Aphid

#Overview

The Aphid is a tier-1 pest of Potato Field, Peel Forest and Crop Circle. Each of those biomes has two tier-1 pests, and the game picks between them at random, so about half of the early spawns there are Aphids (the other half are Sprout Mites, or Little Greys in Crop Circle). Every run starts in Potato Field, so Aphids are usually among the first pests Tibo meets. On Normal, tier-1 pests make up 8 in 9 spawns until 4:00, become a minority from 5:00 and stop spawning at 9:00 (one minute later on Easy, which has a longer tier lag).

It has no attack of its own: it walks straight at Tibo and hurts only by touching. With 6 base HP it is tied with the Crumb Ant as the most fragile pest in the game, and at speed 42 it is one of the quicker tier-1 pests (only the Crumb Ant and the Parking Lot Gull are faster). A kill gives 1 XP and a 3% chance of a coin.

Elites are drawn from tier 2 and up, with one exception that can make an elite Aphid. Crop Circle's only tier-2 pest is the shooting Spittlebug, and when the shooter cap is full (2 shooters before 3:00, 4 before 6:00) the pick falls back to the tier below.^[1]

#Tips

• Aphids arrive while enemy damage is at its lowest: on Normal the damage multiplier is about ×0.22 at the start and ×0.35 at 5:00 (see Enemy scaling), so a touch costs Tibo about 1 HP or less before armor. You can afford to walk through a thin line of them to reach a pickup.
• They have no mass, so any weapon with knockback pushes them the full distance.

#Stats

Base values before time scaling and difficulty.

#Where it appears

• Crop Circle, enemy tier 1
• Peel Forest, enemy tier 1
• Potato Field, enemy tier 1
• Russet Moor, enemy tier 1
• Duchess Gardens, enemy tier 1

Biome tiers: each biome lists five enemy tiers; higher tiers appear as the run goes on (see Enemy scaling).

#Names in other languages

Verified: the name the game shows when another language is selected in Settings, from its translation files.^[2] See Languages.

#Data

{
  "id": "aphid",
  "behavior": {
    "kind": "chase"
  },
  "hp": 6,
  "speed": 42,
  "damage": 3,
  "radius": 4,
  "xp": 1,
  "goldChance": 0.03,
  "mass": 0
}