Guide to Infinite Loops

What is an infinite loop or an infinite combo? By definition, a loop is a series of actions that lead you to the exact same state that you were in before, so you can repeat the same series indefinitely. In order for this to be useful, you also need to accomplish something with each iteration of the loop; ideally, you want to deal at least one point of damage, but infinite evade can also win you almost any fight. Another way to basically win every fight is if you can each turn reliably move infinite times to either side. For a non-exhaust-based loop, the goal is to reduce the deck size to a bare minimum, so you can draw all the cards in your deck. The maximum hand size is 10, so you need to remove or exhaust cards until at most 10 cards are left in your deck. Then you need to find a sequence of card plays that is at least neutral in terms of card draw and Energy. This often involves an energy generating card followed by a draw 2+ card which will re-draw the energy card and the draw card itself. Cobalt Core makes infinite loops considerably easier compared to similar games, because a draw card can re-draw itself.

While infinite loops are in some way infinitely powerful, they are not necessarily infinitely fun to play; in fact, some can be quite tedious to execute. Also, getting to the point where you can reliably kill opponents with your loop is risky, as you will sometimes need to prepare for your long-term loop plan (e.g. by not putting a strong non-exhausting card in your deck), and these preparations will often make you weaker in the short-term. Thus, it is questionable if going for infinite loops is the most fun way to play or even the most reliable way to win on hard difficulties, but it is certainly interesting for a while, and a relatively easy way to win certain fights.

This is not an exhaustive list of combos — please add to this if you find another cool combo!

Combos

Energy Loops

Energy loops generate energy, then consume it to deal damage and re-draw all cards. The more difficult part is generating energy:

1. Thermal Battery
2. Magi-Battery + Unpolished Crystal
3. Extra Battery + Safety Lock
4. Extra Battery + Backup Stick A
5. Bay Overload + Safety Lock
6. Bay Overload + Backup Stick A
7. Lightning in a Bottle B + Energy Refund
8. Lightning in a Bottle B + Admin Deploy B
9. Flywheel + any 0 cost card that draws at least 1 card
10. Salvage Arm + Small Boulder / Ol' Reliable A / Large Boulders A
11. Salvage Arm + Jupiter Drone Hub Booster + Jupiter Drone Hub

These need to be combined with a draw card and some damage. Draw Shot is doing both while being a starting card, and it can be upgraded to draw 3 cards which is necessary for some combos (e.g. [6]). Math.Max is another good option, as it also makes it trivial to use the maximum 10 cards hand size, but it requires another card like Basic Shot A to deal damage.

Easiest Loop?

• Draw Shot
• Unpolished Crystal
• Magi-Battery

This is a fairly easy infinite combo to assemble, as both Draw Shot and Unpolished Crystal are starting cards of Riggs and Books respectively, and Magi-Battery is just a common. Also this does not require any upgrades, so you can spend all shops on removing cards from your deck instead. Max's Admin Deploy is immensely helpful, as it can exhaust cards that normally do not exhaust, allowing you to get to a small enough deck from any total amount of cards given enough time. Max's Memory Leak (or rather, the Static Noise it creates) and Total Cache Wipe can also accomplish this.

Once you have no cards in your deck and discard pile you can play the Crystal Shard from Unpolished Crystal indefinitely (it redraws itself and is free) to get to 3 shards. Then play Magi-Battery to gain 1 energy which you then spend on Draw Shot to deal 1 damage and re-draw the Magi-Battery and the Draw Shot itself, putting you in the same state as you were before, while dealing one damage.

Note that Drake's Thermal Battery can also produce a lot of easy loops (and can even be upgraded to draw a card too), though it is Rare so it won't show up in your run quite as reliably.

Free Loops

In contrast to energy loops, these use only zero energy cards, so they circumvent the need to generate energy. To achieve this, Admin Deploy A is almost necessary here. Basic Shot A is just a stand in for any non-exhausting zero energy attack.

1. Perpetual Motion Device + only zero energy cards
2. Think Twice B + Basic Shot A
3. Basic Swap A + Safety Lock + Basic Shot A
4. Second Opinions A + Safety Lock + Basic Shot A
5. Serenity B + Safety Lock + Basic Shot A
6. Math.Max B + Safety Lock + Basic Shot A
7. Recalibrator + Basic Shot A + Grazer Beam / Crosslink / any Autopilot card / Jupiter Drone / Jupiter Drone Hub / Ares Cannon V2
8. Basic Swap B / Solar Breeze / Crystal Shard + any Autopilot card
9. Spacer A/B + Safety Lock
10. Sidestep B

[2] requires to have only a total of 3 cards left (counting cards in hand, but not counting zero energy draw like Solar Breeze or Crystal Shard), so Think Twice will re-draw all cards.

1. AI Overflow B + Safety Lock + Basic Shot A

is another combo involving free cards that has the added benefit of not needing the deck to be slimmed down, as AI Overflow B retrieves itself if it doesn't exhaust.

Exhaust Loops

Instead of re-drawing cards from the discard pile, an exhaust loop gets back cards from the exhaust pile. To do so, you need Second Opinions B and Cloud Save, exhaust energy [C], and an exhaust attack [D]. Second Opinions B will always get back the last card you played of each color, so having other Max cards (e.g. Clean Exhaust) in exhaust is fine as long as Cloud Save was played last of those. Cloud Save can never get back itself or even another copy of Cloud Save. Similarly, Second Opinions B does not return itself or (needs confirmation) another copy of Second Opinions B.

• [A] Second Opinions B
• [B] Cloud Save
• [C] Extra Battery, Bay Overload, Clean Exhaust, Salvage Arm + Energy Drone B / Jupiter Drone A / Repair Kit B
• [D] Evasive Shot B, Shuffle Shot B, any exhaust attack

If you choose a Max card for [D], you need Cloud Save B to get it back, as Second Opinions B can only get back one Max card which needs to be Cloud Save for the loop.

Temp card loops

CAT can generate infinite combos using Quick Fix to discount Temporary cards.

1. Quick Fix + Backup Stick + any card draw card costing 1 Energy + Basic Shot A
2. Quick Fix + multiple copies of Riggs.EXE (preferably with B upgrade), hoping for either Draw Shot or Quick Thinking.

The latter of these two isn't fully reliable, so you have to be able to suffice if you aren't able to find that Draw Shot or Quick Thinking

EMP Locks

A lock is not a loop in the sense described at the top, but rather you cancel all of the enemy's intents each turn, effectively locking them out of combat entirely. You just need something that prevents exhaust [A] on a card that cancels all of the enemy's intents (I call those EMPs here) [B].

• [A] Safety Lock, Backup Stick A
• [B] EMP, Solar Flair, Enrage

If you go with Solar Flair, you also need a way to get rid of all the heat like Ventilator. Using the cards and ideas from the Exhaust Loops section, you can also get back an EMP from exhaust each turn instead of using something that prevents exhaust.

Infinite Payback

In contrast to other infinites, this combo doesn't require you to spam cards, though it is quite difficult to assemble because it involves multiple Rare cards, and requires Isaac and Dizzy.

1. Jupiter Drone/Jupiter's Moons + Payback + Bay Overload/Catch + an Armored segment on your ship

Do this:

1. Get 1 stack of Payback, and no more! (Make sure your enemy doesn't have Payback either!)
2. Launch a Jupiter Drone backwards, either by having Bay Overload active, or by Catching and then releasing it
3. Align it with an Armored segment on your ship
4. Make sure you have a cannon aimed at an enemy's non-Armored segment (and make sure you aren't fighting BTL-86 “Goliath” Defender, who will reactively armor itself)
5. Shoot an attack (1 damage is best so that you won't take damage on the first hit, but any attack will do)

You will hit the enemy, and then your Jupiter Drone will hit you in your Armored point — triggering Payback, which causes an endless loop of 1 damage shots to the enemy and then back to you (and you'll be 100% safe thanks to the armor), constantly triggering Payback automatically until the enemy is dead. (But note that if you do this with too much Payback, or your Jupiter Drone is facing a non-Armored spot on your ship, or the enemy has Payback, you will probably die!)

Note that this loop isn't actually infinite. Rather, it is hard-coded to stop after 99 loops to prevent softlocks. Regardless, this is enough to fully deplete any enemy's hull, so you probably won't hit that stopping point unless you fire at an Armored part on the enemy, or you fire into empty space.

Dangerous Enemies

Some enemies are particularly dangerous when playing a combo deck, because they put trash cards in your deck, making it harder to get to a state where you can combo off. Defensive combos, where your output is defense, is particularly vulnerable to this.

Note that Buried(?) Relic can mess with combos relying on Recalibrator as many ships are unable to miss in that fight. BTL-86 “Goliath” Defender can stop some infinites cold by adding Armored to the segment you're shooting, though if you can get an infinite defensive benefit you'll be fine.

Building a Combo

Crew

• Riggs is key to many combos, because she starts with draw shot, has lots of card draw in general, and her cards and artifacts include many combo pieces.
• Max has the ability to get around exhaust which enables EMP locks, his starting card Admin Deploy makes it easy to eventually draw all cards by exhausting more and more, and Math.Max is a premium draw to use the full 10 cards hand size limit.
• Books starts with essentially a free draw card in Unpolished Crystal, and has the only non-exhausting common energy producer in Magi-Battery. While Mage Hand is not a combo card it is still very useful as a strong starting card to survive the run until you assembled a combo.

Early Game

Assuming Hardest you start with 3 Basic Shots, a Basic Block, a Basic Dodge, and the 6 starting cards from your crew for a total of 11 non-exhausting cards in the worst case, some crew members have exhausting starting cards. This means in order to eventually be able to have all cards in hand at once you cannot add many (if any) non-exhaust cards to your deck. Consequently the goal is to visit as many Repair Yards as possible to get rid of non-exhaust cards. The strength of a deck can be thought of as the average card strength in it. Removing cards then increases the weight of the remaining cards, and can thus make the deck stronger if the remaining cards are meaningfully stronger than the removed card. Just removing cards from the starting deck however is not great, so upgrading non-exhaust cards to exhaust cards like Basic Dodge B accomplishes a similar goal of reducing the number non-exhaust cards while improving the deck meaningfully. Combos which require many upgrades are harder to pull off, as each upgrade means one less card removal. Non-exhaust cards should ideally be skipped unless they are combo pieces, but skipping too many times may lead to you falling below the required power curve, risking to lose the run. The goal should be finding the right balance, knowing when you can go for the combo strategy and when you are forced to abandon it. Forcing an infinite combo strategy is not the most reliable way to win a run, instead it is usually best to pursue another strategy while keeping the combo option open as long as possible. If combo pieces show up you go for it, but if not you also have a reasonably strong deck that can win in a fair way. When choosing a path Repair Yards are a priority, followed by Elites as a source of artifacts, but only if you are actually strong enough. Especially if you are only one or two removals/upgrades away from assembling a combo it is likely better to avoid Elites. Events can offer removals (Grandma's Bakery and Weapons Market, Black Hole) or artifacts (Exploded Ships, Artifact Smuggling, Sports!, Missile Mayhem) and usually are low risk. Emporium of Wonderful Ideas even provides a combo piece in Lightning in a Bottle. Normal encounters are usually the worst as they are always a risk, but not always improve your deck, especially when going for a combo strategy, as non-exhaust cards are undesirable.