Zhukovs - focus on fire rate and reload speed, use the gas rerouting and refrigerated gunpowder overclocks.

Nishanka bolt shark - focus on damage (later stages), fire rate and reload speed use reload speed and fire rate overclocks.

Cryo grenade - focus on damage (later stages), reload speed and potency with the cluster grenades and a little more oomph overclocks.

Drak plasma carbine - focus on fire rate, damage (later stages), reload speed, potency and piercing with any fire rate and reload speed overclocks

The artifacts I used for this run are:

Vita-miner pills - +5% Health Gain

EXP scanner - get a small amount of exp when mining rock

Gold tipped bullets - increase your damage by 1% for every 5 gold you have

Company issued magnet - spawns a magnet that collects 50% of all exp at the end of the stage

Other artifacts to consider are the Squint EE5 and the BLT (thanks to mustaxo for suggesting them), these are just suggestions but use whatever artifacts you feel will help you the most

Make sure to do the Recon Scout mod mastery, if you complete the four or five stages you can increase your dodge chance by 5% and damage by 10%, giving the recon scout mod a 30% dodge chance, I would also recommend also completing the Crystalline caverns biome mastery for an increased 20% exp gain. I didnt complete the Magma core biome mastery but that also gives and extra total of 10% exp gain and +10 Armour.

I wouldnt recommended any masteries for the weapons I suggested as they give damage increases and you want to keep damage low for the first few stages to get as much exp as possible, but if you feel it will help you in the dive go for it.

For upgrades to the Scout you should use go with xp gain, mining speed, critical chance, reload speed, pickup radius and movement speed

Here are the links to the discussion board and Youtube video that helped me finally beat the challenge

Discussion Board: https://psteamcommunity.yuanyoumao.com/app/2321470/discussions/0/4342103705852745796/