- Go to options and turn on mouse only movement. It is more accurate than WASD

- Turn off damage display, screen shake, explosions, weapons highlighting (theyre useless and hinder visibility)

- Don't mix and match weapon types (like melee and range), in general its good to stick to one weapon type (melee or range), and usually good to stick to just one weapon (like full SMG's)

- Read all the tooltips (stats, weapons, tags etc)

For most classes HP regen, Lifesteal and Dodge are useless. You want to focus on Luck + consumable healing boosting items instead, they offer superior healing, with Luck getting you other benefits as well.

On most classes you want to focus on getting your economy up in the first 5 waves, while obtaining a weapon or two per wave, ideally. This means spend level ups in Luck and/or Harvest, and money in the shop on weapons. Rerolls if necessary.

Then the next 10 waves or so prioritize getting more DPS, and for the last 3-4 waves you can buy defenses if you need them. But this is just a rule of thumb, if you get decent defensive/whatever item you want in wave 13, its okay to buy it. You probably have plenty money by that point. Its better to buy something semi-useful than waste it on a reroll.

- Usually its better to have 6 white weapons (tier 1), than 4 white weapons and one blue (tier 2), so don't start upgrading weapons until you have all 6 slots full

- Weapon tags give hidden increased chance of seeing more weapons with that tag in the shop. Lets say you want Slingshots, but you dont have Slingshot in your choice of starting weapons. But you do have Spear. Choose Spear, beat wave 1, reroll a few times and there's a decent chance that a Slingshot will pop up. They both have the Primitive tag.

- This also applies to specific weapons. If you start with Spear, youre going to very likely see another Spear soon. And a third, and a fourth and so on. Usually this starts to really get going once you have 3 of the same weapon. This makes pivoting out of weapons unreliable (for example you start with Demon and Tasers)

- Often its not worth upgrading weapons past tier 2 before like wave 16-17, the DPS returns per money spent are pretty garbage. Like lets say you have 6 blue SMG's. Its often not worth buying another blue SMG (to get a purple), if for the same price you get say +2 ranged damage item (like Small Magazine)

- Early on its often more important to get more Attack Speed than any kind of Damage increases, for most weapons. SMG's, Miniguns and Engineering weapons being the exception

Knowing how much to reroll in the shop and during level ups comes down to experience, I cant give a hard rule about it. Usually in the early waves (1-10) 2-3 rerolls at max, later on you have more money and can reroll more (by the time your build is already pretty much done). I dont usually reroll once it costs like 50 money or more (until the very end atleast)

Don't leave money hanging on the map, pick it up. Its XP and money you need NOW, not later (this also means you spot any Trees spawning) This game is all about snowballing as hard as you can. You cannot afford to fall behind.

- Loot crates are automatically picked up at the end of the wave, dont needlessly run to them unless you need healing. The red crate that elites drop heals you completely full, so keep that in mind.

Items that affect explosions (like +15% Explosion Damage) will increase the damage of any weapon with the "Explosive" tag, regardless what they scale with. (its like % Damage but for Explosive weapons only). Mines are not Explosive btw. If the tool tip says something about exploding, its explosive. For example Bull-class doesn't have explosive tag, but his tooltip says he Explodes which means Explosive boosting items affect his dmg/radius directly.

And one of the most important concepts to understand:

DPS is king. More DPS means less enemies trying to kill you. Defenses are secondary priority, if a priority at all (depends on class). Usually melee builds will want some extra HP and armor. Offense is your best defense.

Some meta items you should nearly always buy. But prioritize acquiring 6 weapons before these, if you cant afford both (usually by wave 4-5 you can afford to buy a weapon and one of these)

- Coupon (reduces shop prices by -5%). Buy all of them



- Gentle Alien (+5% Damage, +5% Enemies, +2 Max HP) You get more enemies = more money, get more dmg% and more HP. For cheap. What not to love. Buy all of them



- Piggy Bank (+20% of your materials at the start of waves) This will teach you to save money. Its an incredible item. But dont buy it too early (atleast before wave 9-10) unless you know what youre doing



- Recycling Machine (Gain +35% more materials from recycling items) Just a good economy item all around if youre focusing on Luck as you should be



- Shady Potion (+20 Luck, -2 HP Regeneration) Speaking of Luck. Great item, and you don't need HP Regen anyway



- Weird Food (+2 HP from consumables, -2% Dodge) Awesome, just what we want. And don't need Dodge so its great.



- Lemonade (+1 HP from consumables) Want that consumable healing, best in the game



- Tree (More trees spawn) Trees are great. Always giving money and healing, and with high Luck (~90 or more) you start to get a bunch of crates too. More trees, more healing, more money, more free items. Awesome. Snowballing, remember?



- Bag (+15 money from crates, -1% speed) Used to be +20 which made it top tier, got nerfed pretty significantly. Still a good item, just not instabuy as before. Again, synergizes with Luck.

- HP. For ranged builds you usually want enough so that no single enemy can one-shot you. For melee you obviously want more (atleast 3-4 shots worth, since a lot of the time youre going to be taking shots left right and center.

- HP Regen. Useless outside special classes, dont invest

- Lifesteal. ^

- % Damage. Dont buy this until you got a solid base of flat dmg thing going on. For example for melee builds, you want some melee damage before you start investing in this. It all depends on the weapon/build when the breakpoint is, which offers more bang for your buck (flat or dmg%)

(flat damage means Ranged or Melee Damage stats, respectively)

You dont need to do that much math to figure it out, more like rough ballpark estimates. Just dont do something dumb like buy +10% dmg item when you got 6 dmg dealing SMG's

- Melee Damage. Great for melee builds! not so great for others

- Ranged Damage. ^ except for ranged builds

(make sure to check the weapon what stat it scales with and how well. For example Crossbow scales best with Range instead of Ranged Damage)

- Elemental Damage. ^ except for elemental builds

- % Attack Speed. Awesome stat, you want more of this on majority of weapons. Atleast ~100% by the end of the run. Only fast firing weapons like SMG or Miniguns dont really need this at all. The slower the weapon, the better this stat becomes

- % Crit Chance. Useless on most builds/classes/weapons, ignore.

- Engineering. The only stat that increases your turrets and mines damage. Great for those builds.

- Range. Great stat for both melee and some ranged weapons (like Crossbow and Sniper Gun). Though of course Gun tagged weapons get bonus range from the tag. Melee builds wants atleast 80-100 Range for most melee weapons. You hit more mobs per strike = more DPS, less enemies that can get in your face = survival way easier = profit. Its not uncommon for me to have around 150 Range on Melee builds by the end of the run.

- Armor. Good stat all around if you need some. Dont go overboard though, 10-12 is plenty enough. Try to avoid going into negative Armor (especially in the early waves and especially if melee), it increases dmg taken

- % Dodge. Useless, dont invest outside specialist classes (like Ghost). Manual dodging is better, and when you make a mistake you got some HP and Armor and 10 consumables laying around you to always have your back, instead of relying on some RNG fiesta stat. Money/levels spent here is much better invested in DPS.

- % Speed. Great stat, you want to start increasing this by wave 9 or so, depending on build. Just 10% extra Speed makes a great difference, everything becomes easier when you can move faster (but not too fast..). I usually aim to have around 20% Speed by the end of the run.

- Luck. Ka-ching! Great stat, want around 80 atleast for most builds by the end of the run. More loot, more consumables = more healing, better level ups, higher tier items. It does it all and all for the price of one stat.

- Harvesting. Decent to great stat, depending on what youre going for. If you want Harvest, get it early since its a snowbally stat by design. I usually get some early Harvest and then start focusing on Luck, while still picking up a bit of Harvest here and there if there's nothing else to buy.

Some weapons are really good, some are decent, some are okay and some are bad. It also depends on your class. Here's a short tierlist of the best weapons. Obviously classes that are meant for melee builds dont want to buy ranged weapons and vice versa.

S-tier:

Slingshot (current best weapon, infinite range bounces with no dmg reduction)



Fist (great damage, great attack speed) Includes Flaming and Exploding Fist



Spear (great damage, awesome range)



Sword (great damage, decent range, mix of stabbing and slashing attacks)



A-tier:

SMG (just pump that ranged dmg up and kill everything)



Minigun (same as above)



Circular Saw (great healing because of slashing attack, nice attack speed, ok range)



Knife (great dmg in a crit build, with the Crazy class this weapon becomes a real dmg dealer)



Thunderfury, Bles.. I mean Thunder Sword (great in melee elemental builds)



Shotgun (great DPS up close, but needs attack speed too unlike SMG/Minigun)



Flamethrower (great in elemental builds, 1-2 of these is enough since Burning doesn't stack)



Nuclear Launcher (great in elemental/explosive builds, get a lot of attack speed though)



Rocket Launcher (same as above but its not for elemental builds)



Crossbow (S-tier for Hunter, A tier for rest. Mind that it scales way better off of Range than Ranged Damage. Get Attack Speed and Crit Chance too)



Sniper Gun (same as above, except you dont really need crit with this)



Anything not mentioned is generally ok to meh to awful. Experiment to find out. Use your brain, read the tooltips, look at the scaling, range. And remember, dont mix and match weapons unless you know what youre doing. For example if you play melee build and start with a Spear because Spears are great, dont buy Rocks or Knives. Just buy Spears. You'll get them.

Weapons that SUCK:

Pistol, Laser Gun, Medical Gun, Ghost Scepter, Potato Thrower, Shredder. For the most part never buy these weapons. Some builds can start with a Ghost Scepter or Shredder (like Demon and Artificer, respectively). Though with Demon I'd start with Ghost Axe because it actually kills stuff. Wouldn't touch Scepter, personally, ever. Or the others.

A few special cases though:

Ghost weapons are only good for Ghost and Demon. Dont bother otherwise, since we dont really want Dodge we want Armor.

For Engineering weapons Wrenches and Screwdrivers are pretty equal, but turrets deal more single target dps. You wont kill many bosses or elites with Screwdrivers, but I've done it many times with turrets.

For Mage full Tasers are good, but for others not so good. Wand is the same deal, but a Flamethrower is just way superior in any case.

What this tier-list ranks are the classes in terms of how easy it is to clear a run with them, consistently. The higher a class is on this list, the more consistently strong it is. Some lower ranked classes can be stronger than higher ranked classes but only if they get luckier. Meaning they have a higher potential. I will also include some basic build info. The classes within tiers are in no specific order. I wont mention every stat, like Speed, separately.

Glossary:

- Standard Ranged Build: Attack Speed, Ranged Damage, % Damage. Some weapons can do without one or the other. Like SMG's and Flame Throwers dont need any Attack Speed. Use your brain.

- Standard Melee Build: Attack Speed, Melee Damage, % Damage, Range. Same as above.

S-tier:

Brawler: Get fists (any kind of fists), pump melee dmg, pump attack speed, pump range. Get some HP and Armor later on, if you need them. Pump Luck as usual. Get % Damage after it gets you more bang for your buck.

Crazy: Go full Knives. Pump attack speed, range, crit chance, melee dmg. Otherwise as above.

Ranger: Full SMG/Minigun is the way to go. You should start pumping Ranged Damage as early as you can, your life will literally depend on it. Ignore Attack Speed. Get some HP and Armor later on. Bandana is a great item (+1 pierce, -15% dmg), but only buy one of them.

Mutant: Sticks, Shotguns or SMG's. Pretty straight forward, if you remember how to make a melee or ranged build. Harvest is really good for Mutant.

Loud: Slingshots, Shotguns, SMG's, Spears. Get all the items that increase enemy count (Gentle Alien and Mouse)

Doctor: Start with Scissors, buy every Circular Saw you can. Replace Scissors with Saws as necessary. HP Regen is pretty good for Doctor. Normal melee build otherwise.

Hunter: Crossbows, buy every Sniper Gun you can. Pump Attack Speed, Range and Crit Chance. Otherwise a standard ranged build. Dont upgrade Crossbows past blue, waste of money.

One-Armed: Slingshot. Standard ranged build, with less emphasis on getting more Attack Speed. Upgrade weapon to tier 4 is as soon as possible.

Knight: Swords or Spears, up to you. Swords are a bit better. Otherwise standard melee build, with Armor giving you Melee Damage (so generally dont buy Melee Damage unless it comes with other goodies). Ignore Attack Speed. Get some Range if you go Swords.

A-tier:

Mage: Full Tasers works fine, Flamethrower, Nuke, Shiv etc. Wands are bad though. As usual, want Attack Speed (except Flame Throwers dont benefit from Attack Speed basically at all), Elemental Damage etc

Lucky: Slingshots. Buy every Luck dmg dealing item you come across (like Cyberball). Ignore Harvest since you only get half XP from it.

Pacifist: Go full Hands, and full survivability. You want Dodge and HP Regen too. Remember more enemies means more XP and money. Speed is very important for Pacifist, you want a lot of it and quickly.

Artificer: Start with Shredders, pump Luck (and ignore Harvest) early since you REALLY need a Rocket Launcher asap. Buy it immediately when you can. Remember you can lock items if you cant afford them right away. Buy every Rocket Launcher and replace Shredders with them once you have full weapons. Nuke Launchers are great too. Remember that for example an item with "+30% explosive dmg, -15% dmg" means you get +15% dmg on all your explosive weapons. Attack Speed is super important for him.

Demon: Full Ghost Axes work well, way better than Tasers in my opinion. You want to fix the Armor debuff you get from the Axes. Dont be greedy unless you want to die to random one-shots. I stay on around 10-20 HP for the first 10 waves or so. Not the easiest class for beginners, need good knowledge to understand whats worth buying and how much HP you can sacrifice at which stages of the run.

B-tier:

Engineer: Full Wrenches or Screwdrivers, up to you. I prefer Wrenches. Buy all Engineer items like more turrets, mines etc. Pump Engineering, ignore Attack Speed, all Damage stats. Get HP, Armor, Dodge too, buy every Healing Turret you see. Hug your turrets, if you venture out of their range you will probably die. You will need good movement skills to stay alive against elites and bosses.

Well Rounded: Stick -> Slingshot is optimal. Sticks alone work as well, SMGs/Shotguns work too, as can Tasers -> Flame Thrower & Nuke Launcher elemental build. Harvesting is good since you already start with 8. Otherwise make a standard melee or ranged build.

Multitasker: Go with full Sticks. Just because you get -5% damage per weapon doesn't mean you shouldnt get % Damage. Get it to fix the crippling debuff. But Attack Speed and Range are more important. Otherwise standard melee build. I have a feeling Engineering build can work too (since % Damage doesnt affect turrets/mines), but I havent tried it.

Wildling: Full Sticks, of course. Standard melee build, except you get some bonus lifesteal. Dont increase it, go with Luck instead. Fix the -3 Melee debuff.

Arms Dealer: Difficult class for beginners, its a class that requires the most knowledge about the game to do well with (mainly knowing which weapons are good and which arent, or which work decently). Harvesting is really good since you start with massive 30 already. You can go pure melee, pure ranged or a mix. I usually choose one or the other.

C-tier:

Speedy: So you obviously want speed. But too much speed can make it very difficult to avoid mobs/elite attacks/boss attacks. I wouldnt go higher than ~50-60%. Sticks, Spears and Fists all work well. Dont ever stop moving and avoid making sudden 180 degree turns, move in wide circles instead if you can. The game can consider you stationary if you suddenly switch directions (since your movement speed drops to near 0). Otherwise standard melee build.

Bull: You want HP Regen, Armor, HP, movement speed. Ignore Dodge and Lifesteal. Blood Donation (take 1 damage per second, +40 Harvesting) is best item. Remember you do explosions, so all explosion affecting items (+ damage, + radius) are very good. Melee damage is the best since its cheaper than ranged or elemental damage. Damage % will become very important stat, in good runs you will be dealing like +4000 dmg per explosion by the end. Consumable healing is very important as well, so get that and Luck. Used to be much stronger before all the HP Regen nerfs.

Entrepreneur: Tasers into better Elemental weapons works. Occasionally. Harvesting is obviously very strong, get that going asap. Standard ranged elemental build otherwise. Remember to always spend everything before starting a new wave. One of the highest potential classes in the game, but a tad unreliable. Luck is even better than usual since you already get a recycle bonus.

Saver: Pistol into full SMG's/Miniguns or Spear into Slingshots. You need to save all your early monies for weapons. Harvesting is really nice since you start with +15. Use the Piggy Bank later on (like wave 10 onwards). Another highest potential class, the money you will earn in the last quarter of the run is absurd. But only if you get moneytrain rolling. Requires good RNG like Entrepreneur.

Masochist: Full Shotguns. That debuff to dmg % needs to be improved as quickly as you can, it will be a priority throughout the whole run. Blood Donation is great if you can take the damage. You will need consumable healing, lifesteal could be decent as well on top. Standard ranged build otherwise. You need to purposefully get hit a lot so you can actually start dealing some damage. Pause frequently during waves to check your current dmg %.


Farmer: Spears/Sticks into full Slingshots is optimal. Shotguns can work too. Obviously want Harvesting, all of it. Ignore Luck for it.

Sick: Full Slingshots. Otherwise standard ranged build.

Chunky: Sticks into Slingshots is optimal. Can also go full Sticks/Fists. Gets big debuffs to Dodge, HP Regen and Lifesteal. Stats that are pretty useless anyway lmao. Speed debuff hurts though. This class will teach you the power of Luck + consumable healing. Obviously get HP, and Armor. Otherwise standard melee or ranged build.

Old: Full Screwdrivers or Wrench works. Fix that Speed debuff quickly. Get all the Healing Turrets you can, as per usual for Engineering builds. Harvesting is good. Items that spawn more enemies are usually good but in this cramped up map it can be your doom, so use caution.

Soldier: Full Shotguns or SMG's. Hate this class with a passion because its a breaker of fingers and computer mice (hey dev, add spacebar for pausing movement pls regardless of mouse only movement). You will need to learn stutter stepping to do well at all. Stutter stepping is momentarily pausing movement by clicking mouse repeatedly. This allows you to move and fire at the same time, albeit much slower than regular characters. So getting Speed is very important so you can move faster while stutter stepping. This class will test your movement skills on the higher difficulties.

Explorer: Full Sticks. Get all Tree-items you can. And consumable healing. And Speed. And Harvesting, and Luck. Fix the % Damage nerf. Otherwise a melee build.

D-tier:

Generalist: Cacti Clubs into SMG's/Miniguns. Ranged Damage is important. Get some Attack Speed (40-50%), Damage %, Luck, Harvest all that stuff. Needs to get lucky to get anywhere.

Gladiator: Did someone say RNG fiesta? Start with Fist, Spear or Ghost Axe. Hope to God you get atleast okay weapons. You can try fixing the Luck debuff if you want, if not, then go into Harvesting. Otherwise standard melee build.

F-tier:

Ghost: Do you enjoy pretty much instantly losing a run because RNG failed you just once for a tiny moment? Then this is the class for you. Start with Ghost Axe, get max weapons asap. Get 90% Dodge asap. You can use 1 Scepter in the beginning, but optimally you want 4 Axes 2 Flints around wave 12-13, if not then as soon as you can. Scepters really suck, afterall. Build for Melee, Scepter is there just to get some early HP. GET HP. And melee damage. And LUCK + Consumable Healing and lots of it, you need to save all those consumables for when you get hit for 75% of your health and need it back asap. 120 HP is not too much by the end, just to give you an idea.

???-tier: Streamer. Havent really played this class much at all, I dont like it. Probably around A tier.

So yeah just follow this guide and you will soon be on your way to clearing D5 on many classes without much issues (but still some, depending on class). There are a few special persons on the forums who claim the game is unbalanced and D5 is much too hard, even if theyre supposedly experienced, so don't listen to those people when they try to offer "advice". I made this guide for them as well :)

Here are some of my example runs. You will notice I follow many if not all of the basic tips and strategies I wrote in this guide, to clear D5 easily.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md5IA4_MLAs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IYr_cZQWzI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhr9fxifZLc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivnHo2zFl-4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjAcenhovS8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA3HLR7PdbY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNhwO2M3HZ4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LbXl9nrVWo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxioD4-jRM4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6linT8potc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfy4dPeCI8M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsevKvlgNwM

And finally, TOO MUCH speed can be certainly be a bad thing.. (highlight of my mouse skills to save this run)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L09fN-qhU5w