Grouped Boss Waves: The Real Filter

What this page helps you decide: whether the wave that keeps ending your runs is a damage problem or a coverage problem

Most guides list the boss at the end of each room, and most runs do not die there. They die on the waves where several large enemies arrive at once, because a pooled health total behaves nothing like a single health bar of the same size. This page collects every documented grouped wave and explains what to do about them.

Why a pooled total is the wrong number

Three enemies at 15,000 each and one enemy at 45,000 have the same combined health and almost nothing else in common. Against the single target, your damage all lands where it is needed and the fight ends when the bar empties. Against three, only the damage aimed at whichever one your units happen to target is doing anything about the other two, and while you resolve the first, the other two are still walking toward the exit. The result is that a board with enormous single-target damage can lose to a wave whose pooled total it could kill twice over. Whenever you see a grouped wave written as a combined figure, mentally discard the total and read the count instead.

In several Horror Mode rooms the mid-room wave outweighs the boss

The Rabbit Hole sends three Nightmare bosses together on wave 16 - 293,825, 511,785 and 842,940 for 1,648,550 combined, which is 52% more than the Ravager Rabbit that closes the room two waves later at 1,083,780. The Operating Theater goes further: Nightmare Feral at 915,120 and Nightmare Slimer at 811,800 arrive together on wave 17 for 1,726,920, the largest grouped wave documented anywhere in the game, against a 1,033,200 Dread Stitch two waves later. The Toy Chest does the same thing on wave 19 with four Nightmare bosses for 1,458,059 against an 835,380 finale. It is not universal - Play Pond's wave 17 pair comes to 755,033, just under its 790,020 Freaky Frog, and the Kennels' three Mad Scientists at 607,824 are half the 1,216,383 Feral - but in three of the five Horror rooms with a documented grouped wave, that wave is the largest thing in the room, which is why preparing specifically for the boss is an expensive mistake.

Floor 3 makes grouped waves the standard pattern

Every Mad Labs room includes at least one wave of identical enemies. The Kennels send three Mad Scientists at 43,200 each on wave 11, the Operating Theater three Lab Guts at 54,000 each on wave 7, Containment Breach two Cage Mutants at 81,000 each on wave 15, and the Mastermind Core two House Experiments at 58,500 on both wave 8 and wave 13 before roughly three Abominations at 135,000 each on wave 20. That last wave is 405,000 arriving as separate targets one wave before a 495,000 boss - back to back, with no recovery time, which is what makes the Mastermind Core the hardest room on the floor despite the modest step up in boss health.

What actually fixes it

Area damage is the direct answer, because it is the only kind whose output rises with the number of targets. One area unit covering all three members of a trio finishes the wave faster than a single-target unit with twice the damage figure, and the documented clears of these rooms all include at least one. Placement matters as much as the unit: grouped enemies arrive together and stay together, so an area unit positioned where lanes converge sees the whole group, while the same unit at a spawn point sees them arrive one at a time. If you own no area units at all, the fallback is depth - spacing single-target units along the path so different ones engage different members of the group rather than all focusing the leader.

Step-by-Step

1. When a wave is written as a combined total, read the count instead.
2. Check the mid-room multi-boss wave, not just the finale - in several rooms it is larger.
3. Bring at least one area unit for Floor 3 and Horror Mode.
4. Place area damage where lanes converge so it sees the whole group.
5. With no area units, space single-target units so they engage different members.

Data Tables

Figures are player-reported in community videos by Rubenakayoshii (w1ToMRwW01I, yHflfPM7Etw, qXjNvcWwWnU, cMiW4nBVQ80, CJoEMD55J_I, dFKZSLRC7cI, rHC4YuKyzBI, 5zDPocP7spE), not developer-published. Combined figures are our own arithmetic on those per-enemy values. A dash means the source did not give the wave number.

Tips & Notes

FAQ

Largest grouped wave

1,726,920 (Horror Operating Theater w17)

Floor with most

Floor 3, every room

Direct fix

Area damage at a convergence point

Checked

2026-08-27