Brotato is a simple roguelike game that puts you in the jacket of a potato warrior fighting an alien invasion. The game puts you in time-limited levels where you must defend against the waves of an ever-growing number of aliens. With each level, you get more enemies with higher damage and HP but you also get level-up upgrades, weapons, and items to cope with this new menace.
IMPORTANT: Brotato is FREE until the 5th of December on Epic Games Store.
The game got its first DLC The Abyssal Terrors in October 2024 and now has 62 unique characters that you can play with, each bringing in a different game style. Every character has its pros and cons that allow you to try out various strategies keeping it fun and dynamic in every playthrough.
In our Brotato beginner’s guide, we’ll give you a brief overview of how each element works and the most important things you need to pay attention to. But don’t worry, we won’t spoil the whole game. There will be plenty of things left for you to discover on your own. The guide just lists some of the things we wish we knew when we first played Brotato.
Gameplay
Since Brotato is roguelike it means you will have one character fighting off hordes of enemies on a limited map. Dodging enemies while simultaneously killing them is the basis of this game, regardless of which character you choose.
Your character will be able to equip a limited number of weapons (most hold 6 weapons but there are exceptions) with which you’ll try and kill off as many enemies as you can and pick up the material they drop to level up and buy items and weapons later on. However, your goal in each round is simply to survive and not kill every enemy on the map. They will keep on spawning and some of them will remain alive at the end of the wave and that’s fine.
To win a run, you need to complete 20 rounds. The first round is 20 seconds long and every other is 5 seconds longer than the previous. There will be a shop between levels that will allow you to buy items and weapons with the material you’ve gathered. When you arrive at round 20 you will be asked whether you want to complete the run after that round or whether you want to try an Endless run. Endless runs are exactly what they sound like, infinite runs where your enemies start getting stronger and stronger and bosses start to multiply.
There are special levels that bring either hordes of enemies (meaning regular enemies just a ton of them) or a boss. Those will be highlighted in the bottom right corner of your shop screen. As you can see from the screenshot below our special levels are 12, 15, and 18. Brotato has 6 danger levels that you can play on and each danger brings stronger enemies and more special levels.
Stats
In Brotato your character will have 2 sets of stats, primary and secondary. As you can see from our screenshots above, primary stats include regular stats that you would see in any RPG, like Max HP, HP Regen, Damage %, Attack Speed, etc. Secondary stats however are a bit more specific to the game and influence things like Piercing Damage, Knockback, XP Gain, etc.
Primary stats are received both through your level-up bonuses and items you buy in the game’s shop while secondary stats can be only received through purchased items. Keep in mind that both your level-up bonuses and the items that show up in the shop are completely randomized so there is no way for you to simply focus on a couple of stats you want like in RPG games. Still, as you begin to get certain stats they will start popping up more and more among these randomized choices.
We suggest you focus on a couple of core stats you think will be key for your character and get those above others. For example, you decide to pick up Max HP, Speed, Attack Speed, and Ranged Damage above all else. But, if another great stat boost, like +12% Damage appears that doesn’t belong to your primary choice group, be sure to take it. Overall, lean towards the ones you set as your goal but don’t miss great opportunities.
One rule that will be true for most characters in Brotato is that they need Max HP and some type of regen. If you skip getting those you’ll have a hard time surviving waves.
Brotato Characters Explained
As mentioned there are 62 characters in Brotato with Abyssal Terrors DLC and 48 without it. Characters bring their own advantages and disadvantages that you need to maneuver around and find the best way to win. When you first start the game, you get a couple of free characters and the rest are unlocked through completing different achievements.
We suggest you first play with those that are the simplest. For example, some characters have only a couple of pros and cons that you need to worry about so it’s easier to understand them. Other more advanced characters can have a list of 7,8 or more different specific abilities or advantages/disadvantages that you need to take into account when you play them. Those should be played once you are used to the whole gameplay of Brotato and have unlocked some more powerful items.
Weapons
They are your main way of fighting aliens and unlike items can be replaced during a run. Most characters get 6x weapon slots but there are some that can hold as much as 12 and as little as 1 weapon. The important thing to know here is that weapons come in tiers I to IV (with some exceptions). You can upgrade weapons by combining two of the same type and rarity, for example, when you combine 2x tier I SMGs you will get 1x tier II SMG. Certain weapons don’t have tier I or both tier I and II and can only be bought when they are tier III/IV directly from the shop.
It’s always better to have more weapons in the lower tier than a smaller number of weapons in the higher tier simply because there is a sea of enemies out there that need to be blown to bits. So if you have 6x tier II Revolvers, don’t combine two of them and have 4x tier II and 1x Tier III. Wait for a fresh Revolver from the shop to upgrade.
Weapon classes are another thing to keep an eye on. Every weapon in Brotato belongs to one or two different classes and when you have multiple weapons of the same class your character gets a bonus. From our example below, we can see that 2 weapons from the gun class give you a +10 range, 3 give a +20 range, 4 give a +30 range, and so on. The Explosive category, on the other hand, gives you a % Explosion size with each additional weapon from that category.
If you dislike a weapon you have you can simply recycle it to get some of your material back and replace it with another weapon.
Items in Brotato
We would say that items are probably the most important part of our Brotato beginner’s guide. Items are permanent buffs and debuffs that you get for your character. We say “buffs and debuffs” because most of the items you can buy in the game’s shop simultaneously give you something while taking away something else (gives +3 Melee Damage but takes -3 Ranged Damage).
The key thing here is to remember that these can’t be recycled or destroyed. The stats they give and take away are there to stay so buy them carefully. There are even a few items that cap some of your stats like Handcuffs that put a limit on your HP and Shackles that limit your speed so be especially wary of those.
The great thing about Brotato is that plenty of items complement each other and it is on you to find those killer combos and experiment with them in action. One great combo consists of these items:
- Lumberjack shirt – Trees die in one hit.
- Pocket Factory – +2 Engineering; Killing a tree spawns a turret.
- Tree – More trees spawn.
As you can see if you get these three items you will get more trees that spawn healing food upon destruction, you will kill them with one hit which saves you time and allows you to dish out more damage to your enemies and you will get 1 turret each time you kill a tree that passively kills enemies on your behalf. There are plenty of mindblowing combos to explore in Brotato and this is just one of them.
Tried Out Tips and Tricks for Playing Brotato
Since we went through all the basics in this Brotato beginner’s guide we also wanted to share some game-winning tips that we discovered while playing Brotato. These aren’t a must but they will enable you to dominate the alien-infested battlefield easier and make a real Rambo-style fighter from your spud.
- Boost Attack Speed for most of your characters – Even though every character is special, some things like the massive amount of low-hp enemies are always the same. Attack Speed is essential in that allows you to dish out more hits thus clearing the ever-growing number of enemies and preventing them from overrunning you.
- Crit Chance – Attack Speed pairs really nicely with Crit Chance so if you can, try and boost this stat when you have high Attack Speed.
- Speed, Speed Speed – Getting Speed to at least 15 or 20 has proven to be a winning strategy for most of our games because even if your damage isn’t enough to clear all the enemies spawning you can still outrun them. The same is true for bosses. When you’re just starting out, bosses will probably be a big bite for you so simply running around the map and avoiding their spells can get you to the next round.
- Power lies in Luck – Luck is one stat that brings many bonuses for you. It increases your chances of finding chests containing items and healing consumables when killing enemies, and it increases the rarity of both level upgrades and items in the shop. On top of that, there are more than a few items in the game that allow you to damage and kill enemies based on your Luck stat.
Final Thoughts Brotato Beginner’s Guide
When summing up our Brotato beginner’s guide we should mention that it is a roguelike full of random events that can sometimes make or break your game. However, if you know the general rules outlined in our article, you will be prepared to fight an alien army with any character. Playing multiple runs with the same character until you win is not rare in this game and if you’re not up for that, the game recently added an option for everyone to replay the level they lost unlimited times.
Photo credits: Blobfish, Brotato.
![Hearthstone Battlegrounds Strategy Guide [Season 9]](https://fantasywarden.com/wp-content/uploads/hearthstone-battlegrounds-season-9-main-cover.webp)
![Top 15 Meta Brotato Weapons [DLC Included]](https://fantasywarden.com/wp-content/uploads/brotato-weapons.webp)
![15 Best Brotato Characters [Winter 2024]](https://fantasywarden.com/wp-content/uploads/brotato-best-characters-sc.webp)
![Ultimate Brotato Builds & Strategy Guide [Danger 5]](https://fantasywarden.com/wp-content/uploads/brotato-best-builds-cover.webp)
![Darkmoon Prizes HS BG Guide [Winter 2024]](https://fantasywarden.com/wp-content/uploads/darkmoon-prizes-collage.webp)