Survival Guide

This page will serve as a catch-all for mechanics in meta loops, which includes mechanics that help players survive and dangerous things to watch out for.

The guide for mutations & bosses will be on separate pages as they are comprehensive, although it's important to know what a perfect 9 (p9) mutation set looks like as this is a core part to survival.

Standard p9

Weapon Loadout

The focal point of survival can be viewed through the weapons ran, which will be the crux of offense and defense.

The Ultra Shovel (ushovel)

The first tool here is the ushovel which does 30 damage and requires no ammo - just 14 rads in order to swing. Each swing only takes half a second so when paired with Long Arms, ushovel has the reach and spread to knock away most enemy projectiles while also clearing out enemy groups with ease.

Due to the increase of enemies on each level in later loops it is incredibly easy to keep rad levels near full constantly, as ushovel can be used to cut through hordes of enemies without worrying about rad counts in the slightest. There are situations where the player may be too afraid to push (such as in the Frozen City due to Golden Snowtanks or Lil Hunter) which can cause rad levels to suddenly drop. Many boss fights will also be a drain on rads which is why Popo Freaks are a key element to a run, they serve as rad recharges that run directly at the player.

The ultra meter can be used to discern rad levels, but does not have a visible number. A full meter has 600 rads, which allows for 42 ushovel swings before running empty.

The Super Plasma Cannon (SPC)

The other vital tool here is the SPC, which is the weapon that has the highest damage potential in the game. This will be dealing the bulk amount of damage to enemies throughout the level as well as bosses, however proper usage will require Trigger Fingers as it also has the highest reload time in the game.

There are a few strategies used around SPC that even furthers its viability:
1. SPC Spam refers to firing the weapon so fast it is being spammed. Due to Trigger Fingers constantly proc'ing and the number of ammo pickups constantly dropping, SPC can usually be fired instantly despite having such a high reload time/ammo cost. When clearing out levels of enemies SPC ammo should never be preserved as low ammo maximizes drops, ammo management is no longer necessary.

2. Perfect Shot refers to shooting SPC in certain ways that maximizes the damage a boss takes, which varies based on how the boss moves. Strategies to get perfect shots will be shared on the boss pages at a later date.
On the betas a perfect shot deals 974 damage normally, or 1,475 damage with Laser Brain.
On non-beta a perfect shot deals 860 damage normally, or 1,361 damage with Laser Brain. (Does less damage due to a bug)

3. Hotswapping refers to swapping SPC with another weapon and then picking SPC back up as this will remove the weapons cooldown. The most common example of this is for the Throne II fight where Trigger Fingers procs are uncommon due to the only other enemies being Popo Freaks. A weapon is brought through the 7-3 portal in order to hotswap with it, if the weapon is cursed it can be picked up before entering the portal.

4. SPC Digging refers to using SPC to dig into walls as it can push multiple tiles in. This is commonly done in a pinch to avoid Van damage if cornered, avoiding Big Bandit's line of fire enabling them to charge instead, clearing out some extra space on 0-1 for the Throne II fight (later loops) among other miscellaneous situations.

Crown of Blood (CoBlood)

The last tool used in meta runs is Crown of Blood which can be picked up in any loop Vault. It causes around 150%-200% more enemies to be spawned in a level. In earlier loops this can benefit the run as more enemies are packed together which is perfect for ushovel/SPC getting more kills at a time and getting more rads/ammo in return.

In later loops the necessity of running Crown of Blood has been argued as it accelerates the issue of lag, and it makes already difficult areas such as Caves and Palace even more threatening.

Kills and distance both had strong emphasis for older world records, but kills has largely fallen out of favor since. On record sheets Crown of Blood is typically required despite distance being the main metric now, which is mainly done for a level playing ground between old and new runs. Daily leaderboards still uses kills.

Popo Freaks

Normal IDPD Appears in Loops 0-2			Elite IDPD Appears in Loops 1-2			Popo Freaks Appears in Loops 3 onwards

Starting from L3 1-1 onwards all IDPD will be permanently replaced with Popo Freaks. (L3 0-1 will still have normal/elite IDPD)

Popo Freaks deal 5 contact damage to the player and will shoot a large swathe of IDPD bullets that do 3 damage each. Upon death they have a chance of dropping the typical IDPD grenades, each doing 8 damage twice for up to 16 damage.

Uniquely they will also pick the nearest corpse/prop from their death location and will revive themselves after 26.6 seconds have passed. They will not revive if an exit portal has opened, and can revive an infinite amount of times before then.

Will drop 25 rads upon death and has a 60% base chance to give a pickup, which is effected by the drop modifier.

It takes 14 rads to swing Ultra Shovel while Popo Freaks drop 25 rads. The table below shows Popo Freaks HP values, and this means that with Scarier Face they will die in one Ultra Shovel from L3-L5 which nets 11 extra rads.

When Popo Freaks take two hits it costs 28 rads to swing twice, which is a small deficit, although this is easily offset by killing multiple at once as they usually all spawn/revive near each other. "Chain Killing" is a simple method where ushovel damages the Popo Freaks at the front of the pack while the player pushes towards them, and then the second swing will kill them while also damaging more Popo Freaks behind them. This can be repeated until all Popo Freaks are dead and is an efficient method of gaining rads back. Do not be fear aggressive plays against Popo Freaks.

They will take 3 hits to kill at L21 normally or L31 with Scarier Face.

Numbers may not be 100% accurate

1. The Popo Freak attacking the player with a wide spread of bullets.
2. Upon death it drops 25 rads, and this one happened to drop grenades as well.
3. A revive circle appears where a Popo Freak is about to respawn, telegraphing it to the player.

Vans

The number of Vans spawned in a level will always be proportional to the number of loops. They will randomly spawn when 20% to 80% of the original enemy count has been cleared out without accounting for cluster spawns, meaning in practice they will usually spawn much later into the level. They also will not spawn until at least one Popo Freak has been killed (additional Vans may only spawn in after additional Popo Freaks have been killed).

Starting in Loop 3 once Vans come to a stop they will instantly detonate. It will cause three IDPD explosions that hit for 8 damage twice for a total of 16 damage, ignoring enemy and player iframes.

Vans will cause three Popo Freaks to spawn, however as they are on the enemy team rather than the IDPD team now they will take damage from these explosions. They will take 48 damage at once which will instantly kill them up to Loop 13 normally, or Loop 21 with Face. This means that every Van will cause 75 rads to drop with the chance of pickups, and even when Popo Freaks survive the blast they should be one hit with ushovel.

Van Management is a method in which the player tries to spawn Vans in specific ways that reduces risk to them. Vans deal 20 damage instantly causing even max HP Crystal to die/drop Spirit. A common death in meta loops is the player taking Van damage which drops Spirit and explosion damage right after.

It's important to note that Van Management is one of those things that comes intuitively with practice, not just explained on a guide. It takes time to start recognizing Van spawning behaviors and frequency.

Main Method: Holding Steady
Common Van management is once Popo Freaks start to spawn in is to try to kill as many as possible while maintaining horizontal movement (or staying still). Even as Vans telegraph they're about to spawn the player has a few moments before they need to move up/down out of the way, which maximizes the amount of Vans clustered together.

Optional Method: Pushing
This method is a heavy judgement call and can easily lead to misplays by inexperienced players. If a level is vertical enough that even while Vans start to spawn in, the player can continue to just push upwards/downwards at a moderate pace while ignoring Vans. If the bulk of SPC shots are shot in one direction it will clear a path for the player to keep away from Vans from, and can open up walls at the end of the level if extra spacing is needed. This is never the safer option, but can be done to speed up gameplay.

Newer players to meta may make the mistake of running wildly up/down the moment they hear any start to spawn in, but spread out Vans may cause the player to get stuck against a wall with no escape plan. SPC digging can be used to make some extra space to escape, but some situations can just cause an inescapable situation that is player-caused.

Enemy Iframes

Any time an enemy is damaged they get iframes, however most sources of damage simply ignores enemy iframes. A full list of things that do respect enemy iframes can be found on the weapons page.

The most notable from this list is melee. If an enemy has iframes active they will completely ignore damage from the ushovel, which can cause some situations where enemies take a smaller amount of damage from other sources and fail to get killed, in which turn they may get surprise damage in on the player.

Common examples of low damage that can trigger iframes are enemies being damaged by wall debris or getting hit by enemy corpse knockback, which can be very hard to predict. Mutations like Impact Wrists and Sharp Teeth are actively avoided in meta as they cause iframes more frequently while having low damage output.

While any enemy can get iframed and in turn cause the player to get damaged, there are a few specific sources to pay mind to that commonly cause Spirit drops or deaths. The first table is enemies that can slip through ushovel swings and cause the player damage in close range, due to their aggressive nature:

Slips through ushovel swings:
Assassin	Buff Gator	Explo Freak
Desert, Sewers, Scrapyards	Sewers, Scrapyards, Caves	Caves, Labs, Palace
5 Melee Damage	4 Flak Damage + 1 Pellet Damage (x10)	2 Contact Damage 5-10 Explosive Damage

This second table are about enemies who the player can accidentally walk into and take contact/explosive damage from. Damage from these enemies are more easily avoided, and usually only happens if the player is pushing too hard with ushovel:

Don't walk into these:
Sniper	Jungle Fly	Laser Crystal	Rhino Freak
Desert, Scrapyard Palace (less relevant)	Desert	Sewers, Caves, Labs	Caves, Labs
5-10 Explosive Damage (Death)	5 Contact Damage	20 Contact Damage	5 Contact Damage

There is a rare exception to enemy iframes known as multi-hitting where enemy iframes will be reset every frame, taking additional damage from weapons that typically respect iframes. This is most prominent when Big Bandits use their charge attacks and Dog Guardians use their jump attacks. Any weapon that normally respects enemy iframes can do significant extra damage during these attacks, which importantly includes ushovel.

Swung normally	Swung during charge

The table to the left shows two instances of L10 Big Bandits, who have 650 health with Scarier Face.

The first image is a single ushovel swing that only does 30 damage - it would take 22 swings to kill Big Bandit, and the player only has 42 swings max with a full rad bar.
The second image is a single ushovel swing that did 150 damage, because it hit Big Bandit while he was charging. This cuts it down to 5 swings max using ushovel alone. (Exact damage can vary)

Big Bandits will use their charge attack if the player is behind a wall within range, or if they're standing too close to fire at (exercise caution).

On the other hand Dog Guardians will only try to attack the player if they are within line of sight, which requires a more aggressive approach standing out in the open and then reacting with a swing whenever they pounce. It often takes two swings to kill them.

Player Iframes

Player iframes are always triggered if any sort of damage is taken, and most damage sources in the game will respect this. There are some notable exceptions to this such as explosions (explained in the next section), or Laser Crystals and Buff Gators:

Laser Crystal	Laser Crystals will shoot out four lasers each doing 1 damage per hit, however they do not respect player iframes and can easily stack if directly in line with the player. This can also stack with lasers from other Laser Crystals which can shred even full HP in under a second in the worst case scenarios. Damage only stacks this high if the player is walking directly into/away from the lasers, otherwise the player is pushed out of the way while only taking minor damage. It's easiest to get damage combo'd while on cobwebs, where the player can essentially get stunlocked.
Buff Gator	Buff Gators shoot a flak ball that deals 4 damage and will break into 10 pellets that do 1 damage each. Pellets will ignore player iframes and can also shred the player's HP if they walk directly into the flak shot, dealing up to 14 damage. The main issue with Buff Gators is how they can sneak up on the player as they are really quiet enemies and will fire aggressively, sometimes giving very little reaction time. Even one Buff Gator can easily cause a Spirit drop or in some rare cases even kill through Spirit by taking the player by surprise.

Strong Spirit gives full invulnerability from any damage source, although this is also only a brief window of protection - only about 5 frames. If an enemy's attack persists longer than this window (again, Laser Crystals or Buff Gators) then the player may instantly take damage and die, killing through Spirit. Illustrated in the dropdown:

Enemy surviving through iframes & killing through Spirit:

	The following screenshots will do a play by play on this gif explaining how the Buff Gator survived a swing from Ultra Shovel and made Chicken go headless through Strong Spirit. This happened during a real run during a daily on 3-2 L5. (The health values are swapped as a lang edit, they can be ignored.)
Buff Gator surviving through iframes
	1st Picture: Chicken goes to swing her ushovel in a closed room. Notice the sleeping Assassin in the purple square.
	2nd Picture: The sleeping Assassin is killed and its body is knocked towards the Buff Gator, who is just out of range of Chicken.
	3rd Picture: The Buff Gator is then hit by the sleeping Assassin's corpse as it lights up, signifying iframes are active.
	4th Picture: While the Buff Gator's hurt animation plays Chicken swings her ushovel, but no damage is done as his iframes are active. On Loop 5 with Scarier Face, Buff Gators have 30 HP so it would have died to just a single ushovel swing.
Buff Gator killing through Spirit
	5th Picture: The Buff Gator is still alive so fires his weapon at Chicken who has 7 HP. This immediately does 4 damage bringing her down to 3 HP.
	6th Picture: 10 pellets burst forth from the flak ball into random directions. As Chicken was walking towards the flak ball as it exploded, many pellets instantly hit Chicken causing her to take an additional 3 damage and drop Strong Spirit. Full iframes from Spirit are now initiated. The other pellets randomly start to fly in all directions, note the one in the yellow square.
	7th Picture: The pellet in the yellow square bounces off a nearby wall and starts flying towards Chicken, who is actively walking towards it to escape the Buff Gator.
	8th Picture: Spirit invulnerability ends despite the halo animation still playing - the one pellet makes contact with Chicken dealing 1 damage, causing her to go headless. This situation would kill most other mutants.

Explosions

Explosions are a constant in deeploop, thus is important to understand the mechanics behind.

As explained on the weapons page, explosives deal consecutive damage in two separate instances. For normal explosions this causes 5 damage twice for a total of 10 damage, while IDPD explosions from Popo Freaks/Vans do 8 damage twice for a total of 16 damage. It is possible for the player or enemies to only take one of the damage instances by moving in/out of an explosion's radius at the perfect moment.

Explosions do NOT respect player iframes, meaning that taking damage from multiple explosions at once will be deadly.
The first exception to this is Boiling Veins which forces explosions to respect player iframes, meaning they will only ever take one instance of damage from one explosion at a time, along with being invulnerable to them at 4 HP or below.
The second exception is Strong Spirit which blocks damage from everything for a few frames, so if multiple explosions go off at the same time the player will still survive.

When multiple explosions happen within proximity they will push each other outwards covering more area. This is noticeable during normal runs when running Nuke Launcher or Super Bazooka as they have a large radius, however this also applies to enemy explosions. This is illustrated in the image on the right as five IDPD grenades detonate at the same time pushing each other outwards. The more grenades there are, the more unpredictable they may become. Ultra Shovel can be used to knock IDPD grenades away from the player.

The first instance of damage from IDPD grenades will always happen at the center of where they explode, and only deals the second instance once they are pushed out to their new position. This makes it somewhat common to only take 8 damage from an explosion rather than the full 16 damage, unless if multiple explosions manage to hit the player.

Chain explosions is a term used for when an explosion procs another explosion to happen, causing a chain reaction. How frequent they are depends on version.

On non-beta any chain explosions can occur, and in later loops the explosion radius from IDPD grenades can be so big that it can sometimes catch the player from off-screen. To work around this use extra caution around the Van spawning phase, and not to underestimate the size of explosions if grenades start piling together.

On the 2021/2025 openbetas & NTT v100 this is changed so that IDPD grenades will no longer set each other off if they're on the same team. They can still be detonated by other enemy explosions, or player weapons. If the player deflects IDPD grenades and these explode within proximity of ones still on the enemy team, this will also cause a chain explosion but not as intense in size.

In other words playing on the betas will solve the largest issue with chain explosions, although they still exist in some capacity. As outlined on other pages as well, the betas also make it so Rogue's blast armor (including Ultra B) and Horror's Stalker will not detonate IDPD grenades to prevent explosions from happening directly on top of the player. Horror's rad beam detonates explosions on all versions.

Settings

The full mechanics of each setting can be viewed here. This section will brief over any relevant settings that meta players have on/off and explain why, but by no means is required reading. Any of these settings can be changed mid-run except for changing FPS.

For Audio settings:

• Normal sound is recommended to keep on as there are many sound cues in the game. Most important ones to listen out for are Vans spawning off-screen, Throne charging its laser or Popo Freaks reviving.
• Music on is up to preference, there is some utility in knowing immediately when bosses die. Particularly useful for Big Bandits when there are a dozen or more of them.
• 3D sound is recommended as it gives directional audio which can be useful to discern which direction Vans are coming from, and situationally track down off-screen bosses.

For Video settings:

• Fullscreen gives the best performance while Borderless gives the most convenience. Running Windowed is not suggested due to the amount of spam clicking that goes on, enabling Mouselock is recommended if it is used.
• Screenshake is recommended to have off as it causes distractions, especially with the amount of chaos in later loops.
• Freezeframes creates artificial lag to give kills more 'impact' to them, which can be used in order to give the player more reaction time.
• Some players turn Freezeframes up to 40% or 50% in particularly difficult areas that don't lag as much (Caves and Palace), while turning Freezeframes down to 20% or off completely for other areas. Completely up to player preference on what feels right.

For Game settings:

• Boss intros are kept off by most players as they can be a distraction, and partly because it used to cause a Throne II crash on u98 randomly.
• Mouselock will keep the mouse in the game to prevent accidentally from clicking outside of the game. Up to player preference.
• For the 2025 openbeta/NTT v100 this was changed so mouselock only applies while the run is active, not during pause menu.
• Due to thronebutt.com having problems, Stream Key on can cause crashes on some versions. As this is broken right now there is no use in having it on.

For sub-menu 'Mechanics' on 2025 openbeta/NTT v100:

• There are customizable options for framerate and resolution. The standard on record tables requires 30 FPS and 4:3, although some give leeway for 60 FPS.
• Rad attract is up to player preference, will change how rads behave.
• Classic: Acts like previous versions where they can get stuck on walls, and the player can avoid collecting rads by corner-hugging.
• Fast: Takes less CPU than classic but will still act like it, except rads won't get stuck at max level.
• Modern: Rads can 'wiggle' around walls if they cannot reach the player while in range. The player can still hug walls to avoid collecting them.