Deep Rock Galactic Survivor is gearing up for launch, literally—adding a fully-fledged gear system when it hits 1.0 in September

Dwarfish bullet-heaven spinoff Deep Rock Galactic Survivor is already more hotly sought after than legendary-tier beard oil, having sailed past a million copies sold despite still being deep in the early access mines.

Now, Survivor is finally planning to breach the surface of a 1.0 launch, and as detailed by developer Funday Games in a recent Steam post, one of the big new features coming to the release version is a fully-fledged loot system.

Funday Games calls this system “Gear”, though at a glance it’s similar to loot systems you’d find in most RPGs. In any given mission, players have a small chance to acquire gear by killing glyphid enemies in standard combat, and are guaranteed to receive a +1 pickaxe or whatever when they slaughter a boss.

There are six types of gear in Survivor. Some of these, such as armour and weapon mods, are self-explanatory. But there are also more specific gear types that require a touch more elaboration. Canisters can alter weapon effects like explosion radius and potency. Gadgets influence your resource collection and mining capabilities. Tools adjust the range and reload speed of weapons. Finally, chips affect the behaviour of your drone sidekick Bosco.

All these items can be acquired across four tiers ranging from “uncommon” all the way up to “legendary”. However! Gear can be affected by “quirks”. According to Funday, quirks bring potentially “build-altering” effects to pieces of gear. For example, some chips come with quirks that enable Bosco to pick up XP or even mine on your behalf.

Funday says the gear system will help tie together a lot of other elements already present in Survivor. “The addition of gear to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor is the solution to a whole lot of dreams we have had for the game for a long time. It makes milestones more meaningful, it makes crafting materials continue to serve a purpose, and it makes Bosco have a bigger impact on gameplay.” It also isn’t the only new thing coming to the with Funday saying it still has several “very exciting, upcoming features to share with you all”.

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor hits 1.0 on September 17. We haven’t been back to it for a while, but Robin Valentine was thoroughly impressed by it even in its earliest access form. “If you’re a Deep Rock Galactic fan, this is a fantastic new take on that game’s core ideas transposed to a very different genre; if you’re a Vampire Survivors fan, this is a really refreshing reinterpretation that stands out from all the more by-the-numbers clones.”