Game intel
Deep Rock Galactic
Ghost Ship Games just handed players a solid reason to boot Deep Rock Galactic back up: Season 6 – Relic of Hoxxes – lands Thursday, January 29, and it brings a new biome, a fresh mission archetype, a seasonal event, and some meta-shifting toys. This isn’t just another content drop; it’s the kind of update that can revive the loop that made DRG a co-op standard in the first place.
This update caught my attention because Ghost Ship keeps doing the thing very few long-running co-op shooters manage: they add content that changes how you play, not just what you look at. The Ossuary Depths aren’t a pretty skin — they’re a gameplay pitch. These caverns are a boneyard for gargantuan skeletons and populated by Ossirans and their scavenger drones. Expect swarms, ambushes, and environmental storytelling that rewards paying attention to the cavern geometry.
New enemy behavior is the headline here. Scavenger drones are number-heavy threats that pressure squads into tighter crowd-control play, while the Ossiran Pit Jaw burrows and ambushes like something straight out of a horror-movie cave sequence. That subterranean unpredictability will force teams to respect flanks and watch their mining routes — this biome favors awareness and coordination over reckless tunnel rushes.
Heavy Excavation is the big practical addition: a mission type focused on amber and fossil relics that can appear in any zone. The core loop is simple—find fossilized relics, attach a four-thruster lift pod, and extract the payload—making it “one of our more straightforward mission formats,” according to Ghost Ship. Simple doesn’t mean shallow: the escort-and-protect nature of the lift pods opens design space for tense defensive pockets and timed rushes that reward proper tool use and class synergy.
The seasonal Ossium Raid adds a narrative hook with the Bone Collector, an insectoid prospector you track to its burrows to claim crystallized Ossium. The twist: the Bone Collector isn’t immediately hostile, so the pacing will feel different — more predator-and-prey than pure firefight—until you try to take its stash. Those Ossium caches should make for high-risk, high-reward encounters that can swing a run’s value dramatically.
For veteran crews, Season 6 is a toolkit update. Expect teams to refine roles: Scouts need to pin down burrowed threats, Drillers will make space for lift pods, Engineers anchor extraction points, and Gunners hold the perimeter. Heavy Excavation will reward coordination more than pure firepower. New enemy types will likely push balance patches once the meta stabilizes, but that is part of DRG’s strength — iterative tuning based on live player feedback.
On the rewards side, Ghost Ship is shipping a performance pass with hats, facial hair, resources, and the Diesel Driven weapon framework. If you’ve followed the game’s cosmetics economics, the paid Relic Raider pack is predictable — attractive to collectors and a legitimate way to support ongoing development — but it’s also the usual reminder that microtransaction-style DLC is how live-service games fund new content. No red flags yet, but I’ll be watching to see if any gameplay-competitive items are gated.
Two realistic concerns: balance and performance. New mission rules and a new weapon framework can upend a meta in ways that favor certain loadouts or classes until adjustments land. Also, large swarm behavior and new geometry-heavy biomes can expose framerate issues on lower-end rigs — something Ghost Ship has patched in the past but needs to stay on top of.
Deep Rock Galactic Season 6 drops Jan 29 and looks like a meaningful expansion of the core loop: Ossuary Depths add spooky new terrain, Heavy Excavation gives you a new escort-and-extract rhythm, the Ossium Raid brings juicy high-risk rewards, and a performance pass plus Relic Raider cosmetics sweeten the pot. If your group likes tight co-op loops and emergent cave chaos, this is the sort of update that pulls you back in — and it’s free, with optional paid cosmetics for collectors.
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