At this point it’s getting ridiculously hard - it wasn’t even on SSH or Virtuoso, just Veteran;
Let’s not also mention levels like “Omnidirectional Onslaught”, (screen full of enemies) or the last wave of “Bend it like Beckhen” (around 20 enemies + soccer balls), among many others, with only Chickenauts.
Things like this are not making the game “more challenging” or “more fun to play”, they’re making it outright unplayable.
(“eggship chicken” = those that shoot 3 blue bullets, “chickenauts” = those astronaut-looking chickens that shoot neutron/green bullets)
Both of them are possible to randomly appear in large numbers in all waves that do not restrict to a certain type of enemy, especially missions with very high base difficulty like 90-100% (even with Rookie), but the chance of that happening is low, so players should do well in other waves to have strong firepowers and special weapons saved up for these so-called “epic waves”.
I skipped CI levels entirely because of wave rng giving unreasonable enemies + a super small key gain compared to other levels.
If you managed to beat them, the amount of keys gained is usually way less than playing levels which gives you keys once you finish a level like Boss Rush/Supernova/Feather Fields/Meteor Storm/Comet Chase. (in no particular order, just giving examples here)
Supernova being the easiest to get keys on for beginners, but needs some investment beforehand on Always-On items, and a weapon that can remove rocks quickly like Vulcan.
I only do CI levels if it happens to be a Key Rush nowadays, at least you get more keys from that.
Maybe I’ll come back to doing CI levels in the future once I got a lot of keys to waste,
or when Pot Luck happens to show up again.
PS:
I’m talking about net key gain - the keys gained after battle minus the keys for the items you’ve spent in the level like lives, coolants, special weapons, perishables, …
I did the math for all of this and I never get any kind of profit for doing elite CI levels, ever.