Brotato Nightmare difficulty: how to unlock it and what changes
Updated 2026-11-03 · for 1.2.0.0
You unlock Nightmare by winning Danger 5 ten times on different characters. If you own Abyssal Terrors, wins on different maps count too. It's the hardest difficulty in the game, above Danger 5, and it came with the All Pain No Gain update in May 2026.
What Nightmare changes
Enemies deal more damage, have more health and move faster than on Danger 5. It also adds things you won't have seen before:
- Environmental projectiles. On some waves, bullets fly across the map for the whole wave. Their arrow shape shows you the direction they're going. You can turn them off or put them on every wave in the Accessibility options.
- The Fog. Parts of the map go dark during a wave. Light stays around you, and your structures and pets light up the area around them. The developers also hint that fire helps.
- New enemies. Tougher versions of existing enemies, in both Crash Zone and the Abyss.
New enemies by map
| Crash Zone | Abyss |
|---|---|
| Horned Spitter | Bloated Pufferfish |
| Corrupted Buffer | Brainy Squid |
| Horned Fly | Cool Walrus |
| Bloated Spawner | Firemane Anemone |
| Dire Junkie | Infected Blobfish |
| Infected Slasher Egg | Scaled Stargazer |
| Mad Slasher | Spiky Lung |
| Mad Dragonfish | |
| Scaled Goblin Shark | |
| Scaled Diplocaulus |
Is Nightmare easier now?
A little. Update 1.2 smoothed out difficulty spikes in Crash Zone. Horned Fly, Bloated Pufferfish and Horned Spitter fire fewer projectiles. Scaled Stargazer, Junkie and Dire Junkie move more slowly. Brainy Squid, Cool Walrus and Horned Bruiser have less health.
What you get for winning
Winning a run on Nightmare unlocks Wounded, a character who dies in one hit. Our build for that character is Free Downsides. The same update also added the Railgun.
How to prepare
We don't have a Nightmare tier list, and our character tier list is ranked for Danger 5. Treat it as a starting point, since nobody should expect the same order to hold on Nightmare. Golem, King, Loud, Technomage, Cryptid and Creature are our S tier there.
A few things follow from what Nightmare adds:
- Enemies are faster, so plan on having some Speed and enough Range to kill things before they reach you.
- Moving bullets are hard to avoid in a crowd, so don't count on Armor alone. Our Dodge vs Armor article explains how the two work together.
- If you haven't got your 10 wins yet, start with the characters we'd pick for a first Danger 5 win.