Daily Drive

"A new configuration every day! Play online to test yourself against others, you only have one chance so make it count!"

Daily Drive is a bite-sized Infinity Drive where the player must overcome 10 layers of increasing difficulty.

Unlike Infinity Drive's 49 layers, Daily Drive offers a different type of challenge, focusing on skill and scoring more than endurance and concentration. The difficulty floor is a bit higher, the difficulty ceiling is similarly much lower, and a new drive is generated every day for everybody.

Basic premise
Daily Drive begins on layer 1 and much like Infinity Drive each layer (numbered 1-10) consists of either a boss, or wave(s) of enemies. Unlike Infinity Drive, all waves and layers are randomly generated each day, giving players what amounts to a unique level to compete against each other with every day on a level playing field.

To advance to the next layer, one must overcome every wave (or defeat that layer's boss).

Between layers, the arena will switch to another randomly selected configuration, All configurations used in Infinity drive (Except layer 1) can appear, if a boss appears, it will always switch to the flat non-rotating configuration for that layer. All layers are the same overall size and circular shape.

The Drive is over when the player runs out of Battery, or completes layer 10. Once the Drive is over, it can not be re-attempted until the next Drive is generated. Quitting or crashing out of the Drive counts as a forfeit, and you will not be allowed to retry. If you have gameplay-modifying EX Options enabled, you will not be able to do the Drive at all until you turn them off.

Like Infinity Drive, players are ranked in terms of which layer they failed on (finishing is awarded a star symbol rather than a layer number). Score is only taken into account if two players failed on the same layer. However, unlike Infinity Drive, it is not too difficult to finish, causing top players to almost always finish and hence making score much more important.

Layer generation algorithm
Each layer rolls a few different types of mob for its waves. Generally, a few "light mobs" are rolled (Kegs, Drones etc), as well as a few "heavy mobs" (Titans etc). Later layers will have more mob variety and also significantly more mobs on screen at once.

Each enemy rolled with spawn in variable numbers depending on its general threat level (may be base score related). For example, if a layer rolls buster titans it will spawn fewer of them than if it had spawned blaster titans.

There can be as many as two bosses per Drive, and a boss can appear on any layer (including the first). The four possible bosses that can spawn are Embryo, Vespula, Justice and Dark Embryo.

It's not confirmed, but it appears that later layers have a higher chance of spawning harder bosses, i.e. you are more likely to see Embryo on Layer 2 than Justice.

Layer color
Like Infinity Drive, the color of the text displaying the current layer number directly corresponds to your current performance (see Infinity Drive) but with the exception that the entire layer must be fully chained to change the colour. However, the difficulty and battery spawn rate are not affected, therefore, there is no need to maintain a specific layer colour, although holding Combo is obviously still important for scoring well.

Strategy
Your ultimate goal is to score as highly as possible, but still survive. This means:


 * Killing enemies as quickly as possible, in order to spawn the battery quickly and maximize time bonus
 * Holding onto the combo chain as much as possible,
 * Getting Surge kills as much as possible
 * Not getting knocked down.

For players that have trouble completing, Starch is recommended for this mode, as survival is much easier due to her high-DPS laser and versatile micro missiles. Shiitake is often the best pick for obtaining the highest score due to immense Surge potential, however, given that she is very unforgiving and you only get one shot, you may find you get more reliable results with another character.

Try to keep both Firepower and Accelerate topped up as much as possible (30 seconds is the maximum, with each instance of a powerup granting 15 secs), and use Shutdowns when caught in a difficult situation. Dangerous enemies like Buster Titans and Mine Tanks should be your primary targets during a Shutdown.

Make good use of the invincibility frames granted by a weapon swap, e.g. dodging through mines as they explode, hopping through lasers, or dodging into a crowd of enemies to grab a Shutdown.

Meta-strategy
A unique feature of Daily Drive is the uncertainty of what bosses/enemies you will encounter, and the fact that you only get one try. This can be controlled in three ways:


 * Get a friend to play it first and drop you hints.


 * Look at the leader-board to see what scores and androids people are using. Scores that are all under 3 million indicates that there's probably not a boss. Scores in excess of 5 million means a guaranteed Justice appearance. Something in between can be more difficult to decipher - the androids used by top players may or may not be a hint.


 * If a boss is on Layer 10, you will get the "Enemies remaining" counter on the last wave of Layer 9. This gives you the option to save or pickup your Powerups, and mentally prepare for an incoming boss. There is also a small chance of a back-to-back boss fight on Layers 9 and 10, which means the counter will appear on Layer 8.

An interesting factor when observing the leader-boards is that the longer you wait, the more information you can glean, but the less time you can proudly hold the top spot for. Whether that's important is up to you.

Offline Daily Drive
Disabling leader-boards in the options (or simply playing offline) allows you to play the Offline Daily Drive instead. This uses a different seed based on the current date, and since there are no leader-boards, you may attempt it as many times as you like.

More meta: Using Offline Daily Drive to practice Dark Embryo
Since you can spoof your computer's date, it's plausible to use Offline Daily Drive to fight Dark Embryo without slogging through 32 layers of Infinity Drive first. All you need is a date which generates a run containing him. One such date is 3 February 2017, where he appears on Layer 7.

Although changing your system clock is the easiest way to spoof your date, it is not recommended as many programs and services rely on your system date being correct to function properly. You can bypass those issues by using a program that spoofs the system clock for a specific program, such as Time Stopper or RunAsDate (x64 version is meant only for 64bit programs so it will not work with the game)

It would be even better if an Offline Daily Drive was found where he appears even earlier. This sheet tracks days which have already been searched for. If you plan to do some searching, avoid the already-marked dates, and mark any dates that you have already tried.

Trivia

 * It's probably safe to assume that the Daily Drive is experienced as a dream/hallucination, like Infinity Drive. See Infinity Drive