As a team of veteran dwarven space miners, you must go on missions for your corporate overlords and venture into the deepest, most dangerous cave systems of the most hostile planet ever discovered.

Experience teamwork as you’ve never experienced it in a co-op game before. Complete missions and gather ever more riches. Expand your roster of class-based skills, unlock new gear and weapons, and take on the worst monsters the galaxy has to offer.

Players take up arms as one of four classes of badass dwarven miners, each with their own invaluable set of skills and gear. The Driller, the Engineer, the Scout and the Gunner must work together to survive a relentless onslaught of ravenous aliens and escape the procedurally generated caves with their bounty intact.

Enlisted dwarves will be paired with up to three like-minded brethren and sent on missions to the most hostile planet ever discovered, Hoxxes IV, to mine precious gems and metals. Cooperation is essential to your success and, as an interplanetary mining conglomerate, Deep Rock Galactic depends on its employees to take care of each other.

Publisher Coffee Stain Publishing and developer Ghost Ship Games announced the launch date and details of Deep Rock Galactic Season 02: Rival Escalation.

Arriving on Steam on 28th April 2022 and console on 5th May, Season 02: Rival Escalation features another completely free Performance Pass, a new enemy type to encounter and exciting secondary weapons for each class. Among the new content for players to unlock, there is a significant update to the cosmetic system, as well as plenty of highly requested quality of life improvements.

The new Seasons format enables brand new players and Deep Rock veterans to all find something new in the mines of Hoxxes IV.

Updated Performance Pass and Cosmetic Tree
The Performance Pass is back and better than before, with around twice as many bonuses up for grabs for employees uprooting the robotic menace down in the mines. Following the same format as Season 01, players can take part in any missions to rank up through levels of the Performance Pass to earn Scrip, or complete the new special event waiting for them on Hoxxes IV. Once Scrip has been earned, unique Beards, Paintjobs, Helmets, Resource Caches and Weapon Frameworks for all guns can be unlocked through the tree as the season progresses.

Players who haven’t managed to complete Season 01 need not worry about FOMO though, as any and all unlocked cosmetics will be scattered throughout Lost Packs, Cargo Crates, Matrix Cores and the Shop in the game to obtain at a later time.

All-New Rival Signal Season Event and Enemy
Season 02: Rival Escalation picks up where Season 01 left off, as the Rivals are stepping-up their prospecting efforts on Hoxxes IV! To stop them in the Rival Signal season event, players have to race against the clock and oncoming bullets, interrupting the operations of the Rival Communications Router, obtaining the data cell within the router and shutting it down before it combusts! But there’s more to worry about than just their communications. The Rivals have unleashed additional hordes of robots within the caves of Hoxxes, but don’t let that serve as a distraction because beyond that lies a new, deadly nemesis designed to lure miners in and hunt them down systematically with giant claws and deadly intent.

New Secondary Weapons introduced
To fight off the swathes of Rival Robots and the Rival Nemesis lurking in Hoxxes IV, players will have access to four new secondary weapons, with one for each class of player. Gunners can employ the Armskore Coil Gun strong enough to break clean through solid rock, Engineers have the incinerating Shard Diffractor that will detonate anything in its path, Scouts are able to switch up between a wide selection of customised bolts with the Nishanka Boltshark X-80, and finally, Drillers can bring the heat by harnessing the power of the Colette Wave Cooker. These four new weapons all come equipped with full upgrade trees, weapon frameworks and paintjobs to find, and around 24 brand new weapon overclocks to be uncovered.

DLC and Shop Updates
Season 02 also includes a brand-new “Robot Rebellion” DLC pack to deck out their weapons and armour in the remains of the rival robots defeated in Season 01. The shop is being updated, with the implementation of a new Cosmetic Mastery system and, Phazyonite, a new option for payment instead of Credits. This new currency can be earned by advancing in Cosmetic Mastery levels, and can also be acquired in the mines. This has been implemented to allow employees’ wages to go a little further when purchasing weapon upgrades, and more importantly: Beer.

Alongside all these additions, Season 02 also includes a number of bug fixes, tweaks, and behind-the-scenes improvements as always.

Søren Lundgaard, CEO of Ghost Ship Games comments: “We wanted players embarking on this next chapter of Deep Rock Galactic to continue the narrative we started in Rival Incursion. Rival Escalation continues our commitment to offering exceptional content to all our players, and creating new opportunities for our audience to engage with other players in the complex caverns of Hoxxes IV.”

Season 02 is available on Steam Experimental Experimental from 19th April, and will officially launch on 28th April 2022 on Steam and 5th May on Xbox and PlayStation.

Key Features:

• 1 to 4 player Co-Op: Work together as a team to dig, explore, and fight your way through massive cave systems filled with hordes of deadly enemies and valuable resources.
• 4 Unique Classes: Mow through enemies as the Gunner, scout ahead and light up the caves as the Scout, chew through solid rock as the Driller, or support the team with defensive structures and turrets as the Engineer.
• Fully Destructible Environments: Destroy everything around you to reach your goal. There is no set path so you can complete your mission your way. But proceed with caution, you don’t want to stumble into an alien swarm unprepared!
• Procedurally Generated Cave Network: Explore a network of procedurally generated cave systems filled with enemies to fight and riches to collect. 
• High-Tech Gadgets and Weapons: Clean the caves of Hoxxes IV with the CSPR Flamethrower and the "Lead Storm" Powered Minigun, light the way with flares, tackle tough terrain with the Reinforced Power Drill and reach new heights with the grappling hook.

Deep Rock Galactic is available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One/Xbox Series X|S (Microsoft Store) and PC (Steam) @ $29.99/€29.99/£24.99.