Best starting items for Engineer?

[Ziehen Freund]

How do I escape the early game with engineer. My Turrets can't survive very long during teleporter events and I'm not sure what items to prioritize to live long enough to become god.

[Useless]

You unlock the glass artifact

[CanvasK]

In rough high-to-low priority order based on my recent 3 hour run:
Prophet's Cape is great on everyone, including turrets. Toss in some Hermit Scarfs for more dodging. Tough Times for when they can't dodge.
Repulsion Armor is a great first red.
Time Keeper's Secret is not super necessary, but comes in handy since turrets get a fresh one each time they are placed. When you become god and can't think of much else to get, stack them--turrets will eventually get regularly assaulted by Overloading Worms and Wander Vagrants, stacked TKS will give you time to reposition and take shots at them.
Gasoline and Will-o'-the-wisp for collateral.
Barbed Wire, Frost Relic, and Chargefield Generator to help with Jellyfish and other monsters that get in. Fire Shield and Scorching Shell Piece for similar reasons that are more Parent or Sand Crab shaped. Toxic Centipede and Spikestrip can join if they want.
A smattering of healing items so that you and the turrets can heal it a variety of situations. Bustling Fungus is for the odd downtime, Mu Construct for consistent TP healing when enemies aren't in range, etc.
Paul's Goat Hoof and Red Whip to both loot and activate the TP fast and to get yourself out of danger while you wait for turret cooldown.
Concussion Grenade, Prison Shackles, and Taser to keep enemies from getting in. Permafrost may also be handy.
AtG Missile to deal with enemies out of range or to get them as they spawn. Get 10 of these for 100%. With enough attack speed, missiles will be proc'd faster than they can be fired so they will be delayed and continuously go for out of range and newly spawned enemies (sit back and enjoy the fireworks).
Soldier's Syringe and other attack speed items (20 is a decent amount). The more often you hit, the faster enemies die. And the more often you hit the more often you proc, which means you can put less priority in stacking on-hits for 100%.
Speaking of, aim for at least 1 of each (offensive) on-hit item. They all proc at different times, so the more you have the more extra damage opportunities you get.
Items related to gold are useless on turrets. They don't benefit from Golden Gun and gold from Razor Penny, Life Savings, and Smart Shopper just goes to you.
If you manage to get all of this, you're probably at least an hour in and a god. So just grab whatever is fun.
For reds I stacked Laser Turbine, but mainly to have a lightshow from 3 rapid fire lasers. The Ol' Lopper will speed up killing. Wicked Ring to restock on turrets. inb4 someone says Dio's Best Friend is bad because you shouldn't use it because if you used it that means you died and that means skill issue, log off, etc.--we're here to have fun and to me fun is doing stupid stuff in a 3 hour run and I'm not going to let a horde of 30 Volatile Lynx Totems taking cheap shots stop me from doing that; get a Dio's if you want.

[MarcoPants]

Originally posted by CanvasK:

In rough high-to-low priority order based on my recent 3 hour run:
Prophet's Cape is great on everyone, including turrets. Toss in some Hermit Scarfs for more dodging. Tough Times for when they can't dodge.
Repulsion Armor Plating is a great first red.
Time Keeper's Secret is not super necessary, but comes in handy since turrets get a fresh one each time they are placed. When you become god and can't think of much else to get, stack them--turrets will eventually get regularly assaulted by Overloading Worms and Wander Vagrants, stacked TKS will give you time to reposition and take shots at them.
Gasoline and Will-o'-the-wisp for collateral.
Barbed Wire, Frost Relic, and Chargefield Generator to help with Jellyfish and other monsters that get in. Fire Shield and Scorching Shell Piece for similar reasons that are more Parent or Sand Crab shaped. Toxic Centipede and Spikestrip can join if they want.
A smattering of healing items so that you and the turrets can heal it a variety of situations. Bustling Fungus is for the odd downtime, Mu Construct for consistent TP healing when enemies aren't in range, etc.
Paul's Goat Hoof and Red Whip to both loot and activate the TP fast and to get yourself out of danger while you wait for turret cooldown.
Concussion Grenade, Prison Shackles, and Taser to keep enemies from getting in. Permafrost may also be handy.
AtG Missile to deal with enemies out of range or to get them as they spawn. Get 10 of these for 100%. With enough attack speed, missiles will be proc'd faster than they can be fired so they will be delayed and continuously go for out of range and newly spawned enemies (sit back and enjoy the fireworks).
Soldier's Syringe and other attack speed items (20 is a decent amount). The more often you hit, the faster enemies die. And the more often you hit the more often you proc, which means you can put less priority in stacking on-hits for 100%.
Speaking of, aim for at least 1 of each (offensive) on-hit item. They all proc at different times, so the more you have the more extra damage opportunities you get.
Items related to gold are useless on turrets. They don't benefit from Golden Gun and gold from Razor Penny, Life Savings, and Smart Shopper just goes to you.
If you manage to get all of this, you're probably at least an hour in and a god. So just grab whatever is fun.
For reds I stacked Laser Turbine, but mainly to have a lightshow from 3 rapid fire lasers. The Ol' Lopper will speed up killing. Wicked Ring to restock on turrets. inb4 someone says Dio's Best Friend is bad because you shouldn't use it because if you used it that means you died and that means skill issue, log off, etc.--we're here to have fun and to me fun is doing stupid stuff in a 3 hour run and I'm not going to let a horde of 30 Volatile Lynx Totems taking cheap shots stop me from doing that; get a Dio's if you want.

dio's does double duty on engie bc his turrets also get a fresh dio's if yours hasn't popped

[Lukewarm]

Enemies always gang on your turrets, exploit that. Employ items that punish enemies for grouping and attacking.

Minimal build that works for me on Monsoon:
* White tier: Fire Shield, Sticky Bomb, Soldier's Syringe, Gasoline, Toxin.
* Green tier: too-long-to-spell-Wisp, Panic Mines, Missiles.
* Red tier, if lucky: Bazooka or Heaven Cracker.

Either use your turrets as baits and actually take care to kill the assailants, or be the bait yourself (speed and Hoopo's Feather help a lot).

[Zukabazuka]

For red item I would consider daggers to very helpful, the amount of damage and kills they are capable of doing is something that a lot of character benefit from. Because you don't want to take damage in this game, just killing them before they get close.

[Lukewarm]

Originally posted by Zukabazuka:

For red item I would consider daggers

Ceremonial Daggers are awful before you have a dozen of them. Only 400% base damage, triggers on KILL, and no AoE capability. They are only ever good for finishing already dying enemies. And the only way to improve daggers is to buy more daggers. In comparison:
* Atg Mk2 does 63% TOTAL damage on average per hit. Keep hitting fat enemy from afar to generate rockets that will handle close enemies.
* Behemoth (bazooka) does 20% TOTAL damage per hit, with a decent AoE. Smear all your on-hit effects all over the enemies.
* Both of the aforementioned benefit from the attack speed and damage-scaling effects (crowbars, crits from the trigger, etc), unlike the Ceremonial Daggers.

[Useless]

Originally posted by Lukewarm (tea):

Originally posted by Zukabazuka:

For red item I would consider daggers

Ceremonial Daggers are awful before you have a dozen of them. Only 400% base damage, triggers on KILL, and no AoE capability. They are only ever good for finishing already dying enemies. And the only way to improve daggers is to buy more daggers. In comparison:
* Atg Mk2 does 63% TOTAL damage on average per hit. Keep hitting fat enemy from afar to generate rockets that will handle close enemies.
* Behemoth (bazooka) does 20% TOTAL damage per hit, with a decent AoE. Smear all your on-hit effects all over the enemies.
* Both of the aforementioned benefit from the attack speed and damage-scaling effects (crowbars, crits from the trigger, etc), unlike the Ceremonial Daggers.

most ppl play with glass always on so dagger isnt useless

[Lukewarm]

Originally posted by Hardlight Afterburner:

most ppl play with glass always on so dagger isnt useless

Only 8.7% of the playerbase have the Glass unlocked, according to the achievement.

[CanvasK]

I personally didn't think Daggers would be useful long term and so never bothered to get them in my run. They disappear very quickly when there aren't any enemies. Missiles on the other hand stick around for much longer. Since missiles are on-hit instead of on-death, there is a lot more opportunity to spawn them (and stockpile if you have enough attack speed). With Engineer you also have 3 sources (4 with Ancient Scepter) of constant missiles instead of 1 source of a few Daggers.

[Useless]

Originally posted by Lukewarm (tea):

Originally posted by Hardlight Afterburner:

most ppl play with glass always on so dagger isnt useless

Only 8.7% of the playerbase have the Glass unlocked, according to the achievement.

I was talking from experience in the 2013 ver

[Zefar]

Originally posted by CanvasK:

I personally didn't think Daggers would be useful long term and so never bothered to get them in my run. They disappear very quickly when there aren't any enemies. Missiles on the other hand stick around for much longer. Since missiles are on-hit instead of on-death, there is a lot more opportunity to spawn them (and stockpile if you have enough attack speed). With Engineer you also have 3 sources (4 with Ancient Scepter) of constant missiles instead of 1 source of a few Daggers.

You basically just need 2 daggers to have enough of them in the start to wipe the floor with weaker enemies. Late game you'll have other items that will kill stuff quicker.

They are also good in just clearing out those air units. Proccing on kill isn't an issue. You kill a trash mob and it'll start to pile up.
While Daggers do go away the moment there are no enemies on the map, missiles still do not stick around for that long either.

I certainly wouldn't take Repulsion armor as my first choice though. You're better off with taking Alien head or the Crit ring so you can put out your abilities quicker.
Not to mention you can just get a lot of movement items to avoid taking damage to begin with.
If you want to tank damage there are better white items for it. Which you'll get far more of.

But I'd still take Hitlist before any of them. That 20 extra damage does a lot early on.

[CanvasK]

Originally posted by Zefar:

You basically just need 2 daggers to have enough of them in the start to wipe the floor with weaker enemies. Late game you'll have other items that will kill stuff quicker.

They are also good in just clearing out those air units. Proccing on kill isn't an issue. You kill a trash mob and it'll start to pile up.
While Daggers do go away the moment there are no enemies on the map, missiles still do not stick around for that long either.

Missiles stick around for significantly longer than daggers, long enough for everything to be killed and there be a period of downtime before something else spawns. Daggers can't do that; your momentum is killed within half a second. If we're just talking about red priority, I wouldn't take Mk. 2 over Dagger since Mk. 1 is easier to stack.

Originally posted by Zefar:

I certainly wouldn't take Repulsion armor as my first choice though. You're better off with taking Alien head or the Crit ring so you can put out your abilities quicker.
Not to mention you can just get a lot of movement items to avoid taking damage to begin with.
If you want to tank damage there are better white items for it. Which you'll get far more of.

One of the reasons I did Repulsion Armor is because I got a red as like my 5th item. That early on, Wicked Ring isn't good because I got nothing to activate it other than itself and turrets don't count towards your cooldown. Also don't think Alien Head would be great that early on since if I'm scrounging for my cooldowns to place turrets on stage 2, then that run was either dead anyways or wouldn't be fun. I did get both of those items later on so I didn't have to think about cooldowns.
Movement items weren't a priority for me because I'm building for the turrets. A Hoof or two early on maybe. But since the turrets can't make a tactical retreat, being able to tank and dish back the damage from Sand Crab, Golem, or Magma Worm. And the only white that can tank damage and be useful when getting hit by 3 Lemurians, 2 Golems, and 4 Sand Crabs is Hermit's Scarf which I did get along with a Prophet's Cape. But when the turrets inevitably do take damage, being able to minimize it and remove the sources at the same time is handy.

[Zefar]

Originally posted by CanvasK:

Missiles stick around for significantly longer than daggers, long enough for everything to be killed and there be a period of downtime before something else spawns. Daggers can't do that; your momentum is killed within half a second. If we're just talking about red priority, I wouldn't take Mk. 2 over Dagger since Mk. 1 is easier to stack.

You won't have 10 MK1 missiles early on. So the dagger isn't a bad choice.

I've had plenty of missiles fade away because they would target a second target and if that one was killed it wouldn't really have time to find another.

Originally posted by CanvasK:

One of the reasons I did Repulsion Armor is because I got a red as like my 5th item. That early on, Wicked Ring isn't good because I got nothing to activate it other than itself and turrets don't count towards your cooldown. Also don't think Alien Head would be great that early on since if I'm scrounging for my cooldowns to place turrets on stage 2, then that run was either dead anyways or wouldn't be fun. I did get both of those items later on so I didn't have to think about cooldowns.
Movement items weren't a priority for me because I'm building for the turrets. A Hoof or two early on maybe. But since the turrets can't make a tactical retreat, being able to tank and dish back the damage from Sand Crab, Golem, or Magma Worm. And the only white that can tank damage and be useful when getting hit by 3 Lemurians, 2 Golems, and 4 Sand Crabs is Hermit's Scarf which I did get along with a Prophet's Cape. But when the turrets inevitably do take damage, being able to minimize it and remove the sources at the same time is handy.

The only thing the armor does is after taking 6 full hits, you get 100 armor and you will reflect the damage taken by 400%. But it doesn't mention of becoming invincible and because I rarely if ever pick it I haven't tested it out if it fully blocks all damage.

6 hits from anything on 100% damage modifier is gonna be rough. High chance of killing you in the start pretty quickly. By the time you can take 6 hits you still probably don't want too because until you have several thousands of HP the enemy can still kill you.

As for defense items. The root and Bronze Brooch are better options.

[Chronstell]

Originally posted by Lukewarm (tea):

* Green tier: too-long-to-spell-Wisp

I like how "too-long-to-spell-Wisp" is actually longer to type than Will-o-the-Wisp.

[Ziehen Freund]

I went with missiles on my run clear. It was really effective. Thanks everyone for the tips. Now I just need to make it through monsoon with Merc...