Starlight Survivor Build Guide: Levels, Slots, Weapon Numbers and Your First Evolution

How levels arrive

Each defeated monster drops a star shard worth its experience: 1 for a slime or bat, 2 for a skeleton, 3 for a ghost, 5 for a golem and 30 for a giant. Going from level n to n+1 costs 4 + 3 × (n − 1), so the second level needs 4, the third 7 and the tenth 28. Reaching level 10 takes 144 in total, level 20 takes 589 and level 30 takes 1,334. Wisdom multiplies everything you pick up.

Shards start flying to you once they are within 2.4 tiles and travel at 9 tiles a second. To show the pace, I ran the game’s tactical test bot over 40 nights: its median level was 5 at 1:00, 9 at 2:00, 14 at 3:00 and 20 at 4:00. Those are automated runs, but they show how many choices you get before each giant.

The eight slots decide your night

You have four weapon slots, one already taken by Magic Bolt, and four ability slots. Once four weapons are owned, no new weapon appears in a level-up; the same goes for abilities. The fourth weapon you accept is therefore the last, and an early pick taken just to have something new can lock out the weapon you wanted.

Eight items at five levels each is 40 levels, and you start with one, so a complete build needs 39 upgrades. The bot that reached dawn averaged level 35, so on most nights something stays below level 5. When a weapon is ready to evolve, its evolution takes the first card, and only one evolution card is offered per level-up.

Weapons at level 1 and level 5

Damage below is before Might, and times are the cooldown between uses.

• Magic Bolt: 14 damage, one bolt every 0.9 s at the nearest enemy within 11 tiles, aimed ahead of moving targets. Level 5: 30 damage, three bolts, each passing through two enemies from level 4. Meteor Shower adds two bolts, passes through four and fires every 0.6 s.
• Orbit Blades: one blade for 17 damage, circling about 1.8 tiles out; level 5 has five blades for 37 at 2.3 tiles. Any one enemy can be cut once every 0.37 s, however many blades touch it. Blade Storm adds 12 damage, widens the orbit and cuts every 0.23 s.
• Thorn Aura: 7 damage every 0.4 s to everything within about 1.8 tiles; level 5 does 19 within 2.9. Thorn Sanctum does 25 every 0.3 s, reaches a tile further and slows what it touches.
• Lightning: 26 damage to one random enemy among the 40 nearest within 8 tiles, every 1.6 s; level 5 strikes three times for 58. Thunderstorm doubles the strikes, fires about every 1.07 s and reaches 10 tiles.
• Frost Nova: a ring every 3 s for 17 damage that grows to 3.5 tiles, pushes monsters 1.2 tiles back (not giants) and halves their speed for 1.5 s. Level 5: 37 damage out to 5.5 tiles. Blizzard adds 10 damage and fires every 1.67 s.
• Boomerang: 22 damage every 1.33 s, thrown the way you last moved and passing through everything. A second one comes at level 2 and flies backwards; a third at level 4 goes to one side. Level 5 hits for 46. Cyclone Boomerang throws in all four directions.

Abilities per level

• Swift Feet: +10% move speed, from 3.2 to 4.8 at level 5.
• Vigor: +20 max HP and 20 HP back when picked, plus 0.2 HP per second of regeneration, so level 5 means +100 max HP and 1 HP per second.
• Haste: −8% cooldown per level, −40% at level 5, for every weapon except the Orbit Blades’ re-cut time.
• Might: +12% damage per level, +60% at level 5.
• Magnet: +30% of the base pickup range per level, from 2.4 tiles to 6.0.
• Wisdom: +10% experience per level, +50% at level 5.

Having an evolution ready for the first giant

An evolution needs the weapon at level 5 and its partner at level 1. For Magic Bolt that is four bolt upgrades plus one Wisdom: five choices, so you can be ready by level 6. The bot’s median at 2:00 was level 9, which leaves room for a few defensive picks too. If the build is ready when Morg the Mire Giant falls, the chest evolves it on the spot instead of giving a level-up.

The chest evolves the first ready weapon in the order Magic Bolt, Orbit Blades, Thorn Aura, Lightning, Frost Nova, Boomerang. If two are ready, the second waits for a level-up card or the next giant at 3:00.

Before a night starts, the start screen names the weapon the stars point to. That weapon really is in your first level-up, so you know from the start whether a second weapon is coming at once.

What hits you, and how hard

Under the current rules every hit is scaled to 76% and rounded, you start with 160 HP, and after any hit nothing can hurt you for 0.8 seconds. One hit from each source:

• Bat 3, charging bat or swarm bat 4, slime 5, skeleton touch 7, skeleton bone shot 8, ghost 9.
• Golem touch 12, golem ground slam 14.
• Giant touch 19, giant charge 27, each of the eight shots in its ring 9.

Where the score comes from

The score is kills, plus 2 per second survived, plus 5 per level, plus 300 for dawn and 50 for each Star Pouch. In the 40 bot nights, the 12 that reached dawn averaged 1,462 kills at level 35 for about 2,535 points, so kills were close to 60% of a winning score. Runs that fell lasted 3:46 on average and scored about 1,280.

Most of the gap comes from the last minute: monsters arrive faster than ever, so it brings more kills than any earlier minute, along with 120 points for time and the 300 for dawn. Surviving to the end is worth more than any single build choice.

A first night, minute by minute

• 0:00 to 0:36: slimes, then bats. New monsters arrive at 1.9 a second, rising to about 3.7 a second by 1:00. The first pack closes in at 0:45.
• 0:36: skeletons join; 1:06: ghosts; 1:42: golems. The first bat swarm crosses at 1:10.
• 1:56 to 2:00: no new monsters for four seconds and the ground shakes, then the first giant. About 6 new monsters a second by now.
• 3:00: the second giant, at about 8.7 a second. From 2:36 golems come twice as often.
• 4:15 and 4:45: the last two giants, the second of them Nyx, Queen of Night. About 12 a second at 4:00, with up to 220 monsters on the field.

Common mistakes and why they cost

• Accepting a fourth weapon early. It closes the weapon pool for the rest of the night.
• Leaving auto-pick on when only spare cards remain. It takes Starlight Soup over a Star Pouch even at full HP, giving up 50 points, the same as 25 seconds of survival.
• Waiting for Magnet to fetch floor rewards. Starlight Soup (+30 HP) and the Star Magnet on the floor have to be walked over.
• Spending the four quiet seconds before a giant standing still. No new monsters arrive, so it is the safest moment to collect shards and step away from the crowd.

What changes between modes

Tonight’s Night always starts with Magic Bolt, and everyone gets the same seed. The Nth level-up uses the same random draw for everyone, but it draws from what your build still allows, so two players’ cards drift apart once their builds differ. Challenges replay another record’s night with its score as your target.

Practice rolls a new night each time and is the only mode where the starting weapon can change. The Starlight Chronicle, shown under Night Goals, unlocks them one by one, and you pick one on the practice start screen: Orbit Blades for surviving 2:00, Thorn Aura for defeating one herald, Lightning for surviving 4:15, Frost Nova for reaching dawn and Boomerang for seeing three evolutions. These are kept only in your browser and never touch scores. ‘Practice this night’ on the results screen replays the night you just played, which is the cleanest way to test a different build against the same monsters.