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Nuclear Throne: Oh! I accidentally ate my gun.

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been playing for 65 hours and a single loop is still an accomplishment for me

furthest ive got is the crystal caves on the first loop... once.

all other loops i never got past the desert.

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Looping tips:

Crown of Guns is amazing, it's the best at everything all the time forever. Having good weapon selection is just such a huge deal. On Robot, no ammo isn't even a drawback, on other characters I generally get enough off chests and weapon pickups that I can afford to keep one primary weapon fed, while either alternating my secondary weapon in accordance with ammo needs, or using a melee secondary. Also, it stacks multiplicatively with Heavy Heart which is rad.

 

My prioritization of perks is as follows:

Tier 0: Heavy Heart (you only get one chance to take it, if you pass, it goes away forever)
Tier 1: Scary Face, Hammerhead, Strong Back (except on Robot), Throne Butt (on some characters)

Tier 2: Anything that will unlock Heavy Heart. Special mention to Long Arms because melee is amazing in the Throne fights

Tier 3: Bloodlust, Rhino Skin, Protection, Second Stomach, Rabbit Paw

Everything else scores so low that I don't even want it.

 

Usually Hammerhead is not very good, but occasionally you will get dumped into a wide open room full of enemies, and in those situations Hammerhead is the only chance you've got. If you're okay with randomly getting screwed by levelgen now and then, feel free to knock it down to Tier 3.

 

Strong Back is amazing firstly because it lets you simply go full-auto on the Throne with much less concern for running out of ammo, and secondly because if you don't use Crown of Guns, it's the best ammo conservation perk in the game. For each weapon you have under 20% max ammo, you get +30% ammo drops, and for each weapon over 60%, you get -35% ammo drops. Since Strong Back adds to your max ammo capacity, 192 bullets goes from 75% to 37.5% full, kicking you down a tier in the drop tables.

 

The ideal loadout for the Throne 1 fight is a melee weapon (I will sometimes carry a basic wrench all the way from World 1, just so I can have melee for the Throne), and anything high DPS. When the fight starts, the Throne is pretty chill, and a melee weapon lets you safely destroy the giant green balls to farm for medkits and ammo. Farm up to full, kill three generators and farm back to full, then kill the fourth generator and just unload on the Throne. When it dies, run away from the portal: this will give the portal time to suck in the weapon from the chest at the beginning of the level.

 

For the Throne 2 fight, try to keep one of the basic IDPD alive, as Throne 2 will only spawn once you've killed them all. With one left alive, run around and grab the guns you want, then start the fight. Farming it with a melee weapon is still possible, though more difficult. I generally find it sufficient to pick up a high DPS weapon with reasonable projectile speed and kill Throne 2 quickly.

 

In the post-loop levels, I usually meet my doom at the hands of the loop-exclusive IDPD units. I haven't fought them enough yet to know if that's because they're just that badass, or because I have yet to learn their patterns.

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Man, I've been getting stuck on world 1 recently. It turned into something that was so easy, I could switch off and get through. Now I switch off too much and end up getting shot or beaten to death by maggots. You can't stop concentrating in Nuclear Throne for even a second.

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For people trying to accelerate their playthroughs you can skip the desert and fight Big Bandit immediately if

 

you collect the Weapon Crate, Ammo Crate, and Rad Cannister in 10 seconds without taking damage

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I accidentally did that a couple of times, and couldn't figure out why he was showing up somewhere he shouldn't and just looked up what the criteria was. 

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I never take the gun chest on the first level since I want the big chest later. I would never have come across that on accident. 

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There was a tip in one of the loading screens which clued me in to the big chest. It simply said "Try not opening chests." Wouldn't have figured that out otherwise!

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I tend to crack open early chests in search of an explosive weapon to access the Pizza Sewers, because the drop tables don't do anything I find exciting until 3-2's auto crossbow or 3-3's hyper rifle (though 1-3 starts the shovel and sledgehammer if you're into those), so an early large chest doesn't offer up much.

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For people trying to accelerate their playthroughs you can skip the desert and fight Big Bandit immediately if

 

you collect the Weapon Crate, Ammo Crate, and Rad Cannister in 10 seconds without taking damage

 

I thought you had to

 

open them all without killing any enemies?

 

Or maybe that's a method from an old patch. I'ma have to try this out now, I gave up on doing it that way since I could never get it consistently...

 

Edit: That's still what the wiki says:

 

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Turns out the reason you sometimes take damage with Gamma Guts is a weird technical thing that boils down to "Gamma guts does 6 damage, but it hits enemies twice before they damage you. If they're only in contact with you for one frame, then they only take one tick of damage and can hurt you because they don't die." So the trick is to run into them headlong, only a glancing blow (such as from a fast-moving snowbot that hits you edge-on) can penetrate gamma guts + scary face.

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I had a feeling it was multiple ticks but assumed headlong was how you got hit, where it would jump right on top of you in between frames. Guess that explains why i took so much damage while trying for only glancing blows.

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Does anyone understand the Throne 1's AI? I'm not sure if it's more than binary, but there is definitely an aggression switch or slider that gets flipped partway through the fight, which makes it shoot way more green balls, and rapidly alternate laser patterns. Normally I see the Throne get more aggressive once all four generators are destroyed, but I have occasionally observed it happening before then. Just recently I saw exactly when the change happened: I destroyed one generator, walked onto the generator, then dug into the wall with Hammerhead, and the Throne started going nuts (and did not resume normal behaviour once I walked back into the normal area). Normally I don't even touch the walls, I wonder if going too far to one side can trigger its aggro switch.

 

After 62 hours of play I took my first death to Throne 2: apparently its death-explosion can kill you. I'm still not sure if Throne 2 is inherently a cakewalk, or if Throne 1 weeds out all the bad runs (the ones that arrive with nothing but a heavy crossbow and Gatling slugger) leaving only strong ones to face 2.

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When you go into the walls it does go nuts with the big green globs.

The fight imo gets harder over time whether or not you take out the generators, and when you do i think the increased difficulty is just from the little extra green gronks.

I've had nailbitingly close run ins with throne 1 to then breeze through the second one... i think the space, plus only having to deal with single patterns at once, rather than the crazy overlaps throne 1 throws at you (especially with the aforementioned gronks) makes it a ton easier.

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Picked this back up for the first time since months before it was finished...and I'm still super terrible at it.  Yah! 

 

Any tips for the boss of the ice world?  That as far as I ever got in Early Access, and still stuck there.  Been mostly running Robot or Fish, because they are my only two with Golden Guns right now (shotgun and crossbow, respectively).  I usually get killed within 10-15 seconds of the boss spawning, aren't even having time to see a pattern to deal with. 

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That's the boss I struggle with too. I only seem to kill him with Crystal because I can just bubble the damage from his AOE. I always die on the next stage though. I can't tell if those enemies are infinite, or that there are just tons of them.

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Jackhammer works wonders if you spam it on him as he lands. Try to stay just within range so you mulch all his bullets and flames.

Get boiling veins so his jetpack wont kill you.

Hiding behind a wall may make him summon IDPD. It also keeps him still for a few seconds. Pop out as soon as you hear him blabber, get some shots in, then pop back and be ready to deal with the doods that spawn.

Hammerhead is also great for emergency hiding in walls.

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Boiling Veins and Hammerhead are not mutations I often take (though Boiling Veins if picked up early would also help some in the junkyard where I've certainly taking unnecessary damage to fire at times).  I'll try that!

 

Also, I have never, not a single time, seen the Jackhammer drop.  Didn't even know it existed. 

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I made it to the Throne for the first time last night!  :clap:

 

 

I died to the very first attack.  :(

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Welp, 950 runs since release, and I've finally unlocked all characters, skins, and the golden frog pistol. Only achievements left are the near impossible ones. Kinda really super wishing the daily challenge scoreboards got fixed so I can test my mettle on those, but til then.... feels weird to just play it without a goal. Kinda relaxing actually, as some of the character skin unlocks just meant i was attempting something outside of my comfort zone for an extended period of time. But yeah, fun game.

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The leaderboards still haven't been fixed? Cripes.

 

I should get back to this some time. I really want to unlock Rebel again but I could never quite nail the loop. Died to the second Throne twice, which never happened to me pre-release.  :(

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I'm not sure I'll ever start this back up again.  I made it to the Throne a single time, died instantly.  I like this game alot, but the particular mastery or skill that it requires just isn't something I've been able to pull off. 

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FWIW, I played for months and months and months without getting very good at all - I rarely made it to the ice level. Eventually I made it to the throne and died instantly. Then I made it to the throne again and killed it. I've made it to the throne a few more times and I think I'm legitimately better without having reached any sort of mastery or whatever.

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