ArosRising's Guide to Endless Mode

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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 Page hasn't been Updated for the 1.0 Changes.)

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 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

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:

• Start with a Scaling Weapon like Thief Dagger or Ghost Flint.
• Invest Heavily in Harvesting, Luck, and XP Gain.
• Look for Economic items like: Bag, Crown, or Hunting Trophy
• Choose a Character with economic Bonuses.

Good Candidates for an Economic build:

• 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 or Ghost Flint
• Farmer - Farmer can get insane amounts of harvesting by using Pruner and Crown.
• Entrepreneur - Entrepreneur can stack large amounts of harvesting, and their shop prices can get all the way down to 50%.
• Explorer - Explorer can earn tons of Money by stacking Luck and getting 3 early Bag. The +25% Enemies is also super powerful later in the game, as the Material drop rate becomes 25% for all characters, so the -50% ability doesn't matter.
• Streamer - If you can get ahead on Streamer, you can earn up to 25x60 = 1500 Materials per wave.
• Jack - Jack gains a ton of Materials due to how the mechanics play out, not just triple. And if you can manage to stack Gentle Alien and Mouse, you can become a powerhouse.
• 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 one able to Never lose the Game.

You use Potato Thrower and Alien Eyes to deal damage based on your Max HP.

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

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

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 - Demon Comes with a HP conversion ability that is equal to that of 7.7 Paddings. This limits Demon's Super Late game potential, but makes Demon perhaps the strongest HP Scaling Character out of the gate.
• 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 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 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 - 4x Crit modifier, very easy transition from Thief Dagger into Knife. Great DPS potential.
• Plasma Sledgehammer - 200% Melee scaling, Powerful Explosions.
• Thunder Sword - 150% Melee and Elemental Scaling. Has better attack speed and crit than Plasmahammer.
• Power Fist - A faster version of the Plasma Sledgehammer. Also a good option.
• Spiky Shield - Spiky Shield allows you to stack Armor for both Defense and Offense. And with Anvil giving 2 Armor per turn, it can become quite potent.
• Spear - Just a generally powerful melee weapon with good range.
• Shuriken - Allows you to be Ranged while using Melee Damage for scaling.

Good Candidates for an Melee build:

• Knight - Only Melee weapons in the Shop, Gain +2 Melee Damage for each Armor you have.
• Speedy - Gains +1 Melee Damage per 2 speed you have.
• Masochist - Extra Tanky, gains damage from taking damage.
• Glutton - Explosions that scale with Melee Damage. Their Explosive Damage gain can benefit The 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 and 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 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).

• Nuclear Launcher - Insane Explosion Size.
• Obliterator - Comes with great Range and Piercing. It has amazing Ranged Damage Scaling.
• Laser Gun - Great Ranged Damage Scaling. Can be Scaled forever with Attack Speed without hitting diminishing returns.
• Double Barrel Shotgun - Great scaling and damage output. Also great Area clear. Downside is that it misses a lot at longer range.
• Slingshot - The Bouncing Option. Can use Ricochet without damage falloff.

A spin on the Ranged Build is using weapons that scale with Range, namely Crossbow and 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 - +50% Ranged Damage, Only ranged Weapons in the shop.
• Hunter - Gains Damage equal to 10% of your Range Stat. Great for Crossbow and Sniper Gun builds.
• Soldier - Ranged Weapons are suitable for the Standing Still Playstyle, and Soldier brings a lot of Stats to the table.
• Multitasker - 6 Extra weapons is at its best with ranged weapons. Multitasker can make the best out of Giant Belt.

Elemental Build

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

• Lightning Shiv
• Plasma Sledgehammer
• Thunder Sword
• Nuclear Launcher

Remember to pick up the Burn Themed items:

• Scared Sausage - Allows All Weapons to spread fire.
• Snake - Allows the fire to spread.
• Eyes Surgery - Increases the DPS of your Burn.

Good Candidates for an Elemental build:

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

Engineering Build

The Engineering build revolves around having tons of Landmines And/or 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, and increase the % Damage with Dynamite. You scale the area hit with Plastic Explosive and you increase the Spawning Rate / Attack Speed with 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 and Ricochet.

• 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 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 - +25% Engineering, Structures spawn in a cluster, Tagged for engineering.
• 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 - Streamer gains +2 Armor per structure you have.
• Artificer - Starts with +175% explosive Damage, Tagged for Explosives, Explosion size scales with Elemental Damage, which also gives engineering if you have Strange Book. Artificer has some insane Late game potential. But the early game is really really hard to do with Wrench or 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 and Damage.

Then you pick up all the Cyberball and 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 or 5 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

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 - +125 Starting Luck, +25% Luck Modifier, Tagged for Luck, Built in Luck Damage Ability.
• One Armed - +100% Dmg Modifier, the Luck damage helps you deal with the masses of enemies.
• Arms Dealer - +33% Dmg Modifier, Good economy, and the Luck based damage is a safety net against bad weapons.
• 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:

• Plasma Sledgehammer - For the Melee and Elemental Build.
• Nuclear Launcher - For the Ranged Build.
• Screwdriver Spawning Landmines - For Engineering.
• Wrench Spawning Explosive Turret - For Engineering.

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 and Explosive Shells.
• Explosive Damage, unlike regular Damage works with Structures such as Landmines and Explosive Turret.
• You can increase the Size of explosions with Plastic Explosive
• You can cause Explosions with Items such as Rip and Tear and Spicy Sauce. Rip and Tear is especially powerful if you can stack 5 of it, as it then gives a 100% chance for enemies to explodes for 250% Melee Damage.

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 - Tagged with explosive, explodes on hit.
• Glutton - Tagged with Explosives, Explodes when picking up Consumables and gains Explosive Damage from Consumables.
• 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. These are choices you must decide on either beforehand or during your run as you see how it pans out.

Hunting Trophy / Non Crit

With Hunting Trophy being super important for getting materials later in the game, 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.

• Luck Damage ( Baby Elephant, Cyberball)
• All enemies that Burn to death.
• Turrets and Structures in general.
• Explosions from Landmines, Rip and Tear, Spicy Sauce

Ricochet / Piercing

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

Projectiles have a default damage falloff of 50% when bouncing, unless the weapon have bouncing by default such as the Slingshot or the projectiles spawned by Lightning Shiv. 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 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 is a powerful item that can block lethal damage late in High Endless Mode. Bloody Hand is also super powerful for Endless Mode. But items like Bloody Hand and Blood Donation deals damage to you every second and prevents you from using Tardigrade effectively. Consider what fits your Build.

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 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 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 earlier in each category for the different builds also have great potential when used right.

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 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 and upgrade it to Power Fist when given the Option.

You can also start with a weapon that is also strong in the endgame like 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 is essensial for upgrading your weapons, so you can get back to having 6 Tier IV weapons.

The Timing of the Pivot typically starts at wave 20-25, and sometimes at wave 30-35 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.

Scaling Weapons

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

• Ghost Flint - Can give you large amounts of Attack Speed
• Ghost Axe - Can give you large amounts of Damage
• Ghost Scepter - Can give you large amounts of Max HP
• Pruner - Gives Explosive Damage with Glutton and Harvesting with Farmer.
• Thief Dagger - Earns you a lot of extra money, and puts you into Crit build early, so you can benefit from finding Hunting Trophies.

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

• Shredder - As you look for Nuclear Launcher
• Crossbow - As you look for Sniper Gun
• Fist - As you look for Power Fist

Pivot Targets

• Knife - 4x Crit modifier, very easy transition from Thief Dagger into Knife. Great DPS potential.
• Potato Thrower - Strongest Weapon in the game.
• Sniper Gun - 4x Crit modifier, Insane damage potential, Spawned Projectiles are powerful with Bandana, Ricochet, Giant Belt. Just stack tons of Range.
• 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 - Comes with great Range and Piercing. It has amazing Ranged Damage Scaling. You Just have to provide ample attack speed.
• 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 - 150% Melee and Elemental Scaling. Has better attack speed and crit than Plasmahammer.
• Power Fist - A faster version of the Plasma Sledgehammer. Also a good option.

Starter Weapons that Work in Endgame

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

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 - Your Primary way of surviving. Depend on Extra Stomach, Grind's Magical Leaf, and Padding to get your Max HP high.
• Armor - Your way of Scaling your survivability. There is no limit or diminishing returns on armor, so high stacking it along with your Max HP. Anvil is your best friend for armor.
• Dodge - Max it out at 60%. Once you have Retromation's Hoodie you can stack more dodge to get attack speed.
• Speed - 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.

Offensive Stats

• Damage - Damage is perhaps the most important stat, or it is the stat that is important for most builds. Weapons, Alien Eyes, Cyberball, or Scared Sausage all scale with Damage. The exception is Engineering. You can gain a lot of damage through Power Generator, Bloody Hand, and Vigilante Ring. You want as much as you can get in most cases.
• Attack Speed - Attack Speed is very important for most builds. With Improved Tools it also applies to Engineering builds. 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.
• Crit Chance - You should max out your crit chance when you can, so you can gain extra materials with Hunting Trophy.
• Range - 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

Damage Scaling Stats

• Melee Damage
• Ranged Damage
• Elemental Damage
• Engineering

You use these to scale your damage output into the late game.

Not much more to say.

Healing

• HP Regeneration - Due to Grind's Magical Leaf, you can end up gaining a lot of HP Regeneration, and when combined with Regeneration Potion, it can provide a good amount of reliable healing.
• Life 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.

Economy

• Luck - 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 - 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.

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, Grind's Magical Leaf, and 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 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.
• Consumables - You can stack a lot of consumable healing with Lemonade and Weird Food over the duration of a game. But the droprate of consumables plummet. So you must rely on Garden's + 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!

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:

• Tractor - And Harvesting in general
• Lucky Charm - And Luck in general
• Scar - And XP Gain in general

And all the Eco items:

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

On higher waves of Endless Modes, the shop prices become so high that it is no longer worth it to use the Shop. But you'll still be getting crates from Elite kills. At this point you can choose which Items you lock in the shop. Locked Items in the Shop won't show up in crates. So if you're looking for mainly Tier 3 items, then lock four Tier 3 items to increase your chances.

If you want to be extra Optimal, you can lock the cheapest Items you see, so the ones that show up in crates give slightly more money when recycled.

Resetting Progress

The most 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.

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 has stopped working, and Shop Prices/Rerolling have yet to be absolutely ruined by the Endless Factor. So it is time to get shopping done.

You'll note that Enemies start dropping much less Materials already from Wave 21 and decreases further, reaching the minimum drop rate of 25% at Wave 30.

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 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 barely possible 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 doesn't deal much damage anymore.

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

Unless you're doing a HP Scaling build. Then this is easy and no problem.

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.

The plan is to use Potato Thrower as your Weapons along with Alien Eyes which shoots 6 eyes per item you have every 3 seconds. Both of these scale with your Max HP.

Then you stack as many Padding as possible to increase your Max HP.

And when the Shop becomes too expensive to use, you simply just begin to save up as many materials as possible.

In order to get tons of materials, you buy as many Hunting Trophy

Setup

To prepare for this run, you'll need to first reset the game. Unlock the Following items.

• Anvil - Core Item. Upgrades your Potato Throwers. Gives you tons of armor.
• Potato Thrower - Your Weapon of Choice.
• Hunting Trophy - Your Material gain engine.
• Padding - Turns your Materials into HP.
• Improved Tools - If playing Farmer.
• Giant Belt - Free Extra damage. Not super important in High Endless Mode.
• Tentacle - Optional - Provides powerful healing for the Thief Dagger Build.
• Snail - Optional - Provides a Slow that actually still makes a small difference even in High Endless Mode.
• Spicy Sauce - Optional - 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.

Characters

The Two most Common characters for High Endless is Loud and Farmer. Other Economic characters can also make it to wave 100+ with some luck, but aren't as powerful.

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
2. Start with 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.
5. Pivot to Potato Thrower somewhere around wave 25-40. Hope you have Anvil.
6. Shop for at long as you can, then lock the shop. Continue to gain items from Crates and keep the important items.
7. 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
2. Start with 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.
5. Pick up all the Garden you see and 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 or Landmines
6. Farmer gains a lot of Experience over the duration of the game, so pick up some extra Experience items.
7. Pivot to Potato Thrower somewhere around wave 25-40. Hope you have Anvil.
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 and Weird Food.

Bloody Hand

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

But picking up Bloody Hand Ruins your 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.

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.

Target Items

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

• Grind's Magical Leaf - Gives 3 HP per Wave. Gives 2% Dmg with 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 - Gives 3% Damage Wave. Super important to keep up in damage.
• Padding - Gives you more HP. Keeps you Scaling
• Dangerous Bunny - Very Important early on to abuse the shop. Becomes useless
• Hunting Trophy - Fuels your Paddings with Materials
• Alien Eyes - Another HP based Damage Source.
• Silver Bullet - Adds Multiplicative Damage against Elites and Bosses. Important to keep up in damage against Elites.
• Tardigrade - Protects you from taking damage from the first X hits.
• Garden - If you're Playing Farmer

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, we must fully optimise the Item Pool.

One Thing we notice is that most of our most important target items are Tier 3. So once the Shop becomes too expensive to use, we lock four differnt Tier III items in the shop that we don't want, to clear out the item pool.

You'll also 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.

You should never buy Candle and 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.

Which Uniques to Get

If you're going for a Bloody Hand Build, you should buy Esty's Couch and Torture to clear the pool out, so you get more Grind's Magical Leaf.

If you are going for a Tardigrade Build, you can pick up Sad Tomato and Handcuffs since your HP doesn't matter anymore. Note that Sad Tomato prevents you from gaining harvesting for picking up Consumables, if you're playing Farmer, so Avoid it. Handcuffs doesn't affect your damage scaling with Potato Thrower and Alien Eyes.

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

Now with Tardigrades, Grind's Magical Leaf doesn't matter that much either, so clearing up your Tier 4 Pool doesn't matter that much. But the Two Tier 3 items are important to remove.

If you are going for the Bloody Hand Build, you should stay away from Sad Tomato.

Handcuffs are interesting. 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.

Then you have to choose to get Bandana or Ricochet - Consider if you're going bouncing, and pick up enough of these. Don't get too many Ricochets, as they will lagg the game damn. The first 3-4 is enough.

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 15-30 see that your run isn't that great, consider restarting and try to a better one.

Once you get past the pivot to Potato Throwers, the game becomes just a waiting game and Unboxing game. A test of Patience.

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
Bloody Hand	+10 % 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 into 2% Damage per wave per leaf. But note that the self damage prevents you from using Tardigrade effectively.
Lucky Coin	+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 or Tentacle. So Lucky Coin is an easy +200 Luck. And can be used to convert excess crit chance into more luck.
Power Generator	+1 % Damage for every permanent 1 % Speed you have -5 % Damage	Power Generator is a cheap way to gain 100-200% Damage.
Retromation's Hoodie	+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.
Strange Book	+1 Engineering for every permanent 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 can do some fun builds with this item if you can pull off the early game.
Improved Tools	+10 % Attack Speed Increases the attack speed of your structures by 0% (50%)	Improved Tools is a Run-defining item for builds that rely on Engineering and is busted with Garden if you're playing Farmer or Glutton

Stats Per Wave

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

Item	Effect	Notes
Anvil	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.
Extra Stomach	+1 Max HP when picking up a consumable while at maximum health (max +8 per wave)	Extra Stomach gives can +10 Max HP each wave. Super important for surviving if you're not abusing Padding.
Grind's Magical Leaf	+3 Max HP at the end of a wave +1 HP Regeneration at the end of a wave +1 % Life Steal at the end of a wave	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.
Vigilante Ring	+3 % Damage at the end of a wave	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
Adrenaline	+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.
Bag	+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.
Coupon	-5 % Items Price	Coupons are just great. Always buy.
Giant Belt	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
Gentle Alien	+2 Max HP +5 % Damage +5% Enemies	Gentle Alien grants more enemies, which means more Materials. Generally, it tends to be Bosses and Elites that ends up being a problem.
Metal Detector	+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.
Mouse	+5 % Life Steal +10% Enemies -5 Harvesting	Mouse increases the amount of enemies, which means more materials.
Regeneration Potion	HP Regeneration is doubled when 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 builds with endless Max HP.
Recycling Machine	Gain 35% more materials from recycling items	Essential item for all runs. Gives tons of Materials over the duration of a run.
Sifd's Relic	+3 Armor +100% chance to instantly attract a material when it’s dropped	Just a quality of Life pickup. You can also pick up Baby Gecko's for the same result.
Snail	-8 % Enemy Speed -3 % Speed	Snail slows down enemies. An auto pickup during the midgame.
Tentacle	+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.
Ugly Tooth	Hitting an enemy removes 5% of their speed. Max 20% -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
Alien Eyes	Shoots 6 alien eyes around you every 3 seconds dealing 6 (+50%) damage each	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 build.
Dangerous Bunny	+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.
Garden	+40 Harvesting You take 1 damage per second (does not give invulnerability time)	Garden helps you stack Extra Stomach and can even be a powerful source of healing if you have Improved Tools. It is a key item with Farmer or Glutton.
Hunting Trophy	33% chance to gain 1 material when killing an enemy with a critical hit	Hunting Trophy quickly the main way of earning money, as you have 100% crit chance, and enemies drop less materials due to the Endless Factor.
Padding	+3 Max HP +1 Max HP for every 80 Materials you have	At a certain point, items become so expensive that it is better just to save it up and become super tanky with multiple Paddings.
Plastic Explosive	+25 % Explosion Size	Unless you're Artificer, Plasic Explosives are the only way to increase your Explosion size. So stack them if you rely on explosions.
Silver Bullet	+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.
Tardigrade	Nullifies the damage of one hit taken every wave	If you're not using 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
Alien Baby	+15 Max HP +10 % Enemy health	Alien Baby makes enemies permanently faster. The +15 Max HP just isn't worth it.
Blood Donation	+40 Harvesting You take 1 damage per second (does not give invulnerability time)	Blood Donation and 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
Weird Ghost	+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.
Sad Tomato	+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, you can take Sad Tomato to remove it from the item pool. But don't take it if you're playing Glutton or 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
Candle	+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
Ricochet	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 or Shuriken. And it will reduce the damage of all the following piercing attacks. With Piercing you can use Pumpkin to not lose damage on hit. So you should really consider if you want to go for bouncing. However if you're not going for High Endless Levels, it might be worth it to go for Ricochets.
Torture	+15 Max HP Restore 5 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.
Triangle of Power	+20 % Damage +1 Armor -2 % Damage when you take damage until the end of the wave	You want to avoid this item if you have Bloody Hand or Blood Donation.
Cyberball	25% chance to deal 1 (25%) damage to a random enemy when an enemy dies	Secondary damage items like Cyberball, Baby Elephant, Baby with a Beard, or 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
Handcuffs	+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 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.
Esty's Couch	+5 Max HP +2 HP Regeneration for every permanent -1 % Speed you have -20 % 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.
Landmines	A landmine spawns every 12 seconds dealing 10 (+100%) damage in an area	There is a limit of 50 Structures on the map at once. So for really long Endless Runs you might need to consider which structure you pick up. But in many cases you won't hit this limit.