Brotato Saver Danger 5 Guide and Walkthrough

It's everyone's favorite time again, professor Cephalopocalypse teaches Economics. The Saver is all about managing your income and understanding how to build a powerful bank - then leveraging your investments for gain (and damage)! If I include enough finance buzzwords maybe a business prof will accidentally play this in class instead of their lecture.
Detailed class guide and gameplay for Brotato 1.0 on max difficulty, including the unique mechanics, best build, and tips for this class. This run features excessive math.

[@alanhong99]

Just lose ten rounds in a row with saver. I think I'm simply bad at financing......

[@DatShadyGuy]

"Layers of ablative meat." Bravo for the wordplay.

[@Cephalopocalypse]

:D

[@beastofbones]

Excellent guide for Spear Saver. Good demonstration of how to move and clear space, and as always, Ceph's commentary is top notch, explaining which stats to prioritize, being picky on items, and how to maneuver defensively to maximize Spear effectiveness. For alternatives, I consider Lightning Shiv Saver the easiest and most consistent to play. Aros has Lightning Shiv as the other recommended weapon, and it's much stronger than either Taser or guns imo because it requires a lot less investment to come online. Shiv's are awkward early, Spear has a stronger early game, but most Brotato runs are more likely to lose towards the midgame, particularly going into Elite or Horde. Spear Saver requires more skill to play, as Spears as slow, and if you don't find attack speed or manual target, it's easy to get caught out. Shivs have an easier time to moving around as the Shivs serve as a point defense to clear enemies where you're intending to move to, while the lightning bounce around and wipes out more enemies than Spears. It takes surprisingly little Elemental damage for the Lightning to do it's job. Main adjustment is you want to take some melee damage early as Shiv's have trash base damage, but beyond that, there's not much to it. Lightning Shiv tends to be good dueling Elites, as the Lightning clears trash while you focus out the Elite. Late game, the lightning just does what it always does and blows up the map. Tbf, Saver always wins late game, I just find it Shiv handles much better into Elites.

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Thanks for the detailed analysis! I actually haven't tried lightning shiv on saver myself yet, but your ideas sound spot on here, lightning shiv does really well on classes that multiply the damage in some way, to minimize how much elemental damage you have to buy. Cheers! :D

[@General_PunisheR]

Lightning Shiv first try, 20+ runs previously struggle with spear and other chooses... High prices are too big of a drawback. Crit chance for weapon tag and lightning bounces helps a lot even with low elemental damage.

[@jeffe2267]

this took me like 20x the attempts of any other tater, I have no idea why. finally finished it out.

[@Cephalopocalypse]

This one's weird and way harder than it looks to be honest. Congrats on the win!

[@happy_labs]

It was also one of the hardest for me, and probably most people. The +50% item costs is brutal, and not well offset by the bonuses. When you compare to the Mutant with the same econ penalty, they get triple XP and therefore a ton of stats for free making it pretty easy to stay above the power curve despite the shop costs. The Saver gets...a few percent damage

[@jodi3694]

⁠@@happy_labsI go thief dagger for that reason. Takes a while to come online but if you can survive the early game headache the extra economy starts to really snowball with piggy bank

[@michael_krueger]

This one was really tough for me too. I ended up beating danger 5 saver when I got lucky enough in a run to get all 3 paddings and was practically invincible.

[@randykeller680]

Any other tater 😂

[@LaMareAuDiable]

Thanks for your videos, I don’t play Brotato yet but I’ve watched all of your guides ! 😂

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Basically the best compliment I could get :D

[@letsgobulls24]

It’s a great game. Addicting af. I never played Binding of Isaac or anything like it before but this is a blast. I’m enjoying the videos as well. I told my wife yesterday “He’s not a douche, informative, intelligent, videos are pretty much exactly what I was looking for.”

[@jessejernigan8001]

Got it on my first try! Never would have thought spears were the move tbh

[@christianboi7690]

I feel like saving up early is a good option too. I maintained around 3000 by like round 12 or so and I tried to pay for everything with interest alone. I also found reformation’s hoodie and a ton of dodge though so I guess this was just a rigged run. I also focused on luck a bunch and I think that helped a lot. Good wave clear and high luck is a really good combo I think.

[@bones563-]

Yessss! Saver is one of my 7 characters left

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Awesome - good luck!

[@jodi3694]

For anyone still struggling on Saver I ended up going ghost flint and then adding some axes around wave 12 and the extra attack speed was able to help mitigate absence of health, dodge, recovery, etc.

[@JHank-yb4jv]

Came for the brotato, stayed for the investing advice

[@Cephalopocalypse]

It's like I always say, always take any financial advice you find on the internet

[@JHank-yb4jv]

@@Cephalopocalypse Especially interesting that you recommend moving my money from a savings account into derivatives of biotech crypto. Very interesting, thank you, will let you know how it goes.

[@DinglBotom]

does anyone else hear the "help" at 19:18?

[@PrivacyPleaze]

A small suggestion for your videos: Showing stats of the key items at the end of the run might be a good idea. Personally i was wondering total amount of material gained from piggy and total harvesting from the crown.

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Thanks for the reminder! I always fall in and out of the habit of doing that - will try to be more careful about it.

[@insertusernamehere-zp8vz]

Iused sticks, because they give you tons of flat damage, and all you need to make it work is percent damage (which you can get from the passive very efficiently) , attack speed, and defensive stats. They are also very cheap and save you a lot of money by not making you buy melee dmg.

[@k.w.8496]

wheelbarrow buy was incorrect, it costs 127 for 16 harvest, but if you save that, piggy bank will give 24 per turn, similar to 24 harvest

[@Cephalopocalypse]

That's possible, but it's more complex than that - harvesting is worth XP as well, so you can't just straightforwardly compare them

[@kylemenos]

Your forgetting the impact of xp and the crown purchase that multiples it further. Besides that I think it was worth.

[@Erlewyn]

The game doesn't tell you what the monsters are called, so everobody's gonna make up their own names. For me, they're mummies (ribcages), bulls (horned rushers) and aliens (coming out of the eggs).

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Haha true! Maybe I should have a naming contest.....

[@1K1NDR3D]

Where did you get that cursor? It seems the Gamepass version doesn't have anything like that :/

[@rKayZz0]

what is the challenge to unlock saver?

[@jeffe2267]

If you kill the egg right as it hatches, do you get the bounty for the egg AND the spawned alien?

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Huh, great question! I have no idea. Definitely worth testing though!

[@jeffe2267]

it seems like you do, but i couldn't be sure.@@Cephalopocalypse

[@gazs7237]

This potato is absolutely broken, I go with their dagger every time... My go to easy run along with chubby

[@tyediedhair]

Harder than the ranger. Have been stuck for weeks and 30+ rounds

[@DiegoarmandoZapienRodríguez]

You make it look so easy xD

[@MaestroAlvis]

3:40 doesn't harvesting have a hidden fraction? Surely it doesn't just truncate the number

[@Cephalopocalypse]

It does not! It's rounded up to the nearest whole number

[@tommyvandriessche592]

Is there any guide where you use ghost flint?

[@Cephalopocalypse]

A couple! In fact, I just did a Random Weapons challenge where I got ghost flint on the Ghost, so you can check that out for a pure ghost flint build!

[@napoearth]

You got at least 7 crates before wave 20. You could have taken that first bag you skipped.

[@jackc8365]

Somehow barely spent a penny. Went into the final fight with 7k materials and over 100 attack speed because of the legendary item from an elite and killed both of them in seconds. One of the easiest danger 5 wins I've had 😂

[@Izahdnb]

Man.. I tried a few runs and the shop is not generous in the spear department.

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Yeah, spears for whatever reason can be hard to find sometimes (I think the high base cost).

[@Fleklixxx]

I really love your videos but please turn the screen shake off

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Thanks! Sure, I can look into that

[@onekidarmy]

​@@Cephalopocalypsein addition to it being annoying and suboptimal for positioning, it also negatively impacts performance in most games. Lol who knew

[@cqstle-]

​@onekidarmy I've had it off too because it is way too strong. Dizzying even. As for performance, I'm playing on Switch and there's so much lag in the later levels even with all the effects, damage numbers and screenshake off. Hope it gets fixed soon.

[@Luckyn1604]

I'm not 100% agree with the way you talked about economy from his passive. First the piggy bank only at the start of the wave, so in early where you are spending everything, you actually get close to 0 bonus, not the 20% bonus. But then on the mid-late, I'm still not agree when you say every material is worth 1.2, because it would only be true if the piggy bank work once per material, this isn't the case your spare material become 1.2 but then 1.44, 1.728... so in 3 wave you nearly reach the 50% malus, and in 4 waves you are above. And you start sparing really early on this char because of the damage bonus (and piggy)

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Good points! I should have been a little more clear about the shortcuts I was taking - the main idea is that you'll have slightly less money *spent on items* than other classes, since assuming you are spending, that money won't be appreciating. And since costs rise with every shop, the value of materials decreases over time as well. Appreciate the analysis!

[@maxwellsope1080]

Are you planning on continuing the baldurs gate 3 lets play?. 99% of the playthroughs are of people that have no idea what they are doing. Other then some laughs most playthroughs are boring to watch and tedious too. I would like to watch an expert let's play.

[@Cephalopocalypse]

Yes! I had a small delay recording it as I'm on vacation and only got the first episode done ahead of time, but the next one will be up Saturday. Glad you're enjoying it!

[@maxwellsope1080]

@@Cephalopocalypse good to hear.

[@heryny4782]

I predicted this would be hordes and not bosses - I was right... of course.

[@Cephalopocalypse]

I predict you'll recover from the trauma within a few weeks

[@sandersbayden02]

You sleep on the lightning shiv

[@justalilbit8759]

Monk is definitely not the hardest elite xD Probably the easiest, any time I see Monk I know it's a free wave

[@sterbsen]

I bought 6 spears and saved money, pretty op character xd

[@diegopiergigli9409]

algoritm

[@oscarguzman3017]

50% item cost significantly outweighs everything Saver has going for him. I think he's my least favorite for sure. POS character. 😂

[@rendros88]

this is the dumbest thing ive ever played.