If you’re looking to optimise your Deep Rock Galactic Gear setup, you’ve come to the right place! This short Zhukov NUK17 mods guide will discuss the options for the five tiers of submachine gun mods and whether or not they’re worth considering in your own mod build or outright skippable.
Tier 1
- Expanded Ammo Bags – Maximum ammo increased by 100
- High Velocity Rounds – Damage per shot increased by 1
The Zhukov seems to be about one thing, and one thing only. And that seems to be speed. This weapon helps you run faster, reloads fast, and dumps its entire magazine in 2 seconds or less. To that end, those extra 100 rounds from Expanded Ammo bags might look tempting, but believe me you will blaze right through them regardless.
High Velocity Rounds became the default choice for me because even with two separate maximum ammo upgrades the Zhukovs would manage to deplete their total ammo remarkably fast regardless, and the extra damage comes in handy for a weapon that can utilize it 20 plus times per second.
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Tier 2
- High Capacity Magazine – Magazine size increased by 10 rounds
- Supercharged Feed Mechanism – Rate of fire increased by 8
- Quickfire Ejector – Reload time reduced by 0.6s
This tier really can go to any of the above. High Capacity Magazine is likely the weakest choice here, as the Zhukovs will use up those 10 rounds in half a second or less, so the difference made is less than Quickfire Ejector purely on a numerical basis of time saved per upgrade.
Meanwhile, Supercharged Feed Mechanism is my preferred choice over both of those. Play into the Zhukovs strength of emptying both magazines into a single target in about two seconds by amping the fire rate even higher – it won’t be doing your ammo reserves any favours, but whatever was in front of you is long since dead now.
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Tier 3
- Increased Caliber Rounds – Damage per shot increased by 1
- Better Weight Balance – Accuracy increase due to base spread being halved
This particular choice can go either way, though personally, I feel that Better Weight Balance is hugely useful as the Zhukov will drop about 50-60 bullets in anything in front of you in about 2 seconds or less.
The baseline accuracy goes a long way to making sure every shot hits a weak point if you’re looking at one, and that value outweighs the single damage boost per shot from Increased Caliber Rounds to me.
Tier 4
- Blowthrough Rounds – Shots will penetrate the first enemy hit, continuing past them
- Hollow-Point Bullets – Weakpoint damage increased by 30%
- Expanded Ammo Bags – Maximum ammo increased by 150
Blowthrough Rounds will amplify your ability to deal with large hordes of enemies at a time by making your shots penetrate an additional target – it’s not a huge boost, but for a gun that already burns through its ammo, a boost against groups of enemies is welcome. Expanded Ammo Bags can be useful to negate those ammo issues a bit, but the Zhukov burns its ammo too fast for it to be a huge difference.
Meanwhile, Hollow-Point Bullets is a clear specialized use upgrade – its excellent against enemies with large easy to hit weakpoints. And the Zhukovs are uniquely placed to abuse them, being both naturally very high fire rate and high movement speed from Get In, Get Out after firing a full clip allowing you to nuke a large target and then get very far away safely.
Tier 5
- Conductive Bullets – Enemies take 30% increased damage while in an electric field
- Get In, Get Out – Gain a temporary movement speed bonus after emptying the magazine
This choice comes down quite simply to how often do you see electric field effects, or do you have a means of making them yourself? If you do, Conductive Bullets can be great for all that additional damage.
If you don’t see those effects much, or at all – Get In, Get Out becomes the default choice – though luckily it’s quite a good one because the Zhukov can dump its entire magazine in under 2 seconds and gain the movement speed to run away nigh immediately.
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That’s it for this piece covering the Zhukov NUK17 mods – hopefully, you found it useful, admittedly this is one of the weaker guns in Deep Rock Galactic so far in my opinion, and I usually like SMG-type weapons, though maybe I’m just bad with them, or maybe they’ll get much better later on with overclocks. If you have any thoughts on the Zhukov, let me know.
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