The roguelite dungeon crawler subgenre is rife with indie games that punch far above their weight class. From Despot’s Game to Merge & Blade, and now Patch Quest, games like these take pleasure in blurring category lines while sticking to tradition where it has always worked best.
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Sometimes there’s a little extra focus on puzzles, sometimes the strategy elements are placed front and center. In Patch Quest, there’s a little bit of everything as you're dropped into an unfamiliar wilderness to tame its monsters and catalog its flora, all while fending off its less-friendly residents. Run fast, shoot quicker, and unlock the right perks if you wish to prevail in this action-packed, patience-testing adventure that’s always full of fun surprises.
10 Rocket Reel
One of the three final perks you can unlock on the Lasso end of your perk tree is Rocket Reel. This bio-fueled turbine helps you evade attackers by giving a boost to your running speed while you’re lassoing a mount.
Rocket Reel is valuable in situations where you’ve found a mount you want to capture, but there are still multiple monsters on the map to deal with. You might not want to risk killing your would-be mount while clearing out the baddies, so Rocket Reel can help you stay alive long enough to grab that new pet.
9 Reload Fan
By decreasing your blaster’s reload time after a charge blasts, Reload Fan takes heat off your back—both figuratively and literally. This high-tier perk is ideal for gun-loving players focused on using their bullets to mow through Patch Quest’s unforgiving wilderness.
It’s particularly useful in tight situations, like when you’re in a boss fight with multiple rounds of swarming mobs that need to be cleared out quickly before you get overrun by their huge barrages of bullets. Reload Fan also shines when you manage to gather a solid combination of bullet upgrades that increase bullet size or deal explosive damage.
8 Sap Extractor
In Patch Quest, your offensive power is mostly defined by the upgrades you apply to your gun while out exploring, as well as any attack-oriented skills your mount may have at its disposal. Sap Extractor introduces a third branch to the weapon tree by enabling you to melee a hostile plant to temporarily extract a powerful weapon.
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Maybe you haven't found that weapon upgrade you so desperately want, or maybe your mount doesn’t have the sort of offensive prowess you need to progress further into the wilderness. Sap Extractor can get you over the hump in moments where need a little extra oomph.
7 Spark Jacket
Spark Jacket is sort of like a reverse bulletproof vest: instead of absorbing damage, it takes the damage you receive and turns it into a super useful stun effect. This dazzling piece of couture is one of the three final perks you can get on the Clothes end of your perk tree.
The truth is that it’s virtually impossible to not take damage in Patch Quest, so you might as well equip armor that turns it into something positive. Spark Jacket can come in handy when you’re trying to lasso a mount by giving you some extra time to reel it in without needing to constantly evade attackers.
6 Shockwave Vest
Don’t let the early availability of this perk deceive you, Shockwave Vest is a highly valuable defensive tool that you’ll thank yourself for unlocking as soon as you run into some of Patch Quest’s fast-firing foes.
By releasing a shockwave that clears all nearby bullets after taking damage, Shockwave Vest gives you a highly-valuable moment to regroup, catch your breath and take stock of your surroundings. It can also come in handy if you’re trying to tame a mount and need some extra time to complete that sometimes hard-to-close circle.
5 Suppressor Stock
Sometimes dealing pure damage is overrated in Patch Quest. Often, you’ll find yourself in a situation where you just need to evade you way through a map in order to find a safe spot to regroup. Suppressor Stock can help for those situations where you need to stay on the move.
By giving your bullets the ability to make stricken monsters move and act slower, Suppressor Stock gives a real boost to players just trying to buy some time to examine that new plant over on the opposite corner of the map.
4 Loop Guard
Don’t ignore your lasso. Taming and then subsequently leveraging the full potential of high-power or unique-ability mounts will make progressing into the more challenging stages of Patch Quest significantly easier. Loop Guard can help you become a veritable beast master in no time.
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And not only does Loop Guard make taming easier—especially when combined with perks like Diamond Fibre and Rocket Reel—it turns your lasso into a functioning shield by enabling its knot to block hostile shots. With this perk active, lassoing effectively becomes a viable offensive tool that you can employ to not only capture mounts, but to more easily clear the map of monsters.
3 Wetsocks
From magma-spewing tortoises to toxic spore-hurling mushrooms, the world of Patch Quest is full of fast-moving, hard-hitting threats that never take no for an answer. Wetsocks can help you spread your attention a little less thin by making dangerous terrain do less damage while you’re traversing it.
Throw the Wetsocks on your feet and Spark Jacket on your back, and you’ll be significantly less damage-prone while the bullets fly. You’ll even be able to run circles around your tames without having to worry about whether you’re about to step in a puddle of toxic goo.
2 Cooling Spritz
Mounts have a diversity of unique skills that aid mightily in your quest to explore every nook and cranny of Patch Quest. With Cooling Spritz active, your adversary-turned-companion will be that much more capable of giving you the boost you need.
Similar to the speedier reloads awarded by Reload Fan, Cooling Spritz decreases the cooldown on all your mount skills by 25 percent. Time it right, and if you’ve unlocked all your mount skills, you can cycle through them so quickly that you’ll be raining a stream of nearly uninterrupted pain onto your enemies.
1 Diamond Fibre
Lassoing a mount can be a pain in the butt if you haven’t already cleared the map of all the other monsters you’re not trying to tame. Diamond Fibre makes your life a little easier by making your lasso stay attached after the first time you take damage.
Combined with Spark Jacket and Rocket Reel, you can stun the other monsters on the map and then pull off a super quick tame while taking minimal damage. This is especially useful if you’re deep into the Patch Quest wilderness and are trying to capture the second or third mount of your run amid extra-dangerous mobs.
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