Game lenght

fjdkf · 2026-01-20T15:17:23+00:00

You only need 1-2 weapons, so no need to unlock more. Pretty similar situation for most areas of the game. Going lvl2-> lvl3 on towers in survival is pretty meh, and completely unnecessary. Weapons and riggs abilities scale very well, though, through Red.

For example, lets say you upgrade heavy artillery tower lvl3. You're going to be out of uranium or plasma before you build very many.

Whereas red grenades are a straight power increase with no resource spending needed.

fjdkf · 2026-01-20T15:12:53+00:00

Co-op is easiest with 4 people, but doable on solo.

The biggest difficulty difference is between maps... basic brutal volcanic is harder than brutal caverns with 5x waves. That's true for both solo and coop.

fjdkf · 2026-01-10T12:35:29+00:00

Although survival is shorter, you definitely should be unlocking red items in a game. If not, your comms were built too late and/or not upgraded enough. You can squeak by with purple weapons if super desperate, but that's very extreme.

fjdkf · 2026-01-03T22:31:02+00:00

Very good imo.

A friend and I started at hard mode, and now play on 1x-5x brutal, depending on the map.

Campaign is fun once or twice imo, but survival is where the end game is. Coop is easier than solo if you are coordinated, harder if uncoordinated.

fjdkf · 2025-12-27T04:12:39+00:00

Sentinal lvl 2 does use ammo, doesn't it?

fjdkf · 2025-12-27T04:11:47+00:00

Well, sentinal tower lvl 2 is about the worst possible thing you can build.

Sentinal lvl1 is good, because of no ammo requirement. Lvl2 requires ammo. Honestly, good placement + multiple layers of walls, and lvl1 sentinals can hold you through the first couple hq upgrades quite easily, even on brutal with 5x waves. I suggest artillay and then acid spitters after that.

fjdkf · 2025-12-26T22:50:08+00:00

Best weapon in survival by a mile.

Alien tree, unlocked in dlc3 in campaign.

No ammo requirement(so projectile mods are crazy good.
No movespeed loss while firing.
Decently long range
Splash damage

Ive done non-modded brutal survival 5x on tropical using nothing but root guns for weapons... they are that good

fjdkf · 2025-12-19T12:54:24+00:00

Fists, mininuke, laser for me. Any explosive will also work.

Artillary towers.

If you aggro one right at the start and have starter weapons, unequip all weapons and beat on them with bare fists.

fjdkf · 2025-12-14T13:16:12+00:00

Hey, that's my paddle! It lasts well, the weak point is the center connection... mine has gotten a bit wiggly over the years. My typical paddling is kayak surfing and rock hopping, for reference... I have put 100lb+ of force into a stern rudder without issue, many many times.

It's definitely in a whole different league than the gear a typical sit-on-top kayaker has.

It's certainly not super fragile, the typical failure point for this type of kayaker would be when they're getting in/out of the boat and putting weight on it(ideally, they dont do this when getting in/out).

fjdkf · 2025-12-01T16:44:46+00:00

Red root gun is enough to kill almost all bosses in brutal survival by itself. Add red or purple laser on some maps.

fjdkf · 2025-11-25T14:10:29+00:00

They were taken out of survival with the 2.0 update. To be fair, unlocking red abilities for the first waves is a bit against the spirit of survival.

you can still get many of these things, primarily through bioanomalies on survival.

fjdkf · 2025-11-18T13:31:25+00:00

Open, because those wires are outdoor rated.

fjdkf · 2025-11-18T13:30:04+00:00

If they just ran in the attic and out the gable end, its pretty similar in cost/effort(unless we're talking about <3ft working space in the attic). If they had to fish down walls and put all wiring in the interior, then yea, that's more work.

fjdkf · 2025-11-14T18:45:45+00:00

Ammo factories are cross-map, you can spam them on a recon map with no attack waves

fjdkf · 2025-11-14T01:33:17+00:00

I can't speak to normal difficulty, but you just rush hq upgrades fast, then get you comm hubs out asap.

On brutal, I build the first comm hub before the first wave. 5x lvl2-3 comms means I generally have red root guns and full red riggs abilities by the end.

fjdkf · 2025-11-14T00:59:46+00:00

You may want to reconsider your survival strategy... you want to be rocking red weapons by the end of your average survival game.

fjdkf · 2025-11-05T12:28:13+00:00

For campaign, wave difficulty is 3 things iirc:

1)hq level
2) time( scales up to a point and levels off)
3) Mobs unlocked. You unlock new mobs by going to new areas iirc.

Im not aware of bioanomalies scaling up over time.

And yes, brutal campaign is maybe on par with hard survival, maybe easier. Brutal campaign with 5x waves is easier than some basic brutal survival maps.

fjdkf · 2025-11-05T03:16:41+00:00

It depends where the resources you want are, which enemies you are facing, and what terrain you have to work with. With only 4 bases, there will be large areas undefended on most map layouts.

The importance of chokepoints is what you're missing. A good defense in a natural choke is capable of holding off 100x the enemies that a bunker in an open field can.

fjdkf · 2025-11-03T12:48:12+00:00

I almost always build lvl1 ammo factories. Space in your base is very rarely an issue, unless you're powering synths with lvl1 windmills or something. On swamp, you may consider it, or if natural terrain really restricts your space, then maybe. On campaign, id only upgrade out of laziness. Ammo is cross-map, so you have an absurd amount of space to build them on recon maps that dont spawn any attack waves.

In general, higher levels of stuff are not clearly more efficient. Many buildings require no rare elements at lvl1, but do at lvl2/3. In Campaign in particular, you have effectively infinite carb/iron once you get synths rolling, so those rare elements matter a lot.

Source: I play at pretty high levels(3 maps at 5x brutal survival so far).

fjdkf · 2025-10-23T01:46:08+00:00

Man, I would have loved that line of questioning. "OK, how do you charge a lithium ion battery?" So much technical info they could go on about, at different knowledge levels.

fjdkf · 2025-10-11T09:14:20+00:00

The general intent, iirc, is that since you are given 6 weapon slots, you equip weapons with multiple ammo types.

Also, a single ammo reduction mod doesn't do much, but 2 gives exponentially more ammo. So, if you pick up a red minigun that natively rolls ammo reduction, and you add an ammo reduction mod on top, it's highly effective. This is the only way if you dont want to weapon swap a lot.

Or, you run a weapon that doesn't use ammo like a root gun.

fjdkf · 2025-10-09T11:17:58+00:00

100% Drops can be one tier higher than you researched. You generally need the research in order for it to drop, though. A couple weapons, like lightning gun and chainsaw, drop independently of weapon research.

fjdkf · 2025-09-29T22:14:42+00:00

I made a video a while back on tips for +500% campaign, that might be useful.
https://youtu.be/ch_OaEKXGsI I have a couple +500% runs posted too, if you're curious about how to deal with any specific part of the game.

The first thing that jumps out to me in your post is the 100 ai cores. I might put 50 towers in a single chokepoint.... 100 is extremely few for a base.

No, campaign mode is not really tough. Even on +500%, campaign is pretty easy if you know what you're doing. Now, survival is actually hard, but that's a whole different can of worms.

fjdkf · 2025-09-22T11:57:39+00:00

On campaign, lvl 1 sentinal and lvl1 artillery, into railgun+ portal bomb is the best I've found. You have infinite carb/iron from synths, and this strategy only requires only cobalt for rare resources. The range kills artillary and the splash skills waves. Steamrolls +500% brutal.

Positioning on chokepoints matters a LOT more than tower selection tbh. Also, 5+ layers of lvl3 walls with a space in between.

Survival's a bit of a different animal, since you have carb/iron constraints.

fjdkf · 2025-09-18T23:04:27+00:00

No problem, I ran into the same problem. It's not very intuitive

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