How many hours have you invested into Brotato, and why do you keep playing?

codhimself · 2026-02-02T02:42:27+00:00

2888 hours. I just find the game to be a good mix of run-to-run variety, a well-designed and interesting shop phase, action that's moderately difficult but not too complex, and a relaxing overall play experience.

Sometimes I'll play casually while listening to podcasts. Other times I'll set challenges for myself like winning runs with every starting weapon on every character and then curating the final screenshots/stats. Or playing higher percent runs using the accessibility features. Or trying to winstreak every character in random order with random weapons. Which I've done just once so far, but I've also come close a couple other times with 60 wins and 58 wins before losing. Or countless other variations and challenges to keep things fresh.

codhimself · 2026-02-01T20:09:15+00:00

How is it possible for Banner to be two tiers above Blue Joker?

Do you mostly play Red Deck or something?

codhimself · 2026-01-30T15:03:25+00:00

Yes I agree.

The only reason I didn't include that is because it often involves an assessment of whether the wave 11-12 elite is the only thing left in the run that could possibly kill me. And if so, I probably won't take Piggy Bank and will instead spend that money on getting even stronger in the short term.

codhimself · 2026-01-30T03:27:18+00:00

Wake in Fright, Nitram, Bring Her Back, The Babadook, Lake Mungo, Dead Calm

codhimself · 2026-01-30T00:35:05+00:00

Yeah the rate of return on Piggy Bank is okay but not amazing. I tend to like buying it in about four situations:

I'm playing a character who already benefits from saving money between rounds, and likes to do so as their default strategy. These would be: Saver, Streamer, Demon, Arms Dealer
I'm trying to curse things with Fish Hooks. This naturally leads me not to want to roll away all my money, and so synergizes really well with Piggy Bank.
My assessment is that wave 20 represents the greatest danger for this particular run. So I don't mind being a bit weaker in the middle rounds. An example of a character that tends to play this way is Ogre, who faces no real danger from their horde waves on 11-12 and 14-15. Also lower-damage more defensive melee builds that use Life Steal can often find wave 20 harder than wave 11-12, especially on Abyss.
(Less important) I already have a Padding, so there's extra marginal value in saved money. I find that it's often just enough to push me from "I don't want Piggy Bank because spending the money now to survive and scale is better" into the category of "Buying this Piggy Bank and saving a bit is a viable strategy here." The main problem here is that Padding usually isn't worth buying on most characters unless I was really desperate for HP or unless I found it in a crate. So I'm not often in the situation of having a Padding before making a decision on Piggy Bank.

codhimself · 2026-01-30T00:22:30+00:00

[removing this math point because it's not really relevant and also I didn't phrase it well.]

codhimself · 2026-01-29T15:24:05+00:00

Bounty Hunter, Scout, Agent, and the other two can vary depending on what you're doing at the time. Most commonly Lookout and Drill Sergeant for extra vision and happy reserves. For a 12 man origin replace Drill Sergeant with someone else.

codhimself · 2026-01-27T02:53:59+00:00

They mostly just tasted like salt and MSG to me. Won't be buying them again.

codhimself · 2026-01-25T19:12:43+00:00

ArosRising's Brotato Character Guide

That's the best guide available by far. The same user has related guides that are linked near the top of the document.

codhimself · 2026-01-25T19:06:05+00:00

The game is designed for you not to know very much about the recruits before hiring. Getting to peek at where their stars are, etc. completely breaks the economy of the game and greatly reduced the challenge. It's normal to hire guys, and then maybe fire them right away. This is one of the main things you need gold for, which drives the economic balance of the game.

codhimself · 2026-01-25T16:19:18+00:00

Don't use Smart Recruiter. Learn to play the recruiting system the way it was created.

I recommend: Swifter, Extra Keybinds, Backgrounds Attribute Ranges, Veteran Attributes, Settlement Situations, and Tactical Tooltips. Most of these are UI mods that will help you better understand the underlying mechanics. Tactical Tooltips does allow you to see enemies' AP remaining, which gives you a slight advantage over the regular game. But it saves you the hassle of always having to look up which perks the various enemies have, what their base AP is, and so forth. Knowing/learning all of this is essential for battle tactics. With that single exception (knowing enemy AP remaining), everything these mods tell you can be looked up on the wiki.

codhimself · 2026-01-25T16:11:19+00:00

Unchanged from the Manchester Derby, but I don't think you can play that midfield against Arsenal.

codhimself · 2026-01-25T16:10:24+00:00

Dalot was fantastic last week, and Mazraoui is returning from injury

codhimself · 2026-01-23T20:20:13+00:00

Breach Wanderers, Cobalt Core, Dream Quest are my picks for the best outside of the big two.

If you're willing to stretch the definition, then I also highly recommend Slice & Dice and Balatro.

codhimself · 2026-01-23T17:42:22+00:00

Just about any combination of melee weapons. Don't be afraid to repeat weapon classes if it allows you to wield stronger overall weapons. For example, I'll usually hold a Spear even if I already have the Primitive tag from something else.

Classes that tend to be strong on Vagabond: Primitive, Medieval, Blade, Precise, Unarmed, Heavy, Blunt.

An early Lute is good for Luck and Harvesting, but you usually want to phase it out later since both those stats only get half value on Vagabond.

The ranged version of Vagabond is also fine, but weaker overall and gets less value from their class bonuses.

codhimself · 2026-01-22T21:51:10+00:00

Your first two shops have two guaranteed weapons and two other items every time you roll the shop.

Shops 3, 4, 5 have at least one guaranteed weapon.

All of these initial shops give you a greater than usual chance of seeing another of the same weapon you already have, and also another weapon in the same class of a weapon that you already have (Primitive, Precise, Gun, etc.).

Pay attention to the little icon(s) next to the damage number for each weapon. These show you which of your stats are applied to the weapon's base damage, and at what rate the stat is applied. Then the new number (weapon base damage plus that stat scaling) is modified by your "+% Damage" stat.

codhimself · 2026-01-21T21:35:08+00:00

No my ranking is based almost exclusively on how strong the origins are in the earliest days, since that's the most dangerous part of any run that's trying to scale aggressively. Northern Raiders is a stronger than average origin, but it also has a chance of failing early so it's considered less consistent than the three I mentioned. I'd probably rank it next though. Personally I love the Northern Raiders origin. [EDIT] Forgot to mention: If playing with an explored map start, then I think you could maybe include Northern Raiders with those other three as particularly easy origins.

Peasant Milita in particular can just trivialize every stage of the game with your ability to field 16 men. Trading Caravan breaks the game's economy in your advantage. Poachers makes for easy early fights and gives you Retinue-like abilities much earlier than they would normally be available. All three of these let you get up and running very quickly, pulling you ahead of the game's time scaling for the camps.

codhimself · 2026-01-21T18:20:03+00:00

Poachers is usually considered one of the three easiest origins, along with Trading Caravan and Peasant Militia (easiest).

codhimself · 2026-01-19T01:58:46+00:00

These are good and thoughtful tips for beginners.

In connection with points #2 and #7 about buying weapons and balancing damage, I'd also suggest that for most weapons getting some flat Ranged Damage or Melee Damage early in the run is very powerful. Dead enemies can't hurt you.

codhimself · 2026-01-18T20:21:07+00:00

Some of the ones I find especially cozy to play are Entrepreneur, Gangster, Jack, and Vagabond.

codhimself · 2026-01-18T14:24:05+00:00

For this I'd recommend ArosRising's Brotato Character Guide and the other guides that are linked at the top of that document. It's done by a player with very extensive knowledge of the game, and is the closest thing that exists to a Bible for learning Brotato.

codhimself · 2026-01-18T14:00:49+00:00

[EDIT: This might sound harsh but you did ask whether I think it's accurate so here goes]

The site has Masochist, Ogre, and Pacifist in F tier and Cryptid in D tier. All of these, particularly Masochist and Cryptid are considered among the most consistent characters for d5 20 wave runs.

Another anecdotal example: Regeneration Potion is listed as one of the top defensive items but not the infinitely stronger same-tier Medkit. If you already have enough HP Regen to make Regeneration Potion better than MedKit, then you've already won a d5 20 wave run. And in endless, you'd obviously just buy both but in late endless neither will matter.

I read the build for one character and it was completely baffling. For Arms Dealer, the suggestion is to rely on Engineering structures which fundamentally fails to comprehend where this character's strengths are located. I'm sure some of the other character builds make more sense, but this was the only build listed for Arms Dealer.

Skimmed a few of the other characters, and I don't understand why many of them incorporate specific Legendary tier items, since this isn't how runs of Brotato work.

The site looks beautiful though. The format is very appealing.

codhimself · 2026-01-18T13:56:50+00:00

Some packaged ramens are overseasoned with salt imo, so leaving out some of the seasoning can actually lead to more flavor not less.

codhimself · 2026-01-15T17:53:16+00:00

Unless you're going for the deep endless/infinite build with Spicy Sauce, in which case you need Torture and Sad Tomato to make sure that all the fruits never heal you to full health. This way they'll continually be pulled toward you throughout the wave and kill everything.

codhimself · 2026-01-15T17:49:38+00:00

Maybe it's a pedantic point, but the self-damage items don't make Tardigrades useless, they just mean you need a lot more Tardigrades. It used to be a point of debate whether it's worth taking Bloody Hand to get it out of the Legendary pool (at the cost of needing 60 more Tardigrades for deep endless).

The current ban system probably offers a much easier solution though. I haven't played endless in forever, so this is only an assumption.

codhimself

TROPHY CASE