counts as a buff for it–and you’ll just have infinite stats.

BOSSES AND STAGES

That’s not all this DLC adds however, as of course we have new stages and half of them are implemented into the normal stage rotation and half are unique to something I will hereby dub Path of the Collective. PotC is always available to start on any stage 3 by interacting with this little doodad right here and going in this portal after the teleporter. Afterwards you’ll end up on Conduit Canyon, a stage that on the surface looks standard but is fairly unique for a standard level: It's completely linear. Unlike every other non-boss level in the game, you and the teleporter have fixed spawns and in order to progress you need to insert the Sentry Keys into these terminals. A cool feature of this stage is that you can actually skip the first three terminals by simply jumping over the wall here, which is really cool and I’m glad they didn’t just block this area off. Most other game developers probably would’ve, so props to them for doing not that. There’s also a complete fake-out boss here, which is an interesting concept. Actually, the teleporter event before you enter this stage also has an additional boss fight which is a really neat concept. I’m glad this team is exploring ideas like this because sure these may be small additions but it does go a long way to adding some variety into the game and how certain content is accessed. Also a good way to add some difficulty without inflating numbers. Back to Conduit Canyon, after the fake boss gets to what I believe is 75% health it will die and the real boss, Alloy Hunter, will show up. This boss is mostly exclusive to this stage but can show up on stages that get the vulture family event. This boss is honestly pretty fun, although the fight can get a bit chaotic with how visually busy the attacks can be. This isn’t related to the expansion or anything but I didn’t know that boss items have a 15% chance to drop from teleporter events. Too bad it feels a lot more rare than that but that might be because I play singleplayer. Back on track, the teleporter has a different design and I just think stuff like this is really cool. It really makes this place feel like its own area. 

Going through the teleporter brings you to Solutional Haunt which is a very atmospheric stage. Going down the giant hole in the center leads you down to the boss arena, after you see this cutscene. You can’t skip this cutscene but you can skip the little airlock sequence that plays right after, I just don’t know how to do it consistently. This fight is… a little long but not because of the mechanics or anything, the Solus Wing is just really tanky for some reason. You’re not supposed to directly damage the boss either, instead shooting these 4 weak points. A bit of advice for this boss: try to keep all the weak points at roughly the same amount of health. Because of how tanky the main body is, doing direct damage is ineffective, meaning the primary way to deal damage to the boss is by destroying the weak points. Unlike the other bosses in this game, this boss’s phases are tied to its health, so if you can keep all the weak points at roughly the same health you should be able to speed past the later phases of the fight. The attacks on this boss are whatever, it’s definitely an interesting fight but I feel it drags on because of the health scaling. I feel if they just made it slightly less tanky it’d be perfectly fine, but it’s still LEAGUES better than Voidling. The telegraphs are also pretty well made but like Alloy Hunter the fight can get a little hectic. Not as much because you have a bigger arena and no ads to deal with but half the time I feel like I have no clue what I’m staring at. Maybe I’m just washed. Defeating the boss isn’t the end however, because there’s a little bit extra to this stage. Around the map there’ll be points where there’s extra loot to get. One of these caves has a TC-280, which was recently buffed. Another cave has an area where you get Prison Matrices, which you can use to get some loot and even the new survivor. Both of these areas will spawn enemies but they shouldn’t be too hard to deal with, although when you try to leave this cave you will be locked in a fight with an Umbra version of Mul-T, who holds Shaped Glass and will drop it upon death. In the main room, you can find a vault that costs one Prison Matrix to open and in here you will be treated to a broken Han-D that drops 3 items, Drifter’s backpack which gives 3 temporary items and a small, large and cloaked chest. Drifter is also here and will require you to spend the other Prison Matrix. Don’t forget to pick up the Encrypted Cerebellum on your way out!

Going through the Solus Wing’s eye thing you’ll arrive in what is probably my new favorite environment in the game; Computational Exchange. Visually this area is just breathtaking and I love to run around in here just taking it all in. Above your spawn point is a platform that gives free loot, which I didn’t know existed until just now. In front of the spawn is SPEX, which is basically this area’s Newt. It can’t be killed oddly enough, and if its health falls below 90% it will steal an item and kick you out. Very weird it’s unable to be killed but oh well. Right below it is the charity shrine, in which you can put an item in and drop it if it isn’t the Exposed Cerebellum You can only offer 3 items to it per visit before it will only accept the cerebellum, which makes a lot of sense when you remember the Recycler and Substandard Duplicator exists. You can also activate Prayer Breads’ effects here without losing the item, which is really powerful. To the right of SPEX, there’s a drone scrapper, a 3D printer and a drone combiner station, which is really nice of it to give us. To the left is where the wandering CHEF resides but he already had his moment to shine so we’re just going to ignore him. After giving the Exposed Cerebellum to SPEX, it will open a Decrypted Portal, taking you to the true final boss of the DLC.

You’ll be spit out in the Neural Sanctum and this is another visually stunning environment. I wish we got more areas that look like this because this visual style is really pleasing to look at. Proceeding forward, you’ll encounter the Solus Heart. This fight is really interesting because most of the attacks will destroy parts of the arena temporarily, making positioning matter even more than it already does. Although it can be hard to understand at first, once I got the hang of it this fight became really fun. The real unique part comes after you kill the last phase because the boss doesn’t just die. It gives you an offer: Become part of the collective or kill it. This choice actually does matter somewhat, as accepting the offer ends the run, while rejecting it will drop one item from a very small pool and let you continue the run but that’s not the only difference. Depending on your character, accepting or rejecting the offer will unlock you a skin and these skins have very different design ideas between them. Accepting the offer gives skins that are similar in appearance to the Solus Heart, while the rejection skins match the general Solus/Vulture vibe and while I personally like the rejection skins more, I think the accept ones look pretty nice too.

This DLC introduced 6 new enemies, and they’re all pretty neat. The Solus Invalidator is an enemy who’s primary gimmick is disabling your items with a very well telegraphed attack. I thought this attack would be a lot worse to deal with but after playing it, it’s really not that bad. If anything I rarely notice my items getting disabled from this enemy, instead most of them coming from Collective elites. The Solus Prospector lunges forward with its drill to hit you and this is well telegraphed too, something I wish all the enemies in this game had. Solus Extractor is probably the second most annoying enemy in this DLC because when they hit you they take an entire stack of an item and become super passive, avoiding you as best it can. Luckily it isn’t too difficult to kill but it’s still rather annoying. The Solus Transporter is an interesting enemy because it just seems to have the AoE from SCU but without the launching aspect? I’m just so confused by this move. Solus Scorchers have one primary goal: Oil you up and light you on fire. There’s a small issue: these guys kind of suck at oiling you up. It's kind of hard for them to light me up if they can’t even cover me up in oil. And now we arrive at the most annoying enemy in this DLC: Solus Distributor. This little thing spawns tiny little balls that have ruined my life and my marriage, I lost my job and the house is soon to go too. Please help I’ve lost everything. Oh also the little mines it spawns will also become elites if the distributor is also elite. As if this enemy couldn’t ruin things even further.

MISCELLANEOUS

This DLC also brought a very beloved artifact from Returns: Artifact of Prestige. This artifact guarantees a mountain shrine to spawn on every stage and makes them permanently stackable. This also turns the mountain shrine icon pink, which wasn’t actually in the game until a recent update, meaning the game is finally playable again.

Gearbox also went ahead and reworked the drone AI and while this would’ve been a welcome change by itself, they also went ahead and added 7 new drones. This is a pretty massive change as drones were always a weird part of the game before. They existed and I’d typically buy them whenever I had spare money but I’d never actively seek them out nor would I get excited seeing a drone. Now whenever I see a drone–especially on Operator–I feel a small amount of joy. Just a small amount because Adachi Rei still isn’t married to me. But it’s still a small amount. There’s also a drone combiner that upgrades your drones and it’s a really neat thing. It can be a little hard to use since you need multiple of a drone to use it but it’s worth the reward if you can use it. Transport Drone is a drone that picks your enemies and drops them for increased fall damage. I love this drone, it’s so funny to just watch my enemies get carried away and then slammed into the planet. The upgrade to this drone increases the drone’s movement speed by 60%. Junk Drone drops temporary items every two minutes, and it’s okay. Upgrading it makes it drop more temp items more frequently. Cleanup Drone slows nearby enemies and any enemy affected by this drone that is killed is turned either into money nuggets or health pickups. Upgrading this drone increases the suction radius and provides an extra pickup. Jailer Drone roots nearby targets. Upgrading this drone increases skill and debuff duration by 5s. Barrier drone gives a nearby ally a barrier. Leveling up this drone makes the beam last longer and gives more barrier. Bombardment Drone sends down 16 lighting strikes in one area and is very good for AoE. Leveling up this drone adds an additional 8 shocks. Finally, freeze drone is basically just Huntress’ glaive but it freezes instead. Upgrading this drone increases proc coefficient by 0.5 and max bounces by 6. These drones are a very welcome addition and I hope future DLCs add more drones.

CONCLUSION

Overall, Alloyed Collective is a very solid expansion. I initially had my worries about this DLC’s quality but I am very happy to say that this DLC is leagues better than SotS. Better than SotV though? I’m not quite sure. It’s a hard call to make for me personally. This DLC is worth the $15 price tag, for sure, but compared to SotV I still feel like something is missing. I’m also curious if we’re going to keep getting DLC every year for this game. I doubt I’ll cover the next DLC but not out of lack of interest. I’m sure it’ll be good, but if it doesn’t do much different then I personally don’t see a point dedicating one of my few videos a year to this game every year. But for now, I’d like to thank you all for watching, stay hydrated and I’ll see you next time.

 

  video link: https://youtu.be/lP7_pyj0rQw

short director's commentary: it's been a while, hasn't it? life has changed so much for me since my last video that i don't even know where to begin, nor do i want to disclose that much personal information on the internet. i'm sorry for the wait between this video and the last, however i do hope this next year i can be more consistent with uploads as this is still really fun to do. also just so you know, this video was supposed to come out before the end of the year and i'm only making that goal by one day. got a lot of big plans so stay tuned for more!!!

word count: 6,166
video length: 31:09