Updated for Build #958

• Ram Boxing Gloves now have Knockback scaling, completely preventing crushing hordes! :)
  
• Unfortunately their base damage is still crap, so Planet Killers, Mini-Elites and Bosses are still lame
  
• They cause a LOT of chaos now, and in that chaos its still a nuisance to try avoiding getting plinked from behind by the occasional fleet ship or mini-elite
  
• Recommend pairing with a weapon like Rockets that can take advantage of the chaos -- Boxing Gloves for the Knockback that prevents the crushing hordes forming, plus Rockets that have AoE which can obliterate the mess

---

Once you've learnt the patterns of the game from a few attempts and unlocks, you can reach Wave 120 Victory fairly easily with pretty much any combo of captains and weapons (including the Solo challenges).

But for deep endless runs I've found you need to have a general grasp of the game meta and plan your upgrade path in order to keep up with the continuous enemy stat increases.

Hopefully this guide helps you, or at least gets you thinking about the game meta and figuring out your own road to success! :)

Time Wasters appears on the surface to be a generic casual game with just random bullet-heaven stuff happening. But like most action games it relies on your ship/character balancing the Holy Trinity:

• Defeating Enemies (DPS & CC)
  
• Surviving Damage from Enemies (Tanking)
  
• Recovering / Restoring from Damage Taken (Healing)

In this guide I'll attempt to describe how these work in Time Wasters and what to expect from endless run progressions.


Deep Endless Screenshot prior to Build #839

Completing deep endless runs means being able to survive indefinitely against the threats in the game. Happily there is really only one thing that will hurt you so it's not complicated to come up with a defence.

• Ramming Damage - Enemy chasing ships and mini-elites only have one attack; ramming into you! You can also hurt yourself by ramming into things at regular or boost speed, including enemy ships, elite asteroids, and the black space mines.
  
  Ramming is realistically the ONLY meaningful threat in the game, it's where all of your damage will come from. And just like all enemy stats, the enemy ram damage will increase with every wave (possibly as some multiple of their health).
  
  As the game progresses, no amount of damage can defeat the hordes of ramming enemies (including Mini-Elites) before they reach you. At that point they form what I call a 'crushing horde' blob of enemy ships that will carry you around inside their pack dealing ramming damage the entire time.
  
  This is where you need a combination of damage (to kill them!) and tank (to survive taking damage long enough to kill them!).
  
  Rosanova Nova and Ram Boxing Gloves (since Build #958) prevent crushing hordes forming, but the chaos they create means you still need excellent tank and DPS to go far :)

• Indestructible Bullets - Only one enemy fleet ship type fires these projectiles, which are little red and white bullets. The ships fly up near to you (but not ramming) and try to maintain their max range a short distance away from you. These bullets do only a tiny amount of damage and are easy to avoid, so I don't classify them as an actual threat.
  
  These bullet types are also used by some of the bosses if you choose to destroy certain of their modules, such as the Elite Fire Ship flamethrower wings or the Elite Hell Bird cannons. But they are still easy to avoid even with novice pilot skills, no need to ever be hit by them.
  
  
• Destructible Bullets - These are large black bullets that are only fired by some bosses. They have health and can be destroyed by your weapons. They're fired super quickly and in large volumes by the associated bosses, but every weapon shreds them so they never actually touch you. Not an actual threat.
  
  
• Snake Boss Lasers - These lasers are similar to Ravebow's lasers; big solid beams firing out in multiple directions. But they have a 1 second warmup cycle showing you where they will fire, which gives you plenty of time to get out of the way even if heaps of them are present at once.
  
  They come all at once and at the same set time intervals so just avoid them. Don't panic and start boosting around, just gently nudge yourself into an empty space and sit there. Not an actual threat.
  
  
• Flames - The Elite Fire Ship boss has flamethrows on its front modules, which fire long jets of flame particles that persist in space for a few seconds after firing stops. If you choose to destroy the rear engines/wings, flames will also start coming out the back.
  
  These are slow moving threats that realistically can only hurt you if you fly into them yourself. They aren't aimed at you by the boss, they are always just fired straight ahead from the boss as it follows its static pattern through the arena. Not a realistic threat.
  
  
• Boss Arena Circle - In boss fights, a black hole circle appears to surround the battlefield and create an arena. It starts at a large size when it appears and slowly comes down to its final size which is about 30% smaller, then stops shrinking.
  
  If you fly into it you'll take a small amount of damage every second. Tanking will mitigate the damage as normal, so if you want to collect something that's a little bit into the damaging area you can just boost in and grab it.
  
  Not an actual threat since there's no reason to fly into it unless by choice.

The meta on defeating enemies in deep Endless is skewed towards dealing overwhelming damage (high DPS) relative to enemy strength. Crowd Control (CC) is described at the bottom of this section.

There are only three enemy profiles you need to think about defeating.

These are the fleet based chasing ships and small shooting ships that appear during regular waves, and the destructible bullets fired by some bosses. They have relatively low health and ramming damage so they try to kill you with overwhelming numbers.

• The small red ships have VERY LOW health but huge numbers and try to kamikaze into you.
  
• The white armoured ships have MED/LOW health and try to hold and crush you, but have fewer numbers.
  
• The red/black shooting ships have MED/LOW health and the fewest numbers, but will stand a little way from you firing their indestructible bullets instead of ramming.

To counter these, use AoE / Splash / Penetrating damage to smash them en masse as they try to mob you. Tactically, try to group them up into a blob since that's the best way to apply damage from your weapon to large numbers of targets at once.

For example, get the horde to follow you a little bit so they clump up, then turn and smash into/through them to maximise damage.

Beyond around wave 180-250 (depends on your weapon), unless you're using Ram Boxing Gloves or Rosanova Nova, enemies will form a crushing horde around you that will carry you along with it, so you'll be fighting at zero range and popping the horde from the inside out.

Note on Kat Phase for Hordes
Kat's Phase ability may initially seem like an escape abiliity. But NO! It's actually the best way to use her Katana's to destroy hordes, like an enraged Samurai.

Wait for Phase to be ready, then when your Katanas appear, boost right through the middle of the clumped up horde and laugh as they disintegrate... Continue scrubbing back and forth for a couple seconds while the horde collapses inwards and it's like using a whiteboard eraser to clear the screen.

This tactic works even if you only have a single blue katana, it's really how Kat is designed, she's not meant to dance around the edge of packs slowly stroking them with her blades. Single, brutal one-shot strikes through the pack... no fencing!

Note on Corrosia Slime for Hordes
When using Corrosia's Slime, you can just draw a spoked circle around yourself and sit in the middle of it. The Horde / Trash ships will smash into the slime and die.

For deep endless you need to keep up with significant Slime Damage upgrades for this to continue to work, but with the slime manual aim capability introduced in Build #836 it's easier than ever to set up a Slime Fortress like this.



These are the large enemy ships that turn up in waves trying to ram you, and they only have one type. They have VERY HIGH health and SHIELDS, and do a LOT more ramming damage than the other ships.

Practically speaking these are really the only genuine threat in the game as they are the biggest challenge to your tank.

At the start of a run there is just one Mini-Elite that shows up, but their fleet size increases with each successive phase. In deep Endless you have to plan for a horde of these (e.g. 15+ at once) which form the core of crushing hordes blocking you in.

To counter these, use High Spike Damage to tear them to shreds as quickly as possible, either as they crush you in a horde in the later game or by actively pursuing them and prioritising them in the earlier phases. Use manual aiming to focus fire on them.

If your weapon has an ability to trigger additional shots or a special attack after a certain number of boosts, use boost as a fuel to trigger it to maximise your DPS against Mini-Elites. For example, Rosanova's Nova or Raven's Rockets.

Planet Killer orbital platforms don't hurt you, but you have a time limit to kill them before they eliminate the planet they're orbiting. They appear once per phase, just after you kill a boss, surrounding a random planet.

You need decent spike damage to kill these before a crushing horde arrives, but with the Solo Challenge update in Build #836 every weapon can melt them except Boxing Gloves. Tactically, for weapons with AoE / Splash damage, try to position your ship so you maximise hits on multiple adjacent PKs.

Personally I do a slow, regular speed circle just inside the Planet Killer radius.

Planet Killers are a great way of measuring whether your DPS output is on track and keeping up with the increasing enemy stats each phase. You should be able to melt the Planet Killers in one lap of their circle. If you find you need more than one lap, you know you need to pump up your weapon upgrades.



With the introduction of the Solo Challenges in Build #836, every weapon can now deal with Boss damage requirements very easily. Not all of them scale as well as others, but they are all at least capable of defeating the bosses in infinite Endless waves, just some a litle slower than others.

Tactically, use similar methods to the Mini-Elites -- high spike DPS, using boost as fuel for additional shots where possible.

If you're using a weapon with high concentrated damage (e.g. Katanas, Rockets, Fireballs etc), forget worrying about taking damage and just use your tank to fly into the enemy hardpoints and watch them pop in just a second or two. This is really the ideal way to keep the game moving forward and not getting bogged down for ages in boss battles trying to dance with them.

Crowd Control (CC) in the form of Slows VERY effective in the early waves, but when it comes to deep Endless they are almost useless. They don't scale to match the continuous stat increases enemies receive with each phase so there's no point designing an endless run around them.

• Slow effects become useless at stopping enemies reaching you at around Wave 200-250+, because they don't scale. The enemy ships will simply warp towards you if you get more than a couple ship lengths away, so you have no effective turtling options.
  
  Corrosia Slime can still be somewhat useful for causing non-crushing-horde enemy packs to clump up or align in trailing blobs behind you so they can be kited a little.
  
  Since Build #839, the manual aiming of slime feature makes this minor kiting helper method a bit trickier since often you are aiming in front of you rather than behind. Can ignore.
  
  
• Knockback from Rosanova Nova and now since Build #958 Ram Boxing Gloves will completely prevent crushing hordes forming around you from mobs of ships, even in Endless. Both those have Knockback that scales (Nova is a passive +10 per ship level, Gloves gets +250 per upgrade so you have have to keep spending points on it).
  
  Flat value Knockback effects (like Raven's boost) are useless as they don't scale.
  
  Nova's +10 Knockback is pretty good but needs but gold is even more important than usual as you want a very high Ship Level relative to Wave # for it to work.
  
  Boxing Gloves Knockback is great since Build #958, but causes a LOT of chaos that makes it difficult to avoid getting hit from behind by incoming ships and mini-elites at high waves. Sure, there's no crushing horde even remotely close to forming, but the random ass-bumping is arguably more annoying to avoid. Since Boxing Gloves still do awful base damage (they rely on collision damage multipliers), I highly recommend pairing the Gloves with a damage weapon that can deal with the chaos they create, such as Rockets.

Your ship has the following layers of defence, in the order damage is absorbed:

1. Boost Block
   
2. Shield
   
3. Hull

Tanking is mitigating incoming damage from enemies long enough for your damage to defeat them. That's not the same as taking no damage at all -- it just means hanging in long enough to win, recover, and go again :)

With a stable tank you are functionally IMMORTAL. Even self-destructing is hard!

These types of tank are viable for deep Endless as of Build #839.

• Boost Tanking
  
• Hull Tanking
  
• Hybrid Tanking

Boosting blocks a certain amount of damage, based on your boost upgrade level. If you have a high enough Boost level you can prevent any damage at all from reaching your Shield or Hull.

This can be used effectively with ANY captain as it's a base ship ability, not a captain ability. However, some captains have bonuses to boost abilities which can make your Boost Tank much stronger and more capable.

To use Boost Tanking, just activate your boost and fly into enemies. Don't use it to try and flee (nowhere is safe), use it aggressively to go toe-to-toe with enemies and kill them.

Because you only have a limited amount of boost, you need to control usage for when you need it, and let it recharge when you don't.

The easiest way to recharge boost is by idling inside Boss arenas. Boss battles have no timer so you can spend as long as you want letting your boost recover before the next set of waves. It's slow and boring, but safe.

If you use a pure Boost Tank, technically you can avoid needing much Max Hull or Hull Repair Upgrades. You'll still need some to avoid accidental insta-death on high waves, but not much compared to Hull Tank or Hybrid Tank methods. The tradeoff is the slow boost regeneration time idling in boss arenas.

Ravebow has a unique ability that restores +10 Boost when Invincible triggers (see below in Hull Tanking for description). This means Infinite Boost provided you let yourself take just a single hit every 10 seconds. Unreal.

Given you anyway need some boost to power your special weapon abilities for DPS (like extra shots per x boosts), most people just do Pure Boost Tanking as it's simple and effective.

Hull Tanking is viable because of the Invincibility mechanic, which triggers after a certain amount of damage has been taken within a 2 second period. Once triggered, no more damage is taken OF ANY KIND for 2 seconds.

Invincibility has no cooldown, so as soon as the Invincible window ends it can potentially be triggered again immediately provided the damage threshold is reached. Your shield will recharge during the Invincible period, but that's a minor incidental benefit only.

Invincibility can be used by ANY captain as it's a base ship ability, not a captain ability.

Ravebow's unique abilities double the duration of Invincibility to 4 seconds. That's massive!

When using Hull Tank, the cycle is: Take Damage -> Invincible for 2 (or 4) seconds -> repeat. No skill required :)

The damage trigger level DOES NOT mean you only take that amount of damage from a trigger event.

For example, say you take a hit for 250 damage to your Hull. That's more than the Invincible trigger level, so Invincibility will immediately trigger. But you will still have taken the 250 damage from the triggering event.

Now you can see why Ravebow's 4 second Invincible period is so amazing... half the opportunity for any triggering event damage compared to all other captains. and double the duration once it's active. WOW!!!

Hull doesn't self-regenerate, so Hull Tanking relies on a relatively large amount of:

• Max Hull (to soak the damage between Invincible periods) and
  
• Hull Repair Per Pickup (to heal back to max health from Hull Repairs).

This is also why the Mini-Elite ships that you would otherwise hate, now become your best friends in Endless. They drop all those juicy Hull Repairs, right when they are most useful during/after crushing hordes have been smacking you!

A few captains have abilities which reduce the amount of damage necessary to trigger Invincibility, but it's only by a few points so for deep Endless it's not worth mentioning.

Pure Hull Tanking is simple, but also a bit dicey until you have a relatively LARGE pool of Hull points and Hull Repair Per Pickup upgrades. That means you're putting fewer points into your weapon upgrades and have to juggle things a bit in the earlier Endless phases. But it's still VERY viable.

This is the 'quickest' and most dynamic tank method. It combines the Max Hull, Hull Repair, and Invincible mechanics from Hull Tanking, with the Boost Block Damage from Boost Tanking.

That could be said for ANY playthrough - but the difference is this is deliberate and intentional proactive juggling between the tank types, not just chaotic happenstance.

The benefit is that you don't have to endure the slow recharge of boost while camping in a boss arena (or nowhere near as much anyway). The downside is it requires the most management and concentration to use productively.

The method is simple:

• Use Hull Tanking and leverage Invincible periods, letting your Hull take damage on purpose and make use of your health pool. Your boost isn't being consumed and is recharging slowly during whlie Invincible.
  
  
• Tap Boost for 1 second just as Invincible is ending, to reduce the incoming damage from the next trigger event. This works properly only if you have less Boost Block than the incoming hit from the enemy, otherwise no Invincible will be triggered. So you have to upgrade carefully to get the right balance.
  
  The amount of Boost Block should ideally be about 50hp below the damage a Mini-Elite can hit you for, which increases each wave.
  
  
• When your Hull drops below your tolerance threshold (and you know you aren't about to get fully healed anytime soon), use Boost Tanking to reduce or fully counter the hits that trigger Invincibility. Regular horde ships are fully blocked. Grab Hull Repairs and continue.

With this method you get the benefit of Boost blocking WITHOUT needing a huge Max Boost pool.

Ravebow's unique +10 Boost when Invincible triggers is also useful for Hybrid Tank. It means you can have quite a low boost pool and still get all the benefits. Amazing.

Kat has a unique Phase ability that makes her Invincible for 1 second and noclip through enemies. Triggers on a single boost with 5 second cooldown. Combine with any tank type for even more tank fun!!

Shields mitigate some damage, but are NOT a viable tank into Endless waves, even when using Shield related abilities from captains like TeslAI, Vermillion, Luna etc.

Max Shield and Shield Regen Rate simply don't scale to match the volume of incoming damage you'll be subjected to -- it's not even close.

I up them to whatever the natural x/x max is, and put NO UPGRADES into the infinite upgrade progression. For most captains that's 50 Max Shield, a couple captains with inherent shield bonuses it's around 80. That's plenty for early game assistance when your tank isn't yet stable.

Knockback effects work to help prevent ramming damage from enemies provided it scales, currently only Nova and Boxing Gloves. See the DPS section for Crowd Control for more info.

I don't count evasion / avoidance as tanking options for Endless, since there's no way to prevent enemies getting near you, even with successful Knockback strategy. You will still need a stable tank to survive. Dodging is handy in early game only, but you can still kite brief parts of Endless, just not much.

There's only one way to restore your Hull once it's damaged -- Hull Repair pickups. These drop from:

• Hull Repair Planet (guaranteed drop but with cooldown)
  
• Mini-Elite ships (semi-random, drops more often when you are not at 100% Hull)
  
• Elite Asteroids (appear somewhere on the map after a boss battle, higher chance to spawn as a green hull repair one when you aren't at 100% Hull)

The goal of healing is to get back to full health (100% Hull) as quickly as possible, before you start needing your Hull pool for battle again. In order to do that, you'll need to keep upgrading your Hull Repair Per Pickup upgrade to a reasonable level.

Q: What's a "reasonable" amount of Hull Repair Per Pickup?
A: About 20-25% of your Max Hull value, to be safe. More if you are pure Hull Tanking.

I like to be conservative in that way because nothing ends a run quicker than dying :)

When you're mobbed by a crushing horde in Endless, it will carry you along inside and you really have no control about where it takes you. The ships that are directly touching you will end up being the Mini-Elites, with all the rest of the horde packed in tight behind them in a circle trying to get to you.

This seems like it would be the worst situation, having the strongest enemy type hard up against your ship. But it's ACTUALLY EXCELLENT FOR HEALING.

The reason is that as you kill the Mini-Elites next to you, if your Hull needs repairing they have a high chance of dropping a Hull Repair. And very often the drop will appear right on top of you and you'll instantly pick it up.

Doc's unique mega-magnet abilities allow drops to be collected within your ship's gold magnet radius. This makes pickups from within crushing hordes even more reliable as you don't need to hope the Hull Repair drops pop right on top of your ship.

Even if the instant pickup doesn't happen, there'll be some left on the map once you've killed the crushing horde and you can scoot over to grab them.

Don't forget the Hull Repair Planet as well, if the Mini-Elites don't drop enough for you in a given wave.

I often prioritise taking from the Hull Repair Planet (since it's infinite) and leave the Mini-Elite drops on the map as a stash just in case I need them for an emergency of some kind, particularly in the early game where I might have miscalculated my tank stability. At later stages it makes no difference since you'll be killing so many Mini-Elites and your tank will be so stable that it's irrelevant where the health comes from.

Unless the Boss Arena appears over the Hull Repair Planet, or over a spot where you've got a stashed Hull Repair from an earlier Mini-Elite, there's no way to replenish your Hull once you're in the Boss Circle.

Up until recently you could simply boost your way outside the Boss Arena during a boss battle and back into the open map, where you could repair as much as you wanted. But that bug/exploit has been closed.

It shouldn't be a problem though. To be realistic, bosses in Endless are the least problem you'll ever face. Their movements and actions don't change, so once you've learnt them they no longer pose any challenges to your hull.

If you're low, just keep an eye on the Hull Planet timer and avoid killing the boss until the Planet is ready. Then as soon as the boss is defeated, scoot over there and grab the health.

In the early game, boost is useful for kiting enemies, potentially getting out of trouble (dodge), or getting places quickly (like drops or planet spawns).

But once you start getting into higher waves, boost loses nearly all value as a speed, dodge, or escape mechanism. It has some limited uses for kiting and boss avoidance, but not much. Instead, it fuels your abilities as follows.

Some weapons have bonuses that are triggered by a certain number of boosts being used. For example, Rockets will fire off an extra volley of super rockets after x number of boosts (depending on upgrades).

This massively increases your DPS provided you are holding down boost, which is fantastic for clearing the screen of trash ships or to demolish crushing hordes MUCH faster than with just regular damage output.

When boosting, a certain amount of damage is blocked. This is described further in the Surviving (Tanking) section.

In short, boost tanking is the most popular form of tank and it's available to ALL captains as it's a default ship ability, not a captain ability. So in this sense, boost is a 'tank fuel' :)

Kat's Phase ability is triggered by boost. It has a cooldown, but once the cooldown is finished the next boost usage will trigger Phase.

Raven has a 'Knockback on Boost' ability that causes a knockback field in front of the ship when boosting. This is only impactful in the very early waves of a run since the knockback strength doesn't scale and it becomes useless against the stat-increased ships in later waves.

These are the only abilities I know of that use boost in this kind of way at the moment, being non-damage and technically non-tank abilities.

Boosting madly around for speed in Endless actually becomes more dangerous than just going regular speed. This is due to the way the map wraps around.

Notice how if you travel in a straight line it will take your ship some time to wrap around the map, PACMAN style. But for enemies, as soon as they are off your screen behind you, they will warp to be in front of you on the opposite side of the screen from their original position. So you end up smashing into them headfirst just 1/2 a screen width away.

This is an easy experiment to do for yourself, don't take my word for it. Just damage a mini-elite a bit, then boost away from it in any direction in a straight line. Within 1/2 a screen you'll run straight into the same mini-elite that's been slightly damaged :)

Plus, as you get further into Endless waves you'll notice that when you use just a little Boost, the enemies behind you simply lurch immediately forward to be right on your ass if you get more than a couple of ship-lengths away. So it's pointless trying to get any great distance on them, and simply causes chaos that makes your work harder.

Single-tap boosts can still work for slow circle-kiting the smaller hordes, to get them clustered up in a blob for easier carnage. Or to take the quick trip between Gold Refinery, Time Cube Planet, and the Time Cube Shop.

This is one of the reasons you need to stay calm when playing and not flee in panic - you'll just kill yourself quicker than just eating a few hits kiting enemies at regular speed and doing single-tap circles.

Boost in deep endless runs is instead a critical resource used as FUEL for the following mechanics.

Deep endless runs rely a strategy of overwhelming the enemy with firepower and tank, while they are trying to overwhelm you with their numbers and large health pools.

The only way for your strategy to succeed is for your Ship Level to always be at a much higher level than the current Wave Number (which is the enemy ship level). And to do that, you need GOLD. LOTS OF GOLD.

q: What Ship Level to Wave Number ratio is a good target?
a: Minimum 2.5-3x Ship Level to Wave Number.

e.g. At Wave 300 you'd want to be at least Ship Level 750.

You'll need to build into that, you won't have that ratio in early game no matter what you do since you won't have enough Gold Vault upgrades or Gold Vault drops to be achieving economic dominance.

You thought you were going to beat the game with skill and cunning? How cute!

You can only win by being a GREEDY BILLIONAIRE.

Kind of like real life, really...

The tl;dr is simply to only use Gold Vault upgrades as your means of achieving your needed economic dominance.

The reason is that as you go further and further into Endless, more and more Gold Vaults and Super Gold Vaults will be dropping courtesy of the increasing numbers of mini-elites that will be appearing.

This is why you'll start loving the mini-elites rather than hating them... they're bringing you the means of their own destruction with tasty, tasty coins :)

As you progress through you can decide for yourself when you want to eventually banish the Gold Vault upgrades once you feel you have enough multiplier built up. I've been on Wave 1000 runs with only a 25x multiplier, and also with a 100x multiplier.

I'd say the minimum is probably 20x, but use your own judgement and feel as you progress.

To make sure you are on the right path, aim to have at least a 4x Gold Vault multiplier by the time you get to Wave 120 Victory. This will ensure you've been able to put enough upgrades into your weapon and tank to be reasonably comfortable moving ahead into Endless.

Check your multiplier by pressing Esc and hovering over the Gold Vault box near the top right of the upgrade icons.

The little gold pips that drop from small enemies, asteroids, and boss ship components are very important up to Wave 120 Victory.

Even if you heavily prioritise Gold Vault upgrades, when you look at your endgame screen at Wave 120 Victory you'll see that at worst your Gold Find contributed 50% of your economy.

That's because you only get a few mini-elites (around 10) and only about 25 Gold Vault spawns for that entire time.

But things change dramatically as you start going into Endless. You'll start getting more and more mini-elites every phase, and they become your source of income with their Gold Vault and Super Gold Vault drops.

I've tried a few endless runs using Gold Find upgrades instead of Gold Vaults upgrades and the evidence is clear to me -- it's a HUGE difference in economy progression.

Even if you dump heaps of upgrades into Gold Find upgrades and ignore Gold Vault upgrades, it still doesn't compare to the ROI from Gold Vault upgrades in Endless.

Gold Planet upgrades simply increase the multiplier of gold drops picked up by your magnet when within the Gold Planet area. They DO NOT affect gold pickups from Gold Vaults, even if they're picked up via Doc's mega-magnet ability.

Also remember this is NOT the same as the Gold Refinery positioned to the top right corner of the Gold Planet -- the Refinery drops Gold Vaults and is not affected by Gold Planet upgrades.

Even for non-Endless runs this is a lame-duck upgrade. Hovering within the Gold Planet area limits your mobility, and while you can do it effectively for some waves, you will want to head out on adventures to collect Time Cubes, Hull Repairs, and Space Cubes if you aren't yet maxed.

The main reason it's pointless trying to build your economy around the Gold Planet is that the ROI is pitiful even when compared to just regular Gold Find upgrades, and abysmal compared to Gold Vault upgrades.

Just banish Gold Planet as soon as you can from the upgrade options.

Aside from unlocking the initial captain abilities, Space Cube investment does nothing to increase the maximum possible power of your ship, weapons, or abilities.

All it does it permanently 'pre-buy' the first few levels of upgrades so you don't have to spend upgrade points on them in-game on each run. The same is true for the planet upgrades etc.

This is undoubtedly useful, but it's not the difference between winning or losing a run up to Wave 120 Victory, or being able to do deep endless runs.

So don't stress about Space Cube farming if that's not your cup of tea. Just get enough to unlock the captain abilities you want, and the rest will just come naturally as you play the game.

I recommend prioritising the Space Cube % Chance upgrade with your Space Cube investments. It means that every time you fly over a Space Cube Vortex in-game, you'll have a higher chance of a Space Cube actually appearing, rather than the sad noise of failure.

Just like all economic progression, it's always the most efficient to take currency chance upgrades like that as early as possible, so every time you play the game you are getting more Space Cube drops than you would otherwise.

For each endless run you do, you should choose one weapon as your damage dealer and only invest into that. Since the Solo Challenge weapon rebalances starting with Build #836, you can choose any weapon you like on a given run, they all work into endless.

Even if you fill your crew slots and potentially have 4 weapons available in your ship, it only really makes sense to focus on upgrading a single weapon and keeping it upgraded enough to be able to deal with the crushing hordes once they start arriving.

Prior to the Solo Challenge related changes starting in Build #836, the main reason for this was that spreading out upgrade points on multiple weapons meant putting points into weapons that simply didn't scale well into endless. So it essentially wasted upgrade points on ineffective upgrades.

With the ongoing weapon power changes from the Solo Challenge Build #836 onwards, it may now be possible to do an effective spread of multiple weapons being upgraded into endless waves. e.g. Having 4 weapons at 25x upgrade rather than 1 weapon at 100x upgrade.

It still wouldn't be as efficient due to overlapping weapon ranges and wasted damage from weapons targeting the same enemies simultaneously, but it could potentially work.

I have NOT tested that approach, but it certainly wasn't viable prior to Build #836 when I was doing the bulk of my deep endless runs.

The other reason to focus on one weapon is to make sure you're reducing the possible offerings in the RNG upgrade screen and Time Cube Shop to just 5 possible choices:

• Weapon
  
• Gold Vault Multiplier
  
• Boost
  
• Max Hull
  
• Hull Repair Per Pickup

With just that list, you've got a great chance on any upgrade roll to see the upgrade you want at any given time. Adding 3 more weapon possibilities into the mix means you'll potentially be missing out on the chance to choose the non-weapon upgrades you need to keep on track.
[/quote]

Prior to the introduction of Solo Challenges in Build #836, and the subsequent weapon rebalances and changes that came because of that, some weapons were not viable as DEEP endless options.

But now courtesy of the base power increases and upgrade multipliers that were needed to make Solo Challenges available to all captains, there's no real 'best endless weapon' anymore.

Some are faster than others (e.g. Katanas, Fireballs, Rockets) but they all do the job for infinite endless.

Boxing Gloves are still crap for base damage, even after Build #958
Boxing Gloves are fantastic at wrecking enemy fleet hordes. But they have awful base damage, since they rely on collision multipliers. This makes them terrible for Planet Killers, Mini Elites, and Bosses -- even since they've received several rebalances. Things are better since Build #958, and you can definitely go infinite Endless, but it's chaotic and can be boringly slow on some of the bosses.

I'd recommend pairing Boxing Gloves (which are great for knockback and fleet hordes) with a weapon that can take advantage of the chaos they cause, such as Rockets. Balance the upgrades between them a bit so the Knockback scaling still works effectively and prevents crushing hordes, and the rest into the other weapon. Don't pair with another short-range weapon like Katanas, that doesn't work well. You want best of both worlds! :)

For players new to endless, note that the calculus of what works in early game compared to late game changes dramatically. Often the strategies you learn for getting to Wave 120 Victory are not particularly helpful once you get to 300+.

A great example is how Rockets start off as long range weapons and you don't need much tank at all, but at 300+ they get used as short range AoE melee weapons and you need very good tanking to survive.

Every single weapon ends up as a melee weapon in Deep Endless because of crushing hordes.

The only real way to learn the differences between early/late game for each weapon is to experiment. Provided your tank is stable, you can try different tactics with any given weapon to see what works best for both the weapon capabilities and your preferred playstyle.

• Budget for around the following total times for endless runs, depending on your tank choice:
  
  - around 25-30 mins for Wave 120 Victory
  - around 90 mins for Wave 300-400
  - around 150-200 mins for Wave 1000
  
  Regular non-boss waves are fixed time intervals but bosses can take shorter or longer periods of time depending on your weapon choice and whether you need to idle to recover boost.
  
  Pause time is not included in the calculated run time, so you can go have dinner or take a bio break without it affecting the run timer.
  
  
• Plan your build ahead. You only get 4 crew and 4 weapon slots in your ship (your main captain + 3 crew). So plan your build and wait for those crew and weapons to come up in the RNG upgrade screen. Be patient, your planned combo will be offered eventually :)
  
  
• If you're doing the usual single-DPS weapon choice, decide up front which of your weapons is going to be your HEAVY HITTER DPS weapon. It doesn't have to be your main captain's weapon, any of your crew weapons will do, there is no functional difference between main captain and crew.
  
  This HEAVY HITTER weapon will be the only one you put points into beyond the 3/3 Super Upgrade level. This is because only the damage stat gets improved in the 'infinity' upgrades, not other benefits like Slow Rating or Slime/Laser Width etc.
  
  Spreading out endless upgrades amongst all your weapons dilutes your ability to deal BIG damage due to the overlap of weapon ranges, auto-target selections, and overkill hits. Since the main threats in end game are the unavoidable crushing hordes, you need to min/max your choices to max out one chosen weapon.
  
  
• Decide up front which method of tanking you're going to use. There are the following types: Boost Tanking, Hull Tanking, and Hybrid. As of Game Build #836 there is still no real shield tanking available for endless run purposes.

During a run, your choice of upgrades requires balancing the need to maintain your economic superiority (Ship Level to Wave ratio) alongside your weapon and tank upgrades. The economy is how you pay for your weapon and tank, and your weapon and tank are how you survive, so both are equally important and a little like a chicken-and-egg problem.

A lot of the balancing comes down to how powerful your chosen weapon is. Some weapons scale so well that you can put off upgrading them too much early on and concentrate on Gold Vault and tank upgrades. Katanas are a great example.

Some weapons need pumping up early just to reach parity with the enemies, so you end up being able to put less into Gold Vault and tank early on.

The key is to learn from experience what it's like to fly with each weapon in the early waves, up to at least Wave 120 Victory, so you can get your own feel of how to juggle the competing economy vs weapon vs tank upgrades early on while your ship is still vulnerable.

Aim to have AT LEAST the following by the time you reach Wave 120 Victory:

• Ship Level 140+
  
• 4x Gold Vault Muitiplier
  
• 50-60 Weapon level (depends on weapon)
  
• 30 Max Boost
  
• 200 Max Hull
  
• 40 Hull Repair per Pickup

The reason for these numbers is that sometime soon after the Wave 120 Victory you'll start to encounter your first dangerous hordes. They aren't enormous yet, but you may find yourself struggling to not be packed in by a few ships and driven around taking damage.

One of the threats in this stage is the ring of red encroaching ships that appear in a circle around you and slowly shrink inwards firing bullets. The bullets aren't the problem, or the red circling ships since they eventually evaporate away. The danger is the mini-elites and white armoured ships that spawn inside the circle or manage to bull their way into it, at a time when you have very limited manoeuvrability to avoid or kite them.

This makes it easier for them to form a crushing horde as it takes fewer of their ships to trap you. If they manage to trap you, you can get beat up pretty quickly if you don't have the DPS to match.

Tactically the most effective way to deal with this early danger is to get out of the red ring of ships as soon as they appear. There is a small window of opportunity when you can fly your ship between the red ring ships and get out of the circle. You have to squeeze between them, but that's ok as touching them doesn't cause damage.

In the early game, pay attention to when they appear and instantly prioritise getting out. It's not essential, it just makes things safer while your tank is not yet stable and your DPS may not be at the best level yet.

At this point your tank is likely still not completely stable, and you won't have reached a healthy Gold Vault multiplier for long term economic domination.

The crushing hordes are definitely in effect now, no matter how strong your build is. You'll be in a rhythm with each phase between bosses and likely a bit on 'mental autopilot' with knowing what waves are coming next and positioning yourself for them.

You should also have your general feel of your laps and timings between planet pickups (Gold Refinery, Time Cube Planet, Space Cube Planet), which can be a bit different depending on which weapon you're using.

You should only have the following upgrades available by now:

• Weapon
  
• Max Boost & Block Damage on Boost (it's a single upgrade card)
  
• Max Hull
  
• Hull Repair Per Pickup
  
• Gold Vault Multiplier (get this to at least 20x, then decide for yourself how much economy you want)

You're unlikely to die from a single wave at this point, but you may be feeling pressure over several waves in particular areas (DPS, tank, economy). Use your feeling of which area is under pressure to shift your upgrade decision making before it becomes too late :)

For example, if you're noticing you aren't repairing back to 100% Hull pretty much straight away after a crushing horde, prioritise bumping up your Hull Repair Per Pickup upgrades for a little while.

Or if you aren't killing crushing hordes fast enough, and thus putting a lot of stress on your tank, prioritise bumping up your weapon upgrades significantly to get them back on top.

Use your Time Cubes to help catch up in the area that's falling behind, and prioritise regular upgrades in the same way until you start seeing things balancing out again. I usually do this by ONLY upgrading the area I need to catch up in for an entire 20-wave phase between bosses, then re-evaluating.

Good indications of sub-par areas in your progression:

• Needing more than one lap to destroy all Planet Killers (DPS problem)
  
• Struggling with hordes that don't contain mini-elites (DPS problem)
  
• Getting very low on boost on a regular basis (tank and/or DPS problem)
  
• Crushing hordes eroding your tank to the point you're worried about the next horde (tank problem)
  
• Spending periods outside of crushing hordes still below 100% Hull (healing problem)
  
• If multiple indicators are happening at once, it's likely an economy problem

By the time you get to around Wave 360, you'll be in the groove and should be very comfortable with your build. You can then start thinking about how long you want your run to go for, and therefore deciding when you want to Banish certain of your remaining upgrade cards.

NEVER banish your weapon upgrade card. Keep upgrading it infinitely.

For a Wave 1000 run, these are very comfortable stat guidelines before banishment:

All builds:

• infinite Weapon upgrades (never banish)
  
• 20x-100x Gold Vault Multiplier (you decide how much OP facemelting DPS you want to afford!)

If using Boost Tanking:

• 800 Max Boost
  
• 1500-2000 Max Hull
  
• 400-500 Hull Repair Per Pickup

If using Hull Tanking (with Ravebow's 4 second Invincibilty):

• 150 Max Boost (for potential emergencies)
  
• 6000 Max Hull
  
• 1500 Hull Repair Per Pickup

If using Hybrid Tanking (with Ravebow's 4 second Invincibility and +10 Boost on Invincibility):

• 150 Max Boost
  
• 2000 Max Hull
  
• 500 Hull Repair Per Pickup

Spend Time Cubes in the upgrade screen to Banish upgrades that you are either never going to use, or you've already upgraded the most you're going to in the run.

Do this early, pretty much from your first Time Cube onwards, so you can start reliably getting offered only the upgrades you care about in the upgrade screen and Time Cube Shop.

Prioritise banishing:

• Any weapon you're not going to be using
  
• Any crew you're not going to be using
  
• Gold Planet and Gold Find (not to be confused with Gold Vault Multiplier!!)
  
• Super Plasma Planet and Super Nova Planet
  
• Shield Upgrades once they've reached their regular x/x max upgrade (no points into infinite shield upgrades)

If you're trying to use a multi-weapon build, you'll need to use your own experience to figure out which weapon to prioritise upgrading first during the very early waves. Ideally you should try to get one weapon to it's 3/3 Super Upgrade level before upgrading the others, as that's when weapons become truly useful.

Use your own judgement based on what you know will make getting to the Wave 120 Victory easiest for you, while letting you put enough stats into Gold Vault upgrades and your tank upgrades at the same time.

For example, in combos where I have Slime available, I like to get that to 3/3 max as quick as possible because of the Slime upgrades being spectacularly awesome for the early game invincible turtling fortress capability.

• Bosses get absurdly high stats at high waves, but their mechanics don't change. If you're keeping up with the necessary 2.5-3x Ship Level : Wave ratio you'll be killing the bosses just as fast at Wave 600 as at Wave 100, since your stats are also going up.
  
  Don't be alarmed by 12million+ health Bosses, just treat them like the scrubs they are!
  
  
• If your tank is stable and you have plenty of boost, use your tank to just fly into bosses and stick there doing your maximum DPS right into their soft spots. This makes bosses evaporate in just a few seconds, instead of trying to dance with them and avoid their nonsense.
  
  

  The first time you do this it'll feel counter-intuitive -- surely you're meant to AVOID bosses, right?
  
  NO!
  
  Be aggressive and slaughter them rapidly up close if your chosen weapon is suited for that.

  
  
• You don't have to kill the bosses immediately :) You can just fly endlessly within their circle if you need a moment to catch your breath or to do other tasks like spending upgrade points.
  
  This is a great way to let your Boost recharge if you've used heaps of it and running low. Make sure you've got enough Boost to deal with the upcoming waves.
  
  
• Bosses that go partway or all the way out of their circle when attacking can drag you out there if you aren't careful. e.g. It's easy to get trapped behind the Elite Hell Bird wings and dragged out into the black hole border.
  
  Don't Panic, just use your boost to fly back around the boss and back into the arena, you won't take much (or any) damage doing that, courtesy of your ship's inherent 'Block Damage on Boost' ability.
  
  Unlike enemies, the boss circle boundary damage does not increase with each wave. It remains at a fairly low level, something around 100 per second I think.

Going deep into Endless doesn't reveal any new mechanics or anything new in the game, beyond some of the emergent behaviours that appear when enemy stats get stupidly high (like the unavoidable crushing hordes).

Once you've got to between Wave 300-400 you'll have proven you've got a stable tank and will have learnt all you need to learn about winning for an infinite period of time. You can probably get a bit more efficient next time, and trying different weapons and captains is great fun, but the meta doesn't change.

There's no leaderboard or anything like that, so the only bragging rights you'll get are in your own head and to satisfy your own sense of accomplishment :)

IMO the only reason to do deep Endless runs is either for Space Cube farming with a fully upgraded ship and non-stop psychedelic eye candy, or because you want to set yourself a challenge and see how far you can go. Once you've mastered the way to tank damage and prioritise upgrade investment, it does get a bit samey.

The reason I personally do long endless runs it is that I find it meditative and good for clearing my mind after a busy day!

Note you can farm Space Cubes much easier/safer/more relaxed on the pre-Victory waves. You don't get any more cubes per wave in Endless.

An alternative way to enjoy the game is to do short runs up to the Wave 120 Victory, to just have a laugh and know ahead of time your run will only be less than 30mins. Take whatever captains and weapons come up in the level-up RNG and enjoy the randomness :)

Or set yourself self-imposed challenges like this one (which has now been incorporated as an official Solo Challenge feature in the game):
https://steamproxy.net/app/1290330/discussions/0/3836549485418145375/

Or something like the "Always Door #1" challenge, where you see how far you can get by only ever choosing the first upgrade option in the upgrade screen.

The devs also seem to be adding more challenge modes with Build #909 onwards.

This is a build from before the Solo Challenge weapon rebalancing starting from game build #836.

This is how the build looked on this run at wave 640 when I chose to self-destruct.


Crew: Corrosia, Raven, Ram
Weapons: Slime, Rockets, Boxing Gloves, Static Field

Early Growth Phase (Levelling Up)
Priority #1 = Gold Vault Multiplier. Whenever this comes up, choose it.

then:
Max out all crew weapons & crew abilities up to Super 3/3 (no infinity upgrades yet).
- then banish crew weapon infinity upgrades EXCEPT primary HEAVY HITTER weapon (Rocket Damage)

max out 4th weapon (Static Field) up to its x/x limit (no infinity upgrades)
- then banish 4th weapon upgrades (Static Field damage)

Max out support upgrades up to their natural x/x limit (no infinity upgrades yet).
- then banish support upgrades EXCEPT those related to tanking, i.e. keep these:
-- Block Damage on Boost & Max Boost (this is a single combined upgrade card)
-- Hull Repair Pickup bonus
-- Max Hull

Middle Infinity Phase (Levelling Up to IMMORTALITY)
At this point you should only have the following in your upgrade roster:

• Gold Vault Multiplier
  
• Max Hull
  
• Block Damage per Boost & Max Boost (it's a single card)
  
• Rocket Damage
  
• Hull Repair per Pickup

This phase ends when you are tanky enough to easily roll anything, and have enough income upgrades to keep at about 3x Ship Level vs Wave #. For this build, that's when you have ABOUT:

• 25 Gold Vault Multiplier
  
• 450 Max Boost (which includes enough Blocked Damage per Boost as they come on one card)
  
• 1000 Hull
  
• 250 Hull Repair per Pickup
  
• ??? Rocket Damage (whatever is equivalent to 2:1 with the Max Boost upgrade levels)

Prioritise the Gold Vault, Rocket Damage, and Max Boost upgrades at 1:1 until you reach around the above figures, then 2x Rocket Damage for every one of the others.

I usually use my Time Cubes to spend on the Hull Upgrades at this point, but there is no difference where the stats come from. Once you get to this point the Time Cube store just offers the same upgrades but each worth 5x per card.

By the time you've got the above stats you're functionally IMMORTAL.

Optionally, in this phase you can also max out the planets to their natural x/x EXCEPT Gold Planet (not to be confused with Gold Refinery). Then Banish the following upgrades:

• Super Plasma Planet
  
• Super Nova Planet
  
• Gold Planet

Endlessly Endless Phase
This phase is just about continuing and reaching whatever threshold tanking stats you are personally comfortable with. You'll be getting so much gold that you'll end up with 80-150 levels each block of 20 inter-Boss waves.

I continued updating to the following rounded stats by the time I got to wave 640 and self-destructed to quit:

• 3000 Max Hull (just because... but you don't actually need this much)
  
• 1250 Max Boost (don't need this much for immortality, but it lets you get super lazy)
  
• 600 Hull Repair per Pickup (don't need anywhere near this much, only lose about 200 health per wave TOTAL and you get heaps of Repair drops)
  
• Gold Vault Multiplier = 40x (391 upgrades)

How to Play this Build
Play normally until you start getting the horde waves that you can't evade or kite properly. This will include MANY mini-elites, the fast tank ships, and the bullet-firing assault ships. The little red chasing ships still melt so they're irrelevant.

Once you get those 'crushing hordes' that you can't escape, use your Boosts to simply turn into them and hold down Boost. You'll take one tick of damage (35 health) and your shields will go down instantly, but that's the point of this tanking method :)

While stuck Boosting inside the crushing horde you won't be travelling anywhere. The horde will carry you along in the middle of it no matter where you turn, but you will take NO DAMAGE. But do NOT stop holding down boost, that's the only thing keeping you IMMORTAL.

Also because you're holding down boost, your Rockets are letting off SUPER ROCKETS very fast. You'll actually see the red internal health meter on the mini-elites that are surrounding you tick outwards with the bursts from your rocket. Everything will be covered in Slime, which stops things moving too fast.

Try to steer your ship into the loot boxes that will be dropping from the mini-elites, may as well wrestle with the horde.

If you do happen to let up the Boosting, you won't instantly die or take severe damage. You'll just start taking 35 damage every 4 seconds as the Invincibility > Shield Recharge cycle kicks in. This isn't a big deal, so don't panic when you hear the "shield down" and "hull damage" sounds cycling, you're still safe. The downside is you won't be releasing Super Rockets anymore because you're not boosting.

Once a crushing horde starts fizzing out, keep Boosting to clear up the stragglers, then collect any loot you couldn't steer into before. Do the rounds of the Gold Refinery, Time Cube Planet, and Space Cube Planet to get that loot and harvest any Super Asteroids that are floating about. Repair your hull with the Hull Repair drops that will be everywhere.

Then just repeat this until you get bored and want to self-destruct.

BTW, self-destructing isn't easy once you become IMMORTAL. Regular waves and crushing hordes can't do it, your ship obliterates everything. Amusingly, the mini-elites from crushing hordes will die from your rockets right next to you and push you into their Hull Repair drops, so you can't even die by doing nothing!! :)

The only way I found to die was to park myself in the death-circle part of a boss battle arena. The boss couldn't hurt me but after about 5 minutes I finally lost all my Hull in 35-points-per-4-seconds intervals.

If you choose to self-destruct this way, have a laugh first because you can just fly out of the Boss circle back into the regular map. Using Boost you won't even take a single point of damage. The death circle is only about 1/4 of a screen width. Once you're back into the regular map area you can just fly about. The mobile bosses will even follow you out there - HILARIOUS! :)

This is a build from before the Solo Challenge weapon rebalancing starting from game build #836.

This is how the build looked on this run at wave about wave 470. I was intending to go to about 620 but my power went out at around 530ish. Doesn't matter for the purposes of this guide, the build was at an IMMORTAL state by then anyway.



Crew: Vermillion, Tesla, Ravenbow
Weapons: Fireballs, Lightning, Lasers, Static Field

Early Growth Phase (Levelling Up)
Priority #1 = Gold Vault Multiplier. Whenever this comes up, choose it.

then:
Max out all crew weapons & crew abilities up to Super 3/3 (no infinity upgrades yet).
- then banish crew weapon infinity upgrades EXCEPT primary HEAVY HITTER weapon (Fireballs)

max out 4th weapon (Static Field) up to its x/x limit (no infinity upgrades)
- then banish 4th weapon upgrades (Static Field damage)

Max out support upgrades up to their natural x/x limit (no infinity upgrades yet).
- then banish support upgrades EXCEPT those related to tanking, i.e. keep these:
-- Hull Repair Pickup bonus
-- Max Hull
-- Block Damage on Boost & Max Boost (this is a single combined upgrade card)

Note above, only take the boost upgrade until you have about 20-30 Max Boosts, then Banish it.
This is just to get some handy speed around the map and for little bits of kiting. Boosting is NOT the tanking method with this build, and there are no weapons that benefit from boosting.

Middle Infinity Phase (Levelling Up to IMMORTALITY)
At this point you should only have the following in your upgrade roster:

• Gold Vault Multiplier
  
• Max Hull
  
• Fireball Damage
  
• Hull Repair per Pickup

This phase ends when you are tanky enough to easily roll anything, and have enough income upgrades to keep at about 3x Ship Level vs Wave #. For this build, that's when you have ABOUT:

• 20 Gold Vault Multiplier
  
• 20-30 Max Boost
  
• 2000 Hull
  
• 400 Hull Repair per Pickup
  
• ??? Fireball Damage (whatever is equivalent to around 250 upgrade levels)

Prioritise the Gold Vault Multiplier at about 2:1 with the other upgrades (Fireball Damage, Max Hull, HulL repair Per Pickup) until you reach around the above figures. This build feels a bit more risky compared to the Boost tanking builds until you have enough Max Hull and Hull Repair upgrades to be comfortable facetanking 5 hordes in a row.

I usually use my Time Cubes to spend on the Hull Upgrades at this point, but there is no difference where the stats come from. The Time Cube store just offers the same upgrades as the regular levelup, except each card is worth 5x per card.

By the time you've got the above stats you're functionally IMMORTAL.

Optionally, in this phase you can also max out the planets to their natural x/x EXCEPT Gold Planet (not to be confused with Gold Refinery). Then Banish the following upgrades:

• Super Plasma Planet
  
• Super Nova Planet
  
• Gold Planet

Endlessly Endless Phase
This phase is just about continuing and reaching whatever threshold tanking stats you are personally comfortable with. You'll be getting so much gold that you'll end up with 80-150 levels each block of 20 inter-Boss waves.

I continued updating to the following rounded stats by the time I got to wave 520ish.

• ~4000 Max Hull (just because... but you don't actually need this much)
  
• 30 Max Boost (for getting around)
  
• ~800 Hull Repair per Pickup (this is important... can stop at 500 if you want but I like overkill)
  
• ~30x Gold Vault Multiplier
  
• ??? Fireball Damage

At that point I only upgraded Fireball Damage, no need for anymore tank, it was way more than enough already.

How to Play this Build
Play normally until you start getting the horde waves that you can't evade or kite properly. This will include MANY mini-elites, the fast tank ships, and the bullet-firing assault ships. The little red chasing ships still melt so they're irrelevant.

Once you get those 'crushing hordes' that you can't escape, simply turn into the horde and just sit there, or Boost into them if you want to steer the horde. Using MANUAL AIM clears hordes quicker with this build as you'll make the best use of the Fireball penetration and Lightning super-sweeper damage to focus fire.

DO NOT PANIC! With this build you are SUPPOSED TO TAKE DAMAGE. That's why you have so much Max Hull and Hull Repair upgrades.

What happens is the first tick of damage will trigger Invincible state, which lasts a long time thanks to Ravebow Hull upgrade! In that time your shield cycles back up (especially if stationary!). Then you take another tick of damage, which triggers Invincible again, and so on.

But the amount of damage you take each time there is a damage tick is a VERY SMALL percentage of your max. The shield down + damage hit noise will probably alarm you when you first hear it and your first instinct will be to want to flee. Don't! Just keep pressing into them or sit still. If you have allocated points properly you can last over a minute just sitting doing nothing... and crushing hordes usually only last about 6-7 second max before you killed everything.

A byproduct of this build is you have INFINITE boost when you are taking damage due to the "Boost Recharge on Invincible" buff from Ravebow Boosters upgrade! You recharge quicker than you spend the boost. Boost adds no extra DPS as this build's weapons don't have a bonus shot every x boosts or anything like that.

So if you get worried about the damage you're taking in a horde, especially in the transitional waved 150-250 where your Max Hull may not be where you want it, feel free to use this as a hybrid tank where you also boost at the same time as hull tanking. The build doesn't have enough boost upgrades to be boost-immortal, but it can smooth out the mid-game rough patches quite a bit.

It's also handy to use the boost to 'steer' into the horde to make sure you are picking up the mini-elite drops as soon as the pop. This is how you collect their Hull Repair drops and effectively remain between 80-100% health the entire game.

Once a crushing horde starts fizzing out, boost about to clear up the stragglers quicker, then collect any loot you couldn't steer into before. Do the rounds of the Gold Refinery, Time Cube Planet, and Space Cube Planet to get that loot and harvest any Super Asteroids that are floating about. Repair your hull with the Hull Repair drops that will be everywhere.

Then just repeat this until you get bored and want to self-destruct.

BTW, self-destructing isn't easy once you become IMMORTAL. Regular waves and crushing hordes can't do it, your ship obliterates everything. The realistic way to self-destruct is to camp in the death circle of a boss and wait 5 minutes while your health ticks away every 4-6 seconds.

This is a build from before the Solo Challenge weapon rebalancing starting from game build #836.

I wanted to see if I could use Ravebow's Lasers as the main HEAVY HITTER dps in a build. It worked, but certainly a challenge!



This is a Boost+Phase tank build, with Lasers as the main damage.

I won't write a progression guide for the build, refer to my other examples to understand tanking and levelup progression logic. Instead I'll just point out the interesting things that make this build different.

Crew: Ravebow, Kat, Corrosia
Weapons: Lasers, Katana, Slime, Nova

Target Stats

• 1700 Hull
  
• 400 Hull Repair per Pickup
  
• 150 Block Damage while Boosting (this gives 269 Max Boost since they are on the same upgrade card
  
• 20 Gold Vault Multiplier
  
• xxx Lasers (infinite)

Ravebow Infinite Boost mechanic
Aside from having the chosen main weapon, Ravebow brings one essential ability to this crew. Namely, the "+10 Boost Recharge on Invincible".

What this does is when you take hull damage and your ship becomes temporarily invincible, it triggers +10 Boost Recharge when invincible triggers. This basically gives you INFINITE boost since you only consume 1 boost per second. Invincible can proc every 5 seconds in this build (it lasts 4 seconds courtesy of Ravebow) so you end up gaining more than you use.

The tradeoff is that you have to take the hull damage to trigger invincible. But it's a negligible amount (around 47+ when upgraded and being crushed by a horde - it increases with enemy strength over time, a tiny bit per wave). The situation where this matters is when you're being crushed by mini-elites, and given they drop plenty of Hull Repair items in your lap when they die, they provide the answer to their own problem :)

Kat Phase for Freedom mechanic
Kat is NOT in this crew for her Katanas, those are just incidental to the build. They help in the early waves so that's a bonus, but since we aren't upgrading them they quickly drop off in value later on.

Rather, Kat is here for her special UNIQUE ability -- Phasing. Every 8 seconds, boost turns into a Phase Boost for 1 second (when upgraded). This means you can't be touched and just fly through everything.

When you're playing solo Kat, this is handy to do sweeps with the Katana through crowds, Samurai style. But in this build it's used as means of escaping from crushing hordes so you can go collect the Hull Repair drops the mini-elites have left behind, or leave that shooty-enemy circle thing and gain more freedom of movement.

This is essential as unlike other builds where the crushing mini-elite hordes will die right on top of your ship and you instantly pick up their drops, in this the Lasers aren't doing enough localised damage to ensure that happens. In fact, most of the time it doesn't. Some mini-elite near the back will die and you can't push your way forward through the crowd to get it, you're being carried off wherever the horde is moving.

By using the Phase Boosts you get free of the horde's clutches and can quickly dash over to snatch up the Hull Repairs, or anything else you want to get. This also helps realign the horde into a nice trail behind you, which gives some kiting time and lines up them up better for Laser coverage and Slime containment.

You could also do this build WITHOUT Kat, and simply try to have enough Max Boost to continue long, long periods of boosting since the hordes do NOT die quickly. With that method, you don't lose hull periodically, but the tradeoff is if you run out of boost you're toast. Or you just have enough Max Hull to tank the hit every 4 seconds between Invincibility cycles and Hull Repair to restore it instantly. Both work.

Nova & Slime for early game
Nova is here purely for the early game knockback, and similarly with the Slime. This gives excellent crowd control right up until around Wave 160, enemies can't really get anywhere near you, which is important as your Lasers are in no way going to win fights for you that early in the game.

As you can see, Nova did a measly 24.5m damage by the end of the game, the lowest of any weapon, so while it was critical for surviving the early game while building up Laser and tank strength, it then just became eye candy.

Slime in endgame
The Slime is very, very useful in the early game, especially with a pre-upgraded Corrosia that starts with a very long trail, some slow, and decent slime damage. Nothing can really get through it early on.

In the endgame phase, Slime becomes a horde alignment tool used in kiting, since the slime Slow still has the same effect as usual. This helps line up the enemy ships in a slowed trail behind you, or in a circle if you run rings around them. Both methods optimise the damage each Laser beam can do, as the ships will either run through them crosswise or be pierced by them lengthwise.

The Lasers have a slow effect as well, so this works nicely. Whlie the slow will NOT prevent the ships catching you, it helps maximise the time the Lasers have to do their work, per shot.

This is difficult to describe in words, but if you try out a few kiting methods with Slime and Lasers you'll see what I mean when I say "alignment".

Economy challenge...
Using this build I was always right on the cusp of acceptable economy progression, right up until about Wave 400-450ish. This is because I was scrambling to get my tank up as quickly as I could to keep up with the horde progression, as unlike other builds there isn't enough damage here to smash enemies fast.

To put that in perspective, crushing hordes at Wave 170 were a big challenge already, and only Kat Phase boost was the thing that enabled survival. In a Rocket build, you don't start getting swamped by crushing hordes until about Wave 250+.

In effect this means I was behind on economy the whole time, and only caught up near the end once I reached my target levels of Hull, Hull Repair, and Boost and could banish them. That's why I ended up on the low side of Ship Level vs Wave ratio (1200:525), and for most of the game it was WAY lower than that.

At that stage I was at just 10 Gold Vault Multiplier, way too low really. But after dumping into that stat up to 20x and then banishing it, Lasers starting finally becoming facemelters, particularly the Gold Laser beams.

This made things much more challenging than other builds, as there was no 'melting of enemies' or bosses until right near the end of the run, unlike with say Rockets or Katanas where melting starts quite early.

This is a build from before the Solo Challenge weapon rebalancing starting from game build #836.

Below is a fun build using Katanas for damage, Phase + Hull + Boost tanking.

4 hours, Wave 1143.



Kat is great fun as her massive damage plus unique ability to phase through/inside enemies makes her facemelt literally everything.

Bosses die in a few seconds. Crushing hordes get blended in under 5 seconds (one invincibility cycle!). Planet killers get wrecked in one lap.

Probably the most fun build I've used just wrecking everything.

This is just as good as a solo build, but for this run Ravebow is included solely for her +2 second Invincibility bonus (total 4 seconds) and +10 boost restore on Invincibility (infinite boost). TeslAI is here just as means of easing the first 60-ish waves to counter the RNG of the early levelup screens. But they are PURELY OPTIONAL, the build isn't dependant on them.

Hopefully you've learnt some tips that will help you get into the deep Endless waves. Post a screenshot if you get up around wave 400+, especially if you have some interesting crew or weapon combo :)

Either way, have fun! Cheers!

- Torq