Band leader is Insanely difficult

[You'reJustBad]

No word of a lie, getting slapped for half your health in an instant is obnoxious...

and ive tried everything i can think of

If i go for regen, they out DPS me, if i go for DPS, well, i have no Regen and so they kill me first with their ult

if i try to mitigate the debt, well then i don't have any regen or DPS to deal with them before they kill me

ive managed to get to ascension 3 with her and its just impossible from there on, you can't stack enough things in order to keep you balanced

and i have ascension 30 with several other characters

[Mr Talented Moth]

I am ascension 9 with pre-band leader,its not so hard, try with incremental perks as "make money", "muscle memory", <gain whatever after defeating an enemy> on first rounds and then try to make it powerful, it's about balance after all (pun intended)

[Andra]

Ascension 8 on her myself. Sometimes I don't bother dealing with the debt, sometimes I do. You've got to be flexible with builds since trying to get the same one (or two) each time will lead to disaster. I usually try and look for no more than 2 cards that "make a build" to make it easier on myself.

I.e. Muscle Memory (+1 flex every 120 heal) + heal per str. If I see both, I go heavy str-heal build.

Armor quest + frost on 50 armour block. I go heavy frost.

Income cards, and I go income build

And then I have a bunch of flex cards that suit any build - usually tanky ones like tough, regen quest, heal on ult, etc. They let me keep my options open and sometimes even open up a musician build if it comes up.

Typically your way to stay tanky and kill is to get just a single card that scales - muscle memory is a good example. Get two if you can. Then you can focus EVERYTHING else on tanking and trust that muscle memory will win you it eventually.

Edit: Just made it to ascension 9 as well with a derpy build with 6 vampires, 2 of the "vamps drain +3" and finishing with over 800 regen and over 16,600hp. Also had muscle memory and the vamp relic from the game dev guy, so was scaling up to several hundred strength in seconds xD

Edit 2: aaand reached 10 but taking a break here. Got a couple of vamps but most of my muscle work came from tough + hp stacking + muscle memory again to boost my flexes up so my ult did huge damage.

[Allyour]

I'm steadily climbing ascension with her. Currently 23, but I'm not on hardcore if that's the assumption. I find starting with armor quest makes it fairly straightforward.

If you're trying to manage debt 1) don't go crazy in shops 2) 1 Endurance can do it almost on its own and 2) Make Money can get it under control if you pick it up early. Otherwise, just try to get max HP from stuff like Hungry for More (50/round). Emergency Heal will keep you alive through a few early rounds too.

I have been having good luck with the ice effects + a few vampires. Armor quest gives lots of armor, ice effects stack up slow and heal enhancement, and vampires heal once per second each. For damage it's hard to beat Muscle Memory. Congestion turns that into more vampires/healing and Power Heal can also add tons of heal after you have muscle memory.

[Frenzy85]

Not gonna lie, I also think she is one of the worst characters.

But she does have access to game-winning builds

For survivability:
Cold Nature + Deep Frost for survivability

For scaling damage:
Muscle Memory
Vampire negative regen stacking

Endurance (+10 eCoin every 1000 damage taken)
Helps a lot with managing debt levels

Emergency stuff
For early-game

[You'reJustBad]

Originally posted by Frenzy85:

Not gonna lie, I also think she is one of the worst characters.

But she does have access to game-winning builds

For survivability:
Cold Nature + Deep Frost for survivability

For scaling damage:
Muscle Memory
Vampire negative regen stacking

Endurance (+10 eCoin every 1000 damage taken)
Helps a lot with managing debt levels

Emergency stuff
For early-game

i do know how to win with her, shes just so hard to get the stuff in order to survive long enough to scale...

and she is my least favorite character by far...

my favorite is actually Senpai... i love the fact he just ends up kicking the crap out of people x-D like how we all wish we could do to turds on the internet sometimes

[Frenzy85]

I've actually found scaling Jaws and Wheeler to be harder than Band Leader... Not sure if I'm just not playing them correctly

They both have the worst survivability options in the game at higher difficulties
They just melt so easily at Round 26+

They're a lot more dependent on getting good Relic and Event drops compared to the rest

[www]

dev at least should not let pre-bandleader to be the 2nd unlock character....when i play the game the first time, let just say its not a fun experience...

[Panthaz89]

she's one of the easiest characters to win with simply by taking emergency perks....just make sure your debt is not too high that you will die in one ult.

[Frenzy85]

Originally posted by Frenzy85:

I've actually found scaling Jaws and Wheeler to be harder than Band Leader... Not sure if I'm just not playing them correctly

They both have the worst survivability options in the game at higher difficulties
They just melt so easily at Round 26+

They're a lot more dependent on getting good Relic and Event drops compared to the rest

I take this back, A50 with her on the weekly challenge is an absolute nightmare.
Need to get lucky to even get past Round 6.
I imagine the same goes for reaching A30 with her in regular mode. I was only at around A10 with her on regular.

[gg.nadrewod]

Originally posted by Panthaz89:

she's one of the easiest characters to win with simply by taking emergency perks....just make sure your debt is not too high that you will die in one ult.

The problem is that the Ults deal more damage as the rounds increase, but there's no easy way to see the ult damage numbers ahead of time in-game. For example, the cat boss deals over 1300 damage each ult, and gets faster and faster with her ult regens as the fight continues, so if you don't have some strong armor/heals/dodge by that point, your run is dying in round 10, and that's not even mentioning the massive health sponge that is round 15...

[Steelflame]

Don't ignore her common perks. Endurance is utterly INSANE as a common perk. 10 gold per 1000 damage taken frequently acts like 20-40 income (which means 60-120 health for your next fight) per copy of the perk in a fight. And the income growth for gold spent is better than the income from coin hits perk as well. It's a little slower growth, but actually lets you benefit from dumping a lot of money in the shop.


And something to remember is the math of how her debt vs hp works out. You take 3x the debt as damage, which means in any case where you get more EHP from buying something than 3x it's cost, it's basically free at minimum, or actively earning you gold (Be it from Endurance damage, income growth from gold spent, or just giving you more fight time for your band procs to grow.) And income growth earned in any means is effectively HP.

[DFWPestilence]

Just RNG is a real ♥♥♥♥♥ for getting her combined relic.
Been trying to get them for about a week now and it always seems to just not give me the last piece.
Be it the event armor not showing up or getting effing triplicates of the null, and no knot.
RNG has just been kicking my ass with this combo.
Any advice?

[Steelflame]

There is a way to RNG manipulate the game on events. Events are tied to the RNG seed of your rerolls, if you don't like the event, save and quit, and continue run. Spend a reroll. Your event is a different event now.


Very easy, and can easily let you push through events to get the one you want.

You can also use this for shops (something you've probably realized from losing a boss and using continue after a reroll) and I ASSUME it also works for boss rewards. Haven't tried it for that though personally.

[TastefulSidecar]

Income and money generating perks are insanely good on her

[Cheato1]

Originally posted by Steelflame:

There is a way to RNG manipulate the game on events. Events are tied to the RNG seed of your rerolls, if you don't like the event, save and quit, and continue run. Spend a reroll. Your event is a different event now.


Very easy, and can easily let you push through events to get the one you want.

You can also use this for shops (something you've probably realized from losing a boss and using continue after a reroll) and I ASSUME it also works for boss rewards. Haven't tried it for that though personally.

To add to this if you save all 5 rerolls and only use them on shops its possible to see 2 of her 3 pieces in a single shop, using 5 rerolls plus the shop reroll gives you 10 shops per 5 waves to check.