Arms Dealer Strat

[ry0.saeba]

Hi everyone,
so playing Arms Dealer sometimes the shop can mess the run, just giving you bad guns, wrong guns, no guns at all..
So I see a lot of people struggle with it (Me included), and we go the melee locking strat.
Witch it works, until it doesn't and it's very frustrating; you do everything right and RNG messes you up. So we go for harvesting (more money), for luck (better weapons, ecc), or turrets..
I think I figured out a better way, more consistent that lets you grab whatever random gun melee or ranged you find (As you would think this character was supposed to do) and I am actually surprised nobody does it.

So early game:
The 33% more damage is huge. See damage pick damage.
No harvesting (it is actually for xp more then for money), no luck... damage % early.
Crit as well, and Att Speed. Random guns and greed cheap items only (gentle alien, scar, head injury).
Scar for example, scar gives less range that is bad for melee, but we can pick up ranged as well to help out and eventually fix the range. That exp tho with the harvesting is a huge boost to fix the build with stats.
So basically, when enemies are few and weak we punching them into oblivion and Crit doubles that. Crit also allow the use of shurikens, thief daggers.
If we can't find Att Speed, or Crit..sure take good HP or Armor, but damage is the focus.
Mid game:
Here and there, as the money start to get in, get melee, ranged damage.
Melee is better, is the same as the melee-locking strat, melee weapons buff stats as well like armor (medieval), or dodge. And of course get Armor, Dodge, the usual.
Take what's good from crates, we never know what guns we are going to play.
Focus on melee but sharp bullet/bandana are actually very good.
Stats I ignore:
Hp Regen, unless is in crates: too expensive to build up, a lot of items actually decreases it, and Life Steal is just better investment (Bloody hand? more damage!), or consumables since we go to battle with random pruners and choppers
Engineering/Elemental: too weak, too few weapons that benefit from it.
Luck: it does't matter when you have Damage % at 150 and a random tier 1 Screwdriver is critting for hundred..
Harvesting: I think is a waste of money, better to just grab a random hand..

So let's say we are in shop 8, before Wave 9 horde.
We punch fast and hard. Shop gives a sword? Good; a pruner? Sure; a medical gun? Nice life steal; a laser gun? Crits the chargers in one shot.. whatever it doesn't matter.
When we lock guns with the melee strat, I think we are actually reducing the odds to find something good. I lock items instead.
Lock a good expensive item, re-roll for whatever gun the shop gives to get to six weapons, after the wave, I have more money to get the item and whatever random weapons and have plenty to spare. Often you re-roll for free because you buy all the random guns, you combine them, swap for better..
End game:
https://imgur.com/a/yqtHpdM
Melee build and that Revolver is doing 17k with 3 ranged damage; of course the claw is melting elites, but I could have just picked whatever.
https://imgur.com/a/cCHAyik
Loosing feels more because of miss play, getting sniped, or buy the wrong stuff, not RNG, it is actually fun to play this guy and smack elites with random rocks.

[Deathraven13]

Originally posted by ry0.saeba:

you do everything right and RNG messes you up.

That define brotato very well.

[ry0.saeba]

Originally posted by Deathraven13:

Originally posted by ry0.saeba:

you do everything right and RNG messes you up.

That define brotato very well.

Mmh I don't know, sometimes.
I feel I have a lot of decision making to do in what to buy and when, what stat to boost and when. Other then actually dodge in waves..usually I lose because I get sniped not RNG.

[Deathraven13]

Originally posted by ry0.saeba:

Mmh I don't know, sometimes.
I feel I have a lot of decision making to do in what to buy and when, what stat to boost and when. Other then actually dodge in waves..usually I lose because I get sniped not RNG.

The higher the difficulty, the more RNG can be deadly.

In D5 182% I had to reset a lot because of it and in this patch I was only able to beat it with Speedy (because I'm not bad when it comes to dodging).

If you have some time try to do some D5 182% run in order to understand what I mean, do note that this challenge is harder in this version than it was in 0.8 because 2 patch ago ennemies got a speed buff.

While I have a 100% winrate in D5 I did arm dealer before the buff mentionned above so maybe I would be losing now trying to attempt it especialy if RNG is not on my side, I did a Saver D5 run and twice I had no luck in doing the build I wanted to (a build for a player that had a hard time with the character), so arm dealer isn't such a bad character it's just the RNG the problem.

[Shbnfc]

What is the melee locking strat?

[Bumc]

You focus mostly on melee damage (cheapest to upgrade, cheapest weapons, best supplementary damage from items nvm that part, it would be elemental), and at the end of every round you leave one melee weapon locked.

Next round you pick it up and rely on tags to carry you -- you are more likely to receive similar, hence melee, weapons as you roll.
Then you lock the last one offered and the cycle repeats anew.

[Shbnfc]

Okay, I like to focus ranged more than melee, but good weapons are good. It's nice to have ranged damage if you find baby with beard.

I've been doing attempts for endless with this character, so I have some experience. Attempting my endless strats but not resetting when the start is too bad, I managed a 18 winstreak on D5 default/100% sliders.

[Deathraven13]

Originally posted by Shbnfc:

Okay, I like to focus ranged more than melee, but good weapons are good. It's nice to have ranged damage if you find baby with beard.

I've been doing attempts for endless with this character, so I have some experience. Attempting my endless strats but not resetting when the start is too bad, I managed a 18 winstreak on D5 default/100% sliders.

Don't say that, in 1-3 days someone will be angry at you for saying that.

Will you try going higher in the % ? While not every character was made for that (as if the game wasn't unbalanced already) going higher can really show how good a character/stat is.

For exemple some people say that Jack is a very bad character but it's possible to beat D5 182% with him proving that he is far from bad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8-j-_67wt4

Be warned tho if you play D5 182% a lot going back to D5 will feel very weird, at least for me, I feel like the game is slowing down when I return to D5 (also when playing gal guardians if I record with OBS the game slowdown for some reasons so at some point I was afraid that it would happen with Brotato).

[Shbnfc]

Originally posted by Deathraven13:

Originally posted by Shbnfc:

Okay, I like to focus ranged more than melee, but good weapons are good. It's nice to have ranged damage if you find baby with beard.

I've been doing attempts for endless with this character, so I have some experience. Attempting my endless strats but not resetting when the start is too bad, I managed a 18 winstreak on D5 default/100% sliders.

Don't say that, in 1-3 days someone will be angry at you for saying that. :DMCJester1:

Will you try going higher in the % ? While not every character was made for that (as if the game wasn't unbalanced already) going higher can really show how good a character/stat is.

For exemple some people say that Jack is a very bad character but it's possible to beat D5 182% with him proving that he is far from bad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8-j-_67wt4

Be warned tho if you play D5 182% a lot going back to D5 will feel very weird, at least for me, I feel like the game is slowing down when I return to D5 (also when playing gal guardians if I record with OBS the game slowdown for some reasons so at some point I was afraid that it would happen with Brotato).

Hey, it was me posting that 182% Jack clear. I've done halfway maxed sliders (141%) on Arms Dealer already, it was not very difficult, 182% is going to be hard, but probably very feasible. Yes, it does feel oddly slow on normal sliders at first when going from high% but a few games into normal sliders and you sort of get accustomed to the speed again.

Anyway, I'll stop playing this for a while now as the new touhou game was just released.

[Deathraven13]

Originally posted by Shbnfc:

Hey, it was me posting that 182% Jack clear. I've done halfway maxed sliders (141%) on Arms Dealer already, it was not very difficult, 182% is going to be hard, but probably very feasible. Yes, it does feel oddly slow on normal sliders at first when going from high% but a few games into normal sliders and you sort of get accustomed to the speed again.

Anyway, I'll stop playing this for a while now as the new touhou game was just released.

You did some great job in that run, it's a shame that you'll pause it put I understand.

I'm trying to do Jack D5 182% but so far no luck, don't worry I'll probably win at some point and just like you I'll record the final wave, that should prevent me from having my disk full then OBS won't record when I'll finaly manage it.......

Good luck with Arm Dealer D5 182% I've never tried with him but since RNG hate me lately I doubt that I'll ever try.

EDIT: Welp, I've tried today once again and with lasers I could only reach wave 19 (did not find any bazooka or something to clear chunk of ennemies after wave 13-15) and the best i could do is wave 20 the speedy way but I've died.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3019866196

I could only kill 1 elite with the lances granted that I only focused on surviving late game and didn't have as much Luck as I should have. Got any tips ? I've died with like 20-30 second remaining....... I have the recording of both runs (started recording at wave 19 and the other at wave 16 I think) so I could drop you a sneak peek so maybe you could tell me how I can improve aside dodging better.

[ThunfischGott]

Arms dealer is easiest ranged. Projectile Pierce + Pumpkin + Baby with a Beard or Alien Eyes gives you good damage output even on waves where you roll trash guns, and even bad ranged weapons are usually servicable, compared to bad melee weapons which are awfull. Go hard on luck and harvesting early, Arms Dealer has a really easy early game when weapons cost 1-5 mats, so you want to snowball hard

[ry0.saeba]

Originally posted by Deathraven13:

Originally posted by ry0.saeba:

Mmh I don't know, sometimes.
I feel I have a lot of decision making to do in what to buy and when, what stat to boost and when. Other then actually dodge in waves..usually I lose because I get sniped not RNG.

The higher the difficulty, the more RNG can be deadly.

In D5 182% I had to reset a lot because of it and in this patch I was only able to beat it with Speedy (because I'm not bad when it comes to dodging).

If you have some time try to do some D5 182% run in order to understand what I mean, do note that this challenge is harder in this version than it was in 0.8 because 2 patch ago ennemies got a speed buff.

While I have a 100% winrate in D5 I did arm dealer before the buff mentionned above so maybe I would be losing now trying to attempt it especialy if RNG is not on my side, I did a Saver D5 run and twice I had no luck in doing the build I wanted to (a build for a player that had a hard time with the character), so arm dealer isn't such a bad character it's just the RNG the problem.

182% definitely to much to chew for me, no thanks!!
We have for sure a very different game experience, as a noob I find Brotato...responsive, I would say. The right item or the right compromise really changes the very next wave, and watching other people strats doesn't ruin it, just add to my game and approach, and I enjoy the trial and error when usually I have zero patience.

About the speed you guys talked about, after 2 weeks straight playing Brotato I went back to that awful godforsaken game that is Spelunky 2, and that felt a lot slower. After Brotato, not after the billion hours spent on it, it feels so weird now.

Originally posted by ThunfischGott:

Arms dealer is easiest ranged. Projectile Pierce + Pumpkin + Baby with a Beard or Alien Eyes gives you good damage output even on waves where you roll trash guns, and even bad ranged weapons are usually servicable, compared to bad melee weapons which are awfull. Go hard on luck and harvesting early, Arms Dealer has a really easy early game when weapons cost 1-5 mats, so you want to snowball hard

Did that, then the random shop 17 after picking the locked guns gave me planks and pruners, so not much help from bearded babies.
So I did melee, and random shop whatever gave me SMG's and Shotguns.
I am not good enough to be consistent with any strat, just surprised nobody goes mixed with the only potato that can do it.

[ThunfischGott]

Originally posted by ry0.saeba:

Originally posted by ThunfischGott:

Arms dealer is easiest ranged. Projectile Pierce + Pumpkin + Baby with a Beard or Alien Eyes gives you good damage output even on waves where you roll trash guns, and even bad ranged weapons are usually servicable, compared to bad melee weapons which are awfull. Go hard on luck and harvesting early, Arms Dealer has a really easy early game when weapons cost 1-5 mats, so you want to snowball hard

Did that, then the random shop 17 after picking the locked guns gave me planks and pruners, so not much help from bearded babies.
So I did melee, and random shop whatever gave me SMG's and Shotguns.
I am not good enough to be consistent with any strat, just surprised nobody goes mixed with the only potato that can do it.

You need way way more income. When I say that the Arms Dealer early game is good and that you need to snowball with luck and harvesting I meant it. I had 700 mats on wave 17 on my D5 run, with that you can reroll so much that it does not matter at all when you get planks and pruners. Didn't even pin guns at all, just rolled randomly into a blank shop until a gun appeared.