I’m no pro either, but I beat it.
The difficulty ramp up is significant, but steady. Difficulty:
So over time it gains bullet hell aspects, but it never goes full bullet hell or Robotron.
Ok, so I discovered a few things since my last post, I’ll try to summarize them if I can recall them all.
I wish this game was just a tad bit easier.
I tried playing as the second character over the last couple of days. Without the two bees that the first character starts off with, it’s not as easy to get as many crops, and therefore currency to buy weapons or seeds. It’s only a small thing, but I’ve had much easier time with the first character. On the other hand, the second character starts with a turret. You’d think that means you can leave the field alone and go get more stuff done. But without the bees and better farming bonus, leaving the farm alone means you start off with less crops. On the gripping hand, there’s a chance that your weapon survives with the 2nd character. That is pretty huge when it does occasionally happen. But it’s only happened to me once.
I didn’t think Rye was as good at first, either, but I have hit max fullness way more often with him than Lavender. The main problem I have is the metaprogression requires delving deeply into the wilderness, but it feels like there just isn’t time to do it. I don’t like that aspect. Everything else is cool, I just don’t like the randomness of the ant scientists.
I’ve been playing this the last couple of nights and am up to year 3. I wasn’t sure about Rye either the first couple times playing him, but he’s been growing on me. He seems to have a harder start to get money in the first couple of days, but once you get some guns to stick around, it can wind up saving tons of money.
I’m stuck on Year 3. I always make it through intense firefights but then die to some stupid shit. This last time I took a lot of damage from the fucking moon on the “relaxing night” because I wanted to chase down a golden pupa, which ended up making me lose the run later.
There is an achievement to kill the moon. I have tried but never done it. Like kited it shooting well into the first wave. I wonder if I am missing something. At least I assume the chomper moon is what you need to kill.
Rye is amazing. Top tier is, uh, a future unluck who gets extra time IIRC (but she loses some on damage). I don’t play her because I’m not that good, although I’ve come close on some year 3 runs to not taking any damage. But Rye is my main.
I’m a little uncertain on what meta progression feels like at this point. When I started back up I had one ant hill that was entirely unimproved, and another near the end (there are five in total). The costs were obscene, but now the game does the frenzy thing at the end of a year and on a “bad” one you can pick up 40-50 bonus cornucopia easy (a good one is 80-100+).
The Witch on her broomstick is one of the hardest bosses for me. She just spawns so many enemies to assist her. If I concentrate on just killing her, she goes down relatively quickly, but I get too damaged after the encounter to make it much further, since I get hit a lot by other enemies. But if I concentrate on just hitting the other enemies and not the Witch, the battle just drags on forever.
I’ve still been doing a run or two per night, and loving it. Up to year VI now, and have unlocked all the characters.
Am I missing something, or is Robusta basically just extra hard mode? The game gets hectic enough as it is, so speeding everything up and having that much less time to react quickly went beyond what I could handle.
I could see Dandelion being very powerful, with some giant advantages for farming, but every time I tried I wound up taking stray hits from stuff coming from off screen that I couldn’t react to in time because of the floaty movement, and wound up succumbing to attrition around day 5 or 6.
Actually, that seems to be my pattern in general. Pretty sure my deaths during summer are more than the rest of the seasons put together. By that point either I’ve gotten a good set of upgrades and am starting to snowball, or I haven’t, and am just treading water until I can’t anymore.
And, um, speaking of snowballing…
My first run with Thyme was also my first crack at year V, and I’ve never seen so many things go right in a run. I started with the 3x pigs upgrade in the time capsule, and on day 1 found both the free-upgrade-every-day and the free-tree-every-day upgrades. With an early Duck Wings and plenty of time to explore as long as I was careful to avoid damage, I wound up covering the entire map and getting so many upgrades that the menu screen couldn’t even display them all (there are 30 slots visible, but I couldn’t find a way to scroll them so I don’t even know how many I had by the end). I think I had gotten 3 total achievements across ~15 previous runs, and had tripled that by the time that run ended.
Damn, I can’t even get past year 3, just can’t get a run going with extremely meagre cashew yields the first couple nights and just nothing happening.
I can’t even imagine how you’re getting past the boss in the fifth season. (Or even reaching the fifth season even once with the Rye character).
Corpse-a-Copia? There’s a “trick” to it. I looked it up after the first time I hardly did any damage. Felt kinda silly but then the game gave me zero guidance (as usual!) so whatever.
I imagine if you are REALLY GOOD at the game there might be something to him. IDK. It seems like a troll to me.
This is not a game that forgives imprecise movement, at higher difficulties. TBH I think this is a troll character too.
I don’t know the name of the boss. But it seemed to me that whenever I harvested crops, they did damage to him. So I kept harvesting crops constantly, as fast as I could. They didn’t make much of a dent though. Is there another trick other than harvesting crops?
(Don’t tell me what it is, if so, just tell me there’s another trick).
That’s it. I like to save up a couple pigeon scrolls for the fight, like the one that plows your whole field at once and the one that plants a seed in every plot. Then if you get the megaton tractor you can take him out in like five seconds, in Year 1 at least.
I liked him for speedrunning year 1 again to see if there were any ants I could grab to help things along.
Actually, like I said, the vast majority of my deaths come in Summer. I think I’ve only died once to the fifth season boss because if I make it there at all, I’m probably pretty decked out.
It definitely helps to hold on to seeds and especially scrolls for the final boss. If you can fill your fields at the start of the fight it helps a lot.
Oh, and if the game gives you a chance for a Sriracha Soaker for the final boss, take it and upgrade it all the way. Once of the possible upgrades lets it water crops, which is insanely useful when the boss makes everything on fire.
With Rye, it comes down to taking full advantage the money he saves on gun upgrades. Upgrade as much as you can afford, and use the extra firepower to clear camps faster and get more stuff.
Yeah, it took me a bit to notice too because it was so hectic, but the vegetables do pop up out of the ground and fly at him when harvested, so that was enough to clue me in.
Not really another trick, but now that you know how it works you can plan ahead and be ready to take advantage of it. The first time I fought him I went in blind and it took a long time to whittle him down because I didn’t have many seeds saved and had to scrounge them during the fight.
Good time to use that watering scroll, too.
A lot of people get “stuck” for the first time at year 3 or 4. You need to adjust your strategy maybe.
Day 1: Explore. Plant and fertilize a 2x2 crop (and maybe a couple of singletons if need be) so you can afford a weapon in town. Go west, first. Best normal crop is the prickly, because it requires the least watering.
Buy weapon upgrade in town unless you got choice if butcher knife/squirrel, then maybe don’t.
Day 2: finish exploring west then try to get a few camps cleared east. Try to plant enough crops for a weapon + an upgrade. this will require over 150 cashews. If you can do more, great. You need 650 to max the seasonal rewards.
Day 3: finish exploring east, kill boss.
As you get better at the game, you’ll find that pattern starts to come more easily. Oh, sure, you’ll have bad runs here and there (sometimes I can’t help but run straight into bullets). The goal should be E/W cleared by the end of Spring, and maxing the seasonal rewards.
To facilitate this, consider strategic sunflower usage. If you haven’t figured it out: They r equire 50 fertilizer once planted, and planting them 2x2 is much better (they auto merge, and the biggie still takes 50). But they reward 250 cashews (the bigone does 1500, iirc).
Otherwise, try to pattern thusly:
Day 1 morning, if you have the 4 potato seeds to start, till a 2x2 square and plant them. Otherwise run off west and explore. Try to give yourself some time to get back and plant. Prioritize roses (2x2, don’t plant if you don’t have 4), whatever you can do 2x2, then anything else. It generally requires like 12-16 fertilizer to do most tier 1 crops iirc. Don’t overplant. Plant what you need to get weapon upgrades. Ignore the sunflower merchant. When you get more comfortable with the game, he can be a big help.
Successively mornings, do one or two 2x2 plantings (if possible) then go explore. Don’t try to full plant.
That is very good advice.
