Cobalt Core: How to Unlock and Prepare for Daily Runs

Finish the game or deliberately opt in early

Daily runs become available after beating the game. The developer also provides an early opt-in, with the explicit warning that dailies may contain story or mechanic spoilers. If you want to discover those elements in the normal progression, use the completion route first. If you are comfortable with the warning, the early opt-in is a documented alternative. The requirement concerns access to this mode rather than collecting every possible memory or mastering every crew combination. [1]

Steps

1. Beat the game to unlock daily runs, or use the early opt-in after accepting its spoiler warning. [1]

Build around the daily’s assigned crew, ship and seed

Everyone playing a particular day’s daily shares its crew, ship and run seed. The mode adds one to three shared modifiers, so inspect the daily setup before planning the run around a familiar normal-mode combination. A daily is not a request to choose your usual preferred team: the shared setup is the basis for that day’s challenge. The run is scored, and the announced comparison route is the Steam leaderboard, where you can compete with friends. [1]

Let the modifier decide what you need to inspect

The launch notes give concrete examples: a single-character crew, shuffled enemy ship parts at the start of every fight, extra starting health paired with frequent Solar Flare fights, cards limited to B upgrades, or a free boss artifact. These are examples of possible daily rules, not a list that applies simultaneously to every daily. When enemy parts shuffle, examine the resulting layout each fight. When only B upgrades are allowed, evaluate the available B path rather than planning around an unavailable A upgrade. [1]

Steps

1. Read the daily’s actual modifiers before choosing how to build and upgrade for that run. [1]

Use the daily-artifact codex and inspect card piles during choices

Daily artifacts you have already seen are listed at the bottom of the codex after 1.2.5. Use that record when checking a previously encountered artifact. The same update lets you inspect draw, discard and exhaust piles while another interface is open, such as Admin Deploy B or an EXE-card screen. Check those piles before committing to a choice when the decision depends on your remaining cards. [2]

Compare daily results with the relevant patch behavior

Version 1.2.5 corrected Janitorbot and Rail Cannon starting positions to obey RNG seeding consistently. It also made small RNG changes, so an older replay account may describe a different result from the current build. The patch explicitly notes a small RNG behavior change. Version 1.2.6 then restored some question-mark events to the daily pool. Use the patch scope when comparing historical runs rather than assuming a missing event proves the same bug remains. [2] [3]