Best Deep Rock Galactic Engineer Build for Clearing Swarms of Enemies (2024)

Swarms are a massive recurrence in every Deep Rock Galactic mission, and these hordes of bugs only get more prominent as the difficulty increases. All four dwarf classes have several weapons and different builds that make horde clearing a breeze. However, the Engineer stands out from the rest regarding swarm clearing, and we will give you our best bug-melting build in Deep Rock Galactic to use down against them in the caves of Hoxxus.

Swarms in Deep Rock Galactic

Whenever you hear mission control begin to spout out a warning over the radio frantically, there’s usually an incoming swarm nearby. A swarm typically starts with a wide variety of bugs unless stated otherwise. While nearly all types of bugs are included in a swarm, the main ones you will encounter are:

Knowing what types of bugs have armor and which don’t helps you determine how long they will take to destroy when compared to unarmored bugs. Having weapons that ignore armor or taking armor-breaking mods helps quickly eliminate armored units. The only exception to this rule is the Glyphid Praetorian; they are the only armored bug variant that counts as Unbreakable. This means that their armor cannot be broken.

Related Guide: How to Obtain a Data Rack from the Caretaker Boss in Deep Rock Galactic

Primary Weapon for Your Engineer Build: “Warthog” Auto 210

This semi-automatic shotgun is the weapon players receive when playing as Engineer for the first time, and it’s one of his more potent primary weapons. With proper modifications, this shotgun can not only be built to handle hordes but obtain high enough single target damage to one-shot weaker bugs up close. However, to maximize swarm clearing in Deep Rock Galactic, we recommend the following build for the Engineer:

• Overstuffed Magazine: Increased Magazine size.
• Expanded Ammo Bags: Drastically increases ammo capacity.
• Quickfire Ejector: Increases reload speed
• Tungsten Coated Buckshot: Adds armor-breaking shells.
• Turret Whip: Shooting your Turret causes them to fire an overloaded shot, which inflicts AOE damage and causes fear to those who are hit.

How these Build Mods Make the Engineer a Bug-Killing Machine

This setup is designed to combat non-armored or armored units with ease, with tons of extra ammo. Turret Whip also allows you to save ammo by using only one shell to cause significant damage to packed crowds of bugs. For Overclocks, we recommend Magnetic Pellet Alignment, Light-Weight Magazines, or Stunner.

Magnetic Peller Alignment lowers the rate of fire but increases base spread and adds 30% extra weak point damage. Even with no damage-increasing mods, hitting weak points allows you to kill many bugs with one or two shots.

Lightweight magazines add 18 more max ammo and lower the reload time. While Stunner gives this shotgun’s stun ability to occur anywhere on the body instead of just on weak points. Atop more stun chance, Stunner adds 30% extra damage to stunned targets.

Related DRG Article: The Best Perks to Use in Deep Rock Galactic

The Best Secondary Weapons for Your Engineer Build: Deepcore 40mm PGL & Breach Cutter

Engineer’s secondary weapons are excellent, and it isn’t easy to choose which one is better at wave clearing. Both have unique strengths, so we will briefly cover why they are so strong.

The Deepcore Grenade Launcher Build for the Engineer in Deep Rock Galactic

The Deepcore grenade launcher excels at dealing significant AOE damage but lacks single-target damage without specific Overclocks. Our non-overclock build for the Deepcore is:

• HE Compound -More area damage.
• Expanded Ammo Bags -More ammo.
• Pressure Wave -Armor Breaking.
• Nails + Tape –AOE increased.
• Spiky Grenade –Adds direct impact damage.

Which Overclock to Pick in Deep Rock Galactic to Augment Your Engineer Build

This engineer build allows you to bombard hordes of bugs with ease constantly. Even with the direct impact mod, this weapon still doesn’t deal significant single-target damage without specific Overclocks like Hyper Propellant. However, we recommend one Overclock over the rest, and that’s Fat Boy.

Equipping the Fat Boy Overclock drops your ammo significantly, but each shot now shoots a mini nuclear warhead. The area damage has increased massively and now destroys terrain on impact. A nuclear fallout remains in addition to the initial impact, slowing and dealing radiation damage to anyone who remains in the area.

The Breach Cutter Build for the Engineer Class in Deep Rock Galactic

Our other recommendation is the Breach Cutter. This weapon doesn’t bring the damage AOE effectiveness as the previously mentioned grenade launcher. Still, it provides a lot of wave clear and high damage to special bugs like Pretorians or Oppressors. Our build for the Breach Cutter is:

• Prolonged Power Generation -Increased Projectile Lifetime
• Condensed Plasma -More damage.
• Improved Case Ejector -Faster Reload
• Armor Breaking – Plasma Beams shred armor.
• Triple Split Line -This allows the Breach Cutter to shoot three beams of plasma rather than one.

Mainly thanks to Triple Split Line, this weapon still excels at clearing waves of approaching hoards. However, the projectile only travels in a straight line, making it difficult to effectively kill enemies that aren’t on the ground. For Overclocks, we recommend High Voltage Crossover, Inferno, or Roll Control.

Roll Control allows you to hold down the fire button to roll the plasma beam, allowing you to hit moving targets or adjustments for the terrain. High Voltage cuts your magazine size but electrocutes anything the plasma beams touch. Inferno lowers the damage of your beams and armor breaking but adds Heat damage to the Breach cutter, allowing you to have more constant damage than burst damage.

Equipment to Use as a Swarm-Killing Engineer

LMG Gun Platform

Engineer’s Turrets have a few different builds, mainly splitting between using one or two guns. Mostly having two guns means more firepower, but each has less damage and chews through ammo much quicker. While you can be more dependent on your turrets, having one reliable turret fits this build better.

Our LMG Gun Platform build for the Engineer in Deep Rock Galactic is:

• LMG MKII -One turret but has more ammo and damage.
• Expanded Ammo Bags -Extra ammo
• Stun -Gives your turret a 20% chance to stun.
• Hawkeye System -This allows your turret to target further in all redirections and will prioritize targets you ping.

This mod build allows you to drop your turret in the center of a wide room and provides extra crowd control and sniping far-away targets that your shotgun can’t reach. The Hawkeye system allows you to ping an enemy in a crowd. Combining it with the previously mentioned Turret Whip will enable you to aim your turret’s empowered AOE shot.

Lure Grenades are OP

Lastly, we found that currently, Engineer’s Lure grenade is too strong not to use. The Lure allows you to taunt up to 10 nearby enemies. Throwing multiple lures will draw in different bugs or Rival Tech machines. Even the Nemesis unit’s deadly grab attack will go after lures and strangle them before choosing you.

Wrap Up our Deep Rock Galactic Engineer Build

That’s our Engineer build for clearing waves in Deep Rock Galactic. While this build focuses on dealing with swarms over single target damage, it’s still highly viable in any regular mission aside from fighting Dreadnaughts. Even if you still choose to use this build during a Dreadnought mission, we recommend taking the Breach Cutter over the Deepcore.

What do you Deep Rock Galactic players think of our bug-splattering engineer build? Let us know in the comment section below. For another in-depth dwarf build, check out our Deep Rock Galactic Driller build to take out Rival Machines!

As always, Rock and Stone, fellow Dwarfs!