Why Runetracer is the BEST WEAPON in Vampire Survivors!

Vampire Survivors Part 15 - the dawn of great challenges is upon us! I am attempting Green Acres on hyper mode without evolving a single weapon, how will I find my damage? These weak little weapons better be enough or else.
Edited by: / benbenranger
#aliensrock #vampire #survivors
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[@Aliensrock]

Love taking any chance I get to use Pentagram now, it's truly the best of weapons.

[@NStripleseven]

A fun one for sure

[@briansun9261]

cool

[@essgetispget]

You should do a challenge where you can only take he first level up slot

[@sapphire--9375]

@@essgetispget pure rng. maybe just the first two?

[@zakouraa]

It's crazy to see how much abusing the leveling system made a difference. When I did this challenge myself I didn't know about enemies scaling with you, so by the end I was around level 100 like normal and it was really hard. Granted, I also used a different character while Mortaccio is definitely the best, but it is unreal to see that enemies couldn't get past Santa water for you while they seemed basically unaffected by it at the end of my run.

[@skywalkerjohn8965]

Bones: *hit 100* Tyler: Good job Runetracer

[@lauritshansen1997]

finally someone that noticed

[@RavenDravenek]

I mean, Runetracer did end with over twice the Bone’s damage

[@mauro_carvajal]

@@RavenDravenek its the piercing and more screen time that make the runetracer better, if it have the same damage that bone has it will outclass even vandelier

[@ShadowGod64]

also runetracer: does more than double the dps of bone

[@GamingForeverEpic]

@@tugazu to be fair lighting ring has never been that good most times he’s gotten it

[@gabeschultz124]

The massive amounts of damage that runetracer puts out is due to the fact that every offensive upgrade affects it. duplicator and spinach are obvious, candalabrador makes it big, spellbinder makes them last longer, empty tome makes them fire quicker and the speed makes it bounce more, meaning that no matter the increase, it will get buffed. The pure insanity makes it my favorite weapon in the game, and makes me wonder how the hell theyre gonna evolve it and not make it busted.

[@Smallpriest]

That is not 100% true, bone and peachone/ebony wings also benefit from every offensive upgrade affecting it, what makes Runetracer so good is just the way it was designed

[@Therevengeforget]

@@Smallpriest Runetracer is Pierce and Bone is Bounce. If you are flanked, Bounce is better, but if you face against a horde of enemies then Pierce is better.

[@jamesmayberry78]

Here's my prediction for evolved pentagram: Synergizes with Stone Mask, turns experience into gold :)

[@pi7855]

Imagine it evolved with crown and it DOUBLED the xp dropped lol

[@dhearyzikrimuhammad_0366]

@@pi7855 either doubles it or just turns all into 1 gem for easier collection

[@loganroman5306]

Or it could do like vandalier and evolve with bone.

[@lucielm]

I like the idea that The Bone and Rune Tracer should evolve together and become Screaming Skull which shoots off through enemies with a chance to pop a bouncing bone from the skull. The Pentagram should evolve with the Laurel to make some sort of divine bell. It acts like the pentagram except when it procs you have invulnerability for a few seconds and fully healed. Also special bonus to deal tons of damage to the reaper. Maybe 2 divine bells are enough to kill a reaper, but you have to survive for the 2nd one to proc.

[@lancesfoodreviews423]

@@lucielm nah the reapers health scales with your level and it’s 600k times your level when he spawns

[@bob-hp1lr]

I think pentagram might be counting overkill damage towards its DPS which could be what is skewing its DPS so high. Runetracer certainly did more work over the course of the run.

[@IACBolt7]

It’s a good thought but I believe that the dps stat displays the dps the weapon did at its best second, so pentagram will always have a massive dps.

[@EmeraldEmsiron]

@@IACBolt7 as far as I'm awarem its based on overall time. else your starting weapon wouldn't have such a massively low DPS usually

[@johnz5359]

@@IACBolt7 The DPS is calculated as Total Damage / Time in Seconds. So if we look at Pentagram for example it did 7.3 million damage over 19.44 minutes, so the calc is 7300000 / (19.44 * 60) = 6258 damage per second

[@achtsekundenfurz7876]

John Z is almost right. If you calculate the time properly (19m44s = 1184 seconds, not 19.44 minutes), it's a perfect fit: 7.3 million = 6.17k DpS * 1184 s.

[@johnz5359]

@@achtsekundenfurz7876 Ah, thanks, you're right, that was stupid of me, I think I maybe meant to write 19.73m, but then mixed myself up with 7.3 million. It makes more sense too, that the final number they give is 6.17 rounded up to 6.2 haha

[@MegaMisch]

Just for the record I'm pretty sure pentagram did not carry. It's insanely high DPS is what I believe to be just a strange quirk of the counters they use to calculate it. I don't know for sure but I'm fairly certain that what happens is they tally TOTAL DAMAGE and then divide it by TOTAL TIME. By doing this items that are gotten sooner have far far less DPS because the early game has so few monsters and therefore much less damage potential per unit time. As for the pentagram, it has an insanely high damage per use. Even if a monster has, let's say, 10 hp. If it's hit for 1000 damage then that will count for 1000 towards the TOTAL DAMAGE instead of just the 10 it took to kill it. That being the case it makes it so that when the pentagram activates and screen clears there will be close to 200 monsters that all take huge damage... but they are replaced in mere seconds. Other weapons will of course do less damage but still kill more monsters. This leads to very skewed tallys at the end of the game not properly repersenting the acual DPS. In theory if you had a weapon like rune tracer magically appear at full level for the last 30 seconds of the game, then its DPS would potentially be much higher than pentagram. Thinking about it now, there should be a kill count per weapon counter as well because that would probably be a very useful metric.

[@Raysunghwa]

It seems that there is a flaw how damage is calculated and I agree his runetracer, bone and santa water would have been sufficient to kill all the enemies before they were able to get close. With that kill count, I think this method would increase the pentagram's fake efficiency even more because it would kill all enemies regardless of damages they previously took from other weapons.

[@bladeswell5364]

runetracer: hits 34 bone: hits over 100 Tyler: "runetracer is so powerful"

[@vampyrecat4458]

Well at the time with crits runetracer was doing in the 90s plus at the end you can see runetracer had almost twice as much dps

[@hatimzeineddine8723]

runetracer does get (seemingly) infinite pierce which is good for the game

[@dhearyzikrimuhammad_0366]

@@vampyrecat4458 runetracer has no crits though And runetracer is good swarm damage while bone is for single target damage

[@cameronphenix2096]

_sad xylophone noises_

[@nicoboero15]

8:26 guys commenting b4 watching thats cringe

[@eljay3762]

You should do a video unlocking the red death character, you get it by killing the reaper that spawns after 30 minutes. There are existing strategies to kill it, but it's extremely hard to pull off - much harder than any of your challenges thus far.

[@Malachi_M]

Agreed!

[@JJ-qz1dg]

Honestly I disagree I tried to do it legit but with the sheer amount of HP it has its near impossible Unless you do the proven strat of basically making yourself almost unkillable in the library sit there for 30 min for a chance to kill him

[@Cobb]

Honestly I really like the bone, rune tracer, bracers combo. It's really good for clearing dense groups and it's fun to watch everything bounce around.

[@kalahatze]

9:55 The bones actually bounce an infinate amount of times, they only disappear when their time runs out, so yes, spellbinder helps them immensely.

[@awdefgbfrwef]

Here are some ideas for weapon evolutions : Pentagram + Crown = 100% chance to not erase pickups and spawn exp/chest on enemy defeat. Clock Lancet + Wings = Enemy is slow after being unfrozen. Runetracer + Tiragisú = Chance for a projectile spawn another once it decays. Laurel + Armour = Reflect some incoming damage.

[@redinator5]

These are good ideas. I think the tiragisú one could work well with bone the same way.

[@dhearyzikrimuhammad_0366]

I feel like laurel and armor would just either increase the amount of stacks you can get on laurel or make it do a full screen damage of like 50 base damage for every stack used

[@cinnamonjam9173]

tyler not knowing which weapon does what damage is amazing

[@KingTaltia]

"Runetracer evolution" to be honest, what I want out of that is "Crystal Skull-Runetracer evolution, requires Bone, inherits both weapons upgrades, now fires targetting a random enemy, targets enemies when it bounces off walls or enemies"

[@lepels]

Pentagram damage is probably them counting it doing 666 damage for every enemy it kills, instead of actually doing damage as whatever HP the enemy has left.

[@mr.pickle6487]

I feel like runetracer will evolve with pentagram. Just a permanent runetracer going in the shape of a pentagram and when it completes the shape, nukes the screen.

[@_Myrhl]

runetracer + pentagram runetracer does its thing but sometimes it starts drawing ruins that do random effects, quick 2 sec freeze, do damage to all enemies on screen, insta-kill, knockback dunno what it should be called, runetracer is already a good name

[@Evilminion926]

Pentagram: destroys everything in sight Tyler: good job rune tracer

[@1vader]

Actually, only certain enemies and all the bosses scale HP with your level. The last waves are pretty much only bosses though. But many of the earlier waves after 20 mins are always the same. And the scaling is simply base-HP times your level. So many of the bosses are actually pretty easy if you're level 1. But the difference between level 60 and 70 isn't really that big. Also, pretty sure the pentagram damage is completely overblown. As far as I know, it just counts the damage it would have dealt and pentagram does like 666 damage. But enemies don't usually have that much health so it's really quite meaningless and just jacks up the damage numbers even though it really wasn't that impactful.

[@mattg00004]

the bone upgrade thing is true, i saw it as a choice when i wasnt playing the skeleton guy one time and i thought maybe it was a bug but if other people have encountered it too then it must just be really rare!! i love how this game is so simple yet so well done and addictive, i love seeing indie developers do well and get the recognition they deserve

[@zerazerazerazerazerazerazera]

Challenge idea: only picking the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd option the whole run.

[@kingacrisius]

That's pretty much just a normal run...

[@orkunakman1541]

Wow that's horrible. Someone should do it haha, so RNG based though.

[@jkst4268]

If you hadn't taken pentagram cross would have been the best option as it's actually better unevolved then evolved as you only get one of it while unevolved it's affected by duplication. It's also probably the second best way to push away enemies behind EVOLVED BIBLE.

[@Qeisama]

I think Runetracer might become something like Peachone: it will be a union. Runetracer united with Clock Lancet resulted in runic lance, bouncing around freezing everything.

[@RavenDravenek]

I was looking on the wiki, trying to theorize what the possible evolutions would be for the remaining weapons, when I learned something interesting. Clock Lancet, Laurel, and Pentagram all have a max level of 7 instead of 8, this might be an indication that they won’t be receiving evolved forms.

[@thespyfromteamfortress2656]

Aliensrock is moving towards more flashy thumbnails... Hope it gets him more views!

[@_AprilRyan_]

Loved seeing you taking spellbinder, it was indeed insane for your build, it's one of the best upgrades for bone, peachone, runetracer and clock lancet. And for Santa water! When bone gets more time to bounce around it becomes extremely powerful!

[@lathanchurch8352]

No hp change, the reason they seem weak is because you have a massive damage advantage against them, Essentially an area of denial which is what you strive for come late game

[@gyny2358]

I think that pentagram "carrying" is miss information, as the damage numbers seem like pentagram just made tons of damage appear without taking that damage off of other weapons. I think it deal a ton of overkill damage which the game probably counts, but I can't say for sure as I haven't tested it yet.

[@msclrhd]

It could also be that when pentagram activates, it clears the entire screen of enemies, so will have DPS equal to how much HP all those enemies had. The bone and rune tracer only hit 2-4 enemies per instance, so their DPS is more dependent on how many projectiles there are.

[@platthepotato]

It would be really cool if they made Runetracer evolve with Wings and then made the projectiles speed up each time they bounced, that way you can run away from the projectile to hit the wall sooner

[@newgreen956]

I feel like there is the option to have a balanced and fun runetracer+ pentagram evolved weapon, similar to vandalier. Then you could have rune tracer trace out actual runes (like a pentagram) that cause effects, when they are complete.

[@RanDix]

My first win ever was (coincidentally) without any evolved weapons

[@geist1033]

This run brings a really interesting point to mind- the two halves of evolved weapons. In the meaning that it's more about which half you want more: both Wands are good, but would you pass up Empty Tome and Spinach for it? I'm speculating before seeing what Tyler ultimately picks, but I think Santa Water, Garlic, and Whip have the accessories you can very much go without, while Clover, Bracer, Candelabrador, Duplicator, Empty Tome, and Spinach all bring more to the build than their weapons? And you'd probably be more starved for accessories than weapons, considering Bone and Runetracer as obvious picks leave you at only 4 slots already. And then there's the King Bible, which wouldn't do much DPS-wise without an evolved build, but would probably be the best way to (defensively) survive the lack of damage in lategame. Under perfect circumstances (which would never quite happen, but...), I'm guessing the strongest build would be something akin to: Bone, Runetracer, Santa Water, King Bible (Defensively), and two of: Laurel/Clock Lancet for defense, Whip/Cross for controlling space, and Garlic for early game EXP Spinach, Empty Tome, Duplicator, Candelabrador, Bracer, Clover/Pommarola (for health regen if playing without meta upgrades) 's been a bit since the video was posted but if anyone stumbles into and reads through this comment I'd be curious to hear where y'all disagree with those choices

[@dhearyzikrimuhammad_0366]

If runetracer evolves with wings, maybe the runetracers will speed up when hitting an enemy or something

[@mariamoonbeam]

The bone seems to never have that great of damage, my guess is that it's because it only hits one enemy at a time and spends more time travelling than doing damage, but I still love it, it's so goofy. Maybe bone and runetracer could combine to evolve in some way since they are pretty similar, don't know how that would work thematically but I just imagine a projectile that splits when it hits things, one going through and the other bouncing away.

[@raskal8112]

My idea for a runetracer evo: it fires big projectiles with extra damage that don't despawn but only a like 3 or 4, and when they bounce off walls they make the normal projectiles. Also yeah, I like the idea of it being wings that do it, and the big projectiles would look like arrow heads.

[@axldave9940]

You could maybe try doing a "Only weapons of this type" challenge - like, garlic, bible, and peachone are all circular weapons; runetracer, bone are random firing; wands and knives are directional weapons. So you're only allowed to take weapons of a particular type?

[@ayte3656]

Love watching these in the morning

[@ui264]

I watched this on 240p. 19:40 was incomprehensible; and I wouldn't want it any other way.

[@snazzycat]

Thought I'd mention that if you enjoy this game, there's a very similar but also significantly different mobile game called Magic Survival, that came out a couple years earlier. I just found it again and the similarities were immediately evident.

[@ghisstl.w.9059]

Bruh, Tyler's build was so absurd that The Reaper froze and probably said "I'm Death and yet you stalled the inevitable?"

[@Phosypha]

Tyler's irrational love of rune tracer gives me life

[@johnz5359]

Definitely not irrational, if you get it early in the game, it's pretty much guaranteed to be your 1st or 2nd place damage or dps by game end.

[@CeeMonay]

When I got offered bone in my run I was so confused but I happily took it anyway

[@joeshmoe6930]

Mortaccios, The Basketballs from panda dude, runetracer... and dupe

[@themustardman6665]

Rune tracer evolve: speed lines, fires faster and increases projectiles speed the more distance you travel

[@ahnte]

The bones being very rare is true! I was once offered bone while doing a tank build with clerici.

[@XxSteamStreamxX]

I feel like evolved runetracer could get something like 10% more damage with every bounce. It would synergize a lot with what already makes runetracer pretty good, and you could even intentionally try to bounce them more by moving fast with wings lol

[@0215YK]

Amazing content as always Tyler, keep it up!

[@raf42]

7:10 Way to credit runetracer for the Bone's hard work.

[@xanlikes6146]

one of the nicest part of bones is its really good for knockback and sometimes onehits bosses. so it deals less damage in most of my runs than runetracer but its knockback effect is great for keeping enemies off of you

[@brotherpower3903]

What's your favorite game you've played so far on 2022?

[@drcgaming4195]

u can move by clicking and dragging. this allows u to make very minute adjustments to your angle to, for example, fire thousand edge in a particular direction. this can also help you get out of a bad situation

[@venxuenplays2406]

@Aliensrock Some extra information about a bug on the Empty Tome that weapons doesn't get the max cooldown updated if the weapon is maxed level/evolve before the Empty Tome reaching max level.

[@jimothy7665]

For runetracer I would probably make the evolved something like a bunch of permanent dvd logos bouncing around the screen

[@ABunchOTrees]

Challenge idea: beat the hardest map and difficulty with exactly ZERO meta-upgrades. If that's too easy you can also restrict the character.

[@404missingname7]

KZbin compression really hitting this video hard with all the projectiles XD

[@ODISeth]

If they create an evolution for the runetracer, since it’s the best weapon in the game without an evolution right now, I think it needs to be paired with one of the least useful passives in the game, the stone mask

[@TheBlackZodiacGhost]

The hardest challenge would probably be Exdash on Green Acres with Hypermode activated, and with no meta upgrades allowed.

[@venturestudio-arts]

YESS! I've been waiting for this challenge for a while now. So glad I get to see it. Love your content Tyler. Stay yourself.

[@JJ-qz1dg]

There is a weird interaction that the empty tomb buff only takes place after the weapon levels up so if you max out a weapon then get empty tomb then fully max empty tomb out your maxed weapon won't be affected by empty tomb

[@thefunnyaerialman]

-I hope that gets fixed soon.- Also, small correction: *tome Tombs are places where corpses are buried. So the day after I posted this, I log in to Steam and see that it's been fixed in a recent patch.

[@krysmun]

you should make it a challenge to see if you can evolve every single weapon you have on your build by the end of the run. It might be overpowered but the challenge mostly relies on luck, levelling up and now the added ability to skip and reroll.

[@abrachoo]

One time I was playing as missingN0 and got +200% area and bone. Fully upgraded, the bone managed to get 649.6k dps. Still took 40 minutes to kill a reaper with it.

[@dave6593]

40 minutes? bruhhh

[@ShadowGod64]

can you force king bible to be off the screen if there are too many projectiles? just wondering.

[@PikaLuigi]

If they made a combo weapon for Clock Lancet and Crown, you could become a Time Lord! I'll see myself out now.

[@spiggly_digg]

Challenge idea, create a build specifically to beat the reaper. Clock lancet and laurel to stall and everything else is pure dps

[@noahstout3288]

How to improve Runetracer: Make it so they have infinite up time. There are just like 6-7 that are constantly bouncing around the screen and you don't fire any more.

[@dapie303]

I did a super projectile run with this dude, and thousand edge is absolutely insane with more projectiles.

[@dakiesalamander5221]

Just a tidbit, you can kill the Reaper at the end and unlock a secret character.

[@Chuck.1715]

I did true non evolving weapon challenge back when it was possible, when lightning ring didn't have evolution (bone, rune tracer, clock lancet, pentagram, lightning ring, laurel)

[@Whitewingdevil]

Good old Mortaccio, praise be the bone

[@yuugur666]

Spellbinder is one of the best passive weapons for the bones

[@kaplield4565]

I've passed up the bone a few times now lmfao. Haven't ever used it yet so I didn't know it was so good. Gonna try to build it now

[@macaroni8273]

Yesss ive been suggesting this for a while

[@SomethingForMyComments]

I'm fairly certain pentagram destroys everything, but it does not delete orbs that are being dropped.

[@craftgaming8091]

pentagram does delete exp on the ground but if you read on it in the collection it says it synagises with luck witch i'm pritty sure means luck gives it a better chance to not delete stuff

[@aliopishtofa7073]

Ayyyy I recommended that last video

[@hamishfox]

3:56 nah nah nah man wings has got to combo with the clock lancet because the wings are about going fast and the clock is about time so they gotta go together.

[@nicoboero15]

Spellbinder helps Bones too Tyler

[@michaelsorensen7567]

What about rune tracer and armor, so you get additional damage reduction for each projectile? Rune scribed armor or something?

[@Tepalus]

*No Move Challenge* Let's go! Saw a german streamer attempt it. It's SUPER HARD! ;)

[@NationofFoxes]

@7:46 he hits an elite bat to the north with the clock lancer, heads directly south leaving the frozen bat off screen, and the frozen bat re-appears in the SSW of the screen, is that how all creatures are despawned and respawned or just the elites?

[@geist1033]

Every elite respawns (I think always coming in from the direction you're walking towards?) if you scroll it too far offscreen It's actually pretty useful for when you want to kill an elite but there's too much clutter on the way, you can just walk off to an empty area and have it "teleport" towards you I think you can still lose elites but that's if you despawn them AFTER their wave runs out (e.g. despawn the minute 8 Mad Forest bat after minute 10), but I'm not 100% sure on that

[@aergrtsahashaedfaer5411]

i did this with bone, runetracer, cherry bomb, peachone, clock lance and laurel for weapons and for items i had spinach, empty tome, duplicator, bracer, skullomaniac and tiragisu. runetracer ended up dealing 12,3 million damage

[@isoinsignia7540]

The pentagram does 666 damage to all enemies on screen, so it’s dps is going to be insane even with a long cooldown. Doesn’t mean it carried

[@Leadvest]

Yeah, I've been offered the bone on another character, only once though so it's pretty rare.

[@ws04]

pentagram carried by the last screen clear on minute 29 probably

[@kashifraja8451]

Evolved rune tracer idea: speed up, bounces aim towards nearest enemy then splits into 2 projectiles

[@toby2576]

Challenge idea: Standing still challenge. You can’t move the entire run, almost like a turret

[@thefunnyaerialman]

that's been done by pretty much everyone but Tyler, so he said that he didn't want to do it

[@AdrianWoodUK]

2:45 Huh, did not know enemy health scaled with player level!

[@TobyConger]

Tyler. It's the BONE that's dealing 100+ damage. NOT RUNETRACER!

[@GarrettHoward22]

Day 497 of telling Tyler that he never finished his minecraft series and that he should finish it. Welp. Didn't make the team. Also I did comment in last night's vid, just like 6 hours later

[@NStripleseven]

Day 457 of agreeing Well that sucks.

[@frujey]

Day 182 Oof

[@Kajinama]

Could information overload be a thing in this game? A build that has so much going on that you can't see yourself

[@skylex157]

It is not a very hard challenge but what about only evolved weapons, mesning, every weapon you take must be choosen with it's relic so you can choose anything that fits your run perfectly

[@eatticks3609]

This will be an interesting video

[@joekyu2517]

Didn’t u say something about some secret items in one of the maps? are u gonna make a vid about them?

[@shredderx-sd1qw]

aliensrock idk if u take game suggestions but ive been watching for almost a year now love the content btw. this series is pretty cool if it ever slows down with updates theres another good game like this called magic survival its on android and ios idk if its on steam tho

[@joekyu2517]

Does candleabradore increase weapon size? I thought it only increased the size of some aoe stuff like pechone and bible?

[@zombuster2233]

not sure if you read comments or if you take challenge suggestions. If you do though, have you thought about doing a challenge where you use only physical attacks (knife, axes, bone, etc...) or only magic attacks (wand, fireballs, runetracer. etc...)

[@antonbuur4790]

Did you change the thumbnail?

[@linuxares]

Hey Tyler! There is a secret character if you manage to kill a reaper ;D

[@superexplosion5985]

13:14 would you say that you like big fast bones

[@fporcelli2009]

This game takes it to an other level if you are italian

[@3tpattt553]

To do challenges you can go into the main js file and make unlimited rerolls or skips