Drill Core – Beginners Strategy

Starting Strategy

I start by building a Factory on the far left, then 5 Barracks, and quickly get 19 workers. This includes 10 miners, 6 carriers, and 3 guards. I might increase miners to 12 and reduce carriers to 4. After reaching 19 workers, I remove the Barracks and build another Factory on the far right, leaving 4 spots for Watchtowers.

• Watchtowers are very effective. Laser Watchtowers damage all enemies passing through, while Rocket Watchtowers hit multiple front enemies at once, taking out weaker ones. This lets turrets focus on stronger enemies.
• I clear out all blocks instead of selectively mining. This prevents enemy spawns, reduces earthquake risks, and improves worker movement. It’s faster with 19 workers.
• When reaching a new floor, I dig a 4-block wide path straight down for more working space during night mining.
• Night mining is important for progress. It’s easy to manage workers using these methods. I bring guards back to the core for defense, keep miners together, and control carriers by limiting where they can drop materials or telling them to retreat from danger.
• I use automatic turrets at the top of the mine, grenade launchers in the middle, and a mix of laser and gun 311s at the bottom. This works well for both attack and resource management.
• I don’t use slowing, weakening, or synergy turrets, preferring more damaging options instead. I also avoid the hurricane turret.
• I choose the mini drill launcher for my platform to deal with fire vents.
• I build two Labs and focus on researching visibility, regeneration, and worker health upgrades. I use extra iron for other research when available.
• I try to collect all resources on each floor before moving on. With 19 workers, clearing a floor is quicker than starting a new one, which can be slow at first.

Additional Tips

A couple of tips for new folks that took me too long to realize:

• Your first two free turrets include any you have unlocked as well, so if you grab as many green upgrade items as you can before the first night, you can potentially get free rockets, grenades, etc.
• In your upgrade list for workers, you have health, movement, drill power, gun damage … and then you can scroll down to find sight distance. This will light up unexposed blocks farther out and is super important in avoiding the flame blocks on higher difficulties.
• Build Barracks and recruit aggresively. You can never have too many miners(and collectors), though keep in mind that guard are of course needed to remove the bugs.