It’s not easy being a potato.
No, really! The humans uproot you from your home, put you through a wash, skin you, and then subject you to horrible execution methods before eating you! You probably taste great, but this time, evil space aliens want a piece of you.
Thanks to the wonders of science, technology, and magic that the humans have left behind after they’ve disappeared from this world, it appears that you might just be the only hope of the world and potato-kind. Be the baddest potato you can be in the new arena survivor game: Brotato!
Erabit Studio—makers of 20 Minutes Till Dawn and Candy Disaster TD—brings to you a wacky, intense, and fast-paced arena roguelite survivor shooter called Brotato. Take control of a genetically and biologically modified potato warrior who upholds the duty of keeping alien hordes from taking over the world. Yes, you read that right: your protagonist is a potato that can wield weapons with its 6 arms and can change its appearance as it fights. Think of it as a murderous Potatohead toy but an actual potato armed with actual weapons.
The alien hordes grow stronger yet and it’s time for you to prove that you’re worth your salt. Are you starch-raving mad enough to be the spud of spuds? Will you end up getting mashed by your alien aggressors? Have you just started making your potato the root of all that is good? Regardless of your reason, read our beginner’s guide below and let’s try to save the world!
The Survivor Genre
You might be unfamiliar with the survivor game genre.
This isn’t to be confused with the likes of Bad2Bad: Apocalypse, or similar titles like Don’t Starve Together. Those are sandbox survival types with an open world that you can gather resources from. The survivor genre, on the other hand, often requires skill since you’ll be quickly surrounded by a lot of enemies.
First, you will have to pick a class for your character. Then, your character, usually alone at first, has to roam around and slay their foes for a duration. This is where the “surviving” comes in. If they have incurred enough damage, the game ends and you have to start over.
In some cases, survivor games would allow you to upgrade your character and slightly boost their chance in keeping themselves alive. The upgrades could affect the environment of the stage, the attacks of the player character, or even the player character’s raw stats. While this may seem like the norm in most survivor games, some titles like Ubermosh and Drill Milky Punch do not give upgrades.
Though, Ubermosh does allow the player to pick a class at the very beginning. Titles that are available in the mobile market today are the aforementioned 20 Minutes Till Dawn, Survivor.io, Lonely Survivor, and the greatly popular Vampire Survivors.
But enough about that, it’s time to get your hands dirty with Brotato!
Brotato Mini-Glossary
Before we begin, we’d like to note that Brotato has quite a couple of terminologies used. Just in case you get lost or confused, below are a couple of terms that you will encounter in Brotato. If ever you feel lost or need to know more about a particular term, feel free to visit this section of the guide.
- Armor — This is a stat that affects the likelihood for your potato to reduce the damage it receives.
- Attack Speed — This stat affects the speed of which your potato performs an attack. Therefore, higher attack speed means faster attacks.
- Blade — A weapon class that specializes in cutting. It grants Melee damage and Life Steal.
- Blunt — A weapon class that specializes in blunt force trauma. It grants bonus Armor with a penalty to Speed.
- Bounce — This is a weapon stat that gives a projectile the likelihood to bounce off of a target and onto another.
- Critical Chance — This is a stat that affects the likelihood of your potato scoring a critical hit; an attack that deals higher damage than normal.
- Dodge — A stat that affects your potato’s chances of completely evading damage. When a dodge is successful, your potato will not incur any damage at all.
- Elemental — A weapon class that specializes in Elemental damage. This might include electrocution, freezing, or burning.
- Engineering — This stat affects your potato’s inclination towards mechanical objects. In short, it affects the efficacy of turrets, mines, or similar objects. Higher Engineering means these objects will be more effective.
- Ethereal — A weapon class that specializes in granting your potato an increased dodge rate at the cost of armor. A higher Ethereal weapon rating means a higher likelihood of dodging an attack, but receiving more damage due to the lack of armor if the Dodge fails.
- Explosive — A weapon class that causes explosions. Explosions can be affected by explosion damage and explosion range.
- Harvesting — A player stat that affects your potato’s ability to harvest Materials. At the end of each wave, more Harvesting means more Materials gained. Having negative ratings for Harvesting will mean you will have less Materials each time the wave ends. You will not decrease in level if your XP bar hits 0.
- Heavy — A weapon class that affects the amount of overall damage dealt.
- HP — This denotes the overall amount of life that your potato has. Your potato will die if this hits 0. Max HP is the amount of life that your potato has when they haven’t taken any damage. Your HP bar is the red bar on the upper-left corner of the screen.
- Gun — A weapon class that utilizes Ranged Damage.
- Life Steal — A weapon stat that affects the amount of life stolen from the enemy. Each time you deal damage to an enemy with a weapon containing Life Steal, a portion of the damage you deal is converted into HP that heals you.
- Luck — A player stat that affects the likelihood of enemies dropping consumables (or items that heal you mid-battle), the appearance of higher-tier shop items, and the appearance of higher-tier upgrades when leveling up.
- Materials — Little green objects that litter the battlefield whenever enemies are slain. Materials are used as currency and grant the potato XP when collected.
- Medical — A weapon class that affects your potato’s HP Regeneration. Higher Medical ratings mean quicker Regeneration.
- Medieval — This weapon class increases only Armor at lower qualities. When increased, it affects both Armor and Dodge.
- Melee — This denotes that the weapon is only used when enemies are up close.
- Pierce — This affects the likelihood of a weapon’s projectile going through a target.
- Precise — A weapon class that increases Critical Hit rate.
- Primitive — This weapon class increases Max HP.
- Ranged — This denotes that the weapon can be used when the enemy is far away.
- Regeneration — Having this stat will mean that your potato will slowly regenerate its HP while it isn’t taking any damage. Higher Regeneration ratings will mean that it recovers HP more quickly. Having Regeneration ratings in the negatives will act as though it remains at 0.
- Speed — Not to be confused with Attack Speed, this stat affects the speed at which your potato moves.
- Support — This weapon class increases your Harvesting rating.
- Tool — A weapon class that increases your Engineering rating.
- Unarmed — This weapon class increases your Dodge chance.
- XP — Gaining enough XP will level up your potato. To know where your potato’s XP bar is, look at the green bar directly below your HP bar.
Brotato Basics
Brotato is a game that may look and feel simple, but we assure you that there are so many little things you need to take note of each time! We’ll go over that as we progress through the guide. For now, let’s tackle its basics.
In the beginning, you are given a choice among different potatoes to play as:
- Well-Rounded
This is a potato perfect for beginners. It has a balance of everything and no restrictions. With a boost in health and movement speed, it has the possibility of surviving longer than its peers. Not to mention, thanks to its Harvesting bonus, it levels up rather quickly.
- Brawler
An aggressive potato that prefers to beat enemies to death with its bare hands. It takes great pride in its fists so much that it faces penalties when wielding ranged weaponry.
- Crazy
This potato is inclined toward attack stats. It values Precise weaponry but cannot Dodge very well. Much like the Brawler, it also dislikes the use of ranged weapons.
- Ranger
A trigger happy potato that couldn’t care for melee weapons. Really, it can’t equip any melee weapons no matter what. While it excels greatly in ranged weaponry (it’s in the name, after all), it suffers from low HP upgrades. This means that each time it tries to upgrade its HP, it isn’t as good as other potatoes.
- Mage
Mysterious and bearded, this potato excels in Elemental Damage. However, due to its expertise in this field, it doesn’t do very well using melee or ranged weapons. Its Engineering rating is also rather low.
After choosing a character, you are immediately thrust into the battlefield. At first, the aliens will spawn at a low rate. This should be enough for you to get in the groove of things. Your only means of control here is to make the potato move using the joystick. Making physical contact with any of the aliens will damage you, so watch out! Whenever you slay an alien, they drop green items called Materials which you can pick up as currency. These also contribute to your potato leveling up; the more you collect, the faster you’ll reach another level. In some cases, your potato will level up more than once.
Your goal is to survive a couple of seconds of the enemy onslaught and the timer goes up at later levels. When this ends, you will have cleared the wave. If you’ve leveled up, the game will prompt you with a level up screen where you’re given a choice among improvements to your potato’s stats.
After that, you will be taken to a shop screen where you can use the Materials you’ve earned to spend on new weapons and items. Your potato can hold a total of 6 weapons at a time, but sometimes there are restrictions to this. For instance, the Generalist potato can only equip 3 Melee weapons and 3 Ranged weapons at a time, the One-Armed potato can equip just 1 weapon for the whole run, and the Multitasker potato can equip 12 weapons all at once.
When the next wave starts, you’ll notice that your potato’s HP will be completely full. Don’t let your guard down, though, the alien onslaught will only get tougher from now. To survive the onslaught is indeed a feat of skill and luck, especially with how the shop works. The run will end after surviving 20 waves wherein you may unlock newer potatoes and weapons depending on which potato you used to finish the run. This means that you can unlock different potatoes by playing a different one each time.
Ready to find ways to fend off the alien horde? Keep reading or you’ll end up half-baked!
Brotato Tips and Tricks
The aliens might be hungry for some fries, but we hope by the end of this guide, it’s you who’ll do the mashing. Regardless, read our tips and tricks below and prepare to make a body count.
1. Never Stay Still
Brotato is a tough game and it really works to your advantage to not to stay still… most of the time!
You will be constantly chased by enemies from all corners of the map. Each enemy varies greatly in health and their mode of attack, so sitting still and taking all this damage will most certainly kill off your potato before you could pull off something good. Though, this isn’t to just stay alive despite it being the primary goal of the game, moving around will allow you to gather Materials.
As we’ve mentioned earlier, Materials contribute to the growth of your potato. Apart from being used as currency, they also add to your XP gain. For the most part, these Materials won’t be picked up by your potato unless you walk over them. Apart from this, you’ll be able to scout around for weak links in the enemy’s swarm or even Trees you can cut down for Fruit, but we’ll tackle this later.
While there are certain items that increase stats while you’re standing still, it’s recommended for you to move around a lot if you’ve just started out. It’ll get you a feel of the game and it also helps you think on your feet as you gun the enemy aliens down.
Which reminds us! Look out, because the next bullet’s going to tell you how to calculate your next move.
2. Observe the Xs on the Ground
The enemies don’t just spawn about mindlessly.
Just like how you could tell a creature approaching in real life from its scent to the feral growls it makes (unless it’s been stalking you this whole time), you’ll be able to tell when and where the enemy comes out. These are marked by Xs that appear on the floor.
Every now and then, especially as you roam about, you’ll notice more and more of these Xs popping up. Naturally, it’s a great idea to steer clear of these since colliding with the enemy will cause damage to your potato. If you see more Xs, keep away or walk around them. This should give you an idea of how you should act next, especially if some of the Xs are bigger than the others (these mean Bruisers, the big aliens, are about to spawn; don’t let them charge at you). Green Xs spawn Trees, but we’ll get to that soon.
The best way to understand how the enemy works is by remembering what each and every one of them does… and that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about next!
3. Know Your Enemy
Each enemy in Brotato is distinct.
They all have their own behavior, their own set of HP and means of attack. Getting to know how to beat them is already one step ahead. Thankfully for you, we’ve compiled a list of the most common enemies that you’ll encounter at early waves!
- Baby Alien
The most basic of enemies. These little guys have low health and low speed. Sometimes, in some waves, they won’t be present, so watch out for the other aliens mentioned below. The Baby Alien’s mode of attack is to close in on your potato using collision damage.
- Chaser
These aliens colored in a lighter shade of purple are quicker and sometimes are slightly less durable than the Baby Aliens. They also tend to spawn more often in groups. Just like most aliens, they rely on collision damage as their mode of attack.
- Spitter
An intelligent type of alien. These aliens spew projectiles from their mouths in the direction of your potato. If the potato gets too close to them, they will try to get away. They do not have collision damage.
- Charger
A violent kind of Chaser. Chargers would give chase to the potato, but they also have the ability to drastically increase their speed in a short amount of time, albeit while traveling in a straight line. Collision damage is their mode of attack.
- Pursuer
Bony, tenacious, persistent. Pursuers do not give up on trying to get in your potato’s face. The hardest part about Pursuers is that their speed increases overtime while they are alive. Thankfully, this is all they can do.
- Bruiser
Big, bad aliens who are ill-tempered and tough. The Bruisers are the biggest of the bunch and they operate much like Chasers and Chargers combined. Try to take them out as quickly as you can or you’ll be very quickly outnumbered.
- Buffer
These aliens look like they’re covered in pustules. Buffers increase the health, speed, and damage of nearby aliens and cannot attack the potato. If you try to approach them, they’ll run away. Thankfully, their life is low enough that they can be easily killed.
- Spawner
Bloated, slow-moving aliens that don’t attack. Instead, when slain, they spawn a small group of Junkie aliens that run around and shoot projectiles in multiple directions. The Junkies are dangerous but they can be easily dispatched.
This isn’t even the full list! Most of the other aliens are upgrades of the current ones here and some of them appear in higher difficulties. Do you think you can fight them all? Maybe if you adapt a strategy of your own after reading this guide.
But what happens when you encounter a wall of enemies? Here’s what we can suggest to you…
4. Look for Gaps in the Enemy Formation
Imagine yourself in a situation where you are surrounded by enemies.
There are aliens everywhere and you happened to corner yourself in the arena. There doesn’t seem to be any hope and they all close in on your potato, killing it instantly. This is something that shouldn’t happen. For one, it always pays to remember not to stay still (see item number 1), but more importantly, the trick here is to find gaps in the enemy’s formation.
Sure it might look impossible to do since the enemy spawns endlessly, but if you find the right area to break through, your potato might live to fight another wave. Once you see a crack, move through it immediately and try to find yourself something nice to pick up (like Fruits, if you’re injured). Though, there will be times when you will have to make your own cracks.
Consider keeping an eye out for clumps of Baby Aliens or Chasers since they are among the most fragile of the enemy classes. If that isn’t working, try finding the Spitter-type enemies since their HP is even lower. Kill them and make enough room for your potato to escape through, and you’ll find yourself surviving for much longer. This will also help if you have weapons that strike multiple targets at a time or cause explosive damage. Consider the Chopper, Shredder, Rocket Launcher, Circular Saw, Thunder Sword, or the Cactus Club.
Though, one thing is for certain: the drops on the ground don’t disappear and sometimes it’s great to leave them be for the time you need them. This especially applies to Fruits.
5. Prioritize Tree Destruction
If you see a Tree, destroy it immediately!
While this tip sounds like an environmental activist’s nightmare, this is a perfectly sound strategy here in Brotato. The reasoning behind it is that Trees drop Fruits and these Fruits heal your potato when picked up! Moving around, again, is very important if you want to find these Trees.
Trees spawn with green Xs. If you happen to destroy any of these, they have the chance to drop a Fruit which you can use to recover HP. However, you will be able to pick these up even if your HP is full. Be careful not to do this; what you can do instead is to destroy a tree and not pick up the Fruit it drops yet. Hold your position near the Fruit and fend off any aliens coming at you, then pick up the Fruit should you incur any amount of damage. Fruits don’t vanish after being left on the ground, so you have little to worry about.
Occasionally, Trees may also drop loot crates. Picking these up will heal your potato for a measly 3 HP, but they come with rewards you can claim after the wave ends. Though, sometimes, enemies drop these loot crates as well. There is no limit to how many crates your potato can carry. The rewards come in the form of random items of random tiers. Though, you can still get higher-tiered items or influence the drop rate of loot crates if you increase your Luck stat.
Of course, Fruits are but one way you can recover health. There is also HP Regen and Life Steal. Those are what you call stats!
6. Focus on a Few of Your Potato’s Stats
As we’ve mentioned earlier about the different potatoes you can start with, they each have their own stat bonuses.
You might think that having a bit of everything in your potato’s stats is a good thing, but it’s unfortunately counterintuitive and it may cause your potato some problems as the levels go by. In short, you will turn them into a jack-of-all-trades and make them suffer from the lack of their initial strengths. Although, potatoes like the Well-Rounded one are more adaptable than most. What you should do is understand how your potato works and focus on a few of its stats.
Let’s take the Brawler potato for example. The Brawler greatly excels in melee combat using Unarmed-class weapons. If you want to improve on the Brawler’s abilities, focus on increasing their Melee Damage, Damage %, Armor or Dodge, Attack Speed, and Health. This will make it punch faster and harder whilst being able to take a hit itself.
Another example we can give would be the Ranger potato. This potato should have the following priority stats: Ranged Damage, Damage %, Attack Speed, Dodge, and Speed. You’ll be able to keep your distance with it whilst pelting your enemies with rapid-fire DPS. We didn’t recommend Health as a stat since the Ranger suffers a penalty when receiving health upgrades.
Study your potato and focus on what it excels in as opposed to covering all bases. This strategy should carry you through the waves.
Another thing that you can do to make your potato stronger is to focus on a single weapon class. There’s a little secret to it…
7. Try to Keep a Single Weapon Class
Most potatoes have 6 arms, but what can you do to maximize their performance?
Sure, like stats, you can equip all kinds of weapons on each hand. But this will greatly limit your potato to being, once again, a jack-of-all-trades. The worst part of it is that you’ll probably get stuck with low-tier weapons. How come? Well, allow us to explain.
The weapon system in Brotato is an interesting one. Each weapon falls under a category. As you’ve seen in our mini glossary above, weapons have classes (e.g. Precise, Medieval, Primitive, Gun, etc.). These classes aren’t just for organization, they grant bonuses the more of them you have. This is the rating we were talking about in the mini glossary.
In other words, if you have just 1 Medieval-class item, you won’t get any bonuses. But if you have 2 or more, the Medieval weapon class will give your potato a boost in both Armor and Dodge. This becomes even better if your potato has Medieval-class weapons in all its hands. Additionally, having more Medieval weapons on your potato will mean that the shop has a greater chance of having Medieval-class weapons for sale.
This stretches over to secondary classes as well. If you have a weapon classified as “Precise, Medieval”—i.e. the Crossbow—and you happen to have more than one of these wielded by your potato, there is a chance that you might encounter Precise weapons in the shop. Weapons like the Thief’s Dagger, Knife, Lightning Shiv, and a few others will show up more often than usual.
Having so many weapons can only make you so strong. In most cases, quality beats quantity.
8. Combine Weapons to Make Them Stronger
Imagine having 6 Pistols on your potato.
The rate of fire must be crazy, but if you don’t have sufficient Ranged Damage, you might just end up killing your potato. Instead of having multiple Pistols, how about trying to combine them together?
You can combine 2 weapons of the same type and tier together to form a new, more powerful weapon of its kind. For example, combining 2 Swords will make you a Sword-2, which is more powerful than the regular Sword. The 2 in the Sword-2’s name signifies its tier. This can be done in the Shop phase of the game. Simply tap a weapon you’d like to upgrade, and you’ll use up the other identical weapon currently equipped.
Do note that this can only be done if you have 2 weapons of the same type and tier. If your potato’s hands are full and you find a weapon of the same type and tier in the shop as one that you have currently equipped, you can buy the weapon and have your current weapon upgraded. This won’t work if the tiers of the weapon differ, even if they share the same type.
Anything equippable and upgrades to your potato’s stats in the game have a tier. The tiers are divided into 4 levels:
- Tier 1 – Gray
- Tier 2 – Blue
- Tier 3 – Purple
- Tier 4 – Red
That said, the higher an item’s tier, the more powerful it is. Unfortunately, you cannot combine items or stat upgrades; this is all strictly confined to just weapons. This means that, if you have an item at Tier 1, you can’t upgrade it to Tier 2 by buying an identical item, or even combine these under the item tab in the Shop phase.
Given that this game has a lot of unique weapons and items available for the player’s use, there are a lot of ways you can make them all work together.
9. Find Weapons or Items that Complement Each Other
There are some items in this game that go hand-in-hand together.
They’re like peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, mashed potatoes and gravy—oh, wait, let’s not go that far. Our point is that certain items or weapons greatly empower each other if they’re used in the same run.
To illustrate, consider getting the Tree and the Lumberjack Shirt. What the Tree does is that it causes more Trees to spawn. This means you’ll be able to get more Fruit when you need it. Though, more Trees might mean you’ll need more firepower; that’s not necessary. The Lumberjack Shirt ensures that you destroy Trees in just 1 hit. Having both will certainly make your potato have a contingency plan just in case the enemy gets more numerous.
Consider other items like the Scared Sausage alongside weapons like the Lightning Shiv or the Flamethrower; you’ll be spreading fire while dishing out a good amount of Elemental Damage to many aliens around you. The best item that you could ever get in the whole game is ironically called Potato. It’s a Tier 4 item and it offers a ton of bonuses. Thus, this item goes with almost anything and everything you might have with you. Regardless, it really helps to experiment with different potatoes as well as different gear setups. Go crazy, and maybe you’ll find a combination that works perfectly for you.
After all is said and done, the game still boils down to your skill as a player.
10. Learn from Your Mistakes
You will keep dying in this game.
You’ll be shot, swarmed, slashed, disintegrated, and maybe destroyed many, many times. But this shouldn’t deter you from trying to win. Item combinations and weapons notwithstanding, your survival depends mostly on how you play as well.
When you do die, however, it really pays to learn from your mistakes. One way you can try to discern what did you in is your stats to the left of the screen. Perhaps you had no Armor, your HP was too low, your damage output was much too weak, or something else. Perhaps it might’ve been the Wisdom you bought from the Shop, thinking it would suit the build of your potato. Your potato’s death is a cumulation of different things.
If you think that the potato you played might be too difficult to build, try out a different one and start again. You’ll be able to figure out which items and weapons work best for it. If you pull through, maybe you’ll triumph this time and win your run.
Brotato has challenges lurking in every corner—almost literally! While you will increase the difficulty level eventually, just remember the tips you’ve learned from reading this guide:
- Move around a lot. You’ll die if you’re a sitting duck.
- Keep an eye on the ground for the Xs. Red Xs mean enemies, green Xs mean Trees.
- Remember who your enemies are. Knowing how each of them behaves will keep you on your toes.
- The enemy formation might have gaps in them. Use them to escape or use these to weaken their advance toward you.
- See a Tree? Destroy it immediately! Though, wait around the Fruit it drops until you need it.
- Only focus on a few of your potato’s stats. Stretching them out too thin will make them weak.
- Try to keep a single weapon class. It’ll help other weapons of that same class to show up in the Shop.
- When you have multiple weapons of the same tier and type, combine them to make them stronger. Quality beats quantity!
- Some items go really well with each other. If you find these, keep them in mind because they might help you in a future run!
- Study your deaths or their causes so you can try to prevent them from happening next time.
This wraps up our beginner’s guide for Brotato. Lock and load, suit up, grab your favorite Friendly Alien, and have a weapon in all 6 of your hands. Get some!
Are you a seasoned veteran worth your salt? Have you become hard-boiled toward your enemies? Do you have some cheesy tips that you can offer rookies? Send your shreds of wisdom toward the comment section!