I'll grade heroes in their entirety, not just abilities. Keep in mind, characters have different starting stats and gain these stats at different rates as well. My tiering is based on experience too. I think it's extremely difficult to rate heroes without actually playing with them because there are just too many factors per hero. Most of these notes apply to Sanitary Pod (A lot of people still don't know this is the actual hard mode), but I have some notes for other pods. The big problem with making a tier list in this game is that most characters are situational. Characters are also rated without the consideration of certain exploits, exploits in which I shan't specify here. It's a single player game, I suggest you play as intended lest you ruin your own experience.



S+ Tier (godly)-

Lady Joleri Tupak- Excellent for first 6 floors, on any pod. She has the best starting stats for a non operator, bar none. Her passive takes away dust from you, but the passive only applies when you get her to level 2. You're free to keep her at level 1 for a long time, especially on multiplayer when extra heroes are assured in Sanitary Pod, and you can simply swap Joleri out for that hero. She's somewhat fast, at speed 34, she needs only 2 extra speed to block spawn rooms diagonally after opening a door. She gets extra tanky abilities at a high cost; both of her active abilities give her defense, but the second ability does so with a large penalty to dust. This may be just what you need for a triple operator setup, so she compliments Josh well. She is not good in ALL situations; she's probably not very good with only one operator and many other characters become better choices past floor 6... unless Joleri gets an item that allows her to operate, because she has very high wit for a non-operator.



A+ Tier (great)



Professor Josh Nutella- If you're not playing on Sanitary Pod, bump Josh to S+ tier. If you find him in Sanitary on floor 2 or 4 and make a Triple Operator team, bump him to S+ tier. If he's second op, A+, and if he's your only op, S+ (actually almost any operator is S+ if they're your only operator, starting chars aside). Josh gets better with the more operators you have, but he has some of the worst combat stats in the game (like that ever mattered to him). Don't worry about it if Josh never gets any use out of his Overclock ability, you're probably using him right. He should stay farrr away from the monsters. With proper dust switching, (see Operator Dust Shift) he should go many a floor without combat.



Rakya Pulmoni- If you're not playing on Sanitary Pod, bump Rakya down to B tier. Rakya has the right amount of smarts, and if you're not playing 3 or 4 multiplayer, Rakya is probably the best starting operator. She's beefy; yet not too beefy and she can still buy into level 3 operate quickly. She's difficult to replace as well, because Rakya and Opbot are both high wit operators, and you just don't come across that many of these smarties, so even though she isn't the greatest high level operator, you're sort of just stuck with her. (unless you're playing on a different pod where operators are more abundant; AOE is crazy good in Drill Pod so bump her back to A tier for that.)



Warden Mormish- Even I'm surprised I placed him this high. When I first started playing DotE, I actually placed him near the bottom (right alongside Joleri, even). The thing is, this guy's the beefiest operator. He's got a sluggish speed, but if you need a high level operator, I would choose Mormish over any other operator. (exceptions apply if you create a triple operator team with Josh). He's horrible as a starting character because getting him to level 4 to operate is very expensive, but having him as a frontline operator that gains dust, or having him as a backline operator on a merchant while using his armchair general is great. Yes, the two abilities are counter intuitive to each other, but he's still a good char.



OpBot- OpBot sure is weird. He has very comparable stats with Rakya, they both gain at almost the same rate, and Opbot is just a little smarter. You'd think he's better, but in my experience, the bot keeps dying. And that's because he uses the spear. Yup. Being the only Level 3 Operator that uses a melee weapon, OpBot will have you hovering over the heal specifically because he chooses to aggro the enemies. That's the only reason why he's slightly lower than Rakya. He's also the fastest Level 3 operator! If you need a runner to pair with a fighter like Gork or Nanor, OpBot is definitely the go to operator.



Elise Ness- She can operate. She may not have as much HP as other tanks, but she more than makes up for it with how much defense she gains. She can easily switch her role because she has two device slots. Except when you need her to run, she is always good; no matter the floor (okay maybe except floor 1-2). She's definitely one of the best all-rounders. I still would not likely choose her as one of my 2 starting heroes.



Chef Nanor- I'd like to find Nanor at level 5. His cooking with gas skill gives you a lot of dust, AOEs the whole floor, and since it's an active skill, you could even refresh it continuously. I'd say he's your emergency generator, except it doesn't cost 90+ industry to use his skill. Although not a great character at the first floor, he becomes the top pick past floor 4. I think he's the only character with Extenders, but Extenders is pretty bad imo. You only save a tiny bit of food from using it, so don't bother picking up dehydrated water until your heals cost at least 8 food. In Sanitary you'd think it's essential (since heals cost way more in Sanitary), but if you're spamming the heal button as much as to necessitate extenders, then I'd say you've already lost. Update: Moved down a tier because it's simply too rare to justify usage of his cooking with gas. He'll save games with it, but having ample resources is probably more important than my initial conclusions, and Nanor doesn't contribute to this.



A Tier (good)-

Max O'Kane- He has a modest window of usefulness, but until level 10, I always kind of get the feeling that he's just somewhat subpar. In the beginning floors, you can have him opening doors for dust, but you're probably going to want him operating, and he's not nearly as smart as the top operators (Rakya/Opbot/Mormish/Josh). When he gets to level 10, he's got his run ability and his pilfer does double dust- that's fantastic. More than likely though, he's sitting around operating for the first 15 doors of any floor, because you don't need him to open doors. The reason why he's A is because how much better he gets at Level 10 (I would say this level is somewhat difficult to get to on Sanitary), and the fact that he tends to save games with his pilfer ability. I feel that pilfer level 1 is overrated though, because a comparable team with high enough wit could simply buy dust in the form of emergency generators, but still, there are times when you can't even place said e-gens.





A Tier (good)-

Gork- There is a very small window for Gork to become applicably S-Tier on any pod. I would prefer to find him when he's level 9. That's because of his health at that level. At level 1 Gork has 590 hp, and Joleri has 800HP. At level 15, Gork has 3000, and Joleri has 1900. Health is great. The main cause of death for heroes isn't because you can't afford it with food; it's because you couldn't react in time from the split second massive amounts of damage. In other words, it's the fault of player skill, and I've seen enough players screw this up to know that I'm not alone in the fact. The thing that keeps Gork from actually being S, is that he's just not good enough all around, especially on the lower floors. You definitely can't put him in a triple operator team, but the best time to place him in your team is when you no longer desire a triple operator team. His aggro skill is great though, and I think I use his knifey ability for the speed buff more than the actual damage buff.



A tier-

Ken Massacre- He's the loner type; decidedly the better "brother" of Mizi's. His high speed allows him to open doors, which makes his loner abilities applicable to the enemies he immediately faces, so unlike Mizi, his abilities are always being well used. He's even better with Aftershave.



A tier??? (No experience, only played him once)

Esseb Tarosh- Ranged sword makes him an interesting character that could kite enemies and do high damage. His module/artifact healing ability is not so good though. It's too situational, I'd rather be relying on player skill to ensure artifacts aren't destroyed rather than hero ability. Dust Drainer's got to be good though.



B Tier (Average)

Golgy- Despite her being tiered as average, her character is anything but. She's got super high speed, and very high DPS, even without a weapon. Golgy and Sara are somewhat similar in application. You don't want to find them early. Golgy shines as a switch operator/fighter because you can give her double defense items or double wit items. If you find Aftershave to give her, I don't even care that her active aftershave-like ability is going to waste, push her up to S tier. I would place her at C tier without aftershave, but then again, simply the possibility of finding an aftershave for Golgy places her a whole tier higher at B. Bump her up to A if you're playing on Drill, because the chances of finding Aftershave is doubly higher.



Somewhere around B tier??- (low amount of experience)

Hikensha- She has two abilities based around unpowered rooms. When do you fight in unpowered rooms? If you have a good amount of dust, she should be operating, and there are better operators. If she is operating, she's in a powered room and likely won't leave her operating station, nor the turrets around her. If you have a low amount of dust, then I assume all hell is breaking loose, and the last thing you want is for her to be in a room by herself. Her stat gains are all around the board, much like Deena, except Hikensha's stats may be slightly for the better, being a little tankier and smarter puts her in a roll similar to Elise, so she's applicable all the time.



Somewhere around B- tier??- (low amount of experience)

Kreyang- I don't own this character, but I have played on several occasions with players that do. The freeze ability is very good, one of the best panic buttons in the game. He is a good choice for a third/second operator too. My main gripe with him is that he doesn't synergize well with Sanitary Pod since his character receives buffs while research is ongoing, but Sanitary Pod imposes a monster speed buff while you research. He seems good otherwise, so bring him up half a tier if you're not playing on sanitary pod. Updated: Boost to S if playing on multiplayer due to his wit and operator rounding.



B- Tier?? (low amount of experience)

Skroig- Red Plume is fantastic. The fact that he can't wear armor, and the fact that he doesn't have lots of HP as a fighter makes him a squishy bug. Still, with lots of love and care, Skroig gets the defense he needs to make up for it at a high level. It's a small window for him to shine though. Until then, he's a one trick pony that you're not nearly getting enough love out of with a 3 turn cooldown. Still, you've got some pretty high deeps with his attack cooldown. I feel I could be very wrong about Skroig and he could be A tier. In Drill Pod, his plume becomes a hail mary, but pretty much anyone with a sort of AOE gets a half a letter tier boost.



Somewhere around B- tier?-(moderate amount of experience)

Nurse Ratchet Deena- Deena has good stat gains, even with the price considered to level her. She starts to shine at around level 6 after she gets her second ability. I don't think her paramedic ability is that bad, but there's definitely nothing brokenly good about it either. At first you think it's a bad ability, but then once you get used to things, you start getting better at using it... but then to maximize its potential, you have to have everyone in the same room, which means that you shouldn't be dividing enemies across multiple frontlines...and then it's a bad ability again, but she has placebo, which is a reaaally good healing passive, so I don't know where I stand. Overall, she is a great high level replacement character (like Hikensha), especially if you need a third operator that can switch between fight and op. If you manage to have a lot of buffs that coincide with heroes being in the same room, both of Deena's actives are good at facilitating that, but in order to take advantage of that kind of buff, you'd have to place your heroes in setups I'd normally find inefficient. Anywho, the stigma with Paramedic is that it's very visible how much you're healing with the ability. It's not a lot. Then again, you don't do a lot of damage with most abilities either. The beauty in paramedic is not that it helps you when you really need it; it's when you only sort of need it and would rather use a free ability than a turret. "Sort of need" sounds pretty bad at first, but remember this is a game about efficiency, and paramedic is more useful when you're trying to save money, but not very useful when all hell is breaking loose. Paramedic is healing, therefore it allows you to REACT to a situation rather than preemptively predict with a battle ability. Look, it's still kind of bad, okay?



C+ Tier (Sorta bad)

Mizi Kurtiz- I've had a lot of experience with her, and there's nothing outstanding about her that wows me. She's got a really cool AOE power, but at the same time I wish she had another slot for an item. She's good in the beginning when you don't have any items, but I'd rather give one of my 2 hero starter slots to someone like Joleri (and despite this preference for Joleri as one of my two starters, I still have enough experience with Mizi to place her as C-). The other glaring weakness she has is how long her ability freezes her in place. I think about 1/3rd of the time, Mizi is stuck; she needs to be somewhere else and I can't help but scream internally. Part of me says it's the fault of player skill; I should be accounting for her freeze more, but the other part of me says that I definitely need to use her abilities at times, and then she will just stick herself into the ground. It also doesn't help that her loner buffs never synergize well with her archetype. She has the lowest wit, and is not very fast, so I'm sure she'll be defending...next to an operator. Best case scenario is when she has her own lane of turrets to defend. Her loner abilities are not the worst, I'd just rather she didn't have them.



Somewhere around C- tier??? (very little experience)

Troe P- I don't have much insight past what the wiki already says. He looks like a good character for big floors, using kneecapped and dot ability to separate enemies, but I can't say with confidence on where to place him in terms of tier.



D Tier???

Pug- Despite having countless hours in this game, I still haven't played the pug yet. Even if I did, I doubt I could accurately place her with one playthrough. From what I gather, she is pretty bad because her defense is 0 and she can't wear armor...and she can't operate, so what exactly does she do if she can't fight? She has skills that allows her to generate resources/dust through killing enemies. I imagine I would rather simply have someone operate instead, but then again, I've never played the ♥♥♥♥♥.



D Tier (Very bad or only useful in limited applications)

Legend of Sara Numas- (you only pick Sara

Hi EndlessRunner,

Thank you for this very complete feedback It was a very interesting read!



And, I liked hearing that ^^:

The big problem with making a tier list in this game is that most characters are situational

I find true all-rounders to be really valuable in single player, and Hikensha is the best of them (sorry Elise).



Hikensha's stats are decent. She lacks Scamper or Run Away, but she's a good door-kicker anyway because she can handle herself in a fight, and Nyctophilia makes her almost as fast as Joleri in unpowered rooms (when fleeing to a defensible point). She can Operate if needed, and Endless Expert takes some of the sting away from her modest Wit. Sacrifice is a gigantic DPS steroid (130% attack power!) that synergies with War Face and any other boosters you have available (like a Tac HUD or Armchair General), with a short cooldown and only a minor drawback (damage over time is devastating to monsters, not to heroes). Plus, she has Repair (unlike Elise) for fixing up kill-zones while she's out and about. Last bit: Nytco also helps with Dust collection; it's essentially as good as someone with 10-14 Wit operating an Emergency Generator, for anything that dies in a room she's in.



Specialists are better when you can pick your entire team, but Hikensha can fit on any random setup that the RNG gives you, since she can do anything that you might need. Makes her A+ tier for me.

I want to say, that Lady Joleri wasn't that great in my runs (and I adore Broken Lords). She have too average damage for such strong penalty. Can you talk about her more? What should I build, how should I use her etc? Does she need lasthists to stack her passive? Such heroes as Skroig can easily steal them, making her useless (and many others AOE).



Also, I want to have her till the end, so having her 1 lvl to the end isn't viable, as well as talking only about her good early game.



Thanks in advance.

If you're trying to beat Sanitary Pod with Joleri and have no intention of swapping her out if you found a better character, you're on your own, heh.



If you're trying to beat any other pod, well... Joleri and practically most other characters would favor being in a team with Josh, along with two more operators. Uhhh... your request is really weird, so I'll put it this way: Why don't you think of Lady Joleri as a woman that is so upstanding, that she would give her food to her comrades, and that she would valiantly die for them if needed, if only to be a good host to her new friends? What else... her passive says "by enemy killed", which I believe suggests that she has to kill the target (and such would be in line with easily observable instances of "enemy killed", like the passives that generate FIS).



What other specific Joleri strats can I think of.... Make sure to get +2 speed for her so that she can diagonally block a dark room after opening. Get her an energy bar. Buy crutchy if you see it on floor 1 sanitary pod. You'll usually end up giving her any aggro type items. Even if Joleri's the fastest on your team, consider making someone else the crystal runner because Joleri has two powers that assist very well with crystal running.

Thanks a lot for the answer! I just played her again as solo defender and found item with Operate fairly early (she have good wit for non operate character) and she was a monster in defending. Later on 7-9 floor I almost lost, because of the her focus on fat monsters (so she snowballs a little bit later, almost too late) and after I found Hipster's Sharf. After that, run was pretty easy.



Personally, I think that for that big penalty on her active skill, it would be great to add some serious room slow/aggro. It isn't that much change, but would help her to defend alone or with others.

I think it's pretty funny how people are putting her so low, tier wise, when it's very easy to see that her "-20% Dust Probability" isn't really a penalty on the lower floors where dust is plentiful. Her stats are just too good. I disagree with your proposed buff though. With the current style of characters gradually increasing or decreasing in tiers by the floor you're on, it's fine that her char is lower floor focused.

This is an amazing, well-thought-out, in-depth guide. I only have one suggestion, maybe make a table or something with sections like operator, tank, runner, all-rounded, dps, etc if possible. It'd be helpful for people looking to make a specific team and looking for the best of a specific category. I'm not very experienced with the complexity hero roles, though, so sorry if it's a difficult request. Again, great guide, helped a lot!



Edit: Also, who would you pick for starter characters?