Enter The Gungeon made its long-awaited debut last week on PC and PlayStation 4, inviting players around the globe to explore Dodge Roll Games’ new bullet-hell rogue-like. We’ve already spent a number of hours exploring the Gungeon, which reconfigures itself each time you begin a new run, and uncovered all sorts of loot while exploring the bullet-filled labyrinth. So we figured we’d round up a few tips and tricks for those still struggling with Enter The Gungeon.
Fully Explore Each Chamber
Enter The Gungeon players who’ve spent some time with other rogue-likes likely won’t need to be told this but if you’ve been making a beeline for the boss in each chamber you won’t find much success in the gungeon. Instead, take some time to fully explore each floor, collecting extra shell casings and locating whatever treasure might be hidden away in the farthest corners of the map. Thanks to the game’s teleportation system, any back-tracking you need to do shouldn’t take long and the extra loot you’ll find usually justifies the extra time spent exploring.
Master the Dodge Roll
Here’s another pretty simple tip. As you’re likely already aware, Enter The Gungeon includes a dodge roll command that offers few brief frames of invincibility to the player. Mastering this ability is pretty much a requirement for beating the game; particularly when you encounter some of Enter The Gungeon’s late-stage bosses. Ducking behind cover may be easier than properly timing the dodge roll. But you won’t always have cover to hide behind in Enter The Gungeon. It’s also worth pointing out that the dodge roll can be used to deal a small amount of damage to enemies if you dive over them at the right time.
Take Your Time
One of the biggest mistakes a player can make in Enter the Gungeon is trying to rush through the game. Many of the rooms you’ll need to clear only house a handful of enemies and can be cleared in a minute or two but you will occasionally stumble into a section of the Gungeon that hosts a high number of enemies. In these scenarios, it’s important you minimize the amount of damage being taken by your character. Success in these sorts of games requires careful resource management, with the player’s health being the most valuable resource of all. In big battles, take time to locate cover and use it wisely. Ducking behind a wall every few seconds might draw the gunfight out a bit longer than normal but you’ll thank yourself when you get to the boss with a full health meter.
Save Homing Weapons For Bosses
There are dozens of firearms to use in Enter The Gungeon. But each weapon has a different purpose. . We recommend saving homing weapons, like the Stinger or the Scrambler, for the bosses waiting at the end of each chamber. These fights tend to be the most like a traditional bullet-hell experience, making it difficult for the player to concentrate their fire on the boss. Giving yourself the added leeway of homing rounds makes the encounters much easier to clear.
Feed Empty/Hated Guns To Gun Muncher
Gun munchers will be encountered sporadically during your time in the Gungeon. As the name implies, the greenish box will ingest weapons from the player’s inventory, offering replacement firearms in a 2:1 ratio. While you won’t always find use for the gun muncher, players should remember that the box is an excellent means of disposing weapons you aren’t particularly fond of and/or getting a bit of extra value out of empty weapons. Sure, it’s possible to find ammo crates that will refill an empty gun. But there’s no guarantee you’ll find one or that you won’t be running low on ammunition for a better weapon by then.
Use Blanks To Expose Secret Paths
From time to time, you’ll spot large glowing cracks in the Gungeon’s wall. Next time you do, stand near the crack and activate a blank to expose a secret path. Granted, exposing the path means you’ll have one less blank at your disposal for the rest of the current chamber; however, this is just another reason why mastering the dodge roll is so important in Enter The Gungeon.
Use Blanks Mid-Dodge (As Needed)
If you've been playing Enter The Gungeon for more than a few minutes, there's a good chance you've already encountered a situation where you were forced to roll out of incoming enemy fire only to land directly in the path of another enemy's bullet. What you may not have realized is that there's way to avoid taking damage in these scenarios, provided you recognize them quickly enough. Turns out players can use blanks in the middle of dodge, giving you an extra "Oh s--t!" button when things get hectic. We don't recommend relying on this ability, since you still have a finite supply of blanks, but it could be what saves your life in a boss fight.
Know Your Trigger
Each of the 130-plus guns featured in Enter The Gungeon has their own unique fire rate, some of which are actually faster if the player is manually pulling the trigger for each round. While you can easily get away with holding the trigger for certain weapons, revolvers, crossbows and many other firearms can be fired much faster by mashing away on the trigger instead of holding it down. .
Stop, Drop And Roll (When You Catch Fire)
This is one of our easier tips. Should your character be set on fire, indicated by a small flame icon next to the character’s head, immediately begin dodge rolling around the room until the effect has been removed. Generally, it won’t take more than a couple of rolls to put out the fire. Just make sure you watch where you’re diving. It would be a real shame to avoid fire damage, only to roll into a spike pit or an enemy’s bullet.
Ignore Brown Chests
As you've probably realized by now, keys aren't exactly raining from the skies in Enter the Gungeon. You'll occasionally get one after clearing a room but, for the most part, players will have to spend their hard-earned bullet casings on the keys needed to unlocks doors and treasure chests. Since supply is generally limited, don't waste your keys on the brown chests you find scattered throughout the Gungeon. They contain the game's least-valuable loot and trying to unlock them all will generally leave you unable to open an important door in later chambers.
Know Your Shrines
More than half a dozen different shrines can be spawned in the Gungeon, each of which offers a some kind of potential benefit for the player. In some cases, the player will have to offer a major sacrifice, like a heart container, to acquire something new for their character. So it’s important to know the cost/output of each shrine before heading down into the Gungeon.
Shrines
- Ammo - Increase your curse (hidden stat) level to refill ammo
- Angel - Remove one heart container to increase damage and curse
- Blank - Use a blank near shrine to spawn chest
- Challenge - Triggers multi-wave survival mode. Surviving spawns chest
- Dice - Confers two effects at random, one good and one bad
- Peace - Sacrifice currently-equipped gun, heal one heart
- Y.V. - 10 coins fee (increased by 10 after each use) confers effects that occasionally fires player’s weapon an extra two to four times without consuming ammo
Extinguish Fireplaces When Possible
If you have a weapon that leaves behind a puddle, no matter what substance that puddle might be, use it to extinguish the fireplace in the first chamber. Doing so will expose a button that takes you to a secret floor. Don't worry, we won't spoil anything else. Just keep this one in mind next time you find that "useless" water gun.
Have some tips you’d like to share with the Enter The Gungeon community?
Head down to the comments and share the tactics you’ve found most useful in Dodge Roll Games’ latest release.
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