As all Brotato players know, there are a ton of items as soon as you start this challenging roguelike, and more and more show up as you start completing challenges. Choosing the right items shapes your strategy and often makes a huge difference between winning and losing. If you don’t want to miss the most important tips around playing Brotato, make sure you check out our Brotato beginner’s guide.
However, Brotato items in the shop are randomized, and a unique setup is required for each character, so is it really possible to choose the best items in Brotato? Even though every character is special, some universally good items fit most if not all spud warriors out there. That is why we decided to create this list and help you recognize them. In our list, we focused on must-have items that are common enough that you will encounter in most runs.
Whistle
Increasing chances of getting loot aliens is always good since they don’t only bring loot that heals you like food, but also precious items. The downside noted in this item that gives those aliens a speed buff isn’t a big downside. If you have a well-made build, especially a ranged one, you won’t even notice loot aliens before you kill them.
Metal Detector
Metal Detector is a great item whose benefits are felt more as time passes rather than immediately. It is especially great for those of you who play endless mode since it has that +5% chance to double the value of picked-up material. The item itself can be bought up to 20 times which means you can boost these chances to +100%.
Naturally, you probably won’t get Metal Detector in the shop 20 times quickly, but any addition to those chances is an awesome boost to your spud economy.
Coffee
Simple item, often available as early as Wave 1 and 2 offers you an awesome deal when you buy it. The minus damage you lose here is negligible compared to the Attack Speed you get. If you manage to get +20 or +30 Attack Speed early in the game you will already notice a powerful boost in your killing capabilities, which makes Coffee a crucial item for almost every character.
Weird Food
Weird Food is an item that doesn’t grab your attention at first but is essential for many Brotato builds. Since it gives you +2 to consumable heal it puts it in that rare category of items that boost the food heal (there are only 3 items that do this) which we find very important.
Many builds will put you in a situation where you don’t want to invest your hard-earned level-up upgrades in HP regen or Life Steal. Instead, Luck seems more intuitive as it can give you the best Brotato weapons, items, level-up upgrades, and more consumables to eat.
Garden
The Garden is a straightforward item that just spawns a consumable every 15 seconds. The amazing part of it is that there is no limit to how many Gardens you will have and you can reduce their consumable spawning rate with items such as Clockwork Wasp and Improved Tools. A simple item that most characters benefit from!
Recycling Machine
Recycling Machine is another item that is great for your in-game economy. By giving you 35% more materials for recycling items, it really lets you farm a ton of materials passively. Even in games where you don’t invest much in Luck, you are bound to get dozens and dozens of chests in your levels so the sooner you get this item the better!
Baby Gecko
The big thing about Baby Gecko is that it attracts 25% of materials dropped to you instantly. We’ve all been at levels where we get overwhelmed and can’t reach that big pile of material lying at the middle of the map. This item lets you snatch plenty of material without you having to risk dying. On top of it all, you can get up to four Baby Geckos!
Tentacle
Crit Chance boost with a chance to heal you when you deal critical hits is a great opportunity that shouldn’t be missed by any character. Even in worst-case scenarios, where you have a really small Crit Chance, you will still get decent heal from this item simply because there are a ton of aliens on every level. Even if your every weapon crits once every 10 hits you will still get a lot of healing done because of this item alone. Like some other items on this list, Tentacle can be purchased multiple times to increase healing chances (up to 5 times).
Pocket Factory
When you’re in trouble, the first thing you need is to call for help! Well, Pocket Factory is the help you need when you’re feeling that you aren’t clearing enemies fast enough or that you need some help in clearing trees.
Getting a turret for every destroyed tree is as good as it sounds because even with low Engineering, your turrets will still kill those low-level aliens and take the pressure off of you. Additionally, it can clear new trees for you thus producing new turrets while you’re in the other part of the map.
Ugly Tooth
Every chance you get at disabling your enemies you should take. Ugly Tooth is a common item that can often be found even on Wave 2 or 3 shops. Even though you take a Speed penalty too, you can easily get it back while the aliens can’t. Works great with bosses as four hits disable 20% of their movement speed.
Alien Eyes
Some may say that this item isn’t universally great because it scales only with Max HP. However, grabbing Alien Eyes makes almost all characters stronger because of a few reasons.
Firstly, most characters need HP and invest at least some of their resources into it, so they get a solid passive damage output from this. Secondly, this item can be stacked multiple times which means you can create a complete ring of eyes shooting around you every few seconds or so. This way, even with low HP you will clear the small aliens, letting your weapons deal with the bigger threats.
Piggy Bank
Economy maker, money printer, you call it whatever you want, the Piggy Bank is one of the best Brotato items for getting rich fast. You just need to be patient and play smart.
As soon as you get Piggy Bank, stop spending all your material in the shop (even if you see something great) and always keep something aside for its bonus. Spending less, and saving more will get you to 500+ materials in a couple of levels and the more you save the more you will profit.
Don’t go overboard, however. Do a reality check on the levels of dangers that you are facing and act accordingly. If you don’t have enough damage for the next wave, do invest in items giving it. Just make sure to keep this item in your mind at all times
Retromation’s Hoodie
A red item (tier 4) that you will see fairly often when tier 4 items are concerned so that’s why we decided to add it to the list. Every item that gives you 2 stats for the price of one is an awesome boost, especially when you get 2% Attack Speed for every 1% Dodge.
From our experience, the -80 range doesn’t create too big of damage in most builds, so you would be fine picking up this item for almost any warrior spud out there. Attack Speed is one of those stats that can either make or break your game for many builds so it’s always a solid element on which you can rely.
Lucky Coin
Another two-for-one item that is almost always worth picking up. We say almost always because if you have 0 or minus Crit Chance then you should skip this one. If that’s not the case, then Lucky Coin is your go-to item!
Critical Chance and especially Luck are stats that benefit plenty of the best Brotato characters. Not only will you get more consumables and treasures during your run, but you will also get more rare items/weapons in the shop and higher-tier level-up upgrades. It’s a win-win situation.
Power Generator
Power Generator is one item that we probably never missed buying. Since it gives you 1% Damage for every 1% Speed you have it’s among one of our favorite items in the entire game. Speed is one of those stats that help you on multiple fronts – letting you pick up more material, help you evade bosses and elites you can’t kill, and dodge hordes.
Seeing how Speed is valuable on its own, it only gets better with this Damage % boost that goes with it. The -5% damage that you get from this item is negligible since you will replace it soon enough. Even though Power Generator is of tier 3 rarity it does pop up often in the shop so make sure you have your eye out for it!
Fairy
Fairy is an item that is so OP that we’re really not sure how it wasn’t nerfed or removed from the game. Since it’s a tier 3 it can come to your shop in mid to late game when you already have plenty of tier 1 items that will boost your HP regen.
As soon as you buy Fairy the game will remind you which items will give or take away your HP regen with a small fairy icon at the bottom for every tier 1 and tier 4 item.
The -2 HP regen per tier 4 item is a big disadvantage, but when you think about it further, you’ll realize that you won’t have that many tier 4 items to begin with. Unless you’re planning to conquer 100+ levels. But even then, you can stack up more tier 1 items to make up for the lost HP regen.
Fish Hook
A new item coming with Abyssal Terrors DLC is a really great buy, and when you consider that it is a tier 2 rarity, it’s even better because you can find it often. Giving your locked items a 20% chance of becoming cursed is a boost that any Brotato player would dream of.
With Fish Hook (that you can buy 4 of in total!) you are no longer getting random cursed items. You can now lock a weapon or an item that you think will be great when improved and keep it in the shop until the hook curses them. This works really well since the Curse on the item not only improves the good sides but also decreases the downsides that a particular item/weapon brings.
Conclusion
Brotato with DLC has around 170+ items right now when you’ve unlocked everything. That is a really big pile of buffs and debuffs with which you need to calculate in order to make great builds for yourself that will allow you to murder all those pesty aliens.
With our list of 17 best items in Brotato, we tried to make that choice easier by pointing out some of the safe purchases that work with almost all builds and characters in the game. We hope they work for you as well as they did for us!
Photo Credits: Blobfish
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