Evo lightning ring, holy water, bible, axe, and other stuff are my jam. maybe wand and cross for close range and knockback for the bosses. I’ve evoed the first ten or so weapons, curious to see if others become as good. The spindle thing is super hard to use but also super powerful when you figure it out.
I like (evo) axe and bible a whole lot, especially in combination. Getting double pigeons (vandalier) takes a little time, but boy does it wreck house.
I usually also get the runetracer evo. It’s good for survivability, and it does a decent amount of damage across the map even as you’re building it.
I had to stop playing after an hour last night cause my eyes went all blurry lol. I was running around vaguely aware of where blobs of enemies were.
sometimes my eyes lose focus like I’m looking at a 3d stereogram. Also the rhythmic audio and visuals can be hypnotic and make me sleepy
The titles just keep going… 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Army of Ruin, Brotato, Forced Showdown, Nordic Ashes, Rogue: Genesia, Scarlet Tower, Soulstone Survivors, HoloCure, Nomad Survival, Spellbook Demonslayers,Vampire Survivors. Also added Ember Knights which is a coop twinstick but not really the same genre otherwise. Feels a bit like a top down castlecrashers without the humor.
Nordic ashes seems promising although I’m not sure I like the way it plays right now. But they do have an interesting talent tree sort of evolution which feels more RPG-ish. Though it’s so small that it’s not clear to me that you would evolve differently from one run to the next. No I’m probably going to keep an eye on it but I don’t think I wIll buy it now.
As for the popularity of these games, I believe seven or so of the 10 games I was shown yesterday in my upper vampire survivor-like games.
The bible is definitely my favorite weapon as there isn’t a good replacement for it like with some of the others I like. For example, garlic’s nice, but if it doesn’t pop I can get daggers or the whip for melee. I like the holy water for clearing paths when you start getting overwhelmed with enemies, but the lightning ring (and even the axe) can do something similar. However, there’s not a great substitute for near-range AOE with pushback (the cross boomerang is probably closest, but not quite).
But that’s just my favorite. I think every weapon is viable, at least early on in your run when you’re still getting your build together. Especially with the evos.
The lightning ring is great because it evolves with the duplicator, which gives you extra projectiles for lots of weapons. Good synergy there.
Yeah, it’s almost impossible to reject the duplicator, same with the crown and the tome, though 3 obligatory spots get expensive. After my first several hours I started looking at what was on the map before choosing more than a few things so I could max out options. When I did the 6 evo run I think I had 4 different “extra” items by the end and hit level 150 with no modifiers. Only problem with the bible is without other close knockback, you kinda need the cool down reduction of the time to keep it up, otherwise the proc gap will let stuff through. That’s why I think holy water is the most powerful as I know it so far, because you can let it proc and stand in it to be safe, and it procs often enough you can zigzag to new areas without risking a breakthrough. It still can’t handle endgame HP scaling swarms by itself though. The fire blast is good for that, stand in water, let fire proc, then follow it to the next water.
I got this in April and have enjoy diving back into it regularly. One thing I haven’t figured out though: what determines when level-ups stop giving me upgrades for weapons and passives and switch over to money/heal rewards? Initially, I thought it’s when all my gear is fully maxed out, but that doesn’t always appear to be the case. It’s not time-based either.
I basically never take the Duplicator anymore unless I’m using the Lightning Ring - there’s a cap on total projectiles, and it’s trivial to hit it via limit breaks and golden eggs.
Here’s my review of all the passives, as someone with 150+ hours in the game since January and whose primary hobby at this point is doing single-weapon runs, but who hasn’t played the DLC yet. Note that all of these assume you’re just filling in your six passive slots, not just picking up additional passives on the map or using them to evolve specific weapons.
- Empty Tome: Undeniably the best passive in the game, until you start going wild with eggs and arcana and can max out cooldown reduction without the book, which is a significant time investment well after the point where this list would be meaningful. Almost every weapon in the game benefits from cooldown reduction, and there are basically zero run-finishing builds that don’t want it.
- Spinach: More damage is good, obviously, and you can never have too much of it. I’ll take this every run forever.
- Armor: Way better than it looks initially, but unless I’m using one of the weapons or arcana that inherently benefits from armor (including the retaliation damage buff), I usually skip this. I could see it being worthwhile again once you have thousands of eggs on a character and some other passives stop functioning, but again, that’s so far into the postgame that you shouldn’t be thinking about it.
- Duplicator: Extremely good, up until it stops functioning due to the projectile cap. I used to think this was the best passive, but as I already said, I usually skip it now…but again, that’s well past when anyone should be caring about this list, and you’ll almost always want this until then.
- Wings: Very strong! I usually skip these because I don’t have a slot left for them in a given build, though. Like the Armor, I could definitely see myself taking these normally on a character with Too Many Eggs. They’re obviously also a must-have on characters with low innate move speed.
- Attractorb: Another item that can eventually get phased out by having thousands of eggs on a character, but until then, I often use this as one of my regular six passives. Increased item pickup range is incredible, and the synergy with certain weapons and arcana makes it a no-brainer in many builds.
- Crown: Probably the third-best passive in the game behind the Empty Tome and Spinach, but like the Spinach, this never stops being good. I take this almost every run now.
- Skull O’Maniac: When this was introduced, I would take it basically every run. It’s important to remember that curse is effectively an XP buff, so unless your character/build is really weak, +50% curse is basically a second Crown. The reason I usually skip the Skull now is because I can buff curse to crazy high numbers through other means, so I can use that passive slot for other purposes.
- Bracer: Incredible if you’re using weapons that care about it. Unfortunately, projectile speed is another stat that has an effective cap that can easily be reached with eggs and limit breaks, so the Bracer eventually falls off as well, but I constantly had to tell friends early in the EA period that, no, the Bracer is actually fantastic.
- Candelabrador: Extremely good, especially with field-based weapons like the Santa Water/La Borra. I mostly skip it these days because I do a lot of runs with weapons that aren’t meaningfully better with increased area, but there are more than enough weapons that are better with it that you should still often be looking for this.
- Spellbinder: Potentially very good, but I’ve been skipping this one for months. Duration just doesn’t do enough in my experience unless you’re using La Borra or Unholy Vespers, and while the former is one of the best weapons in the game by a gigantic margin, the latter is severely underpowered unless you go out of your way to do an extremely specific build to make it busted, so I skip both the passive and the weapon that requires it.
- Clover: Luck is one of the most powerful stats in many builds, and this makes it into my passive pool most of the time. Top-tier.
- Stone Mask: You can always use more gold, but I generally skip this as one of my six core passives unless I’m doing a gold-farming run or using the weapon it evolves.
- Hollow Heart: Extra HP is good, but this is another one I skip unless I need it for the Whip.
- Pummarola: Probably the worst passive in the game, so it’s fitting that it evolves one of the weakest weapons in the game. It’s really sad that unlike most other stats, there are multiple other sources of automatic HP regen that work a lot better than the passive item designed for that stat.
- Tiragisú: Revives are nice, but I skip this unless I need extra revives to be able to complete a run or I need it to evolve the guns.
- Torrona’s Box: This is the biggest reason I stopped taking Skull O’Maniac. Twice as much curse and it gives me stat boosts on the way there? Sign me up! Notably, if you can’t handle +100% curse but want the rest of what the Box has to offer, you can banish it before taking the last level so you can enjoy the stat boosts without taking the curse.
- “Secret” passives: I take these every run, unless my build/character can’t deal with the Atlanteans. (Note that this has been happening more often now that inverse mode exists.) They only exist as map items, so they don’t ever have to count toward the six passive slots; the buffs from the Silver Ring and Metaglio Left are decent; and if you can handle the Atlanteans, you probably can handle +80% curse from taking the Gold Ring and Metaglio Right.
You have to have all your weapon and passive slots filled and all of the items maxed out for it to switch to money/food. Note that simply having all of your equipped items maxed out isn’t enough if you have open slots left.
Fantastic breakdown, but please excuse me if I kinda glossed over it, as you are way beyond me and for a game like this build strategy is essentially a spoiler. I’ll come back after I’ve hit a wall.
If you’ve maxed out all your weapons and passives you’re only offered money or floor chickens. I’ve never seen it work any other way.
However, if you have any empty weapon/passive slots and you level up, you can be offered new choices and if you have any weapons or passives that aren’t maxed out you can be offered upgrades. Seems to be random as to whether you get upgrades or new offers (but it very well may not be).
Killing a boss and opening the brown chest will give you upgrades to existing weapons/passives (never new choices). So if your existing weapons/passives are maxed out you’ll get money or chickens even if you have free weapon or passive slots.
If your weapon is maxed out and you have the passive that evolves the weapon, you will often be offered the weapon evolution from the brown chest. You can’t evolve the weapon by a normal level up though.
Yep, the final evolution had to come from a chest, best I can tell. But the big difference so far is to look at the map at level 1-10 and see what items are there, then you can build excluding them and once full you can pick them up and have 14-16 items in your build. Even if you’ve chosen Always Gold or Chicken, once you pick up a ground item the next levels of chests will upgrade that item until max and also Evo other items if the synergy is there.
Yeah, I didn’t talk about items because I thought he was a rookie! :D
I never noticed this before, so this is handy information that I wish I knew sooner. At a certain point, there’s so much going on it’s hard to notice projectiles not increasing on level ups.
I’m not sure how relevant it is, anyway. The early game when the difference between three bibles revolving and four is huge, the duplicator is a big help. By the end when everything is leveled/evolved, you’re pretty much a cuisinart anyway.
Holy shit, what a fun little game. Easily the best $5 spent on gaming.
I was a little unsettled by how compelling it turned out to be. I bought all sorts of very appealing games to try out on my new Steam Deck, and this has sucked up almost all of my time on it.
I unlocked the second whip guy and made the obvious guess it would Evo with the original Evo whip. Hoo boy, that was a mite powerful. I don’t want to know, but I’m assuming I now need to start doing the bonus and challenge stages to move to the endgame. Also I’m discovering which items collapse on Evo, giving yet more slots in endgame. I’m not a min maxer but I can see how the build rabbit hole is deep.
