Hi, I'm Tuxedo Catfish. At the time of this writing (7/2/2025) I have the high score for every single class on Survival Function / Nightmare Pandorum, sometimes by 2x-3x the next-highest score, and a scattering of high scores in other mode / difficulty combinations. I would like more competition, so I'm going to tell you everything I know about how to get high scores in Survival.

Economy mostly means cogs, but also item picks, rerolls, and free items/upgrades. Cog economy perks tend to be multiplicative with each other which means you want as many as possible, as early as possible. Club Walloper / Cog Pounder is the best pair of starting weapons for almost every class, barring a few with traits that make one or the other obsolete or less efficient.

At the heart of Void's Vigil is a feedback loop: you convert cogs into weapons (and various upgrades for your weapons) which increases your DPS which increases how many enemies you can, potentially, kill and convert into more cogs. The main confounding factors or limits are, first, you have to not die, and second, until lategame there are usually FEWER enemies on the screen that your maximum DPS could potentially kill.

Note the emphasis on "more." Stronger enemies is more complicated -- upgraded enemies drop more cogs, but are also more dangerous, can block shots or visibility that could potentially hit other enemies, and have a less favorable interaction with AoE attacks. Curse and its relatives (more score for more HP) do not help with economy AT ALL and imo should usually only be considered post-swarm when most of your DPS and kills are coming from "indirect" methods like Demi, Inferno, Doom, Void, etc.

But more enemies? Good from the moment the game starts. If you can't keep up you weren't going to make it anyways.

The best weapon in the game, hands down, no contest, is the Star Devourer, closely followed by the Gatling Gun and (at some distance after that) the BFG. The Void's Vigil is a gimmick that costs way too much for anyone but a handful of overpowered classes that get free weapon/trait picks, the Moonlight Greatsword is garbage, the Astro Starscream is only good for its trait, and the Ion Lascannon is ALMOST good but it doesn't fire often enough and also if you take Vital your game will lag to death long before you hit high score range.

You usually want to get the Gatling Gun first. It's fairly accurate, and has medium range, so it's good at eliminating enemies as they approach you in the early game. Trigger is one of the best traits in the game and you want it on all your guns. In addition, the Gatling Gun is extremely good at applying stacking status effects like Demi, and on-proc effects like Voltage and Void. In the late game your Gatling Gun is what saves you from enemies that rush straight at you, either by killing them or by reducing their speed.

The Star Devourer simply deals more DPS than any other gun, with one minor exception we'll get to in a moment. The projectiles despawn based on the health of enemies they hit, so it's not quite infinite scaling with the number of enemies on the screen, but it's pretty close, and there's a geometric effect (especially with traits like Demi and Inferno) where the more total projectiles you have flying around the longer all of them last. This is the mega weapon you should be stacking by using Atom, although you MIGHT consider getting a second Gatling Gun at some point, especially if you have at least 3-4 out of Voltage, Demi, Emission, Flux, Void, and Blast.

The BFG is a specialized, lategame pick. It is extremely inefficient early on and Doom isn't a useful trait unless enemies are living for five seconds, which they shouldn't unless you're a class (or took an item) that summons extra mega enemies or you're well into swarm territory. Mega Doom, however, is a viable way to shore up your "real" numeric damage if your element stats are really ♥♥♥♥♥♥ (because you're a class with penalties to them, or just got unlucky with elemental troves) and you need a way to finish enemies off after Demi wears them down. Also, you will never need more than one -- Doom doesn't stack like that.

For non-mega weapons, you mostly just want to pick ones with good traits (which we'll get to in a moment) but when possible, and especially when choosing how to fill your 5th weapon slot (6th with Auxiliary Gunic) you should pick a weapon that fires as many individual shots as possible. Freeze Froster is the gold standard, because its mega trait is amazing, but the Bubble Brewer, Cogger Convoker, Blobe Globe, and Acoustic Amp are also reasonable choices, and the Ion Laser can also be good if you need a way to snipe certain enemies (beyond the range of the Gatling Gun) and get its mega trait.

But I'll try to simplify it:

Crowd Control >= More Projectiles/Hits > Atom/Chemistry* > Cogs > Shield > Damage > everything else

Crowd Control really just means two traits: Demi and Frost. Demi does a lot of other stuff too and you should prioritize it over any other trait -- except right at the very start of the game. Frost is really good and I rarely pass it up, but it won't really benefit you as much until later on. Knockback is basically worthless since the patch that made it only affect enemies once, and Shellshock is okay but extremely unreliable -- crit-based effects are either buggy or intentionally don't apply in certain circumstances, and it doesn't affect enemies with fixed trajectories, only homing ones.

More Projectiles/Hits is a big category. Trigger and Scatter are the most important entries here because Trigger affects every gun and Scatter affects every gun but melee weapons, and they increase the number of "original" projectiles, the things that actually come out of the gun and interact with the most other traits. Stuff like Voltage and Flux also count, but it's really hard to tell if Voltage arcs or Flux clouds trigger things like Demi or Dismantle, and my suspicion is they (mostly) don't. Still good, though. It also includes projectile behavior traits like Bounce, Pierce, Stable, and Home, because "hitting more enemies" or "missing less" still means more hits -- but these traits are less good because they don't apply to all guns (or affect all guns as powerfully). Their main source of value is they make the Star Devourer even better.

Atom lets you get the mega weapons you want instead of being forced to either waste picks or take garbage. It also lets you double up on mega weapons on any class because mega weapons you've swapped to Elementful don't count against the limit for e.g. Argon, Zenon, etc. mega weapons. You can take Chemistry in order to get to Atom faster, but be VERY careful about this -- you can potentially lock yourself out of the ability to get mega weapons if you have a non-Astro Starscream mega weapon and then take Chemistry. Sometimes it's worth the risk, because taking Chemistry (or just having any Elementful weapons) means Elemental troves are more likely to contain Elementful Exhaust, which is a huge damage boost if you get it early. But usually I skip Chemistry, it's as likely to ruin your run as it is to save it, and the BEST runs are the ones where you get Atom without having to bother with the Astro Starscream anyways.

Cogs mostly means Dismantle, but Alchemy is better than it seems (remember, cog perks/items almost all multiply each other) and Cogise is like getting a free cog hauler every sector, which isn't game-changing but is pretty good. I'm pretty sure Snag is bugged and either just straight-up doesn't work or only works under extremely narrow circumtances (e.g. the killing blow was a critical hit, that killed via direct damage, from an original projectile).

Shield's importance varies by class; it's better on fragile characters, obviously. Some classes can skip it every time (the Orbilas Kindle gets a better version of it for free, the Droneraiser Minioneer can almost guarantee overlapping Guardum drones, etc.) and some individual runs can skip it if you can get Guardum drones + Droneous Doppelganger, multiple copies of Bulleton Shield with ability cooldown/duration passives, etc. It's also (in my experience) the second-worst source of lag after Vital -- something about the way the game checks projectile/shield interactions is really hardware intensive, and it seems to check it even for projectiles that can't be blocked by shields (e.g. lasers).

Damage is pretty self-explanatory: you can usually tell whether a trait adds more damage or not. One special caution here is that you should never take Vital, especially not in conjunction with on-crit effects like Dismantle, Snag, etc. Once your crit rate gets around 75% or higher (including conditional bonuses, which the character screen may not always reflect) you will occasionally see the game stutter and lag intermittently -- that's because it's calculating a huge chain of recursive critical hits and their effects. It's too bad, because recursive crits is a great source of damage, but it will make your game unplayable faster than it helps you score. Never take Choke -- it doesn't break the game or anything, it's just a bad deal early because you spend less time shooting, and a bad deal late because it makes it harder to kill dangerous mid-range enemies.

Drain and Discharge give you room to recover from mistakes, but the better you play the less you'll need them.

The only other traits worth mentioning are score traits (Curse, Blobify, Spook) which are okay to take if you can handle them but don't contribute to the feedback loop -- enemies spawned by the latter two don't spawn cogs, and Curse is just a pure "take a penalty for more score" unless you have the Trojan Doll, and Traitful, which is a gamble (you might get one of the traits that make your guns outright worse like Choke, or lag like Vital, but it's also a LOT of power at once and for weaker classes you might never reach the FPS death stage anyways.)

Your priorities for passive items are pretty similar to the above, except that economy/cog-related passive items are REALLY good and probably deserve to be ranked higher. Cog Enlarger, Five Finger Function, Lucky Paw, Loot Box (although that one can backfire), Smithy Anvil, Cog Craver Contact, Crooked Dice, Wanted Communicae, Store Restockments, and Decypher Key (because you'll catch WAY more haulers) are all insta-picks. Midas Fingerer is a trap unless you already have multiple overlapping shield sources or 100% uptime on a shield that doesn't decay when it's hit, which is a really high bar.

The best damage passives are Trojan Doll and Auxiliary Gunic. The boring +20 or +20 / -10 stat picks are better than they seem, especially the Defense ones. Abilitum Resync + Particle Diffuser are circumstantial but very good if you have multiple abilities that benefit from them. Static Field, Force Field, and Blank Cartridge are okay but really you need to not get hit, they'll only really SAVE you on a handful of broken classes that can stack defense into the upper hundreds and/or have multiplicative HP scaling. Data Sync is a good deal if you get it early and/or combine it with other perks that generate more hackable entities.

Desecrated Remnants deserves special mention. Many of my highest-scoring runs involved taking it, because it gives you a LOT more enemies to kill post-swarm, and I believe the melee-only Ethereal Shades can "crowd out" other, in some ways more dangerous enemies. However, the trade-off is that sooner or later, one of them is going to touch you -- a run with Desecrated Remnants will always end sooner (in terms of sectors) than one without. This makes it a really tough judgment call and I encourage you to experiment with it on a class-by-class basis -- sturdier classes, which can take a glancing blow now and again, and runs where you get all the good CC traits and multiple Star Devourers early, make it a much better bet.

Droneous Doppelganger is the best ability in the game. It lets you stack Guardum drones, which can create a near-impregnable defense against projectiles; it lets you stack any of the elemental-themed drones, which have amazing bonuses and potentially means the ability gives you a bigger boost to your main elemental stat (whatever it is) than any other single perk; with Gunineer drones it's literally just more weapon slots; the only thing it doesn't really work well with is the universal aura drones (Hexooist, Cog Sniffer, and Occultist) but the first two don't need the help and the latter is worse than useless.

Other than that, cog abilities are good as ever (generally my priority is Cog Sucker > Humongous Cogs > Cog Raiser, but the first two are VERY close and should maybe be reversed), Bulleton Shield is a decent band-aid for not getting the trait or Guardum drones (or a redundant layer of defense if you did). Direct damage abilities are good early but don't bother taking them late. All Eyes + [Element] Mists in your highest element are solid, but not game-changing. Lure skills are usually more trouble than they're worth, but Lure Hauler is a good pick. Wanted Probe is the actually-good version of the Lure abilities. Healing Winds can be worth taking if you have no other source of healing, but it's not great. Abilitum Mirror is worth it if you have at least 3-4 other strong abilities already.

For drones, prioritize Guardum, Cog Sniffer, and Hexooist. It's worth spending rerolls to rank one drone up to 3, get a new drone (any type) at level 1, and then upgrade the first drone -- if you just upgrade willy-nilly the mega upgrade will eat drones at level 2 or 3 and this sucks, so since you're "wasting" picks either way you might as well take the path that gives you more control over what you get. The elemental drones are all potentially good but Serenos and Emeralt are best, and Emeralt in particular is better than Cog Sniffer if you can actually get one -- but seems to be dependent on having at least some amount of that element / some weapons of that element first, which complicates matters.

Impostus drones are okay but the final form lures mega enemies, which you usually don't want, which makes them awkward to use. Abilitum Drones and Eggy Weggy drones are garbage. Medical is fine, you might grab one if you have no other source of healing or body stat boosts, but almost never a priority.

It's usually better to take a reroll than to take a crappy item, especially for troves with very large pools (for example, you will never exhaust the passive item trove selection unless you're the Mimic Mouldmaker, so don't bother trying to "thin it out".)

Never take elemental fluid. You should (almost) never take elemental dynamos/exhaust except for Elementful Exhaust, because you're going to switch all your guns to Elementful or Elementless eventually anyways. Element priority is generally Elementful Exhaust > Elementless Core > Any Chamber > Any Jewel > Any Generator > Any Gem > Any Leech > Any Stone > stuff you shouldn't take. Generator and Leech value is, obviously, a function of how many sectors are left in the run -- I usually do the math by assuming I will last till Sector 10, although a really good run will go further. It's okay to choose a "worse" item from your current highest element over a better one that won't increase your damage right now, especially if you already have Atom or Chemistry.

Ability troves without one of the short list of abilities you really want are a good way to build up rerolls without hurting your progression very much if at all. Never take bad drones except as fodder to upgrade a good one. Try and alternate between Weapon and Trait troves so you don't consume weapons whose trait you haven't received for free, and when possible delay opening Trait troves until you know you're going to get at least one freebie (sometimes it's unavoidable though).

General priority when you have a choice re: Magical Troves is Traits > Weapons until maxed out > Devices = Elemental (but elemental troves drop off in relative value much more quickly) > Drones > Ability. Stronger classes can usually exhaust the Trait trove selection -- in fact, being able to do this is the main thing that MAKES a class strong or not.

You have to move around to get cogs, but it takes you away from the safety of drone auras, away from lingering projectiles you're already fired, gives you less time to react to enemies coming towards you, and takes you closer to the stage hazards. Generally speaking, in the early game you should be running all over the map constantly, picking up as many dropped cogs as you can, but the longer the game goes on the more you're going to want to stick to the center (and get cogs some other way, e.g. Cog Sucker, Decypher Key + Lure Hauler, Cog Craver Contact, etc.)

Nothing will end a successful post-swarm survival run faster than not seeing a Gyronicus coming at you and touching one of their orbiting projectiles. The projectiles can't be blocked by shields and they can't be shot down -- your only option is not to touch them. It's sometimes worth keeping a single weapon with extreme long range (like the Ion Laser) purely so you're more likely to hit these guys before they reach you. If the Ionic Lazcannon didn't kill your FPS, this is the main reason you'd want it.

It's fairly likely that my knowledge of the game is incomplete, and that there are tricks or rules of thumb I have not discovered that would allow you to push it further. I believe I have a pretty thorough grasp of the importance of traits, for example, because I've played a lot of runs where I get every single one I want, or where I don't get some one, specific trait and very clearly lose because of it.

On the other hand, it's really hard to reliably A/B test passive items or abilities to see how impactful they are -- you might never even get the chance to take the one you're looking for in an entire run!

I also spent a very long time sabotaging myself by only playing the strongest classes, which meant I just relied on getting lucky with e.g. Mimic Mouldmaker mimicry traits and not only failed to discover things that would make other classes more successful, but because I wasn't pushing myself, I didn't even notice things that would make my *Mimic Mouldmaker* runs more successful, by retroactively applying lessons I learned from compensating for other classes' weaknesses.

At any rate: I believe the scoreboard can be pushed much further, especially if caiys is able to implement performance improvements to make death-by-FPS-loss less of a issue. I adore this game and I don't want to just sit complacently on my nightmare throne -- come knock me off of it!