Picayune Dreams: Helicopter Cyl Build

Welcome! Grab a snack and stay for a while. As a taste for what’s to come, I was able to leave my computer at mortality 60-70 without taking damage on overdrive 4 using this build (I had to stop there because I was lagging so much it was taking ages to increase my mortality any further lol).

The general idea of this build is to turn your whole screen into a lethal area for enemies. It relies on the Chainbelt and (mostly the) Shrapnel Shells for the damage, with the Eye2 for boss damage early on (and the Injection to truly ramp up your idle capabilities). I’m including my specific build, but you’re welcome to toy around with this concept and make it your own.

Note: This build is based on per-frame damage. I’ve learned while using it that playing on 2x speed that your per-frame damage is effectively halved, as the enemies are traveling twice as far per frame and your per-frame damage is not changed to compensate for the 2x speed. This build can manage 2x speed for a while, but around the time the lag started to get really noticeable (mortality 60-65) the skull enemies started to reach me on 2x speed. When I turned 2x speed off, they instantly stopped getting even remotely close to me.

Let’s start with the skill loadout and settings configuration! I’ll show you the skills I think are important to making this build work, in the order I think that they’re most important. Feel free to skip this part if you’ve found skills you’re comfortable with.

You want to start by making sure you don’t leave any XP behind. Plus, starting each run with an upgrade is really nice.

The build I use doesn’t come with any max HP, so gaining max HP with every boss is important if you struggle with bosses, but even if you don’t, it’s still nice to have.

As your weapon size increases, these skills become less important, but they’re nice to have. 20% boss health is a significant difference!

I tend to prioritize crit chance with these, but getting an extra black hole or hp is also a good idea. Otherwise, it’s up to you!

You might have some extra points left over depending on your level/overdrive. It’s up to you how to spend those. I typically grab 3 bans so that it’s a bit easier to get the build going early on, but it’s really up to you.

There are a few settings I strongly recommend when you play with this build.
1) I turn “late game instant XP” and “low spec mode” on the moment my game begins to lag. this will make XP skip the animation where it magnetizes to you, and instead of displaying as numbers the XP laying around is circles.
2) As you progress, lower your weapon visibility. This will make boss fights digestible, because otherwise your screen looks like this.

Default max items is 12, but all 12 are not necessary for this build. I tend to focus on getting as many parts of the build as soon as possible, and as the build goes on the main focus is going to be crowd control rather than single target damage. That being said, let’s go over each part of my sample build and their function. I’m also going to include each item’s portion of the total kills and damage in my mortality 70 overdrive 4 run, as well as their upgrade level.

The Chainbelt is definitely an MVP of this build. This, paired with the shrapnel shells, will be how we maintain lethality for non-boss enemies for the bulk of your runs. This is an upgrade that you should be consistantly upgrading throughout your run.
Kills: 7.4%
Damage: 5.4%
Level: 53

The Eye2 is included to give both hitscan for bosses and “discretionary” damage to help with particularly dense groups or particularly strong enemies. It’s important to consistently upgrade up until the point where your Chainbelt can reach bosses even when you’re not able to go right next to them (judging that distance is personal preference, but I tend to stop when the Chainbelt visually reaches the top of the screen. By that point, the actual hitbox of the Chainbelt is pretty huge and extends beyond the visual range). At that point, you can safely slow down on upgrading this.
Kills: 1.1%
Damage: 1.5%
Level: 54

The Injection is the glue that holds this build together. This is crucial to upgrade early on. I would keep it as high priority as the Chainbelt and Shrapnel Shells (if not higher) until your Chainbelt touches the top of your screen visually. However, at that point it becomes less important to upgrade, and I tend to upgrade it every so often.
Level: 50

If the Chainbelt is an MVP of this build, the Shrapnel Shells are the MVP. They will pull a huge amount of weight once crowds of enemies begin to get denser. You don’t need to upgrade them right away, but once your other critical upgrades are well-established they should be a huge priority to upgrade quickly.
Kills: 60.7%
Damage: 65.5%
Level: 56

The Missile Pack serves to aid in DPS, as it’s great at crowd control and can serve as a bit of extra damage on bosses. I wouldn’t prioritize this over any of the other critical upgrades for a while, but it’s worth keeping in mind.
Kills: 17.2%
Damage: 13.7%
Level: 55

I’m including the Halo in critical upgrades because it’s the main survivability in this build, but if you’re good at navigating bosses and maintain good pace on the Chainbelt and Missile Pack you likely won’t use them much. I like to get about 5 before putting them on the backburner and upgrading them slowly. You can choose how many you need to feel comfortable, although you’ll likely still hit 200+% max HP with the skills previously mentioned.
Level: 39 (this many were NOT necessary lol)

The Slime Spike is the older sibling that keeps teasing its younger sibling, the Chainbelt, for being short. It starts out bigger than the Chainbelt, but as the Chainbelt grows it will quickly surpass its sibling. The Slime Spike isn’t a core mechanic to this build, and is almost useless to upgrade the moment your Chainbelt reaches 60% of its size visually. I keep it in here because I like how they look, but in all likelyhood you can replace this with something else of your choosing.
Kills: 9.1%
Damage: 7.5%
Level: 51

I like the Angel Wings because they help keep distance between you and the enemies in the early stages when that’s necessary. They still get some use in the late game by keeping distance between you and huge crowds with their knockback, too. I suspect the knockback helps a lot on later mortalities if you choose to loop, but in terms of kills they don’t rank very highly. I tend to upgrade them up to 4-6 early, then evenly upgrade them over the rest of the run.
Kills: 0.9%
Damage: 2.0%
Level: 54

Those are the upgrades most important to the build’s longevity, but I tend to run a couple other ones in the early game. Frankly, none of these matter very much, and you can insert whatever you like here.

I usually go with the Flamethrower and Hunter’s Bow in the very early game, but after your second boss they tend to fall off sharply, and become basically useless if you choose to loop. (When I got to mortality 70 on overdrive 4, they had a total of 1.6% of the kills and 2.4% of the damage combined, at upgrade 10 and 40 respectively. Flamethrower at higher levels might be worth it, but the Hunter’s Bow certainly isn’t). I’ll also add the Shinobi Equipment too, but I won’t focus upgrading it at all until the critical upgrades are all extremely well established. It’s mostly for style points (I think the headband looks cool on Cyl’s head lmao).

Hopefully this build serves y’all as much as it has served me! Feel free to mold this to your personal preference, and enjoy the easy of leaving your computer running while Cyl does all of the hard work. Also, shoutout to my brother for introducing me to this game, I loved every moment developing this build!