Anyone who, like me, had everything unlocked already before the update will want to unlock these new characters as fast as possible. Here’s how to do that.
Apprentice
How to Unlock
There’s no way around this one, you have to reach level 20 to unlock it. The best way to mitigate the grind is to use the Mutant. A flat +200% rate will get you there much faster
Strategy
The Apprentice is quite simple. You gain all damage types on level up. But at the cost of -2 Max HP. Normally you gain +1 Max HP on level up, so now you instead lose one HP. This might not seem like much, but it adds up quickly and can reduce you to being a very fragile Brotato.
The Apprentice is by its nature a glass cannon, you’ll gain tons of damage for free, but you’ll have to look for HP items to stay alive. Your Hybrid Stat gain also means you can combine multiple damage types to deal with your enemies. That means multiscaling weapons, while picking up turrets and burning enemies with scared sausage.
Cryptid
How to Unlock
The Cryptid is unlocked by finishing a wave with ten or more living trees. The Explorer’s stat of increased trees spawning is a good way to help you along, especially if you find the item with the same effect, but this is a double-edged sword.
The Explorer also starts with a lumberjack shirt, meaning you’ll want to avoid turrets, explosives, any sort of crowd control, really. The last thing you want is for an explosion to destroy your last tree right as the round ends.
Strategy
The Cryptid tries to survive while running around the map, avoiding the trees. Your ability to move around the map becomes limited the longer the wave goes on, as more trees spawn.
As the Cryptid, you’ll have a very strong economy as long as you can manage to keep trees alive, and it can really make you have a great early game. Cryptid also has a super powerful late game with the 70% dodge cap, bonus attack speed, and free HP Regeneration. Generally a powerful character.
- Keep the Trees alive: Cryptid Gains 12 Materials and XP per tree that is alive at the end of the round. Trees only drop 3 materials, and have a 20% chance to drop a crate. (That chance decreases for every crate that drops during a wave). It isn’t worth it to kill trees. The crate drops won’t cover it. Also you’re losing HP Regen.
- But don’t be afraid to kill trees: During the later waves, especially if you’ve bought some of the tree items (Which you should), the map will be covered in trees. Don’t be afraid to kill a tree or two to keep a path open. It isn’t worth dying for 9-18 Materials.
- Avoid Ranged and Engineering: Explosions, Turrets, Long Range weapons will often pop trees without your consent. So it is best to avoid picking up these, including long range melee weapons like spears.
- Range: You have -100 range by default. This helps you not kill trees by accident, but also makes it harder to hit enemies. Learn what amount of range you’re comfortable with. If you don’t have enough attack speed, enemies might hit you, before your weapons can react and hit the enemies. Simply make sure you have enough attack speed or get more range. Whatever suits you.
- Build Dodge: Cryptid gains attack speed when dodging, and has a dodge maximum of 70%. This is stronger than it might sound. 60% dodge means you can take 150% more damage before dying, since only 40% of the attacks hit. 70% Dodge means you can take 233% more damage before dying, making it way stronger. And don’t leave it at 63-67% dodge or something. GET IT TO 70%!!
- Luck: Cryptid has less reason to build luck. You won’t be killing trees, which is where a lot of the crates come from. I still like the good Luck options, Lost Duck, Clover, etc. But I’m less willing to invest in it.
- Consumable Healing: Cryptid can’t life steal. But I like to get consumable healing, since it allows you to use all the trees as health packs during elite and Boss fights. Later in the game, you End up killing a lot of trees anyway.
Pacifist Build
- Just get 6 hands, don’t get tasers, since they have awful range, and will kill trees.
- Focus on getting speed up for wave 6-7, then you just build your dodge up.
- Look for Max HP and Armor as well. More HP Regen is also welcome.
- Look for the Ugly tooth and Wandering bot, two stables of the Pacifist archetype.
- Dump Luck and Consumable healing on this build.
- Move in circles around the Map. You can still kill trees with Hands. So try to dodge them a bit. But don’t risk your life for a tree. Just kill them, it doesn’t matter. And don’t buy Lumberjack Shirt
Fisherman
How to Unlock
The Fisherman isn’t complicated to unlock, but it does require a little luck — you just have to get two baits in one run. Getting them is a minor matter of luck, but you’ll want to make sure you can actually survive the onslaught. Just pick the lowest difficulty and don’t play something like the Pacifist and you’ll be fine.
Strategy
The Fisherman is a very difficult, high risk, but high power character. Your Shop always sells the bait item for 1 gold, but how many can you survive to buy without dying?
Your entire game revolves around buying the bait item, and learning how to handle all the enemies it spawns.
Each Bait costs 1 gold, gives 8% dmg, +2 Harvesting, and spawns enemies that drop materials. It is an insanely good investment. But Lampreys also spawns throughout the wave depending on the number of Baits you have. So while you become super strong, so will the challenge you face.
- Temper your Greed – You don’t need to buy 5+ Baits each round to beat the game. 2-3 can be enough. Maybe you become stronger and can handle more.
- Boss & Elite Waves – These become quite Easy for the Fisherman. With the insane amount of damage you deal, Bosses and Elites melt in seconds. If you’re nervous about winning the wave, you can simply skip out on buying baits in the shop before the Boss wave or elites waves. So instead of 30 lampreys spawning, you’ll just instantly murder the Elite.
- Learn the Patterns of the Lampreys – Lampreys are quite tanky, and will chase towards you, charging you every few seconds. When they charge, they will fire 2 projectiles, one to each side in a V shape at the start and at the end of each charge. You can learn to predict and dodge these.
- Healing: As the Fisherman I find myself taking tons of damage. So I like getting a good amount of healing, so I don’t die to the Lampreys spawning throughout the wave. Life steal can be ok, but you’re killing enemies in 1 hit, so it isn’t the best. You have a lot of enemies spawning, so Luck + Consumable healing is a good option. Since you take damage from the start of the wave, HP Regen is also awesome on Fisherman.
Golem
How to Unlock
This one is very easy. You have to end a wave on one hp, which might make you think of the ghost item that starts you at one hp. But you don’t need to muck around with that when you can just use the Pacifist, walk into nine enemies on the first wave, and avoid them for the rest of the wave. Ridiculously simple.
Strategy
The Golem cannot Heal. But instead You gain +33% more Max HP and Armor. So you want to stack those stats to survive. The Golem can play kind of like a more extreme version of Chunky.
In the early waves you will breeze through with your 39 starting health, but as waves become longer and longer, the lack of healing becomes a bigger downside. Learn how to move carefully and avoid stray projectiles and not walk into damage. Some damage is unavoidable, but you’ll have the Max HP to handle that.
If you’re struggling with not taking damage in melee, switching to a ranged build can be easier.
- Strong Early Game: The Golem has a super strong early game, and it is hard to die in the first 5 waves. Use this to invest in harvesting and other forms of economy. It will help you out later in the game.
- Falling below 50% – When you lose more than 50% of your HP, you gain +40% attack speed and +20% movement speed. This is a powerful boost that can help you outpace enemies, or keep up in damage output.
- Going below 50% – Sometimes you might choose to go below 50% on purpose to activate the boost. The main reason for doing so is to increase your Damage output. Especially with ranged Weapons. It can give you the boost you need if you want to kill an elite. But it is dangerous. Once you go below 50%, you can’t get that HP back, so the strategy will kill you sometimes.
King
How to Unlock
The King is unlocked by having 3 tier IV weapons at once. Your best bet there is to buff up your Luck stat, especially if you can be fortunate enough to get an Anvil. The Lucky class is a good place to start. And again, seriously, pray you get the Anvil early, as it will trivialize this one.
Strategy
The King has a rough start, but an insane late game. Consider what you buy, and try to combine weapons. Once you get 1-2 Tier 4 Weapons, you’ll have tons of stats and the game will be easy.
- Reconsider your Tier 1 Items: The first copy of each Tier 1 item has a -2 Max HP tagged along with its effect. This makes most items you buy terrible. I still buy items like Bag, Tree, Coffee, Coupon, and Broken Mouth. And then maybe some archetype items like Snake, Ugly Tooth, or Sharp Bullet. But really limit how many you buy.
- Only the First Copy tho: It is only the first copy of each Tier 1 Item that gives -2 HP, so once you have gotten the first one, you can buy away when you see the item again.
- Focus on Buying Weapons: Since you have a ton of stats waiting for you when you reach Tier 4 Weapons, you should focus on reaching that goal. Your shop is going to show you a lot of tempting tier 2-3 Items. But be picky about which items you buy, and make sure you buy the weapons and get enough rerolls in with each shop.
- Be ready for the Midgame: Mid game can be a killer with its elites and stronger enemies. Try to make sure your build comes online so you’re ready. If you havn’t yet gotten a tier 4 Weapon, and you’re down 10 HP from tier 1 items, the first Elite can easily murder you. King gets offered a ton of tier 2-3 items, which while good, can distract you from getting enough weapons.
- Get some Early Max HP: Since you lose a bit of Max HP from buying Tier 1 Items, you want to get some extra Max HP early to compensate.
- Always Combine Above Tier 1: As King, you want to combine Tier 1 Weapons as soon as possible, even if it means going below 6 weapons. The -15% Attack Speed and Dmg penalty is very harsh. Having one Tier 1 weapon while waiting to upgrade it is fine. But you don’t want more.
- Mixing Weapons: King benefits a lot from getting to Tier 4 Weapons, so mixing weapons, meaning you’re using maybe 2-3 different weapons, can get you there faster. Using 4-6 different weapons is also the point where it begins to become harder to combine weapons.
- You still want to mix weapons that go well together. So make sure they scale with the same stats, play nice together. (Shuriken’s chip damage doesn’t do much in a melee build for example)
Renegade
How to Unlock
You have to have ten tier one items in a run to unlock the Renegade. My first thought was that this had to be tier-one items, where you’d be better off using the Wilding so you don’t get anything better than tier 2, or the Multitasker so you can have twelve weapons at once right off the bat.
Those are still valid strategies — Multtasker in particular will probably be very fast — but most runs with any sort of Luck investment will get this no matter what because most of the items you find in crates will be low-tier. This isn’t the fastest one to unlock, but its by no means difficult.
Strategy
The Renegade is super powerful once you learn the playstyle. Your weapons fire in random directions, and deal tiny amounts of damage, but the triple projectiles and Piercing allows even single target guns to clear out crowds of enemies.
You gain +10% (+2% reduced) damage from buying new Tier 1 items. This is how you’re getting %Dmg. Don’t waste your upgrades on it. In the first 3-5 shops, you don’t want to lock or buy bad Tier 1 items. Just do like on any other character and only buy the good ones.
But once the midgame of wave 7+ hits, you begin collecting tier 1 items, and you shouldn’t be shy to buy items that do nothing. Once you hit the late game you might even want to pick up items that are bad for you. (But don’t buy -1 Ranged Damage items)
I hope the above information was helpful. Happy gaming!
Can confirm unlocking Renegade does not need to be 12 weapons. Any 12 grey items would do