Endless Mode is one of the most challenging and rewarding ways to experience Rayadillo.
Unlike the main campaign, there are no checkpoints, no safety nets, just you, your skills,
and endless waves of enemies determined to stop you.
You can access it from the level select menu at the lower left by pressing Play → Endless.
Wave Breakdown (subject to change)
Each wave lasts 40 seconds in the current version of this writing.
Waves 1–9 = Easy, up to 2 zombies per wave.
Waves 10–19 = Manageable, 3–4 per wave.
Waves 20–27 = Challenging, 5–6 per wave.
Wave 35 onwards = Gets increasingly high eventually.
The Basic Loop
Chop the wood as early as possible, buy a blade and a gun, then slay until you can afford either the first Rifleman or a Tiradores. After that, the game should play as you want it to.
Wood and aswang heads can be sold, if you didn't know. We didn't add a tutorial for it on purpose, we want to give the feeling of novelty to players discovering these things on their own. Consider this your spoiler warning.
The Builds
Due to this being endless, we can assume the closest you are going to get to "winning" is if you've already bought everything. But it's still important to consider different approaches for early to mid game.
Attack Build
Save up for a Trenchie Shotgun or a Colonial Rifle. Use the Colonial Rifle for long distance and the Trenchie Shotgun for close range, as it almost one-shots anyone. You can also skip the saving and buy the cheaper Box Gun, which uses pistol ammo but can be fired very fast. It's hard to hit headshots with it, but it's good for hitting their legs to slow them down. If you want a mix of high fire rate and piercing ammo, buy the most expensive pistol, the Black Revolver.
Defense Build
Buy a lot of barricades with 450 HP each while you mow them down with a Bolo. Version 2.8 buffed the health of the barricades to 450, which will take around 14 hits to destroy. Stock up on bandages too. if an aswang ever gets through, bandages are your only way to heal. They're cheap and easy to overlook, but you'll be glad you bought them.
We also plan on adding a more permanent spike trap in a future update, like the spikes in Plants vs. Zombies where my favorite tactic as a kid was to put them in front of a Wallnut, so while the zombies are eating down the wallnut, the spikes are hurting them.
Support Build
Buy the cheapest weapon you can get and save up for either the first Rifleman or a Tiradores. Personally I think the Riflemen are much better early game as they use a Colonial Rifle which pierces through — though they can be annoying if your soldier has low accuracy, as they might end up shooting the floor instead. Luckily they have the high ground, so if they ever miss the foot, they might even hit the head of the next aswang.
Once you've completed the Riflemen, you should either start buying Tiradores, which insta-kills any zombie in its range (with a caveat, their accuracy), or buy "Order Fuego", which lets you call fire to any chosen direction where your cursor is. This lets you use the Riflemen even from afar as long as their bullet can reach it.
Hybrid Build
As all things should be, they should be balanced. This is my personal approach when playing Endless. I chop the trees, go home, get a Bolo. Chop the other tree, sell those. Get the cheapest pistol, and save up for whatever I want at the time, though I recommend getting at least one soldier first, and a blade since it never runs out of ammo.
I personally prefer pistols as their ammo is so cheap and they fire faster than a rifle. Their disadvantage though is they almost cannot be used for a headshot, which ends up aiming at the body, making the cost per kill higher, as I need about 3 bullets to take down a normal guy, as opposed to an almost guaranteed headshot with a good rifle. One thing to note though is you can actually hit the head easier if they're not moving. You can do the kick and shoot combo, kicking applies a stall state to the aswang, causing it to not move and be more vulnerable to headshots. So pistol is still my favorite as I can just do the kick and shoot combo while saving up money for later purchases.
Tips and Tricks
Use the Spacebar
Do not tire your hand aiming and clicking all the time. You can press spacebar to use the leftmost melee weapon in your weapon inventory, it will swing where you are already aiming. It is also faster since when using a mouse, you can only swing the sword if you are facing the cursor, causing some of your clicks to be rejected if you clicked too early while your character is still turning. Pressing spacebar bypasses that and will swing your melee weapon regardless of where you are facing.
All Blades Hit the Same
Some weapons work the same as their cheaper counterparts, especially blades. Right now the pricing is based on novelty, not quality, all blades deal the same damage, though some have a higher swing rate, meaning you can use them more often than the heavier ones. That said, the Sinmalayat has that legendary vibe to it that the other blades just don't. Same damage, same as they're all long blades anyway, but it just hits different.
Know Your Rifles
Most of the rifles have differences. The Rolling Block is the cheapest since it is relatively common at the time. The Levy uses a lever-action mechanism, allowing the soldier to load its inside magazine and cycle the rounds by lever. As seen in the Colonial Rifle wiki entry, most guns in the game have a magazine, but given they have limited clips and are loaded in battle, we can assume they have no time to insert the maximum ammo, causing them to behave like single-shot rifles.
The Krag and the Rolling Block are essentially equal in this game. The Rolling Block is used by Filipinos and the Krag by the Americans. The Krag is much more expensive not because it is better, but because it implies there is a low supply of it in this scenario, an implication of where the Americans are during this time. The full story is still not released, so we'll keep the details limited for now.
What's Coming
This mode will never be finished, as soon as mechanics are added to the game, we're adding them here, including the cannon that is lightly teasing us. Even we as developers want to see that barrel smoking soon.
The map is supposed to be expanded soon. The black shadow is not a permanent obstacle, this mode is supposed to extend inside the walls. Our imagination when we first planned this was to be like the Battle of Helm's Deep from Lord of the Rings, where the last point of combat would literally be inside a building inside the fort. The fun should not end outside the walls, but those are just plans for now.
The Cavalry is supposed to be led by General Gregorio "Goyo" del Pilar with his Bulacan Brigade, but the horse mechanics are not yet implemented because the soldier mechanics themselves are not yet done.
Tikbalang should be added along the aswang monsters as the fast-moving variant. No, I don't think we will ever add a running zombie, it has something to do with the plot and how the zombie virus works in this universe.
