Steel Fighters Guide

Guide

Drone perks in Steel Fighters

A drone is one extra passive on your robot, rolled from a pool. The decision is not which roll is strongest overall, but whether this roll helps the thing you are doing this week.

Two confirmed examples from recorded runs: a drone giving 9% Cash, and a Common drone giving 6% attack speed. Everything else in this guide is what players report, not what the game documents.

What players actually roll

Drone interface next to the robot in the base area

Where the drone roll lives, and what the roll screen looks like before you commit.

Perk reported What it changes Where it shows up
Attack speed How fast the robot hits Longer boss fights
Max health How much damage the robot survives Floors that one-shot you
Boss damage Damage against bosses Boss floors and titans
Thorns Reflects damage back Crowded fights
Crit Chance of a bigger hit Everything, unevenly
Walk speed Movement speed Travel, not fighting
Cash Cash earned Every cash grind

Epic thorns is reported at 30%. That is one number from one conversation, not a published table.

The roll you should probably keep

Judge a roll against your current bottleneck:

  • Dying on floors: max health or thorns. A damage perk does not stop a one-shot.
  • Timing out on bosses: boss damage or attack speed.
  • Farming Cash: Cash%, which is why the 9% Cash drone in the recorded run was worth keeping.
  • Running around the map: walk speed, but players in the community channel treat it as the weakest roll for combat and some ask for it to be removed.

That last point is opinion, not a stat. If you spend most of your session carrying Scrap, walk speed is doing work for you.

Rerolling: what it costs and what it risks

The first roll is free in a recorded run, and the price climbs from there. One player saw 500, 4,000 and 8,000 and guessed it doubles each time; that is a guess, and the shop confirms a reset exists, not a formula.

There are two reset items, and they are not interchangeable:

Item Robux Applies to
Drone Price Reset 29 The normal Drone Hub
Space Drone Price Reset 29 The Space Drone Hub

Buying the wrong one does nothing for the hub you are standing at.

Slots: normal and Space are separate pools

Slot Robux Effect
Extra Drone Slot 99 A second drone follows you on the normal base
Extra Space Drone Slot 149 A second drone on the space base

A normal slot does not give you a fourth universal drone; it gives you one more drone in that hub. If you are still in the overworld, the Space slot is money spent on a system you cannot use yet.

Decide in three questions

  1. What killed you last? If it was one big hit, take health or thorns. If it was a slow kill, take damage.
  2. Is this a keeper robot? If you plan to fuse or replace it, do not buy a price reset to chase a perfect roll on it.
  3. Are you at the hub the reset applies to? Normal drone work uses the 29 Robux Drone Price Reset; Space work needs its own.

If you rolled something useless

Do not reroll immediately on instinct. A weak combat perk on a farming robot is still a farming loss; the roll only matters against the job. Bank the drone, do one session with it, and reroll only if you can name what the current roll fails to do.

What we could not verify

  • The full perk pool and the weights of each rarity.
  • Whether two drones can hold the same perk type. One player was blocked from taking a second copy of an effect he already had, which suggests limits exist.
  • The real reroll price curve and when it resets on its own.