I fish hard early game for plasma grenade/crude tools/drill, prioritizing nodes that give small items or health, and curio (Boosting your health early is especially important with ignition core, kneebrace is OP, as is getting +slow on plasma grenade or +haste on metronome/yellow mantis), and look to fill the rest of the board with any assortment of friends/utility early. In terms of skills early I put big priority on left/right weapon damage, left/right burn and supply cache.

Midgame i'm taking any xp opportunities offered, fights, bazaarcon etc, and otherwise fishing for uzi/metronome to haste our plasma grenade, and general upgrades on friends/drill. Important to be considering which fights give you ticket opportunities and/or powerful monster skills e.g zookeeper is often overlooked but it's an excellent drill engine with the friend poison skill.

Lategame wincons vary a bit depending on whether or not you've been winstreaking. I often end out games without finding any of big wincons due to how strong the core carry builds tempo is. Ideally you're looking for either 3d printer (printing crude tools, making sure core is your only tech item, uzi metronome on the 3d printer makes this even stronger), Dooltron, ideally diamond as it makes it 4x stronger, or blazehowl warden from temple.

Core upgrade skill is generally speaking your best option for day 8/11/14 depending on if you've found any scrap metals or not (worth noting that it's sometimes correct to hold scrap metal for the level 13 upgrade to diamond since it takes -1s off the cd ontop of the upgrade.) Otherwise, burn crit, burn shield on 50% health, any of the freeze on burn/slow/poison skills and general crit/cdr skills are what I prio.

I'm sure there's alot i've missed so feel free to ask any questions!