The Thinking Behind the Potion Build That Survived Every Match from Bronze to Master with the Reaper in Backpack Battles

The early-game staple is the Pan, which the speaker says they use a lot. However, the Ranger is strong early in rounds 1–2, and since this build doesn't take a route that's strong early, it is relatively likely to lose. In fact, in this run the first opponent was a Reaper, followed by a typical Ranger, and the speaker says, "Basically, you lose."

The way to win here is to reroll and hit sale items, but the speaker says they belong to the camp that saves money instead of rerolling when the odds of winning are low. Looking back, they feel that giving up the first two rounds lets them buy sale items with an eye to the future, or bank their gold.

The early flow is to first gather the Pan and three or four food items, then swap in a rare or epic weapon or a scythe when one shows up. This time, they got a Whip that is quite strong for before round 6, which gave a big power boost and made winning look likely for a while. As ideal replacements for the Pan, they name the Hammer or a Spear on sale.

Once the weapon swap is done, the focus shifts to collecting potions. The speaker's target ratio for the end state is one red, two white, five purple, and as many green as can be bought.

They say the order matters when you start collecting. The white potion triggers at 20 block, so it won't trigger without a way to gain block. The red potion triggers when your own HP drops to half, and here its role is to trigger the white. In addition, when a potion triggers, it also applies the buff of the potion placed directly above it.

In a fight shown in the video, when HP reached half, the red and white effects fired first, then the 30 block gained from the white effect triggered another white, resulting in red, white, and white effects all firing. The speaker roughly describes this as "a device that gives you 60 block when you're at half HP," and rates it as surprisingly strong on its own, since it's like having a piece of armor.

Ultimately you want to fill your bags with potions, so as for bags, the Potion Belt is basically the target. In the video they were combining stones as an experiment, but the speaker clarifies that combining is simply poor value for money and unnecessary in this build.

At this stage, the things the speaker lists as wanted are a few green potions, a scythe, belts, armor and crystals, a second scythe, and a few purple potions.

In one fight the green potions failed to fire, but the block effects from red and white won it anyway. Green doesn't trigger against opponents who don't heal. However, the speaker considers such opponents a rare case and says it's fine to write off those fights.

There was also something to reflect on. Because the crystal for the armor was on sale, they started collecting armor, but in reality they were short on green potions and should have rerolled to look for green. They also say that this build ideally wins short fights, and armor only serves to trigger the purple potions, so it's better to choose cheap armor.

The speaker emphasizes that this build has no mechanism that gets stronger the longer a fight goes on, while opponents basically do. So the longer a fight drags on, the worse your position, and the speaker thinks the balance between offense and defense is exactly where skill shows in potion builds.

An actual fight showed a typical example of losing by being too defensive: while they were dawdling, the opponent got buffed by slimes. Two green potions at round 8 is slightly late; with three you can feel safe. It's from three greens that a single scythe can be used efficiently, and using purple at the two-green stage has little effect. So the speaker analyzes that buying purple at this point leans toward a misplay, and they should have looked for green potions or a scythe.

After that they still didn't find any green potions, and instead bought a white potion as a stopgap. Their judgment was that it works as long as the opponent isn't a scaling build.

They got their third green potion in round 11. Since potions only connect upward, potions go horizontal and belts go vertical. However, the inventory is at most 7 tall, so it's impossible to chain belts in a single straight line. So once they reach eight potions, they place them in two columns using three belts.

This round they were leaning defensive and short on poison, a state prone to losing to scaling opponents. The speaker attributes this loss to having prioritized expensive armor. In the bag reorganization that followed, they said they weren't making full use of their bags' effects and rated their own layout "5 out of 100."

With three purple potions on belts, the speaker calculates that purple potions get applied an average of 7.4 times. Assuming 33 poison has built up, the expected value of the purple potions comes to 73 damage. Purple triggers when either the enemy's or your own HP drops to half, and since it tends to trigger at moments when there's no block, you can usually win once you've knocked the opponent down to half HP.

But it's meaningless if you go down before that. So they place the purple potions in the bottom row, aiming for them to trigger even when they themselves are about to go down.

They finally got a scythe in round 13. The layout the speaker finds easiest has the doll and three belted green potions within the scythe's range. At this stage the coffin's effect becomes almost meaningless, so selling it for 10 gold is worth considering.

The expected poison at this point is 57.6, so the plan is to whittle the opponent down to half HP with four poison procs over 8 seconds, then hit them with the purple potions' expected 73 for the win. This build is weak from early to midgame and gets strong from here.

From here, what you want are green potions, a second scythe, belts, purple potions, and crystals. A second scythe slightly reduces space efficiency, but since poison is basically in short supply until the late game, the speaker thinks you should buy it if you have three or more green potions. Two white potions are enough, they say.

According to the speaker, the later the game goes, the lower the relative value of purple potions. The reasons are that the crystals' effect grows, and fights become even shorter. In the video they prioritized green potions over the scythe, but the speaker adds that it's basically stronger to prioritize the scythe, even if it means selling purple potions.

Purple potions also have the effect of slightly reducing your own HP. In the late game, piercing builds are a threat, so it's worth remembering this drawback too.

Fights against opponents who don't heal were written off from the start. The weaknesses of the potion build the speaker names are its weak early game, builds that don't heal, and piercing/invulnerability mana builds. Still, the goal isn't to win every round but to survive every match, so their stance is that it's fine as long as they win reasonably often in terms of probability.

Against most current opponents, white, green, and purple settle the fight within a few seconds. The ideal final form is three columns of potions, for which you'll want six belts. Belts are also space-efficient relative to cost, so from the midgame on, it's good to target belts as your bags.

In the end, they reached the final round with 2 lives, guaranteeing survival. They added a purple potion at the very end, ran into a piercing/invulnerability mana build, and the run ended with them learning the drawback of purple potions firsthand.

The speaker fought every match from Bronze onward with this potion build alone, and rates it as a good build that can be assembled at any time, is simple and clear, and teaches a lot.