Up-to-date on March 13 2025
For those who want diamonds.
These tips can extend to a lower difficulty, but economy builds are all but null and void with the Expensive Shops modifier.

Economy is post loop 1
Intentionally building for economy is fairly futile during islands 1-32.
You do not get enough item rarity for the really good items, and the shops are too dang expensive!
You NEED damage to scrape by and kill mini elites and bosses.
If you find a paycheck, double-edged sword, or other economy item randomly, you still should take it.
Portal Priority
In order; these are the chests you want to get.

• Relic. These are strong enough to warrant the risk without sustain. Grab what you can. See list below.
  
• Elite. Fight some elites to get an elite chest.There may be better options.
  
• Anvil. Upgrade your shiny mods! Any upgrade here (on epic/legendaries) is a stronger pick than most epic items.
  
• Upgrade. The default choice, as it'll stack the rare stuff you have.
  
• Speed. Get a speed demon, supercharged, and juiced here!
  
• Healing. Until you have adequate sustain, or if you're on deaths door.
  
• Critical. Until someone has a Ring of Wisdom.
  
• Greed. After you find a Big Chests or Coral Amulet. Melee wants brawler, the rest of us want slippery slope!
  
• Skill. Find more big chests or odd
  
• Parkour will cost you crystals and earning perk bonuses.

Relic Priority

• Luck Ring. Best one-off item in the game?!
  
• Skill Ring. If you're good at dodging, it's a TON of legendary loot. Pairs with any extra chest perks.
  
• Duplication Ring. If you're good at dodging, it's a TON of epic loot. Pairs with skill ring.
  
• Coral Amulet. More chest rolls. Other relics are epic, so get them first if you see them.
  
• Ring of Precision. If you have over 20% crit chance, this gives a ton of extra damage.
  
• Elemental Rings. Only if you have elemental damage.
  
• Ring of Value: Get an item way cheap every roll at the shop. Get it before it gets nerfed. (Nerfed during updating the guide)
  
• Portal Ring. Better shot at the loot you want. Stack them in co-op for trolling.
  
• Tony's Ring. More shop choices. Stack them in co-op for shopping.

99% of gamblers are just one more bet from winning it big!

What to avoid:
Avoid economy chests early in a run.
Avoid elemental explosions modifier.
Avoid energy rings modifier in co-op.
Avoid Horde islands if you have no strong AOE damage.
Avoid using health, greed, *gold, and randomizer totems.
Health totems don't offer much of a reward until you have upwards of 2500hp (or luck ring). Save your hp pool.
Greed totems will give you the worst greed perks, because it's funny. You can't get rid of these, so unless you're on island 1-3, I'd avoid them.
*Gold totems offer exceptionally good items, but if you can't dodge anything, they will get you killed. These are also best gotten at the start of runs, when your health pool is minimal (sub 1000HP); as will the effort to get that hp back.
Randomizer totems are funky looking purple totems (that look like crystal totems) that will end your run. I'd only recommend using one if you find it early on OR if you're in a co-op session and your build is garbage late-game. (You can cheese them by dropping any items you have that are good, and rolling the remaining ones. You can get insanely lucky)
Stay away from healing and gold hp rocks while fighting. You'll want these for *after* a fight.
Do not use healing rocks while fighting. Stuff WILL hit you.
(March 2025): Melee is really good now!? Get a blender! Don't bother with melee builds. You cannot damage bosses, elites, or mini-elites without suffering through a ton of damage. Enemies just attack too fast. I promise you that nobody is good enough to overcome this. Grabbing big claws is OK if you want to have more safety popping shields.
The claws are the best melee weapon. Daggers hurt your range and are risky, and the hammer affects your movement too much and will probably get you killed. (Fun Though)

Being able to STOP mini-elites and drill into them vs. sending them flying is hugely valuable, so I recommend picking black-hole or ice grenades. Holding enemies back and clumping them together is extremely powerful. If you get some fancy legendary ability mods, you may consider an ability build as grenades are pretty serious as of the Anvil update.

What not to avoid:
These perks or mods ought to work for every build on islands 1-64.

• Piercing Shot. Having one of these will give you the chance at doubling damage. ((March 2025): Double tap only works on last enemy hit)
  
• Split Shot. Almost every mod and perk stacks on top of it.
  
• Dice Shot or Luck ring. Way better elemental or enhancable proc chance, and more loot from driller, faulty chests, totems*, rare treasure, and HP from scavenger.
  
• Big chests. More rolls at better items in any chests.
  
• Portal Ring. Mitigates chest RNG allowing more upgrade portals and crit portals.
  
• Ring of Value / Tony's Ring. One cheap item or Five additional shop options are really good.

Must finds.
These are things that will assure victory!

• Health Shot and/or Grim Reaper: Stay alive during boss fights!
  
• ((March 2025): Not so many items are assured victory anymore hah.

Get some sustain early.
Having a source of HP gain will allow you to use HP totems, spiked chests, and hopefully not die!
So, in your first biome, try to grab some form of healing. Here is your priority.

• Regenerator. +2HP/s (120HP) Every island in the first 60 seconds. Don't finish islands *too* fast!
  
• Endurance. +120HP Upon clearing an island. Less total HP than Regenerator but it can give you that boost at the end, which is great for spiked chests.
  
• Grim Reaper. +1-30?HP for every enemy eliminated, scales on enemy size.
  
• Health Shot. +nHP/shot As long as you are hitting enemies.
  
• Scavenger. +80HP... Occasionally... Unreliable, but fundamentally shareable in co-op. Stack this up in multiplayer as it really is good and keeps everyone topped up.
  
• Vampire. +HP Every time you melee attack something and it dies.
  (March 2025):
  
• Amber Resin. +40% healing. Awesome to get more value from several different sources of
  healing at once.
  
• Personal Space: Keep your HP pool from shrinking. Busted for melee players.
  
• Fortitude: An extra +25 max HP per island! Adds up quickly and makes you more survivable.

Dual Lasers Sharp shot is a must pick early (~4 max). I've found the most success building crit blast and time shot on these (since the damage is so low already). Wind-up and big mag are all good choices. This is probably the best weapon to use light-shot on, for more fire-rate! Good for proccing enhancables and DOT
Avoid anything that affects your weapon spread, orbiting shot, blind fire...
Seek elemental damage or anything that has a % chance of triggering. Poison shot is good.

Seagle The seagle in my opinion is sort of uncomfortable to use without a key mod: Fast Shot. Without fast shot, the gun will feel sluggish, and you'll have to lead your shots quite a bit.
Faster fire-rate also helps you hit more shots, and big mag and juiced will keep you shooting.
The seagle has a high proc chance and base damage so mods like damage shot are a great addition.

Minigun Sharp-shot is a must-pick. Wind-up, mag-shot, streak shot, and big mag are all good choices. Escalating shot is kinda bad in general, however you should try to grab a few more, and limit other fire-rate mods to about +100%.
Avoid anything that affects your weapon spread, orbiting shot, arc shot, x-shot.
Poison shot is good. Ammo Ring (reload on dash) is EXTREMELY good on the minigun.

Sniper Rifle Split shot, Damage shot, Triple shot, are must-haves. Multiple bullets at once will help you break armor AND kill the target.
I do not care if you wanted that homing shot... You're gonna give it to whoever has the sniper rifle as it'll be at 100% chance. Homing shot applies to ALL of your bullets grab square-shot>x-shot>triple shot.

Orb Launcher Big shot is good and helps you hit stuff more often, and it scales good because the base projectile is large. Arc shot is great. Pairs good with aura shot, because the auras seem to scale in size with your projectiles.

Rocket launcher. Arc shot, Split shot, Damage shot. Every small creature will perish.
Light shot is good, because your rockets are easier to aim. Avoid accelerating shot (aiming will usually be harder) and bouncing shot (projectiles don't explode with it lol).

Crossbow Arc shot can double your projectiles. Aura shot gives extra AOE. Not much else to note as this weapon scales good with alot of mods and I don't think anything breaks on it.

Grab these up in sets to flatten enemy crabes
Torpedo Shot
Proximity Barrage
Beam Shot
These are enhancable and can be upgrade to poison, freeze, burn, and delete enemies.
Accelerating is great on any homing projectiles (Torpedo, Proximity Barrage, Fireworks)
Growing is good on bubbles, Persisting is good on beams (avoid anything that changes trajectory).

Glue shot + Aura shot. The OG combo. Great early-midgame dps. Auras will stack and deal DOT.
Auras seem to scale in size with your projectile, so big shot or certain guns will have a larger radius. (March 2025): Nerfed to oblivion, kinda useful on flamethrower.

Critical is king! Crit chance + critical blast + time shot is insanely useful. You can find a time ring to get +400% time damage that affects time shot, time claws, time bolt, and any chipping enhancement.

Dice Shot + Any chance based effects or Enhancables. If you get a dice, poison, lightning, ice, multi-bullet mods, and more will better. It's such a powerful perk it can define your loot picks afterward. Stacking Enhancables is good, but it WILL hurt performance a great deal.

Things that will net you quite a bit more.
Coral ring or big chests. More choices = better builds, more rare loot, and synergy with streamer loots and faulty chests.
Skill ring. Applies to all elite chests IF the stage was flawless. This is the best source of legendary chests in the game, as you can get 4+ pre-boss ( or more if you proc other chest items :] )
Duplication Ring. Another chance at an epic chest. Best combined with a skill ring.
Crystal Asteroids: It's like finding the challenge crystals but you don't die! Insane in Co-Op because everyone gets an item! Affected by Luck Ring.
Bonus Chest: Horde maps mean more chests!

Decent picks
Efficiency + All-You-Can-Eat! Keep 100% weapon uptime for more damage!
Portal ring. Mitigates RNG a bit and gives you more shots at epic chest islands, and if you want specifically crit or hp chests, you can get them pretty reliably.
Driller. It procs a ton on the desert island, and is a source of random armor.
Care package. Occasional free chest.

Lesser picks, but quite good.
Performance bonus. If you do well, it's a free chest! (avoid in Ultra Chaos lol)
Double vision. Do well or not... a free chest! Along with performance bonus, can be buffed by Luck Ring.
Rare treasure. It will be rare :) Affected by Luck Ring.

Win-More Strats!
Don't be greedy! If an item will boost your teammate more than you, consider giving it to them. Maybe trade for it!
Give the homing shot to the sniper>rocket launcher>seagle>... player, and in this priority.
Arc shot belongs to rocket launcher!
Poison for X-bow!

Avoid using the Assassin perk, because you're not gonna get the same value as a solo. You'll actually be lucky to get over +10% damage... Ever!

If you get some Big Chests: Don't horde them! Let your team also get some! I recommend keeping 2, and giving the rest away.

Open relic chests one at a time to get a coral amulet, do note that you CANNOT get a coral amulet if you are holding one. Pass a big chests around when opening relic chests!

(March 2025 update):
Having someone dedicated to melee and close range modes is great. They draw aggro from anyone with range, can stack poison or ice, and will collect crystals for the team on Ultra Chaos! Give the melee player personal spaces, vampires, and scavengers!
Stack to get stacked.
Stack Tony's Black Card and special delivery to on one person to save slots.

(March 2025 update):
CRIT! If you are in a team and you only find 1 ring of wisdom, just stack the remaining crit on the person who got it. They'll scale the crit and you can find other items for damage.

Driller! Grabbing a couple of drillers and stacking them on one guy is crazy good. Be sure to break rocks and cacti before finishing the island. Give these to anyone who has the Ring of Luck.
(March 2025 update): Drillers are PER player now. Extra items are great when shops are expensive.

Stack any faulty chests you find on one person. Doubly good with a Luck Ring! Share those perks on legendary chests, stack them even more!

Multi-Shot Mods
Multi-shot mods (with the exception of split-shot) can apply in the same shot.
What this means, is that if you picked up a triple-shot and an arc shot, you can proc both per shot. With this in mind, we can take advantage and stack mods for what we want. Depending on the weapon, you'll want to choose your multi-shot mod.
For aoe projectiles, like the wand or especially the rocket launcher, Arc-Shot is king. You can hit tons of small enemies at a time and really rack up crystals.
For single target weapons, like the sniper, seagle, pistols, or smg you'll get a great benefit from.Triple-Shot.
X-Shot and Square-Shot are generally better than most other multi-shot mods because they shoot more bullets, but there is a difference. X-shot shoots (4 extra)* projectiles with low spread, and Square shot shoots (8 extra)* shots with alot of spread, making X-Shot generally better for the single target guns. (March 2025 update): X-shot is now an EPIC and you'll see it alongside arc-shots.

Elemental Mods
Every projectile from multi-shot mods can also proc elemental effects, so if you want more elemental damage, you get more bullets!
Enemies with armor plates take no elemental damage until it is broken.
Bosses and Elites take HALF damage from elements except for Arcane. *At least from what I've seen...

• Poison is king. It multiplies the damage you do to an affected target AFTER all of your other damage items, giving them all extra scaling.
  
• Lightning. This gives you small stuns and bursts of damage that CHAIN to nearby enemies. It's decent for a bit of AOE builds.
  
• Arcane. This element gives you a strong DOT on ALL enemies, stopping their healing.
  
• Fire. The element of money. Gives a fast ticking DOT that can be scaled for extreme DPS on tanky targets like bosses.
  
• Ice. It won't proc. It never procs! Why would it ever proc? Even if it did proc; You'd be in the middle of a reload AAAAAHH. You get no tangible damage benefit and bosses/elites have crazy freeze immunity. (March 2025 update): Ice stops trash mobs for a second, giving some needed breathing room. Ice claws have been added, which can be combined with knives or claw for a good defensive move.