Backpack Battles: Ranger Lightsaber Build – Survive with Shovels, Win at Light Speed

The early-game staple is the Pan, which the narrator says they also use often. The starting point of this build is to spend the first three rounds making two Shovels. The narrator is fine with losing up to three lives here in the worst case. In this game, you can lose up to five times over 18 rounds. The narrator's view is that building becomes more fun when you think about where to spend lives as a resource.

With good luck, you can make the second Shovel by round 2, but usually you only get about one and a half. If you go straight for it without detours, you should be able to make the second one by the end of round 3. Stamina runs short while you're still combining items, so there were moments where Bananas were used to get by.

Once both Shovels are ready, you hold on with Sand, Bananas and Slime until a Lightsaber shows up. Because you want to lower the enemy's accuracy early in the fight, speeding up the Shovels is effective. The narrator's favorite layout puts three Pouches against the Shovels, and this layout remains useful even after swapping to Lightsabers.

According to the narrator, this build has three points where it gets stronger: "when the two Shovels are completed," "when Slime is bought," and "when the Lightsaber is bought." With two Shovels, the build is reasonably strong until around round 8. However, the gap between Slime and the Lightsaber is long, so the narrator considers one loss around that point to be expected.

In the run, a Shield on sale was purchased. However, the narrator adds that it isn't a very desirable choice, since going with a defensive setup makes the Reaper's poison a threat. Besides the Lightsaber, the items they want are, in order of priority: "Hiropo," Sand, Stamina Bag, Gloves, Carrot, Clover and Acorn.

In round 8, Arrows were bought with the future in mind. While other players get much stronger around this point, this build grows only a little until it gets the Lightsaber. This period is its weakness. In fact, in this round, despite holding the opponent's accuracy to nearly 0%, the run lost after being overwhelmed by the effect of the opponent's doll.

According to the narrator, items of the rarity that includes the Lightsaber appear at a rate of 5% in round 8, 10% in round 9 and 12% in round 10. Since they suddenly become much more likely to appear around this point, this is the time to go for it. In the run, a Lightsaber appeared right in this window, and the narrator reflects, "I held out well to get here." From here the build gets much stronger all at once, so the goal is to win every remaining round.

That said, right after buying it, stamina was insufficient and the build wasn't yet showing its full potential. So the narrator says they'd be happy to have an item that sounds like "Ki" in the Stamina Bag. The reason is that holding multiple "Hiropo" later can restore 6 or more stamina at once, and if you don't raise your maximum stamina, the excess recovery goes to waste.

Next, a second Lightsaber was obtained, and the narrator says the build is now rock-solid. From here, to raise early-fight DPS, it's good to buy Herbs, "Ki," Acorns, Carrots, Slime and Gloves.

The fights up to this point were too short to discuss in detail, so here the narrator takes a slower look at one. By their calculation, the build's DPS is about 90 per second. The opponent with Potions can be defeated with a total of 252 damage, so the fight ends in about 3 seconds.

One reason the narrator likes this build is that once you have the Lightsaber, you can keep strengthening it bit by bit even with cheap items like Sand, Clover and Herbs. For comparison, they cite the Book build. It's strong once the Book's invincibility starts triggering, but weak while you're collecting Mana Orbs. The narrator's assessment is that this build is less prone to that kind of weakness mid-progression.

Upon reaching 10 wins, the narrator chose to continue, saying the build could still get stronger. Stacking "Ki" and Gloves speeds it up further. The next big goal is to add more "Ki" and go for a third Lightsaber. They could have bought it right away, but this time they wanted to show how far two could go, so they kept going with two for a while.

The Shield bought on sale early on was barely doing anything anymore, since opponents were almost always defeated before they could attack. So the Shield was sold to free up space, and the proceeds went toward a Gloves upgrade material and a fourth "Ki." As for the number of "Ki," the narrator feels a maximum of four is enough, even considering opponents with many Shields.

After that, a second Carrot appeared. However, since this build doesn't depend much on Carrots or Slime, the narrator treats them as just a nice bonus if you get them. Things had gone well so far, but the run nearly lost to an opponent with a rush build. The narrator reflects, "Maybe this wasn't the time to be messing around with Carrots."

With things heating up, a third Lightsaber was found and purchased. By the narrator's estimate, the expected value per Lightsaber is about 50 damage. Swinging three of them per second gives a DPS of about 150. The opponent at this point could be defeated with 320 damage, so by this calculation they fall in about 2 seconds.

By the time the final round was reached, the only lost rounds were the two during the early Shovel combining and right before buying the Lightsaber. After deliberating over what to buy last, the narrator bought the "Cute Bird." It speeds up the Lightsabers even more, going "beyond the speed of light."

The opponent in the final battle had two Books, so 350 damage had to be dealt before invincibility triggered. This fight was shown at double speed, and the opponent fell before invincibility triggered, ending in a GG. The fight lasted 3.8 seconds. The narrator concludes that it was a fun build that slices through opponents with ease.