Here are the basic principles of achieving high level (and they are not necessarily the same as winning a run). I'll order the ideas by putting the most impactful ones first :

1. Do not kill the end of the stages bosses quickly, delay that and farm the level for as long as possible. The higher your dps, the longer you can farm the level safely without being overwhelmed. Once things start to get crazy, then focus on killing the boss and leave.

2. The above is achieved by avoiding boss killer weapons. Things like the M1000, Nishanka, and anything that targets the highest hp enemy or has high single target damage. Instead prioritize slows, freezed, and knockbacks as they will buy you a ton of time to farm more xp. The ideal weapon for this is the cryo grenade, so try to get it as a 2nd weapon and you are off to a very good start. Boomstick with cryo overlock is another good choice, and so are most AOE cryp weapons be it base or with overclock cryo upgrade.

3. On hazard 5, prioritize dps over +Xp% because you need to kill things so you can stay longer in a stage, and there are plenty of things to kill. On lower difficulty like hazard 4, yes focus more on +xp% bonuses because there is only 1 boss per stage and not 2, and less bugs, so you need to extract more xp from every kill to reach a high level. That being said still prioritize a really good dps gain vs a 6% xp gain, if you're getting 25% more damage on your main weapon like the cryo grenade, that will be a lot more useful than 6% experience.

4. Pick the artefact as soon as possible. Not only to benefit from the possible extra dps as early as possible to farm as much as possible from stage 1, but also to avoid killing the boss with the drop later on.

5. Create a big area where you clear all walls, so you can put all the bugs in a ball you can circle and farm later when the stage boss spawns.

6. Prioritize clearing the map out of minerals first because minerals still give you xp and level up your guns between stages. Also the faster you kill the enemies the faster the progress bar at the top goes fast and trigger the stage boss earlier, so you don't want to start the stage with massive killing, but rather with farming the minerals. While you do that make sure you keep killing by mining the side of walls and not inside walls, so your weapons still have a clear shot at the bugs most of the time.

7. Goes without saying, but the final stage with the final boss, don't squash it with the artefact drop, you want him to survive longer to buy more time for you to reach a higher level.

Don't pick weapons that will kill the bosses faster, like the M1000 or the nishanka.

Focus on AOE weapons because you want the boss to survive as long as possible so you can farm each level to its max HP potential.

Ideally pick guns that slow, freeze, and knockback so you can buy as much time as possible. Weapons like : cryo grenade, boomstick, plasma charger (it has a slow overclock), and maybe the arc tek cryo guard if you don't pick the attack overclock. The base weapon, the Zhukov also has a cryo upgrade.

The perfect loadout for this is : Zhukov with cryo, cryo grenade second (build it as big as possible with reload speed as priority), boomstick with cryo, and finally arc-tek cryo guard. This way you will be able to stack a lot of cryo damage to benefit all 4 weapons and everything will be near perma frozen.

Note : Plasma charger with slow overclock is also pretty nice as a 4th instead of the drone. Please also remember that you don't need all 4 cryo weapons to do this, you can often get away with 2 or 3, especially if you have the cryo grenade.

If you enjoyed these tips or want to see them in action, feel free to find me on Twitch, nickname Drakenkin. I only stream hazard 5 and I am currently doing a win streak challenge using a different build everytime, current streak is 10 wins. I also always explain my decision making so if you're still learning about the game i believe you will benefit from watching!

Until the next cavern, my friend.