The Starfish: An alternative eHP build for the early game (before you can kill protectors)
;tldr if you can 2x your labs or better, this build is not for you - go back from where you came. If you can’t 2x your labs yet but stone income is your #1 priority in the early game go run blender, it's better for stones than this build. If you care more about cells, coins, and an idle playstyle, keep reading.
What is the Starfish build?
The starfish uses thorns to kill enemies and survives the first few thousand waves in a run with def% and def abs, and the last few thousand waves with def%, health, regen, and stun effects.
Nothing in the Attack tab of the WS is unlocked - the build just lays there, killing things with thorns and regenerating, hence the name Starfish.
Here is a video of the build on T1 wave 11200+, T3 wave 4550+, and T4 wave 4580+. With no additional lab levels and 100-200 billion WS coins, this build will easily run wave 4500+ on T6. Additional videos will be posted when/if I reach that level.
The specifics of this build (cards, modules, UWs, Perks, Labs) are detailed at the end of this post.
Who is the Starfish build for?
This is an early game build only (at least as far as testing goes) so if you can already run all your labs at 2x or above this build is not for you.
The starfish build should be considered by anyone whose current build cannot kill protectors and is OK with the benefits, drawbacks, and requirements of the build.
What are the benefits of the Starfish build?
Excellent cell farming: When compared to other eHP early game builds, the Starfish build has superior cell farming ability, being able to consistently run two or more labs at 2x speed and the rest at 1.5x.
Excellent coin farming: When compared with other eHP early game builds, the starfish should be at least as good if not better at coin farming.
No need for any special modules
No absolute UW requirements (although the death wave health bonus offsets the coin and regen tradeoff perks)
Extremely ‘idle’ playstyle allowing the build to run for hours without player input unless you are trying to push for a relic
What are the drawbacks of the Starfish build?
Early on this build is hot garbage in tournaments. Expect to be at the bottom of Gold tier until you have 100-200 billion WS coins invested in health-regen-def abs and at the bottom of platinum tier until you have 5x more invested. If top tournament performance for stone income is important to you, this build is not for you.
This build cannot push wave 100 to open higher tiers without a disproportionate amount of WS coin investment compared to an early blender build. You should already have all the tiers you care about unlocked before switching to this build.
What are the requirements or near-requirements of the Starfish build?
Have all the tiers unlocked that you want to have unlocked for a long time - I suggest up to tier 11 or 12
Be in gold league for tournaments so you can’t get demoted any further
Have the land mine stun card
While 5 card slots will enable this build without any room for econ, up to 14 slots can be beneficial if you don’t like micromanaging them within the run
Death wave is highly recommended to offset the use of both the regen and coin tradeoff perk. Although I did not test this without DW in theory you should be able to forgo the CTO perk and still be able to get the same cell income with this build, although that may not be advisable due to the big drop in coin income this would lead to.
A generic epic armor module with 2% thorns is highly recommended so that non-bosses die to your tower in 1 hit. The build will work without that but the heat-up mechanic will mean you are taking 4% more damage than you need to be.
What doesn’t matter for the Starfish build?
Strangely enough, the Starfish build does not care about garlic thorns. Due to not having multishot knockback, the vampires crash into the tower and die from regular thorns well before garlic thorns has a chance to finish the job.
How does the Starfish fit in with other eHP builds like turtle and blender?
The Starfish is the natural extension of the advanced turtle build in the Evolution of eHP builds thread and is superior to that build in every way. The Starfish should allow as good or better cell and coin farming as the blender+ build but is vastly inferior to that build in tournament performance and, therefore stone income.
How is this any different than blender?
According to u/Darkestlight1324 on a blender build:
The core idea is to have use knockback to push enemy’s into orbs so you can “blend” them. You use your health/defense/recovery packages to tank bosses and elite enemys
Health, thorns, defense%, recovery package, orbs, knockback, and lifesteal are the stats that “make” blender, but attack speed, multi shot, and rapid fire all help push enemy’s back so it’s good to invest some in them to.
The Starfish build does not make any use of knockback, lifesteal, attack speed, recovery packages, multishot, or rapid fire - making it a vastly different build. An additional major difference is the blender build cannot deal with protectors for a very long time (until many stones are spent on UWs) but the Starfish build can deal with protectors from day 1.
Orbs are only used in Starfish if you also have the black hole UW, as the extra orbs card is required to get kills within the BH.
Regen and Health are carrying your build, why do you bother with Def Abs?
While it is true at the end of the run def abs has a minimal contribution, it is absolutely essential to the first few thousand waves of the run and remains so until you have over 500B coins invested in your WS health and regen levels.
As described in the specifics section below, 400-1000 WS levels of def abs buys us the time in the beginning of the run to raise EALS, buy up recovery amount and max recovery so EALS gets more free upgrades, and accumulate the perks necessary to turn on our build.
What UWs are required to run this build?
No UWs are explicitly required. This build was tested with death wave and poison swamp with a 20% chance of a swamp and a 12% chance to stun. Without death wave in theory the build should work but not progress as far for the last few hundred waves, unless you forgo the CTO perk. DW is highly recommended for this reason. Without PS the land mine stun should still provide adequate cc. Otherwise, standard econ UWs can be chosen and other UWs can be selected with an eye to the endgame as recommended here https://what-uw-should-i-pick.netlify.app/.
How and When can I switch to the Starfish build?
When you meet the requirements (see above) you can respec your WS. Unlock nothing in the attack tab, ELS in the utility tab, and death defy in the defense tab.
How did you come up with this build?
I read this post and others that followed it (examples here, here, and here). After my def abs failed I noticed I still survived for a few waves so I made this post to figure out whether it was due to lifesteal or regen. Then, I used thetower.tools to do some calculations and thought this build might work. Then I made this post and this post and this post as I was figuring it out along the way.
Why do so many players well into the mid/late game not understand how this build works?
Somehow whenever you talk about def abs on this subreddit people see red and lose their mind. They forget what it was like to not have a spare trillion coins to pump up their WS levels of health and regen, and they look at the videos of the last waves in the runs where def abs does next to nothing and completely forget what it takes to survive the first few thousand waves to get to that point. It’s like u/Driftedryan said:
I'm so far past that, I could max the stat before wave 100 if I wanted and it still does over 1000x less then my Regen and health
Just tune out the noise of the players that poop enough coins to fill up your early game WS. Soon you’ll be just like them and can forget about this brief early game period.
Furthermore, the changes to perks made in patch 24 (as detailed in this post) were implemented well after these old-timers left the early game where a build like this mattered.
Who should check themselves before they wreck themselves responding to this post?
Anyone who can’t handle the fact that def abs is actually useful beyond T1, or anyone that left the early game before patch 24 should save themselves the embarrassment of posting and go back from where you came.
Is Def Abs really needed in this build?
No, if you already have over 500 billion coins to split between health and regen in your WS, you don’t need def abs, bUt YoU dOn’T nEeD tHiS bUiLd EiThEr. Enjoy the midgame and leave us poor early players alone.
What are the specifics of the Starfish build?
Workshop:
The key to a building successful Starfish is respeccing your workshop to take everything out of the attack tab. It is multishot/bounce shot/rapid shot combined with knockback that destroys this build by allowing protectors and elites to stay alive for too long, but knockback alone doesn’t have the same impact.
Make sure you don’t respec until you have used an early blender build to unlock at least t11.
What your workshop looks like depends on how many coins you have to spend. Below is what your workshop should look like in an ideal scenario where you have 2B coins to spend in the WS:
Attack:
Nothing unlocked
Defense:
Health: 400
Regen: 400
Def Abs: 400
Def%: Max
Thorns: Max
Lifesteal: Max
KB: Chance Max
KB: Force Max
Orb: Speed Max
Orbs: Max
Shockwave Size: Max
Shockwave Freq: Max
Land Mine Damage: 50+
Land Mine Chance: Max
Land Mine Radius: 30
Death Defy: 20+
Utility:
Cash Bonus: Max
Cash/Wave: Max
Coins/Kill Bonus: Max
Coins/Wave: Max
Free Attack Upgrade: Max
Free Defense Upgrade: Max
Free Utility Upgrade: Max
Interest/Wave: Max
Recovery Amount: 20+
Max Recovery: 20+
Package Chance: 40
Enemy Attack Level Skip: none+
Enemy Attack Level Skip: none
In the event you do not have enough coins for the above investment, make the following changes:
Defense tab:
Only unlock up to lifesteal until you can afford to unlock through death defy at max minus 20* levels (~9 million coins)
Utility tab:
Unlock everything but instead of max level, target max level minus 20*.
*Max minus 20 is chosen because it is a trivial cash cost to upgrade in-run.
Labs:
All standard advice for econ, lab speed, modules, UWs, attack speed, etc. applies so this section will only discuss labs that are specific to this build.
Def Abs: I brought this to level 37. In the long run all these levels are wasted however it is def abs that allows me to have an idle playstyle and not really care if I can check in all that closely in the first few thousand runs, or even sleep through the night at a higher tier than I otherwise might. For that reason these levels are worth it to me. YMMV. Do what lets you sleep at night.
Def %: Although all levels beyond 23 are a waste in the long run, you may decide to take this further. I’m only at level 16 so I haven’t made a decision on what to do yet. It is a very long lab time (cost is minimal in terms of coins) but it can play a big role in extending runs and perhaps a small role in tournaments.
Health, Regen, DW Health: These all extend your run so increase them as you desire to meet your cell/coin goals.
PS stun: I brought this to 12% but I never tested how much it adds to my run beyond land mine stun. It is about to be reworked so I wouldn’t put any focus on this right now. PS should be optional for this build anyway.
Perk Bans: There are only 3 perks that can outright kill this run (the 2 damage TO perks and the -90% regen TO perk), and a 4th that can if taken too soon (the cash TO perk). 3 bans is easy and a 4th is realistic if your coin income supports it.
Auto Perk Order: Not necessary if you have 4 bans but can provide some nice QOL.
Coin/Wave: This is only useful until you have GT+BH after which time it become negligible part of your coin income
Cards:
The cards that are essential for this build are:
Health
Regen
Fortress
Extra Defense
Landmine Stun
There is an argument to be made that fortress could be removed at the end of a run if you are juggling slots.
Standard econ cards are:
Cash (can often be removed at end of run as everything gold boxes with free upgrades)
Coin
Crit Coin (only matters if you have high coin multiplier)
Wave Skip
EB
Additional useful cards are:
Free Upgrades (The more free upgrades the faster EALS gets maxed)
Second Wind (great run extender because deaths are often random when a vampire somehow is not stunned)
Extra Orb (only to kill enemies inside BH)
Wave Accelerator (time=coins/cells)
A total of 14 slots would allow all of the above cards with no juggling. If you are juggling cards landmine stun is only needed after def abs fails (could be as high as wave 8000 on t1), cash can be taken out when free upgrades will gold box everything before the run ends, free upgrades can be taken out when everything is gold boxed.
Death ray and recovery packages might extend runs but I haven’t determined that they do with certainty in testing.
Modules:
The defense module is the one that matters here. This build assumes you have none of the fancy modules, just a plain epic one that is level 41+
Having 2% thorns and the highest def% you can roll is most important. The 3rd most important stat is probably def abs although I have not tested regen and it may improve tournament performance.
Perks:
As discussed in the lab section only 3-4 perks kill this build.
The rest can be taken in the order you prefer due to your def abs freeing up the early waves and giving you enough time to build up your def%, def abs, health, and regen perks. If you are pushing for a relic or milestone you’ve never gotten before you should probably not take the coin TO perk.
In-Run Playstyle:
For the first ~500 waves gold box package chance and recovery amount, and get max recovery and EALS as high as you can afford.
After that, upgrade health, regen, and def abs equally.
When you are pushing for a relic or milestone you’ve not gotten before you might focus more on regen and def abs since your health will be higher due to not taking the CTO perk.
Between-Run Workshop Upgrades
I’ve found it best so far to upgrade health, regen, and def abs equally in the WS. I believe tournament performance is most helped by regen so as I get more WS coins to spend I may disproportionately favor regen.
Credits
Thank you to everyone here and in the discord who has replied to any of my previous posts/questions and especially u/priesten for the initial advanced turtle build, u/popillol for the evolution of eHP post, and those that followed making posts about def abs in the post V24 meta.
Feedback and Testing Please!
Feedback is welcome, positive or negative, but is especially valuable if you decide to take the leap and run and test the build yourself. Also if you have an early blender build please share your total WS coin spend and your cell income or relic milestones which would allow us to better judge whether this build is worth bothering with at all. If you have 1q LTC and want to tell me how much def abs sucks or theorycraft a blender build while forgetting you can't kill protectors with it maybe keep that post in your drafts.