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The Bazaar Build

Hingus's Vat of Acid Guide

Mak

Updated on Apr 5, 2025

Apr 5, 2025

Overview

This build will highlight Vat of Acid as a strong item to play throughout the entire game. Its strength lies in three primary areas:

1) Inherent self-scaling (by means of selling items of varying types)

2) Minimal necessary support

3) Critical strikes

Vat of Acid's core functionality is that it first deals Poison for each type it has, then Burn equal to the enemy's poison. That order of operations is important because it first poisons, then takes into account that poison value when applying burn. This means that poison applied through other means will help scale the burn that's applied, but it's ultimately not necessary.

Early and mid game scaling of this item is completely wrapped inside the item itself due to its text: "When you sell an item, this gains that item's type(s)". This means that finding and selling new item types builds Vat of Acid's strength, which can make it your carry item through the early and mid game with a mere 7.0s base cooldown. The first cast can often times apply enough poison and burn to defeat most PvE and PvP encounters.

Where this item really shines is with critical strikes. In The Bazaar, items with multiple effects happen in the sequence listed. This is why Vat of Acid can take into account its own poison applied when applying burn in the same cast. This can be abused with crits, because the item will first crit the poison, then the burn, multiplying the item's effectiveness 4-fold instead of a normal 2-fold. For example, if my Vat of Acid has 50 poison and critically strikes, it will first apply 100 poison, then the burn will critically strike based off of the 100 poison and apply 200 burn.

Because of this scaling, enchantments can be incredibly powerful, especially the Obsidian enchant, which adds 10 times Vat's burn as damage. In the above critical strike example, Vat of Acid would crit for 4000 damage on one cast (50 * 2 = 100 poison --> 100 * 2 = 200 burn --> 200 * 10x scaling * 2x crit = 4000 damage).

Supporting Vat of Acid mostly involves haste, crit and endurance effects.

Example Board

My board above shows two key components: 1) Vat of Acid and 2) Strength Potion. Strength Potion ensures that Vat of Acid crits on its first cast*.

*Important note: Strength Potion must activate before Vat of Acid to be useful. While this may sound obvious, I did run into a situation where I reduced my Vat of Acid's cooldown under 6 seconds, causing it not to crit and missed out on a huge scaling component.

Secret Formula adds extra poison to Vat of Acid equal to your regeneration.

*Secret Formula was hotfixed to give additional poison on its active component instead of a passive component, and because of this I no longer recommend using Secret Formula. Early game try to use a Retort to apply additional poison prior to Vat of Acid's activation.

Invulnerability Potion provides straightforward endurance in the event the enemy board activates much faster than mine.

Energy Potion hastes the board and allows us a second cast if needed.

Scales makes my primary two items Vat of Acid and Strength Potion activate sooner.

Though not shown here, Boiling Flask is incredibly powerful with Vat of Acid since Vat of Acid will become a potion type through selling a potion.

The Main Engine (Necessary Core)

Vat of Acid's functionality and power are outlined in the Overview section, so here I'll focus on decision making that can lead to scaling and victory throughout the game.

Early Game: Focus on obtaining and selling items of different types to stack up Vat of Acid's inherent power. Don't forget about Loot and Reagent as item types, and any time you can get items from another hero is an opportunity to add types that you can't normally acquire like Aquatic or Tech. Add items to your board that apply poison, ideally with a lower activation time than Vat of Acid so it can take that poison into account on its first cast.

Mid Game: Start adding in support items like potions, cooldown effects, and things that significantly boost Vat of Acid's poison value. You very much want one cast to be enough.

Late Game: Get your cooldowns lower and stack poison on Vat of Acid through effects (such as gaining regen to pump up Secret Formula). Feather and Insect Wing are often more valuable than Extract.

Obsidian and Shielded are excellent enchants on Vat of Acid

Vat of AcidMak

Supportive Items and Skills

Support comes in the ways of 4 primary means, listed in order of importance:

1) Critical Strike Chance: a Strength Potion is the simplest way to do it. More ideal would be stacking skills and selling loot items that get Vat of Acid to 100% critical strike chance, but that will be very difficult to obtain.

2) Haste (more accurately, speed of first activation): Energy Potion, Scales, and Pendulum are all good bets here. Anything that can make your Vat of Acid activate sooner is a win.

3) Endurance: Invulnerability Potion and Memento Mori are great options to buy a little time in the event that you need another second or two for burn & poison to deal damage.

4) Additional Poison: Adding poison through Extract is nice but the effect is often so minimal that you won't see a difference. Compare that to Secret Formula with Thirsty, where you can add 30+ poison as opposed to a couple at a time.

Additional note: This build is susceptible to Freeze mechanics. Obviously freezing Vat of Acid is detrimental, but also Strength Potion. If Vat of Acid activates prior to Strength Potion and it doesn't crit, you will lose a lot of power.

ThirstyMak

Secret FormulaMak