Please add in comment what potato you struggle with, I'd like to do first the ones people have difficulties with.

This guide won't mention EVERY item that's good for a character. I will mention the items that don't increase the stats and mention the (mostly) obscure synergies of the character you might not know about (for example sausage-turret interaction). I will also mention the "bad" stat items that are good for that specific character.

If glass cannon is mentioned in the stats section, that means the character works well if you just don't buy any defensive stat and focus on full offense. After all, enemies can't hurt you if they are dead. However, you cannot afford to keep your speed below 10.

You want to donkey roll for the weapon(s) you want and typically only buy weapons on the first 3 waves. The reason being that 2 weapons are guaranteed to appear each reroll for the first 3 waves. The only reason you'd typically buy a non-weapon item is if you play a ranged character and if you see a harvesting item like fertilizer (and sometimes peaceful bee).

1 weapon is guaranteed to appear on each reroll up to wave 5.

By wave 6-7 you should have a full set of weapons, even if 1-2 of them aren't ones you want to keep in late game.

Another important thing is to not chase weapon upgrades if all your desired weapons are blue. While it's good to combine weapons when they present themselves, it's not worth wasting rerolls that could be used to improve your character. Blue is the most cost effective version of a weapon, and you should improve blue/purple weapons with a "might as well" mentality.

Each character has access to pool of item and weapon that he is more likely to see and thus you should build around.
Weapons that you equip will also be tagged and thus you will be more likely to see them again to upgrade them.

You can see the weapons a character is tagged with by looking at the weapon selection before starting a game. Because of that it's gonna be more reliable to upgrade to max yor weapons if you got 6 of them early.

You can have access to the tags by googling "brotato item wiki".

During wave 1 to 10, you want to only increase your damage output to make sure you get as much material as possible and snowball the game. Damage output stats to increase from most important to least are :
- Attack speed
- Flat damage
- %Damage
- Critical hit if you already 1 shot the small enemies and are trying to kill elites.

If you are ahead on damage early (there's only 10-20 enemies on the screen) then you want to buy harvesting or enemy count to get the money flowing. You'll want to get those 2 on the first 3 waves, but it's not worth rerolling or restarting over getting the perfect level-ups.

Around wave 9-10 you should start building defensive stats, which are speed (mandatory, but 10% is good enough for most character), HP, armor and dodge. Regen and lifesteal depends on the build. HP should be prioritized for level-up, since shop items giving HP are typically overpriced or with too big of a downside, while leather vest is super efficient but reduces HP.

You should also understand the concept of dimishing return. improving your damage from +150% to +160% will be a 260/250=1.04 (4%) damage increase, so if you get to that point it will (often) be better to go for other stats such as crit (if you want more damage) or more protection.

But that works the other way. For instance, lucky starts with a 60% attack speed penalty, and as such getting one coffee will grant you a 0.5/0.4=1.25 (25%) DPS increase from that upgrade alone!

The only stat that gets better as you get more of it is the dodge, while armor is a flat 7% increase per armor point.

If harvesting is mentioned, then it means it should be increased mostly early on (up to wave 10) unless it's tractor. A good rule of thumb is to pick harvesting items only if it pays itself within 6 waves if the downsides don't affect you and 4 waves if the downsides affect you.

Overall I would say buying around 30-40 harvesting and letting it compound after that is the right number 90% of the time. However the biggest breakpoint to reach is 21 points is that 35*5%=1.05 but the game rounds it up to +2 harvesting per round.

While it's sometimes right to get more harvesting, it's often a trap and better to upgrade your other stats.

I have heard some people say that Bull is inconsistent and reliant on blood bag to win. However, I am here to prove you that is wrong with the screenshots to back it up :


- Dodge (up to the max). Yes, I know that seems weird, but you actually want it to the max since it's the most efficient way to increase effective HP and allows you to go in the middle of a group of enemy before proccing explosion.
- Armor
- Regen
- Melee Damage (from levelups)
- %Damage
- Melee damage (from items)
- Speed (good to get to 10% then you can stop)
- Elemental damage
- Ranged damage
- Health (should be 70-100)
- Luck is good enough around 50 but you can go for more if you go for consumables bonus.
- Attack Speed. Doesn't work, period.
- Lifesteal. Doesn't work either.
- Range
- Crit

- Blood donation, but you probably know about it
- Any item for explosion.
- Anvil is good before round 16
- Barricade is very good when you have the dodge to back it up.
- Rip and Tear if you have been diligent with upgrading melee damage and explosion upgrades.
- Sad Tomato is still worth taking over as long as you have the speed to back it up.

Shotgun works best, since your DPS comes in burst and you won't waste DPS by moving between each of your shots. However SMG and Shredder aren't bad either.

- Harvesting. Soldier starts with a VERY strong early game and as such, going for more DPS early is a bit of a waste. Also he is tagged for mostly ranged weapons, that means fertilizer is an item without downside for him and it's really easy to snowball it harvesting. Don't hard reroll for it though, since ...
- Luck is a good alternate pick too
- Ranged damage is something to look for too. Soldier starts with +50% attack speed and damage, so flat damage is the best to go for to increase damage.
- Speed should always be around 20 to 30 (more if you have generator). The reason being, the faster you are, the less time you spend repositioning in a good spot and the more you'll shoot and benefit from your standstill items. Negative speed means death if overwhelmed even once.
- Attack Speed is still king. Even with +50% you should always be trying to increase it.
- Armor, always good for non-glass cannon.
- Dodge is very strong, however, I'd recommend to only increase it to 40% and wait for chameleon to be in the shop, since it's such an efficient item and you're very likely to see it at least once if not twice per run.
- LifeSteal.
- Critical chance works really well if you want to increase damage vs big targets, since you already got +50% damage, it will for example more efficient to increase 10% of crit compared to 10% damage (1.6/1.5=1.07 compared to 1.1/1=1.1). Not as valuable if going SMG though.
- Damage is always nice to increase too.

- Range, you'll get range bonus from gun set, and ideally you'll want to reduce it to the point where you kill enemies only in your pick-up range. Don't go buy items just to reduce the range though.

- Regen. This character is strong early and regen is good mostly early and typically falls of unless you get specific items. Plus this character wants to buy shad potions and enjoys buying poisonous tonic, and both reduc regen.
- All the damage stats you don't use.

Chamelon is godlike. The downside is very negligible and the stat increase insane even when you have 0 dodge, and dodge become much stronger the more you have

Barricade is very much worth taking, despite the speed decrease.

Statue, in my opinion there's basically no reason you should take this, unless somehow your last 3 level-ups gave you only commons and a purple speed upgrade 3 times in a row, and you notice that your damage is lackluster, then statue isn't worth taking. -10% speed is too harsh and it's not like it's the only way to increase damage.

Esty's couch, while very fun, I'd recommend staying away from it if you are grinding Danger 5 victories. It needs too much to get going. You have to find it early, you need to have the money to buy it, you need to not have increased your speed too much AND then you need to buy the items that reduce speed to make it worthwhile AND you have to keep the damage up to not get overwhelmed during your transtion phase AND also keep buying a lot of armor, since you'll only be able to facetank the two bosses at the end (not to mention the buffed chargers that hit for 50 damage).

:Retromation hoodie is a snap pick even when your dodge is currently at 0. This character build dodge very easily
Torture is very nice.
Medical turret is very nice, even with engineering at -19 to 0. Will act as a pseudo-regen, and since you don't move much the turret won't miss you ever, just make sure to be in range of it. However because they spawn randomly on the map and you don't move much. More than 1-2 gets diminishing returns very quickly (well it can work some wave but it will not be reliable.

Early on you want to have tasers (because they are a support weapon and they give you a harvesting bonus).

Generally it can be good to have 1 torch OR wand. torch helps with crowd control for wave 9/10 while wand is good to apply a DOT on the big enemies of wave 8.

The reason being that DOT (damage over time, the burning damage) does not stack, instead it will keep the strongest DOT of the two weapons that touched an enemy, so if two of your DOT weapon decide to target the same enemy(ies), you waste damage.

That torch or wand should be replaced by a flamethrower when you can, unless you managed to get a purple/red early.


All the stats should be increased evenly, except for regen or lifesteal. You typically pick one of the two.

- Regen is typically what you go for. Mage has access to Schmoop without downsides and is tagged for fireplaces, which gives regen.
- Lifesteal. if you find flamethrower early and didn't dump lifesteal then you can go for lifesteal. 5% should be enough to reach the lifesteal limit. It's good to go lifesteal early if you can because you will save money over Regen.

Turrets are actually very good for you despite the -100 engineering penalty, since turrets can proc sausage and snake which means you can burn enemies without even seeing them thanks to turrets

Snake is good for all the mage builds.

Sausage I recommend getting only if you go for a build without a DOT weapon.

His best weapon is crossbow. I would recommend only upgrading his crossbow up to tier 3 (purple) since tier 4 crossbow doesn't increase the scaling damage based on range, and the extra penetration is overkill anyway.


- Bonus experience (30% early, dont be afraid to sacrifice some range early on, it'll pay itself quick, helps mitigate the HP penalty too since you get a "raw" +1HP per level)
- Attack Speed at ALL cost (though past 200% you will see diminishing returns)
- Range
- Crit Chance
- % Damage
- Luck (Between 50 and 100, we want hunting trophy)
- Speed
- Ranged damage (not really a stat we chase, but you should consider it like a small bonus for items that have the stats above)


Always:
- Regen (Hunter wants Shady potions and Poisonous tonics)
- Harvesting

But Hunter works best as a glass cannon.

Those items are ones that tipically aren't great for most characters, but work for Hunter.

Gummy berserker is good to take, especially early. You really want that attack speed, and the range increase is nice for damage output.

Glasses isn't high priority but is worth over spending your moneys on rerolls.


Hunting trophy wins you the run on the spot. It doesn't matter if there's a rough wave coming and you are behind on damage for the next round, just play safe for this wave (even if that includes skipping an elite). This item will essentially always be worth to get up to round 17 on Hunter (though it's not a run winner by this point).

Tardigrade is a nice insurance to get too.

The trickiest part about generalist is his weapon management, since he is restrained to 3 ranged and 3 melee. Fortunately, he is tagged with some of the best weapons in the game, which are spear, sljngshot, SMG, shotgun. Cacti Club is in my opinion, a trap because the attack speed is too low, but it can be serviceable. You should not be afraid to recycle weapons.

From experience it's better to start with a spear, since it's the only good melee weapon he is tagged with, it has the primitive tag, which means you are likely to see slingshot, but SMG and shotgun are good to take too. It's also worth to buy pistols early to keep up on damage, but be aware it falls off on later waves.

All the stats are good to increase on generalist except regen. The reason being is that you snap buy hedgehog, which reduces regen. It's also worth noting thtat generalist can be a potential glass cannon if you go for 3 spears

Rip and Tear is insane, but so is Baby with a Beard, if you see the two just pick both.

SMG is his best weapon, although shotgun works well too.

Because One-Armed only has access to 1 weapon, if you get a blue weapon on the first 5 waves, it's better to spend money on damage increase instead of trying to level your weapon
- Flat Damage
- %Damage
- Regen
- Speed
- HP
- Armor
- Crit. Bad stat for this character, especially with SMG and its x1.5 crit multiplier. Also due to the stats of crit items. Insanity will often be a neutral or even decrease on overall DPS, poisonous tonic will be way too expensive for what it gives and will compete with regen, blindfold you don't want to hurt range to much since you are waiting for Baby with a Beard. The final nail in the coffin is Medal being insane value with +6% damage increase but with crit chance reduction.
- Knockback

Lifesteal is in a weird spot where One-Armed only benefits from 1/6th of the proc speed but considering stuff like Wheatstone where knockback doesn't matter on One-Armed (tyîcally big enemies aren't a problem, they'll die in a few shot, his real problems are swarm of enemies) and that [bRelic[/b] is still worth taking, while stuff that reduce lifesteal banner are basically worthless on him; with an SMG around it's still okay-ish to have lifesteal around I guess.
Baby with a beard is your best find, essentially the run is won, however you can't rely for a specific purple to show up every run...

That's why you'll often have to pick his lesser cousin Bandana. The -20% damage will hurt quite a bit vs big target, and you won't 1 shot basic grunts with the penetrated bullet immediately (especially if you don't find pumpkin...) but you'll need it to survive wave 19 and horde waves.

I don't have experience with ricochet on One-Armed, but should be a good way to outscale if you've been diligent with %damage upgrades, otherwise probably keep it locked in the shop before you can mitigate the damage penalty (-70%!!!).

From my experience, Wrench is better than going for Screwdiver, especially when going for elite and boss kills. For many reasons.

Reason 1: Wrenches are tagged as engineering while screwdivers are tagged as engineering and precise. While it might seem like an upside for the screwdiver because it offers the set bonus (extra crit) it's actually very bad. The reason being that the pool of weapons offered to you is partly based on the weapon tags. So with wrenches you're more likely to see only engineering weapons (only wrenches and screwdivers) while screwdivers dilute the pool with precise items (so you'll see more shurikens, knife, thief dagger, crossbow etc alongside wrenches and screwdivers). As such wrenches are more consistent to upgrade quickly. Not to mention crits dont work with buildings and that screwdiver have only a x2 crit multiplier.

Reason 2: screwdivers' mines can be overwritten by enemy spawns, so sometimes your mines just won't spawn.

Reason 3: While the 50% engineering scaling of the melee damage of the wrench seems apealing, with you being an hybrid build able to still do respectable damage alongside your building, it doesn't really fit with the pool of items of the engineer: Engineer wants to buy every engineering item that present to him, and the most efficient ones reduce attack speed, %damage and crit chance. That and the fact that all of your buildings don't scale with %damage, means that buying %damage to beef up the mediocre damage of screwdiver won't work on your buildings. It's more cost efficient to be able to only focus engineering like you do with wrench.

Reasons 4: Wrenches scale with more items, see items section.

Reason 5: You are more likely to see turret items than mines, since at common rarity, there's both lvl1 turret and mines, but there's also uncommon, epic and rare turrets. No such such things for mines.

Engineering
HP
Armor
Speed (bare minimum 10, more is very welcome, since you want to stay around your turrets so you can't really kite enemies and as such you have to do some funky maneuvers to do dodge chargers that manage to close the gap)
Regen
Luck. Don't buy the items that reduce regen though.
Harvesting
Dodge is pretty low priority, but still nice to get from ballitic vest

Attack speed
%Damage
Crit
Lifesteal

Buy all the structures you see, though you should know that inciendary turrets don't stack, sothere's diminishing returns to have them, I'd recommend have 2 of them maximum (3 if you have a lot of turrets).
Ricochet is absolutely nuts.
Bandana is pretty good.
Snake works with incendiary turrets.
Alien baby is pretty good to take, because it allows the enemies to come faster to your killzone of turrets. Only buy if the waves are too comfortable. Wouln't recommend more than 1.
Dynamite and plastic explosive: in early game it's worth buying a few if them when they present themselves and you are ahead on damage, but don't spend too much on them unless you are already in lategame with explosive turrets.
Dynamite and plastic explosive are worth at any point of the game.
Yeah that's kinda the problem with mines' screwdivers build, you are much less likely to scale them because there's less items they work with, and if you did, well, your fully upgraded red wrenches would have scaled the same.
Strange Book is the biggest bait of all time. Your character isn't tagged for any item that give elemental damage, so unless you find it SUPER early for level-up value, it's not worth taking.
Eye Surgery/b] works with incendiary turrets, but too expensive for what it does.

In my opinion, his best weapon is Spear, since it's a good weapon for hordeclear with a good base damage, so it synergize really well with %damage bonus saver gets.

SMG works well if you still struggle with spear, but you'll need to start with pistol to manipulae the RNG and pray to find an SMG in the shop. So you'll probably need to restart a few times

Saver's strategy is all about saving. You start saving around wave 4-6 with 200 money unspent. the things you should prioritize are xp bonus, attack speed and survivability and a little bit of harvesting. Then on wave 7 to 9 I save up to have a 1000+ money and spend until I have around a 1000 left. So from wave 10 to 14 I typically spend 200-300 money and end up with 2000 money by wave 14. I generally don't go for the first elite kill. On wave 14+, you should typically spend 300-500 money, and those upgrades should be on survivability, weapon upgrades (up to purple typically), and crits+attack speed. Maybe sprinkle in some flat damage if it increase DPS by 10%+.

It's basically never worth spending money on %damage.
Padding is a free win if you let the money compound, especially if you don't want to go for a boss kill.
Generator is not worth spending money on, basically ever. It's better to not spend the money and let it compound.