WHIP guide

How it works

The basic idea is to get as many points as possible. Points are given to the player for killing enemies and bosses in a WHIP run. There is a multiplier that can be tracked in the top right corner. The multiplier comes from multiplying two factors together, your time factor and curse factor.

Time Factor

You will start a run at 10x time factor, It takes 60 seconds of gameplay to lose 1x multiplier from your time factor, the timer is rest to 10x after every location change (ie goldmine to dungeon, etc.) if the player has less that 10x time factor when they change zones. An additional Boss time factor will be added to the time factor when changing zones as well. This boss timer will start at 6x when the fight starts but quickly decrease to 5x during the cutscene. This factor goes down by 1 every 30 seconds in the boss fight. The boss time factor freezes at the end of the fight at whatever number it ended up at, and it doesn’t apply itself to the overall multiplier until you go down to the next location.

Curse Factor

This factor defaults to 1x at a minimum, Major curses give a 0.5 increase to the factor and minor curses give a 0.25 increase to the multiplier. For example having 3 major curses and 1 minor curse would give a multiplier of 2.75x. The same amounts get removed from the multiplier when the curses are removed.

Tips

• Your First Run
  • This run should be taken as a time to learn the WHIP and Floor layouts
  • Learn where Secret Rooms and Crawl Spaces are. Especially try to find Tus
  • The optimal way to go through each floor

• Get As Many Curses As You Can Handle
  • Witch's Brew is very helpful for this
  • Getting Branding Bomb at Shouguul can be useful since they give 1 brittleness for each one used.
  • Taking hits from Nemesis (enemy) can be an okay strategy to get some extra curses, as long as you have lots of max health/healing. You may lose alot of gold doing that though.
  • Taking curses from will o’ wisps in halls rooms with cursed urns can also work for getting lots of random minor curses
  • Don't remove curses, practicing running with lots of curses outside of WHIP runs can make it much easier to handle insane amounts of curses. (Using Aether to get rid of a problematic Major curse can be helpful.)

• Go As Fast As You Can
  • Don't back track too much
  • You can spend extra time on the Goldmines 4 floor(or any boss floor) after defeating the boss if you have less than an 11x multiplier because the next floor will reset you to a full 10x multiplier.

• Learn What Relics Are Good And Bad In WHIP
  • There are some relics in Normal UM runs that are not good and that you should not pick up in WHIP runs.
  • Ara and Doll are relics that can be good in normal UM but you never want to take them in WHIP since they block curses lowering your score multiplier.
  • Aphotic Charm, Doom Blade and Twisted Blade are all really good since they are based on curses and you stack a lot of curses in WHIP
  • Branding bombs now give one brittleness and you can use multiple in a single room.

• Actions That Pause The WHIP Timer
  • Opening the Journal pauses the WHIP timer
  • Switching between rooms pauses the WHIP timer
  • The WHIP timer is paused during boss fights
  • When you switch zones after defeating the boss the timer pauses to add the boss time multiplier to your time multiplier
  • In the Antechamber in Othermine.

• Actions that DON’T pause the WHIP timer
  • Being in a boss room after the boss is defeated
  • Waiting for a shop to get stocked
  • Black Rabbit games

• Other tips
  • If you fight a boss in WHIP and don’t beat the boss before the timer reaches 0 there is no punishment for a boss timer reaching 0.
  • Skeletons spawned from Ostiophobia give points unlike spiders spawned from arachnophobia
  • Hoodie fast travel is available in WHIP but should never be used for getting score because it offers no benefit to the player.(Can be used for unlocking familiar skins though if you aren't going for max score)
  • Minor curses stack to add to the curse score multiplier unlike most of the time where items don’t take advantage of stacked minor curses
  • At Sho'guul's lair it may be worth taking an item worth less curses if that item could save you more time.