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The Bazaar Build

Hingus's Early/Mid-Game Mak Burn Guide

Mak

Updated on Apr 6, 2025

Apr 6, 2025

Overview

Mak can create a lot of power through the early & mid game by stacking burn effects. With Calcinator as a staple and plenty of other available burn items this build can hit hard early and easily scale into the mid game through Mak's other strong support items.

Calcinator is the staple of this build for two reasons:

1) Inherent burn stacking via reagent transformation

2) Gold generation via transforming Chunk of Lead into Chunk of Gold, which can also help you find small items to support your build.

Early Game: (Example Board) - Days 1-5/6

Find Calcinator as early as possible and take every opportunity to transform your Chunk of Lead to keep stacking its power. The primary method is the Mandala encounter, though items like Alembic that can transform an item daily help scale this as well. Feel free to also pick up an early Retort for more Chunk of Lead generation, and you can also field the Retort in early days if you don't find burn items. With Calcinator online, field more burn items to increase your power.

As for your starting boon, I suggest to take the Gold Skill option. Burn skills like Fiery, Final Flame, and Immolating Spark are ideal. Dumpster Diving is also very powerful, providing a gold-tier potion at the beginning of every day. This provides useful items, gold generation, and build flexibility.

Mid Game: (Alternative Example Board) - Days 5/6-10/11

Your Calcinator should be stacked to a point where additional burn through smaller items becomes nearly irrelevant. A Fire Claw can boost your power significantly since its burn scales fromCalcinator. Aside from Fire Claw look to add in a Strength Potion for critical strike as well as haste, disruption, and endurance effects. Examples include Energy Potion and Smelling Salts for haste, Amber, Rainbow Potion, Sleeping Potion, and Frost Potion for disruption, and Invulnerability Potion and Vitality Potion for endurance. In the Alternative Example Board below 4 of those items apply burn, and only 2 of them in any significant amount.

This strategy should allow you to breeze through the early and mid game stages with plenty of gold to look for an end game. It's very possible that this setup gets you to 10 wins, but you'll ideally want to transition out of it by day 11-12.

Example Board

This is a day 5 board that I had (item rarity aside). The goal here is to stack as much burn as possible.

Burn total: 104

Silver Calcinator: 30 burn

Bronze Ruby: 4 burn (but important as it adds 3 burn to other items)

Gold Fire Potion: 14 x 2 = 28 burn (from Boiling Flask multicast)

Gold Bottled Lightning: 8 x 2 x 2 = 32 burn (from Boiling Flask multicast and 100% crit chance)

Silver Thurible: 9 burn

Silver Fireflies: 5 burn

These items have similar cooldowns, which leads to one round of item activations applying 104 burn after 8 seconds (not including Ruby at a 10s cooldown for 4 burn). On day 5 that's enough to win just about any encounter. Note that I don't bother much with haste, slow, or freeze effects here as my goal is to burn as aggressively as possible.

Threats to this early game build are mostly fast weapons-based builds. It's hard to disrupt this build, since multiple items are doing heavy burn application.

Alternative Example Board

This was a day 11 board. At this point Calcinator had 102 burn, making items like Ruby and Fire Potion less powerful additions.

Fire Claw can double or nearly double your total burn value depending on its rarity, and Strength Potion doubles the burn of your items through crits.

Note that Strength Potion and Calcinator have the same base cooldown at 6.0s. If you can find a way to make Strength Potion activate before Calcinator you will get much more value out of it. Fire Claw doesn't have this issue since its base cooldown is 7.0s.

Smelling Salts is primarily here because I was fortunate enough to find a Clamera, which means that Calcinator was hasted at the start of the fight.

Amber, Clamera, and Rainbow Potion are in play to disrupt the enemy board and buy more time for our burn.

Note that day 11 is getting to be a bit late in the game for this build. I started losing games on day 12 at 9 wins and transitioned to Vat of Acid for my end game 10-win build.

The Main Engine (Necessary Core)

Calcinator is the core of this build as mentioned above. Try to find this as early as possible, upgrade it when you can, and transform reagents at every opportunity to stack its base burn value and also earn yourself gold through Chunk of Gold.

The self-sufficient nature of Calcinator means that throughout the mid game you can start to plan a transition board for late game. You'll have gold and stash space to plan for a board swap in the end game.

CalcinatorMak

Supportive Items and Skills

Fiery, Final Flame, Immolating Spark, and Dumpster Diving are excellent skills to start your run with.

Brewmaster and Stocked can add extra power in the mid-game. Other support is rather straightforward through items and skills that either:

1) Start your board activations faster

2) Delay your opponents board

3) Allow you to live longer

FieryVanessa, Dooley, Mak

Final FlameVanessa, Dooley, Mak, Pygmalien

Immolating SparkVanessa, Dooley, Mak, Pygmalien

Dumpster DivingMak

BrewmasterMak

StockedMak