side order run optimization - theorycrafting (light gameplay spoilers)

[kyubone]

hey y'all, haven't seen a thread like this go up yet so i'm making myself the center of attention seeing who else out there has been as obsessed with crafting 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓹𝓮𝓻𝓯𝓮𝓬𝓽 𝓻𝓾𝓷 as i have! so far i've cleared the spire at least once with each palette and more than once with a few of them, and my goal here is to compile some thoughts and strategies to help people lower their times and clear their runs more efficiently. my pb is 16:45 igt with the charger palette, but even i know there's a LOT of time left to save and i'm hoping some of you are willing to share your perspectives while i dive into preliminary run optimization.

if you have not yet finished the dlc and are wanting to go in blind, consider this your final warning for any (very light) spoilers that may follow. this thread is strictly focused on gameplay, so story spoilers should be avoided wherever possible. however, some discussion of palettes, color chips, floor layouts, and bosses will naturally be required. safe browsing, kids!

all good? great. let's do this.

1. Palette + Color Chip Selection
first thing's first: the charger palette is kinda broken. not only does it boast high damage and piercing at full charge with no prior upgrades, it also packs a very impactful special in triple inkstrike. you get access to good damage, good range, and a reasonable amount of crowd control with charge pierce/ink mine/tristrike, making it not only adept at deleting important objectives but also well-rounded enough to handle almost any floor layout. (as a splatling player, seeing a charger be THIS good disgusts me, but i digress.) it also gets access to a slew of fantastic color chips, some of which it shares with heavy splatling, which can turn the base charger from a just alright main weapon into the second coming of grizzco charger. depending on your rng, you can blow up portals with a few long-range shots at full charge and still have half of your ink tank in reserve if you need to make a clean getaway. this thing is not okay. it's incredible.

before i get into my thought process on color chip choices, i'm gonna set up a good ol'-fashioned color grading system for all the options i wanna talk about! iykyk. the color grades are simple:

• gold options are universally great. when presented with a choice between one of these and most other color chips in the game currently, i'll be taking these. i consider color chips with these ratings to be run makers and run winners to the point where i will reset floors and vending machines multiple times just to have a shot at acquiring them early.
• blue options are excellent and usually round out my builds to help them be more versatile in certain mission types or encounters. they're powerful when stacked and useful tools to have, making them very high-priority options that will benefit just about any kind of run.
• green options are good, but i find their usage is either somewhat situational compared to other options or they lack the immediate value of other color chips. i certainly don't feel penalized for picking these, but i'm always taking them after i have other, more significant upgrades since they're much more dependent on having other color chips first anyway.
• red options are bad for some reason or another. these feel like a trap and will almost never get picked since side order has a veritable cornucopia of more useful color chips to pick from. hard pass on these, thanks.

now that we have the very subjective rankings laid out, let's delve into the meat & potatoes of side order runs: COLOR CHIPS!

my general priorities go something like this:

• quick charge is god and that's all there is to it. every single level of quick charge i can get in a run is guaranteed value for charger. less time charging means more dps, which means faster room clears, boss fights, and overall runs. i often reroll pretty aggressively early on if i'm not finding quick charge chips, but it's so good that i'm willing to run slower rooms like zones and turbine escort just to get this upgrade. use it, love it, cherish it. like most other fire-rate upgrades, this does eat into your ink tank pretty fast, so you'll need some kind of ink efficiency chips to make sure you're not constantly sitting in ink waiting to recharge, but MAN is this worth it. even if this is the only main upgrade i'm able to farm in a run, it's still a good run to me.
• lucky bomb drop feels like one of the best chips in the game to me right now. with very little investment, i can get squid game's version of will-o-the-wisp/ceremonial dagger from ror2, setting off massive chain reactions after splatting 1-3 enemies and keeping floors clear of mobs so i can focus on completing objectives faster. pierce on full charge is already pretty solid for dealing with crowds, but this pushes crowd control to new heights. i almost never reroll floors/machines just to buy it, but when it's an available option, i'm always going with this. after reaching rank 2 for 30% lucky bomb spawn rate, this goes down to a blue option for me - still amazing, just more of a bonus than a priority (especially if i'm still missing other key chips that i want).
• main range is particularly notable on charger, as i believe one chip gives you a 40% range increase over base charger and it continues to stack very well with more investment. this is a huge boon for runaway enemies in particular, as they don't start running away unless you (a) approach them, (b) aim at them within your effective range, or (c) shoot/throw something/pop a special in their general direction. with a bit of main range investment, i can put myself behind cover or at a distance, charge a shot, and then flick them from a position that lets me quickly move to the next enemy. it's also quite useful in boss fights, especially the pinging marciale/ball boss, since i can easily take advantage of the absurd range to do safe, reliable damage and wrap the fight up faster. if i've already gotten some main damage (distant) chips, this becomes a gold option for me, at least until i've invested 1-2 ranks.
• main damage (distant) is probably the more worthwhile of the 2 range-based damage buffs for charger. i try to position a bit further away since charger can often find spots near the center of a given floor to hit multiple objectives anyway, and this is just an additional reward for doing so. it feels extra-useful against stationary bosses like asynchronous rondo/layer boss (charger can continue sniping the rotating weak points from underneath its body) and overlorder (charger can delete the spawner tentacles and annihilate the boss without having to move too much). it's always useful since the main benefit of playing charger is being able to handle objectives the moment they enter your effective range, which other, closer-range weapons can't do nearly as well without investing heavily into their subs or specials. if i've already gotten some main range chips, this becomes a gold option for me.
• ink saver (main) is an excellent choice to offset charger's UNQUENCHABLE THIRST for your ink tank. quick charge is an insane dps boost at the cost of absolutely gutting your ink efficiency, and this is one of the most straightforward ways to mitigate that tradeoff. a couple ranks in ink saver (main) go a long way toward faster objective completion on normal floors and drastically reducing downtime in boss fights. it's a simple, practical bonus that reduces the effective cost of using charger's strongest upgrades, making this a solid priority in most runs for me - but i'm also not devastated if i can't get much of it either.
• ink attack size might just be fooling me into rating it higher, but since charger already has pierce on full charge and struggles to paint, this upgrade is pulling double duty by helping with both of those traits. bigger projectiles means more enemies are getting hit behind your initial target, and the wider shots paint a little better as well (though that's hardly the main consideration here). this can make the tight aim required on some runaway enemy floors more forgiving, which is a nice bonus. i don't normally take more than 2 ranks in this to get to 235% size, but i've never regretted taking it or felt like it was a good idea to skip out on entirely. i'll keep testing it just to be sure, though.
• poison ink would normally be rated much higher for me since it does fantastic damage to crowds, but given how effective charger is at dealing with those anyway (especially with some of the other color chips mentioned above), i feel comfortable rating this lower. the additional chip damage to enemies is less valuable since charger's paint is pretty subpar, so i have a harder time setting up to use this than other weapons do without investing heavily into better turf coverage... and that takes away from other, better options. if i've already gotten close to finishing my build in a given run, this is a good option, but i'm not going to pick it early on when i have much higher priorities to worry about. if i'm able to swap ink mine for sprinkler at a vending machine, though, this becomes a much more attractive option since sprinkler remedies a lot of charger's paint problems. then again, i could just be shooting things instead of throwing my sub weapon...
• sticky ink occupies the same spot as poison ink for me. it's a good option even when i don't necessarily want it, but less good on charger due to other options being so much better. no need to type all that out twice. like poison ink, this also becomes significantly better with sprinkler since the sub paints a lot better than charger normally can, enabling you to actually benefit from this chip's crowd control.
• hindrance damage is the third of the three stooges of paint control. it's good, but better on weapons that can actually paint. i will say, however, that it lacks the appeal on sprinkler that the other two crowd-control options above have since it's just a damage increase to enemies on your own ink - and charger doesn't really struggle with that anyway. it's not passively splatting them like poison ink or slowing them down like stinky ink, so even though it's not a bad option by any means, it's not putting in much work for me either. good synergy with the other two chips listed above, but still generally skippable.
• ink-bottle drop is one of the easiest ways to mitigate quick charge's heavy ink consumption, provided rng decides to cooperate. the only reason i've rated this lower than ink saver (main) is the randomness involved, but since i've never had an issue building up lucky chains during my charger runs and usually end up taking 1 or 2 luck chips anyway, playing around items has never felt unreliable or gimmicky to me. in fact, item-based runs have been some of my most successful runs ever! expect to see a lot of free ink refills dropping when paired with other luck chips. pairs very well with lucky bomb drop but is still worth investing in on its own. becomes even better next to other luck-based upgrades.
• disc-piece drop is exceptionally powerful in floors with longer, time-gated objectives like zones and turbine escort. the problem is that i try to avoid those when possible, so i'll rarely get much mileage out of this chip as a result. it's still potent and the step-off song is really good at clearing rooms and buying time to focus on other objectives, though i wouldn't rate it super high on charger in particular since it's already so good at wave clear with piercing shots. gains much more value when paired with other lucky upgrades if you can find them.
• max lucky chain seems to give more up-front value than lucky chain window on charger. when one piercing shot can take down an entire swarm of enemies, i'm much less concerned with fitting multiple splats into a small window of time. by comparison, max lucky chain enables charger to reach staggering chain numbers with its piercing shots and push the bounds of absurdity if i can squeeze in other upgrades that facilitate chain-reaction wave clear. has great synergy with lucky bomb drop and the other options in this section; on its own, this is still valuable but much less so if i'm not trying to farm specific lucky drops.
• drone splat bomb isn't a terribly high priority for me, but it's nice supplemental damage even in the worst-case scenario of only getting 1 rank in it. the bomb detonates on contact with portals and boss weak points, plus it's a net positive in the early game if i can't find other, better crowd control options since it never stops being useful later in the run. out of all the drone options, i'm most likely to take this one since it's easier to pick up and use than something like drone wail or inkstrike. (i am interested in testing drone inkstrike further, though, so take this with a grain of salt.) also a great way to get reliable access to splat bombs with a few ranks in it, assuming the vending machines aren't being kind with their secondary options.
• homing shots is one of the few upgrades that, in my opinion, make charger strictly worse. why do i want my shots to suddenly swerve and hit an enemy 2 feet to the left of the portal or boss weak point i was aiming at? i don't! thanks a lot, game! homing shots can absolutely be good on other weapons with higher fire rates, but this is a guaranteed skip from me in every charger run.

these are all based on my experiences with clearing runs using charger, but since i don't have much hard data to go on, i'm very open to discussion and alternative theories in case i missed something glaringly obvious! if i didn't touch on a color chip here, i'm either not super familiar with it or i would place it somewhere around the green tier. there are a lot of good options for color chips in side order, and i plan to experiment with many more over subsequent runs!

to be continued in the next post!

 

[kyubone]

continued from the previous post!

2. General Floor Selection
now that i got all that YAPPING on chips out of the way, let's talk floor selection and gameplay. speed is good, yes, but as with all roguelikes, learning to balance speed with safety to avoid tanking your run because of a poorly-balanced build or bad decisions during a level is key. thankfully, side order has proven pretty forgiving after the early floors since it's easy to get at least somewhat overpowered and start clearing floors like it's your 9 to 5.

during my runs, i consider the best options for floor selection to be 8-ball and runaway enemies. they're usually extremely quick compared to other floor types since they only have 2-3 balls or 2-5 enemies to splat, and both can be handled very efficiently if you know where to position and aim ahead of time. 8-ball setups in particular are also super satisfying to land! portals are close behind since they can be completed pretty quickly - tristrike carries a lot of weight in portal floors since it can shred stationary objectives so easily - but can be a bit dicey without some investment in crowd control. still extremely worth doing imo.

conversely, the time-gated floors like zones and turbine escort end up getting skipped a lot. i'll pick them if there's a really good color chip on those floors, and charger can at least handle the objectives a bit easier than other weapons on certain annoying maps (like the one with the inkrails and the floating central platform... pure hell), plus it can blast the turbine through checkpoints pretty fast with just a few upgrades. what hurts these floors the most is that lock players behind a waiting period where they HAVE to babysit an objective for a predetermined amount of time, and if they execute that floor even a little bit poorly, that waiting period only ever gets longer. it sucks, and i ignore them unless they give an upgrade that's key to my build.

i wish i had more to say on this cuz it feels a bit reductive, so i'm curious if anyone else has a different perspective on floor selection. i will say that the 8-ball and runaway enemy floors feel the most like puzzles to be solved in that they have very clear solutions for their initial layouts (before the balls/enemies get shuffled around), and that's something i really enjoy about side order as a whole. portals are a nice inbetween floor type where the solution is clear but enemy spawns may complicate things, necessitating some good damage to deal with adds and a little quick thinking in case things go south. zones and turbine escort are less about puzzle-solving and more about... well, mindless drudgery. push the tower uphill, push it back downhill, collect paycheck, repeat. not my cup of tea, and not the kind of grind i enjoy when playing roguelikes.

3. Boss Strategies
okay, nearly there - just gotta talk about bosses! my poor fingies are gettin tired man the one good thing about only having 4 bosses in the game is that it won't take too long to write this section! without further ado, let's kick it off with the ball boss.

Pinging Marciale (ball boss)
this is easily my second-favorite boss in side order. despite the simplistic design, i really love the mechanics of this fight, especially going in with charger since it makes light work of the boss even before i get a lot of upgrades. for starters, the extra range on charger helps a lot in this fight - shooting the boss propels it in the opposite direction, so being able to reach from a distance and still smack its big ol' weak points is a no-brainer. on top of that, i feel there's a lot of incentive to shoot the ball into one of the bumpers arranged around the boss arena. the bumpers launch the ball upward, and while other weapons might struggle to reach at that height, charger dgaf. the momentum of the bumper launch actually works against the boss here since shooting its weak point will cause it to stall out in the air, giving you several free follow-up shots for big damage. assuming i haven't shot myself in the foot, dealing with the extra adds that spawn when the boss lands is never an issue. a fun fight overall and one i look forward to in every run!

Asynchronous Rondo (layer boss)
i don't think this fight is too bad - it has a pretty interesting mechanic with the searchlight that runs opposite of each weak point, and each layer calls down a different weapon, which is a cool touch. the addition of the shockwave and mob spawns beneath the lowest layer is pretty cool as well! it's not all that tough to bring down, though. gliding in puts 2 weak points directly in front of the player on the lower layers, which can be sniped together with a little investment in ink attack size chips. every other weak point rotates at a fixed rate when the boss isn't doing its spinning tantrum attack and making the most ungodly noises known to squidkind. it's a quick fight given the static nature of the boss, and while it has some unique mechanics to account for, it's never felt like much of a legitimate threat.

Parallel Canon (pvp boss)
this one is just kinda... there. the concept of fighting ai cephalokids is cool, but the execution feels pretty hit-or-miss in the series so far, and side order's take on fighting enemy soldiers is a definite miss. their movement can be a bit unpredictable, but i think the ai is incapable of treating certain subs and specials as threats, so you can cheese them pretty reliably. ink mine and tristrike both come in handy here; i usually try to funnel the spawns into the area directly in front of the central platform and either snipe or strike them as they land with their gliders. not much to say about this boss - it's mid, though it can be an annoying time loss if one of the enemies escapes the no man's land and starts doing goofy movement on the flank. if there's a reliable strat to pick them off as soon as they land, i'd love to hear about it so i don't have to worry about these goobers messing up my run.

Overlorder (final boss)
my favorite boss in the run! this isn't a particularly difficult fight either, but it does have pretty decent variety with its attacks and mechanics. by this point i'd expect to have full or at least close to full quick charge chips, and with a few other damage buffs, charger can pop the tentacle portals in around 6 shots. this takes about a full ink tank and requires a refill after every portal if i haven't gotten any ink efficiency buffs or ink-bottle drops from enemies. i save tristrikes for when the barrier goes down - nothing fancy here, just unload the charger into the boss at either close or distant range depending on color chips. empty the tank, pop strikes, repeat until finished. there's something really fun about optimizing this fight in particular and finding the best route to pick off each portal; i tend to favor the right side of the arena first and then swing left since i may be able to line up the left portals in phase 3 to explode them at the same time. ngl, the music really helps here, and not simply because the boss attacks to the beat in predictable patterns. it's also a BOP.

Closing Thoughts
this was supposed to be a basic and very informal overview of my thoughts on how to complete the game a little faster, so i'm gonna call it quits before this verges into full-on walkthrough territory and i actually have to start citing real strategies and numbers. maybe that'll be my project for this weekend, who knows?

i hope my enjoyment and appreciation for the dlc have come through because i'm having an absolute blast and hope they add just a little bit more content in the future to spice it up. the room variety and number of bosses are both fine, but leave something to be desired that could be fixed in later updates (if they choose to go that route, which they might not). that said, it's still an excellent introduction to roguelikes, and i hope everyone else has been having fun with it! the more discussion we get surrounding this, the more resources we can hopefully provide to future players looking to improve their runs. good luck in the spire - i'll see you in there!

p.s. if you have links to videos or other resource threads about optimizing the boss fights in particular, i would love to learn more!

 

[RubberCF]

I think this should be turned into a guide

 

[missingno]

Just finished zero hacks Octo Shot. Haven't done so with other weapons yet, but I do wanna try a Splatling run since I had the most fun with it before. VOD if anyone wants to see how my run went.

My strat has been to just remember which problem floors are run-enders and don't ever take double zones no matter what shinies are offered. Single zones are usually simple, but you have to know which floors are which - if in doubt, I would simply not take zones at all. Careful with hard spawners as well unless you have excellent DPS, hopefully piercing too. 8-balls and fish are free. Turbines may be slow, but safe since you never lose progress.

Most floors can be downright trivial, and the final boss is easy enough that I think it's better to rush to floor 30 without taking any unnecessary risks than try to greed for a cool build. Early on you can click on shinies simply because it's not a huge setback to lose yet, but after floor 20 you should just never take risks anymore.

My opinion on chips, general guide rather than specific to any weapon.

• DPS is king. Take any and all DPS you see. Top priority.
• Range is really important as well, Charger and Splatling want at least one stack and everything else wants ALL the stacks. Homing is kinda funny, and if you have homing you don't need to bother with spread reduction.
• Piercing is HUGE for crowd control, and is a massive help for getting through to spawners. Finding that first stack is essential, a second is decent, you probably don't need any more than that. I was unlucky on my no hacks run and never found any though!
• Ink efficiency is valuable because getting caught with no ink is a death sentence. Movement ink refill is really nice, since that's the way to recover if you do run out and have nowhere to swim. Also funny with Roller/Brush since it works while rolling.
• Run/swim speed helps you escape Battering Lentos, who I found to be the most threatening run-enders. Also just crucial for recovering any time you go into Danger state.
• Squid Roll attack is a good get-off-me button if you're getting swarmed.
• Discs can be a good insurance policy, if you get stuck on a floor where enemies are spawning faster than you can kill them, the discs will bail you out. Most floors you should win before three drop, but I do like having insurance.
• Armor drops are also important insurance. Stay safe.
• Drone requires way too much investment before it becomes good. Zero hacks means many drone upgrades don't show either. I do like just getting it online to begin with, but don't invest in it over higher priority upgrades.

 

[GiggaPoggers]

homing shots is one of the few upgrades that, in my opinion, make charger strictly worse. why do i want my shots to suddenly swerve and hit an enemy 2 feet to the left of the portal or boss weak point i was aiming at? i don't! thanks a lot, game! homing shots can absolutely be good on other weapons with higher fire rates, but this is a guaranteed skip from me in every charger run.

This is one of those things with variability. If your a comp charger main who alr has good aim, you shouldn’t take it. It’ll trip you up and make you hit random enemies. However, if your a casual who’s aim could be better, or you want to stack quick charge, you can take it for easy crowd control. All chips in this game are preference, and depend on what type of player you are.

 

[☆Oblivion☆]

[*]homing shots is one of the few upgrades that, in my opinion, make charger strictly worse. why do i want my shots to suddenly swerve and hit an enemy 2 feet to the left of the portal or boss weak point i was aiming at? i don't! thanks a lot, game! homing shots can absolutely be good on other weapons with higher fire rates, but this is a guaranteed skip from me in every charger run.

Homing shots are brutal when paired with quick charge and range and you can do fleeing foe floors in seconds with it.

 

[youre_a_squib_now]

[*]homing shots is one of the few upgrades that, in my opinion, make charger strictly worse. why do i want my shots to suddenly swerve and hit an enemy 2 feet to the left of the portal or boss weak point i was aiming at? i don't! thanks a lot, game! homing shots can absolutely be good on other weapons with higher fire rates, but this is a guaranteed skip from me in every charger run.

Homing shots are brutal when paired with quick charge and range and you can do fleeing foe floors in seconds with it.

Fleeing foe floors are literally the only reason I get homing shots, and I never get more than one, for the stated reasons.

Generally I won't even get one because without the range chip (i usually do monochrome runs) you don't have enough range to quick clear the fleeing foe floors, so I might actually have to fight some enemies.

 

[crows]

homing shots are really good at ending your charger runs if you don't have max quick charge, and really good at winning your charger runs if you do. it really just flips as soon as you get tap charge, since you can just abandon traditional charger strats at that point and start spamming zr in the general direction of enemies. your main concern at that point is just ink saver main to let you delete even more.