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In the indie roguelike vertical-scrolling shoot-em-up Gunlocked, there are two ways to customize your ship before you even start a run. You can pick a Pilot, which determines your starting weapon and a character-exclusive Augment, and you can pick up to three non-character Augments, which are more general but are still quite run-defining.
Since you can only pick three of them, and there are currently 21 available once you unlock them all, you’ll probably want to know which ones you should use. Whether you want to fill the screen with bullets and explosions, or just want to live long enough to clear the stage, here are the best Augments in Gunlocked, ranked.
11 Nano Repair
The value of this Augment relies largely on how much you’ll need it, since it only takes effect if you’re at 25 health or less. Your ability to heal gets overcharged to 200 percent, which will do a decent job of keeping you alive if you can manage to avoid taking lethal damage.
Of course, the usefulness of Nano Repair goes down if you’re not getting hit, so it functions best as training wheels. However, when paired with other life-extending perks, like Phase Modulator or Supply Depot, or utilities like Kinetoshield and Repair Drone, you can live pretty dangerously and still not end up as a fireball. Just keep in mind that this is non-compatible with the Exposed trial which turns off passive regeneration entirely.
10 Phase Modulator
Like the Nano Repair, the Phase Modulator’s value lies largely in how often you get hit, which is also why the two synergize so well. The extended invincibility period that the latter gives means more time healing before you can get hit again.
The Phase Modulator, in addition to tripling your invincibility period after taking a hit, will also give the Phase Shift powerup you can get in-game two more seconds of uptime. The extended invulnerability makes this Augment work nicely with the Anti-Matter Engine or even the Unstable Core augment, if you want your hit retaliation to not invite further damage.
9 Power Converter
The Power Converter is an interesting piece of kit since it basically functions as an investment in your future. It gives you two points of shields for every powerup you pick up, but doesn’t actually heal you so you’re still reliant on other sources of healing like Repair Drones or the odd Auto-Repair powerup.
You can double your max health this way if you do a good job of not getting hit, but even a little bit of extra padding can be life-saving as the run gets more difficult. Now, you’ll want to run this with Supply Depot, since powerup drops are pretty slim and a guaranteed powerup every 90 seconds can go a long way to lengthening your shield bar.
8 Slag Shot
This Augment initially might seem like more trouble than it’s worth, but if you build around it, you’ll find that you can turn the screen into a hell of bullets for your enemies to deal with, with just a little work and some luck.
Slag Shot makes it so that whenever you destroy an asteroid, it’ll launch a default of three projectiles towards the top of the screen. Now, destroying asteroids is pretty difficult unless you’re also running the Treasure Mapper. But even without it, eventually, you’ll be able to destroy asteroids regularly, which is when Slag Shot shines.
Just remember to pick projectile weapons and utilities for that sweet, sweet synergy; the most important of which are the Replicator and Discharger.
7 Supply Depot
The Supply Depot is a nice powerup to have, and is pretty build-agnostic. After all, who doesn’t need a random pick-me-up on occasion? While the powerups you get are smaller than the ones that spawn naturally, you get them regularly, and they can still come in clutch.
You get a mini powerup every 90 seconds, which do less damage, heal for less time, or lasts shorter than their full sized counterparts, but will still trigger powerup synergies like the Power Converter as if they’re a genuine article.
6 Treasure Mapper
The Treasure Mapper marks an asteroid at around every 12 seconds, and also allows you to deal a lot of damage to the marked asteroid when you first hit, plus being trackable with Lock On weapons. Early on in the game, this is likely the only way to destroy asteroids – at least until you have a few weapons or damage bonuses in play.
The value of this Augment is that asteroids hold a trove of gems that give you valuable experience to get an early start on leveling up your ship, especially since enemy spawning is pretty slow at the start of a run.
5 Prize Box
The Prize Box is a great tool if you’re patient and don’t like relying on chance too much. It allows you to pick one of three random Utility upgrades at the start of the run (which can be rerolled). The catch is that you’ll need to wait before you can use it, as you’re only automatically granted that Utility at the 10-minute mark.
This is good if you want to guarantee a particularly strong powerup or, more importantly, secure a Utility that serves as part of a Symbionic evolution. The latter particularly works well, since you can’t get Symbionics until after 10 minutes anyway.
4 The Sure Thing
While it’s not a 100 percent bet, The Sure Thing lives up to its name more often than not. This Augment makes it so that whatever the first thing you upgrade in a run will always show up when you level up, denoted by this Augment’s target symbol.
Ideally, you’ll want to pick a weapon that you want to make into a Symbionic, but, barring that, pick your starting weapon or a particularly powerful Utility upgrade. Keep in mind that you only get this choice once per run, so you should probably use all the rerolls you have available to try and get what you want.
3 High Roller
High Roller is one of those abilities that don’t seem all that powerful, but can often be the difference between the perfect build and a perfect mess. It allows you an extra reroll at the start, and another for every 15,000 points you earn.
You can hold up to four rerolls, and you use them to reroll your choices on level-up (or The Prize Box). While it’s not so useful when everything is going your way, the extra rerolls are always valuable when you end up with a slate of bad choices, especially at critical times like when you need to pick something from The Prize Box or The Sure Thing. Plus, your inner gambler would get a kick out of some extra chances.
2 Kinetobeam
The appeal of Kinetobeam is simple: move around enough, and you can blast a fat laser across the screen, constantly damaging whatever is caught in its beam until the effect stops or the enemy dies.
It’s a nice extra weapon at the beginning of a match, and, with a full build, you’ve got yourself five weapons. The best part (aside from the aforementioned fat laser) is that all Utilities that affect Beam-type weapons also affect this, for maximum synergy.
1 Blowdozer
The Pilot Ram gets exclusive access to this Augment, the best one available in the game. The Blowdozer is a versatile, powerful ability that applies an explosive debuff to up to five enemies affected by force effects, causing them to explode after one second, or after they die, dealing damage in an area. This ability can charge up with ship movement to increase its area of effect, but even uncharged, it’s still quite beastly.
There are plenty of weapons with force effects, and Ram starts with a good one to begin with, meaning you’re rarely short of synergy when you pick him. Just keep in mind that, though targets ‘explode,’ they won’t actually die unless their hit points are depleted. But this hardly matters for anything but bosses.
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