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Endless Mode Guide
This is a guide I've written to help players optimise their endless runs and go as far as possible.
This Guide assumes you have read the page for Endless Mode
In the First part we will go over the concepts and how to play Endless Mode. General Tips and Tricks.
In the Second part, we will go over how to reach High Endless Mode, Wave 100 and above.
In the Third part, we have a List of Items to key an eye on.
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.
Powerful Characters
Loud - Additional Enemies means Loud is able to Snowball their economy early and enter the Endless Waves with tons of items.
Farmer - Farmer can snowball their economy insanely high and have tons of items when entering the Endless Waves. In addtion, Farmer can keep up thousands of Harvesting by combining many 
Garden with 
Improved Tools and high Attack Speed
Lucky - Extra Luck Scaling and Luck Damage has potential. The downsides can be negated with a few items. Sadly the Endless Factor causes the amount of materials dropped to decline, so 
Baby Elephant and Lucky's Innate ability will do less damage. But 
Cyberball stays relevant.
Terrible Characters
Arms Dealer - Despite the increased damage modifications, and good early harvesting, Arms Dealer is awful. Having to buy your weapons each round simply can't compete with having 6 Tier 4 weapons of your choice. The price of weapons also become quite expensive later in the game.- Wildling - No important upsides, and can't upgrade weapons past Tier 2.
Mutant - The Exponential nature of Experience means that Mutant doesn't gain that many extra levels. And +200% Exp Gain can easily be gotten with items. The +50% Shop Prices on the other hand is a detrimental downside.
Stats
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.
However there are some ways of Healing that can be scaled somewhat into the late game.
The easiest way of healing is having 5 
Tentacle, 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.
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 
Weird Food.
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. This is powerful because you can have the fruits stack up until you need the healing.
Weapons
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.
Starting 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
- 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.
Knife - 4x Crit modifier, very easy transition from Thief Dagger into Knife. Great DPS potential.
Potato Thrower -
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.
Other Good Weapons
Spear- Fist
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 -
Slingshot - The Bouncing Option for Ranged Damage.
Shuriken - The Bouncing Option for Melee Damage.
Lightning Shiv - The Bouncing Option for Elemental Damage.
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.
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.
Builds
HP Scaling Builds
Tardigrade Builds
Tardigrade allows you to block out the first X hits you take. This can both be useful on Non 
Padding builds where you don't have a lot of HP, and enemies start to be able to kill you in a few hits around wave 35-50. On HP/Padding builds, it becomes super useful later when enemies are able to deal over 1 million damage per hit even if you have 600 armor.
The problem is that you need to give up on 
Bloody Hand in order to make good use of Tardigrades. This means losing out on tons of Damage. Consider what fits your Build.
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!
Look for the Following Items:
Coupon
Recycling Machine
Bag
Tree
Dangerous Bunny
Hunting Trophy
Tractor - And Harvesting in general
Crown
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+
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.
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.- Garden - If you're Playing Farmer
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. See Uniques and Limited Items.
If you're Going for the Garden build with no Garden, you no longer need to care about your HP at all. So you can now buy the following items to clear the Item Pool:
Esty's Couch - The Minus HP Regen doesn't matter.
Torture - The Healing doesn't matter.
Sad Tomato - Starting at 50% HP doesn't matter.
Handcuffs - Now Handcuffs are Interesting. 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, 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.
The Item List
Here are some tables of items that you should key an eye out for.
Stat Scaling Items
Stat Scaling items can give insane amounts of stats for a single item.
| Item | Effect | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| +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 | |
| +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. | |
| +1 % Damage for every permanent 1 % Speed you have -5 % Damage |
Power Generator is a cheap way to gain 50-200% 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 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.
| |
| +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 |
|---|---|---|
| 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 +8 per wave) | Extra Stomach gives can +10 Max HP each wave. Super important for surviving if you're not abusing Padding.
| |
| +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.
| |
| +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 |
|---|---|---|
| +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 % Items Price | Coupons are just great. Always buy. | |
| 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 | |
| +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. | |
| +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 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.
| |
| Gain 35% more materials from recycling items | Essential item for all runs. Gives tons of Materials over the duration of a run. | |
| Gain 35% more materials from recycling items | Just a quality of Life pickup. You can also pick up  Baby Gecko's for the same result.
| |
| -8 % 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 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 |
|---|---|---|
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.
| |
| +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. | |
| +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.
| |
| 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. | |
| +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. | |
| +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.
| |
| +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 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 |
|---|---|---|
| +15 Max HP +10 % Enemy health |
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 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
| |
| +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, you can take Sad Tomato to remove it from the item pool.
| |
| +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
| |
| 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 | |
| +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. | |
| +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.
| |
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
| |
| +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.
| |
| +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.
| |
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. |
