Dome Keeper Artillery Dome Endless Mode Survival Guide

To survive Endless Mode with the Artillery Dome in Dome Keeper, you must master predictive aiming for aerial targets, upgrade explosive shell radius to clear ground hordes, and manage mining trips so heavy resource hauls never delay your return to the defense console.

Unlike hitscan or direct-contact dome weapons, the Artillery Dome fires ballistic mortar rounds governed by travel time and gravity. Success requires balancing offensive turret upgrades with mining mobility to keep pace with escalating enemy health and swarm sizes.

Ballistic Aiming and Shell Arcs

Because mortar rounds take time to reach their destination, firing directly at moving enemies results in missed shots. Effective defense requires adjusting firing angles and leading targets:

Leading Aerial Targets: Fast flyers like hornets and dive bombers evade shells fired at their current position. Aim ahead along their flight path, targeting the open space where the shell's arc will intersect their incoming route.
High-Angle Lobbing: Steep trajectories drop shells vertically onto dense ground clusters or targets positioned behind terrain obstacles.
Flatter Trajectories: Shallow horizontal arcs minimize travel time, allowing shells to detonate quickly against frontline ground attackers.
Point-Blank Base Defense: The Artillery Dome does not inflict friendly-fire blast damage on itself. When melee swarms reach the dome glass, fire directly at the base of the structure to eliminate the entire cluster in a single detonation.

Target Prioritization During Wave Scaling

As waves scale in Endless Mode, mixed enemy compositions will test your reload cadence. Prioritize targets by threat level:

Threat Category	Target Types	Combat Tactic
Ranged Spitters	Floating artillery bugs, mortars	Destroy immediately from long distance before they settle into a firing rhythm against the dome.
Fast Flyers	Hornets, dive bombers	Intercept at medium range using low-angle, high-velocity shots.
Heavy Armored	Burrowers, monolith crushers	Focus fire with direct shell impacts, absorbing minor hits while burning through high health pools.
Ground Swarms	Walkers, ticks, small crawlers	Center shots in the middle of groups using upgraded blast radius to clear multiple units at once.

Subterranean Mining Rhythm

Surviving deep waves requires gathering Iron and Cobalt quickly without leaving the dome unprotected.

Early Strip-Mining: In the top layers, dig horizontal corridors spaced two blocks apart. This reveals every hidden resource vein while removing the minimum number of blocks.
Vertical Shaft Transition: Once soft dirt transitions into harder rock strata, switch from clearing every tile to sinking direct vertical shafts to locate dense ore pockets.
Haul Management: Carrying heavy resource bundles reduces jetpack speed significantly. Monitor the dome's wave proximity meter continuously while digging. If enemies approach and travel time is short, drop your mineral haul in the main shaft, fly up unencumbered to man the Artillery station, and collect the materials after the wave is cleared.

Upgrade Priority Sequence

Allocate resources systematically between defensive firepower and mining capability to prevent bottlenecks:

Early Cycles (Waves 1–8)

Drill Tier 1 & Carry Capacity 1: Invest initial Iron into basic digging speed and bundle carrying capacity to strip the upper layers efficiently.
Artillery Shell Velocity: Increases projectile travel speed, making manual ballistic aiming against fast-moving flyers much easier.
Jetpack Speed Tier 1: Reduces transit time between deep dig sites and the dome console.

Mid to Late Cycles (Wave 9+)

Mortar Blast Radius: Maximize blast area as soon as swarm density spikes, allowing single rounds to wipe out multi-enemy ground packs.
Shell Damage Tier 2: Increases raw damage to eliminate high-health armored targets before they breach defenses.
Drill Tiers 2 & 3: Upgrades drill strength to penetrate hard granite and obsidian layers containing high-yield deposits.

Cobalt Conservation and Dome Maintenance

Cobalt is the primary resource for hull repairs and dome integrity. Because repair costs escalate when patching heavy structural damage under fire, managing your Cobalt reserve dictates how long an Endless run can continue:

Rely on Shields Early: Avoid spending Cobalt to top off minor hull scratches during the opening waves. Allow the dome shield to absorb minor chip damage, as shield health regenerates between rounds at no resource cost.
Reserve Cobalt for Major Repairs: Save Cobalt reserves until late cycles when heavily armored chargers and artillery bugs guarantee hull penetration. Perform necessary hull repairs between waves rather than mid-combat to maintain weapon focus.