Radstarving Overview

Radstarving is a community term used for purposefully avoiding collecting rads in order to avoid leveling up. This is done while running Crown of Destiny as its downside (narrow future) only applies while the crown is being ran, while the upside (extra mutation) is kept even if the crown is swapped off. This strategy is mostly done in present day during daily challenges as the daily sheet lets players plan out optimal routes.

This page is a strategy guide meaning it is just advice. As a light suggestion this page is best utilized for runs going to at least Loop 2, as radstarving would take up a significant portion of the run if just going to Loop 1.

There are three options that the player could do to radstarve;

• Starve from the 3-2 Vault to the 5-2 Vault, which is the standard strategy.
• Starve from the 5-2 Vault to the 1-2 L1 Vault, referred to as loopstarving. This is far more risky and time consuming, typically only done if it ensures a perfect set on a daily.
• Start a run with Destiny (non-dailies) and starve until the 3-2 vault, only seeing 1 or 2 mutations and resetting if any bad ones are rolled.
• This last strategy is a part of the meta guide (L3+ play), which is gone in-depth in the setgrinding guide.

As a reminder, here is every threshold to level up.

General Strategies

The easiest way to avoid rad collection is by hiding behind walls/near spawn, however this will be very time consuming. One strategy is 'corner starving', where hugging a corner will prevent rads from reaching the player. Be careful as staying in one spot out in the open could be vulnerable to attacks, and using melee to deflect projectiles will pull the player forward into some of the rads.

If playing on 60 FPS on the betas be aware that corner starving will not work, meaning the only way to avoid rads is to hide behind walls. If on the 2023 openbeta or NTT v100, rad mechanics are best swapped to 'Classic' for the duration of the starve, then swapped back to whatever preferred mode once the radstarve is finished.

One of the main issues of avoiding rads is that health/ammo pickups will be more difficult to collect. Luckily, the timer for rads disappearing is shorter than pickups - short enough that if an enemy drops rads and pickups, the moment the rads despawn the player should rush up to the pickups.

Not all rads need to be avoided, just enough to avoid leveling up between Vaults. Be aware of exit portals opening as any rads that come in contact with it will be collected by the player, which can commonly include radiation canisters that are typically at the end of a level. (These should still be broken to avoid Hostile Horror.) Also be aware that any starve that includes Plutonium Hunger will be significantly more time consuming, and may make low level Destiny unviable.

The best character for starving will always be Horror who can use their active ability to dispose of rads without having to wait for them to despawn at all, meaning they can play mostly as normal. Other benefits of Horror includes their active ability easily filling Crown Vaults, getting an extra mutation slot for Destiny, and having an easier time loopstarving as well. If playing as them, the bulk of this guide can be ignored. Simply fire any rads collected into a nearby wall to prevent leveling up.

Vault Statues

Full Vault Statue mechanics can be found here, it is useful to be familiar with all their mechanics.

As a summary they will have 120 HP in preloop and enter its collection phase at 83 HP. It will suck in any nearby rads and once it collects 24 of them, it can be broken open to enter the Vault. It will continue to collect rads as long as it is not fully broken, meaning that the player can keep killing enemies nearby for additional pickups/kills even if it is already full.

Vaults can be damaged by the player team or IDPD team, but enemies on the enemy team cannot damage it. The exception is enemy attacks that can harm any team such as explosions or toxic.

Sometimes Vault Statues will not have enough enemies around it to fill the Crown Vault, most common for 3-2. One option could be to rush the Crown Vault to open it as quickly as possible while killing as few enemies as possible - but this is fairly risky.

The crown pedestal must be stepped on first to swap crowns - if any guardian statues are broken first then crown selection will be skipped. Also be aware of a bug where if leveling up in a vault (from Crown Guardians or if a Hostile Horror spawns) and Crown of Destiny is swapped off, it will erase the following set. This is present on both Non-Beta and Betas and unlikely to be patched.

The 3-2 Strat

The most common strategy for radstarving on dailies is by taking Crown of Destiny in the 3-2 Vault, and then taking it off in the 5-2 Vault. Typical starves start at level 5, and it takes 300 rads to reach level 6 giving quite a bit of leeway. Daily challenges may only have level 4 as a possibility by 3-2, while on the other hand reaching level 6 by 3-2 is rarely possible.

Some dailies may call for lower level starves which gives much less leeway for rad collection. One helpful strategy is to summon Big Bandit on 1-1 (by opening the chests/rad can without killing enemies), but not killing Big Bandit within 10 seconds. If not killed quickly enough Oasis will fail to trigger, but will instead bring the player to 2-1 which skips two areas. Lower difficulty also means less enemy spawns on average, however better weapons will not drop as soon.

Generally for this starve, the best weapons to run are ones with low ammo consumption with a decent damage output. However, this is up to the player preference.

• Most melee are a very safe crutch for starving as they can hit enemies through walls, but may be particularly slow when radstarving.
• Most bolt weapons are great options as they do good damage with high range and low ammo consumption. Even the default Crossbow can carry a starve as it one shots mid-HP enemies such as Spiders, Snowbots and Wolves. It falls off hard for Lil Hunter/Labs however post-starve.
• Explosive weapons can be used to dig into walls to give the player more safe spots to starve from, as well as providing very reliable damage.
• Can also be used in a worst case scenario if just a few rads away from leveling up, an entire level could be dug around until the Vault is found.

The rest of this section will brief over the enemies from each area and how much of a threat they pose while radstarving. Pay particular attention to how many rads they drop and their base pickup chances.

Scrapyards
Bandit	Assassin	Raven	Salamander	Sniper	Big Dog	Big Dog Missile (ScrapBoss Missile)
3 Projectile Damage	5 Melee Damage	3 Projectile Damage	1 Contact Damage 2-6 dmg/flame	3 Projectile Damage 5-10 Explosive Damage (Death)	3 Projectile Damage 5-10 Explosive Damage (Death)	5 Contact Damage 5-10 Explosive Damage (Death)
4 HP	7 HP	10 HP	25 HP	6 HP	300 HP	22 HP
2 Rads 1 Pickup (16%)	8 Rads (16 Rads while idle) 1 Pickup (20%)	4 Rads 1 Pickup (20%)	12 Rads 1 Pickup (30%)	8 Rads 1 Pickup (40%)	90 Rads 1 Weapon Drop (100%)	1 Pickup (100%)

If having to radstarve as early as 3-1 or 3-2 these are particularly easy levels as they often have layouts featuring many long hallways. Be cautious of 3-2, if too many enemies advance while trying to avoid rads, there may not be enough left to fill the Vault.

3-3 is always a very open area, so depending on generation hiding in spawn may be unviable. Some aggressive play may be required to clear out Snipers; Caves and Frozen City have plenty of opportunities to radstarve extra slow if extra rads are collected here in order to ensure survival.

Big Dog has the highest rad count of any enemy during this starve, and it's very easy to collect his rads upon death on accident (especially with Plutonium Hunger). It is beneficial to keep an enemy alive until Big Dog is killed, as the exit portal may open in an unpredictable place due to Big Dog's corpse pieces. Have a wall/corner nearby to hide at for the moment he dies, avoiding these rads specifically will make the starve go smoothly.

Crystal Caves
Bandit	Spider	Laser Crystal
3 Projectile Damage	3 Contact Damage	20 Contact Damage 1-2 dmg/laser
4 HP	18 HP	45 HP
2 Rads 1 Pickup (16%)	9 Rads 1 Pickup (30%) 1 Weapon Drop (2%)	22 Rads 1 Pickup (35%) 1 Weapon Drop (5%)

Crystal Caves is not directly challenging provided the right weapons, however radstarving is particularly time-consuming here due to the level being darker and Laser Crystals dropping many rads. Enemies will often be killed at close-range adding to wait time.

Be particularly cautious of corner starving here as Laser Crystals out of view can easily melt HP. Hiding around walls and only picking off one or two enemies at a time may be particularly time consuming while being the safest option.

(One particular strategy for the impatient while very situational - if high on ammo the player can fire into the darkness towards areas they think enemies may be. If a weapon with a different ammo type gets pulled in from 3-3 that ammo can quickly be exhausted as well, then swapped back)

Frozen City
Snow Bandit	Snowbot	Wolf	Snowtank	Gold Snowtank
3 Projectile Damage	4 Charge Damage	2 Contact Damage 3 Projectile Damage	3 Projectile Damage 5-10 Explosive Damage (Death)	3 Projectile Damage 4 Contact Damage (Missile) 5-10 Explosive Damage (Missile & Death)
8 HP	15 HP	12 HP	50 HP	70 HP
4 Rads 1 Pickup (16%)	4 Rads 1 Pickup (40%) 1 Weapon Drop (8%)	5 Rads	8 Rads 2 Pickups (50%)	13 Rads 2 Pickups (50%)

The last leg of radstarving is 5-1 and 5-2. Neither of these levels should be particularly difficult on a radstarve, though there are some things to be aware of.

Snowbots and Wolves are particularly aggressive enemies that make collecting pickups while avoiding rads difficult. Wolves can always be killed at a distance as they do not drop pickups. Snowbots can be killed from a distance too if good on pickups; if low they can always be 'baited' to dash attack towards spawn, only killing them once they are further away from other enemies.

Meanwhile Snowtanks can be partially ignored unless if an open field. They very obviously telegraph their attacks and are easy to side-step, so more aggressive enemies can be focused on while keeping them alive until last for safer pickups. Golden Tanks cannot spawn until 5-2, but should always be considered highest priority.

Snow Bandits do not naturally spawn, but four are guaranteed to appear alongside the 5-2 Vault. This means that they can be used to locate the Valut Statue much quicker by simply heading in the direction they're seen.

Crown Vault

Crown Guardian

12 Projectile Damage (Large Orb) 5 Projectile Damage (Normal Orb)

70 HP

12 Rads 1 Pickup (100%)

Once inside the Crown Vault the only threat left is two Crown Guardians. They can quickly be dealt with if radstarving has been done properly as they drop 24 rads combined (1 rad less than a Rad Canister). Any other crown or bare head can be selected from there and the run can continue as normal, and the radstarve is over.

If particularly low on ammo, one Crown Guardian can be farmed for orb pickups for a safer Lil hunter fight.

Loopstarving

For reasons mentioned above loopstarving is strongly recommended against, unless if playing as Horror. Where the 3-2 strat only requires starving through four levels, the 5-2 strat requires starving through 7 levels (not including 0-1) with many more issues and threats causing unintentional rad collection. This section will not be in-depth, but rather will just brief over the major threats of each area. All drop values can be found on the enemies page.

1. Frozen City can follow the section above for 5-3 as well. Lil Hunter should be dealt with quickly, when he is low health the player should have an escape plan to avoid his death explosion and rad drops alike.

2. Labs will inevitably be annoying for radstarves as enemies will repeatedly spawn thanks to Necromancers, who are top priority to kill. They will only ever revive corpses within line of sight, which can be partially used to track their location. Hiding in a corner may drain ammo repeatedly handling Freaks, so either Necromancers need to be pushed to be killed quickly, or Freaks can be killed in a way that their corpses end up out of Necromancer's line of sight (such as leading them around corners).

3. Palace is annoying as well as all enemies have high rad yields and are particularly aggressive. Dogs will be the most annoying of the bunch as they push into spawn and break blocks easily, so sometimes pushing out into a level may be necessary to avoid rad drops here.

4. The Throne will drop a whopping 200 rads and a collective 80 from generators which is a very high risk for leveling. The loop portal will also pull the player in from across the map making normal corner starving not viable - instead the best way is to complete the fight while staying near the upper generators (destroying the lower ones from above), and only moving down to the lower ones The Throne is killed. Hiding in the top area of the destroyed generators will avoid the exit portal's pull and rads alike.

5. Throne 2 drops 100 rads that are almost impossible to avoid. The fight should just be done as normal.

6. The Desert will be the last test for radstarving with its own annoying roadblocks. Flies will always have to be dealt with first as they are very aggressive enemies and constantly spew Maggots that also drop rads. Swapping out weapons to exhaust others with different ammo types will be particularly useful here due to the volume of enemies - the most reliable way to gain ammo back at this point will be IDPD spawns who do not drop any rads.

The Crown Vault on 1-2 L1 can be entered as soon as possible and a new crown can be selected which will end the starve. If three Vaults at this point be aware there will be four Crown Guardians, who can drop nearly 100 rads combined. If really close to leveling up, one Crown Guardian can be picked off at a time while hiding in spawn.