Questions about items in shop and obtaining keys

Ideas
1

So this is a lengthy post, and I don’t know if it’s in the right place.
So I start with the shop. Some things are no clear to me.
How long do perishables last? One mission? Certain time? For one wave?
How much difference are low-mid-tier heat sinks? is it worth buying a medium one or just save for the best one?

Now to the keys. Keys are the soul of the game. And I am confused how I get the efficiently.
To me it seems that the game is simply punishing me for being fast and good.
I get keys after a certain time. So AFKing a wave gives more keys. Score seems to not give me anything. Why should I go for Multikills/clean sweeps and whatnot? I mean I get new ranks, but at some point it will take a long time to obtain a new one.
Shouldn’t be playing fast and good rewarded with more keys?
I also do not get the difficulty. I bought myself SSH, and if I understand it correctly in the ending screen, it gives me a 20% bonus on keys, while like Rookie or so gives less.
I do not know if having 20% more keys on missions where I get 100-200 tops is worth that much when I burn through lifes faster and have to re-buy them.
I also feel like missions are really unbalanced. An easy mission with 40 waves gives me infinitely more keys than a really hard boss-rush. Both taek equal time and the boss rush is much harder. So imo it should give me more keys.
I know starting ship gives me more keys and SHH allegedly, even though I do not see it. Whether or not I play normal or SSH, I get 1-2 keys per wave. Sometimes 0.
Are there certain missions I don’t know about which give me keys? I know I can sell food for keys.

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2

One mission

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3

You should move it to Early Access.

One mission, but if you surrender after the first wave you’ll need to buy them again.

It is best if you save for the best/expensiveest reators/heat sinks/engines, also if you found ones with gems on them at herowares buy them, but if you want to know which one is the best ask @Recruit_75.

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4

A bit confusing, excuse me.
Do you mean: “if you see any items with a diamond, buy them” or “if you see the best ones with a diamond, buy them”?

5

If you see any items with a diamond, buy them.

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6

1 diamond is Uncommon, 2 diamonds is Rare, 3 diamond is Legendary

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7

Yes and the better are the expensiveest with diamonds.

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8

Oh, cool to know. But what do they do? better stats or what?

9

They reduce hitbox of spacecrafts, increase speed of bombers.

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10

That’s for every spacecraft actually, not only bombers. they increase the speed of mullers and scouts too. not just bombers.

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11

Yes, I said spacecrafts means I included mullers and scouts with them.

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12

So about keys again. Is there any trick to getting more, or do I just do missions as slow as possible on the hardest difficulty?
Are special missions worth anything? Like Squawk Block or the darkness missions.
They all have less waves than standard invaders, thus on paper giving less keys.

13

Well, you can use H&C 101 Scout, it gives 18% key bonus, I would recommend playing key rushes with scout, since you will get a lot of keys. And sell all food you have.
Also

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14

Grind droid raids then sell the food you got, you’ll get keys from food

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15

For engines, heatsinks and reactors, they have better stats than the normal one. For spacecrafts, they reduce the hitbox and increase the speed

16

I failed to find info on the wiki or internet. What are Key rushes and droid raids and how do I do them?

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Key Rushes are missions that can be played only for once, so you need to be well-prepared, and they spawn a lot of keys. Besides, all of them have the same difficulty: 25%-100%, but their duration is different: 1x10 2x10 3x10 4x10 5x10
Droid Raids are missions where you can get a lot of food and points, you just need to grind the droid raids and you will get a lot of food, after that, you should sell them to get keys.

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Actually, it varies from 1x10 to 5x10

19

Okay thanks. But how do I or where do I find them? Are they time-limited events which happen randomly or do they appear in certain spots, or something else.

20

@InterAction_studios Sorry for tagging you here, I don’t normally do it, but I think that this topic is excellent reminder that we really need to work on tutorial to the game. I normally praise the games that work great without tutorial (like Hollow Knight for example), but here in CIU players are overwhelmed by all the stuff that’s available rather immediately. So it would be good to have some kind of introduction. And those purple tip boxes aren’t pleasant.

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