Fear

OverviewDRG Concepts Fear

“	Weapons with Fear capabilities can scare enemies away resulting on them fleeing for a period of time. Some enemy types are more courageous than others, so scaring them is not always assured.
	— In Game Description

In Deep Rock Galactic, certain weapons, weapon mods, grenades, and perks are able to inflict the Fear state.

Effects

When a target is inflicted with Fear, they will stop what they're doing and attempt to flee to a point approximately 10m away from their current position (away from the source of the fear, if possible). Once they reach this point, the Fear state ends and they resume normal behavior.

Under most circumstances, Fear will interrupt the target's current activity (such as a Praetorian's spit attack). Fear cannot interrupt actions which lock the target into moving to a predetermined point, however (such as the Mactera Goo Bomber's Goo Barrage attack). This also means that you cannot interrupt a target who is already fleeing from a previous Fear effect with a new Fear effect, as they are already running to a predetermined point.

Most targets which are vulnerable to Fear will make a "scared" sound when the Fear state would have been applied to them, regardless of whether it was successfully applied or not.

While a grounded enemy is fleeing, they gain a "Flee" movement speed multiplier of x1.5 (with some exceptions, see below). Most flying targets, however, do not gain this speed, but are otherwise effected normally by the Fear state.

Courage

For most enemies in the game, the probability to inflict Fear ($\%Fear$) on them is modified by their "Courage" value, based on the following formula:

$\%Fear_{modified}=\%Fear_{base}*(1-Courage)$

If this would result in a negative fear change, the creature is immune to having the Fear state inflicted upon them. Likewise, if this Fear chance exceeds 100%, then the Fear state is guaranteed to be inflicted on them.

The table below gives examples of how Courage effects Fear chance for Fear-inflicting effects of various strength:

Enemy Name	Courage	20% Fear	50% Fear	100% Fear	250% Fear	1000% Fear
Glyphid Exploder	0	20%	50%	100%	100%	100%
Glyphid Acid Spitter	0.3	14%	35%	70%	100%	100%
Glyphid Grunt	0.5	10%	25%	50%	100%	100%
Glyphid Menace	0.7	6%	15%	30%	75%	100%
Glyphid Bulk Detonator	1	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Glyphid Oppressor	100	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%

If an enemy's Courage is greater than or equal to 1, they cannot have the Fear state applied to them under normal circumstances (see below).

Sources of Fear

Driller

• CRSPR Flamethrower T4.A "It Burns!" applies a 20% Base Fear Chance to enemies from every particle fired by the weapon (default flow rate is 6 particles/sec).
• Reinforced Power Drills apply 50% Base Fear Chance to enemies every time it damages them.
• Satchel Charge T4.A "Big Bang" applies 100% Base Fear Chance to enemies within its damage radius plus 10m.
• HE Grenade applies 100% Base Fear Chance to enemies within its 4.3m damage radius.

Engineer

• "Warthog" Auto 210 T5.A "Turret Whip" projectile applies 100% Base Fear Chance to enemies within its 1.5m damage radius.
• "Stubby" Voltaic SMG Overclock "Turret EM Discharge" applies 50% Base Fear Chance to enemies within a 5m radius of the turret that the explosion is centered on.
• LOK-1 Smart Rifle T5.C "Fear Frequency" applies a variable amount of Base Fear Chance in a variable radius around the Engineer on the last shot of a burst based on how many shots were fired during the burst.
  • The fear chance is 15% + 15% per shot fired
  • The radius of the effect is 2.4m + 0.15m per shot fired
• Deepcore 40mm PGL applies 100% Base Fear Chance to enemies within its damage radius.
• Plasma Burster applies 100% Base Fear Chance to enemies within the 3.5m burst damage radius upon each burst detonation.
• Proximity Mine applies 100% Base Fear Chance to enemies within its 5m damage radius.

Gunner

• "Lead Storm" Powered Minigun T5.A "Aggressive Venting" applies 1000% Base Fear Chance to enemies within a 10m radius around the Gunner upon overheating.
• "Thunderhead" Heavy Autocannon T5.B "Suppressive Fire" applies 50% Base Fear Chance to enemies within 1m of bullet impact, either on terrain or enemies.
• Sticky Grenade applies 250% Base Fear Chance to the enemy directly impacted, and 100% Base Fear Chance to all enemies within its 4m damage radius upon detonation.
• Shield Generator applies a 1000% Base Fear Chance to any enemies in its radius when it deploys.

Scout

• M1000 Classic T5.B "Precision Terror" applies 250% Base Fear Chance to enemies within 4m of any enemy killed with a Focused Shot to a Weakpoint.
• Jury-Rigged Boomstick T5.B "Fear the Boomstick" applies 50% Base Fear Chance to enemies within a 5m radius around the Scout every time the trigger is pulled.
• DRAK-25 Plasma Carbine overclock "Aggressive Venting" applies a 500% Base Fear Chance to enemies within its damage radius

Other

• Active Perk "Field Medic" Tier 4 applies 1000% Base Fear Chance to enemies near the dwarf's downed body, accompanied by a bright flash of light.
• Active Perk "See You In Hell" applies 1000% Base Fear Chance to enemies near the dwarf's downed body, accompanied by a bright flash of light.
• Being revived by Bosco applies 1000% Base Fear Chance to enemies near the dwarf's downed body, accompanied by a bright flash of light.
• Bosco T4.A "Fear the Rocket" applies 50% Base Fear Chance to enemies within the rocket's damage radius.

Duration

As the duration of the Fear state is tied to the target moving to a point 10m away, the duration of the effect is proportional to how quickly the target can get there. This results in targets which have faster movement speeds crossing the distance sooner, therefore staying in the Fear state for a shorter period of time than their slower counterparts.

Disrupting or improving the target's ability to cross this distance will also result in the effective Fear duration being extended or reduced, respectively. As a result of this, slowing an enemy during the Fear state will extend its duration, as it will take them longer to reach the designated fleeing point. Similarly, immobilizing an enemy during under the effect of the Fear state will effectively "pause" it, as they cease to make progress towards ending the Fear state. This makes Stunning, Freezing, or Slowing enemies that have had the Fear state applied to them a very effective form of Crowd Control.

Taking this all together, the duration of fear can be approximated using 'Time = Distance / Speed', where the 'Speed' in the denominator is just the enemy's maximum movement speed modified by any speed-effecting modifiers they are currently subject to. This includes any slowing status effects, flee movement speed modifiers, hazard speed scaling, and any stun (which effectively acts as a 0% speed modifier for its duration).

Summing it all up:

• Let $T$ be the duration (Time) of the Fear state (in seconds); in other words, how long it takes this particular enemy to travel the 10m required to recover from Fear
• Let $S_{max}$ be the creature's Maximum Movement Speed (in meters per second)
• Let $S_{mod}$ be the product of any speed modifying effects applied to the enemy, normally ranging from 0 (completely immobilized) to 7.5 (the total speed modifier applied to the Elite variant of the Mactera Grabber while fleeing).
  • If multiple speed modifying effects are effecting a target at once, multiply their individuals effects together to evaluate this
  • In the case of a completely immobilized enemy (i.e. a stun effect), this is treated as $S_{mod}=0$
• Let $D$ be the Difficulty Scaling modifier (ranges from 0.8 - 1.2 depending on Hazard Level and player count)

${\begin{aligned}T&\approx {\frac {10}{S_{max}*S_{mod}*D}}\end{aligned}}$

Disclaimer: The true duration of the Fear state will normally be slightly longer than the approximation above. This is because most targets will decelerate as they approach their destination, slowing down slightly as a result

Special Cases

Bypassing Courage

Under normal conditions, enemies with a courage greater than or equal to 1 (such as a Glyphid Dreadnought) cannot have the fear state applied to them. There are four exceptions to this, however:

• Field Medic's Tier 4 revive flash
• See You In Hell's explosion and lingering field
• Bosco's revive flash
• Being in the radius of a Shield Generator when it deploys

All four of those sources of Fear are accompanied by a bright flash of light and ignore a target's courage when checking whether they should be inflicted by the Fear state. As each of them also has a fear chance of 1000%, this normally results in any targets caught in the effect instantly fleeing. For these targets, their fleeing movement speed modifier is x2 (Glyphid Oppressor) or x1 (Glyphid Bulk Detonator, Glyphid Crassus Detonator, and Extermination Mission Targets)

Fear Immunity

Many enemies are completely immune to fear, even if their Courage is relatively low and they are hit with Courage-bypassing effects. Enemies can be immune to Fear in one of two ways:

Inability to Flee

A target can be marked as unable to flee in the game's code, as denoted by the canFlee tag being set to false. These targets will not even check for Fear when a Fear-inflicting effect hits them. Currently only the following targets have this flag set to false:

• Korlok Tyrant-Weed (as well as the sprouts and healing pods it spawns)
• Rival Patrol Bot
• Rival Nemesis (as well as its arms)
• Rival Caretaker (and the tentacles it spawns)
• Nayaka Trawler
• Drilldozer

Inability to Set Fleeing Destination

A target can be (functionally) immune to Fear if how it moves prevents it from setting a fleeing destination. This results in the following targets being functionally immune to Fear, despite being able to have the Fear state applied to them:

• BET-C always has a predetermined destination set, preventing Fear from setting a new one
• Naedocyte Breeder always has a predetermined destination set, preventing Fear from setting a new one

Allied Targets

Allied targets are immune to Fear inflicted from damage. However, area-of-effect Fear sources will still work. This can result in the following allied units being scared off by you or your teammates:

• Glyphids tamed with Beast Master
  • Retain their original courage value of 0.5
• Shredders summoned by an Engineer's Shredder Swarm grenade
  • Share the same courage as their rival counterparts; 0.