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.

There are only 10 layers rather than Infinity Drive's 49, the difficulty floor is a bit higher, the difficulty ceiling is much lower, and a new drive is generated every day for everybody.

Basic premise
Daily Drive begins on layer 1. Each layer (numbered 1-10) consists of either a boss, or wave(s) of enemies. All waves and layers are randomly generated each day. Every player is playing the exact same Drive, so competition is on an even playing field.

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

Between layers, the environment often changes (holes, walls, rotating floors etc). 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.

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, hence the top players will all complete and score is 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.

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, eg. 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 difficulty and battery spawn rate is not affected.

Strategy
Your ultimate goal is to prevent the Battery from running out, which means


 * killing enemies as quickly as possible, in order to spawn the battery quickly,
 * holding onto the combo chain as much as possible, in order to maintain red layer color and thus the highest possible battery spawn rate,
 * not getting knocked down.

However, an experienced player is always going to finish the Drive, and will have to play with score in mind, not just survival. Unlike Infinity Drive, getting surge kills is important, since score will determine your leaderboard ranking if you finish.

For players that have trouble completing, Starch is recommended for this mode, as she has high survivability 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.

Try to keep both Firepower and Accelerate topped up as much as possible, and use Shutdowns when caught in a difficult situation. Dangerous enemies like Buster Titans and Mine Canisters should be your primary targets during a Shutdown.

Make good use of the invincibility frames granted by a weapon swap, eg. 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 leaderboard 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 leaderboards 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 leaderboards 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 leaderboards, you may attempt it as many times as you like.

More meta: Using Daily Drive to practice Dark Embryo
Since you can spoof your computer's date, it's plausible to use 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.

Unfortunately, no examples of such a date are known. If you know of one, please add it here!

Trivia

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