How to beat Survival mode

[Knight of Tigers]

Certain waves of enemies are way too tanky. I get that this is meant to be a DPS check, but unlike other roguelikes or "be the bullet hell" games, there doesn't appear to be any kind of synergy or build combos to help stay ahead of the curve.
My usual setup is to load one hand up with a single weapon type (like five shotguns or five electric chains), then have the other hand set up with at least one water hose and one launcher or missile. I can reach the waves of enraged werewolves fairly consistently, and have made it to the waves of sultans a handful of times, but I can't seem to kill fast enough to prevent being swarmed.
Does anyone have any tips or tricks to share?

[Lucius Caesar]

In my experience you are much better off with an upgraded weapon than many low level ones, so every chance you get, upgrade your starter weapon. obviously it depends what that starter weapon is, but I've had a fairly easy time with the guided missile launcher.

Also I switched to manual fire instead of automatically firing when enemies are in the middle of the screen, that's probably not made a huge difference, but it feels better.

[VeNoM]

We've just had a similar discussion on Gamecraft's Discord and one of the members (Megadeth116) gave a detailed tip:

"may be too late, but for survivors mode my strat is: start with electric chain to get shock which is op, then something with pierce like a rifle, then single target like minigun (mini gun alt fire is op), elemetntal rifle for freeze and exposure, can go with sniper riffle for 1 shots of tougher mobs. If you have trouble with huge group clear then submachine gun (for ricochet with shock) otherwise everything else into miniguns, machine guns or rifles. dont know if support weapons and accessories are even worth it, sting is usefull early i guess and maybe a sticky bomb.
for classic mode: missiles. like 8 of them should be enough (actually 2 lvl 5 are enough for all the mobs, may be more on lower rebirths)
For relics in classic: crit chance
For relics in survival: soul chance and crit chance if you dont have good weapon upgrade"

Thread link: https://discord.com/channels/722442771847446599/815551562558210048/1180888751182991523

[Marshmallow_Fox]

Originally posted by Lucius Caesar:

In my experience you are much better off with an upgraded weapon than many low level ones, so every chance you get, upgrade your starter weapon. obviously it depends what that starter weapon is, but I've had a fairly easy time with the guided missile launcher.

Also I switched to manual fire instead of automatically firing when enemies are in the middle of the screen, that's probably not made a huge difference, but it feels better.

I would definitely advise using manual firing. The automatic firing certainly makes the vast amount of holding/clicking you need to do less fatiguing, but the hitboxes seem to be smaller than normal when you do this; ie- You can aim at the extremities of the enemy and it won't automatically fire but manual fire would have hit it. Also there are lots of scenarios where even if you weren't directly aiming at a monster, you would still hit, with seeking, splash, ricochet, etc.

I'm mostly on the same page with upgrading before getting new weapons, but you'll notice every weapon has a point where you want to get it to that level quickly, and it's not absolutely necessary to get it to 5 just yet. Obviously, there are diminishing returns at +5, but for some weapons, it might be 4 where the weapon's effectiveness is realized, and you can focus on adding more weapons to get to 4 before getting the previous ones to 5. I would also always grab a new weapon if it skips a level (New starting at 2 or higher) rather than upgrading another weapon by one level, just because you're getting an extra level out of it.

It used to be as simple as just grabbing all electric chains since there was apparently a bug with Electrify that made it do way more damage than expected, but those were nerfed and now I'm not sure if they even feel good to use anymore.

[<|☥|Inesophet|☥|>]

I am not going to spoiler it for you but after finishing matches look at the DPS some of your weapons do. I have beaten the game several times now but only with a mix of a few high level weapons. (4-5).

[Knight of Tigers]

Well, I've given everyone's suggestions a go. Time to report back.

Focusing on upgrades more than bulk weapons and avoiding upgrades beyond Tier V seems to have had the most positive effect. I can now beat the wave of enraged werewolves a little more consistently; at this point, it seems to largely be a matter of having good RNG and making sure I have more weapons with high fire rate. Launchers feel more reliable than guided missiles, which seem to be kind of a crapshoot in terms of DPS. Beating the wave of sultans is still a complete wash, however. I have beat Survival mode exactly once, even with all permanent upgrades maxed out; felt like luck more than skill, since I can't replicate the run at all.

Increasing my crit rate might be helping? But it feels like sacrificing a more tangible upgrade in exchange for something very small. I'd rather improve my secondary or passive weapons than get a measly +3% crit boost.

The suggestion to switch to manual fire, however, didn't really help. I definitely chewed through smaller waves faster thanks to hitting enemies earlier than the automatic fire can acquire a target, but against the dense waves - the ones I actually have trouble with - it made no discernible difference. If anything, it's more of a liability in the event that I take my finger off the trigger to rest.

tl;dr feels like DPS and bad shop rolls is the main issue.

Are there any weapons that are just straight-up not worth it? I know flamethrowers are complete trash, and I'm quickly coming to the same conclusion on the water hose, but are there any other pitfalls I should know about?

[Cytwex]

First off, max out your collection range upgrade.
Start with Gemini and smg, upgrade these to 4.
get sniper to 5 and elemental rifle to 5 in that order if possible.
Everything after is just personal preference.
For artifacts, always take any thing that increases souls or damage.

Strat wise, always focus on weak mobs and kite the tanky guys around, there job is to keep you moving but dont sit there wasting time killing them. You want to focus on out leveling the waves as much as possible. Save your bloodskill for the werewolves early on but you wont need it once the crawlers spawn and can save it for clearing paths for escape.