Nubby's Challenge Mini-Guide: One In Nubillion

A short list of tips for each of the challenges, if you are struggling with them and need some pointers

Intro

UPDATE: This guide was made before 1.3, but most of it still applies. Some challenges were made easier like Expiration date, and some items were changed. The item that I reference the most that was dramatically changed was "Jake the Snake", which was moved from a rare shop item to a common black market item (thus can't be force triggered). I might update this guide, but probably will wait a few more updates so I don't have to keep coming back to it. Just know that some items are changed, but the core strategies still apply!

Hey there! Just wanted to make a small guide listing the strategies I tried to use to get through the challenges in Nubby's Number Factory. By no means am I an expert on this game, I've just played it a fair amount- but I saw no other full challenge guide on here and wanted to fill the gaps.

In terms of general tips:

• I didn't ever feel like I needed to "restart scum" a la binding of isaac, I'd honestly say that most situations are winnable, some just take an incredible amount of luck. Don't be afraid to restart if you need to, but you don't also need to restart if the starting shop isn't perfect.
  
• There are several pegboards in the game, some are slightly better than others in certain situations, but I also don't personally find any "so bad" that I reroll my run to not get it. They can mildly dictate what builds are best to go for- flat-ish ones are better for "stall" builds involving things like the Kazoo, and ones shaped like "buckets" or with lots of crevices are better for builds that involve bouncing with items like the Dancing Dino. The "Sphere" (missing a peg in the four corners) is probably the weakest out of all of them, but it's good for "manslaughter builds" where you throw Nubby down a pit immediately. (See "Times Up!")
  
• I generally find "Double Peg" builds to be the most consistent, but they also require the most rare items to excel. Halving pegs can also be incredibly powerful, but the items you need to pull it off are so strict that it's not worth going for unless it's handed directly to you.
  
• The game scales it's win conditions based on how many times you've restocked the board, so try to avoid pivoting a build in a completely different direction mid-run.

"The Easy Ones" (1-4)

I'm grouping all of these together because I don't really have too much to say on them- they're all easy enough that the only wisdom I can really impart is "it's just like the regular game but harder in a certain way"...

1: Amnesiac

Probably the most boring challenge out of all of them. It's just a worse version of the game since the only downside is you can't synergize your build at all. Just keep throwing yourself at it until you get some powerful items or things that work decently together. It's good to know that since all items are mystery boxes, you might as well "buy" items at the crane game- you also get a chance at perks this way. This challenge took me a surprisingly long time to beat because I kept getting things that never worked well together.

2: Stay There!

Another challenge that is just the vanilla game but with a feature removed. You might expect me to have some sort of strategy of when to reroll the pegs (since you can only do it once per game)... sorry, both times i've won this challenge I accidentally immediately rerolled them before shop 1. Easier than challenge 1.

3: Short on Change

This was one that I thought was going to be pretty easy, but turned out to be trickier than I expected. Things cost less so you need less coins to buy things, but since a lot of stuff costs 6-10 coins, you basically can only buy one thing per shop. Don't pick up perks like "Void" or "The Meaty Perk" if you aren't secure in your items- you might not be able to unlock enough slots to make them worthwhile. In this challenge, you can focus less on high-roller catapulting builds and more on consistent 1-2x restock builds. (unless you're going for a high score, of course!)

4: Plain Jane

If you've played a lot of roguelites before, you might be thinking "hang on- less items in the item pool, isn't that sort of a good thing?". Well, in Nubby you can't permanently stack items, but it is still extremely helpful. Welcome to the land of being able to get 2-4 of the same upgraded item. Even though rare perks/items show up less often normally anyways, there's almost a mental relief that you don't have to wait for them. Feel free to buy as much crap as you want, since you're not getting that Laser Pointer! In my opinion this is the easiest challenge in the game, and also the first one I beat. Basically almost a Tony perk...

5: Expiration Date

This is a challenge that seems pretty bunk to deal with at first, but once you get into the swing of it it's not too bad. It can be very challenging, i'd actually say this is the first truly difficult challenge, but it has a clear strategy that can vastly help your chance at success.

Basically you are looking for a way to easily use your inventory as a "revolving door". Start by catapulting your money after the first couple shops- get things like Cheese House, Finger Puppet, or Squirmy/Sea Cucumber. If you have a good enough setup to get your lives back, sacrifice some Nubbies to get more coins during Gold Rush. Basically your goal is to get a good economy as fast as possible.

Once you've done that, keep that money flowing, somehow! You are going to buy a lot of stuff and won't always have a consistent money source, so it's good to have a nest egg. Open up Cafe Nubby when you can and gorge yourself on Hotdog-dogs and Strawberries if you can afford it. Sell your items if you can win the last round without them! When they explode, they give no money back.

The last thing to note is that upgrading an item does indeed refresh it, so generally common items are better than rares. Unless I get something like Jake the Snake, I tend to avoid buying rares in this challenge as they cost more and last less. By freezing an item dupe in a shop you can basically guarantee keeping that item for much longer than normal provided the second shop comes fast enough. I don't go for black markets in this challenge, they're usually a trap. Only worth going for if you can upgrade the item via Cafe Nubby.

The Ones Where If You Die, It Sucks (6-7)

I was originally going to separate both of these, but I realized how similar they all are when I started writing the second one.

6: One-Shot McGee

It's the regular game, but you only ever have five lives. Honestly, despite this being a difficult challenge, there's pretty much absolutely nothing to say. Don't go for risky plays, keep it consistent, and try to find a build that guarantees you a win ASAP. Think of it as playing against the clock instead of trying to do a "perfect run", Nubby is coated in a special form of radioactive waste that makes him bounce like a maniac that is sometimes impossible to predict.

7: Nubblocke

[UPDATE: Finally beat this challenge, now I officially have all challenges completed whooo! Honestly really not much to say, incredibly predictable build that's the standard "have nubby die and get points for it" void type beat. I will say that I think crab claw might be a lot better than yeti in this challenge, mainly because you can rely more on inventory saturation over having only 2 items and potentially messing up. Then again, if you get a few pregnancy tests, Yeti is an instant win- so really it's down to how the run goes. I died once during this challenge in the middle of the run, but it only killed my second pregnancy test, which actually made it a tiny bit more consistent as there wasn't 6 nubbies flying around everywhere popping pegs]


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This is my least favourite challenge in the game by far, and I would honestly say maybe the most difficult one as well. Once you are at the point in a run where you have items, you basically have one life. You can be on the best run ever with Jake the Snake combined with a Yeti buffed with multiple Void Perks and a Pregnancy test to boot, and you have one bad stroke of luck or terrible bounces and suddenly you've pretty much lost. That exact thing actually happened to me two levels before the final boss, and that's the reason I still haven't beaten this challenge to this day.

The real difficulty of this challenge is how levels scale. If you do really well early on, later levels will be a bit harder due to the board restocking more. This normally isn't too much of an issue as you can just keep snowballing past it... but if a really good item you have explodes there's not much you can do.

The only tips I can really provide for this one that aren't things like "just please for the love of god don't miss" is to saturate your inventory. Don't be a fool like me and try and play it with a low item build, the Void perk isn't worth it. The Mystery Box perk that puts a random item in slot 1 is actually really good in this challenge for obvious reasons, but I wouldn't recommend relying on it as it's just pulling the lever on a slot machine. If your inventory is full of 6-7 items, the chance of your run going into a failure cascade is much lower.

8: Times[sic] Up!

I really, really like this challenge. It's very unique feeling, and you even can see the cute accessory Nubby is wearing in-game.

Basically your goal is to get lots of perks and items that benefit from you killing Nubby immediately. Sure, you can go for a mid-range approach involving surviving the full 1.5 seconds, but isn't it nicer to put him out of his misery? Jokes aside, I find the "throw him down a pit" strategy a lot more consistent. Go for stuff that has "On first peg popped" or "When Nubby dies" over anything else. I actually find "The Speedy Perk" to be less consistent or good than you'd expect, mainly because it's only 1 second instead of his full 1.5 second lifespan. If you bounce wrong or want to hit a peg or two before dying, you can end up blowing up instead of falling out. That's why I personally find things like Void or the shotgun perk (actual name escapes me at the moment) a lot better. Pregnancy Test is invaluable for these kinds of builds since nubby can die multiple times, even better if you manage to duplicate it with a squid. (4 Nubbies?!?!?)

This challenge is definitely very hard, but rewarding once you get it down. What I ended up doing is picking up a Yeti, putting it in slot 7, getting a few void perks and a pregnancy test, and then throwing him down the far left or far right of the screen. Combined with a doubler like Jake the Snake or the Dancing Dino, and you basically have a guaranteed win. Obviously getting all of that takes a lot of luck, but it gives a good idea of the kind of build you're looking for. Cheese House can carry you through a lot of early rounds, but Flaming Skull is surprisingly lame. In general, just avoid anything with "X pegs popped" or "number of bounces" and go straight for those juicy "first peg popped"/"highest peg popped" activators.

9: Pol's Bane

Not as bad as you might think considering it's the second last challenge, but still can be frustrating. You'd be surprised how far you can go without any perks, as long as you go for certain builds.

I'd recommend going for either a double build or a half build. The best part is that you can technically go for both at once if you get a Dancing Dino- buy that sucker in shop 1 or 2 and see where your luck takes you. I won with a half build, and I was surprised how well it worked. Grab yourself a Mannequin Head (something I thought was completely useless until I won this challenge), some Asbestos, the titular Dancing Dino, and maybe a Kazoo or summon item as a garnish. Your goal is to have Nubby survive long enough that the chaos of Asbestos and the Dancing Dino Doubles get you major points. By having the Mannequin Head in your inventory, the Asbestos will start out hugely boosted, and the point threshold will also be a lot lower. I liked keeping one or two slots open for flex, which helped in using Cafe Nubby to upgrade the Mannequin Head. (you can buy a junk item and put it in the leftmost slot to upgrade your rightmost item using the rare food)

10: Pheebie-Mode

[UPDATE: Shortly after writing this guide, I ended up beating this challenge. I used the Yeti, and had an equal mix of chaos and void perks. I tried to fish for an upgrade food in cafe nubby, but ended up just going for a bunch of kebabs instead since it was hard to get lots of cash. I was given the opportunity to get the 3d glasses or the laser pointer, and I think both of those could have potentially been pretty strong, but I opted to stay with the safer choice. Leaving the old guide down below as I think it still heavily applies, but I think Yeti is the the most consistent option, and the one i'd recommend. My boss was Evil Tony, and it took me a couple lives to get the right RNG of his laser blasts during my void perks triggering.]


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Ah yes, the true Nubby-Buster. You'll feel like you got kicked in the Nubbies after this one.

Well in all honesty, I find it less frustrating than challenge 7. I also will fully admit that I have yet to complete this challenge either- it's one of the two I have left. So take my information with a grain of salt, and apologies if you came here just for help with this one.

There are a few things that can help loads on Pheebie-Mode. The most obvious one is the Void Perk, which can more or less theoretically secure you a win if you get enough of them. If you want to brute force this challenge for full completion, you could honestly probably just reroll your perk selections over and over until you get 3-4 of them, but that sounds pretty miserable. The Chaos Perk also is REALLY good in this challenge, almost better than Void in some builds, since it only has one item to target. Ray-Gun and Drainer can be alright, but be careful with the latter.

You might need to swap out items a couple times, starting out with something like the classic Cheese House or Squirmy gambit. Once you have a stable income and/or have unlocked item slot 7, you can try and fish for a rare item or go with something more classic like Pants. Generally you need an item that can scale all the way to the end of the game though. The Black Market is a complete scam, and the crane game has a chance to get you perks, so spend all your hard earned dough on rolling for gacha pulls there. If you get an item, you can add it to your inventory and immediately sell it to further fund your gambling addiction. Cafe Nubby also has the Kebab perk, but if you're going with Chaos or Void an extra trigger or two won't really amount to much. Good to keep in mind though if you have lots of extra cash!

As i've said, I have yet to beat this challenge, but i've gotten very close. A few further notes I have on item observations:

• Dancing Dino is usually one of the best items in the game to me, but here it's outperformed due to how easy it is to trigger. Perks are the major powerspike in this challenge, so you want stuff you can force-trigger.
  
• The Yeti is absurdly strong, but be careful with the chaos perk. You need multiple of the Void perk to be able to pull it off... it's one of those "all or nothing" hail marys that will either win you the game or end your run if you pivot into it. Chaos requires less investment, but is more luck based since you have to avoid popping the highest peg.
  
• Summons can be very helpful with Chaos, but the more you pop pegs, the higher chance you have of falling out of the stage, so I tend to not bother with them. If Dolphin ends up getting buffed it might be a pretty good solution to this challenge, but as of right now I find it very weak.
  
• Pants are just the classic. No matter if you go Chaos or Void, Pants are a good choice. However, they're very inconsistent. You can follow all the steps and do everything in the run right, but still lose because they decided to hit the wrong pegs.

[Fraggy]

This game is impossible, my highscore is 70,000

[king julian]

Black market has so many good items

[Tom]

The Pheebie strategy worked for expiration date for me. Yeti and pants work well if you can get 2+ void perk and some kebabs.

[ZOx0]

Expiration Date Challenge was a Pain In the Ass, Good thing it got easier? in the V1.3 update. Thanks for the guide mate. Cheers

[Obsessed]

I did Pheebie-Mode using cheese house to get a bunch of money, then the snake for 1/4 chance to double with a LOT of kebab and anything else to retrigger it.

[SuperKirby]

One thing I want to add is that for Pheebie-Mode, the Mystery Box Perk does NOT trigger the main challenge effect, so you can technically cheese it by having another random item in slot 1. Can be useful in early game, but I don't actually see any point in going for it later on if you build around void.

[Ramble]

Helpful guide. Might be worth mentioning that some challenges also make it so relevant food items cannot appear. No Pickle Rats in Stay There, No Croissants in One-Shot, and No Kebabs in Pol's Bane. Confused me my first time around, so I think it'd be helpful.

[Cooki]

i also just cant find them anywhere else

[Cooki]

what do all the supervisors do? i want to know so i have an idea of what to go for first

[Keinicus]

Very helpful, I didn't realise pants were so good