Character Overview

Big Dog was added as a playable character for an April Fools event back in 2015 in-between update 67 and update 68. This was the second April Fools update, the first being a joke FPS mode a year before.

Big Dog was re-added as a seasonal feature for April Fools starting with the 2020 openbeta. Presently he can be played on the 2021/2023 Steam betas, NTT v100 and Xbox on any April 1st. This is based on local time, thus Big Dog can be accessed at any time by changing the system's clock.

Can be accessed on any NTT version any time by using the command '/gml race_set_active(13,1)'

Big Dog is unlocked by defeating his boss variation on 3-3 in preloop. He cannot be played on dailies and is restricted on weeklies, although was temporarily enabled for a few hours as a joke once. His starting loadout includes his Dog Spin Attack and Missiles.

Big Dog will appear on the character roster during April Fools along with the unlock condition. He can also unlock crowns and start with them, although he does not have a B-Skin and cannot unlock golden weapons.

Big Dog Sprites
Icon	Idle	Walk

Abilities

To avoid clutter in the abilities section, most mutation/crown effects will only be listed in the sections below as many do not work for him.

Big Dog's primary weapon is his Dog Spin Attack, while his 'active ability' is his Missiles, which he dual wields similar to Steroids active.

Weapon	Ammo Type	Cost to Fire	Damage
Dog Spin Attack	Bullet	15	3 x 90
Missile	Explosive	3	5-10 x 3

• These starting weapons cannot be swapped, meaning ammo chests will always give bullets ammo unless full.
• Cannot be swapped out for other weapons, meaning that any ammo gained for shells, bolts and energy are useless.
• With no interact button for weapons, weapon drops do not give Big Dog any ammo.
• Dog Spin Attack will shoot out a stream of bullets in six different directions. Each bullet does 3 damage each.
• Costs 15 bullet ammo to fire and shoots 15 bullets in 6 rows, totaling 90 bullets.
• Big Dog will spin during this attack but is just for visual effect, he can still move normally during this.
• Spin attack will cooldown at the same time his spin attack ends.
• How the bullets behave exactly depends on version.
• For 2021 openbeta, bullets will shoot out in six predictable rings like the boss attack, firing clockwise or counter-clockwise depending on direction facing.
• For 2023 openbeta/NTT v100, the closest bullet ring to the cursor will instead aim in that direction. The other 5 bullet paths will mimic its spread in different directions.
• Big Dog's active ability shoots out three missiles for every RMB click.
• Missiles use 3 explosive ammo and will follow the player's cursor. They do not have any reload time.
• Missiles will always fire in the opposite way that Big Dog is walking, being a bit unpredictable if he is standing still.
• Upon contact with any wall, enemy or explosion they will explode and can destroy terrain. Each missile does 5 explosive damage twice for a total of 10 damage.
• Missiles can damage Big Dog, but if a missile directly hits him it will simply bounce off of him.
• Boiling Veins forces missiles to respect iframes, meaning only one missile will damage Big Dog at a time for just 5 damage while running this mutation.
• Uniquely missiles will also bounce off of props instead of damaging them.
• Missiles are guaranteed to drop either a health or ammo pickup upon exploding.
• If a missile is damaged by an enemy they will explode after a moment. They start with 8 HP and actually do scale by loop, although this doesn't change anything meaningful.

• Starts with 300 HP, which matches preloop Big Dog boss.
• Playable Big Dog's HP will not scale by loop.
• Can survive any attack at full health; Hyper Crystal deals the most in the game at 200 damage a hit.
• Big Dog will start at a speed value of 2 while the default is 4, meaning he is twice as slow as normal characters.
• Extra Feet increases his speed to 2.5, which is still slower than base Skeleton.
• Big Dog's speed is not effected by cobwebs. Ice will make him slide, but hardly noticeable.
• (These speed values are based on the games code before friction is applied, which is slightly different in practice.)
• Big Dog is substantially bigger than every other mutant, which includes his hitbox.
• More walls at spawn will always break giving him more starting space.
• Hallways may be too narrow to fit through, requiring missiles to open up a path.
• Despite being bigger in size, does not have an increased pickup radius. Health/ammo must be directly walked over to collect if not running Plutonium Hunger.

• Causes missiles and bullets to travel around twice as fast.
• Does not cause any damage increase.

Ultra A: Ultra Spin		Ultra B: Ultra Missiles

• Doubles the amount of bullets shot out by Dog Spin Attack from 90 bullets to 180 bullets, while still only costing 15 ammo.
• These bullets will behave differently per version.
• On the 2021 openbeta they will shoot out in 6 specific directions in a tight formation, which can do more reliable single target damage than its normal attack.
• On the 2023 openbeta/NTT v100 they will behave the same as the normal attack, where the closet bullet pattern follows the cursor.

• Big Dog's missiles will now shoot bullets directly in front of them, similar to the boss attack on loop.
• These do 3 damage each and do not require any additional ammo to use.

• Big Dog always starts a run on full bullet and explosive ammo.
• Upon dying will cause a giant explosion covering most of the screen similar to his boss counterpart.
• Big Dog's boss theme will play for the entire duration of the run.

Basics/Mutations Strategy Guide

Because Big Dog has fundamentally different gameplay, his strategy guides will be formatted differently. As an April Fools character Big Dog was not meant to be balanced, he cannot dodge most attacks due to his size and speed. However someone was able to 'crack' the problem by running a specific mutation set that makes Big Dog one of the most powerful characters in the game, although runs will go at a snails pace.

Before taking any mutations, Big Dog will have to start the game at his slowest and will take a long while to traverse levels. Any hallway that is too small to fit through, Big Dog should walk away from it while spamming missiles (so they go in that direction), opening up a way to walk. As the missiles also give Big Dog guaranteed health/ammo, he can farm their pickups at any time if he's starting to take too much damage - just be careful of the explosions before taking Boiling Veins. Rebuilding HP will be time consuming before having the proper mutations.

Missiles will always be the better option to damage enemies, although Spin Attack should constantly be used just because of how easy it is to regain ammo. 2023 openbeta/NTT v100 is suggested to play over the 2021 openbeta as the bullets can be controlled which is far more useful in hitting specific targets, as well as the Impact Wrists buff.

Core Mutations							Additional Mutations

The general idea behind Big Dog's meta is that he becomes an actual tank, shrugging off any enemy attacks as his missiles will constantly provide heals. Given the right mutations Big Dog should be able to out-heal most any damage he takes, which includes self-damage. There is no cooldown on using his missiles, and they are guaranteed to give pickups. In order to reach Big Dog's potential the 7 mutations above should be seen as a 'core set' that is more necessary to function, and then pick 1-2 of the 3 additional mutations to make the build more complete.

Boiling Veins will be the most important mutation of the build. While the mutation's description only states it gives invulnerability to explosions when at 4 HP or below, it has a hidden attribute - forcing explosions to respect player iframes. This means that only one explosion can damage the player at a time, and that explosions will only deal 5 damage once. (They usually deal 5 damage twice for 10 damage.)

The next two mutations are Second Stomach and Plutonium Hunger. Building off of Boiling Veins as a base, Big Dog will only take 5 damage from explosions at a time while being able to heal for 4 HP with any health pickup. The lower Big Dog is on health the more likely ammo may convert into health, meaning that whenever he is low on health he can heal back up at a rapid pace. Plutonium Hunger speeds up this process, which is an important addition as well.

The first three mutations are about making Big Dog be able to sufficiently self-heal, letting him spam RMB as much as he wants for infinite pickups. Extra Feet is just used to traverse a bit faster around the level (being 20% faster), while the rest are meant to focus on his damage output;

Due to how frequent Big Dog is damaged and self-damages, Sharp Teeth will be one of Big Dog's main form of damage. It deals 2.5x the damage taken, so for instance if Big Dog takes self-damage from an explosion for 5 damage he will deal 12.5 damage to anything on-screen. Scarier Face removes 20% health from any enemy which makes levels go much quicker, and Gamma Guts lets Big Dog constantly damage anything that he's standing over which he can actually use as reliable damage to any boss he can reach aside from Hyper Crystal.

From here there are 3 other mutations that Big Dog can choose 1 or 2 of - Impact Wrists, Thronebutt and Bloodlust. These can be partially left up to preference, each has their own strengths.

• Impact Wrists is an extra damage mutation that is less important than the other ones, but is still a welcome addition. Big Dog runs were being ran while Wrists were bugged dealing only 2 damage max, but on the 2023 openbeta/NTT v100 they can now deal up to 5 damage at max velocity, so it could be a lot more viable now.
• Thronebutt lets missiles and bullets go significantly faster which means that levels can be cleared much quicker too. This is mainly a nice boost, while not necessary.
• Bloodlust is more of an extra safety precaution to make sure Big Dog never takes too much damage in areas where enemies may deal particularly large amounts of damage. While Stomach will always be the main form of healing, this is just extra insurance but will not make the run go much faster unlike the other two mutations.

Ultra Options

Of the two ultras the better option is definitely Ultra Spin, especially for runs that plan to push further loops. While it is not particularly game changing, Big Dog's spin attack gets doubled in terms of damage output while costing the same amount of ammo. A single bullet stream normally has 15 bullets which deals 45 damage total in that direction, Ultra Spin will double it to deal 90 damage in each direction.

Missiles usually have very little airtime before exploding, meaning the bullets from Ultra Missiles may not have a chance to damage enemies at all. For this reason Ultra Spin will add a more reliable damage increase.

Relatively Helpful			Relatively Unhelpful

While some other mutations still work for Big Dog, many of these will not have an impact on gameplay.

• Rabbit Paw: Not necessary as missiles give guaranteed drops, although extra drops from enemies never hurt.
• Back Muscle: Can be used to spam even more missiles out while waiting for them to explode, although not very useful since pickups are infinite anyways.
• Lucky Shot: Similarly does not mean much with infinite ammo, but can help to some degrees in firing explosions quicker.
• Euphoria: Not a great idea for later loops since slower projectiles can cause a lot more lag, and Big Dog doesn't really need to avoid most projectiles with an optimal build. Decent choice for preloop runs.
• Rhino Skin: Increases Big Dog's max health from 300 to 304, which is a drop in the ocean.
• Strong Spirit: If Big Dog takes lethal damage it's very unlikely that he will recover in time as Spirit only gives a brief frame of invulnerability, the mutation slot is better used elsewhere.
• Open Mind: Having an extra chest doesn't matter in the face of infinite pickups, although extra rad cans for preloop runs can help level up slightly faster.

Essentially Useless			Completely Useless

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

• Hammerhead will have most of its tile breaking used up immediately the moment Big Dog pushes into any wall.
• Trigger Fingers and Stress will both let Spin Attack be fired sooner than Big Dog's spin animation finishes, which will actually stop the rest of the bullets from that attack from being fired out, which is a net loss in damage. Missiles do not benefit in any way.
• Heavy Heart gives weapon drops that Big Dog cannot use nor gain ammo from.
• Eagle Eyes does not effect either of Big Dog's attacks.
• Recycle Gland does not benefit Big Dog's attacks, neither does the other 4 weapon mutations as he cannot pick up other weapons.

Crowns Strategy Guide

Tech Related

If Big Dog wants to get a 9 mutation set, they have two options which includes Crown of Destiny usage and possibly Crown of Hatred, which are used to temporarily assist the run.

The first option is on NTT v100 by running the grillskills mod that removes mutation rng, giving a guaranteed set. Considering the time investment just to start a Big Dog run, this is the recommended option to get a guaranteed preferred build. Big Dog can play a run as normal, starting with or taking Crown of Destiny at any point. (Skip to Meta Crowns if doing this method)

The second option is to do it through vanilla and grind for mutations. A run should be started with Crown of Hatred either by unlocking it in a previous run, modifying a save file (use Method 3 here), or on NTT where crowns are unlocked by default (using '/ccrown hatred' otherwise).

Once Big Dog starts a run with Crown of Hatred his first goal should reach the 3-2 Vault. In here a proto chest will spawn because he is running a crown, and he can repeatedly walk on/off the chest to trigger Hatred's upside of giving rads - taking around 100 to 120 damage will get him to upper level 9. When exiting the vault either keep Crown of Hatred or run Bare Head, and see up to Big Dog's 8th mutation in the set. The run can either be continued or reset from here.

Big Dog can then hit ultra in a following level, Ultra Spin is probably the better pick as explained above. In the 5-2 vault Big Dog can then take Crown of Destiny for a random 9th mutation. While this does not have the most favorable RNG, it is the best for Big Dog's circumstances.

Once Big Dog finds a set he is happy with, 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.

Crown of Blood is typically taken in meta as it helps enable meta weapons to be even more efficient. However Big Dog's case is different; he mainly takes Crown of Blood just to maximize score for the sake of records.

Crown of Death will omit the extra kills from Crown of Blood to instead focus on the extra damage output. Each missile that has a large explosion will now gain three smaller explosions around it, meaning that each missile will change from dealing 10 damage total to up to 40 damage total with wider coverage. Big Dog will still only take 5 damage if running Boiling Veins, this crown is a very bad idea to run without it.

Not Useful				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: Big Dog moves slowly, and pickups disappear quickly, making this a bad combination even if missiles drop most pickups near Big Dog.
• 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.
• Weapons cannot be picked up making Curses useless.
• Weapons do not give ammo which by extension makes Protection not give health, thus is useless.
• Crown of Life/Guns removes Big Dog's ability to regain infinite ammo/health with ease, actively hurting his run.

Meta Strategy Guide

Now that all the setup is out of the way, Big Dog can start his run with an optimal build and push into L3+. It would look something like this:

Once Big Dog has a complete build the fun can begin - as in loop he can just tank most enemies and bosses in the game. Missiles can constantly be spammed over Big Dog which will in turn help him regain ammo and health, which can be used to spam missiles for even longer. He will constantly hover around 125 HP - 225 HP (higher with Bloodlust), as he will heal more often while at low HP and less often at high HP.

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 usually a death wish, but Big Dog's gameplay centers around this. He can slowly make his way around the level using Gamma Guts on any enemy that is within reach, all the while spamming missiles (and less importantly using spin attack whenever it reloads) in order to damage any enemies within proximity. Enemies further out will constantly take damage from Sharp Teeth, whether from self-inflicted explosive damage that Big Dog takes or the constant amount of projectiles that may be hitting him.

A part of the reason this works so well is because enemies can only deal so much damage per second due to player iframes, as many enemies that pose a high risk for normal mutants can be shrugged off by Big Dog due to his absurd HP and healing capabilities. Outside of Hyper Crystal the highest enemy damage source is 20 damage (Laser/Lightning Crystals, Vans) while the lowest is 1 damage (such as Maggots), meaning that Big Dog will constantly be dealing anywhere from 2.5-45 damage to enemies on-screen constantly while caring little about the types of damage he is taking.

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

• Big Bandits: Not a huge threat. Big Dog can immediately start spamming missiles and use Gamma Guts when they begin to spawn. It's still smart to hug walls while tracking down any Big Bandits that get away.
• Mom: Not a huge threat. She goes faster with each loop, so her fight is more of an endurance test if anything. Missiles should constantly be spammed so if Mom ever directly runs over Big Dog, she will take massive explosive damage suddenly. Ideally it is best if she is stuck between a wall and Big Dog to maximize damage output.
• The first major Big Dog run ended on L21 because Mom was doing a ton of contact damage near the level start while Buff Gators were able to damage Big Dog quicker than he could heal. If not running Bloodlust then it's smarter to keep one eye on health, and not running out into Sewers until enemies start to clear up a bit more.
• Big Dog boss, Lil Hunter and Technomancer: Can all just be walked over directly with Gamma Guts without any concern.
• The Throne: Not a huge threat. Big Dog can stand directly under the Throne's laser beam and do constant Gamma Guts damage while spamming missiles, as the rate of healing will far outpace any damage being taken.
• Throne II: Poses a decent threat. It should be followed around to deal explosive/Guts damage where possible as Big Dog will not have any walls to reliably explode missiles on. The easiest time to deal damage to T2 is when it uses its bullet ring attack and stands stationary. More effort should be put into gaining pickups here than other levels.

The biggest threat to Big Dog's run will be Hyper Crystal (HC). While HC is a somewhat dangerous boss in normal meta, her being given 200 contact damage coincidentally makes her a big threat to Big Dog's run as it is 2/3rds of his max health. Extreme patience may be needed for this fight, Big Dog will constantly have to keep Hyper Crystal on-screen while not getting too close.

Hyper Crystal cannot be fought using Gamma Guts due to the amount of contact damage, making this the only boss that Big Dog cannot out-heal. While Sharp Teeth would deal 450 damage this will only be a portion of her health. Another issue is that she will constantly spawn a ring of Laser Crystals, meaning that Big Dog's missiles and bullets may rarely reach her - the primary mode of damage dealt may be through Sharp Teeth through missile/Laser Crystal damage, which is very time consuming as a sole form of damage.

Sharp Teeth will cause 45 damage if any Laser Crystals are touched. If the ring of Laser Crystals around HC are all killed, missiles can be spammed to try to get some extra damage in. With every loop this fight will drag on longer and longer, so it's just the matter of sticking close to the boss and trying to get extra damage in whenever the opportunity arises.

While Big Dog was added as a joke he has the potential to get to the furthest loops in the game, it just requires a LOT of free time as his gameplay goes significantly slower than any other character. With runs this long remember to take frequent breaks and stay hydrated, so Big Dog's slow gameplay only causes a mental toll rather than a physical one.