Dooley Guide

Learn how to play Dooley in The Bazaar with this in-depth hero build and strategy guide!

The Basics

Based on his signature item type, the cores, Dooley pushes for a specific kind of build depending on which core you pick. That doesn't mean that choosing Dooley as your hero forces you to play the same strategy over and over; on the contrary, each of the six cores has a unique ability that allows you to diversify your build with different damage types. Let's see what they are!

The Cores

This core is central to one of the strongest builds in the game at the time of writing. It rewards you for building an army of Friends and using your Companion Core as much as possible so your board is constantly hasted.

This is most often a Poison + Haste build due to the current power of Monitor Lizard. However, there are other friends you can use as a foundation, such as Micro Dave for a Burn build or Bill Dozer to further reduce the cooldowns of all your Friends.

I think this is probably the most balanced core of them all. The Ignition Core focuses heavily on granting your Burn items extra Burn potential during the fight. While this core is key to your build functioning at peak performance, this build actually relies on the Rays (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and especially Omega) to buff your board while you activate your core as often as possible.

The idea with the Armored Core is to build a gigantic amount of Shield and let fatigue do the work, or find a way to transform that Shield into damage.

In a meta with a dominant Poison build, this is kind of an all-or-nothing pick. If you find Force Field, you should be able to compete with the best of them by using your Shield as your main source of damage. Otherwise, you are hoping to dodge the Poison builds while building enough Shield to withstand the Weapon Damage and Burn opponents.

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The three Weapon Damage cores aren't doing as well as the other three in this meta, mostly because Vanessa tends to eclipse them when it comes to Weapon Damage based builds. As such, Dooley is mostly played with the Companion Core and the Ignition Core right now, as both can represent some of the highest damage output in the game.

If you pick the Critical Core or the Weaponized Core, your run should mostly focus on building the Damage of your core and making it as fast as possible. The Alpha Ray can help a lot in that regard. Another possibility is stacking your Damage on another weapon and using The Core to charge it. You could also find a very fast weapon and increase its damage with the Weaponized Core (I like Miss Isles in that role).

Now that the cores are out of the way, it's time to get to the bulk of this guide. I'm going to focus on the first three cores because they require a much more specific play style, and they're also the strongest ones at the moment.

Early Stages

You start a run with eight gold, but that can quickly run out if you have to re-roll or you spend it in the wrong shops. Fortunately, the core you chose tells you exactly what to look for! This means a Dooley run typically starts with finding a way to get the items that synergize with your core. This will put the emphasis on two types of encounters in this phase of the game: Gold and Merchants.

You're looking for Small and Medium Friends for the Companion Core, Small items for the Ignition Core, and Shield items for the Armored Core. The non-weapon merchant works for all of these. When playing Dooley, you need to start strong in order to build gold and get the snowball going. This will help you start racking up the wins.

A large part of that snowball is making your core as fast as possible, hence the need to find items quickly. Even if those items won't stick around for your final build, charging your core during fights will go a long way toward gaining power early on. Plus, this will give you a great buff or upgrade target. When in doubt, boost your core and focus on activating it as often as possible during fights.

Obviously, you are in great shape if you manage to find the best item that synergizes with your core. The earlier you get that item, the earlier you can start focusing on boosting and upgrading it and your core. For example, once you have Monitor Lizard with the Companion Core, you can focus all your efforts on getting more Haste and things will just take care of themselves. The same is true for the Omega Ray with the Ignition Core; you can shift your focus to finding fast Burn items and the other Rays.

Even if you can't get a hold of your most important items, there are a few ones I like to buy early. These tend to do a great job in most builds, and at the very least they can help get some momentum going in your early fights.

First Aiden is a quick Small item that grants Haste to another. This is kind of the perfect item to make sure your core will charge as fast as possible.

Small items are very important in Dooley builds because they are the best way to charge your core quickly. Whether you use Micro Dave with the Ignition Core or the Companion Core, this item represents a good way to get some damage in early.

With any two fast items by its side (your core is typically one of them), the Tesla Coil will help charge your core very fast, which ensures a minimum amount of raw power.

I love the Rays in general, but this one works in basically any build. It can open the way for the others later on if need be. Plus, it helps charge up your core since both reduce the other's cooldown.

Duct Tape has to be one of my favorite items in the game, both for its usefulness and its ironic design. Considering your goal is to activate your core as often as possible, this item can be enough to give you some solid survivability against Weapon Damage builds.

It doesn't get faster than a 2 second cooldown early on in a run. You will almost never keep the Uzi in the long run, so there's no need to invest into it. Still, this is a great way to help your core charge up.

The early stage will typically last until you find your signature item, or at least a decent enough back up plan. If you're struggling to get going, don't focus on PvP wins too much. Instead, make sure you have a sizeable stack of gold, focus on picking the encounters where you could find your key item, and build raw power to beat Monsters. Dooley has enough power to turn a run around, but you need to get set properly before that can happen.

Best Monsters for the First 3 Days

Day 1

Companion Core: Viper (Extract to buff Monitor Lizard) / Banannabal (Medkit to buff First Aiden) / Kyver Drone (Insect Wing for Core)

Ignition Core: Pyro / Kyver Drone (Insect Wing for Core)

Armored Core: Banannabal (Duct Tape) / Haunted Kimono / Kyver Drone (Insect Wing for Core)

Day 2 (if you can't beat the Elite for XP / Gold)

Companion Core: Giant Mosquito (Rush Skill / Insect Wing)

Ignition Core: Giant Mosquito (Rush Skill / Insect Wing)

Armored Core: Coconut Crab (Hard Shell Skill / Toughness Skill ) / Tent City Mayor (Augmented Defenses Skill)

Day 3 (if you can't beat the Elite for XP / Gold)

Companion Core: Always Eccentric Etherwright if you can beat it. Otherwise, Rogue Scrapper (Various bonuses to Friends) / Dabbling Apprentice (Vial of Blood)

Ignition Core: Tempest Flamedancer (Cinders, Flamedancer Skill)

Armored Core: Always Eccentric Etherwright if you can beat it. Otherwise, Rogue Scrapper (Scrap / Rust Skill) / Dabbling Apprentice (Vial of Blood)

Racking Up PvP Wins

So, you're now sitting on a decent amount of gold and Monsters aren't a problem anymore. It is time to focus on PvP encounters and continue optimizing your build. You should have found the item responsible for your damage output at this point, so, from this point on, you need to focus on making it and your core as strong as possible. You want to improve their speed and power as much as you can by any means necessary.

Dooley's cores charge 1 second every time an item to their left (or a Friend for the Companion Core) is used. This means Small items give you more triggers per space used on your board. For example, a Medium item triggering every three seconds is worse than two Small items every four seconds; the Medium item needs six seconds to trigger twice, while the two Small items will give you two triggers in four seconds. As your build becomes more streamlined and in tune with your core, the position of your items grows in importance for optimizing your build.

The other significant metric to look at is the power of your key items, which can grow depending on upgrades or buffs. Typically, you'll have your core and one or two other items to focus on. Monitor Lizard only gains one or two Poison stacks when upgraded, and that's basically the same as using a bronze Extract on it. As such, it is much better to upgrade your core for more Haste and boost your Monitor Lizard with items to get more Poison.

The opposite applies for the Ignition Core and the Omega Ray. Indeed, this core gains three Burn stacks when leveling up, which can be equally matched by a gold Cinders. However, upgrading the Omega Ray increases the bonus it grants to other Burn items. Thus, it is much better to boost your Ignition Core and upgrade your Omega Ray.

I don't have a hard rule for the Armored Core (or I haven't found one yet). I would say that the choice to upgrade or boost depends on whether you have very fast Shield items that are worth placing to the right of your core. For example, if I have Duct Tape, I'd rather upgrade my core to boost my Duct Tape during fights because I get the Shield from the Duct Tape every time my core triggers. Then I can reposition my build to have two items, Duct Tape and a fast Shield item, to the right of my core.

The easiest way to gain upgrades for your core and more items to improve your Poison, Burn, or Shield is to pick them from level up bonuses. This means that once your focus shifts to PvP, experience becomes more important than gold. Plus, this will grant you more health, another important ressources for PvP fights, and a great back up pick when encounters don't offer anything of value.

Best Monsters for Day 4+

When in doubt, pick the Elite for more gold and experience—but only if you are confident you can beat it. They often have the strongest loot possible to boot. Otherwise, look for cooldown reductions among other Monsters; faster items are always stronger. If neither is possible, here's a list to help you pick.

You can find the full list of Monsters with their available drops and skills here.

Companion Core

• Boilerroom Brawler (Time to Tinker Skill)
• Hakurvian Rocket Trooper (Rocket Boots)
• Zookeeper (Toxic Friendship / Trained Spider)
• Viper Tyrant (Revitalizing Toxins Skill / Extract)
• Joyful Jack (Black Rose / Extract / Rapid Thaw Skill)
• Thug (Bonk Skill / Thieves Guild Medallion)
• Bloodreef Captain (Full Arsenal Skill)
• Elite Duelist (Holsters)
• Trash Titan (Catalyst)

Ignition Core

• Techno Virus (Solar Farm)
• Sabretooth (Diamond Fangs Skill)
• Flame Juggler (Cinders / Fiery Skill)
• Infernal Envoy (Restorative Fire Claw)
• Zookeeper (Salamander Pup)
• Joyful Jack (Rapid Thaw Skill)
• Thug (Bonk Skill / Thieves Guild Medallion)
• Infernal Frigate (Incendiary Rounds)
• Bloodreef Captain (Full Arsenal Skill)

Armored Core

• Retiree (Extreme Comfort / Bushel)
• Foreman (Scrap)
• Joyful Jack (Bushel / Rapid Thaw Skill)
• Thug (Bonk Skill / Thieves Guild Medallion)
• Bloodreef Captain (Full Arsenal Skill)
• Trash Titan (Juggler Skill)

Closing Words

First, I would like to thanks drizzqt for their amazing Cheat Sheet on The Bazaar. All item images in this guide were taken from there, and it made my work so much easier.

For those who don't enjoy big walls of texts and need something simple to remember, here are four words that should be your mantra when playing Dooley: think about the snowball.

Dooley is the best character in the game to close out 2024, mainly because he is almost unstoppable once you get a Poison or Burn build going. As such, once you find an item worth investing your bonuses into, don't hold back! Step on the gas pedal. Make your core as fast as possible and that item as powerful as it can be.

Being flexible and adapting to the popular match ups is a great skill, but that will come in due time. Dooley is the king of raw power at the moment, so let's enjoy it!

I hope this guide was helpful, and I wish you luck in The Bazaar! If you have any questions or if you're looking for coaching, feel free to reach out on Discord @den_ccg.

Good Game Everyone.

(Also, here's a small flex that doubles as an example of some of my successful Dooley builds)