Dr. Ultra Mutant or: How I Learned to 100% Nuclear Throne (Achievement Guide)

Dr. Ultra Mutant or: How I Learned to 100% Nuclear Throne (Achievement Guide)

I. Introduction.

This guide is not beginner friendly, most of what I'm going to talk about won't matter much if you are struggling on getting past the Sewers or reaching the Throne for the first time. I recommend that, before you grind towards unlocking every single crown, you get all other achievements first, yes, including the Skeleton one (I mean it's not THAT nescessary but it's practice).

I also recommend that most characters have some neat golden weapons but it's not nescessary either.

That being said, this guide is purely about getting the crowns, so what's the easiest method?

II. The Easiest Method.

What truly means unlocking a crown?

According to the game, it's either looping, or beating the game with that particular crown.

You might have already unlocked some Crowns of Haste here or there, so you also know that looping is a way to unlock the crown.

"Therefore, you need to loop with the loop crowns!"

Wrong.

The easiest method is:

Reaching L1 1-2,

Grabbing the desired crown,

Get the van at L1 1-3,

Fight your way through the head quarters,

Pop the big boss,

Sit on her chair with your crown.

That's for the loop crowns, the easiest method for the normal crowns (which you should do first so you don't have to worry about it later) is to just sit on the first Trone without looping, but if you are consistent with the Throne fight, you loop with it and try to grab the loop crown as well on the same run.

And you might be asking, is the Captain that much easier than fighting frog mom, crystal mom, lil hunter again, technomancers and the throne? And while asking that question you probably realized that it is.

II. The Actual Easiest Method

Waiting for a Weekly with a crown you don't have on a specific character.

They tend to be easier but it gets more unreliable to use the Weekly the more you progress.

III. The Captain.


Dr. Ultra Mutant or: How I Learned to 100% Nuclear Throne (Achievement Guide) image 23

Let's start with the stats

First thing you'll notice is the chunky health, that's important for later, specially for deciding the mutations and weapons.

The boss behavior has some phases.

And quoted directly from the wiki, it's the following:

Charge Phase

Takes a shape of a fist and charges in your direction, breaking walls along the way.

Teleport Phase

Teleports and afterwards shoots a blue sphere that splits into blue bullets after hitting a wall. This sphere can be reflected by melee (and will damage the Captain if it hits her), but when it explodes the emerging projectiles will still hurt the player (unlike reflected flak cannon shots).

Projectile Phase

Stays stationary and shoots out projectiles in two different patterns, one around herself and one in an arc in your direction.

The fight starts with a punch to the face that can reach about the middle of the room, if you have 12 hp, you can survive that 1 hit but generally speaking you don't want to have a situation where you are too close to the boss, just start the fight by shooting at the desk from far.

Your strategy is to use your main damage weapon and just spam it as hard as you can on the boss, stay far away enough so that she doesn't charge against you, use your melee weapon to deflect most projectiles (some are very easy to dodge), but use it mostly for the main blue sphere that she shoots very often. They are dangerous, and just using a screwdriver isn't enough because you pop the sphere and the projectiles inside are even worse and the main issue, ideally you smash it back against her and reflect the projectiles that come out from the sphere, but most of the times you'll want to deflect it away from you.

Be careful of WHERE she teleports, if she teleports below your field of view, you may be surprised by a fast blue sphere going right to your face, so always consider that she could be down there, we (humans) tend to react faster to things that come from the top of the screen.

IV. Mutations.

Don't choose mutations based on end-game, choose mutations based on the boss fight

It's easier to just make a tierlist and explain some of them

S: Strong Spirit

A: Long arms, Stress, Scary Face (20% off 1540 is a lot)

B: Rhino skin, Blood Lust

C: Laser Brain, Boiling Veins, Gamma Guts, Impact Wrists

D: The other mutations basically

Generally speaking, you choose what fits your playstyle and what you think is best based on your experience.

Stress is a mediocre mutation unless you are fighting the Captain, then it's amazing.

Pick only a single HP regen mutation, not only will they not be that useful in the boss fight, you have several other alternatives, try to avoid picking the first one until around 5 or more mutations in. If you have to pick one tho, it's not a problem.

Avoid getting the third weapon mutation to avoid heavy hearts eating one of the four mutations since it's not that good.

Patience is king, Second Wish is the same but only before 5-1, avoid it if the mutations are good enough.

Strong Spirit is best by far, ignore all others.

Impact Wrist is alternative to trigger fingers and vice versa, avoid trigger fingers if you already have Stress, they are usually used for dealing with crowds.

Throne Butts by tier.

Fish: D

Crystal: Up to the player, C

Eyes: B

Melting: Depends if you can deal with crowds or not, generally B

Plant: S (This Kills The Captain)

Y.V: D (overkill and wastes ammo)

Steroids: D

Robot: D

Chicken: D (who cares about throwing?)

Rebel: B

Horror: D

Rogue: D

V. Weapons - General

Here comes 40% of your success

If you have bad weapons, the fight is exponentially harder

If you don't have melee, you are making it dangerously more difficult than it needs to be

Of course, you should prepare your loadout in mind of the fight you are going to have, but you also need to fight your way until there, killing bandits, scorpions, rats, dogs, whatever it is that is on palace.

One weapon is the crowd control, or as I like to call it, just melee.

The other is also the crowd control, but we want something that deals a lot of single-target damage, and something with relatively good range so we can keep away from the boss.

In general those 2 weapon types will take care of you through the first loop.

Let's make an arbitrary tier ranking of all melee weapons

V. Weapons - Melee

Starting with the worst

Screwdriver

It's not actually the worst lol

It deals 6 damage and is enough early game, you can beat the boss with just the screwdriver (I did it once), but be careful that it doesn't deflect anything, although it can swing fast and that's amazing.

Chicken Sword

It's character specific, but generally speaking, with chicken, you want to throw this sword away for a Black Sword later on, it deals same damage as a screwdriver but it reflects, has a bigger arc, and swings faster than a wrench which is very good (and could just be enough to beat the boss).

Energy Hammer

Ammo scares me but theoretically it wouldn't even be too much of a problem

The damage is overkill, but swings relatively fast.

Sledgehammer

What the ♥♥♥♥? Why is it here? It's good, it's great, but it swings slow, if you don't have attack speed mutations (which you should) this weapon's main appeal would just be the damage which is VERY good but not good for someone like the Captain. I tend to avoid it and I prefer the wrench over it.

Blood Hammer

Actually fun weapon but misses the point, about same damage or higher than sledgehammer and faster swing speed, but you take 1 hp damage if you don't hit an enemy with a swing, you'll want to deflect the blue sphere instead of hammering it in front of Captain (tho you can)

Shovel

Same as sledgehammer but I prefer it because wider arch :)

Wrench and the Gold Variant

Great enough, fast enough, good early game, bad late game, good against captain again because it's fast and it deflects, gold variant even more so.

Jackhammer

Good weapon, has a problem with the blue sphere and the range is bad but it deals well with lil hunter so it's ok, also uses ammo which can be a problem.

Energy Screwdriver

Very good weapon, strong as ♥♥♥♥ with laser brain, has a problem with sphere but since it's fast and the effect lingers because of laser brain it can deal with it.

Lightning Hammer

A lot of damage, synergizes with Laser Brain, faster than sledgehammer, the attack speed seem to be a bit on the slow side but it's sufficient for Captain.

Energy Sword

Can be used interchangably with the lightning hammer, ideal melee weapon, specially with long arms and laser brain.

Guitar and Black Sword

Best melee weapons but are exclusive to fish and chicken, keep that in mind for these characters.

Honorable mentions would be Ultra Shovel which you won't see if you are doing this route, I mean, you can, but it's overkill and uses rads which scares me too, but if you are familiar with it, use it.

V. Weapons - Everything Else

Instead of ranking every single weapon, I'll just talk in a more "fluent" way like this.

Grenade Launchers and Bazookas are good, not for the boss, but in general, people tend to underestimate them or are very scared of them, but the damage is surreal, and the ability to go to the secret area in the Sewers is neat, Granade Launcher's range is good, but I don't think any of them are Captain-tier. Gatling is only one that could be Captain-tier

Hyper weapons are the best and my favorite, useful in all moments of the game, including the hyper launcher, they are SSS tier for me and very much useful for the Captain. I'm pretty sure that if you hit all your shots and you have max ammo, you don't even need to replenish. All of them are Captain-tier

Heavy Bullets... are usually weird, heavy assault rifle is the strongest bullet weapon (if you aren't doing anything memey with triple machinegun and accuracy or anything of the sorts), otherwise they are alright but suffer a little with L1 desert since there are many worms and useless ♥♥♥♥ in front of you. Most are Captain-tier

Bouncer weapons aren't that great, hard to find a situation where they are more useful than what you have, but they aren't completely useless. None are useful for Captain.

Double shotgun is better than standard, fire is better than standard, auto is better than double, ideal would be auto fire shotgun, and that would be useful for the first loop and desert but not the Captain. Eraser is weird but not bad, wave gun is good at close quarters, flak cannon is amazing, and super flak cannon I didn't use much. None are useful for Captain, except maybe Flak Cannon.

Slugger is good, Assault is strong but overkill, Gatling is perfect, none of them have excellent range and suffer with smaller enemies, heavy slugger is suprisingly fun and fast. None are useful except Gatling and Assault (range is still a problem), hyper slugger is best of the best.

Auto Crossbow is amazing, crossbow weapons tend to suffer a bit with the looped desert but are good with the homing mutation, heavy auto is good for captain. They all are generally good against Captain.

Splinter is aight. Have defeated the Captain with the Super Splinter, Captain tier I guess...

Seeker is fun if you have stress so you don't even worry about aiming and you are just spamming it, not too bad for Captain since unlimited range. Captain-tier.

Toxic weapons are good with eyes, but gimmicky.

Stay away from blood weapons in general.

Laser > Lighting = Plasma

They have their own benefits, laser is a bit better overrall but all depends if the weapon is just naturally better, the best weapon is laser cannon

SPC is not worth it surprisingly enough, it's good for end-game meta but this is not the same meta

Lightining weapons aren't bad.

VI. Golden Weapons.

Golden weapons make your life a bit easier from early to mid-game, rarely they are good into the late-game but they can be with Stress, or if it's the golden wrench.

Best is Assault Rifle, spawns after L1 1-3, you can end the run just to grab this weapon since it's my favorite one.

Golden Wrench is a guaranteed good melee.

Golden Shotgun is good alternative but useful early to mid-game

Golden Laser Pistol is great if you happen to get a laser brain.

Golden Plasma gun isn't horrible.

Rest is personal preference and not that great

VII. Some Tips I Found Useful

Rage quit if you are angry, there is no point in trying and trying again, come back after a few hours.

Practice makes perfect, keep at it, and you'll get there, your motor skills will improve.

Screen shake can disrupt your vision and concentration. Make it 0.

Watch speedruns and learn speedrun tactics, I won't be speaking much about them since I didn't do it myself, but it's very worth it, (gamma guts on big dog for example)

VIII. "Should I?"

"Grind big chests?"

For every red weapon chest you don't open, you increase by 25% the chance the next red weapon chest will spawn as big. Leaving the first chest can be a good idea, by the time the 25% chance triggers it might be later on in the weapon loot.

You can time the stages you are gonna go through so that the big red weapon chests spawn as soon as your favorite item can appear.

Should you do it? It doesn't matter, I tend not to follow it just so I don't have to think about it, but you can and it's something nice.

"Should I always go to the secret area?"

Sewers secret area you should try to always go but you don't need to. It doesn't affect the run too much but seeing nicer weapons early is a straight upgrade.

"Oasis?"

Going through Oasis is not recommended but you can do it, the problem is that you won't have great weapons and fewer mutations.

"Kill myself to get those rads / skip every other rad canister"

Unless you are Rogue, rads won't be a problem, by the time you enter the van and get into the police station, you'll be Ultra already. By the time you finish Throne you might be on higher 8 or mid 9 with all characters, so a single stage delay on getting a mutation is not a deal breaker.

"Second wish?"

It's patience 2.0 if you can handle jungle.

"End the run if I don't get in the van in L1 1-3"

The sewers and the secret area in the sewers are good backups, you just don't want to wait until you are at 5-2 to enter.

IX. Conclusion

You'll get there with time, this is more of an endurance achievement than anything.

Give me feedback on the guide, I would be more than happy if this helped you with even a single thing. If you dislike it, you can tell me too!

I'm willing to discuss and help with any questions. Regarding the achievement, or other achievements or anything about the game.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2124166647					

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