Gameplay Guide

This guide will attempt to explain as many things about the gameplay of The Desolate Hope as possible with as few story spoilers as possible. Before you read this guide, however, I suggest playing the game yourself; the discovery and experimentation is half the fun (for me at least). But if you just want to fight with robots and actually understand what the hell is going on, this guide is for you. Included in this guide are explanations of the items you can buy, the ways in which you can upgrade, and the many, many facets of the virus fights.

Disclaimers and a quick plug

This game is really weird, hard to understand, and lacking in guides at the moment. The wiki is also full of holes and has some of its information wrong, as some of it is based off of an older version of the game and its manual, which is different from the present version. This guide, therefore, is going to have gaps in its knowledge, and may even have some of its information completely wrong. If you see anything inaccurate or wish to fill in a gap, please leave a comment and correct me.

Story spoilers will be avoided in this guide, but almost every aspect of the gameplay will be spoiled in some way, so if you want to be surprised about that, look away now.

I've also made an annotated longplay of this game if you want to see a full walkthrough. You can find it here: https://youtu.be/vfj-ELB51Qc?list=PLw_uIGYEItCrYjPQdHy5796hGRjV_JaUZ (Warning: full walkthrough will contain tons of spoilers. If you plan to play this game yourself, I highly suggest doing that first before you watch the longplay to keep yourself unspoiled. Also, unlike this guide, my longplay's commentary contains profanity, so if that offends you avert your eyes)

UPDATE: Youtube removed annotations, so sadly this longplay is now just a longplay. This makes me very, very sad, but what can you do, I guess.

Introduction

So, you've tried to play The Desolate Hope, but everything is... strange. There are no item descriptions so you don't know exactly what you're buying when you buy things. There are weird eggs on the ground that don't seem to do anything. Oh crap, there's a time limit? How pressing is that? And then you find your first virus and the entire universe turns upside down. What do all these abilities do? Why do I get different abilities at different times? The boss just did something, what was it? Minigames? What the heck do those do? Why is my entire party dying? AAAAAAAAAAGH!

Well panic no more, because this guide is going to explain every aspect of this game that needs explaining without spoiling any story elements, so you can enjoy TDH without having a brain aneurysm. So let's not waste any more time and get straight to it.

The Simulations

The day segments are divided into 3 different gameplay styles: the simulations (which are sidescrolling platformers) the sub-simulations (which are top-down shooters) and the virus fights (which are real-time RPG boss fights). The night segments are divided into two: the item searches and the space invader bonus round. Each of these will be explained in detail.

The simulations are where you will be spending most of your time. In this mode, you control Coffee, and because this is a simulation and not real life, he can jump and shoot energy blasts. Don't question it. This is the mode in which you buy powerups, collect eggs and resources, talk to NPCs, and find the viruses to fight. This mode is pretty self-explanatory, but there are three things that are worth delving deeper into: the six powerups you can buy to enhance this mode, the eggs, and the difficulty curve.

Four out of six of the powerups that power up Coffee in the simulations are sold by the Robo-Baby, and these are the most important ones as they allow you to access new areas. Except for the Pickpocket upgrade which is even more important than the others, because it gives you more money passively, which lets you buy the other upgrades faster. I highly recommend making this your first purchase of the game; it's only 150 bits and will pay for itself very quickly; it increases the number of bits you get from killing enemies and also gives you a chance to get bits for free every time you hit an enemy.

The Hover Pack, (200 bits) is next. This one is a no brainer; it lets you hover, increasing your jump height slightly and jump length significantly. This will make normal platforming much easier, and allow you access to many otherwise unreachable areas.

The next upgrade, costing 350 bits, is the Water Boots, which allow you infinite jumps and jump height while under water. These are completely worthless outside of Miradmoore, and it's technically possible to beat it without them (though you will need them to access all the areas and collectables in Miradmoore), but doing so requires some nightmarish platforming. You don't have time for that. 350 bits is a small price to pay for this one.

Lastly, the X-Ray Goggles cost 900. They reveal walls that can be walked through or destroyed by showing them as flashing. While it's technically possible to beat the game without this upgrade if you already know where all the breakable and pass-through walls are, you don’t, so you’ll probably need this. The Malwastes have obviously breakable blocks, but no breakable walls. However, there will be a specific set of blocks flashing if you have the X-Ray Goggles; One of the viruses will be hiding in these blocks. Miradmoore has breakable walls, but they flash when shot, so if you just shoot at various walls you'll eventually find them even without the Goggles. Betagrid has no breakable walls, but has many pass-through walls, which are difficult to find, but not impossible if you walk into walls. Lastly, the Alphon Domes has exactly one breakable wall which is deviously hidden; it has a lot of health and does not flash when shot, so you'll basically NEED the X-Ray Goggles to find it unless you've played the game before.

There are two other powerups that affect Coffee specifically; the first is the Coffee Power Up, sold by Algo in the Alphon Domes. This simply makes Coffee's energy blasts do more damage. Without buying this upgrade, Coffee's attacks do 1 damage, and each upgrade you buy increases the damage by 1. I suggest buying this upgrade exactly once and then leaving it alone; doing 2 damage is enough to make fighting with Coffee easy, but also lets you get more Pickpocket bits than if you were killing everything in one hit. The second upgrade that affects Coffee is Fourth Sight, which allows you to see and fight the fourth virus in each simulation. It costs a hefty 2000 bits though, so be ready to shell out.

Secondly is the Egg Meters. You might have noticed the pink bars in the corner. These represent your health, and can be restored by picking up pink eggs. However, you will also notice that there are other enemies which drop other colors of egg, which fill meters completely separate from your health. These meters give you temporary stat boosters during the virus fights. The pink meter represents a health boost, the blue represents defense, the green represents speed, and the yellow represents attack. Also note that there are glowing pink eggs sometimes found lying around which you can pick up for a +2 to all 4 meters. Keep an eye out for them. These stat boosts may seem miniscule, but trust me: they're NECESSARY for surviving the fights in the late game. The Health meter will drain automatically when one of your bots is injured, and restores health to all the bots. The speed meter is consumed quickly, but each bar gives a few seconds of increased speed (stacking with the double speed buff). 3 bars of Defense are consumed when the virus attacks (regardless of whether it hit or not) and lowers the damage taken by a percentage (stacking with the double defense buff). Attack is consumed when you hit an opponent, and increases the damage by a percentage. (stacking with the double damage buff). Note that Attack is consumed on EACH HIT, so if you use, say, Thrice Claw, and hit all 3 times, that will consume 3 Attack meter. Also keep in mind that Damage Over Time status effects are exempt from both the Attack and Defense buffs; if an enemy puts a DOT on you, defense won't help you, and putting a DOT on an enemy will not be amplified by Attack. All 4 meters reset back to their default of a full Health meter and empty everything else if you die as Coffee, but will remain the same after virus fights. All 4 of these meters max out at 10, and here’s the trick to all of them: they become more potent the more they are filled up. The more bars you have in one meter, the more powerful each bar becomes.

One last thing to mention: you CAN do the simulations in any order, but they also have an ascending level of difficulty. The Malwastes is easier than Miradmoore is easier than Betagrid is easier than The Alphon Domes. Now, the first virus in The Alphon Domes is easier than the last virus in the Malwastes, but the last virus in The Alphon Domes is much harder than any other virus (except the final boss of course). Basically, you're going to be jumping around a lot, but in general, you want to take things in order.

The Sub-Simulations

Within the simulations are terminals with red text on them. Using these will cause you to go into a deeper level of simulation, in top-down shooter form. Yes really, you're playing a video game in a video game in a video game. These areas have uniform rooms with enemies randomly appearing in them. These enemies grant bits when killed, which is pretty nice. The main purpose of the sub-simulations, however, is to unlock Conditionals, which will be vital in the virus fights (more on what these actually do in the Virus Fight section). Explore the sub-simulations until you find a large crack guarded by indestructible turrets; destroy this crack to unlock a Conditional, which also causes the text on the terminals to turn blue. The left and right walls of the sub-simulations can sometimes be broken by shooting them, while the top and bottom ones can sometimes be walked through; keep an eye out for these. There are three sub-simulations in each main simulation; try to find them all if you can.

The other important thing to realize about the sub-simulations is that they are the only point in the game (other than the virus fights, which are frantic enough already) where time does not pass. And you can collect bits while in them. If you want or need to grind for more money, this is the place to do it. There is also one shopkeeper here, but he only upgrades your abilities within the sub-simulations; these will make the sub-simulations easier but are unnecessary unless you're planning on grinding. Also notice that you can re-enter sub-simulations you've already cleared, so don’t worry about running out of grinding areas. If you are planning on grinding, Miradmoore is the best place to do it; the large enemies in these sub-simulations will spawn more enemies, making it easier to rack up large amounts of cash quickly.

Night Time

I will cover the Virus Fights last because everything else is leading up to them, so let's briefly cover the night section before we move on to that.

During the night, you will have to trek out onto the planet to find items to give to the other robots. This is tedious, but is the only way to level up their base stats, so do it. You will also find resource capsules (which usually give you 200 bits each, but occasionally more) and power cells (which give you another day's worth of power and generally only appear when you only have a week of power or less left). Power cells are lucky finds and should always be taken, but generally resource capsules are unnecessary; grinding in the sub-simulations is much more efficient, and leveling up the bots is more important. If you're really strapped for cash (or running out of night time) take them anyway. You can take two items back to Lun Infinus with you on each trip, and after making three trips, the night will transition into the space invader bonus time. Make sure that you have enough time to make all 3 trips.

There is one other thing you can find. One of the wind-up robots in the Alphon Domes mentions that Coffee used to have a wrench that could fix anything. This wrench only appears at the very end of the road, as far away from Lun Infinus as you can go, and only after collecting 6 items. You will rarely ever have enough time to actually get it unless you rush incredibly hard, but if you're having major trouble in virus fights, seek it out. The rewards for doing so can increase your combat capabilities significantly. You can actually do this as early as the first night, but quite frankly, it might make the game a bit too easy. Might be useful for the speedrunning type though.

After you have gathered your 6 chosen nightly items, your next excursion will be rudely interrupted by pixelated baddies appearing above you. Presumably this is because you are a game program and the night walks are so boring to you that you have to make up exciting things just to get through them (this is not any part of the plot, it's just what I assume. The appearance of these enemies, and the fact that Coffee can shoot energy blasts when they appear even though he's outside of a simulation, is completely unexplained). Anyway, you can shoot these enemies down for bonus bits; each baddie killed will get you one bit. Getting hit by THEIR shots will cause you to lose time, making it become day sooner. There's not really anything better to do during this time, as findable objects have stopped spawning, so get yourself some bonus bits and don't worry about wasting time; once you've made 3 night trips, you've done the most important part already. Unless of course you have a lot of extra time and want to go for the wrench, in which case, ignore those space invaders and just keep holding left.

Alright, I've kept you waiting long enough; the moment everyone's been waiting for is finally here: it's time to explain...

The Virus Fights

This is what the entire rest of the game has been building up to. Every other part of the game exists so that you can upgrade yourself for these fights, and they are what drive the story forward. You'll need to beat them all to complete the game. They are the most complicated, most fun, and most utterly insane parts of the game. Let's get to it.

Before we get into this, you should know that there is no consequence for losing a virus fight other than being kicked out of the simulation and wasting time to travel to the fight, so even if you think you're not ready, you might want to try a virus fight anyway. Feel free to experiment on bosses if the Target Dummy is dying too quickly and it's not too long to walk to them. You might even win by accident.

General Fighting Strategy

The pattern I usually follow in virus fights is thus:

1. Survive the initial onslaught. This means throwing down as many defensive buffs and speed/offense debuffs as possible before the boss can react. Now, this won't be necessary in the early fights, but the later ones will cream you if you are not prepared. So prepare. Get those defenses up and get ready to fight properly.

2. Apply additional buffs and debuffs and get the engine running. Get your minigames started and start racking up those bonuses. Get Mirad to store as many abilities as possible. Have Alphus start throwing up as many auto-turrets as possible. Make Bio-Beta use Break Virus and keep the virus’s stats down. And make sure that Malenz is keeping everyone alive with Quick-Repair. Just stay alive and build up your offense, doing minor damage over time as you do.

3. Go on the offensive. Start bringing out the big guns like Solar Ball and Toxin Laser. Do as much damage as you can while occasionally refreshing your buffs, and repeat until the boss goes down.

You may find a different strategy, but this is the one that worked best for me, but don't be afraid to experiment if you have an alternate strategy idea; the wide variety of abilities, stat boosts, and conditionals allows for a very diverse strategy making process.

The Derelicts

You have four robots to control. The battle system in TDH is an Active Time Battle style system. Both your own bots and the enemy virus have a turn meter, which increases over time, doing so faster if you have boosted speed and slower if you have the Slow status. Bots will ask you for a command as soon as they're ready, but time will continue passing when they do. If you have multiple ready bots at once, you can switch to a different bot, and go back to the other bot later by clicking on the portrait of the bot you want to switch to. You can level up the bots using items you find at night, which gives them increased stats and more powerful abilities. Their abilities are extremely diverse and have a wide variety of effects, but they all have “charge” as their first ability (which is free and gives them 2, 3, or 4 units of charge randomly), they all max out at 8 units of charge, and they all can launch a minigame by consuming all 8 charges (more on that in the Minigames section). They each have a set of abilities of ascending strength and cost; the more powerful abilities take more charge to use. All 4 of them are powerful and useful in their own ways, so don't neglect any of them when choosing strength-increasing items.

Malenz

This guy can be described as the supporting character; most of his moves are based around helping his allies rather than doing damage directly. His first ability, however, is what's going to make you love him, and hate it when an enemy virus inevitably chooses him as the first target when they unleash their instant kill moves.

QUICK-REPAIR (Costs 1 charge): You know how in most RPG games, the move that revives fallen party members is extremely expensive and often comes with drawbacks? Not here. When you use this move, it will revive your entire party with low health, and will additionally give a big health boost to anyone who isn't knocked out. Be ready to hit this as soon as his turn comes up if you have any downed party members. The only downside? KO’d party members lose all their charge, and they don’t get it back when they are repaired.

THRICE CLAW (2 charges): A triple attack which will usually inflict poison. While this attack isn't bad, and the poison does more damage than you'd think, it's inferior to his other abilities in most circumstances. Use this ability only when going for your final offensive push for the finish, or when trying to fill the combo meter quickly.

SPIKEPLATE (3): Causes your bots to deal double damage. Make sure to apply this buff before large, powerful attacks. Take note that this applies to all damage, regardless of source; turrets get benefit from it, Neon Storm gets benefit from it, Store Strike gets benefit from it, Gridstorms get benefit from it; the only damage that it doesn't double is damage from Poison, Burn, and P.L.E.A.

ARMORPLATE (4): Doubles your defensive capabilities, meaning you take half damage. Make sure to keep this buff going whenever the boss is on the offensive; defense is important in this game, and having this buff on is often the only way to survive certain attacks without Proto-Wall

GRIDSTORM (5): Causes random lightning attacks to occur over time, represented by a lightning bolt icon appearing as a buff next to your other buffs. This takes a long time to do significant damage and doesn't inflict status effects, but fills the combo meter a lot and does great damage for the charge. Becomes even more long-lasting when you buy the “Buff Timer Bonus” upgrade. The attacks will occur more frequently if your bots have been speed boosted.

STUN RAIN (6): A highly damaging attack which also stuns the enemy for 3 seconds, even if it misses. Very nice to have if you need to buy your allies some time to get ready, though beware of the high cost.

MEGACHARGE (7): Probably the best ability in the game; when used, it charges every other bot to full and fills their turn meters, letting them all act immediately. If all your other bots are completely uncharged, this is a total of 7 charge in, 24 charge out. This won’t happen very often, but even when used inefficiently, it's still incredibly powerful. Most notably, it gives you a really easy way to get your minigames up and running; more on that later. Don't forget to switch to your other bots and have them use their charge first if you want to get the most out of this ability.

Mirad

Mirad has a rather strange but incredibly useful system of “storing” abilities. Using any “store” ability will grant you a button near the top of the screen. Pressing this button will unleash that ability. Each ability does something different, but all of them are useful. You can stack these abilities as well to increase their potency or duration, but take note that once you use them, you have to use the whole stack at once; no rationing allowed. Also note that these abilities stay ready to use, even if Mirad herself goes down.

PSY-CRACKER (1): a basic attack whose power is based on how much heal energy you have stored up. Obviously, this means that you'll want to store up energy before using it, because it will do basically no damage if you haven’t stored a heal. If you aren't on the final stretch, you should usually just charge and prepare more abilities instead. It does great damage once you have a lot of stored energy, however, so on the final stretch, it can be devastating, especially considering its low cost. And the fact that there are other methods of storing heal energy besides Mirad's ability...

STORE STRIKE (2): Builds up offensive energy. When you press the button, it unleashes an attack on the enemy. Make sure to have X2 damage on when you press this button. Also take note that once you have the attack stored, it will become stronger over time, maxing out at 9999 damage. Start storing this ability early and unleash it late to maximize your damage. Don't bother storing more strike on top of strike you've already stored; the benefits are minimal and you usually just want to charge and wait for the strike to build up on its own, or use Psy-Cracker instead. Both the initial amount of damage and the rate at which that amount goes up over time increase as Mirad levels up.

STORE HEAL (3): Builds up healing energy. This healing energy will not only allow you to unleash a burst of healing for your whole party by pressing the button, but will also passively heal your party over time, trickling out slowly when they are injured. Maxes out at 999. The amount of energy you store on each use increases as Mirad levels up.

STORE AUTOPLAY (4): Minigame spammers rejoice. Every time you use this command, you will store some time (the number on the button represents seconds) of autoplay for the minigames. Pressing this button will make the minigames play themselves until the time runs out. You can stack this command, giving you even more time, even while it's already going. Has no practical limit on number of charges storable. The amount of time you get increases as Mirad levels up.

STORE CHARGE (5): Guess what this does? Basically, this is a charge investment; it costs 5 of Mirad's charges, but in return, charges the whole party by 3. 5 charge in, 12 charge out. Good deal. And that’s only when Mirad is level 1; level her up and you get even more charge. Stacking it higher will give your whole party a nearly-full charge any time you need it. Maxes out at 10, but trickles out when used, meaning if you activate it, then immediately use an ability, the charge from using the ability will be partially or fully recovered, when normally the charge would go over the 8 charge maximum and be wasted. The amount of charge you get on each use increases as Mirad levels up.

STORE INVULN (6): Gives you a scant, but potentially lifesaving 5 seconds of total invincibility, usable whenever you need it. If you are good at keeping track of the boss's charge meter, store this and prevent party wipes by activating it right before major attacks. Maxes out at 10, so don’t bother stacking it higher than that. Take note that it does not remove status effects, but does cause the bots to ignore them completely; they are unaffected by statuses until it wears off, but will feel them once it does.

STORE REVIVE (7): By far the most useful stored ability. Using this ability will give you one revive stored as a clickable button. Pressing this button will revive your whole party and restore them all to full health. Take note, however, that this will not save you if your whole party dies; only Auto-Continue will do that. At least one bot must be standing for this ability to work. Still, I suggest having at least one charge of this up at all times, because if Mirad and Malenz go down and you don't have one, you’re screwed. Has no practical limit on number of charges storable.

Bio-Beta

This derelict is primarily concerned with debuffs, but also has the two most important buffs in the game. Use them wisely.

SUPERCHARGE (1): Doubles your bots' turn meter speed. Given that taking more turns means that you can use your more powerful abilities more often, this buff is essential. Make sure to have this up as often as possible, though be aware that there are other ways to get it.

DUPLICITY (2): Increases your dodge chance for a time. Against bosses that like to spam basic attacks, this can be very useful for staying alive. In fact, it's useful for other bosses too; many special attacks can also be dodged. Take note that this is the only positive status effect that cannot be duplicated with Conditionals (other than Gridstorm, which is more of a DOT than a buff), and one of your Conditionals is “on dodge”. Make sure to use this one against fast bosses.

BURN VIRUS (3): Inflicts your enemy with a nasty, long-lasting DOT. Good for the final push, but otherwise unnecessary. Note that this stacks with Poison.

SLUG VIRUS (4): Slows the enemy for a long while. This can buy you a lot more time than you'd think, so use and abuse it; while speeding up your own bots can be useful, slowing down the virus is more helpful if your bots are getting killed and you need to buy time to get them up again. It's also more helpful when you just need time to think and regroup, or if you're handling your minigames manually.

TOY VIRUS (5): Turns the virus into a harmless toy temporarily. This reduces the virus's strength, speed, and defense to 0. Keep in mind, however, that it won't last long. Unleash your power attacks and get your defenses up while it lasts! Increasing Bio-Beta's level will increase the duration, but it has a shorter duration against more powerful viruses.

BREAK VIRUS (6): Inflicts a potent status which lowers the enemy's strength and defense over time. Get this on the virus early, and it will make the rest of the fight much easier. Take note, however, that the virus's Attack stat is a modifier, not a true representative value; a boss with 0 attack will still do damage, but they'll do 100 less damage than a boss with 100 attack. Defense, on the other hand, IS a representative value; a boss with 200 defense will reduce all incoming damage by 200 on each attack, to a minimum of 1.

TOXIN LASER (7): Bio-Beta's only direct attack. Does some good damage, and additionally inflicts Slug, Burn, Poison, and Break for a short time, and Enhance and Blind for a slightly longer time. Generally you want to save this attack for the final push; Bio-Beta's other abilities are much to useful to pass up on, and this is generally too expensive to be worth it unless you're just trying to do a bunch of damage.

Alphus

Alphus is the powerhouse of the group, and has the strongest offensive abilities. He has his fair share of support abilities too though, so make sure to utilize those to their fullest as well. He makes turrets which attack the enemy, but they don't last forever; after a time, they disappear, and must be summoned again.

WALLOP (1): Deals some minor damage, but more importantly, lowers the boss's charge meter and turn meter. If the boss is charging up and you've already got some turrets up, don't hesitate to throw a wallop out.

PROTO WALL (2): Probably the most important ability in the game. This wall prevents all damage from the Virus's attacks, but goes away after absorbing two single-target attacks or one full-party attack. This means that you should always have it up when the boss is charging for a big attack, or when you have not had a chance to get your defensive buffs up yet. Trust me, it'll save your life. Keep in mind though that it provides no protection from status effects, so watch out for DOTs. Also take note that its effectiveness is limited if you are up against a virus that is significantly stronger than you are; some viruses can break the wall in only one attack, or even ignore it completely. Leveling up Alphus will negate this effect.

GRID TURRET (3): Creates a turret that will periodically attack the enemy. Basically just a DOT. You can use it in the final push for additional damage or to fill the combo meter, but otherwise don't bother; the damage is nothing to write home about.

TASERPOD (4): Now we're talking. Creates a shocking turret that periodically zaps and slows the enemy, also dealing some minor damage. Slowing down the enemy virus will save your butt, especially once you've invested in virus debuff extensions. Take note, however, that it does not stack with Bio-Beta’s Slug Virus attack. As a bonus, it fills the combo meter on each hit.

COUNTERBOT (5): Summons a droid that automatically retaliates for high damage whenever the boss attacks. Ideally, you shouldn't need this. If you've been slowing and stunning the boss, this guy's effect will be minimal. It's still good to have during the final push, however, and is also good for the tank-style party that stacks defensive buffs and doesn’t use slows. Plus, he even counter-attacks when you have Proto-Wall up, so that's nice too.

MED BEACON (6): The description of this one says that it heals the party over time. That’s true, but the way it actually does it is by giving you one bar of HP egg meter (see the egg meter section) and a few points of stored healing energy every second (10 at level 1, increasing as Alphus levels up). This can be useful, as it not only heals you over time, but can store healing for later (strengthening Mirad's Psy-Cracker), but take note that it doesn't make you heal faster than having both HP egg meter and stored healing at the same time. More importantly however, it also automatically cures status effects. Against any enemy that will try and put long stuns and deadly DOTs on you, this beacon is vital to staying alive, especially once you run out of Status Cure charges.

SOLAR BALL (7): The most powerful basic attack in the game. No special tricks or status effects here; this attack is three hits of 100% pure damage, plain and simple. Make sure you have your X2 Damage buff and some Attack egg meter ready before you unleash this one, and you'll do devastating damage. Also take note that it's a pretty weak attack when Alphus is low-level, but becomes much more powerful as he levels up.

The Minigames

Ah, the minigames. One of the more confusing parts of an already confusing interface. Each bot has a minigame they can launch, which you can play to fill the egg meters. This is the only way to fill the egg meters after the battle starts (other than the Med-Beacon filling the HP egg meter), so using minigames is vital in the mid to late game. You'll notice a small, windows-icon-looking box in the corner of each minigame; clicking on this will cause it to change colors, and cause the minigame to dispense different powerups; by default, it just gives you an even spread of all 4, but I suggest setting it to either defense or speed. Don't bother with HP, defense is pretty much always better, and you can use stored heals, the Med Beacon, Quick-Repair, or conditionals to heal instead. Switch to attack for the final onslaught. If you find that the minigames are overfilling any of the stat bonus bars, don't worry, those victories will not be wasted; any overflow stat bonus bars will be added to your combo meter instead, and will also additionally give you stored energy. The stored energy is so good, in fact, that a lot of the time you want to purposefully overfill the bars to get it. Overfilling the HP bar will give you 10 points of healing energy per bar. Overfilling attack will give you 10 strike energy per bar. Overfilling defense will give you 1 second of invincibility per 10 bars. And best (but most difficult) of all, speed overfill will provide you with 1 point of charge energy per bar. You also get this stored energy whenever you "top off" a meter, which is especially useful for the Speed meter.

If you think you've already got enough on your plate controlling the derelicts, you can set the minigames to autoplay, during which they will play themselves nearly perfectly. The “Minigame Autoplay” conditional will give you 5 seconds of automatic play whenever it triggers, but the most reliable way to get autoplay is Mirad's “Store Autoplay” ability, which gives you a long period of time in which you can focus on the main fight while still reaping the rewards of the minigames. This is more valuable than it seems, unless you're a chaos controlling god and can actually play the games without losing your mind or screwing up in the actual battle. If you don't want to mess around with the minigames and just want to focus on the robot combat instead, search the Betagrid thoroughly until you unlock the conditional On Minigame Hit; if you set that to Minigame Autoplay, you can get permanent autoplay after you get the minigames started, assuming you have at least two of them going at all times. If you can control the minigames though, this conditional can be proc'd constantly, so don't underestimate that strategy either.

Now let’s explain the games themselves.

Old West

(Malenz)

The most self-explanatory of the minigames. Targets appear. Click on them to destroy them and get one bar of meter. Miss three, and the game shuts down. Easy, right? Not so much when you also have to handle all your bots and think about their moves. And juggle other minigames while you're at it.

Dragon

(Mirad)

This game plays like a very very basic SHMUP: you control a dragon and must shoot down enemies and dodge their return fire. Every enemy killed gets you a bar of meter. Get hit three times and it shuts down. You move left and right by pressing the A and D keys. This is not explained anywhere in the game, which is somewhat unfortunate. Buying the “Dragon: Power Up” upgrade will give you a higher fire rate, a spread shot, and eventually a mini-dragon helper to add additional firepower. Also of note: when you autoplay this game, the dragon upgrades to maximum level, regardless of whether or not you’ve upgraded it yet. It downgrades again when the autoplay stops though. Also take note that the asteroids are indestructible so make sure to get out of the way when they show up.

Funroad

(Bio-Beta)

A simple “grab the item” driving game. Make your car move up and down by pressing W and S, and grab the ice cream for one bar of meter per cone. The ice cream van stays in one place for a while, but will eventually move. Make sure you move with it. This is the most rewarding minigame and gives you stat bonuses the fastest and easiest, but is also the most short-lived; all the other games can keep going indefinitely if you keep not screwing up at them, but Funroad is on a time limit. Once the time runs out, the game shuts down. You can extend the time limit by buying the “Funroad: More Time” upgrade.

Plook's Quest

(Alphus)

This game is a turn-based RPG, and is thus one of the most useful minigames for people who aren't galaxy brain micromanagers, because you can stop paying attention to it for long periods of time and it won't spontaneously combust, unlike the other games. The other advantage to it is also its greatest weakness; you only get meter from this game when you kill enemies, which can take a while. This means that your rewards are on a delay, but you get them in large bursts, and because of the way the egg meters work, that can be much more effective than just getting a small trickle. You have only two controls: fight and heal. Basically, you just click on fight until the counter in the corner (your HP) gets low. Then press heal. Pretty simple, but the enemies get tougher (but more rewarding) as you defeat more of them. It is sometimes wise to lose this one on purpose and then reboot the game, giving you easy enemies again, being that the hard enemies take long periods of time to kill, and the extra rewards are not always worth it. If you persevere, however, you will eventually come full circle without having to reboot the game, and be back to easy enemies anyway. This will take some time though. An additional note about Plook's Quest is that Plook seems to level up independently from the bots, and his levels don't go away between battles. This means that you can grind up Plook's level in the training simulation and make the minigame much easier in the actual fights; leveled up Plook has higher maximum health, heals more when he uses Heal, and deals more damage.


Now, if you actually plan on playing the minigames, I suggest finding one or two that you're good at and focusing on those, ignoring the others. If you plan on cheesing the games with autoplay, launch as many of them as you can; autoplay works on a time limit and does not deteriorate based on the number of games you have active.

One more thing: you can launch a minigame again while it’s still active, but the only benefit to this is resetting you back to 3 lives in Old West or Dragon, or resetting the timer in Funroad. You can’t launch Plook’s Quest again at all.

Conditionals

As you fight through the sub-simulations, you will unlock conditionals for the virus fights, and can manage them by talking to Boxcar (the easiest way to find him is to just go straight to the left from the Malwastes entrance). You start out with two: On- Critical Hit and On- Combo Meter. I have mentioned the combo meter before, and you might have seen it in the upper right corner. So, what does it do? Whatever you want it to do. Set your On- Combo Meter conditional to whatever effect you want and when the meter fills all the way, you get that effect. It has no other use, however. It goes up whenever you deal damage to the virus outside of status effects, and whenever you get too many stat bonuses from the minigames and overfill the egg meters, and never goes down until it fills fully. Anyway, conditionals are pretty straightforward: whenever the condition is met, you get whatever effect you choose. The effects, on the other hand, are not so self-explanitory. So let’s go over them now:

Heal: pretty obvious what this does. Heals all your bots. This happens instantaneously after the condition is met, so if you set, say, On- Take Damage to Heal, it will commonly look like the enemy is attacking and doing no damage. It will become obvious that you actually ARE taking damage from these attacks once they break the threshold of your bot’s max health and kill them in one hit, completely bypassing the heal because heals don’t work on dead party members. Still, good to have.

Taser Strike + Slow: pretty obvious again; hits with a single lightning strike, similar to what a Taserpod does periodically. Applies a short term slow and does some damage. The major advantage of this effect over the 1 Second Stun effect is the fact that it counts towards your combo meter. It also lasts longer if you have bought the debuff extension upgrades.

Poison: obvious. Afflicts the enemy with the poison status for a long time. More effective than you’d think; one application can do around 200 damage, not counting bonus damage from Enhance or bonus duration from Enemy Debuff Timer Bonus. It doesn't stack with itself though, so careful not to put it on something that procs too rapidly or it will waste those procs.

1 Second Stun: simple, but effective. If you can proc this one repeatedly, you will have a lot more time to do things without the enemy virus destroying you. Be aware, however, that this cannot keep the virus stunned forever; the virus will have a short immunity to future stuns after the stun wears off.

Charge Tweak: Do not make the same mistake I did and ignore this one. Procing this effect will charge the Tweak meter. Filling that will let you tweak one of eight aspects about the battle in your favor. This is a lot more useful than it seems at first. I’ll go over what you can tweak later.

Speed Boost: Now you might be thinking “why would I ever choose this over ATK, DEF, SPD X2?” Answer: because it stacks with SPD X2 and there are other ways to get that buff. Also it lasts longer. For those who can keep up with a super fast battle, this can make things fun. If you don’t have enough conditionals to keep the buffs up at all times and aren’t using a strategy that ignores DEF and ATK X2 though, just go with that instead.

Minigame Autoplay: Cool in theory, but the problem is that it only lasts five seconds. However, if you set "On- Minigame Hit" to it, you can get infinite autoplay if you have at least two games going at a time. Very very handy for those that are not good micromanagers.

Chance: Charge Pt.: A quick note about the Chance conditionals: There is a random chance whether or not any Chance conditional will actually work when its condition is met. I have NO idea what this chance is; sometimes I’ll get it several times in a row, sometimes I’ll barely get it at all. I estimate that the chance is around 25% of success, but that is, quite frankly, completely unverified and not very well tested. Anyway, Charge Pt., when it procs, will give each of your bots one unit of charge.

ATK, DEF, SPD X2: Again, cool in theory, but it only lasts about 2 seconds. Buying “Buff Timer Bonus” will make this more valuable, but it’s still not an ideal way of keeping your buffs up unless you REALLY need all 3 up all the time. IMO, you only need X2 ATK when going for big offensive pushes, and you only need X2 DEF when you’re lacking in defense meter and have no other way to prevent yourself from being instakilled by basic attacks. X2 SPD should stay on as often as possible, however, but that’s the cheapest one; Bio-Beta only needs to use one unit of charge to put that on the party for a very long time. Still, if you want to use Bio-Beta and Malenz for things other than keeping your buffs up, this one can be very useful. I also suggest setting your "On Battle Start" conditional to this, so that you get your first turn faster, and so that you don't get one-shotted by the virus's first attack.

Chance: Solar Ball: When this effect procs, you have a chance to trigger a Solar Ball, same as if Alphus had used it. Good for increasing your DPS, but not exactly good utility. Most of the time, you’ll want Charge Neon Storm instead if you want more DPS at low levels. At higher levels though, it can be incredibly powerful.

Chance: Stun Rain: Has a chance to fire a Stun Rain (same as Malenz’s Stun Rain) whenever it procs. 1-Second Stun is more reliable than this, but 1-Second Stun also doesn’t deal damage, and is not as good for conditionals that proc rapidly. Your choice which is better.

Cure Ailments: Removes all negative statuses from your party. On certain conditionals, this can be a lifesaver, but keep in mind that Med Beacons will make it redundant.

Charge Neon Storm: Causes a separate bar to start charging every time you proc this. When it fills to full, it unleashes a Neon Storm, which is a single hit for MASSIVE damage, which does not appear to scale with any of your party member's levels. This makes it very valuable at low levels, but much less useful at higher levels. Much like Chance: Solar Ball, great for increasing your DPS, but not too good for keeping statuses up. Also worth noting: if you want to beat viruses quickly, this is a good conditional to invest in, but if you prefer longer, more drawn out battles, Charge Tweak is much better.

Tweaking

I said that Charge Tweak is really really good. But why is it good? Because it lets you screw with things. How does it do this, you may ask? Well, when it charges fully, four green buttons will appear near your party, and four red buttons will appear next to the virus. You can press one, and only one, of these buttons each time you get a full Tweak charge. So what do each of them do?

Max Life: Increases all your bots’ maximum HP for the duration of the fight. Good for surviving those pesky powerful basic attacks. Take note that this HP is not filled when you get it, so heal up.

Strength: Increases your damage by 20 for the rest of the fight. Every single hit you do for the rest of the fight will do 20 more damage than it would have otherwise. To take full advantage of this, rapid-hit attacks are recommended.

Defense: Lowers the damage you take for the rest of the fight. You know how to use this. Note, however, that unlike Armorplate or the Defense egg meter, this stat lowers the damage you take by a flat value instead of a percentage, meaning that small, weak attacks may be negated entirely, while it has minimal effect on very strong ones.

Auto-Chg Neon Storm: Causes the Neon Storm bar to fill up on its own, gradually, for the rest of the fight. Pretty obvious how this works, although it is worth mentioning that you can apply it multiple times and it will stack, charging even faster. It maxes out at 15 uses, which gives you a Neon Storm once every 2 seconds, but if you're getting that many Tweaks, you'd probably get more damage out of Strength.

Cap Max-HP: Sets the virus’s maximum health to its current health. Not too useful most of the time, but great against viruses that try to heal themselves.

Blindness: Inflicts the virus with the Blind status for a very long time. Basically, this gives you a long period of breathing room where the virus probably won’t hit that much.

Burn/Poison Enhance: Inflicts the Enhance status for a very long time. This causes the Burn and Poison statuses to deal massive amounts of damage, so if you find yourself using those, this is great for increasing your DPS drastically.

Null Charge: Inflicts the Null status on the enemy virus. Basically, this prevents them from using special attacks and causes their attempts to charge to fizzle for a while. Very nice against Ger Garun and the final boss, as both of them have some of the most irritating special attacks in the game.

Status Effects

Status Effects and You

The viruses can inflict a few nasty statuses on your party. Most of the time you’ll be doing this to them, not vice versa, but it can be bad when it happens. All these effects can be dispelled by the Cure Ailments conditional, Alphus’s Med Beacon, Battle Hacking, or the X5 Status Cure upgrade.

Slow: Your turn meters charge at half speed.

Poison: Your party loses health over time. Pretty obvious

Sleep: your turn meters stop moving, and any bots who were ready are no longer ready. This basically means your bots can’t do anything until you cure it or it wears off. Fortunately, you can still play minigames and activate stored abilities.

Drain: Your party loses health over time INCREDIBLY RAPIDLY. Have a cure for this on hand or die; those are your only two options. Unless you went for the wimpy grinding option and have so much max health that you can survive it.

Half: I don’t know what this does; my guess is that it halves your defense and attack, making you both more vulnerable and less capable of doing damage. It is only inflicted by the Terrible Things attack, however, and the same attack also stuns you and inflicts Drain, so it’s hard to tell; you basically have to cure it immediately.

Status Effects and Viruses

Of course, you can inflict statuses on the viruses as well.

Poison: Obviously, deals damage over time. Not much else to say here really. Inflicted by Toxin Laser for a short time, Thrice Claw for a moderate time, and the Poison conditional for a long time.

Burn: Damage over time again, but stacks with poison. Take note that this and poison do an equal amount of damage over time. Inflicted by Toxin Laser for a short time and Burn Virus for a long time.

Slug: Halves the virus’s speed. Very very useful; the less the virus gets to act, the better. Inflicted by Taserpod or the Taser Strike conditional for a short, but repeating time, Toxin Laser for a short time, and Slug Virus for a long time.

Break: Lowers the virus’s attack and defense values over time. These values stay lowered, even after the status wears off. Inflicted by Toxin Laser for a short time and Break Virus for a long time.

Toy: Temporarily reduces the enemy virus’s attack, defense, and speed to 0. Also, makes it look very silly. Inflicted by Toy Virus.

Blind: Makes the virus’s basic attacks miss much more often. Note that some special attacks can also miss, but some will always hit even if the virus is blinded. Inflicted by Toxin Laser for a moderate time, and the Blind tweak for a very long time.

Enhance: Causes Poison and Burn to do MUCH more damage. Inflicted by Toxin Laser for a moderate time, and the Enhance Burn/Poison tweak for a very long time.

Stun: stuns the boss, obviously. Their turn meter stops increasing while this status is on them. Not affected by the “Enemy Debuff Timer Bonus” upgrade. Inflicted by Stun Rain for 3 seconds and a certain conditional for 1 second. Note that the virus will be immune to stuns for about a second after the stun wears off. Visually, it causes the virus to appear black and white instead of in their standard colors

Null: When this status is inflicted on the virus, they lose charge equal to half their full meter. In addition, while they have the effect on them, their attempts to charge will do nothing. In effect, this is a way to prevent the viruses from using their special attacks. Inflicted by the Null Charge tweak for a moderate time.

Virus Attacks

Of course, the viruses won't just sit idly by and let you hit them, no sir. They will hit you back. Now, viruses have a charge meter and a turn meter, just like the bots do, and you can even see how much they have charged by looking at their stats. When you see them with a lot of charge, get your defenses up, as they are most likely to unleash a powerful attack. They also have a basic attack. In the early stages of the game, these attacks are negligible, and can be easily countered with the conditional “On- Take Damage: Heal”. This will not be the case forever; in the later fights, if you don't buff yourself and debuff the viruses, your bots can be taken down with a single basic attack, and your entire party can be wiped in a few seconds simply by letting the virus unleash a flurry of basic attacks. Defensive buffs and speed debuffs are vital, as is increasing your dodge chance. You should also be ready for the special attacks too: we'll go over them now. Take note that each special attack can only be used when the boss has full charge. They can get up to full charge pretty fast if you don’t stop them though, so keep an eye on that charge meter.

Digi-Toaster: A basic AoE damage attack. Not too threatening, but if it catches you off guard, it can take out one or more of your bots, even from full health. Try to have a Proto-Wall or defense buff up before this lands. Used by Terro Totik, the Malwastes virus, and Puppeton, the Betagrid virus.

Intense Intensity: Bosses which you've used status effects on (especially Break) will use this ability; it will set their attack and defense values back to their default and cure all their status effects. Don't worry about it affecting your party, but be ready to inflict Break again quickly before the boss regains his footing. Used by Terro Totik, Puppeton, and Viren, the fourth virus in each simulation.

Static Jumble: this one is annoying, but not deadly. It will inflict a long-lasting slow effect on your party, making their turn meters charge at half speed. If you have X5 Status Cure you can use it, but it's usually more efficient to just throw up a Med Beacon. Used by Terro Totik

Corrosive: Inflicts your party with the poison status effect, dealing damage over time. Get some heals ready or throw up a Med Beacon to stop the DOT. You usually won't need to pop a Status Cure unless your party is already under stress. Used by Terro Totik

Cosmic Sponge: Heals the virus by ⅖ of its maximum HP. This move is simple, but annoying, and is the biggest reason why Tweak is amazing; drop a Cap Max-HP on the boss and they can’t heal anything. Used by Negmanity, Miradmoore’s virus, and PULSAR, the final boss, who by default will restore a whopping 200,000 HP with it.

Pixel Panic: Negmanity’s equivalent to Digi-Toaster; just a basic AoE damage attack. Handle it in the same way.

Split Thunder: I don’t yet know what the difference between this and Pixel Panic is. I think it does more damage and is used more often by the later versions of Negmanity, but it's not significant.

Searing Volt: Yet another basic AoE attack, albeit a powerful one. You know how to handle this. Used by Puppeton.

RGB Snipe: An instakill move; if you have no Proto-Wall or Invuln up, one of your party members is probably going down. And it’s probably going to be Malenz. Fortunately, since it only hits one party member, the Proto-Wall treats it like a basic attack, and will stay up after absorbing it if it hasn't already blocked a basic attack. In short, get that damn wall up. Technically it's not an instakill, but it does like 1000 damage, so unless you've stacked tons of defense buffs it’s gonna be lethal. Used by Puppeton.

Sleep Mode: Ger Garun, the virus in the Alphon Domes, will use this attack, and it is at this point where you will hate life if you haven't bought the X5 Status Cure. This attack will put your party in an incredibly long lasting stun. During this stun, the boss can either charge up more special attacks or just basic attack you into oblivion. If they're feeling particularly cruel, they can actaully use Sleep Mode again before you get out of the stun, resulting in an unbreakable stunlock if you don't have a Status Cure. So don't let yourself be stunned and use that cure. The only other counters to this attack are Alphus's Med Beacon, which will automatically prevent the stun, Battle Hacking, which costs hack chips, or certain conditionals (I recommend “On- Enemy Turn: Cure Ailments”. It obviously lets the enemy have a free turn, but they had to use a turn to use Sleep Mode anyway, so you break even). It is also used by PULSAR

Reboot: This one is… bothersome. When it is used, ALL YOUR BOTS GO DOWN TO 1 HP NO MATTER HOW MUCH HEALTH THEY HAD BEFORE, AND IT IGNORES PROTO WALL. AND IT REMOVES ALL YOUR CHARGE. AND IT REDUCES ALL YOUR TURN METERS TO ZERO, MEANING THAT IT’S GONNA BE A WHILE UNTIL YOU CAN ACT. So yeah, you can see why that could be bad. Make sure you have some stored heals, or have Malenz do a Quick-Repair immediately, or you’re gonna die. I’ll be upfront: this attack is incredibly hard to deal with, and you’ve got to prepare for it incredibly well; Store Charge, Store Revive, and Store Heal are going to be your best friends here. And don’t forget Head Start if you’ve bought it. Used by Ger Garun, and the one mercy of this game is that it is NOT used by anyone else, not even the final boss.

Hackworm: This isn't really an attack. It's actually an interface screw, which causes your screen to be covered with static most of the time, making it very difficult to fight, and nigh on impossible to complete minigames. It is used by Ger Garun, and generally is followed up by a flurry of basic attacks to take advantage of your confusion. It's not unbearable, but you will grow to hate it anyway. It’s annoying. It’s also used occasionally by Negmanity.

Abandon: Once again, don’t have X5 Status Cure? Prepare to regret life. This attack will inflict your party with the Drain status effect, which is like poison, but faster. WAY faster. As in, your entire party wipes in 4 seconds fast. As soon as you see this attack come up, immediately press your X5 Status Cure button or throw up a Med Beacon, because if you don’t, no amount of healing energy is going to save you. Used by Ger Garun.

Radion Omega: Yet another AoE attack, though a really powerful one. So powerful, in fact, that it breaks through Proto Wall. It can be dodged however, and Invuln will prevent the damage entirely. Used by Viren.

Onezero: This attack basically just chooses half your party members and kills them. No damage, they just die. Fortunately, Proto Wall and Invuln stop it completely, but have some revives ready anyway. Used by Viren.

Reverser: Inflicts the Reverse status on you. For a short time, any attacks you inflict on the virus will instead hit you. Fortunately, it only lasts a few seconds and can be cured like any other status. Pray to god that your Neon Storm and C.O.S.L. don’t go off during those few seconds. You can still inflict statuses on the virus as normal. Used by Viren and PULSAR.

Terrible Things: Inflicts you with Poison, Drain, Half, Sleep, and Slow, all at once (although Sleep and Slow is kind of redundant). Once again: have a status cure on hand or die. Used by Puppeton rarely and PULSAR commonly.

Vulnera: In a game full of nasty moves, this one is by far the nastiest. Don’t have Proto Wall or Invuln up? You die. If you have an Auto-Continue, it gets used, if you don’t, you lose. Keep. That. Wall. Up. Used by PULSAR.

Shops and Upgrades

There is a load of stuff to buy in this game, and you're going to need to get pretty much all of it eventually. Don't be intimidated, you'll have bits coming out of your ears later, once you get all the money-making upgrades. I'm going to go over everything you can buy, where you can buy it, how much it costs, what it does, and how important it is. I've already gone over the Robo-Baby’s upgrades to Coffee’s performance in the platforming sections so there’s no need to reiterate that; go back to the Simulations section if you need a reminder.

Algo's Shops

All of Algo's upgrades are sold in the same way: he offers you 5 different upgrades, each with 5 levels. Each level costs you progressively more; the first level up will only cost 25 bits, but the second will cost 50, then 75, then 100, then 125. After this, a price tag reading 150 will appear, but you can't buy it because that upgrade is already maxed out. This may be a bug, but I'm not questioning it. This means that in total, you need 375 bits to get one upgrade type to maximum power. Algo appears in 4 different places, once in each simulation, and unlike most of the other shops, has a different stock in each location. Seek him out and upgrade before taking on the fourth level viruses. Trust me, you'll need them. So what do the upgrades actually do?

Battle Start: +Defense/+Attack/+Speed/+Charge. All 4 of these upgrades are available from the Algo in the Malwastes dome. They give you the chosen buff at the start of each virus battle, similar to your egg meter. Also similar to the egg meter, they decay over the course of the battle (except +Charge, which is consumable anyway), but trust me when I say that in the later fights, a head start is necessary to avoid getting slaughtered, especially +Charge, which lets you get your defenses up quickly, and +Speed, which will let you act before the boss (or at least before the boss can act several times).

Buff Timer Bonus. Self explanatory. Increases how long your buffs last. This is one of the first upgrades you should max; your buffs are really important to staying alive, and not having to re-apply them as often is a lifesaver. Sold by the Malwastes Algo

Enemy Debuff Timer Bonus. This is necessary for the same reason as the Buff Timer Bonus. Get it. Sold by the Miradmoore Algo, located at the bottom of the third pool.

Player Debuff Reduction. This one is not nearly as necessary as the timer bonuses because there are ways to instantly cure status effects on yourself. Many status effects can be classified as “cure or die” effects, so shortening the timer is mostly useless. Sold in Miradmoore

Weaken Enemy Increment. This oddly named upgrade makes Break status more effective by increasing how much attack and defense they lose per second. One of the most important upgrades if you're not planning on just overpowering enemy virus defenses with potent single-hit attacks or ignoring defense with DOTs. Sold in Miradmoore

Accuracy. You miss less. Duh. Sold in Miradmoore.

Dodge. Viruses hit less. Duh again. Sold in Miradmoore

Battle Start: +Life. Gives you a temporary increase to your max HP. Not the most useful buff but can help you survive initial attacks. Sold in Betagrid.

Increase Red/Blue/Green/Yellow Bar Value. Each of these four upgrades increase how much effect the egg meters have in battle. Obviously, this is very useful if you like the minigames, but if you’re not planning on doing those very much, don’t bother. But you WILL plan on doing those by the endgame, so get it. Sold in Betagrid

Money Finder. Increases the chance that any given bit will be a red bit, which are worth 5 times as much as the normal green ones. This includes bits that are just lying around, pickpocketed bits, and (I think) the bits you get after killing viruses. It does not include bonus bits from the night time space invaders or bits acquired in the sub-simulations. Take a dive into the Alphon Domes early and get this once you have the scratch; it will pay for itself very fast. Sold by Algo in the Alphon Domes, in the Spring dome.

Dragon Power Up. Makes the dragon in the Dragon minigame more powerful. More on that in the Virus Fight section. Good to have in the late game, but since you probably won't be doing much with minigames in the early game, don't bother. Sold in the Domes

Critical Hit %. Self explanatory. Due to the fact that one of your Conditionals is “on critical hit”, this is more powerful than it seems. Sold in the Domes.

Funroad: More Time. Gives you more time in the Funroad minigame. More on that in the Virus Fight section. Sold in the Domes.

Coffee Power Up. Increases the damage dealt by Coffee's energy blast. Makes the platforming sections easier, but doesn't help you in the virus fights. You should get it anyway though, because it saves you time, which is valuable because of the fact that you're on a time limit. I suggest upgrading it once, then leaving it alone; this will double your damage for minimal cost but still lets you hit enemies multiple times (unlike the fully upgraded energy blast) which procs Pickpocket more often. Sold in the Domes.

Med-Med's Med Station

This guy sells you active powerups. Good active powerups. Get them, because the later fights will be near impossible without them. The earliest place you can find him is in the Malwastes, on the far right of the top floor.

5X Status Cure (500): Adds a button at the top of the screen in virus fights. When pressed, it removes all negative statuses from your bots. This is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY against certain bosses, as they can apply deadly DOTs and incredibly long stuns to you if you don't have something to counter them. Don’t even think about challenging the viruses in the Alphon Domes without this upgrade. Can be used 5 times per fight.

Head Start (500): Adds a button that instantly fills all your bot's turn meters to full and stuns the virus for about 5 seconds once per fight. Use this when you need to act quickly. This is probably the least powerful of Med-Med’s upgrades, but it’s still great to have.

Auto-Continue (500): Protects you from one party wipe. If your entire party bites the dust, Auto-Continue will revive everyone with 1000 health (or their maximum if it is lower than 1000) once per battle. There's a catch to this, however: they all come back with no charge unless they were all killed at the same time. If you don't have any protective buffs active or a stored charge, you're probably just going to go back down again.

Charge (500): The most important powerup other than Status Cure. This adds a button to the top of the screen in virus fights. Pressing this button will instantly charge up your entire party to maximum, but only once per fight. You can use this to get a head start on your enemies, get the minigames running, or recover from an Auto-Continued party wipe.

Sandbox's Power-Supply

While Med-Med sells active defensive abilities, Sandbox sells passive aggressive ones. They’re pretty costly, but usually worth it.

10 I.O.D. (1000): 10% Inferno of Doom. At the start of every battle, an inferno will be released which knocks off 10% of the virus’s health bar. This is enhanced by your Attack meter and the X2 damage buff, which can result in the actual amount being more like 25%. Very useful if you want to finish battles quickly, but be careful of viruses that heal themselves.

P.L.E.A. (1000): Parasitic Life Eating Amoeba. This is basically a permanent status which constantly drains the virus’s health. This can really add up over long, drawn out battles. If you like to finish things quickly though, it’s not ideal.

C.O.S.L. (1000): Chance of Space Lasers. This is by far the best of these powerups. Causes a flurry of lasers to occasionally rain down upon your foe, dealing many strikes of low damage. This will hurt a lot against viruses whose defense you’ve lowered, but against high-defense viruses, it’s gonna do pretty much nothing. But you’re going to be using Break all the time anyway, so it’ll pay off quickly. More importantly however, these attacks increase your combo meter and can miss and crit, letting you get way more Conditional procs to go off. The only downsides to this? It eats up your Attack meter very quickly, and it makes a really annoying sound when it happens.

Uunom's Hackery

This guy only appears in Miradmoore, behind a breakable wall at the bottom of one of the pools and across a long gap. You'll need X-ray Goggles (or a bit of patience and exploration) and either the Water Boots or Hover Pack to get to him. You won't NEED to visit him until pretty late, but I suggest giving him a visit as soon as you can; he sells 4 upgrades, all of which are vital, but the most vital of all is the third one. We'll get to that in a moment. Here's what he sells:

Battle Regen (100): gives your bots a small amount of health regeneration. Not the best powerup, but cheap and useful.

Battle Hacking (500): Allows you to “hack” in battle. Once you buy this upgrade buttons labeled “Hack” will show up in the virus fights, and by using a Hack Chip, you can basically change one variable in a virus fight any time you want, at no cost other than the chip. Now, at first I thought that Hack Chips were one-use, and once you use them, they’re gone for good. This is, in fact, not the case. For each Hack Chip you find, you can hack once PER BATTLE. Knowing this will make certain battles much easier. The upgrade comes with one chip, and you can find more around the simulations.

So, what can you do with the chips? The buttons next to the boss’s Attack and Defense will lower them to 0. The button next to its speed will lower it by 50 points. I suggest applying a couple chips to Speed at the start of each battle; the less the boss gets to attack, the better. Drop one on Attack too if you are getting one-shotted. Alternatively, just hit the one next to his health to just remove a chunk of his health bar (don't actually do this, the effect is too small compared to the other options), or the one next to his max health to lower his maximum and make it harder for him to heal, similar to the Cap Max HP Tweak. Hitting the far-right, vertically center button will instantly give you all the buffs; X2 speed, X2 defense, X2 attack, bonus dodge, and gridstorm, all for you, as if you’d used all the abilities that trigger these buffs at once. If you have any negative statuses on yourself, another hack button will appear next to the effect indicators, and pressing this button will remove the effects. The button in the top right corner will instantly fill all your egg meters, giving you some stat boosts in case you’re lacking in minigames. The most potent hack of all, however, is the one at the center top. This one will give you a little bit of every single kind of stored energy, which includes 10 points of charge, 5 seconds of invuln, and 1 revive. This is the only way to revive Malenz and Mirad if both of them are down and you have no revives stored already and no auto-continue. You can imagine why this is incredibly useful.

Auto Half-Price (500): THE MOST IMPORTANT UPGRADE IN THE GAME. This thing will significantly cut down on your grind time by giving you a 50% discount on EVERYTHING you buy. The prices LOOK the same, but you can buy everything for half price after you get this upgrade. This will save you massive amounts of time, so get it as early as possible.

Fourth Sight (2000): Allows you to see and fight the fourth and final boss of each simulation. These bosses will kick your butt into next week unless you're well prepared, so don't worry about getting this one too early. I honestly think this upgrade only exists so that you don't go through the whole game without ever finding Uunom and buying the rest of his stock.

Everything Else You Can Buy

The remainder of the merchants in the game are uncomplicated and are not worth giving their own segments, so they will instead all be listed here.

Payload Found Something!

Payload is the robot that is waving at you. He always sells you a Hack Chip for 1000 bits. You can find him once in Miradmoore and once in Betagrid, and can buy one chip from each of them.

Jed-Med's Med Station

Med-Med’s palatte swapped brother. He hides behind a breakable wall in Miradmoore, off in a corner by himself. His wares are potent, but are the most expensive in the game. Don’t bother with this guy until you’ve bought everything else you need, and definitely don’t buy anything from him until you get Auto Half-Price. As an additional note, you can buy his upgrades as many times as you can afford. Affording them will be very difficult, however.

+1000 HP All (10000): Gives all your bots 1000 more maximum HP. This is an absurdly good upgrade which increases your survivability exponentially, but you can finish the game without it. And chances are you will, considering its outrageous price tag. Honestly, this is basically the easy-mode button and I suggest avoiding it.

Hack Chip (10000): You’ll notice that this costs 10 times more than what Payload charges for them. This is because Payload will run out of them after selling you one in each of the areas he appears in, while Jed-Med has an infinite supply. Still though, I don’t see why you’d ever get this over +1000 HP. Hack chips are good, but they’re not THAT good.

Virtual Merchant

This guy only appears in the sub-simulations, and can only upgrade sub-simulation related things. If you plan on grinding the sub-simulations, buy everything from him. Otherwise, you probably shouldn't bother.

Digital Muffin (10): restores your health to full. Self explanitory. Can be purchased any time your health is not full.

Weapon Power + (100): increases the damage you do in the sub-simulations. Makes things a bit faster, but since time doesn’t pass in the sub-simulations, that really doesn’t matter. Get it if you want to grind the sub-simulations though

Weapon Distance + (100): increases your range in the sub-simulations. Pretty much useless unless you want to make the grind a little easier.

Cabbage Value + (500) and Cabbage Value ++ (1000): increases how many bits you get from enemies in the sub-simulations. Again, don’t bother unless you’re planning to grind.

Spoiler Zone

OK, if you don’t want any spoilers, don't read below this paragraph, because I’m going to drop some. Both of the spoilers I’m about to spoil can be found on Scott Cawthorn’s Youtube page so I’m not giving you any super-hidden ultra secrets here, but they’re good to know anyway, Also, no plot spoilers, just gameplay ones.

The Wrench and What It Does

Take the wrench to Amos’s room, and press down while standing in front of him. This will repair a damaged CPU chip which will be uploaded into the combat data stores. So what does this do? It gives you a bit of help from Amos when you’re in need of it in Virus fights.

At the start of each battle, Amos has a 1-in-10 chance of popping up and giving you a boost, and every second that none of the other Derelicts are taking a turn, he has a 1-in-20 chance of showing up to help you. If you really like having his help and can't keep up with your Derelicts, you might consider actually taking it easy on the speed boosting buffs so that he shows up more often; use Slug Virus instead so that you can keep up. (Thanks to A random program for this information)

Even if you are stacking speed though, Amos will still have a chance of helping you out when most of your bots are down and out. So still worth having around if you're patient enough to grab the wrench.

Amos

Amos is different from the other Derelects. Whenever he feels like it, he will pop up and let you use one, and only one, of his abilities. He doesn’t use charge, and his abilities do not have different costs; you just get one every time he appears. And holy moly, these are some powerful techniques. You will be very happy when Amos shows up because his abilities can swing the battle in your favor very quickly.

PEP TALK: This is the one you’re probably going to use most often. This basically does everything awesome that can be done for your party. It revives them all, restores them all to full health, gives them all 5 buffs, and gives you a large supply of miscellaneous stored abilities (1 revive, 5 seconds of invuln, 10 charge points, a minute of autoplay, 999 stored healing, and 1000 stored strike). Note that this adds one additional way to revive Mirad and Malenz if they die and you have no revives, bringing the total to 3: Pep Talk, hacking a revive, and Auto-Continuing.

FROST BITE: A multi-hit attack that does crazy damage. If you have Spikeplate on, consider throwing this out and watch in amazement how quickly the boss’s HP goes down. Great as a finisher.

ICE BOMB: Sets a time bomb with a 60 second timer. Every time you hit the virus, the damage the bomb deals goes up. Pull this puppy out when you're going for the offensive push. And don't forget to have X2 damage on when it goes off!

SNOWFLAKE: A long-lasting charm which protects against status effects. Not a horrible choice, but honestly his other ones are better. You have other, better options for status curing, most notably Alphus’s Med Beacon. I guess if you're out of Status Cure charges and get hit with a Sleep Mode, Amos has a decent chance of showing up while your bots are unable to act, so choosing this will get you out of that situation. Actually, can Amos act during Sleep? Might need to test that.

CHILL CHARGER: Inflicts the Null status for a very long time. Great against PULSAR with his instakill special attacks and 200,000 healing Cosmic Sponge, and against Gur Garun with his Hackworm and Reboot, but under most circumstances you’ll want one of the other abilities instead.

The Secret Boss

After beating the final boss, load your game and go to the battle simulation. Instead of the normal target dummy, you will fight… DUMMY’S REVENGE!!!!!!!

Dummy’s Revenge is… an interesting boss. You know how every other boss in the game has had ridiculous abilities that inflict deadly statuses and wipe your party in one swoop? Not this guy. This guy, in fact, has NO special moves. All he does is basic attack… for 10000 damage. He’s also immune to many statuses; Slug won’t slow him down, Break will be applied, but since his attack and defense are already 0, it doesn’t do anything, and Toy just doesn’t work at all. You can’t lower his speed with hacks either. And worst of all? He completely ignores Proto-Wall, and will just slap you down right through it.

You have two options against this guy: the lame-o grindy option which involves buying +1000 HP several times and which I don’t recommend because there’s no special ending or anything for beating him and the only thing you get out of it is satisfaction, which you won’t get if you grinded for it, and the hard way.

Now, there are two ways to fight the hard way. The first is to accept that he’s going to kill one of your bots every single time he hits. This means having the Dodge buff on constantly, and having him blinded as often as possible. Also don’t forget about Store Invuln. If you launch any minigames, they will probably be focused on Attack or Speed, preferably Speed. You’ll be spamming Quick Repair and Store Revive to keep everyone healthy. Generally with this strategy, you want to just bum-rush him; use your hack chips to keep a steady supply of Charge, Invulnerability, and Revives coming while focusing on maximizing your DPS. Have Amos drop an Ice Bomb to help with this, and occasionally Pep Talk when you’re in trouble. Of course, you CAN beat Dummy’s Revenge without Amos’s help at all, but it'd be really, really hard to do so. Then again, with Amos’s help it might be too easy; Scott Cawthorn’s video of him beating Dummy’s Revenge does so with his bots at very, very low level, but he had Amos’s help and won with that.

The second way is a bit more methodical but no less frantic. It involves never ever having the X2 DEF buff off, and never ever not having a full defense egg meter. Minigame spam hard, autoplay spam hard, and with luck, you’ll be able to withstand the Dummy’s attacks. Drop DOTs on him repeatedly and heal up constantly. You’ll need high level bots in order to do this one, but if you’re on day 10 or so, you should be high enough level to do it with little or no grinding.

Oh, and for either strategy, I highly suggest using the Solar Ball conditional to maximize your DPS. Most of the other conditionals aren't too useful against Dummy's Revenge.

Good luck!

[166gFD]

I'm glad Scott Cawthon dialed down the amount of stuff in the fights when he decided to make a similar game (FNAF World, people seem to hate it but it's actually pretty good other than a few annoyances)

[lionhart]

My response to reading all this is, "WTF? Scott Cawthon is a madman!" Thanks for explaining all of that; I don't think I will bother playing this game since the actual gameplay sounds really weird and tedious, but the game was worth the download just to walk around looking at the derelicts. Cawthon has a truly unique and fascinating artistic style.

[iFailaLotl]

WAIT WHAT VIRUS ORDER DO YOU RECOMMEND TO FIGHT

PLEASE I MUST KNOW

[iFailaLotl]

YOU ARE A SAINT I WISH I KNEW THIS SOONER

[imwithbanana]

Still trying to wrap my head around the virus battles, as this is my first dive into actually understanding fast turn style games. A lot to manage at once lol. But this guide really helped with understanding what to look out for.
I haven’t gotten all the way to the end of the game because I’m still trying to get past the Alphon Domes (the only virus I haven’t been able to get past) and I’m still curious of how vital the days are to the game. When I run out, do I have to start a whole new save? Or do I have time to still go on and find everything else that I need to level up more.
Thank you!

[hypercube2017]

I was looking at the Steam files and noticed that there is a Manuel in the (steamapps/common/The Desolate Hope) file. This may help, especially new players since it does provide a little bit of context. More importantly, I just wanted to point it out since it's kind of hidden (how many people actually read the game files?).

[mlgbowserlol]

Hey. Big guy. Appreciate it. As someone who got interested in hopping back into the game this is gonna be REAL useful. Kudos to you.

[Fire [She/Her]]

Not sure if you ever went back and tested, as in the guide it said you would but didn't but Amos CAN be activated while your party is Asleep

[Viddaric, Flesh Robot]

@sharkanador1 u2 m80

[Sharkanador]

very cool