Brotato – Characters Guide (with Strategy Tips)

Comprehensive Guide to Brotato Characters

By ArosRIsing.

This is a guide aimed for new and intermediate players to help them understand how each character should be built and played. The guide is aimed for completing Danger 5 with the character.

Well Rounded

• Difficulty: Very Easy
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Knife
• Stick
• Cacti Club
• Ghost Flint
• Pistol
• SMG
• Shotgun
• Taser
• Wand

SMG and Shotgun are powerful ranged options, and perhaps the easiest path for a newer player. Just get a ton of Ranged Damage. Taser is a pretty decent Elemental damage option. Stick is a great and easy melee option. Well Rounded can make everything work.

Strategy:

There isn’t much to say about the Well Rounded. It can do well with any build or weapon, as the bonuses are very general. The Harvesting boosts your eco, and the HP and Speed sets your defenses up for the early game. This gives you the freedom to fully commit to any build you want.

Brawler

• Difficulty: Easy
• Tier: A

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Fist
• Hand
• Claw

I just go Full Fists. I don’t recommend picking up hands. I’m not a big fan of Claws on Brawler, since they don’t gain extra damage from the 50% attack speed bonus you have with Unarmed Weapons. They only scale with your Attack speed stat. They also need Crit, while Fists have terrible critical hits. If you’re going Claws, I recommend only going claws. The two weapons don’t mix too well.

Strategy:

The Brawler is one of the stronger melee characters in my experience. The cheap fists, early attack speed and dodge sends you out of the gate with a lot of power. The fists scale well into the late game, and the easy access to 60% dodge makes the brawler very tanky later.

As the Brawler, the build is quite simple. You’re going fists. Later you add Burning Brass Knuckles and Power Fists to the mix. 

Stats:

• Dodge: You start with 15% dodge and gain another 15% from the unarmed weapons set bonus. You should look to get the last 30% sooner rather than later, as it will make you very tanky.
• Armor & Max HP: Just because you have dodge, is not an excuse not to get a good amount of armor. The Brawler will often get hit. So have a good amount of Defensive stats.
• Melee Damage: Get some melee damage early to help boost your fists. Fists scale well into the late game, so you don’t need too much Melee damage later.
• Attack Speed: You get the first 50% attack speed for free. So you don’t need to strive for it like you do on other characters, but I still want more than 50%.
• Speed: If you have really short range, Speed actually becomes important to help you clear enemies. It is also generally good at helping you survive. I recommend somewhere around +20% +40%. You can even get more.
• Range: You might want to get your range back up a bit, as it helps staying on bosses and clears more enemies. But some prefer to instead just get really low range, as it gives you more attack speed. Find out what works for you
• Crit: The fists all have 1.5 crit damage multipliers. So I often dump the crit stat, so that I can buy the good items. If you’re going for a Claw build, then it is a different story.
• HP Regen: I prefer HP regen over life steal. Consumable healing, like always, is great.

Items:

• Adrenaline is powerful for Brawler. Look for it.
• Dump Crit items: If you’re dumping crit, look for Goat Skull, Medal, Bowler’s Hat, and Octopus.
• Dump Life Steal Items: If you’re dumping Lifesteal Look for: Plant, Bean Teacher, Clover, Robot Arm, Exoskeleton.
• Plastic explosives and Dynamite become powerful once 3 or more of your weapons are power fists.

Crazy

• Difficulty: Easy
• Tier: A

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Knife 
• Thief Dagger
• Scissors
• Lightning Shiv
• Shuriken
• Claw

All of the weapons are pretty decent but my favorites are: 

• Lightning Shiv – Awesome weapon, get both melee and Elemental damage. It clears the map and feels like a ranged build.
• Shuriken – Strong weapon once you get going. The +25% attack speed helps you early, and Crazy finds more crit items. 
• Claw – Starts out strong with the +25% attack speed. Stack a ton of Attack speed and crit, and it will destroy most enemies.

The other Options are also fine:

• Knife – Kinda like Claw. Higher damage per hit, but attacks slower. I prefer Claw.
• Thief Dagger – Earns you extra money for a snowball run. Fine, but I prefer the other options.
• Not a fan of the Scissors. It doesn’t deal enough damage, and the healing doesn’t make up for that. You can add one to the build for life steal if you want, but I don’t recommend it, as you will see more scissors in the shop if you pick one up, and less of the more important weapons.

Strategy:

As Crazy, your melee weapons are basically ranged, since you gain 100 range. Normally changes to the range stat are halved for melee weapons, but the starting +100 isn’t for crazy. So it is like starting with +200 range when using melee weapons. Crazy can start with different precision weapons that are great with Critical builds and Crazy is tagged for crit items, so more will show up.

• Sell your Knife: If I’m going Lightning Shiv, Shuriken, or Thief Dagger, I’m selling my starting Knife as soon as I get into the first shop. Having a knife means the shop will try to sell you more knives instead of the other weapon that you actually want. 
• Elemental Hybrid Build: If you go for lightning Shiv, you’ll have a Melee-Elemental Build. So I would build both Elemental and Melee Damage. Look for Scared Sausage and Snake for this build.

Stats:

• Get to 100% Crit: Knife, Claw, Shuriken, and Thief Dagger all are amazing with crit. Make sure you get them to 100% crit chance. For Lightning Shiv and Scissors, you don’t need that much crit unless you find some of the synergy items like Hunting Trophy.
• Don’t go Dodge: You start with -30% Dodge. It is not worth it to go for dodge. Just leave it in the negatives and pick up -dodge items like, Toxic sludge (Lightning shiv), Alloy, Little Frog, Weird Food.
• Melee Damage/ Elemental Damage – Knife, Shuriken, scissors and Thief dagger all want a ton of melee damage. For Claw, Attack speed is better. And lightning Shiv needs both melee and elemental damage.

Items:

• Negative Range items: Since you have effectively +200 range with melee weapons, you can dump it and still be fine. Cyclops Worm, Head injury, Beanie, Little Muscley Dude, Scar, Gnome are items to look for.
• Good Crit Items for Crazy: Claw Tree, Alloy, Sun Glasses, Insanity. Poisonous tonic is ok, same with night goggles. But you don’t need the range as much. Exoskeleton is just a banger of an item.
• Bad Crit items: Avoid Elemental bracelet, it is fine on lightning shiv, and avoid blindfold.
• Hunting Trophies: One of the most broken items in the game when you have a crit build. This is the unlock for Crazy, and it can earn you tons of money.
• Tentacles: Gives a chance to heal when killing enemies with a crit. Unlocked by winning on the lich.
• Lucky Coin: A legendary that gives you 2 luck for each 1% crit you have. A really powerful way to gain 100+ luck for cheap.
• Giant Belt: This belt makes critical hits deal bonus damage depending on the Current HP of the Enemy. This is super powerful on a 100% crit build. 

Ranger

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

Here are the possible starting weapons for the character.

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Pistol
• SMG
• Revolver
• Laser Gun
• Shredder
• Crossbow

My Picks:

• SMG is the most common choice.
•  Revolver is also a great choice.
•  Shredder also works..

You can go Pistol or Laser build for a challenge.

• Crossbow: The Ranger is also one of the better options for a Crossbow build. However, the crossbow’s Ranged Damage scaling is still so awful that you shouldn’t get ranged damage even with the +50%. (You do start with 50 range, are tagged for range, and only see ranged options, so it has some advantages.)
• Slingshot is a surprisingly good choice if you can find it during the first shop. If you go 6 slingshots with no other weapons, you’ll find tons of slingshots, since the shop can’t offer you any other primitive weapons (They are melee). The +15 HP is also super nice early.

Strategy:

The Ranger is the basic ranged character. While having less HP is rough, the +50% ranged damage along with the more focused shop are strong benefits. The +50 range is a fine additional bonus. 

• Sell your Starting Pistol: Consider selling your starting Pistol, as it causes the shop to show you more pistols instead of what other weapons you might be going for.
• Look for Weapons with good scaling: Since ranged damage is buffed for you, look for weapons that scale well with ranged damage: SMG, Shotgun, Minigun, Obliterator, Shredder.
• Guns, unlike many other weapon classes, can mix well. Having some Shredders/Shotguns for Horde Clear, and SMGs for single target damage can work well. Try to combine guns that work with your stats. (SMG’s are bad with Crit, Pistol doesn’t scale that well with ranged damage) However, you don’t have to, and 6 of the same gun might even be the strongest option depending on what the shop offers you.
• Glass Cannon: Ranger is a common character to go glass cannon on. That said, don’t let the -25% Max HP trick you. You still need Max HP, even if you go glass cannon. Unless you have some tardigrades, you should at least be able to handle a hit from a boss. If you’re a newer player, I wouldn’t try to go glass cannon.
• Healing: Ranger tends to not take that much damage, and instead relies on dealing damage. So my favorite healing is consumable healing here, since it heals you in big bursts. HP Regen can be fine, and same with Lifesteal if you’re using SMGs.

Stats:

• Guns – Dump Range: If you’re going for a gun based build, you’ll have more than enough range and you might dump it in order to buy Blindfold, Cyclops Worm, Retromation’s Hoodie, Scar.
• Ranged Damage. You get +50%. Ranged damage is already one of the strongest stats. On Ranger it is insanely strong. The easiest way to get Ranged is through upgrades. So look out for them.

Items:

• Look for ranged damage Lens, Small magazine, Alloy are good items for ranged damage. Wheat, Handcuffs, Heavy bullets are also good.
• Baby with a Beard: This item is insanely powerful on ranger since you’ll stack a ton of ranged damage.
• Tardigrade: Tardigrade can be a great option if you’re going for Glass Cannon. 
• Triangle of Power is also a fine option if you plan to not take a lot of damage.
• Torture: Torture gives a ton of Max HP and gives you more than enough Healing for the run. Can be a great pickup if you find it before you’ve invested in defenses.

Mage

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: A

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Wand
• Torch
• Lightning Shiv
• SMG
• Shotgun
• Taser
• Plank

While you can use weapons like shotgun and SMG to spread fire, they will always do their base damage on hit. You can’t increase Weapon damage with Melee or Ranged damage. As such it tends to be a better idea to go for an elemental weapon. Wand and Torch spread fire on each hit and deal high burning damage later in the game. 

I recommend Taser and shiv. 

• Lightning Shiv can deal amazing damage with the bouncing lightning, and the bouncing projectiles now spread burn since the new patch 1.0.1.3. However, mage can’t increase its melee damage attack, so you’re not super well protected from enemies walking into you.
• Taser gives a powerful slow that can nearly stop elites and bosses. It also comes with the support tag which gives you early harvesting. Tasers can struggle to clear the map, so you need to pick up some early elemental damage, attack speed, and look for a sharp bullet, or get better at spreading flames.

Strategy:

The Mage is a very strong elemental character. You get a +33% multiplier to your elemental damage, and you get to start with the two powerful burn items: Scared Sausage and Snake. This sets you up for a burn focused elemental build.

• Higher Tier Weapons: Elemental builds have access to a lot of powerful higher tier weapons that fit well into elemental builds: Thunder Sword, Flamethrower, Plasma Sledgehammer, and Nuclear Launcher. All are powerful weapons that I like to mix into my Taser and LIghtning Shiv builds.
• Flamethrower gets a special shoutout. It is amazing. It spreads flames to so many enemies and interacts well with items and life steal. You want 1-2 Flamethrowers on most elemental builds. But they don’t stack well since they just spread burn. Ugly tooth and Boxing glove are great with flamethrowers.
• Engineering: A Secret tech with mage, is that you can pick up Scared Sausages and Some Turrets. Turrets can spread fire with sausage, which then hits multiple enemies with Snakes. If you have several turrets and a Tyler, you can really have flames spreading all over the map. Pocket Factory is also super powerful for this reason. Landmines also spread flames. But remember that you can’t gain any engineering stats.

Stats:

• Elemental damage: As the Mage, you need to stack elemental damage. Elemental damage is best found through items, but upgrades are also fine. Especially if you’re offered an elemental damage upgrade of a higher tier than the other upgrades.
• Healing: Life Steal is super powerful with the flamethrower, as its fast attack speed and pierce will trigger life steal very often. Otherwise I would go for HP regen in general.
• Dodge: Consider if you’re going dodge. Peaceful bee is quite good if you do, Toxic sludge and Alloy is great if you don’t.

Items:

• Melee Damage/Ranged Damage Downsides: Fertilizer, Shmoop and Lucky charm, have downsides that don’t matter to you. So they become potentially powerful items.
• Ugly Tooth is really powerful with Burn, as it slows down enemies while they burn to death. The Flamethrower is great at stacking the slow along with the burn.
• Pierce/Bounce: When using Taser or Wand, look for Bandana and Ricochet. Getting Piercing or Bouncing is great. And each hit can spread burn.
• Sharp Bullet is also very powerful, since the actual damage of the hit doesn’t matter as much, since you spread flames. This is a S-Tier item for taser and wand.
• Scared Sausage: If you are using weapons that don’t automatically spread fire on hit, then you should pick up more scared sausage. (Taser, Lightning shiv). Otherwise it isn’t worth buying them. Structures also spread fire with this item. Btw sausages add a secret +1 to all your burn damage for each sausage you have.
• Snakes are great. When you have a snake, everytime you light an enemy on fire, it can spread the fire to another enemy. There is diminishing usefulness to snakes. Once you have 2, you’re likely to already be lighting enough enemies on fire. 
• Not Eye Surgery increases the DPS of your Burn. But it costs a lot of money for 10% faster triggers. Eyes Surgery have shown itself to not be worth the money this patch.
• NOT Strange Book: (But remember that Strange Book does nothing for you since you can’t gain any engineering stat.). 
• Elemental DMG Items: Toxic Sludge, Fuel Tank, Handcuffs, Gnome, Wolf Helmet are the items I’m looking for to get elemental damage. Boiling water is fine and perhaps the cleanest way to get elemental dmg.

Chunky

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: C

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Hand
• Fist
• Cacti Club
• Rock
• Stick
• Torch
• Plank
• Chopper
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Spiky Shield
• Ghost Scepter
• Shredder
• Pruner

Weapons of Choice:

• Pruner works well with the +3 Healing from consumables. And can really do damage if you find spicy sauces. The Harvesting bonus is awesome. My go-to. (remember to get enough melee damage if you’re using pruner)
• Stick – Great weapon that comes with +15 Max HP.
• Spiky Shield, as the armor stacking is great on Chunky, and you ignore the -10% speed of the blunt tag. Good knockback keeps you safe.

Alternative Options:

• Shotgun/Shredder – puts you at range, which can be a big help if you’re having trouble surviving with Chunky’s healing in Melee.
• Choppers give additional healing from consumables, and scales with your max HP.
• Rocks are also playable. Gives some nice Armor + HP bonuses. But it isn’t the strongest weapon in general.
• Ghost Scepter – A fun option with an awesome late game. You need to focus on getting enough damage early to keep if you go this route.

Strategy:

Chunky is a difficult character to learn. You have so many stats that don’t work for you, and you heal by eating consumables, and generally by having more max HP. You need to learn to navigate the battlefield locked at 100% speed without taking too much damage.

Chunky can be quite powerful once you learn the movement and what stats to get. Max Hp, Armor, Attack speed, and Luck are your most important stats. 

• Keep your DPS up: Dead enemies don’t deal damage. It is easy to get sidetracked by Max HP, Armor, Consumable Healing etc. keep your DPS high on Chunky, just like with other characters. If you fall behind on DPS, you lose out on Materials, and it becomes exponentially harder to avoid damage.
• Learn to sidestep enemies. Since you’re stuck on default Speed, you’ll have to learn to dodge projectiles and charging enemies at that speed. All these things can be done at default speed, but it requires you to learn the attack patterns.
• Watch out for Ranged Enemies: Chunky is slow and uses melee weapons. This means that it can be difficult to kill the spitters and buffers. Make sure you chase down the enemies that keep a distance to you, so they don’t stack up. You also need to be vigilant on wave 7, since it can be hard to reach the eggs in time.
• Consumable Healing: This is your Main way of surviving. Learn to manage your consumption. Leave consumables on the ground until you need them. Get more Healing with Weird food and Lemonade. Get more fruits with Gardens and Luck.
• Luck Based Build: Chunky has a bigger chance of seeing items that give luck, give Consumable healing (Lemonade, Weird Food), or Baby Elephant, Cyberball. This sets Chunky up for a Luck based build. You want Luck for more Consumables dropped by enemies. So if you have a ton of Luck, then Baby Elephant and Cyberball can deal tons of damage. You also have extra %dmg from your HP. But remember that this is an option, not a requirement. You’ll be more than fine without going for Cyberball/Elephant.

Stats:

• Max HP: Max HP is great on you, and also provides a good amount of %Damage. There are some items and weapons that deal damage based on your Max HP, which can be fine. But I wouldn’t tunnel vision on Max HP. You still need other stats.
• Dead Stats: You can’t really use HP Regen, Life Steal, Dodge, or Speed. That is going to affect how you evaluate items a lot.
• Armor, not Dodge: Since you can’t really go for dodge, armor becomes super important to increase your Effective HP. Having armor increases the value of your healing. Luckily some armor items have negative speed as their downside, making them easy pickups for Chunky.
• Healing: Life steal is a dead stat to you and HP regen is halved. So look for other methods of healing. Lemonade and weird food are great for more consumable healing. There are also Items that can 
• Luck: Chunky is tagged for Luck, and Luck increases the amount of Consumable dropped by enemies. So get more luck.
• % Damage: You’ll get a lot of this through your Max HP. So you don’t need to worry about it. But I would still pick up the great items and upgrades you see along the way.

Items:

• Max HP Items: Broken mouth is great, Acid is also pretty good. Since you’re ignoring the downsides of those items. Not a fan of alien worm. Medal is also worse. But Little Muscley Dude is great as always
• Baby Elephant / Cyberball – Since you’re tagged for luck, and might be stacking luck, these can be good. Chunky has the option to go for a luck based build if you find enough of these. So look out for that option. 

Speed:

• Negative Speed Items: You can use Items with Speed downsides without losing anything. Look for Helmet, Warrior Helmet, Barricade, Statue, Mammoth, Big arms,
• Shackles has no downside for you. 80 Range is pretty powerful. And if you’re using engineering for some reason, that’s a free additional bonus.
• Ugly Tooth & Snail: You can’t increase your own speed, but you can slow down enemies. These also have speed as downsides, making them extra good for you. Especially ugly tooth is a must to keep up with Elites and Bosses.

Healing Options:

• Lemonade and weird food – Consumable Healing is your bread and Butter. You need to buy them.
• Gardens are quite good on Chunky. Solid healing.
• Alternative healing includes cute monkey, healing turret, and Torture.
• Tentacles can also be powerful if you have some crit.

Max HP Build:

• Alien Eyes can be strong if you stack max HP
• Spicy Sauce can become good if you manage to stack them and extra powerful if you’re using Pruner as a weapon.

Traps:

• Not Stone Skin – This can be powerful, but you don’t get +%dmg from the Max HP. and losing Armor sucks. So you want at least 22 or more armor before this becomes good. So Max HP from other sources tend to be better.
• NOT Baby Alien – While the +15 HP gives a lot of stats for chunky, the +8% enemy speed really hurts since you can’t increase your own speed. 
• NOT Padding – You don’t get %DMG from the Temporary Max HP. I’m not a big fan of padding on chunky, even if you get to ignore the -5% Speed.
• Not power Generator – C’mon.

Old

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Scissors
• Screwdriver
• Wrench
• Revolver
• Rock
• Plank
• Chopper
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Taser
• Wand
• Pruner

Old is pretty vanilla when it comes to weapons. The character specific abilities don’t affect weapons much.

• Shotgun – The tightly packed enemies line up perfectly for the shotgun to mow them down. 
• Revolver – Is just a generally good weapon.
• Pruner is also just great.

Other Options

The defining feature for Old is the small map and slow enemies. The small map makes engineering more powerful, as the randomly placed turrets end up being close together anyway. 

• So Wrench is a powerful option, along with Screwdriver as a fun option to try.
• Taser is also fine if you want an elemental build.

But any weapons can work, as the bonuses aren’t limiting the Old from any build. Melee weapons like the slowed enemies, as you can dance around them without being hit. Explosive weapons can also become very powerful.

Strategy:

There isn’t much to say about Old. It is a different experience playing on a smaller map, but the slower enemies make it easier to handle. Get used to sidestep projectiles, since you don’t have as much space to dodge in. Especially for Elites and bosses.

• As the Old, it is easy to avoid taking damage, as everything moves slower, giving you more reaction time. However the smaller map means you can’t kite enemies around the map as easily.
• Don’t fall behind on damage: You need to keep the map clear.
• Tank up for the Mid Game: Once you get to wave 10+, enemies are going to spawn all around you. At this point you are going to need to up your defenses a bit.
• Turrets: Even if you’re not going engineering, picking up Incendiary turret and medical turret can be an option since the battlefield is so small.
• Economy: Build up your harvesting and economy early so you have enough power to handle the later waves where it is harder to evade enemies.
• Get Speed: Get your speed back up. Don’t stay at -10%. Leverage your ability to outmaneuver your enemies.

Lucky

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Stick
• Rock
• Fist
• Chopper
• Plank
• Screwdriver
• Slingshot
• Wand

• Stick is my go-to lucky weapon for this patch. It is cheap, and works fine at your slow attack speed. It gives a strong start, and doesn’t require a lot of melee damage, allowing you to focus more on %dmg.
• Slingshot is a decent ranged option. The bounces work very well combined with your luck damage. However you can fall behind on damage if you don’t find enough Elephants/Cyberballs.
• Chopper: Chopper grants a ton of consumable healing, which is powerful on Lucky. Chopper can struggle a bit with the damage and range, especially early. But it scales with your Max HP, which means you can skip melee damage for the most part.
• Screwdriver – Some people also like screwdriver because it damages enemies all over the map, just like your Luck damage, and you can largely ignore the -60% attack speed.
• Fist is another fine melee option. It is fast, and mostly ignores the negative attack speed debuff. However it has a shorter range, and requires a bit of melee damage early.

Weapon Mixing: As lucky it might be worth it to not invest in flat dmg and crit at all. In that case, you can freely combine ranged weapons with melee weapons. Due to your luck, high level weapons show up early in the shop. Adding a Tier 3 spear to your slingshots can give you extra area clear and be a cost efficient investment. Experiment and try what works for you. However if you’re using sticks, you should just use 6 sticks.

Strategy:

Lucky revolves around the luck stat. You start with 125 luck and you should stack it higher. The idea is to use your ability to deal damage when you pick up material, along with the items Cyberball and Baby Elephant to deal intense luck based damage. You should buy all the cyberballs and Baby elephants you see. You then pick up a lot of % Damage and Luck to scale this. 

Baby elephants and cyberballs trigger independently. This means that whenever you pick up materials, or kill an enemy, the game rolls the 25% chance for each of that item you have. So if you have 3 cyberballs, you roll 25% three times, and an enemy is chosen and hit 0, 1, 2, or up to 3 times by the damage depending on how many rolls succeed. (That does mean some diminishing returns due to hitting the same enemy with way too much damage and just doing overkill damage.)

On Negative Attack Speed: 

It is worth noting that negative attack speed doesn’t work like positive attack speed. Weapons have several hidden stats that determine their attack speed, (Weapon cooldown, Recoil, and range) and negative attack speed only affects one of these stats, while positive attack speed works with all of them. A normal slingshot has a cooldown of 1.22 seconds, while for Lucky it has 1.77 seconds. Normal fists have 0.78 vs 0.92, Stick – 1.25 vs 1.68. So that means picking up 60% attack speed only gives: (slingshot 45% dps increase, Fist 18%, Stick 34%) Instead of the 100%/40% =150% DPS increase you would’ve expected. When you then account for the fact that attack speed doesn’t affect your luck damage, it might not be worth it to go into attack speed at all.

Conclusion: Since negative attack speed doesn’t do too much, you should either stay at the negative 60%. (You can even lower it further). Or you should attempt to get it to at least +50% positive attack speed to get the real benefits, if you stop around at 0% attack speed, it is a waste.

• Don’t let Materials Pile up. There is a maximum of 50 Materials that can be on the ground at once. If more would be dropped, the value is instead added to other materials already on the ground. So you lose out on Baby Elephant damage when this happens.

Stats:

• Boost your XP Gain: The high amounts of luck means you’ll find more crates and higher tier items, boosting your economy, but it comes at a cost of -50% exp. You can pick up some Scars or bean teachers to bring you back up to 100%. Those items are extra effective on you. (2.5 scars double your exp gain, normally it takes 5). So make sure you look for Scars and Bean Teachers especially.
• %Damage will scale both the damage you deal with your weapons, and with your luck abilities. Super important stat for Lucky.
• Flat Damage and Crit: These damage stats don’t increase your luck damage, and the weapons you’re using, stick, fist, slingshot, don’t scale particularly well with flat damage, so you can ship out on most, except the really good offers. For Crit I like just dumping it on Lucky.
• Speed is useful for surviving and picking up materials faster. Get speed early and a good amount.
• Ignore Life Steal: Your luck damage does not life steal, and your slower attack speed means that life steal is weaker. So in addition to my consumable healing, I look for powerful HP regen options such as Plant, Fairy, etc.

Items:

• Consumable Healing: The high amount of luck means you’ll find a lot of consumables. So look for lemonade and Weird food. It can end up being your main form of healing early and mid game. 
• Pickup Range / Auto Collect: Look for items that help your pickup range. Alien tongue, and maybe Little frog, if you’re not going dodge You don’t need much, but the first +30% to +50% is decent. I also love Baby Gecko and Sifd’s Relic.

Mutant

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: B

Starting Weapon:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Cacti Club
• Ghost Axe
• Stick
• Rock
• Plank
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• SMG
• Revolver
• Shredder
• Taser
• Crossbow
• Fighting Stick

Mutant’s ability to gain more upgrades work well with most weapons. However a few weapons stick out.

• SMG, Double Barrel Shotgun – Upgrades are the easiest way to get ranged damage, and these weapons are insane if you can get enough ranged damage with them.
• Fighting Stick – Scales with your level, making it a powerful melee option for Mutant.

Other options

• Stick – Great Weapon.
• Revolver – Good weapon.

Strategy:

The Mutant has only two simple and easy to understand abilities. Items cost 50% more, and you’ll earn 300% experience.

This means you’ll end up as perhaps level 33 instead of 23. Or something like that. Especially in the early game, the levels will come fast, and you can expect to level up 2-3 times each wave.

Understanding Good Upgrades 

Some stats are easier to find on items than others. %Damage is easier to get through items compared to attack speed. 

• Generally, Attack Speed, Armor, Ranged Damage, are hard to come by efficiently in items. 
• %Damage, Max HP, Luck, Melee Damage, Harvest, Life Steal, Elemental Damage are easier to get through items.

But this is just a loose rule of thumb. You still pick up the good attack speed items like coffee, and if you’re offered a higher tier upgrade in Max HP, you’ll also take that. Consider it a tie-breaker.

• Buy your Weapons: Since everything is so expensive, you 
• Harvesting gives both money and Exp, Investing in harvest helps later in the game so you still can afford items, when the upgrades slow down. Since the Exp from Harvesting is tripled, harvesting is the real way for you to gain extra levels.
• Levels: You can expect to get about 10 extra levels compared to a normal run.
• Manage your Rerolls: Reroll costs for level ups are shared for each wave. So if you have 3 level ups after a wave, you should be careful not to reroll too hard on the first level up, since it will also increase the price of rerolling for the next two levels.

Items:

For Mutant, you’ll spend more money on rerolling upgrades, and all items are more expensive, so it is really limited how many items you can get. For this weapon as the Mutant, you should have a high standard for which items you buy. I often skip those middle of the road items I otherwise would’ve have picked up and instead just buy the good stuff. 

• SKIP XP Items: You are tagged for exp items, meaning more will show up in the shop. But I think it is a waste of your money, since going from 300% exp to 315% exp gain isn’t as big of a difference as 100% to 115%. Each level also requires exponentially more exp than the one before it. So even if you pick up +50% extra exp, it is likely only getting you 1 extra level.
• Recycling Machine – The Recycling value of items scale with your shop prices, so Recycling Machine can really earn you some good money.

Generalist

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Cacti Club
• Ghost Axe
• Lightning Shiv
• Spear
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Pistol
• SMG
• Revolver
• Slingshot
• Knife
• Shuriken
• Laser Gun

As the Generalist you need to pick both a melee and a ranged weapon at least, since you can only have 3 of each. Due to your ability, the generalist ends up with a higher amount of melee/ranged damage. So look for weapons that scale well with flat damage.

Melee Weapons

• Cacti Club – You actually make the spines fired do quite a bit of damage.
• Spear – Basically works like a ranged weapon, making it easier to fire all your weapons at the same time.

Ranged Weapon

• SMG or Shotgun are really good since they scale really well with ranged damage.
• Revolver is also surprisingly great when matched with a weapon like spear. 
• Slingshot is a powerful weapon, and primitive, making it give extra hp with your melee weapons, and making it easier to find the weapons together.

Other Combos

• Knife/Shuriken – A Crit based combo that can be fun to explore. Both weapons scale with melee, but that doesn’t make any difference. You still can use good ranged upgrades and items to pump your melee damage.

Strategy:

The Generalist Is forced to use 3 Melee and 3 Ranged Weapons, but in your Melee and Ranged Damage Stats are linked together. This helps you get more of the better upgrades/items and you gain a ton when you find items that give both Melee and Ranged Damage.

Otherwise the generalist is pretty straightforward. 

I don’t find Generalist to be very strong, since having to have such a mix of weapons is often a downside. It is harder to get the right mix of stats, when your weapons scale very differently. For example, Spears don’t need a ton of Melee damage, while SMGs do want a ton of Ranged damage. If Generalist feels very strong in your hands, it might be because you’re doing some funky weapon combinations on other builds anyway, and it might also be because you’re not getting enough flat damage. Generalist certainly helps you get a ton of flat damage.

Melee / Ranged Damage is important, but don’t let it cloud your judgment. You shouldn’t be buying the bad sources of Melee / Ranged Damage, in fact you should have standards. One of the powerful points of the Generalist is that you have double the options. You can choose the Highest tier between Melee / Range DMG Upgrades. And you can buy the best items that grant melee and ranged Damage. So with that many options, don’t be tricked into buying garbage sources of Damage like Mutation or Riposte.

• Lifesteal: If you’re using Cacti club + SMG lifesteal can be good. I mostly Default to HP Regen.

Items:

• Look for Hybrid Items: Look for items that give both Melee and Ranged damage, as their values are doubled for you: Hedgehog, Wheat, Big Arms, Handcuffs, Alloy.
• Double Damage Downsides: Watch out for items with melee or ranged damage downside. Especially those with both as a downside like Peaceful bee, Lucky charm, or Shmoop.
• Item Based Damage: Rip and Tear and Baby with a beard tend to be good with you since you stack a lot of flat damage.

Loud

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: S

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Cacti Club
• Ghost Axe
• Ghost Flint
• Lightning Shiv
• Spear
• Torch
• Rock
• Hatchet
• Plank
• Wrench
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Pistol
• SMG
• Revolver
• Shredder
• Taser
• Wand
• Shuriken
• Slingshot
• Crossbow
• Thief Dagger
• Pruner
• Jousting Lance
• Fighting Stick

So many choices!

• Lightning shiv and Slingshot for easy bounces killing everything.
• Thief Dagger gives you a ton of money and causes you to scale out of control.
• Spear or Jousting lance are great for long range melee builds.
• Shredder – The explosion build easily deals with the additional enemies.
• Ghost Axes or Ghost Flints for insane fun stacking.
• SMG – If you stack a ton of ranged damage. Get at least 34% attack speed, you want more. Get sharp bullet.

Honestly most builds can work. As long as the weapon is able to handle the number of enemies.

Strategy:

Loud most deal with the hordes of enemies that spawn. Use weapons that can hit multiple targets. More enemies means more money and exp. Loud can gain insane amounts of money. All you need to do is to deal enough damage, and your late game will be amazing.

Watchout for waves like wave 7, where the extra enemies can mean a large amount of eggs spawning. 

Stats:

You’ll need all the same stats as a regular build, but there are a few stats that are a bit stronger than normally on Loud.

• Attack Speed: Generally always a nice stat, but extra nice on Loud since it helps keep up with the extra enemies. Keep it high and it will keep you safe.
• Crit Build – Tentacle healing on Crit kill, and Hunting Trophy granting gold scale really well with extra enemies. So the Critical Hit based build becomes quite a bit better.
• Negative Harvesting has no increments. So it won’t grow aside from the -3 each round (So if you have -100 Harvesting, it becomes -103 at the end of the wave, not 108).
• Positive Harvesting: But this also means that if you get any harvest, you won’t be gaining increments unless you get enough to get into the positives. Buying fertilizer or a tractor might still be worth it, but generally you can ignore harvesting in favor of just focusing on dealing enough damage to kill all enemies. Unlike on other Characters, Harvesting is a Luxury on Loud.
• Healing – More enemies means that Life steal and consumable healing is better. Especially consumable healing. You’re also seeing the mouse item more often, making life steal better. But in all cases, I will invest in Consumable healing. 
• Luck: I like Luck on Loud. You have the extra money early to throw at luck. And it just helps you scale completely out of control, and boosts your healing.

Items:

• Lure – The amount of spawned enemies scales with more Enemies. Making Lure Highly profitable.
• Bait – Same with Bait. This means more money, and it’s great if you’re ahead. But otherwise it can mean a quick death.
• More Enemies: Pick up Gentle aliens and Mice for more enemies, if you can handle it. These can lead to some of the most fun runs in the game. Gentle alien is especially powerful, since it grants a ton of useful stats. So if you like more enemies, it is a great item.
• Piercing/Bounce: Bandana and Ricochet can help your ranged weapons clear the enemies. Sharp Bullet is also an option.
• Rip and Tear and Baby with A Beard are really powerful on Loud.
• Luck Damage: Cyberball and Baby Elephant’s damage scale with the number of enemies. Since Loud has +30% and a strong economy, it is easy for Loud to reach a point where you have a ton of Luck, Damage and those items. It can be a powerful way to clear the map. But worth noting it doesn’t work with Crit.

Multitasker

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Cacti Club
• Fist
• Knife
• Spear
• Stick
• Lightning Shiv
• Screwdriver
• Wrench
• Ghost Axe
• Plank
• Chopper
• Hatchet
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Pistol
• SMG
• Revolver
• Shredder
• Wand
• Slingshot
• Taser
• Shuriken
• Crossbow
• Pruner
• Jousting Lance
• Fighting Stick

There are many good options for starting weapons for the Multitasker. It is a lot of fun to try all the different builds with 12 Weapons

• Stick is the strongest option, as its ability gives crazy base damage. You don’t need to worry about Melee damage at all. It’s also a cheap weapon, which is nice since multitasker can buy so many.
• Jousting Lance – Also quite nice, gives you 24-40% ish Speed when you have 12, so you don’t have to worry as much about speed, range, or melee damage. It also sets you up for a strong power generator.
• Slingshot is a very strong ranged option. Just get enough of the different damage stats, and it will keep you safe.
• Spear got a great range and is a good option.
• Shotgun, SMG can be great, since they scale so well with ranged damage, that you don’t need them higher than tier 1. 
• Wrench is also good, as it ignores the Damage penalty. You can let your %Dmg go to -100% if you want, since your turrets are unaffected. You can Add some Screwdrivers to the mix if you want.
• Chopper is a fun meme for +12 healing from consumables.
• Single Target weapons like Revolver and Laser Gun actually are pretty decent on Multitasker, since with 12, they can actually handle a large number of enemies.
• Taser, Lightning Shiv, are also quite good for an elemental build.

Generally, you can go with most options. 

Strategy:

The multitasker can wield up to 12 weapons at the cost of losing 5% Damage for each weapon picked up. If you’re not using Sticks or Wrenches, you’ll actually have a bit of a rough early game, since you’ll have -10% damage with 6 weapons with no character abilities. Then as you add more weapons, the % damage reduction can actually be worse than the additional dmg the weapon adds.

• -40% Damage: At 12 weapons, you have -40% base damage. Make sure you get enough +%dmg to get back in positives, or it will hurt your damage output. This is super important to increase.
• Stat Increases are more impactful than upgrading weapons: When you have 12 weapons, getting +10% damage or attack speed might make for a bigger damage increase than upgrading one of the weapons. This can be a hard balance, since Multitasker easily can end up spending all their money on weapons. Make sure you haven’t forgotten a stat.
• Weapons are far away from you: The more weapons you have, the further they are positioned from the center of your body. As a result, short ranged melee weapons often have trouble attacking enemies on the opposite side of you. Making elites harder to focus down. You either need to keep your range stat higher, or better yet, learn to move closer to the enemies, such that the weapons get their turn to hit. Outside of elites, this can be an advantage, because it gives extra range to the weapon in its direction, and it means that you have weapons ready to attack in different directions.
• Weapon Set Bonuses: If you mix weapons, you will get more set bonuses. It might be worth it in some cases. (never with sticks tho).  But this is very niche, and your first priority is to make sure your weapons scale with the same stats and have similar range.

Items:

• %Damage items: I’m buying Head injuries, Gentle Aliens, Cyclops Worms. Give me all of it.
• Glass Cannon – This isn’t the most cost efficient item. But If I’m into the negative with %Dmg, I’m happy to pick this up.
• Power Generator can really be a powerful pickup.

Wildling

• Difficulty: Very Easy
• Tier: C

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Stick
• Spear
• Torch
• Rock
• Cacti Club
• Hatchet
• Slingshot
• Fighting Stick

Sticks are likely the best choice, as you start with an extra stick. But Spear, Hatchet and Slingshots are also great. Any primitive weapon can work. 

Strategy:

Starting with +30% lifesteal, and the +15 HP from primitive Weapons makes for a very tanky character. Wildling got a strong early game, but their late game is kinda capped from the Tier 2 limit. So we have to work around that.

• UP your DPS stats: Your weapons can only go to tier 2. This limits your late game DPS output. (but saves you money, especially with sticks, which are cheap) You need a high amount of %Dmg, Attack speed, Flat damage, and Crit to keep up. Secondary damage such as Rip and Tear can also help, or Baby with a beard for ranged.
• Economy: Use your strong early game to invest in your Economy. Get Harvest, Luck, Bags, Recycling machine, Trees. This will help you scale the late game. Piggy bank, Tractor, Crown. Go big. We want to scale out of control.
• Defensive Stats: I like getting a lot of armor, and maxing out Dodge on Wildling. It’s useful for melee builds that struggle to clear the map quickly.
• Healing: You already got 30% life steal. So I wouldn’t invest in more. Just get Hp Regen and Consumable Healing. You’re gonna get hit.

Gladiator

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: C

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Spear
• Cacti Club
• Torch
• Thief Dagger
• Knife
• Plank
• Ghost Axe
• Ghost Flint
• Fist
• Jousting Lance
• Fighting Stick

The Gladiator is a Melee Only character that is encouraged to use many different weapons. So your start weapon is just a jump off point.  

• Ghost Axe – If you start with a ghost axe, you can pick up some quick free stacks in the early game. Buy exactly enough ghost weapons to combine them into one Tier 4 Axe. This has been my go-to strategy. It is weaker early, but helps a lot for the mid-late game.
• Spear/Fighting Stick/Jousting Lance– These weapons are all quite fine and interchangeable. They have nice weapon classes which helps you find other good weapons early.
• Fist – A fine start option. Fist is cheap and has a weaker weapon class for jumping into other weapons. So I would rather pick up Fists/Flaming Knuckles on my journey. 
• Thief Dagger – You could start thief dagger for some cash. But Gladiator isn’t the biggest fan of Crit. I think ghost axe does the same job better on Gladiator.

Weapon Strategy:

The Gladiator is rewarded for using different weapons. So you want to end up using 6 different weapons. 

However in the beginning I often have 2-5 of the same weapon (my starting weapon) until I find the other good weapons. 

It isn’t worth it to pick up random bad weapons. You don’t need the attack speed early. You’ll do fine without due to the +5 starting melee damage. Then as the game progresses I add more and more different weapons to the mix, and then by the Late game I hope to have 6 different weapons. But only having 4-5 different weapons is also fine, if the duplicates are great weapons.

Great Weapons:

• Spear – Offers a strong ranged attack that can help you cleave into big crowds of enemies. Very powerful
• Fist, Flaming Knuckles, and Power Fist – Good DPS with Knockback, keeps you safe. 
• Sword – Strong DPS and attack pattern. Great range.
• Circular Saw – Good DPS, gives good life steal with a decent range and sweeping attack. 
• Hammer – Good Burst damage and knockback. Keeps you safe from a lot of heavier enemies.
• Plasma Hammer – Great DPS, Knockback, Insane Explosive DPS. Better hammer.
• Thunder Sword – Better Sword that slows enemies.
• Scythe – It has great range and DPS. It will boost your %DMG which is really powerful. The 3hp damage per Second is steep and can kill you, but the weapon life steals some back.
• Drill – The DPS is fine, the Range sucks. But the Attack Speed buff to all your weapons is insanely strong.
• Ghost Axe (Only if you have it early) – I like it as a Starting weapon. Otherwise it just isn’t worth it. It has terrible DPS compared to other options.

Decent Weapons:

• Scissors – Ok Melee weapon that comes with good life steal.
• Chopper – Not the strongest weapon. But it gives Healing and the Blade Tag, which helps you get to Saw and Sword.
• Hatchet – good scaling, strong at tier 1 if you have the attack speed coming in. But it needs you to increase your range stat.
• Fighting Stick – Good weapon classes. Decent weapon. It becomes quite damaging at higher tiers. 
• Claw – Actually deals okay damage if you have a lot of attack speed. But it falls off later if you don’t get crit.
• Jousting Lance – Strong ranged cleave, good weapon class. Gives some speed. 

Mid Weapons:

• Ghost Flint – I don’t like it. You could pick it up early game if starting ghost axe, but otherwise its stats and DPS are weak.
• Knife – It got good DPS if you got a Crit build. But I’m assuming you don’t. Then it kinda sucks.
• Thief Dagger – Can be okay if you get it early and make some money out of it. But it requires crit, and other weapons will take most of the kills.
• Plank – Bad scaling, and there are stronger versions of it.
• Spiky Shield – If you have good armor. But it doesn’t work with melee damage.
• Rock – Can be a fine cheap pickup along with your other primitive weapons. But it just doesn’t keep up in DPS. The Tier 1 rock got some high base damage tho.
• Pruner – Gives a Garden which is decent. But you can’t really use the support tag, and it doesn’t deal a lot of DPS:
• Cacti Club – Mostly useful for its tags and Spikes. You won’t really be able to abuse either. Which leaves the Cacti Club as a kinda weak option.
• Lightning Shiv – You don’t want to be scaling elemental. So it won’t be doing too much.

Never Use:

Stick, Screwdriver, Wrench, Hand, and Torch. (Reasons left to the reader)

Strategy:

• Have Standards: While it might be tempting to pick up a bad weapon just for the temporary attack speed. Remember that it will cause the shop to show you more of the bad weapon instead of the weapons you want. So it is often not worth it.
• Leave space for combining: If you have 6 Different Weapons, it is really difficult to have room for combining Weapons. You don’t need all that attack speed early. 2-4 different weapons is fine for early game.
• 8 Tier 1 Weapons = 1 Tier 4. Remember that you want to end up with a red weapon of each different weapon. It takes 8 white weapons to create a red one. Once you have the weapons you need to combine into a single red one, it is time to stop buying more. So if you have two purple spears, don’t buy a blue one. You already got what you need. However, sometimes I actually like having 2 spears, because a spear is such a good weapon. Then I can throw it away later.
• Exploding weapons can’t trigger life steal as well, and can end up clearing enemies before your life stealing weapons can hit enemies. Be careful you don’t lose your ability to heal. You might want to consider going into HP regen and consumable healing for this reason if you plan on having both Plasma Hammer and Power fist. That doesn’t mean you can’t still have a saw.

Stats:

• Attack Speed: Your ability will provide most of the attack speed you need. But still pick up the good options you’re offered: higher tier upgrades and coffee, etc. But otherwise you don’t need to hunt it down like other builds do.
• Negative luck means that even trees have a chance to not drop fruit. It means you’re only getting 70% consumables in general. It is lowering the amount of higher tier upgrades and items in the shop that you see. And it also means less loot crates. I want to get out of negative luck. And Luck is quite good on Gladiator, so I don’t mind if I can get to +30 ish luck. A lot of the best weapons are locked behind higher tiers.
• HP Regen: I like HP Regen over lifesteal on Gladiator. A lot of melee weapons are terrible with life steal. So HP Regen is much safer. If you want life steal, use a scissor/Circular Saw.
• Crit – Critical Multipliers: Fists, Fighting Stick and Hammers aren’t great with Critical Hits. So if you have multiple of those, crit becomes much worse. You can also build multiple precise weapons for a crit build. But I don’t think it’s very strong. 
• Max HP / Armor: I like being Tanky on Gladiator. So I keep my HP and Armor healthy.
• Dodge: Gladiator can struggle with surviving. So I like a tanky build. I like getting Dodge filled up to 60% during the mid-late game for the Elite-Boss fights. But you don’t need it that much early.
• Range: It really depends on your weapon setup. If you’re using mostly long range weapons like sword, spear, lance etc. You don’t need range. But otherwise, 150 range weapons and below really benefit from some range. Having different weapons makes it harder to rely on them covering you, so a bit of range makes it much safer. I like having +0 to +100 range stat.

Items:

There aren’t a lot of items to shout out. Plant, Leather armor, and mastery are all top tier on gladiator. The general melee build items.

• The Spider item was made for the Gladiator. Buy it if you see it.
• Clover – Really a neat item. You want luck and Dodge, and you don’t use life steal.
• Consumable Healing. Weird Food, Lemonade – These can be great if you get the luck stat up a bit. But honestly, I’m such a big sucker for consumable healing, I’ll even get it on Gladiator.
• Melee Damage: You’re tagged for Melee Damage. So expect to see a lot in the shop. You start with +5, so you don’t need to be desperate for melee damage. The premium Items are Mastery, Little muscley dude. Defective steroids can also be fine. But don’t lower yourself to goat skull (if you have crit), hedgehog, charcoal. Those are bad.

Saver

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Tier: D

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Thief Dagger
• Ghost Flint
• Lightning Shiv
• Cacti Club
• Spear
• Pistol
• Laser Gun
• Taser
• Wand 

Saver has a Rough start, and their starting weapons aren’t the greatest.

• Spear is often the default weapon, and its ability to hit tons of enemies work very well with your saving up.
• Lightning Shiv is also quite powerful. Shiv can easily clear the map with little stat investments. 
• Pistol can be acceptable. It is cheap and you can pick up revolvers. But it isn’t my favorite strat.
• Thief Dagger – Can be fun for the Money run, but can struggle with keeping up in DPS early.

Strategy:

As the name suggests, the Saver is about saving money. You start with a piggy bank, and it will give you 20% of your saved money at the beginning of each wave. Furthermore you gain damage for each 25 materials you hold. (You gain +40% damage for each 1000 gold you hold.)

The Saver is very difficult, as it requires you to carefully manage your money and only spend money on Weapons/items you absolutely need. If an item costs 100 money, it is now 150 money with the Saver’s downside. That is +6% damage if you had kept the materials through your damage ability.

And you could’ve also held onto that 150 gold and it would increase with each wave. 150 -> 180 -> 216 ->259 ->311. Any money kept doubles in 4 waves.

The Saver can reach 5000-25000 gold late game depending on the situation. And you gain +40% damage for each 1000 gold you hold. 

So the basic gameplay is to only buy 1-2 weapons per shop. Lock the absolutely best items. Then from shop 3 and onwards you can buy those items. Don’t reroll much, and just focus on saving up money. The later the game goes, the more you shop like a regular character. 

• Less Rerolling: Rerolling is throwing away money. And since you’re buying less items, you’re also rerolling less.
• Don’t need to save up too much: You don’t actually need to save up that much gold in the endgame. While you can have 20k+ for the wave 20 boss fight, you don’t need that much. 5k Gold is already +200% damage, which is more than enough. You’ll have a higher win percentage if you’re willing to also spend money later on and get your defenses in order for the late game.
• Glass Cannon: That said, I end up playing saver as a glass cannon. You’ll have so much damage that you’ll destroy bosses and elites before they can really hurt you. 
• Make sure you pick up materials: Unlike on other characters, you’re losing out on gold if you leave materials on the ground at the end of a wave, since you could’ve gotten a 20% return on it. Also, you deal more damage the more materials you have.

Stats:

• Flat Damage (Melee/Ranged/Elemental): Flat damage is one of the best ways to increase your DPS early, so you still need to pick some up, depending on your weapon choice.  
• %Damage: You rely on your ability for all the %Damage you need. Don’t waste upgrades on or buy items that give %dmg, you need the other stats. 
• Max HP + Armor: Early game I take some Max HP and it is most of my defensive stats. Then later you get to shop more. Then you branch into Armor. Later I would optimally like to use Padding to cover my Max HP needs.
• Take a +5 harvesting early. You start with 15 harvesting. If you take another +5 Upgrade, it will push you to 20 plus the one you got from the end of the first wave. This puts you to 21 harvesting, which is the break point at which you gain +2 Harvesting at the end of each wave. Really neat for your economy. (Harvesting also gives XP, and saver needs those stat boosts)

Items:

For Saver, you’ll be buying very few items in the early game, but then later you begin to shop more like a regular character. So early game I’m looking for top quality items: Fertilizer, coffee, tree, etc..

• Economy Items: Even on Saver, I still like Fertilizer, because it is that strong. But others like Coupon and Dangerous Bunny become quite questionable. While I normally rate them highly, here they cost +50% more gold and you are likely to earn more gold by just not buying anything. Saver also isn’t shopping a lot early, so coupons won’t be paying off for a looong time, at which point the saved up money would beat it out. You’re also not rerolling much, so bunny falls in value.
• Padding: The Saver’s own unlock, the padding is quite powerful on Saver. It gives 10 HP per 1000 gold you have, so it can easily give 30+ or more Max HP.
• %DMG Items: Avoid items that give %DMG, while items that have -dmg as the downside become better.

Sick

• Difficulty: Easy
• Tier: A

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Fist
• Hand
• Scissors
• Lightning Shiv
• Ghost Scepter
• Slingshot
• SMG
• Medical Gun

My Choices are:

• The SMG or Slingshot are the easiest options.
• SMG – Gives you tons of Life Steal, just a ton of Ranged Damage, and sharp bullet.
• Slingshot – The +12 HP from Sick + the +15 HP from primitive along with life steal means you can just ignore defense until the mid to late game. Just get a healthy mix of all the offensive stats, and you should win with ease.
• Lightning Shiv is also great, as the bounces trigger life steal. You can go full elemental and pick up flamethrowers. Flamethrowers are insane with lifesteal. 
• Fists are fine as melee.
• Scissors and medical guns are kind of overkill, since they have much worse DPS than normal weapons. And you have the life steal anyway.

Strategy:

You have +12 HP and +25% lifesteal, and that more than makes up for the 1 damage taken per second. It allows you to focus on your dps. 

Sick is a quite Easy Character. You get a ton of free defensive stats. It sets you up for an easy early game. 

Stats:

• Armor & Dodge. Since you already have extra Max HP, and plenty of healing, Armor & Dodge will do more than just more Max HP. You might not need Dodge, especially on a ranged build, but I want some armor on every run.
• Attack speed is always good, but it is extra good with lifesteal.
• Life Steal has diminishing returns. You can only heal 1 HP per 0.1 Second. So if you have SMG, you’re already pushing most of that. I don’t mind going higher, but you don’t need to buy random Bats and Butterflies in the shop early. Focus on your other stats.

Items:

• Dump HP Regen: Since you have -100 HP regen, negative hp regen items are great. Broken mouth, Poisonous tonic, Shaky Potion.
• Don’t take weird ghost, Tardigrade or Triangle of Power. Ghost will kill you, triangle will reduce your dmg. Tardigrade just pops.
• Blood Donation and Bloody Hand are powerful on Sick as you can support the additional damage. The Bloody Hand is especially powerful, as it usually will give +70% damage or more.
• Sharp Bullet – Getting the extra pierce means extra life steal. It’s already good, now it’s even better.

Farmer

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: A

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Hand
• Spear
• Stick
• Torch
• Screwdriver
• Wrench
• Taser
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Potato Thrower
• Pruner

The Strongest Option is Pruner for snowballing into the late game, as it will give you tons of harvesting. Spear, Stick, Shotgun, Wrench are playable options. But Pruner is the only thing that feels good on farmer.

Strategy:

Farmer is a weird one. He can spiral completely out of control with thousands of Harvesting, but also fall flat and end up behind if you don’t get enough Harvesting. Basically, your economy from enemy drops is halved, and you have some harvesting benefits that have to make up for that. 

• +20 Harvesting. – This secures your early game.
• +3% Increased Increments – This is a neat smaller version of the Crown.
• +1 Harvesting from each Consumable you pickup while at full HP. 
• Tagged for Harvesting – You find more Harvesting items in the shop.

The Farmer plays out pretty vanilla except that you have to pick up enough harvesting to make up for your -50% less materials dropped. The +20 harvest gives you a huge head start. Gaining you much more material and exp on the first wave compared to other characters. But you need to reinvest those upgrades and extra money in more harvesting.

• End of Wave consumable harvesting:Consumables are picked up at the end of the wave. If you have 100 consumables on the ground at the end of the wave, you miss out on 100 materials from the harvesting stat. However, the consumables are picked up and added to your harvesting stat before the 8% harvesting increase is calculated, so you don’t miss out on that. 
• Stay at max HP: Farmer heavily rewards skill. If you can evade enemies and not take damage, you gain more Harvesting from Consumables.

Using Pruners:

Pruners can be a bit difficult to use. They don’t have amazing damage or range. But they offer gardens and +25% harvesting from the Support tag. Pruners have some extra Crit chance, but they don’t really have synergy with crit. So I don’t prioritize crit. Instead I mostly focus on getting some Melee Damage. Don’t mind the 50% scaling, it gets better, and it’s still the best stat in the early game for scaling your Damage. I also love a bit of extra Range, and ofc boosting the Attack Speed. That also sets you up for Improved Tools.

Items:

• Garden – Spawns Consumables, that’s a lot of harvesting potentially.
• Improved Tools – If you have Pruners, or Gardens in General, Improved Tools makes them drop more consumables. Can be super powerful.
• Crown – Makes your Harvesting scale by 8% more per wave. If you can find Crown and also boost your Harvesting, it can gain you so much money that you just snowball out of control.
• Consumable Healing – Since you’re picking up so many Consumables, you should buy every Weird Food and Lemonade that you see.
• Harvesting Items: Fertilizer, Tractor, are insane. Even with the downsides.

Stats:

You need all the standard offensive and defense stats, but farmer has a bit of a different relationship with his economic stats.

• HP Regen over Life Steal – Pruner at least is better with HP Regen. Having Healing helps you not waste Consumables.  I then just dump Life steal for the Plant, Bean Teacher, and Clover.
• Luck is slightly better on Farmer than other characters. The extra Consumables dropped means more harvesting, and there are several Key Tier 3 items that Farmer really can use. Buy those Lucky Ducks at least.
• Harvesting: You gotta get it high, as mentioned. But remember not to break yourself trying to get it. There is a limit to how high you should value it.

Ghost

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: D

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Ghost Flint
• Ghost Axe
• Ghost Scepter 

All three options are fine. You can go 6 axes, Flint, or Scepters, or mix. You can mix Flint and Axes for a melee build that gives both %Dmg and Attack speed. 

• 2-2-2 Mixed Build: Some players also like going 2-2-2 of each weapon early for a good stat mix. Rely on your +10 Damage to make this viable. You don’t need more Ranged Damage for this build.
• If you are mixing, start with Axe, as it is more expensive.
• Ghost Scepter Build: Personally I like going 6 scepters, since it gives you a ton of HP for the late game. However, the build requires you to stack a lot of DPS to keep up with the enemies. You need a sharp bullet, tons of attack speed, and some ranged damage + good amount of %dmg. On this build you can basically forego defensive stats due to the amount of Max HP you have. Like a weird golem run. 

Strategy:

Your gameplay is to get maxed dodge, while using ghost weapons to farm stats. You have to get more Max hp to compensate for your armor. 

Ghost can be a bit scary to play, because a few unlucky hits can end the run if you have too little Max HP. Dodging 90% of the time can make you careless, because it seems like you can just stand in a crowd of enemies and just 

• Switch Weapons Late game: The Ghost weapons have terrible DPS, so you can replace them late game for other weapons. But if you do, remember that you lose 6% dodge, due to the set bonus. So make sure you don’t go under 90%
• Legendary Weapons: Ghost weapons aren’t the best late game, so if you can find a legendary weapon late game, it can be a super powerful dps upgrade. Scythe is also an ethereal weapon, making it easier to show up. Excalibur’s Armor downside is meaningless to the Ghost, making it a super powerful option.

Dodge and Ghost

You start with 30% dodge, and gain another 30% from the Ghost weapons. It is very important to get to 90% dodge, as being hit 40% of the time is 4 times worse than being hit 10% of the time. But you don’t need to rush it. During the early game, you can survive without the dodge, while you get your stats and economy going. But I want to be at 90% for the midgame.

At 90% Dodge, and -100 Armor, the ghost has 534% effective Hit Points, which is the same as a character with 0% dodge and 65 armor. So you are technically quite tanky. But there are several downsides. Since you take 0 damage from dodges, it often makes you feel immortal, since you are at 100% hit points… Until you aren’t. Don’t let Hybris get you. Play safely, even if you’re at full hp.

Stats:

• Don’t need to buy stat: When using Ghost Axe, you don’t have to buy %Dmg. Same with Ghost Flint and Attack Speed, and Ghost Scepter with Max HP. (If you mix the weapons you might still want to buy the better options for those stats.)
• Consumable healing is very powerful on Ghost, since you can store consumable healing on the ground until you take damage. Look for lemonades. If you have enough dodge, you can pick up some weird food. It is worth the -2 Dodge.
• Luck: If you rely on Consumable healing, consider getting slightly more luck.
• Max HP: You need a larger Max HP to compensate for the randomness of dodge. You should be able to take at least 2 hits in a row. You can expect the end bosses to deal about 56 damage with their projectiles. If you have under 112 hp, you can be killed by two hits in a row. If you have under 90 max HP, it becomes hard to heal above the 56 that you need to survive another hit. (Melee Hits are 77 Dmg, so oof)
• Negative Armor: Unlike positive armor, Negative armor has huge diminishing returns. Being at -90, -100, or -120 Armor makes no difference at all. It is the difference between taking 87% or 88% Extra damage. – This means you can pick up all the negative armor you want. And that you shouldn’t try to increase your armor.

Items:

• Negative armor items are a good pickup: Gambling Token, Glass Cannon, Sunglasses, Wheelbarrow, Community Support. You ignore the downside.
• Tardigrade was made for Ghost. But it still only saves you from 1 hit. It can be a fine addition if you’re not that tanky. But if you have 150+ hp, it isn’t that good.
• Fertilizer, Peaceful Bee: I like picking up some early negative melee damage items which are Fertilizer and Peaceful Bee. You start with +10, so you’ll be fine. The stats of those two items are great for you.
• Adrenaline is Insane on Ghost, always buy, even if you already have maxed Dodge.
• Not Riposte: I’m not a big Fan of Riposte, it barely does any damage, but you can try it out if you want. It is fine from a crate for the melee damage. On a Ghost axe build, you can stack Riposte for some meme boss damage potential.
• Not Armor Items: Avoid items that mostly give armor: Leather Vest, Metal Plate, Warrior Helmet.
• Not Stone Skin: And whatever you do, don’t buy Stone Skin… It will instantly put your Max HP to 1.

Speedy

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: A

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Fist
• Knife
• Thief Dagger
• Spear
• Screwdriver
• Wrench
• Shuriken
• Stick
• Jousting Lance
• Fighting Stick

My Picks

• Shuriken – Scales quite well with melee damage, the weapon clears the map nicely, making it easier to run around with full speed. Remember to get the Crit maxed out. The tier 4 version has 45% innate crit, so you need 55% to get it to 100%.
• Jousting Lance – Seems like the Perfect fit for speedy. Scales with speed, gives speed. Certainly really powerful. But it also only scales 50% with melee damage. Still, it is really powerful with speedy. Just don’t stand still.
• Spear – Longer range and better melee scaling. Spear is a viable alternative to the Jousting lance.

Strategy:

Speedy starts out fast and with a lot of damage. So it is a good opportunity to go glass cannon. Get more attack speed, %Dmg, weapons. Invest in Harvest and Luck. And then worry about defense later.

The main things to learn about speedy, is to navigate at high speeds, and not to stand still. Once you get these down, speedy is just a character that starts with a bunch of free stats. 

• Fix your Armor: Having Negative armor hurts. You should aim to get that -3 into a normal 10-20 range later in the game.
• Don’t invest in melee damage: Since you get melee damage from speed, you don’t need to invest in it. Only pick up the best of the best melee damage you’re offered. Otherwise focus on other stats.
• Don’t stand still. If you hold down both the left and the right button at the same time, you’ll stop. So be careful how you move. 
• Power Generator is overpowered on you. Always buy.
• Max Speed While getting more speed gives you melee damage, you shouldn’t push yourself above a speed you can handle. If you go too high, you might just start running into stuff and die. I would recommend 50-100% speed. 

Entrepreneur

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: S

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Hand
• Fist
• Knife
• Thief Dagger
• Pistol
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Taser
• Shuriken
• Pruner
• Wand
• Wrench

You have -50% modifier to damage. So weapons that scale heavily with flat damage are worse. For example Shotgun.

• Wrench is a strong build for Entrepreneur. You get to fully ignore the -50% dmg downside. Just stack the engineering stat. You can look at the Engineer character for more details on how to build an engineering build.
• Pruner is really strong. The support tag kickstarts your economy, the gardens provide healing, and the pruner has ok Damage. You’re going to struggle a bit to scale the pruner’s damage output, but the healing and economy gives you the breathing room to do it. This is my choice. You can pick up some DPS weapons in the midgame.

Other Options:

• Fist is a strong and cheap choice. You can also hope to pick up cooler weapons in the shop.
• Thief Dagger: You want more money? Thief Dagger can make for some fun snowball runs. But the -50% damage really hurts thief dagger.

Weapon Mixing: As the Entrepreneur I often end up weapon mixing. Early game you need to just buy whatever weapons that fit in your build. You can’t expect to be finding 6 of the same weapon when you only have 25-30 gold for the first shop. Wrench has better odds and doesn’t like mixing as much. 

In addition you also end up getting a lot of random stats, and you see a ton of weapons. So I like to mix and add powerful weapons to the build. Remember that you have better recycling value, so you’re not losing as much money in this way. I try to only have 2-3 different weapons in the early mid parts of the game, otherwise it is too hard to combine. Later you find a ton of tier 3-4 weapons, so it doesn’t matter.

Strategy:

The Entrepreneur is a quite difficult economic character. You lose all your gold at the start of each wave, so you have to spend it all at each shop. But once it gets going, Entrepreneur is one of the strongest characters in the game.

• Weak Earlygame: Your Early game is quite weak. You start with less money, you have to invest in harvesting, and your Dmg gains are halved. So just make sure you pick up enough weapons early to handle the waves, and make it out alive. The harvesting will carry you later!
• Spend all your money: You lose all the materials you have at the beginning of each wave. So you need to buy items and reroll until all your money is gone. You need to learn when to buy a bad item, and when to take a really expensive reroll.
• Recycling: Normally you get 25% back when recycling. Entrepreneur gets 50%. If you buy Recycling Machine, it becomes 85%. Consider getting more luck for crates at this point. It is worth noting that your lower shop prices also lower the recycling value.
• Buying out the Shop: When the rerolls are expensive, you can instead buy out all the items to get a free reroll. If there’s weapons in the shop you can recycle them and get 50-85% of the money back.

Stats:

• Get harvesting: You need to invest in harvest and get an insane economy to make up for your downsides. Look for harvesting in the early upgrades and items. Fertilizer is amazing.
• Damage Stats: When Flat damage and % Damage is halved, Attack speed and crit becomes stronger options to scale your damage.Since you have to spend all your money each shop, you often end up with  a lot of random items, ,and in turn, stats.
• Secondary Dmg Stats: Pumpkin, Dynamite and the like, are also halved in effect. (But they are still good in the right situations)

Items:

• Crown: The best item you can find. Any Harvesting you gain from Crown is also increased by 50%, allowing you spiral out of control if you find the Crown Early.
• Harvesting Items: Fertilizer, Tractor, Blood Donation, Bowler Hat, Wheat, Wheelbarrow. You need to buy these and stack up your Harvesting.
• Recycling Machine: This brings the recycling value from 50% to 85%. Making recycling Crates super powerful on the Entrepreneur.
• Economy Items: You are tagged for them. Buy any Coupon, Dangerous Bunny, Bag you see.
• Lure: Entrepreneur gains additional money from recycling Crates. Making Lure really powerful, if you manage to get enough damage to handle it.
• Not Piggybank: Piggybank makes you gain 20% of your materials at the beginning of a wave, but Entrepreneur loses 100%. So with Piggy Bank you just lose 80% instead. Don’t Buy Piggy Bank on Entrepreneur.

Engineer

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Wrench
• Screwdriver
• Plank
• Hammer

Wrench is the way to go. Screwdriver can also be powerful. Regular weapons aren’t a good experience.

Strategy:

The plan is to just get a bunch of turrets, engineering stat, and then just tank up so you can survive.

The Nest: Your Turrets spawn in a cluster somewhere on the Map. This is your Nest. It will protect you, but it also means that you’re weaker away from it. If you’re playing with screwdrivers, you’ll have more weapon DPS, and also have more mines around the map. But engineering is most often played with wrenches. So 

You will have to survive, evading enemies under your turrets. So pick up good amounts of speed, HP regen (Or Luck and Consumable Healing), Armor and dodge.

• Blue/Fire/Tier 2 turrets’ burn doesn’t stack. So you might want to upgrade your wrenches past blue, instead of having 6 blue wrenches. The Engineer’s Ability to make Turrets cluster really makes Blue turrets worse in general.
• Primary Stats: Structures – Landmines and Turrets don’t work with primary stats. So you can ignore Crit and %Dmg. The exception is of course the Engineering stat, which increases the base damage of landmines and Turrets.
• Improved Tools: Another exception is Improved tools, which lets your Structures scale with 50% of your Attack Speed. While 50% might not seem great, it is super powerful since it adds a whole new multiplier to your damage output.
• Engineering Upgrades: Items are the more efficient source of engineering. Though the +2 tier 1 engineering upgrade is decent. So take that +3 Armor over +4 Engineering when choosing upgrades. Rely on Items instead.
• Healing: Life Steal is useless on you. So I like getting HP Regen and Consumable Healing.
• Economy: Engineer has a powerful start. So I like getting the Harvesting engine going. 

Items:

The Engineering Archetype has a lot of key items to look out for. Many items can affect your turrets. Getting the right items can improve your run drastically. 

• Engineering Items often have downsides that don’t matter to you. They are quite cost efficient and should be your main source of engineering. Look for Pencil, Toolbox, Cog, Compass, Metal Detector, Shackles, Exoskeleton, Robot Arm, Diploma.
• Turret Items: Look for the turrets in the shop: Tyler, Healing turret, and the other turrets are great. They are a way for you to scale beyond the 6 turrets you have from your weapon slots.
• Pocket Factory can also be really powerful, but it requires you to leave the engineering Nest. If you have multiple tree items it becomes good. But I also want a lumberjack shirt to make sure I can kill the trees quickly. On screwdriver builds, this isn’t an issue.
• Shackles: Shackles are insanely powerful on engineering builds for the +8 Engineering and the +8 HP Regeneration. So find out how much speed you’re comfortable with for the endgame. I like having 20-25%. Others like higher. 
• Metal Detector: I think this item is quite underrated. Just from the +6 and +2 Engineering, you’re already getting a fine deal. But the +5% material drops usually means +10 to +25 money and harvesting per wave. I really like it on Engineering builds.
• Economy: Since you dump all those stats, many defense and economy items become better: Bowler hat, Cape, fertilizer, Lucky Charm, Metal Plate, Panda, Peaceful bee, Shmoop, Tractor.
• Ugly Tooth works with your turrets (And landmines) and keeps enemies within range of your turrets for longer, and makes it easier to dodge enemies. 
• Sharp Bullet: Since Engineer has -50% Dmg modifications, sharp bullet only reduces the piercing damage by 10%. (So the pierce will do 40% damage on the pierce). I’m very happy to pick up Sharp bullet, since it boosts Tier 1 and Tier 4 Turrets. Tier 2 turrets are unaffected, and tier 3 is slightly nerfed.
• Bandana and Ricochet are amazing for you if you are using Wrenches. The -%damage doesn’t matter, so you pick these up cheaply. If you already have Sharp Bullet, Bandana isn’t very good, but Ricochet is still super powerful.
• Explosives: Both Landmines and the Tier 4 Turret scale with Explosive damage and size. So look for Dynamites, Explosive Shells, and Plastic Explosives. I will lock and buy dynamites in the early game even though their damage is halved on engineer, because this is super important way to scale your turrets late game, and crazy powerful for landmines in general.

Explorer

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: A

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Cacti Club
• Screwdriver
• Stick
• Torch
• Chopper
• Plank
• Hatchet
• Crossbow
• Shredder
• Taser
• Wand

Explorer has several starting options.

• Shredders are a neat choice, as they are great at killing trees and large groups of enemies. You can easily make up for the -40% damage with explosion damage. Look to upgrade with Rocket Launcher and Nuclear Launcher later.
• Sticks, as they will deal a lot of damage early and are cheap. Helping you get through the rough start.
• Cacti Club gives +25% damage, and +15 Max HP with the Set Bonus, which is super good for you. The spines also cuts down trees all over the map.

Other Options:

• Screwdriver – Going for an engineering build can also be quite strong. The early game isn’t the best, but if you find pocket factory, it can be insanely strong. Picking up Wrenches is also fine.
• Choppers can be fun for the insane Consumable Healing. However the short range and low damage makes it hard to clear the large groups of enemies.
• Taser can be good for an elemental build, but has a rough start. You won’t be killing a lot of enemies, but the Support Tag will boost your income. Pick up Flamethrowers later. You can also mix in an early torch for knockback and spreading fire. Pocket Factory is insane with burn builds if you can find Scared Sausage.
• Pacifist: Explorer can also go for a more pacifist playstyle. Start with Taser, build some hands. You just focus on defensive stats and farm trees. Remember to stack some harvesting. 

Strategy:

The explorer can feel like playing a different game. The map is huge, there are more enemies, but they drop less materials. You start with -40% damage. Most importantly There is a ton of trees spawning.

For the Explorer, your first goal each wave is to move around and kill trees for profit. Killing enemies is still a good source of income, but it isn’t your first priority.

For Explorer, some items are really important. Bags and Recycling Machine are completely busted on you, and you should be looking for them. Once you have them, you begin earning much more money.

Trees: You start with +12 to your tree stat, which is the same as having 12 of the tree item. That means that every 10 seconds, 4-5 trees will spawn. Normally trees spawn each 10 seconds into the wave. So you get the first spawn after 10 seconds and the next after 20. Explorer has an ability that makes the first wave of trees spawn at the beginning of the wave. The next spawn is still after 20 seconds.

Have Area Damage: More enemies spawn, and you deal less damage. That often causes big groups of enemies to pile up in the middle of the map as you move around them. Make sure your build has a way of dealing with these big 

Stats:

• Consumable healing: Each tree drops a consumable. More enemies spawn, and the -50% materials doesn’t apply to consumable drops. So yeah, a mega ton of consumables drop. This is your primary form of healing. You better be buying every lemonade and weird food you see. Or I’m  taking away your Brotato privileges. Adding some HP regen or life steal is also fine. I mostly go HP Regen.
• Big Map, Fast Speed: The Map is huge. This makes the Speed stat much stronger. On one side it allows you to get to more trees, and also collect more materials. But the huge map also means larger gaps in between enemies. Note that  some elite abilities have limited range, and you can just completely outrun the danger of a lot of the elites. I like getting the Speed
• %DMG: You start with -40% Damage. You should attempt to get this fixed, otherwise you’ll struggle to deal damage. Negative %Dmg is very punishing.

Items:

• Recycling Machine: Is insanely powerful – it increases the amount items recycle for from 25 to 25%+35% = 60%. This makes it much stronger than the tool tip might seem. Explorer recycles a lot of items from crates, and this provides 140% more money from that.
• Bag: Bags can catapult your run into easy mode. They can provide you with so much money. 
• Tree: Even if you already have a lot, more trees is still awesome, because you are built to take advantage of it.
• Explosions: If going shredders/screwdrivers look for Plastic Explosives, Explosive Shells, Dynamite
• Power generator: You lack %DMG, but have a ton of Speed. Quite the match.
• Pocket Factory: Pocket Factory is great. It spawns turrets for every tree, which means it will spawn 4-5 turrets every 10 seconds for you. Even if you don’t go for Engineering, that’s still a good amount of free damage. And the turrets also kill trees for you.
• Engineering Burn Builds: Explorer can do some cool things by combining Engineering and Elemental build. A regular melee or ranged build will also do fine, if not better, but this is fun. Understanding how these builds function is key to make Explorer be super strong. Key players are items like Pocket factory – spawns turrets when you kill trees, Strange Book – converts elemental damage into engineering. And Snake – spreads the flames.

Doctor

• Difficulty: Very Easy
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Scissors
• Medical Gun

Strategy:

As the doctor you have 2 options. Melee build, where you go Scissors. Here, you can hope for the Circular Saw, which is basically just much stronger scissors. For Medigun, you hope to pick up a bandana, Sharp Bullet, or ricochet to help with the area clear. Baby with a beard can also do it. 

Stats:

Attack Speed: The +200% attack speed and -100% cancel out, so you have +100% with medical weapons. You have -100% with all other weapons. So stick with medical weapons. 

You can still pick up more Attack speed, but the value is effectively halved, since you’re already attacking at double speed. Medigun needs it more than Scissors/Circular Saw.

• Great Healing: You’ll have a lot of LIfe steal from your weapons. And your HP Regen is doubled. You can dump the life steal stat with little to no loss, since your weapons basically already max it out (It can only trigger once per 0.1 second). Since you have so much healing from the get go, I don’t focus much on healing early.
• What Healing to get.  I still want to end up with a lot of HP Regen in the late game. So I’m looking for Plant, and some of the big HP Regen items later. 
• You can dump Consumable healing for some alien worms, if you don’t want to use consumable healing.
• DPS Stats Ranged: When using Medigun, it has a quite high base damage for a ranged weapon, so ranged damage isn’t super important. Focus on getting %DMG. Get crit from insanity and Sunglasses. Then look for some ranged damage and Attack speed when you see a good option.
• DPS Stats Melee: When using Scissors or Circular saw, they have super low base damage, but scale well with melee damage. So Stack melee damage like crazy. Scissors and Saw both have some base Crit, so don’t focus on that. %Dmg is also important.
• Armor/Dodge: Your survivability is lacking due to the half armor. You should still pick up the good armor options. And aim for 60% dodge. Dodge is going to be your best source of Damage mitigation during the later waves and boss fight.
• Max HP: Since your armor is halved, I like to have a bit higher Max HP, so that I’m not instantly killed in two hits before my healing can kick in and save me. It also helps prevent unlucky dodge streaks from killing you. 

Items:

• Weird Ghost and Sad Tomato are good, since you quickly heal back up to full.
• Blood Donation can give you a ton of harvesting, and you can easily sustain the damage. Bloody hand is also great for this reason.
• Regeneration potion is super powerful if you can find it. Makes you heal 4 per tick while 50% or lower.
• Fairy and Medikit are just generally insane HP Regen Items.
• Not Rip and Tear’s Explosions can mess with your lifesteal. So I’m out.
• Baby with a Beard: This is neat on the other hand, since it helps a medigun build clear the stage.

Hunter

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Cacti Club
• Thief Dagger
• Spear
• Shuriken
• Crossbow

The Hunter was made for Crossbows, and Crossbows were made for the Hunter. That said, Shuriken is decent and Thief Dagger / Spear can be fun. What is the Cacti Club doing here? It is fun for a Challenge I guess.

Strategy:

The hunter is one of the best glass cannons. Your Hit Points are crippled, but you can dish out immense damage at long range. 

Hunter can be a hard character to learn, since you’ll need to be evading projectiles and not get hit. You can rely on your damage and range to keep yourself safe, but Elites and Bosses can be tough.

Most builds start with Crossbow. You have a 

• Sniper Gun: If you’re going crossbows, you can pick up sniper rifles along the way. Sniper Gun is a super powerful weapon. But you need a lot of range, and it only has a base Crit Chance of 20%, so you’ll need more Crit. Also, Sniper Gun requires you to have at least 1 piercing or Bounce before it is good, so have that in mind. But if you manage to get these things, Snipers can outperform crossbows by a ton! But there are also cases where you don’t need it. So it isn’t always worth the investment.
• Healing: With this Patch, I’m going HP Regen + Consumables. Banner will put you into negative Life steal anyway.
• Consumable Healing: You can get some extra luck and get consumable Healing with Weird Food and Lemonade. This means that you’ll have powerful healing fruits saved up around the map, which is great for glass cannon builds.

Stats:

• Range Instead of Ranged Damage: Range is much better than Ranged damage for Crossbows. If you pick +2 ranged damage upgrade, it only gives +1 damage with the crossbow, however the same tier +30 range upgrade gives +3 damage and +3% damage. In the case of Sniper Gun, it is even more extreme.
• Range If not Crossbow: If you’re using other weapons, that don’t scale their damage with Range, you shouldn’t value Range very highly. The +10% %Dmg is neat, but not enough. And if you already have +100, it should cover a lot of your needs. However, Hunter is still low HP, so it might be a tactic to pick up more of the good Range stat options you see and get to +200ish, where you effectively are playing a ranged build with melee weapons. 
• It is important to get to 100% crit, so your weapons pierce/bounce on each hit, but don’t take a 3% crit upgrade over 10% attack speed. You’ll get there, stay efficient with your choices.
• Crit needed: Red/Tier 4 Crossbow has 45% crit, so you need to aim for 55%. Same for Shuriken. Thief Dagger is 40%
• Attack Speed: Crossbows don’t get better attack speed as they are upgraded, and are pretty slow, so you need to get more attack speed to compensate. 
• Dodge & Defense: Dodge can sometimes struggle when you have lower Max HP. Since it takes less hits to kill you, you’re more prone to unlucky streaks of not dodging. Also, Hunter is usually busy with getting enough offensive stats. Just stick with some armor and a good amount of Max HP.

Items:

• Range: If you’re using Crossbow, you need to look for Glasses, Wings, Baby Gecko, Banner, poisonous tonic, night goggles. Tons of great options. I’m not big on scope.
• Shackles: This is insane for you. 80 Range and 8 HP Regen is great.
• You can’t harvest. This is a major downside, as it is a very powerful stat. But it also allows you to pick up items like Bat, Blood Leech, and Rip and Tear with no downsides. Look out for hunting trophies, which can make up for your worse economy.
• Non-Harvesting Economy: Also look out for other economy boosting items like bags, trees, Recycling Machine. Getting some luck can also help. 
• Tentacles are a super powerful way to heal if you can find them. Basically an always buy on crit builds.
• Tardigrade: If you’re going glass cannon, Tardigrade can be powerful.
• Glass Cannon: If you’re going glass cannon, gummy berserker, Community support, and Glass cannon can be powerful items to allow you to kill everything before you take a hit.

Artificer

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: C

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Plank
• Shredder
• Screwdriver
• Wrench

• Shredder is the default option. Good safe ranged damage. Get a bit of ranged damage early. And try to get some attack speed. 
• Plank is also quite good. It takes a little more skill to not get hit, but you can stack elemental damage for some really big explosions.

Challenging, but fun:

• Wrench and Screwdriver: These aren’t explosive weapons, even though they create structures that are explosive. This means they deal 1 damage per hit, making the run significantly harder to do. But later in the run, the structures can become really powerful with the +175% explosive damage and Increased explosive Damage. Fun, but a bit harder to pull off. 

Higher Tier Explosive Weapons: When you’re using plank and shredder, you want to be looking out for the powerful higher tier explosive weapons you can find in the shop: Rocket Launcher, Nuclear Launcher, Power Fist, and Plasma Sledgehammer. These are really powerful. Shredder is mostly looking for the ranged options, while plank is fine with the melee options and the nuke.

Strategy:

The Artificer is a bit of a glass cannon centered around explosions.

You have -100% damage but deal 175% extra explosion damage. So that means you deal 75% bonus damage with explosive weapons, but 1 damage with all non explosive weapons. You can stack elemental damage for bigger explosions.

But these powerful upsides come at the detrimental downside of -50% armor modification.

So stick with explosions. Use Dynamite and Explosive Shells as your main source of bonus damage. Since you already start with +75%. %Damage is otherwise a low priority. No matter what build, attack speed is super powerful and is the key stat to increase. Crit also works with explosions, so it is useful in all builds

The plan is to just blow up all enemies with a rather glass cannon build.

• Explosion Opacity: You can scale the opacity of Explosions in the gameplay menu. This is very useful, so that you don’t get blinded by all those explosions. 

Stats:

• % Damage: You start with +175% – 100% = +75% DMG while using explosive weapons. So %DMG is already a lower priority. You can find really cheap Explosive damage through Dynamite, which you should be buying. Regular %DMG options aren’t as effective, or needed, so I would skip many of them. 
• Attack Speed: I really like attack speed. Works great with all weapons, and it really helps those long cooldown weapons protect you better. Try to get a good amount of it throughout the game.
• Flat Damage: Both Plank and Shredder like some flat damage early to get their base damage up, so look for some Ranged Damage. On Plank I’m mostly looking for melee or elemental damage. However, Rocket Launchers and Nuclear launchers scale much less with flat damage, so if you get some of those, flat damage stops being important.
• Elemental Damage: Getting Explosion Size through elemental damage can be decent if you’re picking up the good elemental items, but don’t buy every +elemental damage you see. The benefit is good, but don’t bend over backwards to get it. Plastic explosives are more efficient. But it is fun to see how big your explosions can get. So I don’t blame you if you just go crazy.
• Planks: However if you use Planks, you can scale with elemental damage, and then pick up Strange Book for even more scaling. So in that case, go crazy. Nuclear launchers And Plasma Sledgehammers also scale with Elemental Damage, making it even better.
• Healing: Avoid Life steal. It doesn’t work with explosions. Rely on HP Regeneration and consumable healing.
• Defenses: Normally, Armor is the strongest defensive stat. For you it is halved. I still want some armor. So you should still look for some of the stronger options. If you see a higher tier upgrade, or leather armor for example. You can go into Dodge if you want to be more tanky, and also get a bit more Max HP. But on the other hand, Artificer can also just be a bit of a glass cannon. On melee builds, it is harder to get away with glass builds.
• Crit: Critical hits work with weapon explosions, but not Spicy Sauce or Rip and Tear. So it is just about as effective as on other builds. Except that crits might be quite overkill on the High damage per hit of the Tier 2+ Explosive weapons. A Plasma Sledgehammer or nuclear launcher already kills most enemies in a single hit. So I wouldn’t invest too much into crit unless you get some of the synergy items such as Hunting Trophy or Tentacle.

Items:

• Handcuffs: Look for Handcuffs late game. They are quite powerful for double +8 stats.
• Spicy Sauce can actually do some good damage, if you manage to stack them. But the first one isn’t super good.
• Rip and Tear can become crazy on plank builds with a lot of melee damage, if you manage to get multiple.
• Bandana and Ricochet are great with Rocket Launchers and Nukes, as they explode on each hit. But aren’t good with Shredders. Sharp bullet should be avoided if you have shredders. But it is good with the Launchers.
• Avoid Secondary Damage: Baby with a beard, Alien Eyes, Cyberball all suffer the -100% damage. So you shouldn’t get them.

Arms Dealer

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Tier: C

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold, yeah as if you had a choice)

• Pistol

Your weapons are destroyed when entering each shop, so you’ll have to pick up somewhat random weapons each round. There are however some things to note.

• Weapon Classes: When you pick up a Weapon, you’ll have a good chance to see more of that weapon, and to see more weapons with the same Weapon Class. So consider which weapons you pick up.
• Get Enough Weapons: One of the most common mistakes is to not get enough weapons for the next wave. Being too picky can result in your death. You want to enter the waves with 6 weapons.
• Locking Weapons Once you have enough weapons, you can lock a good weapon for the next wave, setting you up for Weapon Classes in the next wave.

Strategy:

As the Arms Dealer you have to build the weapons you use each round. In the beginning you’ll have a lot of money, and the weapons are cheap, but it quickly becomes quite expensive to have to find weapons on each round.

The idea is to find a path: Melee, Ranged, Elemental. Engineering is hard to make work, since there are so few weapons, and since engineering doesn’t gain from the +33% dmg. You can also go for two of the three builds.

The easiest path, and strongest, is going for a melee based build. It is easier to build for melee weapons, and they are better at clearing a wave when behind. You can spice it up with adding some Elemental Damage and Scared Sausage. There is room for cool hybrid builds on arms dealer, but if you’re struggling, you might just be better off going pure melee. 

• The Support Start: You can start the 2-3 shops, or wave 2-4 with using 6 support weapons. This is more than enough damage to clear the wave. And the +25 Harvesting gives you 25 extra money and exp, and a permanent 1-2 Harvesting. During this for 2-3 waves (lock a support weapon).
• Good Economy, Strong Early: Between 30 Harvest and Dangerous Bunny, you have a strong economy, which counteracts all the shopping for weapons. Your Early game will be strong, since you can have 6 weapons from wave 2. Make sure to invest in your economy so you don’t fall behind when the Prices of weapons catch up.
• Go with the Flow of the Shop: Just stacking a large amount of melee/ranged damage and using random weapons can also get you there. Combine the different strategies depending on what shows up in your shop. And don’t bend yourself backwards to force one specific strategy. 

Stats:

• +33% Damage Modification: you have a +33% damage modifier to all damage. This includes %Dmg, Melee Damage, Ranged Damage, and Elemental. It also includes secondary Damage stats such as boss damage, explosive damage, or piercing damage. 
• Healing: Since you can’t rely on having weapons that work with life steal, I tend to avoid it. Rely more on HP Regeneration and Consumable healing, since these are constant between waves.
• Luck helps finding higher tier Weapons, and boosts your Economy. It also provides more consumable healing. It also sets you up for Luck Damage. So it can be a good option. I like getting a bit early during our strong early game. If I then go for luck damage, I might scale it higher.
• Harvesting: You start with 30 Harvesting, but I want more. Arms Dealer is strong early, but can struggle later. Investing in harvesting can even this out. 
• Defenses: You’re often playing a very mixed melee build. This makes it hard to rely on your weapons knocking enemies back, or killing them. So you’re taking a bit more hits, and you might have weak waves where you struggle with clearing. So building tanky can help a lot here. If you managed to get a good economy, I would get the regular defensive stats, but also Max out Dodge.

Items:

For Arms Dealer it can be nice to have some secondary damage. Or Item based damage to help you clear the waves. It helps you stay strong between waves, should you have an awful shop.

• Secondary Damage options: Rip and Tear and Baby with a Beard are strong secondary damage options. But they require you to be on a melee or Ranged build.
• Elemental Burn Build: If you get Scared Sausage and Some Snakes, you can stack elemental damage, and all weapons will work for you. In this case, also get turrets and landmines. 
• Luck Damage: Cyberball and Baby Elephant can deal good damage with Arms Dealer due to your +33% damage modifications. It’s also secondary damage you can rely on between waves.
• Hybrid Items: If you’re building towards multiple damage types, you should look for hybrid items such as Alloy, Handcuffs, gnome, or Hedgehog. 
• Crown: You start with +30 Harvesting, so Crown is often worth it. 
• Blue Turret / Incendiary Turret: Even without Engineering, this turret can do a lot of damage on its own. So buying one can be a nice bit of secondary damage. 
• Other Turrets: Turrets spread flames if you have scared sausage, so if you have that with some elemental damage and snakes, even a regular turret can dish out a ton of damage. 

Streamer

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Tier: D

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Rock
• Fist
• Stick
• Cacti Club
• Ghost Flint
• Ghost Axe
• Knife
• Lightning Shiv
• Scissors
• Screwdriver
• Wrench
• Spear
• Plank
• Crossbow
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Laser Gun
• Medical Gun
• Pistol
• Shredder
• SMG
• Taser
• Wand
• Slingshot
• Revolver
• Pruner
• Jousting Lance
• Fighting Stick

There’s a lot of options. Some are really bad. A lot of the melee options are really rough. Here’s my favorite ones.

• SMG – Super strong and protects you well. But you gotta get that ranged damage.
• Slingshot – Safe option that clears the map with fewer requirements. Quite safe.
• Wrench – Really powerful, but slightly more difficult to get going. But you can just freely scale out of Control, since your structures ignore the -%Dmg. Also Wrenches and structures grant 2 armor, so it’s really nice.
• Stick – The melee option. Stick got enough range and good base damage. It is cheap, allowing you to get the materials rolling by standing still. Melee streamer is a bit more difficult than Ranged. So try your hand at what works for you. 

Strategy:

The Streamer is one of the harder characters to play. I’ve put him in D Tier because most newer players struggle with the Streamer. But the Streamer can be really powerful if you get the playstyle down.

You gain money when standing still, and a huge combat bonus while moving. However enemies drop less materials and exp, and standing still doesn’t grant XP. So you will be behind on XP, but you can earn tons of money to make up for it. And the combat bonus while moving is powerful. 

Don’t Stutter Step – Kill enemies and then stand still

There is a delay from when you begin to stand still, to where you begin to gain money. So you want to switch between moving and standing still as little as possible. Start each wave by standing still for as long as you can. Then once you are attacked, you begin to move and stay moving for that +40% attack speed and damage. You keep moving until the extra Damage output has cleared the battlefield. Only stop if you see that you have an opening where you can get 2-3 or more ticks of income. 

Manage your Gold.

You need to manage the amount of money you hold. If you spend all your money in the shop, each income tick only gives +1 gold. You need 67 gold for +2, 100 for +3, and so on. So try to keep a decent amount leftover, as much as you can get away with. But be careful, as you lose %dmg and speed when you hold more material. Managing this balance takes some tries.

It takes 834 Gold to max the gold income of 25 per second, 1500 gold if you can stand still all 60 seconds. If you have piggy bank, it is 695 Gold.  

Dmg% and Speed.

You lose both of these Stats as you hold more gold. You lose 3.33% Speed per 100 gold, and 6.66% damage. You need to be wary of this. If you stack too much gold during a wave, it can prevent you from moving at all. And it can also mean that you stop being able to deal damage. And you can’t get rid of materials during a wave, so be careful.

• Buy additional %Dmg and Speed Stats. You have to focus on getting enough.
• If you’re playing Engineering you can ignore %Dmg.
• Elites/Bosses – You can spend your gold before a boss/elite wave. This will return your %Dmg and Speed to normal, and with your 40% Attack Speed/DMG bonus while moving, you have a good shot at beating the elite/bosses.
• Mouse Aim: If you’re a bit more advanced, you can attempt to manually aim your weapons. Ranged weapons fire about 50 range longer than they target, so you can reach enemies keeping a distance to you from further away, or strike spitters as they come towards you, before they fire. If you’re a newer player, this might just get you killed tho.

Stats:

• Armor: You should be getting your armor from Structures. You don’t have to buy Armor items or spend upgrades on it.
• Dodge: If you get rich, you want to also be super tanky. Get Dodge maxed. If you’re struggling more with the run, you can skip it.
• Harvesting: Unlike Harvesting and Materials dropped, your money ability only gives money, not exp. So while you make tons of money, you’ll be down on exp. Getting Harvesting can help here.

Items:

• Piggybank: – It’s great. You save up materials before the start of each wave anyway. So it’s just free gold.
• Structures: Turrets, Landmines, Gardens, Wandering Bots all give you +2 armor, making them good pickups. Even if just for the armor.
• Improved Tools. – If you have a good amount of structures, this is quite a fine item, even if you’re not doing engineering.
• Candle and White Flag can actually make sense on Streamer, since you mostly care about standing still, and enemies only drop half the materials. But I’m mostly looking for them in a crate. Don’t wanna pay too much for it.
• Wisdom: While I’m generally not a big fan of Wisdom, it can be useful on Streamer, since your Damage % naturally decreases throughout a wave, as you gather more materials. So the High bonus late in the wave is very welcome. 
• Baby Gecko / Sifd’s Relic: If you get to the point where you can stand still for the most of the game, getting auto pickup for materials is pretty nice. 
• Standing Still Items: These can be great if you manage to get to the point where you stand still most of the game. But if you’re relying on moving around a lot, they aren’t the best. Statue with its +40% attack speed can really help you be able to deal enough damage while standing still, but it also means that moving doesn’t do much for you, since you have +40% either way.
• Not Stone Skin: Stone Skin sadly doesn’t work with the Armor gained from structures.
• Not Pocket Factory: Pocket Factory is bugged and doesn’t give +2 Armor.

Cyborg

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: A

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Wrench
• Screwdriver
• Plank
• Pistol
• SMG
• Revolver
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Crossbow

You start with a Minigun. That is powerful. But you also get to choose a weapon. I like to start with one of the Engineering weapons that I plan to be going with: Wrench, Plank, or Screwdriver.

Otherwise you’re not guaranteed to find an engineering weapon. On the other hand, Minigun provides the Gun tag, which will supply your shop with more ranged weapons.

I like to find some SMGs or Shotguns instead of starting with them. You want weapons that scale hard with Ranged Damage.

• Fun Crossbow Build: You can also choose crossbow and sell your minigun, and just go for a range build, meaning you have no abilities as a character. This isn’t a good build btw.

Strategy:

The Cyborg has +250% Ranged Damage for half of the Wave, and then that ranged damage is converted into twice that much engineering.

So that means every time you buy 1 ranged damage, you get 3.5. Which is then turned into 7 Engineering at half-way through the wave. The Clock timer at the center top turns Blue when this happens.

So you need a mix of ranged weapons and engineering weapons. 

I like having 1-2 ranged weapons, and 4-5 engineering weapons. More engineering weapons means better crowd clear and safer second half of the round, while more ranged weapons means easier times with elite and boss waves. I like combining some engineering weapons just before an elite wave and pick up an extra ranged weapon. 

For your Ranged weapons, SMGs are really strong. They will take down elites, and with the insane ranged damage, they can handle even large crowds of enemies. Shotgun is also a decent option. Other ranged weapons can also work. Miniguns, Gatling Gun, or the Insane Chain Gun are also options. (Chain gun scales with both Ranged Damage and Engineering, making it busted on you.)

You can also pick up a weapon like Rocket Launcher and Nuclear Launcher, which don’t scale well with Ranged Damage, but in return offer a lot of power in the Engineering Phase.

For the Engineering weapons. Try the different options. Wrench gives you ranged turrets which keeps you safe, along with a ton of knockback on your wrenches. Screwdrivers gives a mix of melee damage and mines 

• Elite/Boss Slayer: Cyborg is rather good against elite and Boss waves, since the insane Ranged Damage scaling and single target damage of the ranged weapons are typically able to kill the Boss/Elite during the Ranged Phase.
• Boss Wave: I often stock up on ranged weapons in the last shop. Engineering weapons don’t do much here. Just get 6 SMGs and end the game in 10 seconds.

 Stats:

• What stats to get?: Consider which stats actually benefit both of your weapon types. Primary stats do not affect structures. And SMGs have a bad critical hit multiplier, so I like to skip Crit if i’m using that and haven’t upgraded my Minigun.
• %Dmg/Attack Speed: You still these. Depending on the amount of ranged weapons you go with. 
• Ranged Damage. Yeah, just saying it another time here. TONS OF RANGED DAMAGE. ALL OF IT.
• Healing: I prefer HP Regen over Life steal on Cyborg on this patch. The Minigun is good with life steal, but if you’re only using 1-2 ranged weapons it just isn’t enough. Consumable healing good as always.
• Don’t take Engineering: Be careful! You have -75% Engineering modifications, so don’t pick up engineering stat. Only get it through ranged damage.
• Can’t go Melee/Elemental: In the same vein, you have -100% Melee and elemental damage, so you can’t scale plank and screwdriver with those stats, you won’t be able to use Strange Book.

 Items:

• Sharp Bullet/Bandana/Ricochet – If you’re using wrenches, then getting more Bounces/piercing for your weapons + turrets is high on the list. Minigun already comes with a default 1/2 piercing for tier 3 / 4. So picking up sharp bullet hurts it.
• Improved Tools: If you have already beaten Cyborg, you have Access to the Improved tools, which lets your Turrets and Landmines scale with 50% of your attack speed.
• Buy Turrets: Pickup as many turrets as you can find, and landmines. These will help you a lot during the Engineering phase.
• Pocket Factory is Great on Cyborg, since it lets you stack up turrets during the first half of the wave, just in time for your Engineering Phase.
• Explosives: No matter which Engineering Weapon you choose, you’ll be using explosions. Landmines, Explosive Turrets, or Plank. So look out for Dynamites and Plastic Explosives.
• Boxing Gloves: Picking up some boxing gloves can be useful, since it will make the Minigun and other range weapons be able to keep you safe during the engineering phase.
• Lumberjack Shirt can be useful for killing trees during the second half, since your ranged weapons don’t do much now.

Glutton

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Pruner
• Chopper
• Thief Dagger
• Fist
• Hatchet
• Jousting Lance
• Screwdriver
• Plank
• Shredder

There are some of the Starting weapons that actually work well with Glutton’s abilities.

• Pruner spawns Gardens that Spawns Consumables (So you explode more often). With a Pruner build you can gather large amounts of % Explosion damage. And Pruners Scale with Melee damage just like your Innate ability. This is my Go-to. 
• Shredder is a pretty strong weapon in itself, and it likes the extra explosive damage. The Downside is that you have to build both Ranged and melee damage if you want to scale both Shredder and your own Explosion.
• Plank both scales with Melee damage and Explosive Damage.

I’m not a big fan of the other options. But they can work: 

• Chopper: Gives you more Consumable healing, but it doesn’t scale well with melee damage, and it doesn’t spawn consumables, or scale with explosion damage.
• Thief Dagger: Can allow you to earn some cash to make up for the +25% shop prices. But your explosions will steal the kills from the daggers.
• Screwdriver: You get a ton of explosive damage for the mines. 

The best explosive weapons can only be gotten at higher Tiers later in the game. Rocket Launcher, Nuclear Launcher, Plasma Hammer, Power Fist. All are great and I would pick them up later in the game. (Depending on if I’m going Melee or Ranged Build). Pruner especially can be upgraded quite a bit by picking up some explosive weapons.  Note that Rocket Launcher and Nuke are great even on melee builds, since they have such a high base damage.

Strategy:

Glutton is a quite fun and unique Character. You create a huge explosion whenever you pick up a Consumable. Furthermore you gain 1% Explosive Damage if you had full HP when you picked up the Consumable. This creates a fun, but difficult mini game where you navigate around the map, trying to not take damage, while picking up consumables. This then clears up enemies around you. 

The Explosions scale with 500% of your Melee damage, and can be boosted by Spicy sauce, causing it to also scale with 100%/200%/300%/400% of your Max HP. (Super weird and bugged interaction, where the damage from spicy sauce is just added to your larger explosion). Later in the game, the explosions can deal 1000-3000 damage, which makes them instantly kill annoying tanky enemies such as Armored bruiser, Pursuers, Tentacles, etc. Glutton doesn’t care if that tentacle with the red buff has 1000+ HP, it is gone. 

If you’re using Pruners, you’ll rely more on your explosions to clear enemies, while if you’re using explosive weapons, you’ll rely more on those. 

Elites/Bosses: Your Explosions can wreck Elites and Bosses. Try to lure them close to your gardens, and time the explosions so that you hit them.

Stats:

• Melee Damage: It is important to pick up some Melee damage early, as it empowers your own explosion by 500% of the Value. The base damage of the explosion is 10, so you need to increase it so that it kills most enemies in one hit. This will keep you much safer.
• HP Regen, Not Life Steal: Explosions don’t trigger life steal. So I would go HP regen most of the time. (Life steal can still be ok with Shredder) Having HP Regen helps you not lose Explosion damage to not having full hp.
• % Damage: If you’re using Explosive weapons, you can rely on dynamites and your ability to gain %DMG. If you’re using Pruner, you’ll want a bit of %Damage early to scale your DPS.
• XP Gain: Since you start at 75% Xp gain, the first couple of XP gain items you pick up are extra impactful. Try to get it to at least 120%, Scar, Bean Teacher, Black Belt are all fine options.
• Luck: Luck gives more consumable drops, but since you already start with +50, I wouldn’t prioritize it at all. You don’t really need more.

Items:

• Consumable Healing: Getting increased consumable healing, Lemonade and Weird food, is super powerful on you, and will cause you to gain more Explosive damage, since it takes less consumables to fully heal you.
• Additional Consumables: Look for Gardens and Tree items. They spawn additional Consumables.
• Improved Tools: The Improved Tools Item can help your gardens spawn consumables much faster if you have attack speed. Insane for the pruner build. But it can also be useful if you have 1-2 gardens. You don’t need much use of the ability before it becomes a fine item.
• Hybrid Items: If you use Planks or Shredders, look for items that increase multiple damage types like Hedgehog, Gnome, Alloy, or Big Arms.
• Explosive Damage: Dynamite is good on you if you’re using Shredder/Plank, since you won’t get as many consumables. But if you’re using Pruners, you’ll get plenty of explosive damage, so Dynamite might not be necessary.
• Explosive Size: This stat is insane for Glutton. Get Plastic Explosives and Explosive Shells.
• Rip and Tear can deal a lot of damage on Glutton if you have a melee focused build. I recommend it. The more you stack, the stronger it gets.
• Spicy Sauce is really powerful – Spicy sauce scales in a weird way with Glutton, and it just adds its damage to the same explosion as the one you make when you pick up consumables. And it does this 100% of the time, not just 25%. This makes Spicy Sauce a great way to scale your Explosion, especially if you’re using Shredder, Chopper, or any weapon that does not scale well with melee damage.

Jack

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Tier: B

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Knife
• Jousting Lance
• Wrench
• Torch
• Hatchet
• Stick
• Spear
• Laser Gun
• Pistol
• Revolver
• Crossbow
• Shuriken
• Taser
• Wand

The cookie cutter option is either Laser Gun or Revolver. I like mixing both together, since that means you get to buy more of the weapons you see in the shop.

Other Options:

• Jousting Lance has also been quite powerful, as it has the range and speed to keep you safe.
• Stick is also a decent option. Just a really powerful melee weapon.

Jack’s intense Enemies means that some weapons just aren’t great. So you might have a bad time with some of the other options.

Strategy:

Jack is one of the hardest characters in the game for newer players. While there might be fewer enemies, the amount of bosses and elites are the same. (and You’ll only face elite waves). And while you have +75% bonus damage to elites and bosses, it doesn’t make up for the +250% hp they have, and you have nothing to protect you against the +50% extra damage they deal. So Jack will test your ability to dodge elite and boss abilities.

Jack’s Economy

• More than 25% enemies actually: The “25%” enemies is actually more than it seems, since everytime a group of enemies spawn around the map, there is a minimum of 1 spawned enemy. So if 2 enemies would have spawned, you would still face 1 enemy. (so only 50% down here)
• The Material Bug (Important!): There is a limit of 50 materials being on the ground. Above 50, any dropped material is instead added to the materials already on the ground. The size of the materials on the ground visually grows when this happens. .Jack drops 3 materials per kill.  For jack, there is a bug where if there is already 50 on the ground, you still only get 1 material added to the ground materials instead of 3.
• So Always pick up materials Quickly: Never let 50 materials be on the ground, or you lose materials in drops.

If you manage to actually kill the enemies that spawn and collect the materials in time, Jack is one of the riches characters. The plan is to use this economic advantage to get ahead for when the bosses spawn.

• Deadly Elites & Bosses: Elites are much stronger for Jack. Harder to kill, and they hurt more. Horde waves don’t spawn for Jack, so get ready to face Elites every game. Learn the patterns of attack, and be ready. Jack is usually never more than 2-4 hits from death. 
• Low Danger Levels: HP and Damage scaling on enemies is additive. Danger 5 adds 40% damage and HP. So for Jack that is a total of 90% Damage and +290% HP. This also means that Enemies have almost the same HP whether you’re on danger level 0 or 5. A lot of the Difficulty on higher danger levels then comes from the added Elite Waves and extra Boss on wave 5.

Stats:

• Focus on DPS: I like to focus on just dealing a ton of damage. This will make it easier to not take damage, and it makes you rich.
• Crit: On one hand, crit has less overkill because enemies have much higher HP. But on the other hand, you’re not going to be able to make a strong use of the Crit synergy items like Tentacle/Hunting Trophy since they scale with the amount of enemies.
• Defenses: I like going a bit of glass cannon on Jack. Since you take fewer, but stronger hits, Dodge becomes much more unreliable. So I sometimes skip it, though Jack often has a good enough economy to get it late game. Glass cannon or not, You’ll need to tank up for the later half of the game.
• Speed: You want to get your speed up. There are less enemies on the map, giving you more room to move around. Also, more speed allows you to better avoid Elite/Boss projectile Attacks. 
• Healing: You’re using slow weapons on a few enemies. That means no life steal. HP regen is great as usual. Consumable healing is a nice addition here. On one hand, less consumables spawn due to the fewer enemies, but trees still give consumables. Jack takes damage in bursts, so the burst healing from consumables is really useful.

Items:

• Avoid item damage: There are many items that become less powerful with less enemies. Baby with a beard, Cyberball, and Rip and Tear come to mind.
• Baby Elephant Baby Elephant still works like normal, but again, it requires a ton of luck to do good damage.
• Get more Enemies: Since your biggest issues are Elite and Boss Waves, you can pick up Gentle Alien and Mouse to increase the amount of enemies you encounter. While this will make the game harder, you also gain tons of extra materials from those enemies, making the Elite and Bosses waves relatively less scary. Going from 25% to 30% represents somewhere around 7.5%-10% More enemies when you account for how the spawns work.
• Avoid Less Enemies: Reversely I would avoid Candle and White flag, as it will cause you to gain less materials. (but you can pick them up for wave 20 in some of the last shops)
• Silver Bullets and Giant Belt – Since you already have +75% Damage against elites and Bosses, SIlver bullet isn’t as impactful. But it can still be powerful, since Elites and Bosses can be your main issue. 
• Lumberjack Shirt is quite powerful on jack, since the regular amount of trees spawn, but their HP is increased by 250%. But you might just be killing them in one shot if you have Laser guns.
• Lure?– The amount of Loot hoarders spawned is affected by your less enemies. So only 1 will spawn, 93% of the time. But it will drop 24 materials on death, making it worth it. But it can also be super hard to kill.
• Bait – I like bait on Jack, since only 1-2 Lampreys tend to spawn, making it really cheap %Damage. But sometimes 4-5 spawn, and you might lose the run. Take a chance, but know it can throw a run.
• Pickup Range/ Auto pickup – To prevent losing Materials to the bug, you should look for baby gecko, alien tongue, and Sifd’s Relic.
• Triangle of Power – I also love this one, since Jack tends to take fewer hits than other characters, but each hit doing more damage. Perfect item for a ranged class cannon build.

Lich

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: C

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Ghost Scepter
• Wand
• Slingshot
• Hatchet
• Medical Gun
• Pruner
• Knife
• SMG
• Ghost Flint
• Scissors
• Thief Dagger
• Chopper
• Crossbow
• Stick

The Lich has several interesting options. But some of them are less ideal than it seems on the surface.

My Favourite options are Stick and Slingshot. Both are primitive which gives you +15 Max HP out of the gate, which really helps your early game go smoothly. 

• Stick is cheap and has amazing base damage, so you can skip buying Melee damage.
• Slingshot is a powerful weapon, and its “single target damage to multiple enemies around the map” style of damage works very well with your HP based Damage, as they can clear the map together.
• Hatchet is also a fine option. You don’t need melee damage, and can just stack Attack speed for DPS. It starts weak, but gets stronger in the late game, which is perfect for lich, who has a strong early game.

Other Options

• Chopper is actually pretty decent. The extra consumable healing isn’t at its best here, but the Choppers scale with your Max HP, meaning that you once again can skip Melee Damage. Fun if you’re going for that Max HP build.
• SMG seems good with Lifesteal, but it is really hurt by the -50% Damage modifications. Still a powerful weapon tho.
• Scissors and Medical Gun both have great innate life steal, but the -50% modifications really hurt them. And they have terrible DPS on their own. Also, you can just pick up some extra life steal and have enough with other weapons. That said, scissors are still a fine option.
• Crossbow can avoid the DMG modifications by going Crit and Range. Can be a decent choice actually, but the start is a bit slow, and you need to focus on getting attack speed, range, and crit instead of playing around your Ability. Make sure you get some range early.
• Ghost Scepter: This one can be fun, but it is really hard to it running. It allows you to stack HP like crazy. The issue is keeping up in DPS. Sharp Bullet really helps, and you also need a ton of attack speed. Your Damage Ability also helps keeping up in DPS. A bit harder, but quite fun.
• Pruner: Good weapon, but you don’t need the vast amount of consumable healing, and the -50% really hurts when it comes to getting enough DPS.

Strategy:

As the Lich you have a good deal of Healing right from the start. You also have a damaging ability that helps you keep up with clearing enemies. 

Stay Below Full HP: You want to be using your Healing Damage Ability at all times. So you will want to intentionally take damage from time to time, to stay below Max HP. But be careful not to get too low HP and die from an unexpected hit.

-50% Dmg: The -50% damage modifications is a really hard penalty. It affects %Dmg, Melee damage, ranged damage, Elemental Damage, even Explosive damage and Piercing damage. Nevertheless you still have to increase your % Damage, since it both benefits your weapon and your HP ability. But you should take this into account. It does affect how much melee/Ranged Damage you should pick up.

Two Builds: To me, there’s two different mindsets to play Lich with. You can take the free healing stats and damage ability, and then just play somewhat normally. Or you can really try to lean into the damage ability by stacking Max HP, Healing, and %Dmg. 

• Boost your Weapons: Your ability to deal damage when healing is powerful, but you’re still going to be doing the majority of your damage with your weapons. So don’t forget to get Attack speed and a bit of Crit.
• How often you heal: Lich doesn’t care about how much you heal, but rather how often. So you can dump consumable healing and take Alien Worm.
• Additional Healing from Items like Cute Monkey and Tentacle is also quite good at triggering your Ability more often.
• Potato Thrower can actually be a nice Late game Tech for lich if you’re doing Ghost Scepters, or another ranged build and you have enough Max HP

Stats:

• Healing: You start with +10 to life steal and HP Regen. So you can’t really dump either. I recommend stacking both. It will trigger your ability a lot.
• Damage: Since %DMG and Flat damage are halved, you need to adjust accordingly. If you’re using Sticks, it means you can basically skip Melee Damage. But if you’re Using SMG’s you still need to pack some Ranged Damage. Attack Speed and Crit are still at full power and are ways to increase your DPS. But they don’t affect your damage ability.
• Defense: Lich can be in a bit of a weird situation – Max HP and healing increase your DPS, and you might be tanky enough just from that. I recommend some armor since it is so great. But you might not need more to survive, so you can often just skip dodge. Especially on ranged builds.
• Tank Build: If you’re using melee weapons, Lich can really go for a tank build. If you have a ton of healing, ton of armor and maxed Dodge, you can basically let enemies walk all over you, while your Melee weapons get to crush the crowds of 

Items:

• Legendary items: There are tons of super powerful Legendary Items that are amazing on Lich. Regeneration Potion, Grind’s Magical Leaf, Extra Stomach, Medikit, and more. 
• Plant: This is great even though it reduces your Life steal.
• Torture:  Don’t take Torture as it will nerf your Damage dealing ability to only happens once per second.
• Lower your Starting health: Sad Tomato and Weird Ghost are good items for Lich, since you can easily heal the downside, and the damage at the start of the round actually means you just deal more damage.
• Bloody Hand and Blood Donation are amazing for you. You can easily handle the Damage per second, and might even welcome it. And with the downside gone, you’re left with the amazing stats. Scythe is Similarly quite a beast on Lich.

The Max HP Build

• Alien Eyes can be quite decent with Lich, since you gather a good deal of Max HP. I like it more on ranged builds, where you might have piercing for it, and where the projectiles are more useful to your damage output. If you’re going for a Max HP build, it can really deal good damage. 
• Spicy Sauce – Mostly for max HP build. Spicy Sauce gets much stronger when you have 2+ of them, so you need to stack them if you’re going for them. They can become quite strong. But it isn’t an efficient source of Max HP on its own. You’re paying for the ability.

One Armed

• Difficulty: Super Hard
• Tier: D

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Fist
• Thief Dagger
• Ghost Axe
• Ghost Flint
• LIghtning Shiv
• Scissors
• Cacti Club
• Torch
• Plank
• Hatchet
• Chopper
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Laser Gun
• Pistol
• Shredder
• SMG
• Revolver
• Taser
• Wand
• Shuriken
• Slingshot
• Crossbow
• Pruner
• Jousting Lance

As One Armed, you are limited to only one weapon. So choose Wisely. You can switch it out later if you find, for example, a Nuclear Launcher, or even better, a legendary weapon like Chain Gun. You have many options but the following stick out.

The easiest options are:

• Lightning Shiv, the easiest option: The melee part can be quite scary, but it spawns projectiles for each enemy hit, so if you stab into 10 enemies, that is up to 10 bouncing lightning strikes spawned. Lightning Shiv can easily clear the screen and can’t fall behind easily unlike other weapons. Remember to get both elemental damage and melee damage.
• Slingshot. Decent and Easy Option, Can struggle with clearing enemies mid-late game.
• SMG (My Favorite but difficult): While SMG can’t actually benefit from 200% Attack Speed, it scales so insanely well with Ranged Damage, that it doesn’t matter. Expect doing 100-300 dmg per shot late game. You can win with SMG without having Bandana, Ricochet, or Baby with a beard, but they sure help making it easier. This is a slightly harder, but high roll option. If you struggle with D5 One Armed, playing SMG until you get a good run is an easy way to clear.

There are also some fun options.

• Ghost Axe Scales double damage. Fun build, But hard to survive. Switch to a better weapon later in the game.
• Plank is also a fun option. But harder.
• Hatchet: Starts out with a ton of base damage due to your 200% attack speed. Boost its range, and it can work quite well. It is fast and scales well with melee damage.
• Shredder isn’t bad either.

Strategy:

The one armed can only use one weapon. But you are given some really powerful buffs to compensate. +200% attack speed and all damage you pick up is doubled. One armed can do some insane builds if you are lucky, but also struggle with surviving and dealing enough damage.

One Armed is considered one of the hardest characters. A lot of weapons are traps, since they aren’t able to protect you or clear the map alone. So make sure you’ve chosen one of the suggested weapons. You have to learn to evade enemies while your weapon does its job. You can’t expect your weapons to kill every enemy coming for you.

• You are tagged for +damage items. And they are good for you. You need to get a lot of %Dmg and Flat damage to keep up with the enemies. You save money by not having to buy weapons. Invest that money in damage.
• Luck Damage: One Armed is also a very good option for a luck build, since you are looking for the extra secondary damage, and you have +100% Damage scaling, so you can really make those Cyberballs and Baby Elephants hurt.
• Healing: With one Weapon, life steal isn’t the best option for you. Consumable Healing + HP Regen is the way to go.

Stats:

• Attack speed isn’t that important for you. Going from 100% to 110% attack speed means +10% dps. Going from 300% to 310% means +3,33%. So take this into account when buying items. Coffee becomes +3,33% DPS, -4%. Instead of the normal 10%, -2%.
• Attack Speed, maybe?: That said, depending on weapons, That said I still might pick up coffee later in the game, because it is soo strong. Attack speed is still allowing you to handle more enemies. And if you get to the point where you kill most enemies in one hit, Attack speed looks better again.
• Crit: You’re likely killing most enemies in one hit. So Crit is in many cases wasted. Maybe you can pick up some of the good options, but otherwise I just stick to DMg% and Flat Damage, since they are doubled. If you find a Hunting trophy or some tentacles, it could become attractive.
• Speed: Having a good amount of speed helps protect you when that one weapon fails. For example lightning shiv likes having a decent amount of speed. 
• Range: Since you only have 1 weapon, it is centered on you, which means it has less range. If you’re using something like Lightning shiv you need to boost its range for extra safety.

Items:

• Secondary damage items can be very powerful: Baby with a Beard, Rip and Tear. These can help you clear up the hordes of enemies and you can scale them very well. Baby with A Beard especially is insane on One armed.
• Piercing/Bounce: Items like Bandana and Ricochet that allow you to hit more targets. This makes them critical on builds With SMG, since it only hits 1 target normally, and the item also really empowers Baby with a Beard. The Doubled -%Dmg might seem scary, but remember you’re seeing a ton of +%dmg items, and it takes the same amount of head injuries/ Injections to make up for a ricochet, Doubled or not. 
• Not Sharp Bullet: The -20% Piercing Damage is doubled(-40%), so the second hit deals only 10% damage. So I would avoid Sharp Bullet unless I have a Pumpkin coming up.
• Wandering Bot: I find this one to be quite useful on lightning shiv builds, or other melee. Its ability to stop enemies around you is key to giving your weapon enough time to attack again and wreck the enemy before it hits you.
• All damage is doubled. Even dynamite (+30% dmg, great with shredder), Pumpkin (-30% is all you need for shotguns), Silver Bullet gives +50% for you.

Bull

• Difficulty: Medium
• Tier: C

Starting Weapons:

You can’t have weapons.

Strategy:

You don’t have weapons. Instead you have a very powerful explosion. You also start with very powerful defensive Stats. The plan is to build up your defenses, and the damage of your Explosion.

Get enough speed to where you can control when you want to collide with the enemies. Aim for the enemies that deal low damage to you. Herd enemies into big group and then clean them out. Bull can be difficult until you learn the ropes.

• 4 Items Per shop: Since you can’t wield weapons, you’ll see 4 items per shop. This also means you should be quite picky with which items you buy. Because you’ll see a lot. Just because an item gives you the stats you want, doesn’t mean that it is good enough to buy. Especially be critical of items that offer damage. Lens giving +1 ranged damage is simply not good enough, you can find so much better.
• Elites, Bosses: It can be difficult to kill bosses and elites on Bull, unless you are doing well. Sometimes you just need to play chicken and wait the wave out while going for big explosions. Don’t die trying to kill something you can’t. 
• Wave 7 Eggs: Remember to search for the eggs in wave 7. You can kill them by walking into them, but once they hatch, they become difficult for Bull to handle.
• Don’t be at full HP: Make sure you’re using your regeneration. Being at full hit points is kind of a waste. You want to herd enemies, and constantly trim them down in efficient explosions while staying at a healthy amount of hp, but not full.

Stats:

• Armor and HP Regeneration is your Bread and Butter. Get as much of both as you can carry. Max HP isn’t as important. You pick up max HP through Alien Magic, Alien Worm, Medal, Warrior Helmet, Little Muscley Dude, Defective Steroids. Don’t pick it up alone, Get it in good deals with other stats.
• Speed is whatever you put on top of bread and butter. It allows you to choose when you get hit. Buy those Beanies, Medal, Compass for speed. Having 6-10% for Wave 7-9 helps a lot. I like having 15-20% for the later waves at least. Having 40%+ can be nice for the boss fight.
• Useless Stats: Range, Engineering, Attack speed, Life Steal,  Crit, are dump stats. This Scrambles which items are useful. Take your time to think about what items and stats you actually need.
• Dodge: Once you get to wave 15+, the game is mostly about surviving. So you can go into dodge to help survive longer, and especially during the boss fight. However it messes with your explosions. So I mostly skip it. If you have self damage you can get into it. 
• What Damage to get: Elemental, Ranged, and Melee Damage all increase the damage of your explosion. But Melee damage comes at half the price of the other two. So a tier 2 Melee upgrade with +4 melee damage is better than a tier 3 elemental damage upgrade.
• Luck: Several of the most important or strongest items for bulls are tier 3 or 4. If I’ve also got some 

Items:

• Blood Donation: The Most powerful Item you can get is Blood Donation. It makes you explode every second. Once you have that, you can go for dodge. Otherwise you might not want dodge, as it prevents you from exploding when you want. Bloody Hand is also worthwhile just for the effect even though life steal is useless on bull.
• Explosive Items: Dynamite, Plastic explosion, and Explosive Shells all work with your explosion. They are extremely powerful for you. Dynamite is by far the best way to get % Damage for you. If you get enough Dynamite, you can skip out on normal damage items.
• Rip and tear, especially if you stack them, can be powerful pickups. It can create powerful chain explosions that clears out any stragglers that might be just outside of your radius. And the chain explosions also kill bigger enemies that survived your main explosion. If you pick up Rip and Tears, it is time to focus on melee damage for your damage, more than you already did.
• Dumping Crit: Your Explosion only scales 1.5 times with Crit, but it already deals enough damage to kill most small enemies. I tend to allow my crit to go into big minus, so I can pick up efficient items such as: Goat Skull, Medal, Compass (If you need the speed), and Bowler Hat.
• Core Tier 1 Items: Look for Plant, Mushroom, Defective Steroids, Goat Skull, Toxic Sludge, Beanie. Propeller Hat is also good.
• Insane HP Regen Items: Medikit, Regeneration potion, and Fairy are all completely insane for Bull and can keep you alive through some insane situations.
• Generally speaking I find myself having more than plenty of damage with Bull, so I’m not afraid of taking items like cute monkey or lost duck, as the effect is strong and you can recover the damage. Same thing with metal plate or tractor.
• But skip Broken Mouth and Hedgehog. The minus HP regen is not worth it.

Soldier

• Difficulty: Hard
• Tier: S

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Knife
• Crossbow
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Laser Gun
• Pistol
• Shredder
• SMG
• Taser
• Revolver
• Wand

Shotgun, SMG, and Revolver are all premium choices. If using Shotgun or SMG, you have to focus on getting a ton of ranged damage. Crossbow, Laser Gun, and Taser can also work. Soldier can pull most weapons off due to the insane starting stats.

Strategy:

The Soldier comes with a lot of firepower and strong abilities. The Downside is Major. You cannot attack while moving, so you want to stand still and fire. You only count as moving while you are holding down a movement button. The moment you release it, you count as standing still. So if you move around and dodge by tapping the moment keys instead of holding them down, you can shoot while moving. This movement is called “Stutter Stepping”.

Once you learn the stutter stepping, Soldier becomes one of the most powerful characters in the game.

• You have additional knockback. Which keeps you quite safe. Spawned projectiles and turrets also use knockback, and are quite bugged. So be mindful of rogue enemies being pushed around if you have that.
• Pickup Range: You start with a ton of pickup range. It is really a neat thing to have. You don’t have to wander around the map and pick up materials. Don’t buy more pick up range. You already have enough. Also Consumable healing comes flying towards you. 

Stats:

• Get more Speed: You start with +10% speed, but it is a good idea to get more, unless you’re going for Etsy’s Couch Standstill build. If you have enough speed, the stutter stepping won’t make you slower than normal.
• Life Steal: Life steal can be worth it on Soldier depending on your weapon. Still a 50/50% on which healing you’re going for.
• Ranged Damage: Since you already have 50% dmg and Attack speed, make sure to get ranged damage early to balance it out for greater dps. Especially since the Soldier’s weapons scale well with ranged damage. Ranged damage will be your most efficient stat until you have gotten a lot of it.
• HP Regen vs Life Steal: Soldier with SMG or Shotgun is quite good with life steal, but HP Regen is often just the better Choice.

Items:

• Standstill items: The Standstill items have been buffed, and are now quite good. Statue is basically always super cost efficient on Soldier, since you can only fire while standing still. So I would buy it nearly always.  But don’t let it drop your speed too low. Barricade and Chameleon can also be quite good, since you stand still more often. But don’t make it your strategy to get hit. And you’re also likely to be moving while you’re 
• Esty’s Couch: You can’t rely on hoping to find this legendary, and I tend to lose when I get it. It is mostly a trap.

Masochist

• Difficulty: Easy
• Tier: S

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Rock
• Scissors
• Cacti Club
• Ghost Axe
• Spiky Shield
• Double Barrel Shotgun
• Ghost Scepter
• Medical Gun
• Wand

My Picks

• Scissors – Very strong option – you heal much more from the innate life steal. But you need to get a ton of melee damage for this build. Look for Circular Saws as a weapon upgrade.
• Spiky Shield – Perhaps the strongest option, Unlocked by winning with Masochist. You can ignore the melee damage and just stack armor. Super hard damage potential, but the knockback can make it a bit harder to use.
• Rock is also quite decent.
• Shotgun is also an option. Just get some early life steal and ranged damage. 
• Not a big fan of the rest, but they’re doable.
• Try to play with Ghost Scepter if you want to torment yourself.

Strategy:

The masochist must take damage to deal damage. Each time you take damage, you gain +5% dmg for the rest of the wave. You start off each wave dealing 1 damage, and at the end of the wave one-shotting everything. To allow you to take such damage, you start with insane tanky stats. Once you understand how to take damage and build tanky enough, Masochist becomes one of the strongest characters in the game, since you can survive anything while dealing insane damage.

The plan is to stack lots of armor, some Max HP and get a ton of Healing, so you can take the damage..

• Manage your HP. You want to be below Max HP for most of the wave, so that you’re getting the most out of your healing. You want to start the wave by getting hit as much as possible, so you can begin dealing damage. Be careful with going too low. You don’t want to be at the point where 1-2 hits can kill you, since accidents can happen. 
• Manual Aim: Sometimes at the start of the wave, I manually aim my weapons to attack behind me, so I can walk into an enemy without killing them. This usually allows them to get a couple of hits in.

%Damage

Masochist starts with -100% damage during the beginning of a wave. You gain +5% Damage whenever you take damage. I used to just buy as much -%Dmg items I could find, since the Ability makes up for that. But if I don’t have something like Blood donation or Bloody hand (which damages you each second), giving me endless %Dmg, I want to actually increase my %Dmg. Masochist don’t struggle at the end of the wave either way. And just getting your %DMG to -80% can really make the beginning of each wave much easier to handle, as you can actually kill enemies.

• Dumping %DMG. If you choose to Dump %Dmg:. Look for items with negative %DMG – Coffee, Insanity, Metal Plate, Small Magazine, Propeller Hat, Tractor. And so on.

There are also players that go and invest in %dmg, so that you don’t start each wave being unable to kill anything. This strategy is perhaps better if you don’t find Bloody Hand or Blood Donation. I’ve had success with both tactics.

Stats:

• Round out your DPS Stats: You still need Attack speed, flat damage (unless spiked shield), and a bit of Crit (not on scissors, it already got more than you need)
• Healing Over Max HP: You want to take damage all the way through the wave. Healing in any form is more important than Max HP. You already start with a good amount of Max HP. You still want more Max HP than the average character tho.
• Speed: Remember to pick up some speed, so you can choose which enemies hit you. Seek out the enemies that deal least damage and use them to pump up your %Dmg. But you don’t need as much as for example a squishy ranged build. I like 10% for early-mid, and 20% for later. Some like to have more and that’s fine.
• Life Steal: Since you end up attacking enemies while not dealing damage early in each wave, it sets you up for some good life steal. On masochist I like going both HP regen and LIfe Steal.
• Dodge: Dodge makes you more tanky, but it doesn’t allow you to get hit more, and it slows down your ability to stack %Dmg. I would rather invest in other defensive stats. If you have found Blood Donation/Bloody hand, you can go for it. But you might not need it at all.
• Luck: Masochist has great benefit from some nice Epic and Legendary items, and loves some consumable healing. Making Luck a neat pickup if you find a good source for it. Lucky Duck

Items:

• Blood Donation is insane for you. The +40 harvest is great, the damage each second is greater. During the 60 sec of a wave it is gonna build you towards 300% damage, with more in the boss battles. If you get blood donation, you can start building dodge. Otherwise Don’t get dodge, as you need to take hits.
• Bloody Hand is also amazing for this reason. The stats it gives is also Awesome.
• Whetstone: Awesome source of lifesteal, and you might like having less knockback, especially for Spiked Shields.
• Healing Options: Cute Monkey (If not Ranged), Weird Food, Lemonade are all great. Tentacle is great if you have some crit.
• HP Regeneration has some insane items at Higher Tiers: Fairy, Medikit, Regeneration Potion. All are insanely strong. But I would avoid Sad tomato in many cases, since Masochist likes to take damage from the beginning of the wave.
• Not Wisdom: You already are strong late in the wave, and weak early. You don’t need an item to make this more extreme. 

Knight

• Difficulty: Easy
• Tier: S

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Sword
• Hammer
• Spear
• Torch
• Spiky Shield
• Jousting Lance

Sword is the strongest starting option. Spear is also good. Hammer is also fine, but the slow attack speed makes it a rough experience. Jousting Lance doesn’t scale well with melee damage, so I would skip it. I don’t recommend Spiky Shield or torch. Knight will generally work fine with most weapons.

Strategy:

As the Knight you have several insane upsides. You start with a tier 2 weapon, and all weapons you find are tier 2+, and you can only find Melee weapons. This makes your shop highly efficient, but the downside is that you cannot boost your economy with harvest. You gain insane amounts of free damage as you stack armor, but your attack speed is halved. This turns out to be a good deal, as the Knight is one of the strongest melee characters.

Weapon Mixing: 

There are many ways to build the Knight, as you can combine and add any of the good melee weapons to your setup. Maybe a spear for some range, or a Plasma Sledgehammer for insane area clear. My personal favorite is 4 swords and 2 Circular Saws. The Saw has 100% scaling, fast attack speed, lots of life steal, innate crit, and good range. It is insane with Knight. The Different Fists are also good options. 6 Spears are also powerful. It is hard to go wrong here. You can basically look at the Gladiator list and take a hint for which weapons that are great to add.

 Stats:

• Healing: I’m going for HP Regen and Consumable Healing. Your weapons are too slow and heavy for life steal. Get your life steal from Circular Saw.
• Get Melee Damage mostly from Armor: Ignore melee damage except if it is really cheap/efficient. You’ll get more than enough from picking up armor.
• Attack Speed: Even if your Attack Speed is halved, you should still get some Attack Speed. You should still pick up higher tier attack speed upgrades and Coffee.
• Crit: I’m not huge on Crit for Knight. You’re killing a lot of enemies in one hit, so that’s a lot of wasted damage.
• Dodge: Going dodge is an option. Pick up leather vests, Blindfold, Cape, Adrenaline, Clover and Higher Tier Upgrades. But if you feel tanky enough, you can skip it and just focus on Armor.
• Luck: Luck Provides a form for economy and healing for knight, which is neat when you can’t get harvesting. So I value Luck Slightly higher on knight.

Items:

• Economy Items: You can still invest in economy items. Look for the evergreen Bag, Tree, Recycling Machine, Lure. 
• Negative Harvesting: -80% Harvest might as well be 100%. Just ignore it and buy items that grants negative Harvest. (Mouse, Bat, Leech, Rip and Tear)
• Stone Slab (Golem Unlock) can single handedly provide you with all the Max HP you need. It is powerful on the Knight once you have 25 or Higher Armor.
• Armor Items to skip: I like everything except: Helmet, Duct Tape, Triangle of Power, I Skip these.
• Melee Damage: I would honestly only buy Mastery, Little Muscley Dude, Mammoth. Rest is skipped.

Demon

• Difficulty: Very Hard
• Tier: S

Starting Weapons:

(Recommended Weapons in Bold)

• Thief Dagger
• Lightning Shiv
• Ghost Axe
• Ghost Flint
• Torch
• Ghost Scepter
• Wand
• Taser

The biggest weakness of the Demon is the bad starting weapons. So one option is simply to sell your starting weapon and look for something better.

The Demon likes to have 1 hp for a good part of the game. So using ranged weapons makes it a bit easier.

• Ghost Scepter is powerful, and guarantees a powerful late game. But it struggles to clear the waves early. Look for attack speed and sharp bullet. This is my preferred weapon. If you’re a newer player, you might struggle with this option.
• Thief Dagger is also insanely powerful late game. It is melee so you can’t go as crazy with the shopping, since its harder to survive with 1 hp.
• Lightning Shiv is a very powerful and user friendly option. Stack Melee and elemental damage and it will have no issues clearing the map.
• Taser can also be a fine option.  

Other

• You can start with Torch and hope to find a Slingshot, Spear, or Stick. The primitive Set bonus is insane with the Demon. Then Sell the Torch. This won’t always work out tho.
• You can also just buy a good gun like a revolver or SMG. Demon has a lot of leeway in the first shop.

Strategy:

The Demon can be hard to understand how to use, but is one of the most broken characters in the game. You abuse the early shops to get ahead, and then you just manage your Max HP at a safe level later. In the endgame, you should be super strong and be able to handle the bosses with ease.

Spending HP

You can spend your hit points to buy items. That means you can also spend the 10 HP points you start with to buy extra items. It is worth noting that Weapons/items are really cheap during the first 1-3 shops, and so is rerolling. So often the plan is to buy items until you have 0-1 HP left. (If you have 0 or less hp when starting a wave, your hp becomes 1 for the wave, but you still have to earn those HP back before your HP increases to 2 or higher. So no free HP.)

So your economic advantages: 13 money turns into HP, which can buy up to 20 money worth per HP.

You can spend up to an extra 10 HP, or up to 200 money. And finally during the early waves you can buy MAX HP items for less HP than they give.

HP items: A broken mouth costs 2 Max HP early, but gives 5 Max HP. So that is free 41-60 money at the cost of -1 HP regen. Same with Alien Worm, Cake, Weird Ghost, Acid. 

This can cascade into a shopping spree early where you just buy tons of weapons and good items while gaining HP. 

• Item prices: You buy items using Max HP instead of materials (Item price is 1 hp per each started 20 gold. So an item costing 1-20 gold = 1 hp. An item that costs 61-80 gold = 4 hp.)
• Shop to 1 HP: Early game I like to stay at 1 HP for optimal shopping, then switching wave 6-10 into normal Max HP. Late game you should save up max hp, since you get it very efficiently. 
• Buying out the Shop: During the First 1-3 shops, you got plenty of Max HP, and you’re often limited by your materials. So when it costs 7-10 materials to reroll, then you can simply buy all the items and weapons in the shop, and it will make the reroll free. If you could use 2-3 of the Weapons/Items in the shop, then this might only cost you 1-2 HP to reroll. And you can sell the weapon back for a bit of materials.
• HP Upgrades: During the early game, hp upgrades are super powerful, since they are essentially a bag of cash you can spend. And during the early game, you can get a lot of stats for 3 hp in the shop.
• Don’t Reroll all your materials away. The demon uses HP to Buy, and Materials to reroll. So I sometimes see players spend all their materials to reroll in the midgame. (Its fine for the first couple of shops). You gotta save that material, since it is converted into Max HP at the end of each wave.

Items:

• Piggy Bank: The Demon is often not able to spend all their materials each round, since it keeps half, and only uses it for refreshing. So a piggy bank can be good. Also, don’t over refresh, since keeping more material means more Max HP for the next round.
• Spicy Sauce/ Alien Eyes: These can deal a good amount of damage if you get multiple of them and a ton of HP. Not needed, but can be a cool addition.
• HP items: They start out strong. Being pure profit, then later they become useless. 

Stats:

• Max HP:  In the early game you spend most of it. Then in the midgame you keep a comfortable amount of it. Then in the late game you let it stack high. 100-300 Max HP isn’t unheard off. But you don’t need that much.
• Economy Stats: I like to abuse the insane early game power to stock up on harvesting, luck, and xp gain.