Big Dog is a secret character that was added temporarily on April 1st, 2015 and is playable only on April Fools. While only added as a one time joke, he was re-added specifically on the Steam betas to be playable again. He can be played by defeating the Big Dog boss while local time is currently on April 1st, which is based on local time meaning that one can simply change the time on their computer to play as him. As long as the current game session is started on April 1st he will remain playable for as long as that session is played. If the game is launched on a different day he will no longer appear on the character select screen and disappear.

Because Big Dog was added as a joke he is not actually balanced around the game, playing as him is extremely tedious and time consuming and many mutations are useless on him. His multiple downsides make each level a slog and taking damage very easy, however he can also regain health at insanely quick speeds due to his missiles always dropping health and ammo. This makes it so Big Dog can secretly have a game breaking build if played right, though extreme patience must be exercised in order to do so. Big Dog is not enabled on daily challenges and is explicitly not allowed on weeklies either.

(Image goes here)
	Big Dog
	Unlock	Defeat Big Dog on April Fools - Betas only
	B-Skin	No B-Skin
	Weapon	Dog Spin Attack, Dog Missile
	Active	Spin Attack Missiles
	Passive	More HP Less speed, larger hitbox, cannot pick up weapons

Abilities

• Active
• Big Dog's active actually just refers to his primary and secondary weapons, which he can freely dual wield and use both at the same time.
• His weapons cannot be swapped out for any other weapon. They also are strictly bound to primary/secondary slots meaning he cannot swap the two weapons.
• This means that any ammo gained that is for shells, bolts and energy are completely unusable for the entire run.
• While ammo pickups are a 50/50 chance on which ammo type it gives, ammo chests will always give bullets unless he is full of bullet ammo, as he cannot make missiles his primary.
• Weapons dropped from enemies and chests do not give ammo, only ammo drops/chests will benefit Big Dog.
• Dog Spin Attack will shoot out a stream of bullets in six different directions, each bullet does 3 damage each.
• This costs 15 ammo and each bullet stream totals 15 bullets, meaning that it shoots out a total of 90 bullets at the cost of 15 ammo.
• The spin attack is mostly a visual thing, as Big Dog can move around normally while using it as well as shoot his missiles during the animation as well. The weapon will cooldown at the same time his spin attack ends.
• The bullet path behavior is dependent on version.
• On 2021 beta bullets will shoot out in a predictable ring dependent on Big Dog's position, in two alternating ways depending on his direction. Moving around will pack the bullets much tighter, standing still gives him 360 degrees coverage with bullets, but cannot actually aim the bullets in any meaningful way.
• On the 2023 beta/NTT v100 the bullet ring can instead be aimed, the closest bullet path will shoot out in the direction of the cursor. The other 5 bullet paths will mimic it.
• Dog Missile will make Big Dog shoot out 3 missiles which can destroy terrain, damage enemies as well as Big Dog himself.
• Missiles use 3 explosive ammo at a time to shoot out 3 missiles. They will follow the players cursor similar to nuke projectiles.
• Upon contact with any wall, enemy or explosion they will explode following normal explosion rules(link later) - dealing 5 damage twice for a total of 10 damage.
• Missiles will bounce off of Big Dog and not interact with his own projectiles, and uniquely will also bounce off of props instead of damaging them.
• If missiles are partially damaged by enemy projectiles or other explosions they will explode after a moment. They start at 8 HP in loop and technically their missiles scale by loop, it's just an HP gained every few loops and does not change anything meaningful.
• They will always drop either HP or ammunition upon exploding.
• The direction missiles fire will always be opposite of the way Big Dog is walking, fairly clustered together. However if he is standing still they may go out in hard to predict directions.
• There is no reload time for the missiles unlike the spin attack, meaning that Big Dog can spam missiles freely to gain a ton of HP/ammo pickups.
• It is very easy for Big Dog to accidentally kill himself from explosive damage alone. See the strategy guide below to circumvent this.
• Passive
• Starts with 300 max HP, which is the starting HP of the normal Big Dog boss as well.
• This means that nothing can one-shot Big Dog, the highest single damage attack is 200 HP by the Hyper Crystal.
• Big Dog is twice as slow as any character in the game, his speed value is 2 while the default is 4. Taking Extra Feet puts his speed at 2.5, which is still slower than base Skeleton(whose speed is set to 3). (Link Extra Feet explanation later, this is only semi-accurate)
• Webs will not effect Big Dog as the reduction would make him basically not be able to move at all. Ice does effect him, but is barely noticeable.
• As Big Dog is much larger than any other character, he in turn also has a much larger hitbox which makes it very difficult for him to dodge attacks, coupled with his abysmal speed.
• Spawning zones will always be much bigger in size as Big Dog would otherwise not be able to fit.
• Many hallways are too small for Big Dog to fit through making him rely on his missiles to blast his way through.
• While unlikely there can be some situations where Big Dog gets softlocked if he is unable to refill his explosive ammo and is blocked by a hallway.
• Despite being bigger in size, Big Dog does not have an increased pickup radius. All HP/ammo pickups must be directly walked over in order to collect if not running Plutonium Hunger.
• Thronebutt
• Missiles will now travel about twice as fast.
• There is no increase to damage, just the speed in which it can reach targets.
• Ultra A: Ultra Spin
• The amount of bullets shot out by Big Dog is doubled from 90 bullets to 180 bullets, where each bullet stream is doubled shooting out two bullets at a time, at the same cost of 15 ammo.
• These bullets will behave differently per. version still.
• On the 2021 beta they will shoot out in 6 specific directions rather than entirely around Big Dog, making damage more reliable.
• On the 2023 beta/NTT v100 they will behave the same as the normal attack, where the closest bullet pattern will follow the cursor, except now the bullet count is doubled.
• Ultra B: Ultra Missiles
• Missiles will shoot out bullets directly in front of them, similar to how the boss attacks work in loop.
• These do 3 damage each and does not require any additional ammo to use.
• Similarly does not benefit from Recycle Gland.
• Other Perks:
• Big Dog always starts a run on full Bullet and Explosive ammo.
• Upon death Big Dog will cause a giant explosion covering the majority of the screen much like the normal boss does upon their death, this can add a few extra final kills to the total kill count.
• Big Dog's boss theme will always play during the entirety of his run.

The Basics

This guide will be very different from other character guides due to how much Big Dog fundamentally plays differently, thus will be lengthy explaining how he interacts with various mutations. He moves through levels at a snails pace, can easily damage himself with his missiles and constantly will be taking damage from enemies. As an April Fools joke this character can be swept under the rug as just being a gimmick and easily discarded, however a game breaking build was found that was sort of game-breaking, though gameplay is still incredibly slow.

In terms of preloop Big Dog will be at his slowest, leveling up will take a while and traversing levels is a challenge in itself. Any time he comes across a hallway, Big Dog should walk away from it and shoot missiles towards it in order to blow it up to give him enough room to walk through. While his downsides seem to make his gameplay really unfun, he gets infinite HP and ammo from his missile attack. Shooting a cluster of explosives towards a wall by rapidly clicking the secondary button will give him a ton of pickups to farm, though apply some caution because of how easy Big Dog can hurt himself with explosions - until Boiling Veins and Second Stomach is got, even rebuilding HP can be a pain because of how easy it is to get damaged even by Big Dog's own attacks.

Missiles will always be a better damage source to enemies, though the Spin Attack should be constantly used too because of how easy it is to regain ammo. Keeping this in mind this is the true 'basics' of Big Dog, farming drops and digging through levels slowly. If just wanting the basics, the guide can end here - just look at the tables below on what mutations to take and ignore the explanations.

Core Mutations							Additional Mutations

The general idea behind Big Dog meta is that he can use his missiles in order to self heal quickly while constantly outputting damage. Missiles have a 100% drop rate so will always be giving either health or ammo that will refill missiles. So in an optimal situation Big Dog can out-heal any damage given to him, including self-damage. In order to reach this point the 7 mutations above should be seen as 'vital' to make this build really work, and then pick 1-2 of the 3 mutations as 'additional' to make the build more complete.

The most important mutation here is Boiling Veins, though if basing it on the in-game description it is not immediately apparent on why. Big Dog starts at 300 HP, and Boiling Veins only makes characters invulnerable to explosives when at 4 HP or below - the mutation has another attribute though, explosives usually do 5 damage twice for a total of 10 damage, Boiling Veins will actually remove the second instance of damage, which will halve the amount of explosive damage taken. This is something that is easy to miss on normal characters but is critical to this build.

In order to make missile farming efficient, Second Stomach and Plutonium Hunger are the next in priority in order to make Big Dog heal twice as quickly while being able to get pickups a lot easier, especially when he starts to loop and enemy bullets will make it difficult to see pickups. These mutations make missile farming much more efficient, and Extra Feet sort of goes along with that to get to pickups quicker. Being the slowest character in the game Big Dog benefits much more from Extra Feet as it being a flat increase(+0.5 to speed) makes him go about 20% faster making his gameplay far more bearable..

Then the other part of the build comes in to dish out additional damage - because Big Dog may be self damaging with missiles a lot and also getting hit constantly, Sharp Teeth is going to be one of his main forms of damage. This is a lower tier mutation on other characters, but actually works very well on Big Dog. Gamma Guts goes along with this as Big Dog can do contact damage far quicker than enemies can do contact damage to him, which makes this actually viable to use against every boss besides Hyper Crystal. Pair both of these with Scarier Face for quicker kills.

From here there are 3 other mutations - Impact Wrists, Thronebutt and Bloodlust. These can be partially left up to preference, each has their own strengths.

• Impact Wrists will help increase the damage output, while generally not seen as a high DPS mutation it's the main way Big Dog can deal any sort of ranged damage to off-screen enemies, as his only means of damage happens entirely on-screen otherwise. Any additional DPS goes a long way for this sort of gameplay.
• Bloodlust is more of an extra safety precaution to help make sure Big Dog never takes too much damage in areas where it can potentially happen. Second Stomach is the main form of healing here, but this will keep runs safer if not a bit slower compared to running TB instead.
• Thronebutt makes missiles go significantly faster which means that levels can be cleared much quicker too. While it doesn't technically increase damage output, it reaches targets much quicker which is a nice boost for a run that is generally really time consuming.

Relatively Helpful			Relatively Unhelpful

Outside of meta mutations Big Dog still has quite a few more choices, though how helpful they are varies heavily.

• Rabbit Paw: While Big Dog will mostly depend on missile drops, having extra ammo/health drops is always welcome.
• Back Muscle: Bullet ammo will almost never run out, so this is mostly for extra missiles to spam, though not very useful with infinite pickup farming.
• Lucky Shot: Random chances of extra ammo isn't very necessary here, though is still on the positive side.
• Euphoria: Not a great idea in later loops since slower projectiles can cause a lot more lag, Big Dog doesn't really need to avoid most projectiles with a meta build. Decent if just playing preloop.
• Rhino Skin: A 1.3% increase to max health isn't going to mean very much where damaging/healing constantly is what the build is focused on.
• Strong Spirit: If you're taking enough damage to die it's extremely likely that Strong Spirit will only delay the inevitable. Even if you happen to get out of the situation rebuilding to 300 HP would be extremely time consuming, where that mutation slot could've been spent somewhere else.
• Open Mind: Having an extra ammo/weapon chest is not helpful here as Big Dog can farm pickups with extreme ease, rads can help level up quicker in preloop but nothing to write home about.

Virtually Useless			Completely Useless

Meanwhile over a third of the mutations either barely function, or not at all, which are as follows:

• Hammerhead is barely functional here as Big Dog will almost immediately use up all of its tiles upon walking into any walls, this is a precision mutation on a character incapable of it.
• Trigger Fingers and Stress will both reset the Spin Attack animation and start a new one, which will actually result in less bullets shot out for the ammo cost rather than extra. Missiles do not need either of these mutations.
• Heavy Heart means more weapon drops that Big Dog cannot pick up, nor does he get ammo from those drops. It also requires 3 weapon related mutations where Big Dog can only benefit from one of them(Boiling Veins).
• Eagle Eyes does not effect either of Big Dogs attacks.
• Recycle Gland does not effect Big Dogs' attacks either, and as Big Dog cannot pick up weapons the other 4 weapon mutations are completely unusable as well.

Crowns & 9 Mutations

Tech Related

Big Dog has two optimal ways to go about getting a Perfect 9 set. The first option is to play NTT and play the grillskills mod(link later) in order to get a guaranteed set. Considering the time investment to just start a Big Dog run, this is the recommended option. One can pick their 8 mutations, then simply take Crown of Destiny in either preloop vault for their extra desired mutation from the pool listed above.

However, one can do a vanilla run too if they so choose and try to grind for a perfect set. A run should be started with Crown of Hatred either by unlocking it in a previous run(Captain or Thronesitting with it), save editing it in(link later) or by playing in NTT which has crowns unlocked by default. (If not, then do '/ccrown hatred' as a command).

Starting a run with CoHatred the first goal is to get to the 3-2 vault, leveling as much as you want. Here the proto chest will spawn, and if Big Dog stands on the edge of it he will rapidly take damage as the chest will repeatedly open/close and spawn rads. You'll want to get to upper level 9, though NOT hit ultra, and then continue on. From here you'll see up to your 8th mutation and can figure out if you have an optimal set or not - you'll be taking around 100 to 120 damage from CoHatred to get to the desired level, as a rough estimate.

Either keep CoHatred, or just go Bare Head - you'll continue onto the 5-2 vault while hitting Ultra inbetween the vaults. Ultra Spin is the better option for reasons listed below. At the 5-2 vault switch your crown out to Crown of Destiny, in which you'll get a random 9th mutation. While this is not the most optimal way of set grinding, Big Dog would struggle with normal destiny strategies so this is probably the most optimal way for him.

From here, reach the 1-2 L1 vault and pick between two of the crowns below.

Meta Crowns

Big Dog has two choices between which crowns are the best to run with after getting his desired mutation set.

Crown of Blood is the standard crown for meta in order to maximize score runs. While it directly benefits normal characters in meta with how those builds work, in Big Dog's case it's mainly there for the extra score in terms of getting records.

Crown of Death will omit the extra kills gained from CoBlood to instead focus on the extra damage output. Each missile that has a large explosion will now get three smaller explosions around it, which means that each missile goes from being able to deal 10 damage total to dealing 40 damage total. This includes Big Dog unless if he takes Boiling Veins which will bring it back down to just 5 damage for one instance again.

Relatively Useless				Useless		Negative

Most other crown options are either not helpful for Big Dog's build, or just does not work at all. They are as follows;

• Luck: Starting at 1 HP means Big Dog always has to start farming HP at the start of every level, and a chance of taking random damage near the start could ruin an entire run. The trade-off is very risky compared to just running Blood or Death.
• Haste: Losing pickups quickly makes Haste not the best choice, though the extra HP from drops could be a bit helpful it's pretty unnecessary still.
• Love: Ammo farming makes extra ammo chests unnecessary.
• Risk: Big Dog's missiles have a 100% drop rate, so Risk is unnecessary for any sort of extra drops.
• As Big Dog cannot pick up weapons, and weapons do not give ammo drops this makes Curses, Guns and Protection entirely useless.
• Crown of Life completely removes Big Dog's ability to self-heal, making Life/Guns more than useless, rather they actively hurt the run.

Advanced Looping

Big Dog will mainly lean into his missiles and damage mutations for DPS output. However, Ultra Spin is actually the better ultra to take here, as Ultra Missiles will often be exploding before they can get any meaningful amount of damage out(especially if taking Thronebutt). Doubling the amount of bullets in Ultra Spin isn't a significant boost, but is a consistent one that is worth taking.

Once Big Dog has a complete build the fun can begin - as in loop he can just steamroll most enemies and bosses in the game. If Big Dog spams missiles over his body, he'll constantly take 5 damage at a time because of Boiling Veins while he'll constantly heal for 4 HP a health drop because of Second Stomach. Because HP is weighted based on health lost, Big Dog will hover around anywhere from 125 HP - 225 HP(higher with Bloodlust) as the amount of ammo or health he gets will constantly vary. The lower on HP Big Dog is, the more health drops he'll be getting and the faster he can recover.

In most circumstances Big Dog can simply out-heal the damage he's taking in. Being in the middle of a field of enemies without a melee weapon is normally a death wish, Big Dog's gameplay centers around this. The idea is to make your way around the level using Gamma Guts on any enemy that you can reach, all the while spamming missiles(and less importantly spin attack) in order to damage any enemies on screen with Sharp Teeth.

A part of the reason this works so well is because enemies can only deal so much damage per. second, while there are a lot of high risk enemies in the game for normal mutants Big Dog can brush off most damage sources. Outside of Hyper Crystal, the highest damage any damage can manage at a time is 20, done by contact damage from Laser/Lightning Crystals or 20 damage from IDPD vans. And any damage that Big Dog takes is multiplied back towards any enemy on screen at 2.5x the rate, meaning that the more damage Big Dog takes the more damage he deals back out more than twofold.

Most bosses are a non-issue even in later loops because their damage output simply is not enough to pose a challenge to Big Dog. Some strategies can still be applied for them, though.

• Big Bandits fall short of significant damage output here, so even when they spawn Big Dog can just immediately push them by spamming missiles and using Gamma Guts in order to deal out tons of damage. After dealing with any on screen Big Dog can start to circle around the level as they tend to hug walls. While death is unlikely keep one eye on HP as they do have the potential to get Big Dog lower on HP.
• Mom goes faster per. loop, so her fights will take longer each time because it will take a lot longer to damage her with these weapons. Contact damage really isn't a concern here, be spamming missiles over Big Dog constantly so if Mom ever runs over Big Dog, she'll immediately take a ton of damage between the explosions and Gamma Guts. Optimally she should be cornered inbetween Big Dog and a wall in order to maximize damage output, this fight is largely just an endurance test.
• The first Big Dog L21 run actually was lost during sewers because Mom was doing a lot of contact damage while Buff Gators were able to chip away at HP really quickly. So if not running Bloodlust keep one eye close on health and if getting lower backing up a bit may be a good idea to have HP at a more manageable level, before continuing onwards. Some caution should be exercised.
• Big Dog boss, Lil Hunter and Technomancer can all be walked over with explosives/Gamma Guts without any concern.
• The Throne is in a similar situation, after destroying the generators Big Dog can stand directly below the Throne's laser beam while spamming missiles and doing contact damage with Gamma Guts. The laser beam damage/contact damage the Throne does is dwarfed by Big Dog's rate of healing.
• Throne 2 requires more attention than other bosses, while not an enormous threat it should be followed around in order to do damage with Gamma Guts/explosion damage where possible. Make sure to end the level with ammo too, without walls it can be difficult to farm pickups at times. The amount of damage Big Dog can take in an open field here can be a bit dicey, so being attentive and being ready to stand on top of Throne 2 the moment Big Dog can is important. The best time for this is when T2 stands mostly stationary in order to do the bullet ring attack.

The only substantial threat to Big Dog here is Hyper Crystal. While in meta this boss is considered more near the middle of the pack in terms of threat level, in Big Dog meta it makes it extremely difficult to actually do meaningful damage to Hyper Crystal while having some threat at ending the run. Extreme patience should be brought to this fight.

The reason why HC is such a big threat is because it deals 200 contact damage, which makes it so Gamma Guts is not an option in order to damage the boss. This is one instance where Big Dog cannot out-heal a boss if trying to contact damage it to death, while Sharp Teeth would deal 450 damage in return the amount of health HC has makes it difficult to predict how close the boss is to being killed. Big Dog's attacks entirely center around damaging on-screen enemies, so Big Dog must constantly be in close proximity to Hyper Crystal all the while actively avoiding touching it despite being very big and slow, which makes the fight frustrating and at times a bit stressful the further you loop. Along with this, doing any meaningful damage with either missiles or even bullets is difficult because of the constant spawning of Laser Crystals, which is why it takes so long.

Optimally Big Dog should follow Hyper Crystal around, not close enough to risk touching it. Taking contact damage from Laser Crystals will result in dealing 45 damage at the cost of 20 HP, which can be done once in earlier loops/twice in later loops to kill every Laser Crystal on screen that HC spawned. Then Big Dog will have a brief chance to shoot his missiles(and bullets for that matter) to get a bit of damage in against Hyper Crystal, at which point it will quickly spawn more Laser Crystals again and this process would be rinse and repeated. This is a situation where taking high amounts of damage is common so one eye should be kept on health, Big Dog is going to be below 200 HP constantly because of this build, so it's better to chip away at HC health rather than sneak in very risky damage. Again, an endurance test.

While Big Dog was added as a joke he has the potential to get to the furthest loops in the game legitimately, all it requires is the know-how and a LOT of free time. Remember to take frequent breaks and to stay hydrated so Big Dog's slow gameplay only causes a mental toll on you rather than a physical one.