How to Get Started in The Bazaar – The Ultimate Guide

The Bazaar is a new Auto Battler Roguelike game developed by Tempo. Players have to win 10 PvP battles before running out of Prestige—the "health" in this game—in order to complete a run. To accomplish this, players can build their power using the Items and Skills they find from defeating monsters, exploring locations, and buying from merchants. In this article, my goal is to guide you through all the basics of the game, including the important phases of a run and what you should focus on during each of them.

Basically, a Bazaar run has five possible outcomes determined by the number of wins you achieve:

• Less than four wins is a defeat and results in a loss of rank
• Four to six wins is a bronze win and results in no rank change
• Seven to nine wins is a silver win and results in a slight rank improvement
• Ten wins with at least one loss is a gold win and results in a moderate rank improvement
• Ten wins with no losses is a diamond win. This is the El Dorado all Bazaar players are searching for

I want you to look at these stages as different goals that you can achieve. If you are just beginning your Bazaar journey, aiming to consistently get to at least four wins is a great target to set.

Feel like you've got the basics covered and you know how to avoid those costly bad runs? Let's take a look at how you can go from four wins to seven, and seven wins to ten!

My #1 Advice

The auto battler genre has some of the most "snowball"-based games in the industry. You can't control what happens in a fight, so your goal is to build the board that has the highest chance of winning into any opponent.

The Bazaar will require you to make a lot of choices, from picking encounters and level up bonuses to the position of your items. I'll admit, it will take a bit of time to learn which builds are best and how you can optimize them, but that comes with playing the game. The same can be said for trying to be flexible; it is an important aspect of the game, but it only becomes crucial once you are working toward those gold and diamond wins. There is one thing you can do to immediately level up your game: just keep the train rolling if you're on a winning streak.

• Are you winning a lot using many small items? Go to the small items vendor.
• Is Burn the main source of your damage? Improve your Burn as much as possible.
• Does one of your items provide the majority of your damage? Focus on boosting that item's cooldown and damage potential.

Find what your build is good at and keep your foot on the gas pedal if you are winning. If you start to struggle, it might be time to reconsider your strategy. Lucky for you, that's exactly what the rest of this guide will help you do!

The Setup Stage

Starting off strong means you're going to get some wins for free, which is often instrumental to reaching your first goal of consistent bronze runs. In order to get a hot start and begin building your snowball (which is the ultimate goal in The Bazaar), there are two things you can leverage early on:

• Gold, the foundational resource of a strong early build. With gold in the bank, you will be able to go to whichever merchant you need for your build, and you won't have to worry about spending on a skill for support. There are also some specific encounters, such as Monster Ranch, where you basically always want to spend eight gold. The most important thing that gold provides is time. Even if you decide on a direction (such as Burn, Poison, Shield, etc.), you might not know exactly how to achieve that plan just yet. Having some extra gold means you can buy more items of whichever synergy you choose and decide later which items are optimal. At worst, those extra items can fill your board early on to make sure you win those early fights—especially the PvE ones.

• Raw Power is the other crucial aspect of this early phase. You need to win all your PvE encounters because that is how you gain gold and experience early on. Ideally, you want to be able to beat elites as soon as possible so you always have the option of receiving the biggest gold and experience rewards. This is even more important when the other two encounters don't have anything you need for your build. Starting off strong, even if it costs you most of your gold, puts you in a great position to win the first PvP matches, which perfectly sets you up to quickly lock in those first four wins.

Here are a few tips to maximize your setup phase:

• Know your key items. Learn their price and which shops you can find them in so you know how much gold to save for them. Some items can be purchased just for the sake of your economy. Items like the Cove for Vanessa will gain you gold later on, so it's almost always a good purchase.
• Not every item needs to be upgraded. Poison and Burn items scale from skills and level up rewards, whereas weapons gain power from items and upgrades.
• Losing a PvE fight is just about the worst thing that can happen to your run. Beating elites is the goal, but don't get yourself into a losing battle.
• Early levels will open more space on your rug and can be a great way to gain power since you get to play more items. Consider choosing experience to level up before a fight if you have a way to use the extra space.
• If you don't care about the reward of an encounter for your build, pick the one with the highest chance of a medium or large item. They sell for more than small items.

The Optimization Stage

You're on your way to reaching your goal and you know what you want your build to accomplish. Now it's time to optimize and start racking up those PvP wins!

At this point, you should have a decent amount of gold. You should also be winning all your PvE encounters without breaking a sweat (other than elites). It would be great if you could beat most elites, though, as the extra gold and experience is always nice to have. Plus, being able to beat elites is a sign that you're on the higher end of the "raw power" scale.

Now that gold isn't much of a concern anymore, another resource is about to become your main focus: experience. Indeed, while picking up random items to build your strength in the first phase was fine, you now have a specific build to follow without much wiggle room available. As such, leveling up guarantees that your build is getting better (but you should still visit merchants to find upgrades and items that are only available after a certain day).

This same logic applies to skills. These will start to gain more importance in this phase because they represent unique support to your build. Of course, skills were already important if your build revolved around Poison or Burn damage (even the bronze skills), but, once your day counter starts approaching double digits and you start seeing gold and diamond skills, adding these to your arsenal can have a huge impact on the success of your build.

Here are a few tips to optimize as much as possible:

• Not all items deserve to be upgraded or boosted. Oftentimes, only a couple of your items represent the majority of your damage, so you should focus on those when it comes time to pick up a boost.
• Cooldown, Charge, and Haste bonuses always make a build stronger. When in doubt, increasing the speed of your build is a guaranteed and safe upgrade to your power level.
• Skills costs 3, 6, 12, or 24 gold depending on their rarity. As more days pass, rarer and more expensive skills are more likely to be offered.
• Non-elite monsters can have unique skills, especially in the later days. Elites are a reliable way to get some extra gold and experience, but nothing beats improving your build.

The PvP stage

Alright, it's time to talk about the big stuff. This is the deciding moment where you will know if your run will be a bronze, silver, gold, diamond win. At this point, you should have the PvE part covered; the only question here is whether you can beat the legendary elites. That means you can focus almost exclusively on the PvP encounters at the end of each day.

First, you need to determine how you're doing compared to the average power of your future opponents. There isn't a surefire way to know this, but looking at your previous battles will help you get a feel for it. For example, if you won a lot early on but now you're on a losing streak, that is much more concerning than the opposite scenario.

You should decide if you should play with more or less risk depending on where you stand heading into your last couple fights. Dominating your fights should leave you wondering what your bad match up could be, or which types of disruption could ruin your build. On the other hand, losing multiple matches in a row is a sign that you should probably focus on disruption since your raw power isn't carrying you very far.

This part of your run will reward your knowledge of the game the most. Indeed, gaining an edge in your PvP battles heavily relies on improving your build in specific directions. You need to be able to find the position of your build compared to the average power, in addition to knowing where you are most likely to find the improvements you're looking for.

Here are a few tips to help you improve your match up knowledge:

• Poison ignores Shield. This makes Poison great against Shield... unless your opponent has a source of damage based on their amount of Shield. Then they will hit you for a ton.
• Burn is the most reliable damage source. It's perfect against defensive builds, but it can lose the race to Poison and some Weapons. Weapon damage is faster, but you can run out of steam against Shield builds.
• Freeze skills are good against anyone and contribute even at the bronze level. These are a good way to annoy your opponent for cheap.
• Skills are the quickest way to turn a build around, or make an average build a strong one. Plus, they don't require you to rethink your positioning. If you are struggling and smelling defeat, look for impactful skills.
• Getting 5 or 6 wins is the same as 4, and getting 8 or 9 wins is the same as 7. When you're thinking about how to improve your build for the next match, know how many more matches you have to win to reach the next tier. This will help you assess the risks you should take.
• A win is often worth more than an optimal buff. As such, don't hold a bonus for later when a PvP fight is coming up.
• Monster fights (with the exception of elites) can be used to test specific parts of your final build. This can be useful if you need to check whether you deal more damage with the heavy-hitting item or the fast item.

Closing Words

The Bazaar, just like most auto battlers, rewards your ability to snowball a good early start or turn around a bad one by taking calculated risks. In either case, the player is asked to figure out a way to win as many games as possible with the cards they've been dealt. Sometimes you can only make it to 4 or 5 wins, but that's certainly better than completely missing the bronze win floor. Other times you might have a shot at 10 wins when your build just clicks, but one bad choice can end your run with nothing but a silver win.

Game knowledge plays a key role in optimizing all of these choices. When you first start playing The Bazaar, I would highly recommend using outside help to make decisions (like this cheat sheet). However, understanding the dynamic of the game and learning to comprehend how the snowball effect works is the key to consistently reaching those gold wins.

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.