Far Far West Tips and Tricks
Each entry below is one mechanic, what it costs you, and the patch it was last checked against. Filter by category or difficulty to narrow the list, and use the anchor beside any heading to link straight to a single tip.
Bosses
#Bosses are not broadly immune, only Swap and Corruption fail
The documented rule is narrower than the blanket immunity people assume. Horsemen cannot be swapped either, but bosses remain fully affected by elemental effects and their combo interactions, so your elemental setup is not wasted on them.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Jokers
#Rampage no longer appears in the Sheriff Stars weapon pool
Hotfix 0.1.1.17 pulled it because it stopped working with the Sheriff Stars rework that Patch 0.1.1.10 introduced. Any build still pairing the two is describing a combination the game will not offer you.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Mobility
#Swap is a repositioning tool with no invulnerability frames
Treating it as a panic button gets you killed mid-animation, because nothing about it makes you harder to hit. It also does not work on Horsemen or bosses at all, so the escape you were counting on is unavailable in exactly the fights you wanted it for.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
#Boing grants no invulnerability beyond its own explosion
Casting it drops an explosion at your own feet, and you are the one thing that blast cannot hurt. Every other source of damage still lands while you hang in the air, so treat it as a mobility enabler and never as a safety net you can lean on.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Spells
#The Voodoo Doll and Frost's Cube are the invincibility spells
The Doll hands invincibility and high speed to allies standing in its zone, and Frostburn added Cube, which turns you or an ally into an invulnerable ice cube. Boing and Swap are the two people wrongly credit with the effect, and Swap does not even function on Horsemen or bosses.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Difficulty
#Patch 0.1.1.3 changed how Nightmare fights, not its multipliers
Elite enemies gained a 75 percent chance to spawn when you trigger a storm, and several encounters changed how they act instead of how much damage they deal. Reading it as a stat bump is what gets squads killed on their first Nightmare run.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Gold
#Detonating a gold vein throws away about 55 percent of it
Mining by hand with the pickaxe returns roughly 36 Gold on Easy where blowing it up returns about 20. Gold also carries a difficulty multiplier running from 1x on Easy to 1.5x on Nightmare, so the same vein is worth more on a harder run.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Jokers
#Rolling Jokers for profit loses you roughly 53 Souls a pull
The 394 figure quoted as proof of guaranteed profit is a pull's expected face value, not the average card price, which sits closer to 682 across all 94. Selling a Joker back refunds half, so an average pull liquidates for about 197 against the 250 you paid.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Vendors
#The traveling trader patrols mission maps and skips Easy entirely
She is not in Town at all, so a run on Easy will never meet her. Her prices escalate from 45 Gold, and she carries Joker cards including Prime and Mythic tiers, which makes finding her on a higher difficulty worth a detour.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Weapons
#No weapon in this game drops in the field, ever
Main weapons come from the Gunsmith for 6 Weapon Fragments plus 300 Gold, down from 500 in the May 2026 update, and utility items need 3 fragments. Searching a map for a gun you have not bought is searching for something that cannot spawn.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Jokers
#The levels 1 to 100 figure is not a Joker slot count
It describes the level range across which slots unlock, widened from 1 to 50 in Update 1, and there was never a 50-slot cap to widen. You get 14 slots on your Hero and on individual weapons, rising to a maximum of 16 through Prestige.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Loadout
#You start with the Quad Cylinder and Revolver, not the Leveredge
The Leveredge is an unlock costing 6 fragments and 300 Gold, which catches out anyone following a starting build that assumes it. Your actual kit is those two plus an Ammo Pack, and the tutorial also hands over five level-1 spells: Fireball, Strikes, Thrower, Drain, and Mino.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Spell XP
#The +200 first-cast bonus applies per school, not per mission
With five schools' worth of spells equipped, casting one from each at spawn banks up to 1,000 XP before you have fought anything at all. It costs you nothing but the cooldowns, which will be back long before they matter.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
#Contagion sounds like a curse and is actually your best XP spell
It is an Acid spell that corrodes enemies in a wide zone and applies Contagious. Spell XP scales with cooldown and a per-school multiplier, and Contagion carries a 70-second cooldown alongside a 1.5x multiplier, which makes it one of the fastest things to level.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Weapon XP
#Bow explosions earned zero XP until Patch 0.1.1.3 fixed it
Bow XP now comes from explosive damage and from the number of enemies hit. The flat per-shot rate players remember predates Patch 0.1.1.3 and describes a build that no longer exists. If your bow felt like it never leveled, that was the game and not your play.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Loot
#Nobody can take your Joker drop any more
Update 1 made them instanced per player, so you only see your own and every player's drop shares the same rarity. Sharing is now an opt-in through the minimap. The first-come-first-served card scramble was pre-Update-1 behavior and has been gone since.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Combos
#The published Firebeam plus Bubble recipe does not work
The widely copied version names the wrong Voodoo spell, and the recipe needs one of three specific ones instead of any Voodoo spell at all. It fails silently, with no error and no combo, so the wrong version survives being passed around.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
#Most named combos are labels the wiki invented, not game terms
Only Fire Tornado, Meteor, Needles, and the three Imbuements are likely genuine in-game strings. Names like Acid Storm and Votive Candles were assigned by the community to effects the game never labels, so searching for them in game finds nothing.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
Secrets
#Jungle has no secret mission joker and no secret skin
Its tracked secrets are the 10 graves, three music disc fragments known as Train of Shame, and a waterfall door with no publicly known key. Assuming every map hides a secret joker turns Jungle into hours of searching for something that is not there.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
#There are 70 graves in total, 10 on every playable map
The number 30 that circulates is a cumulative milestone reward threshold and not the total to find, so treat it as a checkpoint on the way to 70. Grave progress persists across deaths, so a bad run costs you nothing here.
Checked against 0.1.1.18
What to Read Next
- Combat and Weapons. Every weapon and spell school, the XP rules, and which mobility spells protect you.
- Joker Cards. All 94 cards, slot unlocks, and the economics of rolling for them.
- Elemental Combos. Which recipes work, which are wiki inventions, and the order that matters.
- Extraction and Loot. Gold yields, the traveling trader, and getting out with your run intact.
- Boss Encounters. Every boss and Horseman, and what actually lands on them.
- Secrets and Challenges. The 70 graves, the map that hides no joker, and the milestone thresholds.
- Co-op vs Solo. Difficulty scaling, XP rates, and what Update 1 changed about loot.
- Getting Started. Your starting kit, the Gunsmith, and the first run.