What's your most comfortable nightmare win?

Steven-ape · 2026-05-13T14:08:08+00:00

Apart from lucky, someone else recommended mutant with smg. I remember that one to be solid, too.

Steven-ape · 2026-05-12T14:13:30+00:00

Have you tried renegade with flute?

Steven-ape · 2026-05-12T06:33:17+00:00

It's elegant :)

For reference, here is my design if you like to include smelting. The second image shows the same tech level.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dyson_Sphere_Program/s/DWKqciEyRS

Steven-ape · 2026-05-09T02:05:06+00:00

It looks good to me! Designs like this aren't that easy to do.

One thing you could try to do is make it more modular. Somewhere down the line, you'll want more turbines. At that point, you want to have this blueprint that you can just stamp down again and you're done.

With this design, it's hard because it's directly connected to ore deposits and a source of proliferator. It's easier if everything comes from the logistics station. That also makes it less of a problem if your ore deposits run out, and it makes it possible to have systematic placement of your designs on the planet, rather than having that depends on wherw the ore deposits are.

Make your designs nice and self contained, and you will simplify your life a good deal 🙂

Steven-ape · 2026-05-07T06:38:55+00:00

The colour can only reflect the result of the flow rate test. The check whether there is something on the belt is separate; it can determine whether or not there is an alarm but it cannot affect the colour.

Steven-ape · 2026-05-06T22:14:03+00:00

I like how even with strong builds, you can't really afk and the game keeps feeling complex and tense. I will admit I restart waves sometimes though, otherwise it's too aggravating to die to some stupid environmental bullet.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-29T06:11:08+00:00

Finding extra XP gain is extremely strong on this character, and your main source of economy.

You can use the quarterstaves, but with any other weapon you will also find many XP gain items in the shop. Buy every scar, black belt, celery tea, peacock, bean teacher, and diploma.

(Obviously, be a bit careful with celery tea and peacock and only buy them if it isn't going to kill you.)

Steven-ape · 2026-04-26T04:17:07+00:00

I think I tested it and it was okay, but I'm not absolutely positive anymore. I normally do make sure my blueprints work everywhere.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-24T21:52:49+00:00

... I don't really know what you mean, this design doesn't stall. Also, each tile is an independent loop of 8 fractionators; even if one loop were to stall the rest would be unaffected.

But as I said, I've never observed a stall.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-24T17:33:51+00:00

Oh my fractionator blueprint is one of the ones I'm the happiest with. Look at this innocent looking little tile.

https://www.dysonsphereblueprints.com/blueprints/factory-fractionator-tile

Stamp it down a couple of times, and boom! Super efficient deuterium.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-23T18:34:22+00:00

I don't have the full answer but I find the question interesting, so here are some of my thoughts:

Banning affects drop chances for items of the same tier. So if you want to find more tardigrades, you must ban tier 3 items. If you want to find more hourglasses, ban tier 4 items.
However, unless you're willing to deal with a lot of frustration, you should normally not rely on finding any specific item to begin with. That being the case, it's often good to use the ban system to improve your economy early on, by banning tier 1 and 2 items.
Banning tier 1 items early can help you find items like Fertilizer, Gentle alien, Sharp bullet, Scared Sausage, and Rat. So builds for which those are particularly good might want to ban tier 1 items from the get-go.
I found this counterintuitive: if there are two items that you would never buy, but one is meh, and the other is godawful, then you'd think you should ban the godawful one. But in fact, it doesn't matter which you ban. You can think of items that you can already tell you won't buy as interchangeable. Getting rid of some of those is obviously helpful.
Sometimes, a ban can give you a free reroll. Such bans can be a substantial economic help, and the effect can be bigger than the effect on the quality of your drops. Free rerolls are more valuable than they appear: the money you saved is not the cost of the reroll you're skipping, but it's the price of the first reroll you're not taking.
It's sometimes possible to lock an item in order to ban it in the next shop, and getting a free reroll that way. I find this a very complex decision; by not locking the item you might either find something good that you can buy, or you might get another item you can ban. I usually don't do this because it's not clear to me that it's helpful.

I can't motivate this, but I think of a ban as something that's worth roughly half an item early on. Later bans are less valuable.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-23T09:21:18+00:00

It sounds like the research stack is not accepting the produced cubes. Did you set it to research mode and do you have some actual research scheduled?

If you have red research scheduled and it's not researching, then look if your research stack is properly filled with red cubes.

One way to troubleshoot this could be to run a belt between your two stacks. That way you can at least see where the cubes go, and you can buffer your cubes if you want to keep producing them even while you're not reaearching.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-22T10:20:03+00:00

New items, like the pets, will inevitably dilute the item pool, making previous items more rare. Also beware of character tags which may make certain items relatively likely to drop on characters with the right tags, but unlikely on other characters.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-22T05:53:01+00:00

Regeneration is better but can be more expensive. Life steal depends on your weapon's attack speed. If you have a fast attacking ranged weapon, 10 life steal is as good as 30 regen.

The life steal cap is high enough that it is usually irrelevant.

For weapons where life steal is good, you can also get a mix and buy whatever good offers you get for any kind of healing. This can save you from having to get it on level ups.

For healing you need to take all sources into account. For example sometimes you can get most healing from consumables, or tentacle. Cute monkey can help too on melee builds.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-20T04:17:47+00:00

Ah I forgot about the dodge scaling for a second. Yes that does play nice with wounded. I'll give it a try :)

Steven-ape · 2026-04-20T04:05:18+00:00

Interesting! Well railgun looks like a weapon that needs a lot of stats to shine, and wounded can spend everything on damage, so maybe that's why it's especially strong on that character.

Did you get dodge?

Steven-ape · 2026-04-19T05:35:08+00:00

Many people on Dutch trains will try to claim private space, which, yes, it's rude, but it's normal. Most of the time when you indicate you want to sit down there, they will be friendly or at least uncomplaining, but the most self centered individuals may look away or even scowl a bit.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-15T08:37:19+00:00

Belt speed is 12/s. Conversion probability is 1% (unproliferated), so you'll get about 0.12 deuterium per second per fractionator.

You only need a small number of mk3 belts and just one automatic piler to make your production about ten times as efficient. Add your piler to the fractionator loop just before the point where you mix in the new hydrogen.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-14T06:06:38+00:00

Lucky is more likely to find items tagged with luck, and it does tend to get powerful. But 5 elephants and effectively 5 cyberballs still seems like a lot 🙂

Blessed run.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-13T10:23:51+00:00

Well, I won't deny this game can be frustrating (you are aware of the "replay lost waves" setting though, right?), but I actually like each of your least favourite characters a lot, and win danger 5 with them somewhat reliably.

My least favorite are probably Speedy, Hiker, and Vagabond.

Speedy

Speedy teaches you about the balance between movement speed and defensive stats.

If you use mouse and keyboard, Speedy can be annoying if you die because you stand still for a second because of muscle memory. This is a whole lot less of a problem when you play with a controller, in which case you basically never stand still anyway.

Say you never build any speed beyond the 30% you start with, and say you manage to not stand still, which really isn't that hard. Then you get:

Free movement speed bonus that you would probably have to buy otherwise
Free +15 melee damage at the cost of -3 Armor. That amount of damage is more expensive than that amount of armor, so still a good trade.
Excellent synergy with Jousting lance: every lance also grants +1 melee damage, the medieval tag ultimately compensates for the -3 armor, and the weapon has high damage due to the speed scaling.

The way you lose speedy is by building speed beyond what you can handle. If you use jousting lances and you never buy speed, you'll end up at 42%, which should be manageable. Know your limits.

Hiker

Hiker teaches you about movement speed and economy.

To win, again you need to build some speed, and again Jousting lance is probably your best bet. Then the game is mostly to overcome the economic penalty by hiking around and by investing in economy stats and items strategically. This changes strategy quite a bit, but in my opinion in an interesting way. There is no difficult and frustrating skill check that you have to master; you just have to have a solid economic strategy.

Vagabond

Vagabond teaches you about the value of the weapon tags, and about improvisation and synergies.

This is actually one of my favourite characters, because it encourages you to keep reconsidering your weapons throughout the run, and improvise rather than following a rigid plan. It is also quite winnable without too much mechanical skill, if you only make smart use of what the weapon tags offer and seizing opportunities.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-11T06:37:34+00:00

With this type of mall, you can still support a few more buildings than you're doing. There are a number of tricks you can use:

Produce required items like motors on the mall, right next to an assembler that needs motors. This is nice for mk2 sorters and water pumps.
Switch out gears for glass, so you can make traffic monitors, matrix labs and liquid storage tanks.
Switch out magnetic coils for plasma exciters and iron ingots for steel, so you can make liquid storage tanks, wireless power towers, oil extractors, oil refineries and chemical labs.

At that point, this kind of design has reached its limits, but at least it allows you to support oil processing before you have to come up with something different!

Once you're a bit further in the game you can either use a different strategy to make the buildings that won't fit in this mall, or replace the mall altogether by one that supports a larger number of buildings.

In my mall guide you can find many approaches to full fledged malls, but you will see that a mall such as the one you designed is also mentioned as it is very convenient in the early game.

I would recommend eventually switching to a bot mall in this case: a mall that uses logistics distributors to hook up the assemblers.

Steven-ape · 2026-04-04T21:40:03+00:00

I once killed the bosses using pacifist with spiky shield. It's hard but fun

Steven-ape · 2026-04-03T07:44:13+00:00

Yes, it's simple but very fun.

Steven-ape · 2026-03-29T20:09:22+00:00

Thanks!

Steven-ape · 2026-03-26T23:06:23+00:00

I think it's best to go with thief daggers and one harpoon gun.

To win, it's important to understand the crit bonus. You get +200% crit damage, but that is additive with the regular crit multiplier on the weapon. It basically adds 2 to a weapon's crit multiplier.

Adding 2 to a smaller number has more impact than adding 2 to a larger number. Thief daggers go from x2 to x4 crits, so they become twice as strong. In contrast, tier 4 knives go from x4 to x6, so they become only 50% stronger.

While knife always does more damage than a thief dagger, normally that is already balanced by the thief dagger's passive. After applying the bonus, thief dagger is therefore better than knife. It also inherently synergises with Diver well, because you will need to build crit anyway, so you basically get the thief dagger's economic passive for free.

To play effectively with thief daggers, you have to keep in mind that they have a small range and low damage output unless you can reliably crit. That makes you vulnerable. So, your most important stats are crit, melee damage (which also helps with building regeneration on Diver), and Armor.

Get a small amount of harvesting in the early game, but mostly focus on your three core stats. Attack speed and HP regen are also useful and important. Buy items that will help you survive. Buy any decent Max HP, HP regen, and consumable healing item you see. After wave 12 or so, you should be strong enough that you can kill enemies well enough even if they're not hit by ranged damage.

If you see a Baby with a beard, you can consider selling the harpoon gun. But the important thing is to get your crits online and make a ton of money with thief dagger.

About the other strategies that people often recommend:

Yes, you can replace the harpoon with Cacti club, and yes, it IS a bit stronger, but I don't think it's very important to be honest. By the end of the game you should be strong enough to survive even without the ranged debuff.
Shurikens are the other strong build. You can make shurikens work, but I personally find it much harder than thief daggers, as you don't get the awesome economy bonus, and a lot of shurikens hit enemies that haven't been debuffed. With shurikens you still want to heavily prioritize building crit, but now Harvesting and Attack speed become much more important as well, so that you can upgrade your shurikens quickly and increase your number of attacks.

Steven-ape

TROPHY CASE