YMMV / Bounty of One

• Awesome Music:
  • "Sliding Guitar", the first day cycle's theme if Rex, Cupcake and Brutus is your first boss is a very catchy western theme that emphasizes the action taking place.
  • "Shot The Sheriff", Simple Tom's boss theme is a fast-paced theme that portrays the feeling of rolling movement — perfectly fitting the Wild West Armadillo and his Rolling Attack.
  • "Back on Track", the second day cycle's theme if Crazy Denzel is your second boss is upbeat and more lively as the enemies get tougher to fight.
  • "Dynamite Mole", Crazy Denzel's boss theme is a fast, hectic track that fits right in with the mole man's fast Grenade Spam and his quick underground movements.
  • "Buffalo Brawl", Ruthless Ruth's boss theme is a tense and fast-paced track that ties in with the boss' nature of relentlessly chasing you down.
  • "The Last Ride"", the third day cycle's music is a very ominous and creepy piece with an action-packed tone to it, as the player knows that they will have to face the dreaded Undertaker on the next noon.
  • "One More Grave", the Final Boss theme is an ominous yet fast-paced piece to complement the climactic battle against The Undertaker.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Armarauders that appear at the end of the first day cycle if Simple Tom is your first boss. Firstly, they're beefy at 350 HP, at a point where most players will be dealing around 100-200 damage. Secondly, they initially move slowly, but they aim at the player as they're preparing to roll and when they do start rolling, they move around very quickly and bounce off the screen edges. Thirdly, they're encountered at a point where the enemy concentration is particularly thick, making it hard to hit them without piercing or bounce upgrades.
  • Any ranged enemy turns into this if you have the Necromancer's Pact modifier that makes enemy projectiles bounce off the screen edges, especially the second level which allows 2 bounces. This is especially the case with Brainsuckers, whose projectiles are slow but grow in size over time, and will turn a level into Bullet Hell very quickly.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • The first occurs at the morning end of the first day cycle, where the enemy concentration becomes very thick along with relatively high-HP enemies. Most players will be unable to one-shot the 200-HP ranged enemies, and even fewer will be able to kill the Cactus Golems (300 HP) and especially the Armarauders (350 HP).
  • The second occurs at the start of the second day cycle. The basic runner and shooter enemies have 300 HP, same as the Cactus Chargers in the previous phase. The Rock Golems have a whopping 700 HP and will take a lot of punishment. Many players will be unable to output enough damage in one hit to cut these swarms down in one hit, and your best bet would be to hope for a powerful item from your first Sheriff chest.
  • Infamy 10 is when the difficulty ramps up for a simple reason: Enemies now hit for 2 damage. This change leaves you much less room for error, where a single hit can leave you at 1-2 HP in the early game and force the player to play more defensively.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • Roger has 2 less health than any of the other characters as he's an untrained civilian who was forced into fighting. Serra and Madlyn were outlaws who served the Undertaker at some point. Nigel and Natoko were trained in ninja arts by the latter's Hidden Elf Village. Ollin is a mystical spirit who may be the reincarnation of legendary wizard Mezcal. R0B3RT, while also a civilian, now uses a tough robotic body. Jody was a hardened veteran of the Dwarven Wars.
  • Jody is the only character who defies the Do Not Run with a Gun trope on her own, unlike R0B3RT who does so via a turret. Not only is she the most combat-trained of the cast and thus had learned to attack while on the move, but her weapon is one of the lightest as well, making it easy for her to throw them on the move.
• Fridge Horror: When playing as a character, it's possible to find the other outlaws' signature Legendary Items in chests dropped by Deputies and Sheriffs. This means the Undertaker and his minions likely managed to capture or kill the other outlaws.
• Funny Moments:
  • The special ability of Ollin's Mighty Mezcal Staff is launching an entire ball cactus at enemies, which looks incredibly absurd yet deadly.
  • The first boss of the game is called "Rex, Cupcake, and Brutus", being a cutesey dog's name sandwiched in between two fearsome ones. Cupcake's skull is even that of a pug's as compared to the other Rex and Brutus' more traditional looking dog skulls.
  • Crazy Denzel's lore gives us a Shout-Out to one of Fist of the North Star's memes. Namely, his catchphrase being "Hey, as long as it works!".
  • Roger's death animation is turning into an Instant Roast.
  • The "Drinks are on the House" item causes charger and ranged enemies to enroll in Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy by making their attacks miss 70% of the time due to being completely smashed.
  • The Undertaker managed to get control of the magic-resistant but not-very-bright Armarauders. How so? According to their rules, "rolling" is defined by "curling up" and "moving". So, he challenges and beats their leader Tom in a rolling competition by curling up while riding his speedy horse.
• Game-Breaker:
  • "Bulletstorm", especially with a few Cooldown Reductions. One mechanic that adds difficulty to the game is your inability to shoot while moving, and Bulletstorm basically spawns projectiles regardless of movement or not. With a good few cooldown reductions, piercing, and especially as Nigel (or if you have Sheriffken), you gain an Orbiting Particle Shield that grinds up any enemies foolish to touch it, without needing to stay still. Even after a Nerf that limited the number of orbiting projectiles to 20, it's still extremely powerful.
  • "Three is the Magic Number" gives the character a Spread Shot while sacrificing fire rate by 40%. This allows you to potentially hit 3x the amount of enemies at one go, and the fire rate issue can be mostly solved via picking Fire Rate upgrades or with other items. It even makes the otherwise Awesome, but Impractical Tequila Bottle more viable, since the 30% extra fire rate lessens the 40% fire rate drop and the downside of every alternate shot deviating does not affect the two side shots. For added fun, this ability affects Ollin's/Mighty Mezcal Staff's cactus balls (which explode into spreads of shots on removal), allowing you to shoot three at a go for even more Spread Shot Bullet Hell.
  • "Nitrocrit" used to be this to the point where it had to be nerfed four times. Initially, it made all critical hits from shots explode in an area for 25% of that crit-boosted damage, and it had no limit to the number of explosions a shot could make if it pierced/bounced, allowing massive horde clear on high crit rate. To save framerate and nerf it, it was made such that one shot can only create a max of 3 explosions. Then, its explosion damage got buffed to 40%, but taking it nerfed your overall damage by 30% in order to make the main attack less damaging. A new nerf makes it no longer reduce your damage, but the explosion now deals your base, non-critical damage and cannot crit.
  • "Plot Armor" is an absolute lifesaver in harder Infamy Levels where enemies hit for 2 (on levels 10-14) or even 3 (on level 15). Getting hit while Plot Armor is active removes it and leaves you unharmed regardless of damage dealt. If you can find a good few cooldown reductions to mitigate the 60-second recharge time, you'll be able to afford more mistakes.
  • Reckless Rush is a Difficult, but Awesome Epic item that when properly mastered can easily break the game. Whenever the player dashes above 1 HP, they lose 1 HP but gain a permanent +5 damage, which has no limit. However, the part that really breaks stuff is that the combos it has with four different Common items that trigger whenever you take damage — Bloody Rage^* triples your attack speed for 3 seconds, Last Pull^* pulls in all coins and Hearts on the screen to save having to walk, Mezcal Mantle^* spray shots everywhere to hit enemies around you, and Nitro Suit^* causes an explosion that deals 4x your base damage. That's not all, though — with Soothing Escape^* heals after a dash, but +30 seconds to dash base cooldown, you no longer lose HP when dashing but still trigger player damage-related effects. Add in Ninja Headband and Afterimage to shorten your dash cooldown, and Steam Boots (you use all your dash in succession, but recover all your dash at once) and you get a cheap way to increase your damage by a good amount.
  • Guided Shot gives your shots 1 extra piercing, and your shots will home in on the nearest enemy on its first pierce — which can include the first target it hit. This is incredibly useful as the shots can retarget enemies if their target enemy dies, preventing wastage of shots and the ability to clear enemies further away. Finally, unlike several other Legendary items, this one has no drawbacks whatsoever. It got heavily nerfed in a subsequent update, no longer retargeting if its intended target dies, but the fact that it can essentially double your shot damage makes it a very powerful item.
  • Onion is an item that deals 25% of your damage in an area around you every 0.5 seconds — with starting stats, it's a joke that deals weak damage in a small range. However, its usefulness is affected by five different level-up upgrades that can turn it into an "Instant Death" Radius — Damage increases its damage, Critical Chance makes it crit more often, Critical Damage allows it to deal much more damage on a critical hit, Area Size increases its radius linearly and thus its area of effect by a squared factor, and Cooldown Reduction makes it attack at a faster rate. Should the player obtain Gluttony, extra Health will also increase its damage too. With proper upgrades, the end result can be a fast-hitting, wide-radius attack that can hit several enemies at a go and crits often for massive damage, trivializing non-boss enemies. The Relentless Momentum item makes it even better, increasing your area size by +80% and multiplying your damage by 1.5x at max stacks, as long as you keep moving — which Onion encourages.
  • The combination of R0B3RT/Madlyn/Jody and Relentless Momentum. Normally, Relentless Momentum is Awesome, but Impractical, increasing your area size up to +80% and damage to 1.5x as long as you keep moving (in a game where Do Not Run with a Gun is the norm), and will quickly decrease when you stop moving. However, the three mentioned characters easily get around said drawback, with R0B3RT capable of attacking while moving thanks to his auto-firing turret, Madlyn charging up her scrap gun by moving to give her a constant movement/hit and run playstyle, and Jody can stutter-step to stock up daggers that can be fired while moving. This essentially means you can keep a 1.5x damage buff on them along with a sizeable area increase for effects like Onion, Seismic Dance, and Magnetized Horseshoe, which pair up very well with them.
  • Roger, the unlockable shopkeeper character. At first glance, he seems weak, what with only 1 Max HP and slightly slower attack speed than Serra. But he also has the Golden Loaded Die, which gives him an extra choice for upgrades and items and it will be rare or better. If the player manages to find a golden card upgrade, that gives him 5 slots in all, and with the Black Market's Four Leaf Clover and the Lucky Star he gets a 50% extra chance to have yet another slot. This allows him to build his stats in a more optimized manner due to the player having more choices, including negating his low HP drawback by getting a +2 Health, while also having a better chance of getting the optimal items for your build. All this allows him to snowball quickly in usefulness, making him one of the easy-to-use yet effective characters compared to Ollin^note who can get even stronger than Roger, but requires lots of luck with upgrades and items to do so, making him Difficult, but Awesome or Nigel^note who has trouble with range and damage in the early game
  • The Super Black Market's "Legendary Training Kit" gives you a one-use banish for player upgrades. If one encounters the "usual suspects" options^note a Common Damage upgrade, a Common Fire Rate upgrade, and Common Crit Chance upgrade and uses this, every level-up upgrade from then on will be rare or better, which allows you to find the more coveted Epic or Legendary upgrades far more easily.
  • The Super Black Market's "Lost and Found Goods" gives you a basic chest (Lv1) or Sheriff Chest (Lv2) at the start of a run, if you have beaten a Sheriff in the previous one. Having a potentially powerful Epic item at the start of a run can make you snowball faster. Likewise, "Fidelity Chest" gives an extra chest every fourth chest drop, which means you can get roughly 3 extra items in any run.
  • The Super Black Market's "Blessed Ring" gives a chance for your upgrades to be of Mythical rarity, normally only obtainable from re-rolling a Godly Die. Most Mythical upgrades give massive bonuses and a chance to get them for free can easily turn the tide of battle.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Shooter enemies in general, especially Mages. They have moderate amounts of health and like their name suggests can use long-distance moves. Mages are especially bad on higher difficulties where they throw fireballs more often, these fireballs are perfectly aimed requiring you to move or dash and can travel a long distance until they exit the screen unlike the moles' dynamite, which only hits an area after a bit of time. They're also all smart enough to stay out of player radius abilities like Onion or Intimidating Reward, and thanks to melee enemies rushing the player the shooters tend to avoid being the first targeted enemies despite their annoyance. The Brainsuckers that replace the Mages halfway through can even shoot from offscreen, with their energy balls being the only tell that they're doing so.
  • Literal example with the Bat People. They replace Goblins as the Undertaker's mooks, appear in huge numbers, and their special ability makes all of them get a temporary but stacking boost in speed whenever one is killed. If you lack Intimidating Reward, their speed boost can very quickly allow them to catch up to you and deal damage.
  • In Endless Mode, the Mole Men become these. With the right build, you can kill off Bats, Orcs, Skeletal Hounds and Brainsuckers before they can enter the screen or attack. Mole Men however are invulnerable when they enter the screen digging, and there's a very brief period between them popping up and them throwing a dynamite that will likely force you into moving. Certain items can help you kill them before they do so, but you'll likely need around 370% area size for Bulletstorm and Onion to even touch them if you plan on staying still.
• Goddamned Boss: The game is split into day, night, and morning, each time segment giving you three Deputies that are King Mook versions of the Runners, Chargers and Shooters, the order they appear in selected randomly. Depending on the situation, some can be extremely irritating to fight:
  • The most irritating Deputy to encounter as your first one is Green Shadow by far, who does nothing but chase you quickly and force you to keep running away while attacking him and ignoring other experience-giving mooks until he dies, while you have no slowing items and likely weak damage. It's not helped by Green Shadow having the most health of the three early-game deputies (at 1000, with Georges at 750 and Owl Face at 600), despite being a King Mook of the frailest enemy. Both Georges and Owl Face move much more slowly and sport easy-to-avoid attacks, making them easier to manage. Subsequent Runner Deputies are more manageable even though they have more health, thanks to you either having more damage or slowing items and/or the increased amount of enemies likely to slow their movement down.
  • In the mid-to-late game, Shooter Deputies count under this. At this point, the higher enemy concentration allows them to hide behind other mooks while shooting at the player from afar, making it tricky to kill them without piercing abilities.
• Good Bad Bugs: In order to unlock R0B3RT, you need to stand still for 1 minute. For some reason, staying at the "Press any key to begin" screen counts for this, meaning that all you need to do is wait at the start screen for a minute and you can unlock R0B3RT.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • General community consensus deems Nigel the worst character for a scoring run by far, thanks to poor early-game due to lowered base damage, slower attack speed, and his Sheriffkens' limited range making him unable to quickly one-shot enemies from afar without getting lots of upgrades in damage, fire rate, and area size. As each enemy type gives the same amount of bounty score regardless of enemy rank (Runners = 10, Chargers and Shooters = 30), this poor early game becomes a huge score liability. Even after a Balance Buff that reduced his initial attack speed in exchange for removing Sheriffken's 40% fire rate reduction (therefore allowing him to get much better attacking speed), he's still considered to be rather poor at scoring due to his lack of range, as enemies spawn faster if they're killed quickly (i.e. near the edge of the screen). He is considered one of the better characters if you're just trying to survive an infamy run to unlock the next thanks to his innate piercing.
  • Like Nigel, Natoko is one of the less picked characters when it comes to scoring in Bounty Hunted mode, despite being one of the best at killing enemies and bosses and general survival. He shares a similar weakness in his lack of range — while he has up to an insane 3x attack speed if an enemy is near him, it drops to a horrid 1/3x if there are none. To score well, the player needs to kill enemies at the edges of the screen so they respawn faster — and thus this liability prevents him from doing so quickly.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The sparkly jingle that plays when you level up with a Legendary-tier upgrade or obtain a chest with a Legendary-tier item, which plays even before the upgrades/items are revealed.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Inner Strength (+5% crit chance per fully charged dash stock) singlehandedly saved the Epic Dash upgrades (+2 dash) from a "don't pick this upgrade" into a huge boon, effectively giving the player +10% crit chance as long as they don't dash often. The common and rare critical chance upgrades only gives +5/+7 percent respectively, making the epic Dash upgrades grant even more.
• Scrappy Weapon:
  • The Dirty Nigel item increases your damage by 10% in exchange for slowing the speed of all your shots. This is a huge disadvantage especially if combined with Tesla Field which slows all shots within, both yours and the enemies, turning all your shots to the speed of molasses. It's usually not worth it for a mere 10% damage increase compared to its opposite counterpart Far Sight, which increases your damage by 30% and makes all your shots faster but makes you lose 20% fire rate. It got buffed to granting 20% damage instead of 10% and the shot speed decrease buffed from -50% to -30%, rescuing it from the scrappy heap by a bit.
  • Tesla Field is another item that's best left untouched, as it slows all projectiles in an area around you. Including your own, which makes its effect similar to Dirty Nigel. Without Far Sight, your projectiles take a longer time to reach enemies — and if it's combined with Dirty Nigel, you get one of the worst synergies in the game that will slow your projectiles down to a crawl. Worse still, this only slows down the Brainsuckers' Painfully Slow Projectile attacks which makes them clutter the screen even further if you lack Faithfull. The worst part is that it makes the Reverse Shrapnel of Undertaker's most dangerous attack even more dangerous by slowing the projectiles and removing what little amount of space was left between them. The only time it can be useful is with Sheriffken, where your shots home back in to you and can be trailed for a long while via Tesla Field's slowing. It's been Rescued from the Scrappy Heap after it got buffed to no longer slow down player projectiles.
  • Little Friend is a Legendary that increases your fire rate by a huge 4x... and cuts your damage by 3x. While this sounds like an amazing Death of a Thousand Cuts weapon, it basically restricts you to your auto-attack and kills off the viability of any other source of damage except Big Bertha, since most of those don't rely on fire rate. While it can be viable on lower infamy levels, it's often considered a detriment in higher-level play. It's also overshadowed by Bloody Rage + Reckless Rush, a Common + Epic item combo which gives you a burst of 3x fire rate when you take damage from the latter, but you still keep your damage intact. Little Friend is considered the worst item if you're going for endless mode, because the enemy density is so huge and their HP scaling is fast enough to overcome the fire rate and crippled damage from your AoE abilities.
• That One Achievement:
  • "Legend" is earned by having a win streak of 3 on Infamy Level 15 and above. Infamy Level 15 is already notoriously hard, with several restrictions that cripple you such as slower move speed, faster enemies, faster enemy projectiles, higher enemy count, more ranged and charger enemies, more boss health, doubled dash cooldown, halved Mercy Invincibility time, and worst of all, all enemies deal 3 damage to you, instantly killing you if you don't have extra health. Beating Infamy Level 15 once is quite a difficult task, but having to do so three times without dying once makes it by far one of the toughest achievements.
  • Artemis Emissary is the above but even harder, where you need to have a win streak of 3 on the hardest Infamy level.
  • Agendaddict III required you to win a Daily Struggle 7 days in a row. However, beating a daily struggle sometimes didn't award the count for the win no matter how many times you played it, therefore voiding your streak because of a bug. It eventually got changed to simply winning 7 times, without the need for a streak.
• That One Attack:
  • Crazy Denzel's third attack is tricky for newer players to avoid thanks to throwing in both predictability and unpredictability at the same time. He throws two sticks of dynamite several times, one of which is aimed at a spot that the player is standing around (which will hit you if you don't move), and the other is aimed randomly around the boss arena. If you're unlucky with the randomly-thrown dynamite, it can land in the nearest spot you were headed in to avoid the one directed at you, and you better hope you have dash to escape. His other attacks hit pre-determined spots on the map, making them much easier to evade despite the increased quantity of bombs. After an update, this attack is now the one he starts out with, making the fight harder.
  • Ruthless Ruth has an attack where she sticks her horns in the ground and charges, leaving behind large quake explosions which is simple to evade... and is followed up by digging up a bunch of flaming rocks that fall on parts of the screen. These generate a constant damaging AoE and linger for a very long time, gradually turning the battlefield into hazardous zones and making it much harder to avoid her.
  • The Undertaker's Soul Orb Reverse Shrapnel/Orbiting Particle Shield in his second phase. He sends out multiple waves of 5 large spirit orbs that quickly expand in size, and at around 10 waves the orbs stop and begin to circle him. After a few seconds, the orbs go into reverse and move back into him, meaning you now have to dodge the attack in reverse. On harder difficulties, he fires the orbs at a much faster rate, giving the player far less maneuvering room. The attack is tricky to dodge to the point where one of the most commonly-picked Common items is FaithFull, solely because the rotating shields can remove the orbs upon contact instantly and make the attack far easier to avoid. The Undertaker's other two attacks (a Shockwave Stomp in the first phase and the shotgun + Skeletal Horse move in the second phase) are seen as easier to dodge. Mercifully, this is one of the only projectile attacks in the game that isn't affected by the "Projectiles bounce off the edges of the screen" Necromancer's Pact modifier.
• That One Disadvantage:
  • Out of all the Necromancer's Pact difficulty modifiers, the one that makes enemy projectiles bounce off the edges of the screen tends to be the most deadly, despite also giving a lot of infamy level points. The first level in this modifier gives them one bounce and the second gives them two, turning levels into Bullet Hell if you can't kill ranged foes fast enough.
  • In Daily Struggle missions, there are a few modifiers that can make things much more difficult:
    • "You move 50% faster, but enemies also do" benefits the enemies far more than you as you need to be stationary to attack^note unless you're R0B3RT whose turret attacks for him, but even then the enemies' faster speed means a much higher chance to miss, while the enemies can catch up with you much more easily. The only character who mostly benefits from this is Madlyn, who uses Hit-and-Run Tactics and can gain Scrap Gun stacks much faster from the increased movement speed.
    • "Your screen is locked and you can't move out of the starting zone" greatly limits your available movement space for kiting and makes it much easier for enemies to get to you. Worse still, your attacks can't pass the fence boundary. The ranged enemies on the other hand have no such restrictions.
    • "You start with 100 000 bounty but lose score overtime, the day passes only when you take a level" requires you to get to level 36 with Sheriffs appearing every 12 levels. The first Deputy can be easily missed as it appears at level 10, meaning that if you picked up too much gold you lose the chance to get an item. Otherwise, it's not that bad (bosses have lowered health) but if paired up with one of the other two disadvantages, things can get dicey pretty fast.