Rhythm Storm 1.0 releases on Steam in 3 days. To prepare for the release, and to help players succeed at the game, I'm writing up a strategy guide. Part 1 is all about Beginner/General strategy, and I'll create intermediate and advanced strategy posts in the coming weeks.

Note that the following might be considered spoilers, to some extent. So if you prefer to figure out things on your own, you'll want to stop reading now. Let's begin...

ONLY TWO CHOICES?

Rhythm Storm's upgrade system only gives you 2 choices every time you upgrade. That would appear to make the choice "simple": set A or set B? But you have a strong influence on what A or B can be. In reality, A or B is really two of A, B, C, or D. There are six possible sets of choices you'll see each time you upgrade (AB, AC, AD, BC, BC, or CD). At the start of each world, you also choose what ABCD are, out of 6 upgrade sets. The choices you make for upgrade sets matters more than you might realize. Let's get started with good options to start the game.

[We haven't discussed rerolls, which give you a third choice when upgrading. We'll cover rerolls next time.]

BEGINNER STRATEGY - STARTING CONFIGURATION

Let's rewind, and give you some good starting build strategies for the first two vehicles: Guardian and Devastator. Guardian is the starting vehicle, so let's break down the vehicle configuration choices. There are two of each choice initially, and a third choice is available after completing world 1 with a given vehicle. We'll focus on the first two columns for Guardian:

The first choice (POWER) honestly isn't that important, but if you're not going to be upgrading your power, More Shocks is probably slightly more powerful.

The second choice is a bit more important, as this could be the weapon you'll upgrade the most. Again both choices (Plasma and Wide) are valid and don't affect gameplay style too much, though when you get to more advanced builds you'll want to think about what additional weapons you want later when making this choice.

The third choice (image above is outdated as of 1.0.05): You can choose either Cyclone or Storm, and they both ramp up in power fairly quickly (and are easy enough to use) if you want to focus on them.

UPGRADE SETS

Next we'll look at the upgrade sets, which are probably more important than the starting configuration. You have to choose 4 out of these 6 sets, and you'll see 2 of those 4 sets (chosen randomly) every time you upgrade.

The sets change a bit per vehicle, and you can affect one based on the vehicle configuration, but what you see in the screenshot below are the ones you're most likely to see for the Guardian.

There are multiple valid builds for beginners, but I'll cover 3 in particular here:

BUILD 1 - Turret/Power Hybrid Build

BUILD 2 - Body/Power Hybrid Build

BUILD 3 - Weapon Variety Build

For the Hybrid Builds, you'll choose these 4 sets below for the Turret version, and change the first set to "Working Out" instead of "Point And Shoot" for the Body version.

For the Weapon Variety Build (Build 3 above), we want to choose these 4 sets.

For all 3 of these build directions, we're trying to choose a combination of upgrade sets where we'll have potentially good choices for both columns for our build when upgrading.

UPGRADE CHOICE BASICS

For the Hybrid Builds (1 and 2), your objective when upgrading is to either upgrade your power (Shocker) as much as possible, or upgrade your Turret/Body weapons as much as possible. You can do both, particularly if you're always choosing the "better" of 2 sets you're given. Let's do a quick example of the very first upgrade, using Build 1:

There are some good upgrades here, but column 1 is quite a bit better for the following reason: All 3 upgrades work together to make one thing (your Power) better. Unlocking a new weapon isn't bad, but you should generally avoid unlocking other weapons *unless* that's your explicit strategy (I'll cover that in a bit). If you unlock another weapon, you'll have a lot more firepower/weapon upgrades to choose from, which likely means less synergy and cumulative effects.

[NOTE: If you had a reroll or 2 unlocked, and wanted to do a weapon-heavy build, you'd want to reroll this and see a couple new choices.]

Now let's see what the next upgrades are, and adapt accordingly. Because we were able to choose some good Power-centric upgrades the first time, we're hoping to see the "POWERFUL" set again.

And we got it! There's a 50% chance of seeing a specific upgrade set in each upgrade. The "FIREPOWER" upgrades in this case are actually pretty good, so if the other option wasn't "POWERFUL", I'd choose that one most likely. At this point our Shocker power is ramping up quickly, so we want to keep upgrading it (or energy generation) whenever we can. If we don't get "POWERFUL", we'd want to not choose new weapons and choose generally "good" upgrades, with an eye towards what we want to upgrade alongside our power.

[We'll cover long-term upgrade strategy next time.]

WEAPON VARIETY BUILD

Let's move back to Build 3 (Weapon Variety). This build has a different upgrade strategy, because you want get to 4 weapons ASAP and then choose upgrades that benefit multiple weapons as much as possible. Here's our first choices:

Here we want the right column, because it gives us a new weapon (Creeper and Burst are similar in power/etc), and "SWIFT SHOTS" benefits all weapons. "SURVIVOR" is also slightly better than "LOCK-ON", especially early in a run. Next upgrade:

Again we'd choose the right column, this time despite having to choose "LOCK-ON" over "SURVIVOR". The other two upgrades are just much better for our build. For the rest of the run, we want to continue choose upgrades that benefit multiple weapons (turret weapons, body weapons, or all weapons).

DEVASTATOR BUILDS = EASY MODE

Devastator is a bit easier to upgrade, since it only has one turret weapon slot, and you can easily avoid getting additional (body) weapons. There are many sub-variants, including a Drone-heavy build, or a faster one, or a power-centric one. Weapons and powers can vary as well, but the upgrading strategy centers more on these upgrade sets:

For most Devastator builds, you want a strong turret weapon, so choose "FOCUSED FIRE" and "FIREPOWER", and DO NOT choose "WORKING OUT". "POWERFUL" is optional, depending on what you prefer. Assuming you always select "FOCUSED FIRE" and "FIREPOWER", and not "WORKING OUT", it's hard to go wrong with the Devastator.

Of the sub-varieties of builds for Devastator, the ones that are the most foolproof are the Drone ones. In those, you'll have "TINY WARRIORS" as your 3rd upgrade set, and the 4th upgrade set can be whatever you want. Then you'll always have at least one of the 3 upgrade sets you want for each upgrade, and the 4th can be chosen only when it looks especially good.

Because 3 of the 4 upgrade sets will be upgrading a single weapon (or benefit from upgrading that weapon), it's fairly easy to make a powerful Devastator build using these upgrade sets.

The builds above can get you through world 3 without too much trouble (on Normal with minimal Modifiers). Now let's jump into more general strategy while playing:

GENERAL STRATEGY - XP AND UPGRADING

One of the more important elements of the game is collecting XP so that you can upgrade your vehicle. You can obviously move towards XP to gather it, but there are multiple ways to draw it towards you. Upgrading your vehicle's magnetism is one way, the large Magnetic Charge powerup (below) dropped by enemies pulls all energy/XP towards you, and the DECELERATOR powerup increases your magnetism range. If you don't gather XP quickly enough (within 30 seconds or so), it'll disappear. It's not unusual to have some XP disappear, but you should generally try to actively gather it.

Gather enough XP, and you'll level up and upgrade. When you see a purple/pink upgrade as below, that generally means it's very good and you should choose it. In this case, Ultra Damage is one of the best upgrades in the game. You won't see it with many builds, but it's one of the reasons to go for the Guardian's Weapon Variety Build above.

GENERAL STRATEGY - POWERUP BLOCKS

Your vehicle's damage output and upgrade path may not always be optimal, or take a while to ramp up. Powerups dropped from blocks can help fill the gap and keep your run going. Look for arrows on the edge of the screen to help find Powerup Blocks.

These blocks can contain one of 5 powerups:

* DECELERATOR - Enemies slow down considerably, but you barely do, and your magnetism increases.

* GIGABLAST - Unleashes a series of powerful concentric explosions.

* INVINCIBLE - Gives your vehicle invincibility for around 10 seconds.

* LANCER - Smaller powerups that give you ammo for powerful shots that pierce multiple enemies.

* SHIELD REPAIR - Repair 1 shield layer and gain 20 energy. If your Shield is at max, you'll gain 50 energy and a Spark (used in the Modifiers menu).

The SHIELD REPAIR powerup will appear more frequently when your Shields are low, but there's no guarantee you'll get one even at 0 shields remaining. Otherwise the powerups are equally likely to drop from a block. A GIGABLAST has the most damage potential, but it requires enemies to be surrounding you to be especially effective.

GENERAL STRATEGY - POWERS

The first vehicle in the game, Guardian, is the only one with a fixed power: Shocker. All the other vehicles give you 3 potential Powers (out of 10 total) to choose from. Powers can deal a significant amount of damage in some way, even those with a movement element to them. Energy for powers recharges over time when not in use, and you also gain energy from Powerup Blocks and Magnetic Charge powerups.

Each power has different strategies and upgrades that affect how to best use them, so it's hard to generalize power usage. Generally a power should either complement what your build does well, or do something to cover a weakness in your build.

Shocker (above) is a power that can do a bit of both, as its aim is omnidirectional, and its damage output is fairly continuous. The omnidirectional aspect can help stun/slow attackers for builds that are more directional. The continuous damage complements almost any build because it can fill in the gap in damage to weaken/finish off an enemy. So if your main weapon is dealing 10 damage per shot, and enemies have 12 hitpoints, hitting the enemy with 1 weapon shot and 2 Shocker hits (1 damage per hit) will be much faster and more efficient than 2 weapon shots.

If you find yourself with max energy, you're probably not using your Power enough (or it might be worthwhile to try a different one). If you're always nearly running out of energy, you may need to upgrade your power more so it's more effective, or be more selective in how you use it.

COMING SOON - MORE STRATEGY

We covered a lot this time, so I'll hold off on more intermediate/advanced strategies for later. There will likely be 3 parts in this series, so keep an eye out for them in the coming weeks. Let me know if there's anything you have questions about, and I'll answer them in the comments or try to cover them in a future guide.

- Luke