Goobies All Item Tiers for 1.1.0

To use this list, follow this priority when choosing items:

Priority: Tree Whisperer > Dual Use items > Boss Melter Items > Swarm Melter Items = Damage Reduction Items > Junk > Idle Hands (don’t get if you have 4 projectiles or more)

Use your judgment on an item when you believe it’s been leveled enough and should be skipped in favor of an item in a lower tier.

This item is necessary if you get past stage 5 or so. The earlier you can get it the better. Tree Whisperer drops items if you are sitting on a tree. The proc is about once per second and according to the dev it will only select one tree to proc on if multiple are touching you. The proc rate doesn’t seem to change if you move quickly across multiple trees, though it’s hard to tell without confirmation. The earlier you get this, the more items you’ll have. If you don’t get it you’ll eventually hit a point where you can no longer get items due to how levelling scales. If you’re using Abnormal Autopsy the game appears more generous later on and you can still get about 3 items in a stage, but you’ll get more from Tree Whisperer on average. Unfortunately you need to get Tree Hugger before getting Tree Whisperer, and tree hugger isn’t particularly useful especially with Abnormal Autopsy.

Items here are 2-in-1 use case for the next 3 tiers below. In other words they can be Boss melting and Swarm melting and Healing, or any combination thereof. These should be your first priority when they appear, at least until a point.

Priority: Tree Whisperer Tier > Spirit of Mumsa > Slash > Energy > Mass > Boss Melter Tier

Spirit of Mumsa: This item is good for boss melting and damage reduction in the form of movement speed. Each level adds 1 of the base numbers here for everything exluding frenzy duration to the effect, making it good to upgrade. The boss melting comes from the damage the item inherently adds and in the form of movement speed damage from Yellow Sapphires. Each attack has a 1.5% to proc Spirit of Mumsa, which will make you enter a frenzy indicated by little red dots that surround the Gooby. The effect adds +3 base damage (before calculations) to every attack (including weak ones such as a slash chain or Splinter, making the combo of these two items good) and +10% to speed. At level 4 you’ll have a 6% chance to frenzy for 3 seconds, with damage +12 and movement speed +40%.

Slash: This is a passive good for dealing with swarms and dispatching bosses. It does require some crit, but the 3 crit upgrades are good enough to make this a very desirable item. At level 1 it’s just for swarms, which is what you want early on anyway, and has a 20% chance to proc on a crit. When activated it will hit up to 2 slashes on a nearby enemy (including the enemy that the item activated on) dealing 50% of the crit damage. Level 2 gives it a 40% proc chance on crit, and increases the damage to 75% of the crit. Levels 3 and 4 add 1 slash per level. Level 5 might have a typo in it, stating it causes up to 3 slashes. I’m pretty sure it adds another slash, since every level after 5 does that. The more important thing here is each slash is considered a guaranteed crit. This means you can get an infinite chain of slashes, at least until damage goes below 1, if your crit is high enough. At level 5 you can see the damage it does to bosses pretty easily. It’s effect acts very much like an AoE on the swarm, but isn’t affected by AoE radius. Adding more levels past 5 is only good if you have the damage for it since each follow-up slash reduces damage by another 75%.

Salvaged Energy (AoE): This item hits 2 checkboxes, AoE and Healing. Salvage Energy tends to do enormous amounts of damage on the end screen. Since the attack is centered on the Gooby, it can be useful against bosses as well. At level 1 you’ll do (50% * combo number) damage in a radius (based on your combo) around you. Level 2 will deal (50% * combo number) + (0.005% * combo number) in a radius based on your combo. These numbers seem small but they seem to add up, and the enemies within the radius just disappear. At level 3 the bonus damage goes up to 0.001% of your combo, and you get healing at 0.001% (1/100k) of the combo. The healing might not seem like much, but it will pretty much instantly cap your health if you have a good combo going. The final upgrade increases bonus damage to 0.015% of a combo, healing to 0.0015%, and adds an effect where you get 500 orbs at the end of a combo which frankly won’t matter by time you can get to this level.

Tranquilizing Mass: This is a good boss melting item, a good damage reduction item, and good for keeping swarms away from you. This item starts modest and becomes great. At level 1 it looks pretty bad, you get an orbiting mass that does a little damage and slows enemies. At level 5 you get 5 orbiting masses that on-hit each have a 15% chance to give you a shield that provides 25% damage reduction for 3 seconds. After level 5 you can upgrade shield chance up to 25%. The masses get buffs from damage upgrades and proc effects that aren’t “Initial Attack” related, and they orbit fast effectively turning the radius around you into a buzz saw. Around level 10 or so there is falloff as far as adding more masses goes.

Items here mainly add damage to a single target, so any boss/miniboss/elite. Elites shouldn’t be a problem if you follow the tier list, and minibosses aren’t dangerous enough to prioritize damage for, but bosses have a bunch of ranged attacks especially when they start mutating, and eventually a hit from these will one shot you. That makes one shotting bosses before they can do the same to you a high priority.

Priority: Dual Use Tier > Crushed Ruby > Crumbled Sapphire > Yellow Sapphire > Brisk Capsule > Sonic Howl > Citrine Crumbs > Girthed Up > Condensed Power > Hardened Tip > Obliteration > Swarm Melter Tier

Crushed Ruby: This is your main source of crit chance beyond the starting bonus you unlock. Levels 1-3 give a crit chance of 10% > 17.5% > 25% with a crit damage multiplier of 150% > 190% > 225%. Levels 4-6 change Ruby to Cracked Ruby, giving crit chance of 25% > 35% > 40%, crit damage of 225% > 250% > 300%, and a Bleed stack (DoT) lasting 3 seconds of 20% > 35% > 50% of the crit damage. Level 7 changes Ruby to Immaculate Ruby, giving crit chance to 50% (where it remains), crit damage of 375%, and giving crits a 1% chance to proc cardiac arrest which instantly kills the target. Further levels add +55% more crit chance. Immaculate ruby is very good and should be prioritized.

Crumbled Sapphire: This increases all damage sources. Lv 1-3 Increases damage by 15% > 30 > 60%. Lv 4-5 Fractured Sapphire Increases damage by 85% > 115%, all damage has 2.5% > 5% chance to deal double damage. Lv 6 – 7 Increases damage by 155% > 205%, all damage has a 7.5% > 10% chance to deal double damage. Deal an additional 1% > 2% damage per point of damage dealt up to 100% > 200%. Further levels increase damage by another +10%. The Pristine Sapphire effect is effectively another damage multiplier on top, so it’s worth prioritizing.
Yellow Sapphire: Adds a flat +0.2 base bonus damage to all attacks per curent movement speed. This is automatically more powerful than Hardened tip since .2 * movement speed of any Gooby is greater than 1. It also combines wonderfully with Capsule and Spirit of Mumsa. Put at least one point in it to start with. The successive levels decrease the bonus and I’ve never gotten it much past 2, but it’s always better than Hardened Tip.

Brisk Capsule: This is a dual purpose item when combined with Yellow Sapphire, which is why its here instead of in the Damage Reduction tier. While it’s nice to have more movement speed, there is such a thing as too much movement speed. This limits you as to how many points you’ll want to put here for damage.

Sonic Howl (AoE): Originally I had this in the Swarm Melter tier, then I realized it does enough damage to bosses to bump it up. The first item I ever got was Sonic Howl so I had assumed for some time that it wasn’t very good. That was wrong. Sonic howl keeps damage pace with other AoE affects and instead of activating on kill, it activates every second starting at level 1. It centers on your Gooby, so at first it won’t be doing much in the way of long distance damage. Because of this you will probably need a chain attack option when you don’t have many upgrades. When you do have upgrades though, Sonic howl is effectively a shield that surrounds you and ensures that any weaker enemy won’t be able to touch you. This is also why I consider it a reliable boss killing move, it consistently does damage within a range of your Gooby and provides an AoE damage source. Prioritize it over other AoE moves.

Citrine Crumbs: Increases attack speed, note that this doesn’t increase projectile movement speed so it isn’t particularly useful for swarms. Levels 1-3 increase Attack Speed by 10% > 20% > 35%. At levels 4-5 Citrine Changes to Broken Citrine, increasing attack speed by 50% > 65%, and providing a 15% > 25% chance of cauzing a status called Frenzy which temporarily increases attack speed by 5% > 10%. This frenzy isn’t the same as the Spirit of Mumsa frenzy. Level 6 changes Citrine to Flawless Citrine, increases attack speed by 80%, keeping the same prior stats, and adding a double shot to every 20th shot. Another upgrade will take that to every 10th shot. There isn’t much special about Citrine, and it looks like there is a cap on attack speed so only prioritize this if you are definitely attacking too slow.

Girthed Up: Increases AoE range by 15% per level. This is actually a fairly large range, and not too many points later you’ll have screen-wide AoE procs, hitting both bosses and swarms. The effect is better against swarms.

Condensed Power: Increases AoE damage by 15% per level.
Hardened Tip: Gives a permanent +1 to base projectile damage. This does affect all projectiles in the game (i.e. initial attack, dizzys ball, splinters, needles, chain, etc). No idea if this affects Tranquilizing Mass.

Obliteration (AoE): This is a weird ability and I’m not convinced it’s worth putting points in. It may be great, it may be worthless, I need to test it more or get more info on it to tell. It ends up towards of my damage pie chart in runs so I think I’m not fully understanding how it works. The description seems to imply that it can chain until it hits the HP cap. The first 2 levels are a bit weaker. It’s the HP cap more than anything that implies to me that this is probably a weak item, and I’m not sure what the level 3 effect means. At Levels 1-2, damaging enemies above 95% > 90% hp has a 20% > 25% chance to deal 75% > 115% of that damage again. Level 3 turns the item into Post Mortem Obliteration, damaging enemies above 80% has a 35% chance to deal 150% of that damage again. If the target dies, an effect called Post Mortem Obliteration will proc, which gives a 100% boost to all “On Death” effects (Fire, Exlposive Blobs, or some worthless skills further down) meaning they have 100% proc chance. Not sure how long the effect lasts.

Items here focus on spreading damage to multiple enemies, such as in the case of chain attacks, on-hit proc effects, or AoE attacks. Since most enemies will die in one hit we want to prioritize this for swarms. Note that even the lower ranked items in this tier have their uses and can do decent damage.

Priority: Boss Melter Tier > Chain = Soft Blobs > Splinter > Explosive Blobs/Fire/Implode (Prioritize one to level to max) = Damage Reduction Tier (as needed) > Chain Lightning > Thousand Needles > Hailstorm > Strange Fruit

Chain (Projectile): Effectively +1 projectile without an initial attack bonus after the bounce.

Soft Blobs (Projectile): Effectively +1 weaker projectile that still counts as the initial attack.

Splinter (Projectile): + 3 projectiles, will chain once you get splinter storm.

Explosive Blobs (AoE): Procs on kill. Last upgrade can chain. Has most kills for AoE.

Fire (AoE): Procs on kill. Third upgrade chains. Weaker than the other two but easier to upgrade.

Implode (AoE): Procs on attack. Has far more damage and kills than fire. Chains less and procs more than the other two here. Has good final tier.

Chain Lightning (Projectile): Only get if you need something that chains at the beginning of a run.

Thousand needles (Projectile): Only get if you need something that chains at the beginning of a run.

Hailstorm (Projectile): Hailstorm is centered around the Gooby. Not great for this reason.

Strange Fruit: Only get if more range is needed.

Items here help to reduce, avoid, or heal damage. 4 of the items that might otherwise land here, Capsules, Recycled Time, Tranquilizing Mass, and Spirit of Mumsa, are listed in higher tiers due to multiple effects, leaving us with one item in this tier. The usefulness of these effects is reduced if you have at least one point into healing fairy. Damage reduction with the current set of upgrades only really matters so long as you can’t be one-shot or otherwise killed in under a second. Most of the defense therefore comes from offense. I expect that if the devs continue to work on the game there will be more items added here.

Thick Hide: This upgrade is mostly noticeable because it will add to your healing, the damage reduction is excellent at the cap of 50% but if you never pick this up you’ll have a hard time noticing a difference in terms of damage taken since you’ll be a powerhouse that only bosses can actually touch. That said I would recommend putting points into this as needed, and since it takes 7 upgrades to get to Spikey Discharge you’ll want to take your opportunities getting this if you need damage reduction.

These are items that don’t really add to your arsenal, have much better alternatives, or just plain suck. You’ll want to fully upgrade some of them for the encyclopedia entries but that’s about it.

Priority: Halo (only if doing a low HP run) > Damage Reduction Tier > Orb Amplifier > Reroll > Dizzys Ball (if mountains are in your way) > Frostbolt > Ghost Blobs > Soul of Amam > Wiggling Worms > Silly Saucer > Bloberang > Halo (take it if your other options are busy screen junk items, Spikes, or Idle Hands) > Goo > Essence of Zigrid > Spikes > Idle Hands Tier

Orb Amplifier: At level 4, 30% more XP and a chance for duplicate orbs. That’s as good as it gets.

Dizzys Ball (Projectile): Extra projectiles from balls that go through walls. These aren’t counted as an initial attack, but are serviceable as a projectile. They can ricochet but they don’t add all that much damage.

Frostbolt (Projectile): Sometimes a frost projectile will shoot out from other projectiles and it goes through enemies. The upgrades are decent, but this isn’t predictable in any way and isn’t very strong.

Ghost Blobs (AoE): The game says this does a ton of damage across all my plays, but any time I have it in a run it doesn’t compare to the main AoE damage dealers of Fire/Implode/Explosive blob/Howl/Time. There isn’t much info on the wiki about it either, so I’m not really sure how it upgrades past level 2. Level 1 gives a 1% chance for a dead enemy to turn into a ghost blob, which spawns an explosion every second that it’s alive for 5 seconds that does “low” damage. At level 2, it has a 4% chance, lasts up to 10 seconds, and does “high” damage. Since it doesn’t effectively chain and is fairly random I don’t find it to be reliable enough to take for a build.

Soul of Amam (AoE): 5% chance to fire off a shade that flies through enemies, any enemy it flew through will explode (not die, just explode) when the shade flies off the screen. It does fairly low damage that is quickly surpassed by any AoE listed above.

Wiggling Worms (AoE): On death worms will move away from the dead enemy and move through other enemies, damaging them. Not particularly strong, doesn’t chain well and doesn’t seem to increase its AoE range.

Silly Saucer (Projectile): Rotates around you and flies off when hit. Not very strong. The upgrade adds a saw that goes across the screen sometimes. Not worth getting.

Bloberang (Projectile): Generated from attacks, they fly in an arc where they generate and do very small damage. The upgrades will spawn more Bloberangs and make it so you can relaunch them by catching them, which you are totally going to try to do because you don’t have anything better to do.

Halo: You can make this work by maintaining a lot of HP loss, in which case you are doing a specific build that requires this item. Otherwise it’s fairly useless since you’ll quickly heal to full.

Goo (AoE): Misses more often than it hits, creates a lot of distracting messy visuals that you’re better off without. When it hits it does decent damage, but that’s rare.

Essence of Zigrid (AoE): Spawns goo balls above random enemies on attack. The animation is messy and distracting, and the goo balls don’t do much damage.

Spikes: Totally worthless, they do barely any damage when fully upgraded.

Idle Hands is so bad that it gets its own shout-out. Idle Hands is the worst item in the game, providing permanent debuffs after you have 4 projectiles. Before you upgrade your starting projectiles it can be useable, but you should be prioritizing your number of projectiles before any other stat. There is math among the Steam discussions that back this up, so until it’s reworked just avoid it at all costs.