Black Future '88 Survival Guide [WIP]

Don't want to die as much or as badly?
Want to "Git Gud?" /s
There are plenty of ways to do that, but the best way is by using this guide as a reference as you climb up Tower Skymelt.

What exactly is Black Future '88

Black Future '88 is a Retro Cyberpunk themed Rouge-lite Metroidvania Shooter.

Originally posted by superscarysnakes:

Black Future ’88 is a Synth-Punk roguelike 2D action Shooter. Vertically climb an always evolving procedural tower to reach the top and kill its insane owner…before your heart explodes. Shoot, slash, dash and upgrade yourself to survive the endless waves of Homicidal AI, Traps & Colossal Wardens.

What this guide has to offer you.

This guide is a community made guide on everything black future.
This guide will have every weapon, ability, and enemy, as well as some class building guides and maybe even strategies for handling game crashes.

Below, this guide contains

• Gameplay Tips
  
• Characters
  
• Weapons
  
• Bosses
  
• Enhancements
  - Boss Specific Enhancements
  - Normal Enhancements
  - Cursed Enhancements
  - Character Specific Enhancements
  - Chem Enhancements
  - Post-Duncan Enhancements
  
• Enemies
  
• Synergies

This should help you on your way to not only climb Skymelt, but dominate it.

Gameplay Tips

Pro Tips from an early beta player

• Yellow/Gold is bad.
  Associate about every hazard you're going to encounter in game with the color yellow, because nearly all hazards are yellow.
  
  • Explosive gasses
    
    
  • Spikes
    
• Picking up money and ammo drops keeps Skymelt from evolving as quickly.
  Money is easy enough to pick up, just run over it.
  Ammo is important. Pick it up.
  If you had to choose between picking up ammo or money, pick up the ammo. Ammo adds more exp to Skymelt than money does.
  
  
• Try to avoid killing enemies over pits, if anything drops from them it'll be directly absorbed into Skymelt as it goes into the pit.
  
  
• Your explosives hurt you too.
  If there is an enemy anywhere from a short range to point blank range away, you will most likely take explosive damage if you decide to use an explosive weapon.
  
  
• Enemy rockets aren't the end of the world.
  If an enemy fires a rocket at you, there are several options made available to you.
  
  
  1. Panic and run like hell.
     This is a bad idea, panicking will get you nothing but another death.
     
  2. Dash through it.
     You won't take damage if you dash through it.
     
  3. Shoot it to destroy it early.
     A viable tactic, but this can be improved upon if skilled enough.
     
  4. Shoot the rocket when it's near an enemy.
     A grand tactic that can harm or even kill all first (and most 2nd to 3rd run) enemies since explosives don't have a no-team-kills check. (when enemies start doing more damage because of skymelt, this becomes an even riskier proposition because you have a chance at dealing more damage, but you could also take more damage if it's too close)
  
  The viability of all of these tactics depends upon the rocket's distance from you, so weigh your options.
  
  
• Some guns use money as Ammo, which is good and bad.
  The good? picking up ammo boosts or boxes will increase your money.
  The bad? firing these guns uses your money and spending your money uses your ammo.
  
  
• Should I press the button?
  Pressing the button will spawn a Hunter who will appear in one of the next rooms you visit. It could be the next room after you leave, or several rooms later. They'll appear in the next room you visit after you see their pop up that says "I seeeeeeeeeee you."
  If you can manage against the hunter that gets spawned, they will drop a powerful weapon (sometimes themed to them too) and an ammunition crate.
  
  
• What about triggering the alarm?
  When you decide to trigger an alarm, a group of enemies spawns immediately in the present room.
  If you're low on health and ammo, this might be a losing proposition.
  You can re-trigger the alarm as much as you like.

Heads Up Display Help

This section is a basic explanation of the elements of your heads up display, feel free to skip it if you don't need to use it.


Below is a picture of the game











In the upper left corner, there is a (depending on your HUD scaling choice) small info set featuring some important data.









The blue bar is your Blood bar which is basically a health bar.




Taking damage lowers your current health, which if it reaches 0, you die.
Certain things will add or subtract from your maximum blood, such as activating defense droids, or using blood thinners.


Directly below your Blood bar is your Deadlock Timer.








The Deadlock Timer traces how long you have left to live.
There are certain weapons, enhancements, curses, and items that alter the amount of deadlock time you have left.
If the deadlock timer reaches 0, you're dead, it's game over.


To the left of the Deadlock Timer is your money counter.






Your money is probably something you shouldn't worry about too much in game.
You get it by killing enemies, and it is easy to rack up a lot of money fast.
You use money to purchase items, ammo, stims, and guns.
If you use a "Greenback" weapon, note that your money is your ammunition.


The final HUD element in the upper left corner is the Dash Charge.






The dash charge shows you when you can dash. Each dash charge requires around 2.1 seconds to refill, allowing you to dash.
There are a handful of enhancements that modify dashes and the charge rate for dash charges, as well as weapons that use dash charges as ammo.


Going to the bottom left hand corner, you can see your two weapons and ammo counts for each of them.

{ADD PIC LATER}




At the bottom right corner is a mini map with information on it that will be explained in the next section of the guide.

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And lastly on the top right corner is a display of all your enhancements in this run through.

{add pic later}

Map item guide. [WIP]

As mentioned from before, the map would be explained in a later section of the guide.
This is that later section.







The icons on the map mean things.

Character - Hauer

Hauer is the starting character and also the most Vanilla Balanced character in the game.

Starting Gear

Weaponry

• Survivor's Pistol / Infinite Ammunition
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Snake Bite / 44 starting Ammunition
  

He starts with 1 dash that takes 2 seconds to recharge.
His ammunition is normal as well as his blood.

Character - Ghost

Non-Cursed Enhancements

All of the non-cursed, non-stim, non boss core enhancements in the game, with some notes

Enhancement Name	Enhancement Icon	In-Game Description	Character Exclusive?
Rabbit's Foot		Weapons and Items drop more often and are better.	No
Trigger Fingers		Better Firing Speed	No
Animal Heart		Faster Firing Speed if you have a low blood count	No
A Fancy Hat		Extra charisma gets you better shop discounts and more options in buff selection.	No
Spiteful Heart		Killing Synth-Heads refunds a little ammo.	No
Black Mirror		Your Projectiles can now bounce.	No
Remorse Supressor		Killing things lets you immediately use the dash.	No
Saving Grace		Longer Dashes. Dashing through bullets can sometimes heal you.	No
Flak Jacket		Less damage from explosions	No
Bandoliers		Find more ammo in weapons, higher ammo max.	No
Second thoughts		Get an extra dash charge	No
Heavy Boots		Destroy everything nearby when dropping from high places.	Yes, Hauer
Vagrant Core		Gain tremendous dash mobility but running consumes your deadlock time	No

Cursed Enhancements

All of the cursed enhancements found in game.

Enhancement Name	Enhancement Icon	In-Game Description
Blood Rounds		In your darkest hour, turn your blood to ammo.
Optimistic Locking		You cause more damage when at high blood count, but Skymelt spawns more enemies

Boss Core Enhancements

This is a list of all enhancements possibly collectible from killing bosses.

Enhancement Name	Enhancement Icon	In-Game Description	Boss collected from
Jupiter Core: Fast Clocking		Greatly reduces cooldown of dashing.	This core is obtained from the Jupiter and Juno boss fight. Kill Jupiter last to have a shot at getting this enhancement. You can only have either the Juno or Jupiter core.*
Juno Core		Create a hot beam when you dash	This core is obtained from the Jupiter and Juno boss fight. Kill Juno last to have a shot at getting this enhancement.You can only have either the Juno or Jupiter Core.*
Uber Core: Ground Slam		Downward dash and hit the ground with a powerful attack	This core is obtained from defeating Uberhelm.
Avalanche Core			This core is obtained from defeating Avalanche.

* Note, you can only get either the Jupiter or Juno core once per run. It is possible, just not probable to be able to get both through multiple runs.

Stim Enhancements

Synergies

Synergies are cool combinations of enhancements and other enhancements and/or weapons.

They can be beneficial or wack, but that all depends on your play style.

All information has been either obtained in game or harvested from
https://steamcommunity.com/app/751820/discussions/0/1747895838224916354/

Originally posted by HiddenStake:

With some help from GL|HF Laundry.God and Kenyan Bee Thief

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198101156803
https://steamcommunity.com/id/AngeloBangelo
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197993269371

Synergies:

Kill Repeater - Combo Buffs Activate Earlier.
Recipe:

• Firewall
  
• Sequence Optimizer
  
• Death From Above

Denullifier - Pick up nullified projectiles and use them as ammo.
Recipe:

• Prophet Core: Local Area Nullifier
  
• Saving Grace
  
• Kinetic Lance

Nuke Suit - Explosions can only do 1 damage to you.
Recipe:

• Flack Jacket
  
• M. Fission
  
• *Kwang-Grade Stompers (Runnels Ability)

Dangerous When Laserous - Energy weapons have faster firing speed.
Recipe:

• Neon Chrome
  
• Juno Core
  
• Bandoliers

Night Terror - When teleporting from a Night weapon, nullify all nearby projectiles.
Recipe:

• Tempest Core: Deep Shadows
  
• Blood Bait
  
• Night Machine

FMLRIZER - Faster attack speed.
Recipe:

• Neon Chrome
  
• *FMLR LZR (Drone weapon)

Living Weapon - An extra dash for the embodiment of chaos.
Recipe:

• Uber Core: Ground Slam
  
• Juno Core
  
• Remorse Suppressor

Bullet Efficiency - Sometimes firing weapons doesn't use ammo, but energy weapons break when trying to pick them up.
Recipe:

• Synaptic Trigger
  
• Heavy Belt
  
• Trigger Fingers

Dead Of Night - Kills grant an extra few seconds of deadlock time.
Recipe:

• Night Piercer
  
• Time Reaper
  
• Insectivorous

Doomed Soul - Some armor, all your blood is also armor. Your blood can no longer become infected.
Recipe:

• Doomed Valor
  
• Blood Bait
  
• Nails Implant

Sandbagger - Your starter pistol is upgraded.
Recipe:

• Doomed Valor
  
• Time Reaper
  
• Survivor's Pistol

Vantasm - All weapons fire faster, but your blood is now infected.
Recipe:

• Black Mirror
  
• Blood Bait
  
• Blak Rifle

Jr. Anarchist - Become immune to fire.
Recipe:

• Synaptic Trigger
  
• *Snake Bite (Hauer Starter Weapon(?))
  
• Black Richter

Gemini - Two great tastes that taste great together deserve an extra dash charge.
Recipe:

• Synaptic Trigger
  
• Null Mass Cannon
  
• Lil' Brother

Skyvader - You've combined your weapons into the Skyvader.
Recipe:

• Synaptic Trigger
  
• Black Richter
  
• Electron Pistol

Needle Threader - Dashing through bullets will heal you for even more.
Recipe:

• Saving Grace
  
• Heavy Night Nail

Blak Threader - Your deadlock time ticks down faster, but dashing through bullets will earn you back time.
Recipe:

• Melt Core
  
• Blak Nail

Night Piercer Set - You've modified your night nail into a stronger weapon.
Recipe:

• Night Piercer
  
• Night Nail

Sharper Boots - Fast dropping can now slice projectiles that are underfoot.
Recipe:

• *Heavy Boots (Hauer Ability) OR Crat.R
  
• Nails Implant
  
• Night Piercer

True Believer - Slice nearby enemy projectiles whenever you're teleported.
Recipe:

• Night Piercer (The modified weapon)
  
• Night Nail

Faith Healer - Regain more time from Overstimulator Perk.
Recipe:

• Grim Determination
  
• Overstimulator
  
• Black Richter

Heavy Needler Set - You've modified your Needler into a stronger weapon.
Recipe:

• Nails Implant
  
• *Needler (Sioux Starter Weapon)

All items with a star(*) next to them are character specific, can be obtained by special means, or needs a certain character to be there if playing co-op.

[Miankot]

Thanks for this

[Cadaver]

On hunters:

You will know when a hunter will appear in the next room by them saying "I can see you" after this text is when they will appear in the next unseen room, this includes the boss room