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Now with Tardigrades, {{MiniIconbox|name=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.
Now with Tardigrades, {{MiniIconbox|name=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 {{MiniIconbox|name=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.
If you are going for the {{MiniIconbox|name=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.


== The Item List ==
== The Item List ==

Revision as of 17:52, 29 March 2023

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.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.

Powerful Characters

  • Loud.png Loud - Additional Enemies means Loud is able to Snowball their economy early and enter the Endless Waves with tons of items.
  • Farmer.png 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.png Garden with Improved Tools.png Improved Tools and high Attack Speed
  • Lucky.png 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.png Baby Elephant and Lucky's Innate ability will do less damage. But Cyberball.png Cyberball stays relevant.

Terrible Characters

  • Arms Dealer.png 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.png Wildling - No important upsides, and can't upgrade weapons past Tier 2.
  • Mutant.png 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.png 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.png Weird Food.

Consumables - 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. 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.png 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.

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

Pivot Targets

  • 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.
  • Knife.png Knife - 4x Crit modifier, very easy transition from Thief Dagger into Knife. Great DPS potential.
  • Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower -
  • 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.

Other Good Weapons

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.png Tardigrade allows you to block out the first X hits you take. This can both be useful on Non Padding.png 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.png 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:


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.png Potato Thrower as your Weapons along with Alien Eyes.png 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.png 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.png Hunting Trophy


Setup

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

  • Anvil.png Anvil - Core Item. Upgrades your Potato Throwers. Gives you tons of armor.
  • Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower - Your Weapon of Choice.
  • Hunting Trophy.png Hunting Trophy - Your Material gain engine.
  • Padding.png Padding - Turns your Materials into HP.
  • Improved Tools.png Improved Tools - If playing Farmer.
  • Giant Belt.png Giant Belt - 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 Two most Common characters for High Endless is Loud.png Loud and Farmer.png Farmer

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 somewhere around wave 25-40. Hope you have Anvil.png 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.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.
  6. Pivot to Potato Thrower.png Potato Thrower somewhere around wave 25-40. Hope you have Anvil.png Anvil.
  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.


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.
  • Garden.png 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. 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.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.

Which Uniques to Get

If you're going for a Bloody Hand.png Bloody Hand Build, 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.

If you are going for a Tardigrade.png Tardigrade Build, you can pick up Sad Tomato.png Sad Tomato and Handcuffs.png Handcuffs since your HP doesn't matter anymore.

Capping your HP doesn't prevent Alien Eyes.png Alien Eyes and Potato Thrower.png 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.png 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.png 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.

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
+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 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 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.
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.
+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.
Gain +35% more materials from recycling items 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.
+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.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.
+33% chance to get 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 100 Materials you have.
-5% Speed
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.png 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 +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.
+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.

+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 Tardigrade.png Tardigrade build, your Max HP might not matter, and you can clear up your Item pool.
+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 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.