Character Overview

Melting is the fourth character in the game and is unlocked by dying as any character. He has a normal starting loadout with the Revolver. His B-Skin is unlocked by reaching (sitting on) the Nuclear Throne without taking Rhino Skin or Strong Spirit.

Melting A Sprites
	Icon	Melting B Sprites	Icon
	Idle		Idle
	Walk		Walk
	Death		Death

Abilities

• Pressing RMB will cause all corpses on the screen to explode.
• Holding down RMB will not explode additional corpses, must be manual.
• Enemy corpses and destroyed props will both explode.
• Exceptions to these include Big Dog's missiles and any car props.
• These are blood explosions that do not harm the player.
• Blood explosions do 4 damage a hit for up to 12 damage to any single target, while respecting enemy iframes.
• Big Bandit charges/Dog Guardian jumps will have their iframes ignored, meaning they can take up to 60 damage in these instances.
• The amount of blood explosions spawned by a corpse is relatively based on size, with most enemies creating one blood explosion while larger enemies creating three.
• Similar to normal explosions, blood explosions will try to push themselves outwards if there are too many close together which covers more area.
• Blood explosions will erase enemy projectiles and hazardous toxic gas/fire.
• Will also set off enemy explosions, including IDPD grenades.
• During the brief period between killing the last enemy and the exit portal opening, Melting's active will not work to prevent softlocks.
• As with all blood explosions these act as temporary light sources in dark levels.

• All enemies get a guaranteed +1 rad drop, which includes enemies that normally don't drop rads at all.
• Props do not give additional rads, including those that drop rads in the first place.
• Melting has a negative passive as well, starting with only 2 max HP.
• Will die in 1 hit from most sources in the game.
• Can be increased to 6 max HP with Rhino Skin.

• Enemies that only produce one blood explosion will now produce three instead, behaving like large enemy corpses.
• Larger enemies/props will produce the same number of blood explosions as before.

Ultra A: Brain Capacity		Ultra B: Detachment

• Melting's active will now also explode any alive enemies under 5 HP.
• Exploded enemies will not leave behind corpses, meaning they can only ever be exploded once.

• Melting loses half of his current max HP and gains 3 more mutation sets to choose from.
• This will give him 11 mutations total, or 12 if he took Crown of Destiny.
• On Non-Beta the mutation sets repeat the last two sets seen, and then gives a new one.
• This is fixed on the Betas and gives three new sets. Example for both versions can be found here in the context of daily challenges.
• Max HP being halved only applies upon taking the ultra, meaning Melting's max HP can vary.
• Normal variables include:
• 1 max HP if Melting takes Detachment normally.
• Strong Spirit will never recharge if at 1 max HP, meaning it is one use in this circumstance.
• 3 max HP is Melting takes Rhino Skin first, and then Detachment.
• 5 max HP if Melting takes Detachment first, and then Rhino Skin.
• Crown of Death removes 1 max HP which can also effect Melting's end HP.
• Taking Crown of Death and then Detachment keeps Melting at 1 max HP, so removing Death will return him to 2 max HP.
• Taking Crown of Death, and then Detachment, and then Rhino Skin would still put Melting at 5 HP. Unequipping Crown of Death will then give him 6 max HP.
• Taking Crown of Death and Rhino Skin puts Melting at 5 max HP, and then Detachment would put him at 3 max HP. Unequipping Death will then bring him to 4 max HP.
• If Melting takes Detachment first and then Crown of Death (with no Rhino Skin) this will put him at 0 max HP.
• If not running Strong Spirit this will instantly kill Melting.
• If running Strong Spirit it will be consumed upon entering the level, and Melting is then set to 1/0 HP.. Collecting health in any way or taking damage in any way (even from explosives with Boiling Veins) will cause Melting to instantly die.
• Melting will have a +100% firerate if running Stress mutation in this state, the only other character capable of it besides Chicken.

Melting is tied to a secret character, the play condition can be viewed on their character page.

Preloop Strategy Guide

Labs is often the easiest area for Melting to clear in pre-loop and Melting is even arguably the easiest character to clear labs with, especially with thronebutt. Just be extra cautious about the turrets and kill them on site as quickly as possible. As for clearing every previous area as well as palace and ultimately defeating the throne, the name of the game is maximizing survivability. This means taking mutations and weapons that you normally may never consider. Firstly, there are the obvious choices for staying alive longer of rhino skin and strong spirit (unless, of course, you are trying to get Melting's B skin. See the B skin guide for more technical tips and tricks for not getting hit [link]). With these 2 mutations you allowed up to 3 mistakes on average per level before dying on your not-so-hitless run. Long arms is an obvious pick if you plan on using melee to defend yourself and when combined with laser brain makes the energy sword (the best defensive weapon that can be found in pre-loop) a very strong and useful weapon. Scarier face is also a must have if none of the previously mentioned mutations appear in a set since the faster you can kill enemies, the less opportunities they have to kill you. Laser brain also helps kill enemies faster if you happen to find strong energy weapons. Plutonium hunger is very helpful for making vital ammo and hp pickups much easier to reach and picking up rads that may otherwise decay so that you get mutations faster, but it is relatively less important compared to many other mutations. Blood lust can be a safe way to heal and recover strong spirit but is mostly useless without rhino skin. Extra feet can help with dodging with some practice but being unfamiliar with the higher movement speed can make it more of a hinderance. The next mutations to look for are euphoria, hammer head, boiling veins, and gamma guts. Euphoria makes almost every enemy with ranged attacks much easier to deal with, hammer head can be used to avoid every any kind of damage and can act as a substitute for melee blocking, boiling veins makes Melting take no damage from fire and explosions if rhino skin has not yet been taken (this becomes up to 2 damage with rhino skin), and gamma guts (which can kill snow bots in frozen city with scarier face) acts as training wheels for players not yet very competent at dealing with rush enemies that deal contact damage. Having boiling veins and gamma guts make melting immune to most threats in labs and allows for killing snow tanks with gamma guts virtually risk free. Taking thronebutt can also aid in many situations if sets contain nothing else of use. Taking boiling veins also lets Melting take advantage of the high damage output of explosive weapons with impunity as well as more safely use the jackhammer or any of the screwdrivers around the IDPD (these weapons detonate their grenades).

Weapon choices are equally important to mutations when trying to take as little damage as possible. It is best to have a fast-firing weapon to deal with rush enemies and other difficult to hit enemies with relatively low hp and a weapon with high burst damage output to kill bosses and tough enemies more quickly. Early melee weapons like the wrench and screwdriver can act as both a fast-firing weapon and a defensive tool to deflect and clear hazards with but with the tradeoff that you must get much closer to the enemies to deal damage. The shovel and sledgehammer are not recommended without trigger fingers. The jackhammer is the best defensive melee weapon in pre-loop until the energy melee weapons can be found. The energy screwdriver and hammer take 2nd place to the energy sword in defensive ability. The energy screwdriver does the same damage as the energy sword and has a faster fire rate but lacks the larger melee arc and can detonate IDPD grenades. The energy hammer has the same large arc as the energy sword and does much more damage in addition to having digging capabilities which are very helpful for avoiding damage, but it functions more as a high burst damage weapon than a defensive tool as it has a much slower fire rate and consumes a lot of ammo very quickly. The energy sword is the pinnacle defensive weapon for any character in pre-loop so naturally it is a very good weapon choice for melting. Laser brain doubles the lifetime of the melee arc for the energy melee weapons making them defensively superior to their non-energy counterparts in addition to the immensely better damage they do even without laser brain. When melee weapons are unavailable, bullet and fast-firing shell weapons are the best way to defend yourself from rush enemies. When using a mouse to aim, bolt weapons allow you to see further away and let you better plan for how to clear the level. Any weapon that can dig is helpful for avoiding damage, so all explosive weapons are recommended (as soon as boiling veins is taken) for their high damage output and digging capabilities. The super bazooka, nuke launcher, and heavy grenade launcher some of the most powerful damage dealing weapons that can be found in pre-loop and the grenade rifle, grenade shotgun, auto grenade shotgun, and hyper launcher are the best pre-loop weapons for digging into walls. The hyper launcher can dig, has relatively high DPS, and is even relatively safe to use without boiling veins so it is a highly recommended weapon pick for pre-loop that won't lose its effectiveness when carrying it into loop.

Since Melting is rarely at low hp, far less of the pickups will be hp and thus will mostly be ammo. This allows Melting to take better advantage than most characters of more ammo-hungry weapons. Such weapons in pre-loop (in order of ascending area difficulty) include: minigun, auto shotgun, hyper rifle, super crossbow, seeker shotgun, laser minigun, super slugger, auto flame shotgun, nuke launcher, energy hammer, super bazooka, plasma cannon, super flak cannon, heavy assault rifle, double minigun, plasma minigun, incinerator, heavy auto crossbow, and super plasma cannon. This effect can be further improved by rabbit paw and synergizes well with back muscle. Crown of risk has virtually no negative effect on Melting without rhino skin, especially with blood lust. This allows Melting to maximize the ammo drop rate by stacking crown of risk's effect with rabbit paw as well as back muscle's effect of having the “low ammo” drop rate boost occur at half ammo instead of low ammo (which is approximately the max ammo value without back muscle) all for no perceivable tradeoff.

Having strong weapon loadouts is very important for clearing pre-loop as Melting so it is recommended to not use the oasis skip in order to both insure a higher possible difficulty for weapons after 3-3 and increase the total number of weapon drops to hopefully obtain the strongest possible weapons before taking on difficult areas like frozen city and palace. Crown of curses is also recommended for this reason since cursed weapons can be 2 difficulty tiers higher than what is normally possible and entering vaults also increases possible weapon tiers but be careful as to not enter cursed crystal caves if you are unprepared for the dangers the area poses. Also be prepared for IDPD spawning when opening vaults and entering the next level after equipping the crown (including 1-1 when starting with a crown after unlocking it). Entering pizza sewers can also yield higher tier weapons earlier on and can “skip” some of the dangers in sewers. If you are adept at surviving in sewers, Melting's bonus rad passive can be used to get extra rads by rat starving [link]. “More rads” yields an extra rad from every small green rat, IDPD unit, Big Dog missile, and duplicated cursed crystal spider as well as vans in loop which do not drop any rads for other characters. Big Dog can theoretically be farmed for infinite rads until level ultra but this is not a recommended pre-loop strategy.

Loop Guide

Some loop crowns are also very good for Melting. Crown of blood increases the enemy density improving the active ability, crown of luck has no downside with 1 max hp, and crown of death has many different applications. When taking the detachment ultra after equipping crown of death, there is no penalty for having the 3 detachment mutations compared to equipping it with brain capacity or taking detachment without having it equipped. Death > detachment > rhino skin yields 5 max hp just like rhino skin > brain capacity > death and unequipping death in either case results in 6 max hp. Paired with boiling veins, doing this also allows Melting to enjoy crown of death's effect on powerful explosive weapons like the super bazooka or nuke launcher with no penalty while the crown in equipped. In most cases having 3 more mutations is stronger than brain capacity's effect so brain capacity is largely irrelevant in loop after surviving pre-loop without rhino skin assuming that one of the detachment sets has rhino skin. The crown of death trick also makes it possible to enter loop jungle with detachment without rhino skin (totaling to 5 potential sets including patience that could contain rhino skin after detachment) and allows strong spirit to regenerate once lost because you get 2 max hp again after unequipping death. Brain capacity becomes relevant again if you turn into Skeleton and have crown of death equipped when taking the redemption ultra since crown of death doesn't affect Melting's max hp upon taking redemption. Taking brain capacity after rhino skin in this situation nets 7 max hp after unequipping crown of death. Crown of risk from the pre-loop vaults is also still a strong crown for melting in loop especially now that blood lust has a near endless number of opportunities to heal you.

Meta Guide

The next trick is maximizing survivability with the extra detachment mutations. By loop starving with crown of destiny and then equipping crown of death for the first 2 of the 3 vaults accessible during a run, it is possible to have 12 mutations and 6 max hp with detachment. Having 12 total mutations lets Melting compromise far less in the mutation build than other characters with 9 mutations. The most successful perfect 12 (or P12) mutation build to date is the standard P9 [link] plus boiling veins to effectively shrug off explosions as if they never happened (this is especially important due to blood explosions detonating IDPD grenades which often spontaneously drop right next to the player when fighting IDPD freaks and can easily be accidentally detonated), euphoria to make it easier to avoid and block projectiles, and rabbit paw to increase DPS with the super plasma cannon and provide more consistent healing on top of blood lust. It is also common to replace rabbit paw with back muscle having throne 2 in mind. Having up to 4 quick attempts at full hitting throne 2 instead of only 2 makes this infamously dangerous boss far less threatening. Removing blood lust in order to have both rabbit paw and back muscle to maximize DPS is also a valid strategy being that stress is marginally less helpful on melting when paired with blood lust due to the not insignificant probability of being healed to full by blood lust in between slow, stressless swings thus leaving the player exposed to a quick succession of hits longer than if stress were able to better protect the player while out of pickup range of HP pickups. It is highly recommended, however, to have stress, euphoria, or both in the build to make avoiding damage easier and most players will prefer the safety of blood lust. Having throne butt on a meta run can be exhilarating but it's added benefit diminishes rapidly as enemy density increases and it can even cause the game to lag immensely if enough corpses are allowed to pile up, but it can somewhat substitute plutonium hunger if it is unavailable by allowing the player to push for drops more easily and is highly recommended for ranged meta.

Melting's relatively minimal reliance on melee to block projectiles makes them an excellent character for ranged meta. The extra mutation slots from detachment are very useful for boosting DPS and adding extra survival abilities. Exploding corpses also helps clear low hp rush enemies, conserving ammo and rads for the ultra crossbow for digging and killing tougher enemies. Clearing projectiles and rush enemies makes the normally problematic areas for ranged meta (desert, sewers, and frozen city) relatively stress free. Having low max hp, however, is still a major drawback in ranged meta (albeit less so than for normal meta) especially for certain boss fights. Melting has a tougher time fighting the bosses that shoot lots of bullets or other projectiles in situations where there are very few corpses with which to clear the projectiles. Such scenarios are rare for Big Dog and Little Hunter, but very common for the Big Bandits and Throne II. The Throne also has a high volume of fire and very few corpses in the level to counteract it, but its attack patterns are predictable enough that it shouldn't be a problematic fight for experienced players, especially with euphoria. One of the strategies for these bosses is to explode corpses very sparingly and saving them for when it is absolutely necessary to use them to block damage. IDPD freaks are the only source of rads during these fights, so it is advised in much later loops to conserve corpses so that they are allowed to respawn to have enough rads to keep fighting. Melting cannot survive the 10 contact damage from Mom without strong spirit so the safest Mom strategies are advised once she moves fast enough to be dangerous. The Hyper Crystal is a relatively harmless boss but the lasers from laser crystals are extra dangerous with low max hp so clear crystal caves with extreme caution and awareness.

Fighting Bandits
Bandits are either a nightmare or extremely easy as melting. The main strategy for bandits is to save your corpses until a few bandits and vans spawn, then spam your active and clear out any enemies left until it's only you, bandits, and popo freaks. Exploding every corpse can be dangerous and leave you with low rads with no way to get them back so it's much safer to save half or more to ensure you don't run out.

Fighting Mom
Mom, much like bandits, can be horrible or extremely easy. Depending on the layout Mom can be cleared before the rest of the level if you spam active and SPC while pushing forward, as long as you're keeping track of where she is. However as her speed increases this strategy becomes unreliable and isn't recommended. At L8+ clear the level normally while saving a tiny amount of corpses for popo freaks to respawn, while fighting mom you can explode corpses if necessary as her eggs will respawn popo freaks.

Clearing Palace
One of the biggest obstacles in L6+ melting runs is palace. Dogs may seem intimidating however the real enemy is snipers. To deal with dogs, rotate around them in a half circle while swinging your ultra shovel, this will prevent any dogs from actually hitting you and ones that do come close will likely die. In levels full of dogs just perform the same strategy but in a larger circle while occasionally shooting your SPC into the direction you want to move if your path gets blocked or if it seems risky. In levels full of dogs and snipers hiding behind them, it's best to do the same strategy as before while making sure not to open up sightlines for snipers and to play slow as rads will typically be lower with this type of generation.

Fighting Throne II
Throne II is the same as other characters. There is no major tech for melting other than exploding corpses as a desperation move. It's a last ditch effort but you can explode the leftover popo freak corpses to save yourself if you're about to die, but this will essentially put your fight on a time limit if you can't defeat the throne before you run out of rads.