Item guide

How each item and evolved item changes a run. Every tip below is the same text as on that item's page, which also has the numbers and sources.

#Baked Buckler

• One Buckler is worth the most early in a run, when attacker levels are low. Later on, 10 armor barely changes the numbers unless you already stack armor from Starch Plating.
• Armor and dodge work at different stages: Ghost Skin and dodge cancel a hit outright, and armor reduces the hits that land.

#Boom Spud

• 20 damage is enough to finish most early pests, but pest HP grows over the run (about 3.4× by 20:00 on Normal, see Enemy scaling). Treat Boom Spud as a way to clear crowds early and as a step towards Kaboom Spud.
• Holding Boom Spud makes Rotten Spud four times as likely in level-up offers (Level-up). If you plan to evolve it, accept the curse that comes with it.

#Boss Buster

• Elites always drop a chest and bosses are the main thing between Tibo and the 20:00 mark (Chests, Bosses). Damage that only applies to them is still worth taking.
• It does nothing against ordinary pests. Pair it with something that clears crowds.

#Chive Charm

• Maxed Chives and GPU together give 45% cooldown reduction, so you would need five more Chive Charms to reach the 60% cap. Below the cap each charm is a small but reliable bonus. At the cap it does nothing. Measured (build 41 main-B2gf34bA.js, headless tools/play.mjs, seed wiki, standard mode, normal difficulty; passives given with give, charms with giveItem): with Chives and GPU at level 5 the game's cooldownMult stat read 0.55, then 0.43 with 4 charms and 0.40 with 5, 6 or 20. One to three charms alone read 0.97, 0.94 and 0.91, and 25 charms alone read 0.40.
• The cap does not include fire-rate bonuses such as Frenzy Fryer, which work separately (Stats).

#Coal-Baked Spud

• It suits weapons that hit hard and not very often. A single big hit leaves a big fire, while many small hits keep overwriting each other with weak burns.
• Slow Cooker lengthens every burn, but it is not this item's catalyst. The catalyst is Hot Sauce.

#Compost Tea

• XP gain pays off over time. A copy found early in a run is worth more than one found near the end.

#Copper Spoon

• A bigger pickup range lets Tibo collect XP without walking into the crowd. It is a comfort pick rather than a power pick.

#Coupon Book

• Coupon Book pays off when you plan to spend a lot of gold. It pairs naturally with gold gain from Golden Gravy or Golden Fry.
• Crate prices climb quickly (30, 72, 115, 159 gold and up), so the same percentage saves more gold on later crates.

#Crit Chip

• Crit Chip does nothing without crit chance. Each chip raises average damage by crit chance × 0.25 of a normal hit. With maxed Hot Sauce (23.1% crit) that is +5.8% of a normal hit, or about 4.7% more than Tibo dealt before.
• It is best once crit chance is already high, because the value of crit damage grows with how often you crit.

#Cursed Crown

• +30% damage equals three levels of Butter Pat and takes no passive slot. Whether the extra enemy HP is worth it depends on how comfortably your build is clearing.
• Curse makes kill-based item effects that scale with enemy max HP, such as Kaboom Spud, Freezer Burn and Glacier Spud, hit harder, because those enemies have more HP.

#Extra Eye

• An extra projectile is a large boost for weapons that fire one or two projectiles per volley, and it applies to every eligible weapon at once.
• If your main damage comes from the excluded weapon kinds, an Extra Eye does little for them.

#Freezer Burn

• You need a steady freeze source first: Frozen Fries, Root Cellar, Hash Bulwark, Cold Storage or Permafrost Fries. A Spud Freezer freezes every pest on the map for 7.5 s, which makes a good moment to clear the screen.
• Slow Cooker is worth taking with this item even before the evolution, because longer freezes leave more time for frozen enemies to die.

#Ghost Pepper

• The base dash has a 5 s cooldown and a single charge. Butter Socks adds charges and shortens the cooldown, so it gives Ghost Pepper many more windows to work with.
• The extra 0.15 s makes it more forgiving to dash through bullets and enemy bodies, because Tibo is still safe for a moment after he lands.

#Ghost Skin

• Unlike armor, dodge does not lose value as enemies level up over the run. Ghost Skin's 4.8% stays 4.8%, while the 10 armor from Baked Buckler drops from blocking 17% of a hit at 0:00 to 6% at 20:00.

#Golden Gravy

• Gold buys Potato Crates, Fry Cart items and Tater Slots spins, which all give more items. Golden Gravy speeds that up while also raising damage.
• It pairs well with Coupon Book: one item increases the gold you earn and the other reduces what you spend.

#Heavy Russet

• Because the bonus comes in rare large hits, it is best against high-HP targets such as elites and bosses, where the full 15× counts.
• The Microwave can copy a held Heavy Russet, melting a copy of another Legendary item you hold, until you reach the 5-copy cap. Copies carry over when it evolves.

#Hot Pepper

• On its own, Hot Pepper is a small bonus. It is worth more when crits are already strong, for example with Crit Chip or Sour Cream.

#Lucky Peel

• One peel changes little. Several, or peels on top of Four-Eyed Spud (+0.1 luck per level) or Cursed Crown, add up to a fourth card more often.
• Luck only improves item rarity on future rolls. It is most worth having early, before you buy Potato Crates or visit Fry Carts.

#Penny Spud

• Gold buys Potato Crates, Fry Cart items and Tater Slots spins. A Penny Spud only pays off when you spend that gold, so it suits runs that route through those points of interest.
• Curse also raises gold gain, and the two multiply, so greed is worth a little more in cursed runs.

#Philosopher's Potato

• It has no weakness and suits any build. Area and duration help aura, pool and orbit weapons; projectile speed helps shots reach targets.
• You cannot rely on finding one, but if a Fry Cart's bumped third slot rolls it, it is usually worth buying.

#Pickle Jar

• One level of Root Network gives 0.25 recovery, as much as two and a half jars. Treat the jar as a small bonus, not a healing plan.
• Recovery is most useful against chip damage. Big boss hits outpace it.

#Porcupine Spud

• The fries scale with run time, so the item gets stronger late without any investment.
• It rewards builds that are hit often but survive, such as armor from Starch Plating, which is also its catalyst.
• Thorns from Thorny Jacket add directly to every fry.

#Salt Crystal

• One crystal is a small boost. It is a Common, so several can turn up in one run, and they keep adding 4 points each.
• Thorny Jacket contact damage is flat and is not raised by damage bonuses.

#Second Spud

• On Hard it is the only way to get a revive, which makes it much more valuable there than on Easy.
• Level-ups earned while Tibo is down wait until he gets up, so a revive does not waste XP.

#Sharp Peeler

• It is worth most with weapons that fire single-target shots with low pierce, such as Fry Knives or Tot Toss, and with dense crowds. Check a weapon's pierce on its page first: for weapons with unlimited pierce it does nothing.

#Spicy Croquette

• Copies are not wasted when it evolves: every Spicy Croquette you hold becomes a Magma Croquette.
• While you hold the croquette, Big Bowl is offered more often on level-up cards (×4 weight), which helps reach level 5 (see Level-up).

#Spud Muffin

• Max HP makes healing from Pickle Jar, Vampire Tot and snacks more useful, since they are all capped at max HP.
• Muffins are better with Gravy Heart, which multiplies the flat bonus.

#Starch Sock

• Extra speed helps you get around enemies, reach points of interest and outrun slow pests. Its effect is small unless you have several socks or Spud Sneakers as well.

#Static Tot

• It needs other enemies nearby, so it is strongest against crowds and weak against a lone boss.
• While you hold it, Root Network is offered more often on level-up cards (×4 weight) (see Level-up).

#Thorny Jacket

• On its own, 8 flat damage falls behind enemy HP within minutes (see Enemy scaling). Its value is mostly in boosting Porcupine Spud, Fry Volcano and the hash brown shields, where it adds to every projectile or shard.

#Time Tuber

• It pairs with weapons whose damage depends on how long their effect stays out, and with burn items such as Magma Croquette.
• Slow Cooker gives +0.1 duration per level if you want more of the same.

#Vampire Tot

• It is weakest early, when kills are slow, and best late in big crowds.
• Compare it with Pickle Jar (0.1 HP per second): Vampire Tot heals more only while you kill more than two enemies per second.

#Wandering Eyes

• Builds that kill large crowds trigger it most. Because eye damage follows the dead enemy's HP, it keeps up with late-game enemies better than flat-damage items.
• While you hold it, Four-Eyed Spud is offered more often on level-up cards (×4 weight), and its luck is useful on its own.

#Wide Ladle

• Area is most useful for weapons that hit everything in a zone, such as auras, pools and novas.

#All-Seeing Spud

• Eyes from one kill can kill more enemies and trigger more eyes, so it snowballs best in dense crowds.
• Four-Eyed Spud at level 5 also gives +0.5 luck: a 50% chance of a fourth level-up card and better item rarity (see Stats).

#Bonfire Spud

• Hot Sauce stays in your build after the evolution. Its crit chance keeps making the igniting hits, and so the fires, bigger.
• Weapons that hit dense groups make the most of the spread, because a single proc can light a whole crowd.

#Fry Volcano

• Starch Plating at level 5 gives 100 armor, so a Fry Volcano build takes less damage per hit while still triggering on every hit that gets through.
• The blast centres on Tibo, so it clears enemies pressed against him, while the fries reach further out.
• Thorny Jacket thorns count 1.5× in each fry and twice that in the blast.

#Glacier Spud

• With Slow Cooker maxed, the duration multiplier is 1.75 (1 + 0.5 + the base 0.25), so the freeze lasts about 2.6 s and the slow 3.5 s even with no other duration sources.
• Large groups of frozen and slowed enemies bunch up and are easy targets for area weapons. Glacier Spud is as much crowd control as damage.

#Kaboom Spud

• Curse multiplies enemy HP (Curse), so the curse from Rotten Spud also makes every Kaboom blast bigger. The two scale together.
• Because the blast scales with enemy HP, Kaboom Spud stays useful late in a run, where Boom Spud's flat 20 damage falls off.

#Magma Croquette

• Bigger single hits make bigger blasts and burns, so it pairs well with crit and damage bonuses.
• Duration bonuses, such as Slow Cooker or Time Tuber, lengthen the burn.

#Meteor Russet

• Meteor Russet turns Heavy Russet's single-target hits into area damage, so it helps against crowds as well as bosses.
• Meteor damage is a multiple of the triggering hit, and the number of meteors is capped. That favours weapons with big individual hits over many small ones.

#Storm Tot

• The thunderclaps make it much better than Static Tot in tight crowds, where each clap hits several enemies.
• Root Network's recovery (+1.25 HP per second at level 5) is useful on its own, so the catalyst is rarely a wasted slot.