Deep Rock Galactic Hoxxes Halloween 2026: How to Get Every Hat

Hoxxes Halloween 2026 kicked off on October 22 and runs through November 5 at 13:00 CET, and Ghost Ship Games has once again turned the Space Rig into a haunted house between missions. The spooky dressing is mostly cosmetic, but the event brings a genuinely new piece of headgear, a way to catch up on years of past Halloween hats in one go, and a bonus XP mechanic built around chasing down flying skulls in the caves. None of it requires paying real money — every reward in this guide comes from playing missions during the event window.

This guide covers exactly what to do each run: how the Halloween assignment and Straw Boss hat work, how to clear the Last Year's Horrors catch-up assignment, where flying skulls show up and what they're worth, and which classes make farming the event fastest before it ends.

01What's New in Hoxxes Halloween 2026

According to Ghost Ship Games' own announcement, the 2026 event adds three things on top of the usual haunted-hub decorations: a new Straw Boss headgear tied to a special Halloween assignment, a Last Year's Horrors assignment that unlocks every previous Hoxxes Halloween hat at once, and a Double Performance Point Bonus for returning flying skulls found in missions. The Space Rig itself gets redressed for the occasion too — pumpkins and ghosts go up around the hub, and the studio's own patch notes joke that the ominous whispers you'll hear echoing around the Abyss Bar are "just ambience or something." None of the three main rewards require spending Credits; they're all tied to assignments or mission objectives you complete during the event window.

02Complete the Halloween Assignment for the Straw Boss Hat

The Straw Boss headgear is this year's dedicated Halloween reward, and it only unlocks by finishing the event's special assignment from the Assignments terminal on the Space Rig. Ghost Ship Games has not published the exact objective list for Straw Boss beyond calling it "the special assignment," so treat any specific objective counts you see elsewhere as unconfirmed until you check the terminal yourself in-game. What is confirmed is that it's tied to normal mission play — there's no separate Halloween-only mode this year, unlike some past seasonal hats — so any mission type you'd normally run on Hoxxes counts toward it.

Open the Assignments terminal before you queue up so you know which objective the game is tracking, then pick missions that naturally fit it rather than grinding a mission type you don't enjoy. Assignment progress in Deep Rock Galactic carries across a full mission from drop-in to extraction, so abandoning early can cost you progress on multi-stage objectives.

03Claim Every Past Halloween Hat with Last Year's Horrors

If you skipped — or weren't playing for — any of the previous Hoxxes Halloween events, the Last Year's Horrors assignment is the easiest headgear catch-up the game has offered. Completing it before the event ends on November 5 grants every hat from past Halloween events in one shot, rather than making you track down each one individually. This is a separate assignment from the Straw Boss one, so you'll want to check both on the terminal and decide whether to run them back to back or alongside each other, since nothing stops you from making progress on both in the same missions.

There's no indication this catch-up option returns outside the event window, so if your hat collection has gaps from 2022 through 2025, this is the one chance this year to close them without relying on trades or old unused rewards.

04Hunt Flying Skulls for Double Performance Points

Flying skulls are back in the caves for the duration of the event, and Ghost Ship Games confirmed they're tied to the same reward structure as previous years: shoot one down, deposit it, and you get a Double Performance Point Bonus for that pickup. Performance Points feed your Season track, so skulls are worth prioritizing even if you've already finished both assignments — they're effectively free bonus progression stacked on top of whatever mission you're already running.

Skulls tend to show up as flying, erratic targets rather than stationary pickups, so a ranged weapon with decent tracking (anything Gunner- or Driller-friendly at range, or a Scout's precision rifle) makes them far easier to clean up without wasting ammo chasing them across a cave.

05Pick Short Mission Types to Fit In More Runs

With a hard deadline of November 5, how many missions you can realistically finish matters as much as how you build your loadout inside them. Mining Expedition and Point Extraction tend to be Deep Rock Galactic's fastest standard mission types once your squad knows the drill, since both revolve around a single clear objective (hit a resource quota or extract a set number of resource pods) rather than multi-stage escort or sabotage work. Elimination and Industrial Sabotage missions can still contribute plenty toward both assignments and skull hunting, but they typically run longer, so they're better suited to sessions where you've got more time to spare rather than quick lunch-break runs.

None of this changes what counts toward the Halloween assignment or Last Year's Horrors — Ghost Ship Games hasn't restricted either to specific mission types — so the choice here is purely about maximizing how many complete runs, and therefore how many chances at flying skulls, you can squeeze in before the event closes.

06Best Classes and Builds for Fast Event Farming

None of this event's rewards are class-locked, so the fastest approach is picking whichever dwarf speeds up mission clears for you personally, with a slight edge to classes that help you cover ground and spot skulls quickly:

• Scout — flares and mobility gear let you light up caverns and reach skulls flying near ceilings or ledges that other classes have to path around.
• Gunner — the Zipline Launcher and a wide-coverage primary make it easy to reposition toward a skull sighting mid-mission without abandoning your current objective.
• Driller — tunneling shortcuts let you cut toward objective markers and assignment triggers faster, which matters if the Halloween assignment is tracking something time- or route-sensitive.
• Engineer — turret coverage frees you up to chase skulls or assignment objectives solo without leaving your team exposed, useful if you're farming the event in a smaller squad.

Hazard level doesn't appear to gate any Halloween-specific reward, so there's no need to push above your squad's comfortable difficulty just to farm the event — a clean, fast clear on a hazard you can finish reliably banks more Performance Points per hour than a slow, risky one on a hazard you're likely to fail. If you're farming solo or in a two-person squad rather than a full team of four, Engineer and Gunner both hold ground well on their own thanks to turret and Shield Projector coverage, which makes it easier to stop and deal with a flying skull mid-objective instead of having a teammate cover for you while you break off to chase one down.

07Step-by-Step: An Event-Focused Mission Run

Run a Mission That Hits All Three Rewards

1. 1Open the Assignments terminal on the Space Rig before you queue up. Note what the Halloween assignment and the Last Year's Horrors assignment are each tracking so you don't waste a run on the wrong mission type.2 min
2. 2Favor Mining Expedition or Point Extraction over longer mission types like Elimination if your goal is fitting in as many runs as possible before November 5.1 min
3. 3Take Scout or Gunner if you expect open caverns with flying skulls to chase, or Engineer if you're playing solo or in a small squad and want turret coverage while you break off to deal with one.1 min
4. 4Play the mission normally, keeping an eye and ear out for flying skulls in open sections of the cave as you go rather than detouring far off your route to search for them.10-15 min
5. 5Down a flying skull and deposit it to lock in the Double Performance Point Bonus before you extract.1-2 min
6. 6Call the drop pod, then check the Assignments terminal again to confirm progress toward Straw Boss and Last Year's Horrors before queuing your next run.1 min

Running missions this way stacks all three event rewards — assignment progress, Last Year's Horrors progress, and skull bonuses — into the same run instead of farming them separately, which matters with less than two weeks left before the event closes on November 5.

08Don't Sleep on the Deadline

Hoxxes Halloween 2026 closes on November 5 at 13:00 CET, and both the Straw Boss assignment and the Last Year's Horrors catch-up assignment need to be finished before that cutoff — Ghost Ship Games hasn't said either one carries over once the event ends. If you're coming back to Deep Rock Galactic after a break specifically to grab the old hats, that gives you roughly two weeks to fit in enough runs to clear both assignments rather than just the new one. The flying-skull bonus is lower-stakes since it's just extra Performance Points rather than a one-time cosmetic, but it still disappears from the mission pool once the event wraps, so it's worth folding into every run you take between now and then regardless of which assignment you're chasing.