Before I take you deeper into the whole Bloodshot knowledge, I'd like to take care of some questions that might pop out right away.

A: Bloodshot Staff (in other name as All-Seeing Staff) is a weapon usable by Apprentice/Adept, Jester or Series EV. It is a Core drop or a Boss reward obtainable from Moraggo Desert Town playing as Apprentice/Adept.

A: There are two major key things that differ this staff from every other. One is that its elemental (poison) damage actually scales with Hero damage beside commonly used staff like Classic's Eagle. The second is its unigue projectile spread pattern that allows higher damage result on a longer distances (will be shown below).

A: It's set in the game code that it scales with Hero damage together with base damage, but when upgrading, elemental damage provides higher amount of damage per upgrade (will be shown below). So in the end the higher DPS result comes from fully upgraded elemental damage than base damage. The only negative of this is when attacking poison immune enemies, unless you're attacking them in Strength Drain Aura.

A: Definitely! Not only it looks cool on your Jester or Mage, it is also known as the best DPS staff in the game (according to Who's the best DPS hero on Nightmare? guide) that can easily beat Classic's Eagle or even Blaster Rifle on a Jester hero.

A: Yes. Since it is a map specific weapon, it can spawn with higher stats than other common core drops. With some luck, you can end up with usable cool-looking tower weapon. Although it's usually not as good as for example Obsidian Clava from Akatiti Jungle.

You might not believe me, but Bloodshot indeed beats Classic in final damage output, even though it has lower base/elemental damage, the fact that it hits target with more projectiles is crucial. Allow me to show you the drastic difference between these staffs.

• Note: I added Bone staff to comparison since it is also a drop obtainable from Moraggo as well as Bloodshot and has very similar damage scaling, instead poison it deals fire damage, and the projectile pattern also allows to hit target with more projectiles even on further range

Now that you know about the differences in patterns, let me show you some results from testing these staffs.

• Note: All the following tests were done on Open mode with Nightmare difficulty turned ON in tavern tested on dummy using Jester with 4k Hero Damage

62k Classic in a dead-close range so all projectiles hit the target

note: final damage decreases dramatically with increasing distance

45k Bloodshot in a further distance, all projectiles still hit target

note: even though it has slightly lower final damage, it is still way better than using Classic from the same distance

40k Bone Staff from the same distance as Bloodshot (just to demonstrate the similarity)


130k Blaster Rifle, just in case you claim Blaster as a better weapon than some staff


218k Pawn Shot comparison with others

note: Pawn itself as a DPS weapon isn't the best choice, much better results are achievable on Special abilities such as Ranger's Pierce Shot or EV's Proton Beam

• Commonly misunderstooded fact: Since Jester is marked in game code as an Apprentice hero, all gun/sword weapons scale badly on him, way better results are achievable with staffs. That is the reason why the results above are as they are.
  
• More in-depth information about DPS outcomes for each weapon can be found in this guide. I didn't want to go here more in-depth because I would end up with the same results. If you're interested in those numbers, feel free to check it out.
  Who's the best DPS hero on Nightmare?

Now that we know about unique aspects of this staff, it's time to show how can you get your hands on some. The best way to get a decent one is to do Moraggo survival on NMHCMM difficulty. Below I'll show you the build I came up with that is suitable for fairly achievable builder stats with just mythical gear. With these stats it's possible to survive without much effort put into upgrading defences (buffs + auras only) until wave 25, after that it doesn't hold very well without further upgrading. Of course I highly recommend to use higher overlall stats (especially on EV) to proceed to the end of survival session without troubles, this was an example just to show that it is possible to get reasonably far for good core drops without higher equipment tier.



For better orientation in this huge map I divided the whole build into 6 sections, as shown on picture below.



All the placement of defences should be clearly visible, but just to make sure I'll list it below:

• Ensnare + Electric + Strength Drain auras (furthermore, just 'Aura stack')
  
• 4DU Buff Beam & 2DU Wall Beam
  
• 3x Archer, 1x Mage, 1x Spider
  
• 1x Harpoon
  
• 1x Gas trap

On a few places of this build I used stacked-minions technique. If you don't know how to do so, be sure to check wat's instruction video.

• Aura stack
  
• 5DU Buff Beam & 2DU Reflection Beam
  
• 6x Archer, 1x Mage, 1x Spider
  
• 1x Gas trap

• Aura stack
  
• 6DU Buff Beam & 3DU Wall Beam
  
• 5x Archer, 1x Mage, 1x Spider
  
• 1x Harpoon
  
• 1x Gas trap

• Aura stack
  
• 4DU Buff Beam
  
• 1x Archer
  
• 2x Harpoon

• Aura stack
  
• 5DU Buff Beam & 1DU Reflection Beam
  
• 5x Archer, 1x Mage, 1x Spider
  
• 1x Harpoon
  
• 1x Gas trap

• Aura stack
  
• 5DU Buff Beam
  
• 5x Archer, 1x Mage, 1x Spider
  
• 1x Gas trap

At the end of the build you should end up with both DU & MU at 160/160.

• suggested starting wave: 19-21
  
• in avarage the best loot drop between waves 19-31 (personal* & other group members experience)
  
• after you build the whole setup and before you start the session be sure to upgrade every buff beam to 3 stars (there should be enough mana on wave 20 for all of them); also upgrade the Strength Drain aura in central area (2) a few times
  
• in the first wave of the session no loot drops, so use this time to upgrade as many defences as you can with your Jester; ideal is to upgrade all buffs and auras in the first wave, once you do that, you pretty much won, then you can keep upgrading the rest with equanimity
  
• after first wave be sure to switch to Apprentice/Adept (potentially add some extra heroes via controller or emulator to achieve higher drop rates) so those staffs can actually drop; Jester works too, but has only ~1/4 staff drops from all the drops and another ~1/10 chance in addition for an actual Bloodshot drop
  
• since Bloodshot (potentially Bone staff if you're looking to use that) is a core drop or random drop from chest, be sure to check all choke points during build phase while you repair defences, also be sure to open all chests, you might get surprised by a u/+/++ drop from there (few known cases of ult drops from chests are noted)
  
• this map also gives armor drops comparable to King's Game survival or even Lab Assault, commonly found are high-end myth armor drops and all other decent tiers; there is also a chance for über-high-end drops such as u++
  
  
• One fact: It is possible to obtain a Bloodshot/Bone Staff that its damage could be very similar to a RainMaker event staff!

*I've spent roughly 400 hours on this bloody map, so that should be big enough sample

How do you decide which staff is the best to use? There are few key things that you need to pay attention in order to keep your staff functioning properly.

• 1 - The major thing to look for is the tier of a staff, usually Transcendent or lower won't have significant final damage, but Supreme or higher is more than decent. Although it may not be as prioritized since all tiers share the same amount of damage per upgrade value, but the amount of upgrades for higher tiers is in the end crucial.
  
• 2 - Next to look for is the total number of upgrades. A decent staff is considered with 250+ total upgrades. You might end up with an Ultimate staff with 190 upgrades (yes few cases are actually noted since the RNGesus [Random Number Generator + Jesus] is inscrutable) and you might end up with a Supreme staff with 220 upgrades that is actually better than the ult one.
  
• 3 - For Bloodshot staff is incredibly important to have extra projectiles (goes up to 5). Bloodshot with no extra projectiles = useless!
  
• 3* - This goes pretty much hand in hand with 3, you don't want to end up with negative projectile speed (optional is 10k+ speed).
  
• 4 - Charge Speed is the amount of time it takes to charge staff to its maximum potential. Considered optional Charge Speed is 70-80. (one tip: while using staff in combat, holding left&right mouse buttons at the same time puts staff into 'auto-fire mode')
  
• 5 - Since the elemental damage scales with Hero Damage, it's important to have decent amount of starting base elemental damage. It can spawn up to ~2k posion damage, the higher when spawned the better. It can be at the end compensated with the higher number of upgrades (2) so don't be sad when you see f.e. few hundred spawn poison damage. Considered 'good' damage is around 40k poison when maxed. There is also a chance that Bloodshot can spawn without elemental damage, in that case it becomes almost useless.
  
• 6 - Last thing to look for are hero stats. But they are not that important as the other stats for staff listed above, but it's always nice to have some additional stats.
  
• Note: The same order applies for Bone Staff as well.

...you may be asking. Not only it scales with Hero Damage, it also provides higher amount of damage per upgrade, as shown below.

Now we'll take a look on how to upgrade this staff. It's not difficult at all, but there are few steps that need to be followed. As shown below.


This is an example of naturally generated/spawned staff as you could find on the ground. First things to upgrade are following:

• Charge Speed to a range 70-80
  
• Projectile Speed to a range about 10k or more
  
• Also be sure to put every 5th upgrade into Extra Projectiles - up to 5

Next step is pretty straight forward:

• Finish upgrading stats from Step one (if you haven't already)
  
• Spend the rest of your upgrades into Elemental Damage
  
• ! Do NOT waste your precious upgrades on hero stats, you want from your staff the best possible output !

This is the final product that you should end up with. The only thing left is maybe naming the staff, and you're good to go to rekt some enemies!
Note: Same steps go for Bone Staff as well.

The point of this guide was to introduce fellow Defenders to this not commonly used and underestimated weapon. By the end of this guide I'd like to see some opinion changes to this staff and maybe higher common usage since it has a huge potential that not many of us know about.

• Feel free to check DDFRBR group where many nice and helpful Defenders play DD daily and where you can also find me in the group chat.
  
• Also feel free to take a look at my other guides.
  
• Special thanks to the kindest soul miss jemmajule for grammar & spelling checking! ♥

If this guide was useful or helpful for you, be sure to leave a rating or feedback, both would be highly appreciated.
Last thing to say at the end, good luck with RNGesus while farming these staffs and thank you for your time spending reading this guide!

Regards,
NoVa

• Released the guide

• Added How to upgrade your staff properly section
  
• Added DDplanner layout
  
• Fixed some typos

• Added Pawn Shot comparison & Base vs. Poison upgrade comparison pictures

• Extended Q & A section
  
• Fixed one build screen

• Fixed few parts due to Steam updates

• Added few unclear information in Build section

• reworked overall look of guide

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