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This page was written as a friendly guide by the original author. It may not follow the same standards as the rest of the wiki, and may contain ideas and opinions that may not be considered objectively useful to every player or modder.

Introduction

This is a guide I've written to help players optimise their endless runs and to go as far as possible.

This Guide covers the strategy of Endless Mode. If you want to know more about the mechanics and math behind Endless Mode, you can read the page for Endless Mode, which explains everything technical you want to know.

This Guide is mostly aimed at players playing on Danger 5, which is the difficulty which in most Endless Runs are done.

Playing on Endless Mode

Playing on Endless Mode is the same as Normal Mode for the first 20 level. On wave 21 and onwards, on top of the normal wave scaling, The Endless Factor increases, and makes severals things in the game become exponentially harder, including the enemies and the shop. This will in most cases ensure your demise sooner or later.

So what is a great build for normal Mode is not the same as what is a great build for Normal Mode. On normal Mode your goal is just to survive the waves and prepare for the boss fight. In Endless Mode you must instead "snowball", or invest in things that will payoff later in the game and make you as strong as possible later.

Generally I play Endless Mode in two different Ways. Fun games where I mostly just aim to beat wave 20 and see how much further the Build can go. And Record Runs, where I plan from the beginning of the run to attempt to get to as high of a wave as possible in Endless Mode.

The Guide will help you with both.

If you want to go truely endless, and never die, you can see the section on: High Endless Mode

At the end of the Guide, there is an item list with some items to keep an eye on: List of Items

If you're interested in other guides for the rest of brotato, you can find them at the Community Page

TL;DR Guide

If you want a very short version of how to do well, here is a very shortened guide.

  • Start with a character with a powerful Economy character like Loud.png Loud, Entrepreneur.png Entrepreneur, Farmer.png Farmer, or Demon.png Demon
  • Start with a scaling weapon like Thief Dagger (Loud, Entrepreneur), Pruner (Farmer, Entrepreneur), or Ghost Scepter (Demon).
  • Invest heavily into your economy. Buy Luck and Harvesting. Buy items like Bag.png Bag, Crown.png Crown, or Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy
  • Scale out of control. Buy all Unique and Limited items that doesn't mess with your build. This clears out items from the item pool.
  • Once you reach wave 25-50, look to transition into stronger late game weapons like Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower, Excalibur.png Excalibur, or Sniper Gun.png Sniper Gun
  • See how far you can go.

Read the Rest of the Guide to understand each of these steps better.

Choosing a Character.

When choosing a character for endless, you want a character that have abilities that give great benefits in the late game. Wildling.png Wildling starts with a stick and 30% Life Steal, but can't upgrade weapons above tier 2. This means a exceptionally powerful early game, but a very weak end game. 30% Life Steal is very replacable, while not being able to upgrade your weapons is a huge downside.

On the other hand, a character like Multitasker.png Multitasker will have to pay more to get fully armed, and gets -40% damage when having 12 weapons. But in endless mode, those downsides mean little later in the game. And then you'll have double the fire power of other characters.

The different Characters are not equally strong, and especially not in Endless Mode. So if you want to beat a record, you need to choose the right Character. But otherwise you should just play what you want to play and see what record you can get with that character.

Generally speaking, the Economic characters are super strong, but the characters mentioned in the following chapter for each category for the different builds also have great potential when used right.

Build Types

Lets start with discussing the different builds you can use to get far into the Endless Waves. Knowing which items are important for your build, and understanding what can be scaled into the late game is key to making it into the higher waves of Endless Mode.

You often combine two or three of the following builds when you make a build for a character.

Economic Build

Every Character in the Game must look into their economy if they want to make it far into Endless mode. And it is something you combine with your actual build.

But if you really want to get far in Endless mode, you can make your entire build revolve around economy. It will be rough early, but once it begins to pay off, you'll snowball out of control.

The Key points to an Economic build is:


Good Candidates for an Economic build:

  • Loud.png Loud - 50% Additional Enemies and tagged for more enemies. Loud can end up earns tons of materials, and stack a lot of Materials and Stats with Thief Dagger.png Thief Dagger or Ghost Flint.png Ghost Flint
  • Farmer.png Farmer - Farmer can get insane amounts of harvesting by using Pruner.png Pruner and Crown.png Crown.
  • Entrepreneur.png Entrepreneur - Entrepreneur can stack large amounts of harvesting, and their shop prices can get all the way down to 50%.
  • Explorer.png Explorer - Explorer can earn tons of Money by stacking Luck and getting 3 early Bag.png Bag. You can really get a lot of crates and money from the trees.
  • Streamer.png Streamer - If you can get ahead on Streamer, you can earn up to 25x60 = 1500 Materials per wave, which is great in endless mode.
  • Jack.png Jack - Jack gains a ton of Materials. Enemies have 100% chance to drop materials and drop triple the amount. And if you can manage to stack Gentle Alien.png Gentle Alien and Mouse.png Mouse, you can become a powerhouse.
  • Demon.png Demon - Demon's Shop is cheaper, and Demon can spend all their HP early and buy Max HP items for free Materials. This lets Demon Stack a ton of weapons and items early. You can have a full set of Tier 2 weapons after the third shop along with 10+ items if you're lucky.

HP Scaling Build

The HP Scaling build Revolves around getting as much Max HP as possible and using Weapons that scale with your Max HP. It is currently by far the strongest build is the game, and the only build that is able to reach wave 1000+, or even 100+.

You use Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower and Alien Eyes.png Alien Eyes to deal damage based on your Max HP at range. If you can find Excalibur.png Excalibur, it is insanely strong.

And the most powerful HP scaling item is Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce. Pick up Garden.png Garden to spawn consumables, and Explosive Size through Plastic Explosive.png Plastic Explosive. It can even be worth it to use Pruner.png Pruner over Potato Throwers due to the insane damage and area of the Spicy Explosions.

You gain Max hp from Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf and Extra Stomach.png Extra Stomach, but mostly from stacking Padding.png Padding

While Chunky.png Chunky Might seem like a good choice, but the Damage Scaling doesn't work with the Temporary Max HP from Padding.png Padding

Lich.png Lich could also seem like a good choice, but the -50% Damage modifier really hurts, and damaging ability can't Crit, so it prevents you from gaining Materials with Hunting Trophy.


Good Candidates for a HP Scaling build:

  • Any Economic Character
  • Demon.png Demon - Demon Comes with a HP conversion ability that is equal to that of 7.7 Paddings. With the Limit of 3 paddings, this makes demon an extremely strong choice.
  • Golem.png Golem - gains 33% extra Max HP, allowing for better scaling.
  • Fisherman.png Fisherman - Gains Thousands of %Damage
  • Saver.png Saver - If you can manage to pull this off, the damage Scaling from Materials can be powerful. But Saver's Shop Prices and Early Game is really rough.

Melee Build

The trade off with melee is that you have less range than a ranged build, but in return Melee Damage.pngMelee Damage is given out in double the amount compared to other damage types. And your weapons can hit as multiple Targets.

For endless mode you can choose to increase your Range Stat.pngRange and essentially become a ranged build, or you can choose a Melee weapon that has good range from default like Spear or Shuriken. But increasing your range comes at the cost of making your weapons attack slower. So find a range that fits your comfort zone.


Some great Melee Weapons that works in the late game include:

  • Knife.png Knife - 4x Crit Multiplier, very easy transition from Thief Dagger into Knife. Great DPS potential.
  • Claw.png Claw - 2.5 Crit Multiplier, scales with Attack speed, which can be stacked in great numbers with Retromation's Hoodie.png Retromation's Hoodie
  • Plasma Sledgehammer.png Plasma Sledgehammer - 200% Melee scaling, Powerful Explosions.
  • Thunder Sword.png Thunder Sword - 150% Melee and Elemental Scaling. Has better attack speed and crit than Plasmahammer.
  • Power Fist.png Power Fist - A faster version of the Plasma Sledgehammer. Also a good option.
  • Spiky Shield.png Spiky Shield - Spiky Shield allows you to stack Armor for both Defense and Offense. And with Anvil.png Anvil giving 2 Armor per turn, it can become quite potent.
  • Spear.png Spear - Just a generally powerful melee weapon with good range.
  • Shuriken.png Shuriken - Allows you to be Ranged while using Melee Damage for scaling.

The new Legendary weapons are also amazing:

  • Drill.png Drill - A Juiced up thief's Dagger that also gives attack speed to all your weapons.
  • Scythe.png Scythe - Great scaling, range, and general dps. Grants Damage every second, which helps all your weapons. And the 3 damage per seconds doesn't matter in endless mode. Though the weapon prevents Tardigrade.png Tardigrade from protecting you.
  • Excalibur.png Excalibur - The Strongest Endless Weapon. Anvil.png Anvil helps you overcome the -18 Armor. The Stats are insane. 3x Crit, good attack speed, 200% HP and Melee Damage scaling. Completely Bonkers.

Good Candidates for an Melee build:

  • Knight.png Knight - Only Melee weapons in the Shop, Gain +2 Melee Damage for each Armor you have.
  • Speedy.png Speedy - Gains +1 Melee Damage per 2 speed you have.
  • Masochist.png Masochist - Extra Tanky, gains damage from taking damage.
  • Glutton.png Glutton - Explosions that scale with Melee Damage. Their Explosive Damage gain can benefit The Plasma Sledgehammer.png Plasma Sledgehammer, which is a really powerful Melee option late game.
  • Note that there are several other melee characters, But they don't have abilities that scale well into Endless Mode. You should still go melee on them, I just don't point them out as great choices.

Ranged Build

The Ranged build is perhaps the most basic and common build in Endless Mode. Ranged weapons are safer and typically offer great single target dps.

The main weakness of Ranged weapons is typically that they only can hit 1-2 targets per shot. In Endless mode this is fixed as you pick up Bandana.png Bandana and Ricochet.png Ricochet in numbers.

The fast shooting projectiles and Piercing/Bouncing means that you'll do a lot of hits. This sets you up to use Giant Belt.png Giant Belt very well, which can carry you through the first 40-45 waves, after which it will lose its ability to do significant damage due to how it is nerfed by the Endless Factor. (See Endless Mode for more info).

A spin on the Ranged Build is using weapons that scale with Range Stat.pngRange, namely Crossbow.png Crossbow and Sniper Gun.png Sniper Gun. Sniper Gun especially has insane potential with its 4x crit modifier, good scaling, and spawned projectiles.

Good Candidates for a Ranged build:

  • Most Characters are good with Ranged builds.
  • Ranger.png Ranger - +50% Ranged Damage, Only ranged Weapons in the shop.
  • Hunter.png Hunter - Gains Damage.pngDamage equal to 10% of your Range Stat. Great for Crossbow.png Crossbow and Sniper Gun.png Sniper Gun builds.
  • Soldier.png Soldier - Ranged Weapons are suitable for the Standing Still Playstyle, and Soldier brings a lot of Stats to the table.
  • Multitasker.png Multitasker - 6 Extra weapons is at its best with ranged weapons. Multitasker can make the best out of Giant Belt.
  • Renegade.png Renegade - 3x Projectiles leads to some great DPS. However Renegade does fall off in later Endless Mode, since it is super hard to stack %DMG outside of buying new Tier 1 items.

Elemental Build

The Elemental build revolves around Stacking Elemental Damage, Inflicting Burn to enemies, and using some of the very powerful Elemental weapons like:

Remember to pick up the Burn Themed items:


Good Candidates for an Elemental build:

  • Mage.png Mage - +33% Elemental Damage Scaling. Good Elemental Start, tagged for elemental Items.
  • One Armed.png One Armed - +100% Damage and Elemental Damage Scaling. This makes your Burn Extremely Potent. You can spread fire via Turrets and Alien Eyes.png Alien Eyes. With Snake.png Snake this can inflict burn to the entire screen despite you being limited to 1 weapon.
  • Arms Dealer.png Arms Dealer - +33% Damage and Elemental Damage Scaling. Just like with One Armed, you can Bypass your Lack of Weapons with Burn.
  • Apprentice.png Apprentice - Gains Elemental Damage on Level up, and loves going for Elemental Engineering Hybrid Builds.
  • Crazy.png Crazy - A wild Card. Crazy is just pretty strong with Lightning Shiv.

Engineering Build

The Engineering build revolves around having tons of Landmines.png Landmines And/or Explosive Turret.png Explosive Turret causing havoc on the enemies.

Engineering can be Scaled quite well thanks to the Explosive nature of it. You increase the base damage with Elemental Damage.pngElemental Damage, and increase the % Damage with Dynamite.png Dynamite. You scale the area hit with Plastic Explosive.png Plastic Explosive and you increase the Spawning Rate / Attack Speed with Improved Tools.png Improved Tools. Finally Engineering builds can go way beyond the 6 weapon limit by buying Turrets and Landmines when they come up in the shop.

And don't forget you can grant turrets Piercing/Bouncing with Pumpkin.png Pumpkin and Ricochet.png Ricochet.

  • Strange Book.png Strange Book - Allows you to get some extra scaling in, if you have some elemental damage.

It is worth noting that there is a limit of 50 Structures on the map at once. So Landmines.png Landmines spawning can randomly destroy your turrets if you have too many. And with Improved Tools this can happen quicker than you've might expected. Note that 50 structures is a lot, and you won't reach it in most games.

Good Candidates for an Engineering build:

  • Engineer.png Engineer - +25% Engineering, Structures spawn in a cluster, Tagged for engineering.
  • Entrepreneur.png Entrepreneur - Going engineering allows you to mostly bypass the -50% damage modifications. Which allows you to fully abuse the Insane Economy of the Entrepreneur.
  • Streamer.png Streamer - Streamer gains +2 Armor per structure you have.
  • Apprentice.png Apprentice - Gains 1 Engineering per level, or 2 with strange book. Which can really add up if you stack some XP Gain.
  • Artificer.png Artificer - Starts with +175% explosive Damage, Tagged for Explosives, Explosion size scales with Elemental Damage, which also gives engineering if you have Strange Book.png Strange Book. Artificer has some insane Late game potential. But the early game is really really hard to do with Wrench.png Wrench or Screwdriver.png Screwdriver. So you might want to add some other Explosives weapons into the build to help you through the early game.

Luck Build

The Luck build revolves around stacking Luck.pngLuck and Damage.pngDamage.

Then you pick up all the Cyberball.png Cyberball and Baby Elephant.png Baby Elephant you can get your hands on. This Luck based Damage can cause chain reactions and deal a lot of damage.

Sifd's Relic.png Sifd's Relic or 5 Baby Gecko.png Baby Gecko are nice pickups for this build.

While your Luck Damage can't crit, you still want to get to 100% Crit or more, not only for your weapons, but also for when you find Lucky Coin.png Lucky Coin

While your Weapons will deal good damage, you can expect your Luck damage to do chain reactions, killing enemies all over the map.

Good Candidates for a Luck build:

  • Lucky.png Lucky - +125 Starting Luck, +25% Luck Modifier, Tagged for Luck, Built in Luck Damage Ability.
  • One Armed.png One Armed - +100% Dmg Modifier, the Luck damage helps you deal with the masses of enemies.
  • Fisherman.png Fisherman - Gains thousands of % Damage, allowing for some crazy luck damage.
  • Arms Dealer.png Arms Dealer - +33% Dmg Modifier, Good economy, and the Luck based damage is a safety net against bad weapons.
  • Glutton.png Glutton - +50 Starting Luck, likes to stack luck for extra consumables. Tagged For Luck.

Explosive Build

By using Weapons or effects that causes explosions, you can gain access to some items that are really powerful and scale well into the late game. Some of the viable Explosion Weapons are:


Explosions are great because they benefit from several items:

  • You can get super efficient increases to your Damage by using Explosive Damage through the items Dynamite.png Dynamite andExplosive Shells.png Explosive Shells.
  • Explosive Damage, unlike regular Damage works with Structures such as Landmines.png Landmines and Explosive Turret.png Explosive Turret.
  • You can increase the Size of explosions with Plastic Explosive.png Plastic Explosive
  • You can cause Explosions with Items such as Rip and Tear.png Rip and Tear and Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce. Rip and Tear is powerful if you can stack 5 of it, as it then gives a 100% chance for enemies to explodes for 250% Melee Damage. Spicy Sauce deals 400% of your Max HP when you have 4 of them. If you get a ton of gardens, explosive size, improved tools with attack speed, and pickup range, this becomes one of the most deadly sources of damage in the game.

So Explosives can be a part of most builds, but there are also characters with abilities related to Explosions.

Good Candidates for an Explosive build:

  • Bull.png Bull - Tagged with explosive, explodes on hit.
  • Glutton.png Glutton - Tagged with Explosives, Explodes when picking up Consumables and gains Explosive Damage from Consumables.
  • Artificer.png Artificer - Tagged with Explosives, +175% explosive damage, can Scale Explosive Size with Elemental Damage.

Build Choices

When building your Character, there are certain options that are mutually exclusive or can cause trouble for other parts of your build. These are choices you must decide on either beforehand or during your run as you see how it pans out.

Hunting Trophy / Non Crit

Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy can about double the amount of money you gain each wave, if you have 3 of them. But it requires you to kill enemies with critical hits. It can be a problem if you are killing enemies with effects that don't crit.

So if you're planning to rely on Hunting Trophies, you should avoid the following damage sources, so they don't steal kills.

That said, even on luck builds and HP builds, you should still pick up Hunting Trophies since they are so powerful in endless. Rather, I would avoid random Cyberballs and Spicy Sauces if I'm not planning on using those as major damage source.

Ricochet / Piercing

The Ricochet.png Ricochet item can grant Bounces to weapons that otherwise doesn't have bounces.

Projectiles have a default damage falloff of 50% when bouncing. This means the damage that each target takes is halved for every bounce. So if the first takes 20, the next will take 10, and then 5.

Weapons with innate bonucing, such as the Slingshot or the projectiles spawned by Lightning Shiv, have a damage falloff of 0%, dealing full damage on every hit.

Piercing Happens after bounces, so if you pick Ricochets, it might lower the damage of the following piercing attacks. This means that Ricochet comes with a heavy cost for weapons like shotgun or Shredder.

However both options have been proven powerful even at the highest of Waves, so make a choice depending on the situation you're in.

Tardigrade / Bloody Hand

Tardigrade.png Tardigrade is a powerful item that can block lethal damage late in High Endless Mode. Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand is also super powerful for Endless Mode. But items like Bloody Hand and Blood Donation.png Blood Donation deals damage to you every second and prevents you from using Tardigrade effectively. Consider what fits your Build. Tardigrades have proven to be the strongest choice if you're going for wave 100+. On the other hand, on regular builds, you often lose when you begin to fall behind on DPS. The boost from Bloody hand can single handedly carry you a few extra waves.

Weapons

There are several good choices for which weapons you want to choose for your character when starting a run. You can start with a Scaling/Economic Weapon such as Thief Dagger.png Thief Dagger and then pivot to a stronger weapon once you've gained all the Materials/Stats you've wanted.

Or start with a weapon like Fist.png Fist and upgrade it to Power Fist.png Power Fist when given the Option.

You can also start with a weapon that is also strong in the endgame like Shuriken.png Shuriken, and just keep the weapon.

Pivoting

Pivoting is when you switch from one type of Weapon to another.

A common Endless mode tactic is to start with a weapon that grants money or stats, and then switch to a weapon with much better damage output once you've hit the late game.

When Pivoting, Anvil.png Anvil is essential for upgrading your weapons, so you can get back to having 6 Tier IV weapons.

The Timing of the Pivot typically starts at wave 25-35, and sometimes at wave 30-50 if you have a very strong economy. You need to pivot earlier if the weapon you're pivoting to only spawn in Tier 3 or higher. Don't get caught. The Shop prices increases quickly. Be careful that enemies get a lot stronger and faster at wave 37-45. Don't get caught with a half finished build.

Scaling Weapons

These weapons gives you bonuses early in the game, but have really bad DPS, so you should switch them out later.

But a Starting weapon can also be the weapon you start with until you find a stronger weapon for the build.

Pivot Targets

  • Knife.png Knife - 4x Crit modifier, very easy transition from Thief Dagger into Knife. Great DPS potential.
  • Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower - Ranged HP.
  • Sniper Gun.png Sniper Gun - 4x Crit modifier, Insane damage potential, Spawned Projectiles are powerful with Bandana, Ricochet, Giant Belt. Just stack tons of Range.
  • Nuclear Launcher.png Nuclear Launcher - Insane Explosion Size. Can blow up the entire screen at the same time, works well with Bandana and Ricochet. Also a choice for Elemental Builds
  • Obliterator.png Obliterator - Comes with great Range and Piercing. It has amazing Ranged Damage Scaling. You Just have to provide ample attack speed.
  • Plasma Sledgehammer.png Plasma Sledgehammer - 200% Melee and Elemental scaling, Powerful Explosions. Doesn't have the Range and Size of the Nuclear Launcher, but its Scaling means it will deal higher amounts of damage per hit. Also a choice for Elemental Builds
  • Thunder Sword.png Thunder Sword - 150% Melee and Elemental Scaling. Has better attack speed and crit than Plasmahammer.
  • Power Fist.png Power Fist - A faster version of the Plasma Sledgehammer. Also a good option.
  • Pruner.png Pruner - Currently the strongest late game weapon outside of Excalibur.png Excalibur if you are doing a Max HP Explosive build using Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce

Legendary Weapons

Legendary Weapons are amazing, and often outperform their nonlegendary versions.

  • Drill.png Drill - A Thief Dagger with better stats, 2.5x Crit. 100% Chance to give materials on Crit kill. Gives Attack Speed every 5 seconds.
  • Scythe.png Scythe - 150% Melee Damage Scaling, Good DPS, gives %Dmg every Second. Powerful melee weapon.
  • Gatling Laser.png Gatling Laser - 100% Ranged Damage Scaling, super fast attack speed, 3x Crit. A Better Minigun.
  • Chain Gun.png Chain Gun - 3x Projectiles, 100% Ranged Damage Scaling. Super fast attack speed. This is a triple Minigun.
  • Excalibur.png Excalibur - 2.5x Crit, Great attack speed, 200% Melee and Max HP Scaling. Excalibur deals way more damage than any other weapon in the game.

Starter Weapons that Work in Endgame

  • Claw.png Claw - Scales with Attack Speed, and has a good crit multiplier. Quite Powerful.
  • Spiky Shield.png Spiky Shield - Spiky Shield allows you to stack Armor for both Defense and Offense. And with Anvil.png Anvil giving 2 Armor per turn, it can become quite potent.
  • Spear.png Spear - Just a generally powerful melee weapon with good range.
  • Laser Gun.png Laser Gun - Great Ranged Damage Scaling. Can be Scaled forever with Attack Speed
  • Double Barrel Shotgun.png Double Barrel Shotgun - Great scaling and damage output. Also great Area clear. Downside is that it misses a lot at longer range.
  • Wrench.png Wrench - The Weapon for a Standard Engineering Build.
  • Screwdriver.png Screwdriver - Landmines.png Landmines have a large Explosion Size and can be scaled well with Improved Tools.
  • Slingshot.png Slingshot - The Bouncing Option for Ranged Damage.
  • Shuriken.png Shuriken - The Bouncing Option for Melee Damage.
  • Lightning Shiv.png Lightning Shiv - The Bouncing Option for Elemental Damage.
  • Chopper.png Chopper - The Potato Thrower at Home. Slower, and melee. But if you want to do a melee HP build, it is decent.
  • Hatchet.png Hatchet - Scales with Attack Speed, which is Easier to stack than Melee Damage.

Stats

While what Stats you need depends on your Character and Build, there are still a lot of general guidelines that applies to most builds and characters.

Defensive Stats

  • Max HP.pngMax HP - Your Primary way of surviving. Depend on Extra Stomach.png Extra Stomach, Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf, and Padding.png Padding to get your Max HP high.
  • Armor.pngArmor - Your way of Scaling your survivability. There is no limit or diminishing returns on armor, so stack it high along with your Max HP. Anvil.png Anvil is your best friend for armor.
  • Dodge Stat.pngDodge - Max it out at 60%. Once you have Retromation's Hoodie.png Retromation's Hoodie you can stack more dodge to get attack speed.
  • Speed Stat.pngSpeed - Get this as high as you're comfortable with. Getting a lot of speed allows you to outrun enemies, but chances are you can't control it, and just end up running into more enemies. I like getting 100%-200% increased speed.

Offensive Stats

  • Damage.pngDamage - Damage is perhaps the most important stat, or it is the stat that is important for most builds. Weapons, Alien Eyes.png Alien Eyes, Cyberball.png Cyberball, or Scared Sausage.png Scared Sausage all scale with Damage. The exception is Engineering. You can gain a lot of damage through Power Generator.png Power Generator, Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand, and Vigilante Ring.png Vigilante Ring. You want as much as you can get in most cases.
  • Attack Speed.pngAttack Speed - Attack Speed is very important for most builds. With Improved Tools.png Improved Tools it also applies to Engineering builds. Retromation's Hoodie.png Retromation's Hoodie gives a great boost and allows you to stack Dodge to gain a lot of Attack speed. Weapons with a fast base attack speed reach a point where they begin to have diminishing returns on how much attack speed affects them, which should be taken into account. But otherwise you want a lot of attack speed. Once you have 1000%+ Attack speed, a lot of weapons will have diminishing returns.
  • Crit Chance.pngCrit Chance - You should max out your crit chance when you can, so you can gain extra materials with Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy. With Lucky Coin.png Lucky Coin, Crit becomes a great way to stack additional luck.
  • Range Stat.pngRange - For ranged Weapons, it is a good idea to gain a good amount of range, since there is no downside. +200 to +700. Doesn't matter too much. On melee weapons it is interesting. Longer range allows your melee weapons to act like ranged weapons or like a spear. However it comes at the cost of a slower attack speed. Find out what you're comfortable with. I recommend quite a lot of range, since the attack speed slow is minor, and when enemies move super fast, it is better to have some range.

Damage Scaling Stats

You use these to scale your damage output into the late game. If you're relying on one of these stats for your damage output, you should just keep scaling the stat.

Healing

  • HP Regeneration.pngHP Regeneration - Due to Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf, you can end up gaining a lot of HP Regeneration, and when combined with Regeneration Potion.png Regeneration Potion, it can provide a good amount of reliable healing.
  • Life Steal.pngLife Steal - You'll likely get a good amount of Life Steal Passively over the duration of a long game. But life steal has a cap of up to 10 HP per second. You also don't need that much life steal before you run into diminishing returns, so getting more than 30-40% is mostly just for Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand.

Economy

  • Luck.pngLuck - Luck is important for snowballing on the early levels. But on the later levels, you're maxed out on your Chances for higher tier upgrades and items anyway. Also Consumables stop dropping from most enemies. So here the purpose of luck is to guarantee that Elites and Bosses drop Loot Crates. Every time a loot box drops, the chance for the next one decreases. You need 100 Luck for each dropped Crate to guarantee that the next will drop from an Elite/Boss. (Normal enemies have much lower chances of Crate drops, especially as you get into the deeper levels of endless mode. So a rule of thumb is that the max Luck you want is about 100 luck per 10 waves. (More early is great) But for deeper in endless mode you want to have 300 luck for wave 30-39, 400 for wave 40-49 and so on.
  • Harvesting.pngHarvesting - You should try to be greedy and get a lot of Harvesting before wave 20. After wave 20, it isn't worth it to invest in harvesting. (Exception is Farmer through Consumables)

General

Healing

Healing is in a weird place in Endless Mode. As enemies become faster and more deadly, you reach a point where you mostly rely on instantly killing enemies. And then when you stop being able to kill enemies, you've reached a point where healing often isn't able to keep up with the amount of damage you're taking.

Generally, I'm not worried about my healing, and tend to mostly ignore it once i've made it past the first 20 levels. With the Max HP from Extra Stomach.png Extra Stomach, Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf, and Padding.png Padding, you will often mostly rely on Max HP to survive.

In addition to the stats, you can get extra healing through items:

  • Having 5 Tentacle.png Tentacle is great since most builds reach 100% crit anyway. So this means 1 HP healed for each enemy killed. So tentacles are an easy pickup for most builds.
  • Fruit.pngConsumables - You can stack a lot of consumable healing with Lemonade.png Lemonade and Weird Food.png Weird Food over the duration of a game. But the droprate of consumables plummet. So you must rely on Garden.png Garden's + Improved Tools.png Improved Tools with tons of Attack speed.

Economy

In order to go far in Endless Mode, you want to get as many items that will boost your economy. Not only will the items already have made you super strong at wave 20, they will continue to pay off on waves in endless mode too. All builds want to get economy items.

If you want to go far in Endless Mode, you should play as Greedy as Possible without dying, and without falling behind. If you fall behind on damage, such that you are no longer killing all or most of the enemies, you're missing out on the drops from those enemies.

Look for the Following Items/Stats:

And all the Eco items:

  • Coupon.png Coupon - Makes the shop cheaper. Really good.
  • Recycling Machine.png Recycling Machine - Gives more money from Recycling. Super important for your late game economy.
  • Bag.png Bag - Tons of Materials over the duration of a game.
  • Piggy Bank.png Piggy Bank - Can give a lot of extra materials if you can afford to save up, and if you get it early.
  • Metal Detector.png Metal Detector - Extra luck and Double Materials.
  • Tree.png Tree - Trees give extra materials and has a great chance to drop a Loot Crate
  • Dangerous Bunny.png Dangerous Bunny - Dangerous Bunny allows you to bypass the insane rerolling cost you'll see on later waves.
  • Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy - Great both early, but also a key item for your late game economy.
  • Crown.png Crown - Can give great amounts of harvesting if you get it early.
  • Gentle Alien.png Gentle Alien - More Enemies, More Money
  • Mouse.png Mouse - More Enemies, More Money

Item Pool

In endless you'll end up getting a lot of items in both the shop and through crates. But a lot of items doesn't do much for your build. Being able to manipulate your build is important.

There are three ways you can manipulate the item pool to your favor.

Unique and Limited Items

Once you have aquired the maximum amount of a limited or unique item, the item can no longer show up in crates and the Shop. So it is often worth it to pick up Unique and sometimes Limited items that are useless for your build just to improve the Item Pool.

Locking Items in Shop

Unique Items Locked in the Shop cannot show up in Crates during the wave. So it is useful to lock unique items. This way you can actually slim down the item pool by 4 more items. The strongest locks are Tier 2 and 3 items. Since most of the items you're looking for like Vigilante Ring or Garden are these tiers.

Resetting Progress

The one powerful method, and controversial, is to backup your save file and create a new save file. Then you can choose exactly which items you want to unlock and keep all other items locked, massively improving your pool.

Not everyone likes this method and the sheer amount of power it brings to the table means that runs done using it should be put in their own category and not compared to runs done without it. People have already reached wave 1000+ with all items unlocked, so you won't be breaking any records either way.

Gameplay Strategy

Surprisingly there isn't much to say about the gameplay part. At this point, the different Enemies don't matter too much, since you deal so much damage at such a fast rate. You'll mostly just have to care about Elites and Bosses.

Wave 21-29

Typically you won't have much trouble the early waves of Endless. Your Build has kicked in, you've hopefully gotten 2 Legendary Items from the Wave 20 Bosses.

Piggy Bank.png Piggy Bank has stopped working, and Shop Prices/Rerolling are cheap compared to the money you're making. So it is time to get shopping done.

You'll note that Enemies keep dropping less Materials. The drop chance decreases slowly down to 50%, or 25% for characters with halved material drops. See the Materials Page for details.

You'll face 3 Elite Waves if you're playing on Danger 5. But an Elite Wave now have 2 elites which have a good deal more HP and DMG. So it can cause a bit of trouble and is likely the reason for your death if you die during these waves.

Wave 30

Your First big Challenge. Many builds find their Grave at this level. Both Bosses will spawn along with an additional Elite. Due to the Endless Factor, the Bosses and Elite have +110% Damage and +220% HP in addition to their Base HP and DMG also scaling with the Wave number.

If you aren't able to kill the Bosses, the sheer amount of projectiles might do you in. For several attacks, like the rings of projectiles spawning around you, or Butcher's Slicing attacks, you can simply have about +70% Speed or more to outrun it. But you still have to be careful about the rest of the projectiles, as they can hurt quite a bit depending on your build.

Having a Giant Belt.png Giant Belt here is very welcome.

Wave 35-45

The Endless Factor Starts increasing faster from Wave 36 and onwards. This is when the Game is trying to kill you. You'll see several things begin to change. Enemies Speed up, the Giant Belt begins to do less damage, the Shop becomes hard to use at all. The drop chance of Consumables also decreases heavily.

And of course enemy Health and Damage also scale at the same insane rate. Have Fun.

Wave 45+

This is Hell. Enemies move at insane speeds, your Iframes have been ruined by the Endless Factor. Shopping is super expensive at this point. Enemies begin to be able to kill you in a few hits even if you have a lot of armor. Your Giant Belt.png Giant Belt doesn't deal much damage anymore.

Many Builds cannot reach this stage, and the strongest builds will fail during the next 10-20 waves. Being a Melee Build is very difficult at this point.

Most Characters can reach Wave 50-60 or around that range using an economic build (thief daggers, harvesting spam) into something like chain gun, sniper gun, or HP Build.

High Endless Mode

High Endless Mode is for when you're abusing every advantage you can to go infinite. In this section we will discuss how to get to wave 1000+

Note that some people have already gone 1000+ waves, and it takes an insane amount of time to play through 1000 Waves. To combat this you can turn off "Pause on Unfocus" in the Game Settings, so you can be doing other stuff while the Wave continues on.

The Method

There is currently one strategy that far outshines all others in Brotato. That is Max HP scaling.

With the Current path, the build revolves around buffing up the Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce item.

So that means spawning a ton of Consumables (Garden.png Garden + Improved Tools.png Improved Tools)

Then we need explosion size (Explosive Shells.png Explosive Shells + Plastic Explosive.png Plastic Explosive)

And get Alien Tongue.png Alien Tongue for Pickup Range, so that the consumables are coming to you from all over the screen.

Finally you get Sad Tomato.png Sad Tomato to make sure you're not at full HP. You can add Torture.png Torture to prevent you from healing full midwave if you have a lot of Consumable healing.

As for weapons, you can use Pruner.png Pruner for extra Consumables. Or you can go Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower for extra ranged damage. The Weapon Excalibur.png Excalibur is perhaps the Best In Slot, though you could argue for Pruner to be stronger. But Excalibur certainly beats out Potato Thrower. Alien Eyes.png Alien Eyes gives support fire.

When the Shop becomes too expensive to use, you simply just begin to save up as many materials as possible. Lock 4 Uniques you don't want. With the 3 Padding.png Padding you have this will be your Max HP.

Ideally you'll be Demon, which converts your materials to Max HP at much stronger rate (13 material = 1 Max HP vs 33 materials = 1 Max HP of 3 Paddings)

In Order to not lose any Loot Crate drops, you need about 10 Luck per Wave (See Endless Mode for the calculations). It is okay to have a little less than this, but falling too far behind will cause you to lose Crates.

Setup

To prepare for this run, you'll need to at least have the following items unlocked. The standard is to have everything unlocked.

  • Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce - Core item - On Farmer, can become a nuke zone that instantly kills any enemies that come close to you. But it doesn't work with Hunting Trophy, so you might not want it.
  • Anvil.png Anvil - Core Item. Upgrades your Weapons. Gives you tons of armor.
  • Padding.png Padding - Core Item (outside of Demon) -Turns your Materials into HP.
  • Improved Tools.png Improved Tools - Core item - Makes Gardens Spawn consumables much faster.
  • Lure.png Lure - Super snowbally item that provides tons of money with Bags and Recycling Machine.
  • Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy - Provides a great amount of Materials
  • Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower - If you're not doing a Pruner build, then this is your weapon.
  • Excalibur.png Excalibur - Likely the Best in Slot weapon in the game.
  • Giant Belt.png Giant Belt - Optional - Free Extra damage. Not super important in High Endless Mode.
  • Tentacle.png Tentacle - Optional - Provides powerful healing for the Thief Dagger Build.
  • Snail.png Snail - Optional - Provides a Slow that actually still makes a small difference even in High Endless Mode.

Characters

The best character this patch is Demon.png Demon. This is the only build I've seen go to wave 1000+.

Other powerful characters for High Endless are Loud.png Loud and Farmer.png Farmer. Other Economic characters can also make it to wave 70+ with some luck, but aren't as powerful.


Demon

Demon's HP Conversion ability allows it to gain Max HP at a rate that is almost like having 7.7 Padding.png Padding. This combined with a super snowbally early game is the reason why Demon has become the strongest Endless mode Character.

  1. Choose Demon.png Demon
  2. Start with Ghost Scepter.png Ghost Scepter
  3. Abuse the Early Game Shop. Have 1 hp during the early game. Combine Ghost Scepters to below having 6 weapons so they gain more HP stats.
  4. Pick up Harvesting items, economy items, more enemies, Luck, Hunting Trophy, etc. Look for Crown.png Crown.
  5. Pivot to Pruner.png Pruner, Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower, or Excalibur.png Excalibur (if you can find it) somewhere around wave 25-40. Hope you have Anvil.png Anvil.
  6. Do the Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce Build.
  7. Shop for at long as you can, then lock the shop. Continue to gain items from Crates and keep the important items.
  8. Survive for as long as you can.


Loud

The Loud build is the Default Standard Build. You can use any character for this build, but Loud's great economy through extra enemies makes Loud the strongest choice.

  1. Choose Loud.png Loud
  2. Start with Thief Dagger.png Thief Dagger
  3. Get a good start, where you get a good amount of weapons from the first two shops.
  4. Pick up Harvesting items, economy items, more enemies, Luck, Hunting Trophy, etc. Look for Crown.png Crown.
  5. Pivot to Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower or Excalibur.png Excalibur (if you can find it) somewhere around wave 25-40. Hope you have Anvil.png Anvil.
  6. Do the Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce Build.
  7. Shop for at long as you can, then lock the shop. Continue to gain items from Crates and keep the important items.
  8. Survive for as long as you can.


Farmer

The Farmer build has a different start, but the same end goal. You'll abuse the Farmer's insane harvesting gains to snowball early, and then the ability to gain harvesting from Consumables to have thousands of Harvesting even on the later waves.

  1. Choose Farmer.png Farmer
  2. Start with Pruner.png Pruner
  3. Get a good start, where you get a good amount of weapons from the first two shops.
  4. Pick up Harvesting items, economy items, more enemies, Luck, Hunting Trophy, etc. Look for Crown.png Crown.
  5. Pick up all the Garden.png Garden you see and Improved Tools.png Improved Tools. Then stack your attack speed. This will give you tons of Harvesting. There is a max of 50 Structures on the battlefield, so never pick up Turret.png turret or Landmines.png Landmines
  6. Pick up Excalibur.png Excalibur If you see some. Otherwise no need to Pivot. Pruner is great.
  7. Do the Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce Build.
  8. Shop for at long as you can, then lock the shop. Continue to gain items from Crates and keep the important items.
  9. Survive for as long as you can.

Sometimes, you don't fully heal when you gain HP from padding at the end of a wave, and this can prevent you from gaining harvesting with consumables. To combat this, you can stack consumable healing with Lemonade.png Lemonade and Weird Food.png Weird Food.

Target Items

These items are the ones you're trying to get as many as possible of.

  • Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf - Gives 3 HP per Wave. Gives 2% Dmg with Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand. Doesn't do much without Bloody Hand. Might give more MP from the materials you could save by not buying it.
  • Vigilante Ring.png Vigilante Ring - Gives 3% Damage Wave. Super important to keep up in damage.
  • Padding.png Padding - Gives you more HP. Keeps you Scaling
  • Dangerous Bunny.png Dangerous Bunny - Very Important early on to abuse the shop. Becomes useless
  • Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy - Fuels your Paddings with Materials
  • Alien Eyes.png Alien Eyes - Another HP based Damage Source.
  • Silver Bullet.png Silver Bullet - Adds Multiplicative Damage against Elites and Bosses. Important to keep up in damage against Elites.
  • Tardigrade.png Tardigrade - Protects you from taking damage from the first X hits.
  • Garden.png Garden - Spawns the Consumables
  • Alien Tongue.png Alien Tongue - Attracts the Consumables
  • Explosive Shells.png Explosive Shells - Increases the Explosion Size
  • Plastic Explosive.png Plastic Explosive - Increases the Explosion Size

There are also a ton of limited and Unique items that you want to find. You can see those in the List of Items

Item Pool

In order to go the furthest, you need to clear out the Item Pool a bit.


You'll want to buy the Unique and Limited Items to improve the Item Pool. Since no Tier 1 Items really matter, it isn't important to buy limited Tier 1 items. But for the other tiers you should be buying every single Unique and Limited Item you come across.

Now there are a few Exceptions.

Which Uniques to Get

You should never buy Candle.png Candle and White Flag.png White Flag since it will reduce the amount of materials you gain during a wave. The number of enemies isn't an issue, since you clear the whole screen anyway.

You should buy Esty's Couch.png Esty's Couch and Torture.png Torture to clear the pool out, so you get more Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf and Explosive Shells.png Explosive Shells.

Capping your HP with Handcuffs.png Handcuffs doesn't prevent Alien Eyes.png Alien Eyes, Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower, and the rest from scaling, so if you lock your HP at something really low, it won't matter unless you run out of Tardigrades.

You can also save Handcuffs.png Handcuffs if you want to go really really far. Your Max HP has a default cap of 999999 HP. But you can increase this cap by buying Handcuffs and set it to a new maximum. This means that if you get to the point where enemies can one shot you at 999999 HP, you should pick up Handcuffs and increase your Max HP to a new limit. This will allow you to go further in the game. But the Value of this, when you have tons of Tardigrades is negligible. Removing the Handcuffs from the pool early is likely to be the better choice.

Then you have to choose to get Bandana.png Bandana or Ricochet.png Ricochet - If you're going for Ricochet, you should only get 3-4 of them, since the damage will already be down to 12.5%-6.25%. Getting more doesn't increase your damage, but increases the amount of Lagg you'll get from the massive amount of projectiles.

Bloody Hand

Now you have to choose if you're going Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand. Bloody Hand provides a large amount of Damage when combined with many Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf items.

But picking up Bloody Hand Ruins your Tardigrade.png Tardigrade Items. Now even with Bloody Hand, you should still Stack Tardigrades, since Bosses spawn and die within the first 10 seconds of the wave for the most part, so even with Bloody hand, you can get enough Tardigrades to protect you from the Boss Rush.

If you are going for the Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand Build, you should stay away from Sad Tomato.png Sad Tomato, since you'll be be needing that full Max HP to not die.

But skipping Bloody Hand, will allow you to be protected all throughout the wave. Which can be useful for wave 600+ when projectiles begin to be able to kill you even if you got more than a million Max HP.

Since Iframes are destroyed by the Endless Factor, you cannot survive collision damage for very long even with a good amount of Tardigrade.png Tardigrade.

Remarks

With this setup you should be able to go the distance. Note that it might take some tries to get a good run. And if you at wave 10-25 see that your run isn't that great, consider restarting and try to a better one.

Once you have your entire damage setup, the game becomes boring. Now you can AFK during waves, and just recycle most items, picking up the important scaling items.

But there is both skill and dicision making required to get a strong early game and snowball going. Once you have tried going Infinite with HP Scaling, I challenge you to see how far you can go with other builds.

The Item List

Here are some tables of items that you should key an eye out for. Some are really powerful for Endless Mode, others should be Avoided.

Stat Scaling Items

Stat Scaling items can give insane amounts of stats for a single item.

Item Effect Notes
+12 % Life Steal
+2 % Damage for every 1 % Life Steal you have
You take 1 damage per second (does not give invulnerability time)
Bloody Hand is a super powerful item. It allows you to turn Life Steal from Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf into 2% Damage per wave per leaf.

But note that the self damage prevents you from using Tardigrade.png Tardigrade effectively.

+2 Luck for every 1 % Crit Chance you have
-2 Armor
For late game, you want to max out your crit chance at 100% for damage output and for effects like Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy or Tentacle.png Tentacle.

So Lucky Coin is an easy +200 Luck. And can be used to convert excess crit chance into more luck.

+1% Damage for every permanent 1% Speed you have.
-5% Damage
Power Generator is a cheap way to gain 100-200% Damage.
+2% Attack Speed for every 1% Dodge you have.
-80 Range
Not only does Retromation's Hoodie give you +120% attack speed when you max out your dodge, but it also allows you to convert extra dodge into attack speed at a good rate.
+1 Max HP for every 1 permanent Armor you have
-2 Armor
Another free source of Max HP. Gives +2 Max HP per wave once you have Anvil.png Anvil.
+1 Engineering for every 1 Elemental Damage you have.
-1 Melee Damage
-1 Ranged Damage
Not a lot of builds will be using this item, but its useful for those that do. Otherwise you can pick it up just to remove it from the Item Pool.

Artificer.png Artificer can do some fun builds with this item if you can pull off the early game.

+10 % Attack Speed
Reduces the attack cooldown of your structures by 0% (50%Attack Speed.png)
Improved Tools is a Run-defining item for builds that rely on Engineering and is busted with Garden.png Garden if you're playing Farmer.png Farmer or Glutton.png Glutton

Stats Per Wave

These items grant stats each wave. These are bread and butter for scaling your stats.

Item Effect Notes
A random weapon is upgraded when entering a shop. If you have no weapon to upgrade, you gain +2 Armor instead. Anvil is one of the most important items for endless. It grants you +2 Armor each wave. And it upgrades your weapons should you want to pivot into new weapons late in the game.
+1 Max HP when picking up a consumable while at maximum health (max +10 per wave) Extra Stomach gives can +10 Max HP each wave. Super important for surviving if you're not abusing Padding.png Padding.
+3 Max HP at the end of a wave (stacking)
+1 HP Regeneration at the end of a wave (stacking)
+1% Life Steal at the end of a wave (stacking)
Grind's Magical Leaf provides a lot of useful stats. Max HP is always welcome, HP Regeneration doesn't have a upper limit, so more is better. And the Life Steal gives +2% Damage with Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand.
+3% Damage at the end of a wave (stacking) Vigilante Ring grants +3% damage per wave and unlike other stats per wave items, it is a tier 3 item. So you can pick them up early and in number if you're lucky.

Good Uniques and Limited Items

These items have generally powerful effects, and also removes items from the item pool.

Item Effect Notes
+5 % Dodge
50% chance to heal 5 HP when dodging an attack
Adrenaline provides a neat +5 Healing 50% of the time when you dodge. A neat pickup.
+15 materials when you pick up a crate
-1% Speed
Bag is a cheap item that will pay itself back many times over the duration of the game. Always pickup for endless.
-5% Price Coupons are just great. Always buy.
+1 free reroll in the shop Dangerous Bunny provides free rerolls and it stacks. Super powerful effect until the point where items are so expensive that you can't afford to buy anything.
Critical hits deal 10% of an enemy’s current health as bonus damage (1% for bosses and elites) Giant Belt is powerful, especially with faster weapons. The belt gets nerfed by the endless factor on higher waves. But until then it is super powerful
+5% Damage
+5% Enemies
+2 Max HP
Gentle Alien grants more enemies, which means more Materials. Generally, it tends to be Bosses and Elites that ends up being a problem.
+33% chance to get 1 material when killing an enemy with a critical hit Hunting Trophy is a great way to earn a lot of extra money for any crit based build. Its importance is much less now that it has been limited to 3, but it is still super powerful.
+5% chance to double the value of picked up materials
+6 Luck
+2 Engineering
-5% Damage
You're unlikely to max this out. But the item does pay itself back over time.
+5% Life Steal
+10% Enemies
-5 Harvesting
Mouse increases the amount of enemies, which means more materials.
HP Regeneration is doubled while you have less than 50% health
+3 HP Regeneration
Just a Free upgrade to your HP Regeneration, which is powerful if you're not doing Padding.png Padding builds with endless Max HP.
Gain +35% more materials from recycling items Essential item for all runs. Gives tons of Materials over the duration of a run.
+3 Max HP
+1 Max HP for every 100 Materials you have.
-5% Speed
Padding is the key item for HP builds. It allows you to save up money and transform that into Max HP, which fuels your Alien Eyes.png Alien Eyes, Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower, and Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce
+100% chance to instantly attract a material when its dropped Just a quality of Life pickup. You can also pick up Baby Gecko.png Baby Gecko's for the same result.
-5 Enemy Speed
-3% Speed
Snail slows down enemies. An auto pickup during the midgame.
+3 % Crit Chance
+20% chance to heal 1 HP when killing an enemy with a critical hit
Tentacle is insanely powerful. With 100% crit chance, 5 Tentacles will give 1 HP healed for each enemy slain. This outpaces 100% Life steal and can be your main form of healing.
Hitting an enemy removes +10% of their speed Max: 30%
-3% Speed
Ugly Tooth slows down enemies. Great tier 1 item that has an impact at any wave.

Always Relevant

These are items with no limits that have effects that remain relevant even in Endless Waves.

Item Effect Notes
Shoots +6 alien eyes around you every 3 seconds dealing (50%Max HP.png) Each Stack of Alien Eyes increases the amount of eyes fired by +6. So if you're gaining a good amount of HP, and it becomes a super important item if you're doing a Padding.png Padding build.
Spawns a garden that creates a fruit every 15 seconds Garden helps you stack Extra Stomach.png Extra Stomach and can even be a powerful source of healing if you have Improved Tools.png Improved Tools. It is a key item with Farmer.png Farmer or Glutton.png Glutton. Also a key item for Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce Builds
+3 HP Regeneration
2 additional loot aliens appear during the next wave
Lure gives 2 additional Loot Hoarders, which nearly always means +2 crates, provided you have enough luck. 2 crates is 90 extra materials + 16 from killing the Loot Hoarders. That's usually a great deal.
+25% Explosion Size Unless you're Artificer.png Artificer, Plasic Explosives are the only way to increase your Explosion size. So stack them if you rely on explosions. Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce builds want to have as many of these as possible.
+60% Explosion Damage
+15% Explosion Size
-15% Damage
Just like Plastic Explosive.png Plastic Explosive, Explosive Shells grant Explosion Size, which is a very powerful stat.
+25% damage against bosses and elites Silver Bullet increases your Damage against elites and bosses. This is multiplicative with your damage output. So Silver Bullets are super important for being able to clear elites on higher waves.
Nullifies the damage of +1 hit taken every wave If you're not using Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand, Tardigrades allow you to survive a lot of hits on higher waves where you otherwise might have died in 1-4 hits.

Run Killers

These are a list of items that can mess with your runs. Some are just minor inconveniences, while others can get you killed. There are cases and builds where you want these, so it is important to understand the context of when to get an item.

Item Effect Notes
+15 Max HP
+8 Enemy Speed
Alien Baby makes enemies permanently faster. The +15 Max HP just isn't worth it.
+40 Harvesting
You take 1 damage per second (does not give invulnerability time)
Blood Donation and Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand can both be good items. Blood Donation can help you snowball your economy if you pick it up early. However, by picking these up, you hurt your ability to use Tardigrade.png Tardigrade
+3 Max HP
Start the next wave with 1 HP
Weird Ghost is mostly something you need to be aware of when taking items from crates. Picking one up by mistake could easily be an early death.
+8 HP Regeneration
Start waves with -50% HP
In Endless Mode, the HP Regeneration granted by Sad Tomato is quite Sad, and not worth losing half of your HP. If you're doing a glass cannon build with Tardigrade.png Tardigrade, you can take Sad Tomato to remove it from the item pool. But don't take it if you're playing Glutton.png Glutton or Farmer.png Farmer, as it can prevent you from being at full HP at the end of the wave if you have a lot of Max HP
+4 Elemental Damage
+1 HP Regeneration
-10% Enemies
-5% Damage
Candle Reduces the amount of enemies, which reduces the amount of income you get by killing enemies. However you can take it to clear up your item pool. Same logic with White Flag.png White Flag
Your projectiles gain +1 bounce
-25% Damage
Ricochet grants Bouncing. Bouncing attacks lose 50% damage on every bounce unless you're using a weapon with default bounces like Slingshot.png Slingshot or Shuriken.png Shuriken.

And it will reduce the damage of all the following piercing attacks. With Piercing you can use Pumpkin.png Pumpkin to not lose damage on hit. So you should really consider if you want to go for bouncing. However, Bouncing is really powerful, so consider which build is right for your weapon.

+15 Max HP
Restore +4 HP per second. Cannot heal any other way.
Torture turns off your healing, and provides 4 per second. This is powerful the pre Endless Waves, but once you get in later Endless waves, you can heal a lot more than 4 per second. Once you get to Wave 100+, any form of Healing won't matter anyway and you can take Torture to clear up your pool.
+20% Damage
+1 Armor
-2% Damage until the end of the wave when you take damage
You want to avoid this item if you have Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand or Blood Donation.png Blood Donation.
+25% chance to deal (25%Luck.png) damage to a random enemy when an enemy dies Secondary damage items like Cyberball, Baby Elephant.png Baby Elephant, Baby with a Beard.png Baby with a Beard, or Spicy Sauce.png Spicy Sauce can end up not actually doing significant damage and just clutter up your game with damage numbers and projectiles. Those items can be each be good if you're building around them, but spend money on useless items. Also it is worth noting that several of these items can't crit and therefore can't grant materials with Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy
+8 Melee Damage
+8 Ranged Damage
+8 Elemental Damage
Your max HP is capped at its current value
Handscuffs locks your Max HP, and can easily get you killed. However, they are unique, so if you're doing a wave 500+ Tardigrade.png Tardigrade build, your Max HP might not matter, and you can clear up your Item pool. Handcuffs doesn't affect your damage scaling with Potato Thrower and Alien Eyes.
+8 HP Regeneration
+8 Engineering
+80 Range
Your Speed is capped at its current value
Shackles locks your Speed. This can be really bad if you lock it too early. But it can also be fine to do later, since enemies' speed max out at Wave 51. So you can find the speed that you're comfortable with and lock it. I would generally aim for 100-200% Speed Stat. Beyond that, I have issues following what is happening on the screen. Locking your speed, doesn't prevent Power Generator.png Power Generator from giving you additional % Damage.
+2 HP Regeneration for every permanent -1% Speed you have.
+5 Max HP
-15% Speed
You're not going for a Standstill build. So this is just going to lose you a bunch of HP Regeneration. But you can also pick it up to clear the pool for more Grind's Magical Leaf.png Grind's Magical Leaf.
A landmine spawns every 12 seconds dealing 10 + (100%Engineering Stat.png) damage in an area There is a limit of 100 Structures on the map at once. So for really long Endless Runs you might need to consider which structures you pick up. But for many cases you won't hit this limit.
+2 Engineering
Killing a tree spawns a turret
This is a bad one if you're going for high Endless Mode. It might steal kills from your hunting trophies if you get some engineering stats. It will despawn your gardens if you get enough trees. And finally the projectiles lagg the game. So it is fine for most casual runs, but avoid it like the plague if you're going for wave 100+