Table of Contents
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.
Unfortunately, the poison build based on Monitor Lizard feels too slow with its big nerf, but the Companion Core still is great to build around. With the patch, this Core now pushes for a damage centric build, leveraging Bellelista (or Clawrence as a back up plan) to mount huge hits onto your opponent.
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 Omega Ray was nerfed in the recent patch, limiting this builds damage to scale over time and inflict thousands of burn damage like it used to. Now, the build will typically look for another burn item to put on the other side of Omega Ray (the core being the first) and build flexibly otherwise, typically with disruptive items.
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.
With less poison around due to the Monitor Lizard's nerf, one might thing Shield strategies vastly improved. Unfortunately, Vanessa got her poison build back, while Duct Tape, a key item to build huge amounts of shield, was nerfed. This not only impacts your ability to tank against weapon based builds, it also makes your damage output much weaker through Force Field, globally affecting the Shield build.
Overall, let's say the Shield Core gained some power compared to the other cores due to their heavier nerfs, but feels weaker overall with Vanessa and Pygmalien being stronger following the patch.
The three Weapon Damage cores aren't much better than they were before the patch. Indeed, the Companion Core became the new damage based build, keeping these three in the background in this new environment.
Overall, Dooley got weaker with the patch, making the weapon cores closer to the others, so don't feel too bad to pick them if forced to during the starting selection. Yet, there is still something missing for these to be a real threat.
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, in addition to weapons starting on day two to find Bellelista. The Ignition Core still wants Omega Ray badly, but that one starts at the silver rarity now, so is much harder to find on day 1. Last, Shield items logically are the target of 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 Bellelista with the Companion Core, you can focus all your efforts on getting more Haste triggers 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 the other Burn item 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, and you can typically keep it on the long run.
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.
With its change, the Cool LEDs now charge whenever your core activate, up to instantly triggering when on the highest rarity. It is kind of weak early on, but this is a solid item to have nonetheless, especially against builds with a heavy hitting weapon.
Decent for any core that isn't the Companion one, GPU will never stay in your final build, but is a nice utility item early on.
If you found First Airden, or another early friend, Pulse Rifle trigger three times ever four seconds, effectively making it 1.33 seconds per use. If your goal is to activate your core, Pulse Rifle will be great at doing so.
This item can also serve as a decent target for buffs if you picked a damage based core. Miss Isles is only available as a Silver items so you likely will see Pulse Rifle first.
The early stage will typically last until you have built enough power to be able to farm elite monsters for maximum gold and experience. Once there, your focus should shift to PvP wins, looking to enhance your build with Skills, Enchantments, and agressively look for opportunities to level up your items.
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. With the reduce amount of loot items we get following the level up rework, upgrading an item has become the main way to boost, while enchanting remains the best possibility, but is limited to only once. With that in mind, it is crucial to figure out which item improves our build the most when upgraded.
Bellelista gains power as you haste, so there is little need focusing on growing its base power with loot items. Instead focus on making your core as fast as possible while leveling up Bellelista to increase its charging ability, and the damage of Bellelista will follow.
The same can be said for the Ignition Core and the Omega Ray. You want to level up the Ray to increase its burn bonus to other items, but it's the core you want to make as fast as possible, as this is how you trigger that bonus.
As for the Armored Core, I found the Chronobarrier to be the best item for the lategame. Indeed, plus two seconds to all enemy item cooldowns is incredible, and buy you plenty of time to build your shield.
The other way to vastly improve your build is to pick skills, which are much harder to collect with the patch. Now, the easiest way to get them is to level up, which we definately want to do as there is also an enchantment to grab on level 10. Otherwise, we can hope to loot some from moonster battles, or buy one for (5/10/20/40) gold depending on their rarity, so make sure you have that amount of gold ready just in case.
While elite skills are always welcome, in addition to your core making it quite obvious which ones to target, such as Beautiful Friendship with the Companion Core or Augmented Defenses with the Armored one. Here are some skills you can get from non-elite monsters which can be great support for several Dooley builds:
Closing Words
The patch clearly targeted Dooley's raw power and it is obvious the character isn't as good as it was in december 2024. The Bellelista plus Companion Core is stellar to be honest, easily a top contender in this new metagame. However, Dooley can't dominate with multiple builds like it did in the past. Indeed, the Burn build feels weaker overall, especially with Pygmalien and Vanessa being back and able to build solid shield builds. It still is Dooley's second best build, and will farm elites quite easily, but its PvP power is worse for sure.
The nerf to Duct Tape is huge for the Armored Core, which struggles to close out games through damage at the moment. Last, none of the Weapon Cores has been buffed, leaving them in the same state as before, and the reason why the best Weapon build is made with the Companion Core currently.
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)
