Best Loadout and Perks for Endless

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Note: This post has been edited based on my 1339 run in the June 2022 endless event and 1.14 release

Endless is a special case where it’s reasonably easy for strong players to get to level 100, but thereafter one shot kills you. This post is for players strong enough to get to 100 consistently.

Please review the following before proceeding:

Loadout Recommendations

  • Weapon: While the Looper is the most versatile for general runs, in Endless the Autogun has the edge:

    • Boomerang is only a temporary thing till you either get Bouncy Walls or Ghost so this is not a big advantage for looper.
    • Piercing is important, but you have ~19 perks by level 100 so you can afford to lose a roll to take it (and common enough to skip it early in the run if offered with a perk that’s more useful)
    • Autogun benefits the most from Gear damage and the +150 Attack you get from the Mystery Crates
    • Looper shots travel faster (details) but for the ideal perk build it works in favour of the Autogun because it can converge on close enemies that the looper couldn’t
    • Neither the Looper nor the Autogun benefit much from the +5% Ground type all-hero bonuses nor the Small Attack Up that you get from the Angel, although the Looper does benefit a bit more from them than the Autogun

  • Armour: Necro (details), and you need to be good enough (including the perks you take in the first 100 rooms) to avoid getting hit more often than once per 80 kills. The rarity / level doesn’t really matter (except to cover for a mistake in the first 100 rooms while you are building up your perk set)

  • Hero: Health stat is useless cos one shot will kill you after 100 regardless. So you generally will pick the hero with the strongest adjusted attack stat; few things to consider in adjusting:

    • Blazia: Wrath gives an attack boost of at most 16.67%, but this doesn’t apply for Ice, Zap or Shrapnel so I would consider it worth 12~13% (up from previous 10% because Shrapnel has moved off the preferred build)
    • Scorcher: You will not be using Stress Shot after 100, so if you use him it’s just for the Base attack stats
    • Miasma: Absorb is capped and can’t handle the damage in room 100+, so if you use her it’s just for the Base attack stats
    • Firebug: Fiery Wings should give you 10%-20% bonus depending on the room and how good you are at jumping around
    • Jackbot: Not useful, he will exhaust his 15 Jackpots fairly early, and you can get those even in a regular world. Very unlikely that he’s your strongest hero.
    • Armorita: I consider her weak as her base stats are weak, but if Gravity Well helps you stay safe for long enough maybe it still works
    • Fursus - over the run your attack strength will increase, but the Iceplosion damage will not (it’s based on loadout attack), so the passive skill doesn’t boost the effective attack much
    • Dr. Toxic - over the run your attack strength will increase, but the Venom damage will not, so the passive skill doesn’t boost the effective attack much
    • Mortis - Plague cloud can’t heal you when you die from one shot, also the plague cloud damage doesn’t increase as you get stronger over the run, so he’s not an attractive choice
    • Hocus Focus - over a long run, the benefit of 1 re-roll is marginal
    • Hecate - apart from the Magic Bubble damage, consider the value of the bubble absorbing shots
    • Frostina - a liability because a good load out means you don’t see anything except your shots; Snowball is very handy though
    • Arctor: Has weaker attack stats and Freeze damage is marginal, but the extra time it gets you is really useful
    • Prospero - Magic Bullets increase in power as your attack increases, so if you have him at a strong level he might be viable. Magic bullets increase your damage by ~20%, but not against lone bosses

  • Apart from this, consider the benefit of the skill tree as well (how much depends on the level of the skill)

    • Sniper will boost your damage
    • Knock back / Supressive fire will buy you some time
    • Safety Bubble will allow you to safely go through shots (and will also deploy Shield Ward if you have the perk, although it’s not recommended) as well as be handy if you go with Time Stop/Sustained Fire combo
    • I’m not impressed with the benefit of Decoy - sometimes the decoy ends up drawing fire towards you, and there are some enemies that just shoot radially so the decoy doesn’t provide any protection

  • Gear: If you have the Camo Cloak or the Shield Generator, you should probably use them (unless they are really weak, in which case you may be better off with other higher level gear). Plaster’s healing will not help you beyond level 100 and Radiation Field won’t do enough damage even if you can get close enough - so for both of them you should just consider the amount of damage they add.
    If you only have 2 gear that are strong, go with them regardless of the type; if you can choose between several, few options:

    • Go balanced: Ground + Flying or Ranged + Melee
    • Go for the most common boss type : Ground + Ranged (see Bestiary)
    • Go for the most common among the bosses you find difficult (and/or the mobs)
    • Go for the gear that will balance out your bonuses (e.g. I have 10% + 200 against Ground, vs 15% against Flying, which means with the Autogun/Looper I’m already strong against Ground, so I should take Flying). Use the Damage Simulator to check.

Perk Recommendations

These are based on the importance of the perk as well as the probability of getting them:

  1. Homing Shots and Super Homing Shots - the latter is probably the most impactful perk on an endless run; to maximise your chance of getting it, Homing will be the top early pick (even more important than Multishot)
  2. Piercing and Ghost shots. If you take Bouncy you won’t be able to get Ghost, but if you are nearing 100 and haven’t got ghost yet it might be worthwhile to go with Bouncy
  3. Chain Shots and Dividing Shots - This helps you get many shots in play and clear mobs quickly
  4. Multishot - In a normal run Multishot would rank second only to Homing, but Homing/Chain/Piercing are higher priority because we want to maximise chances of SuperHoming / Dividing / Ghost. Note: Dark Castle seems to offer Triple Multishot, in which case Multishot becomes more attractive, but I would still keep it 4th in the list.
  5. All the Spreading shots to have multiple shots in play. If you can get Supermagnetism on top of it, it would be OP but it’s very rare to get this perk because you need to have Back, Vertical and at least 1 Spread
    • Based on perk probability, the priority between them would be Back and Vertical > Spread if you are in the early stages of your run and can afford to wait for them to reappear, but the first 2 Spreads work better with Homing/SuperHoming than Vertical/Back shots
  6. You need to ramp up the damage done by all these shots (remember that Piercing / Bouncy / Chain / Dividing are weak). In the first version of this guide I had Shrapnel, Ice and Zap as options but now only Ice remains.
    • Ice and Improved Ice: Buys you a lot of time and the Improved Ice damage is good; also the only option that works well on the bosses.
  7. Focus Shots helps a lot on the lone bosses
  8. Headshot: the instant kill of 1 in 5 mobs is really handy - the higher you go the more useful it is.
  9. Double / Triple and even Quadruple Barrel - ranked lower because their damage is reduced and if you have super homing you should be able to get 2 spreads and the verticals (and even the back shot and 3rd spread if you have Ghost) hitting directly most of the time

Notes:

  • If you are good at an up-close-and-personal play style (esp using Arctor) your perk preferences could change, and BuckShot and Flamethrower may factor in the mix
  • The following are useful but not essential (they are listed in arbitrary order; I’m not sure how I would rank them)

    • Haggler can be useful in two ways:

      • You are buying equipment (for gems - only recommended for weapons) / upgrade material at a discount as part of a farming run, and are not too worried about a high score
      • You are willing to spend gems to buy perks to push your score higher
      • Note: At late stages the merchant sells other heroes’ skills, so they pulled the perk after this run.

    • Fast Shots are helpful to improve hit rate

    • Time Stop and Sustained Fire are a good combo

    • Hit Mark is handy, especially for bosses that spawn, more so if you are good at going after the enemy with the hit mark

    • Power Tripper is handy (if you are alive you are at full health) while Berserk is not (if you are hurt, you are dead)

    • Generally, Big Attack Speed Up, Big Attack Up and Big Crit Up are not that useful - because you will get the small versions from the Angel and the incremental benefit of additional perks are marginal (and Crit is capped at 50%). But if you have to choose between them, generally Speed > Attack > Crit

    • Triple Jump or Jetpack will help you get to safe spots in many layouts (even Ninja is an option if you are comfortable with it). Springs could be an option but personally I don’t like it because the jumps are higher than I’m expecting.

    • Depending on your base Dodge Chance, 1 or 2 Dodge Masters can be useful. However, I prefer Safety Bubble and Dwarf over them for the predictability. Adrenaline is useless (like Berserk)

  • The following perks are not recommended
    • Shield Ward - IIRC the damage it does doesn’t scale up (if it does, it would be a great pick, especially for heroes with the Safety Bubble skill tree). It is handy to boost the duration of Safety bubble though
    • Zap - it doesn’t increase as your attack increases, won’t work on lone bosses. It is still useful but should definitely pass over if you have Headshot; Improved Zap shots is nice but it creates a lot of lag, especially if you have chain shots
    • Shrapnel build is no longer recommended. It is a very strong build, but adding it in to the ideal build creates way too much lag when you get Piercing Shrapnel. Of course it is still good if you don’t get anything better, especially with Chain shots and for the mobs
      • Priority order
        • Shrapnel (because it unlocks Piercing)
        • Piercing Shrapnel (will likely reappear because of high probability but unless you got Shrapnel really early you might not be able to risk it)
        • Frag Bullets (because the ideal build generates a lot)
        • Side Winders (because they only apply to your forward shots and we are counting on a lot of Spreading shots in play)
    • Fast Learner the speed up does mean you are sometimes 1 perk ahead after room 100, but that perk is the Fast Learner so you don’t have a net benefit. Take it only if all the alternatives are undesirable (i.e. lower on this list). Note that I haven’t yet tested this on the Dark Castle - it might be more useful there (but I doubt it)
    • Death Perks - it takes more and more time to kill the enemies but their damage doesn’t increase. Death Zap can be useful for Stunning and is preferred to Death Ice (because you will likely have Ice shots anyway) but both of them somewhat negate Headshot
    • Titan Mode - at higher levels the damage it does isn’t enough even to one-bump the mobs, and it doesn’t always provide immunity from damage from below. And it costs you 4 perk rolls.
    • Fire and Poison - the extra damage is marginal and they pollute the loot pool with their “improved” versions that are not much better. Even Flamethrower’s benefit is dubious cos it’s damage doesn’t scale up as you get stronger
    • Health / Healing perks (Tank, Max Health Up, LifeSteal, Band Aid, or Combat Medic) are useless, and GunHeart is equivalent to a Small Attack Up
    • Heavy Armour

Addendum:

  • Take the Mystery Crates, if you are lucky you will score an Extra Life. +170 Attack is helpful too
  • Take the Hidden Treasures, if you are lucky you will score a perk. Dwarf will open up chances of World 5/7 Hidden Treasures too, but that’s not a reason to prioritise the perk. Triple Jump / Jetpack makes some of them easier, but again that’s not a reason to prioritise them - if you are aiming for 100+ in endless you have to master the triple jump glitch
  • By room 30 you should have ~15 perks and a sense of whether your build is likely to work out; if you haven’t got a good foundation, just exit (Pause then Home at the bottom left) unless of course you have got Treasure Hunter / Wonder Hunter and will convert to a farming run. Exiting will still cost you the energy but at least you’ll save the time going to a high floor for little or no XP and coin. Warning: This exit will cause you to lose any loot you acquired, so if you picked up something you want to keep, you’ll have to suicide by running in to bosses/shots
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