Grab your weapon of choice, and get ready to dive feet first against the legions of Hell you’ll come across in Grind Survivors.
Grind Survivors by Pushka Studios is the latest game in the popular bullet-hell genre. While a lot of these games allow you to turn your brain off and let you glide during the game, Grind Survivors will require your undivided attention with the hordes of demons that will be coming at you. This beginner’s guide will give you a general overview of the different mechanics in the game, as well as go over recommended build options for you while you’re making your way through the 15 different levels in the game.
Be sure to check out our review of Grind Survivors to hear our thoughts about the game!
Weapons Guide
Throughout the game, you will come across a wide variety of weapons at your disposal. Each weapon handles differently, and some will be unlocked right from the get-go, while others will be unlocked later in the game.
Weapons
- Revolver:
- SMG:
- Shotgun
- Teslagun
- Assault Rifle
- Laser Rifle:
- Sawlauncher:
- Sword:
There are 2 things you’ll need to keep in mind about each weapon: the weapon rank, which can range from rank 1 to 15, and the rarity of the weapon. The rarities go:
- Common(white)
- Uncommon(green)
- Rare(blue)
- Epic(purple)
- Legendary(gold)
Upgrading Weapons
When upgrading your weapons, there are a few different options you have. All of these can play a large factor into how far you can go in a run, and you’ll need to know the basics to master these systems.
Infuse
With Infuse, you can take a lower common weapon and sacrifice 4 weapons of the same rarity and upgrade it to the next tier. So if you have an uncommon(green) SMG that you like, you can get rid of 4 other green weapons to increase the SMG to a rare(blue) weapon. The one thing you need to keep in mind is that every weapon needs to be the same rank. For example, you cannot upgrade a rank 5 weapon using any weapons that are a lower rank.
Reforge
Reforge allows you to spend ashes to increase your weapon stats. You do take a risk doing this, as you might increase it or decrease it. If the stat is already pretty high, it might be best to leave it as is and focus on the lower stats. You will also want to wait to reforge your weapon until you improve it, as all stat changes will be erased when improving.
Improve
Improving your weapon allows you to upgrade your weapon with ashes; there is a chance of a reset. When you increase the level, there is a percentage chance that the next try at improving can fail. You have a 100% chance to go from base weapon level 0 to level 1, and it decreases from there, down to level 88%, 60%, etc. Generally, it’s not worth going past level 4, unless you have a ton of ashes to spare.
Upgrading Rune slots and skill points
There are other factors you need to consider besides weapons. Runes are badges that you need to equip that can give you various effects, such as starting a run with a shield charge, more health and pickup range, or even 100% extra fire damage. There are also various skill points that will give you permanent boosts on your run. These vary, from having double XP chance, to critical hit damage, to dash distance. Both the rune slots and skill points are unlocked using hell dust, which you get from mini mob bosses.
Runes
You start off with 2 rune slots. After all upgrades, you are able to obtain a total of 10 slots. The majority of the runes are 2 slots, with a few being 1 or 3. Once you get a good number of them, you’ll have to decide how you want to use your slots.
Since the rune unlocking and unlocking skill points use the same currency, you’ll need to be smart about how you allocate them. Seeing as overall stats are definitely needed for the game, you’ll want to pump the majority of your soul hearts into skill points. This is how many rune slots I would generally try to have while you’re going through each section.
- Burning Forest: 3-4 runes
- Bastion: 5-7 runes
- Scorched Grounds: 8-10 runes
Obviously, for the infinite run achievements, you’re going to want to have maxed rune slots available. How you choose to use those slots is up to you, but make sure to get a nice mix of survival runes and damage runes.
Skill Points
The skill points you can acquire are broken into 3 skill trees. You can tackle these 3 trees in whatever order you want, just know that you do have to start at the top and work your way down. That means if you want to go for the 3rd row of the skill tree, you will need to have at least 1 skill point unlocked for each skill before that. Every skill can go up 10 ranks, so you will be spending a bunch of time here grinding out hell dust.
In terms of what skills are worth going for, the 3rd skill on the greed tree gives you a higher chance at purple XP appearing, which rewards you a higher amount of XP vs the normal green ones. These are worth going for early on to increase your levels and chances of getting the perks you need. Likewise, the 3rd and 4th skills in the Wrath tree increase your damage and critical hit percentage, and both are great to have during the later minutes of runs.
Altars
The last thing to pay attention to is the altars you’ll see around the map during your runs. These can give you increases during the run, ranging from damage, extra bounces, ability cooldown, and lots of other things. These altars come in different rarities, with the base being green, uncommon altars, all the way up to yellow legendary altars. The higher the tier of the altar, the longer it takes to claim it.
Altars are definitely something you will want to focus on and seek out during your run. These added bonuses can make or break a run, and there’s even a rune that will give you 1% extra damage for each altar claimed, and that can really add up.
And that is the basics to getting into Grind Survivors! Hopefully, this beginner’s guide was useful to help you jump into the new rogue-lite for the first time! Let us know in the comments what you think of Grind Survivors, and be sure to join the Gamer Social Club Discord to keep up with everything Grind Survivors related!
