Table of Contents
Best Weapons!
S Tier
King Bible, Cross | Empty Tome, Duplicator
King bible and cross’ upgraded forms are some of the highest damage in the game and the upgraded book makes it very difficult for enemies to ever get close. Coupled with a bracer and a magic wand, the keep out zone becomes impenetrable.
Empty tome and Duplicator are the strongest sources of combined offense and defense among the passive items.
A Tier
Runetracer, Magic Wand, Both Birds, Bone, Garlic (Forest) | Crown, Bracer, Clover, Spinach
Runetracer is good screen wide damage all game long. The magic wand is the best source of single target keep-away power and pairs well with either garlic or holy book to really seal up your space. The birds do good softening up damage at midrange and when combined simply win the game. The bone is similar to runetracer but focuses more on the space around you as it doesn’t pierce. The garlic is A tier on forest due to its ability to kill all basic bats on contact. The first 5-10 minutes are a breeze with this and you can get an early headstart on your levels to get ready for the beefier green zombies and to chew through the skeletons at 11 min.
The crown can push you ahead on the level curve which is always good. Bracer makes your book wall impenetrable and lets runetracer touch more baddies. Clover grants you more 4 choice level ups which can help you from being forced into bad level up choices. Spinach is a 50% damage up when maxed which is nothing to sneeze at.
B Tier
Axe, Fire Wand, Santa Water, Lightning Ring, Laurel | Wings, Attractor, Stone Mask, Spell Binder
Axe and Fire wand are good damage, especially when maxed, But axe needs a terrible passive item and the fire wand is inconsistent damage targeting even if it is very high damage. Santa water is a worse version of the birds but can help soften targets up. Lightning ring targets randomly but the damage is not bad. Laurel is a defensive item but is the best one as it can let you push through a dangerous surround without getting toasted.
Wings, attactor, and stone mask all provide decent bonuses but just aren’t usually worth the slots they take up and don’t contribute to any weapon evolutions. Spell binder contributes to the best evolution, and mildly boosts some weapons like runetracer and the birds, but is otherwise unremarkable.
C Tier
Whip, Knife, Pentagram, Clock Lancet, Garlic (Library) | Armor, Hollow Heart, Pummarola, Candelabra
The whip, knife, and clock lancet all require proper positioning/facing in order to use correctly meaning any time you out of position or fleeing, the contribution of these items is nil. The lancet itself is also a positioning dependent defensive item. Only useful if you are trying to push past 30 min by freezing death. The pentagram requires the passive luck upgrades, maxed out clover, and at least level 4 on itself for it to not just delete all the pickups at an annoying rate. It’s an item you use to flex on the game but doesn’t serve a real purpose. On the library, the garlic is just a worse king bible and not worth a slot.
Armor, hollow heart, and pummarola are all defense items you don’t need. The Candelabra actively makes your book wall worse by making the gaps between the books wider and putting them further from you. It doesn’t provide a meaningful bonus to much else.
I feel like people forget that garlic lowers enemy knockback resistance. Really good in combination with other items. Also, good for xp farming.
Bible is situational, but not weak. You need attack speed (or max investment in the attack speed powerup) to make it viable as enemies can still slip past. It’s a good item to combo with stuff like evolved axe. But on its own, can’t carry a run like some of the other items can.
Bird dps may not be that high but it’s one of the best clearers out there. Especially if you bother to evolve it.
I’d say knives and whip both are some of the weaker items. Knife dps is really high but you’re missing that AOE potential.
Weapons I’d actually consider useless? The clock lancet, laurel, santa water. These don’t have evolutions, but also aren’t strong enough to justify it. Runeseeker has some huge clearing potential in comparison. Also laurel and slow lance both don’t give you extra DPS which is a death sentence in this game.
Oh, and pentagram too. It’s more harmful than good. 1. deletes all xp. 2. forces all enemies to respawn, causing easy surrounds.
Clock Lancet is necessary if you plan on going past 30 minutes, same with Laurel. Clock Lancet is a great combo piece when combined with slow-firing weapons like Pentagram and Fire Wand, Laurel is excellent for wall builds, such as Garlic/Bible/Santa Water. Get off my lawn builds are generally excellent, but can QUICKLY fall apart if even a single enemy gets pushed past too quickly, Laurel gives the build a moment to quickly reinstate the wall, or put distance between you and a boss.
I just did a run where I forced myself to take Santa Water and things that buffed Santa Water exclusively every time they were offered. Used Mort for the extra projectiles to ensure Santa Water could build an effective safe zone. Grabbed Crown early to quickly level the water to be viable, and it was arguably the smoothest run I’ve had of Hyper Forest yet. Mort’s OP to begin with, but it does atleast show Santa Water can work, and powerfully at that.
With the new Santa Water upgrade in the latest patch, it’s gone from trash to S-tier! Consistently highest DPS for me now, and essential for creating safe zones in the last 5 mins of the game.
The garlic is weak. Even evolved it might have the lowest DPS in the game atm. It’s nice early game as a lazy way to kill weak mobs, but as soon as the enemies get strong enough that the field can’t one shot them it falls off really hard. I find the Bible or Axe are much better defensive options since they scale with more stats and items required to evolve them also buff other weapons. I would like to see Garlic tweaked so that cooldown reduction improves how fast the field deals damage.
Garlic is probabaly my favourite and a must pick. It’s not there to kill every enemy, but leveled up garlic amazingly usefull to protect you from and get rid of swarms of bats, ghosts, and skelettons.
Like others touched on, Garlic isn’t really meant to carry a run on it’s own even if it’s been evolved. It’s value is helping you push back enemies in it’s radius which can get to a decent size on it’s own without investing in the candle.
Try running garlic with a knife and bible and you can just walk along the bottom wall in the library for great effect. I will say I don’t think garlic is worth evolving though because pummarola isn’t really worth it.
Garlic is probably my favorite balanced weapon in the game, providing heavy utility at early levels, hitting it’s peak in it’s mid levels, and dropping off at high levels. Taking it for it’s first level or two is almost always worthwhile in many builds to deal with swarms, which many better DPS weapons aren’t built to handle properly.
Bible is really OP, scaling very very well throughout a run. You not seeing it on level ups is chance, not a flaw of the item itself.
Garlic has only one good use for me: When I started out and when I tried to make Exdash work. For Exdash, it did well because his penalties need real compensation to make a run work
Bible is straight up one of the best weapons in the game. What are you on about? You don’t look at weapons by picking only the weapon and then you judge them, you look at them what they offer, how easy it is to compensate their weaknesses (and also what you might need to sacrifice) and especially how they perform in endgame. Anything on a normal hero gets you through early and mid game.
Yea, Bird is bad. Waste of gold. Don’t get me wrong, if you gave me a free weapon I would pick it over a lot of other things (so I think the final state of the upgrade bird is strong), but given how you have to invest 23 levels and a chest into a weapon that gets outperformed by Santa Water is beyond me.
Bible is broken, it needs a nerf.
Garlic in combination with Bible is basically god-mode.
The bird is only good once its evolved otherwise its weak and hard to control.
Garlic is the best early game weapon and is an excellent defensive tool in late game (I agree that it should deal a bit more damage when upgraded though).
Bible is one of the best items IMO, it deals a fair bit of damage and prevent enemies from swarming you.
The bird is the best item in the game when upgraded, so it’s logical that it’s fairly weak early on.
garlic and bible op i have 6 hours done like 6 full runs never fail anymore, your trolling.
garlic literally carries my games to 30 minutes the knockback becomes insane. i just had a garlic bible birb game. the monsters couldn’t even touch me.
garlic is bad.
the most op combos in the game all revolve around duplicator and extra projectiles which garlic doesn’t gain from.
people saying “it helps mitigate” haven’t gotten through endgame swarm in hyper. Even with every possible buff on garlic things walk through easily.
And the only way garlic works in a build at endgame is if it is carried by weapons that mean garlic is doing near 0 dps.
Garlic is literally the best sss tier must buy weapon. Not only it lets you freely farm early game it’s also a solid defence.
You blame bird for not shooting where you want but you love axe which is one of the most unreliable weapons in game.