WX-78 Circuit Tier List

[Baark0]

I like making tier list slop so here's one for the robot I've been playing non-stop recently. There are 3 separate tier lists here, one for each category of circuit, as it feels unfair to rank the processing circuit against the spin-cycle circuit. All circuits are ranked with the assumption that their respective tinkering skill is enabled.

Alpha Circuits:

Spoiler

The Beanbooster circuit is in S tier because 10 health a minute that's completely unconditional is really powerful, you pretty much never have to worry about taking random damage again because it'll be healed off in a minute. Pairs incredibly well with dreadstone armor, as it repairs itself overtime, meaning you can tank random hits very frequently and lose absolutely 0 resources in the process. The healing effect alone makes it an amazing circuit, the various sanity related buffs it gives are decent, but they all come with the downside of a higher maximum sanity making manipulation of your sanity take more effort. Before you plug a beanbooster circuit in, you could go insane with 2 green caps, but after you plug one in, it now takes 4 green caps. Also, the halved sanity loss from insanity auras means the bee queen crown generates less sanity, which is worth considering since you typically need to kill Bee Queen in order to craft this circuit.

Super-hardy circuits are in A tier because health is the most important of the 3 player stats, and having more health will make surviving when the other stats are low easier. With alpha tinkering 2, you also gain a small amount of armor protection per circuit plugged in, which sounds really good, but in practice it's honestly not that impactful. The TLDR is that unless you're taking lots of unarmored hits, you're only blocking about 1-3 physical damage depending on the hit you take and what armor you wear. It is *not* damage reduction like what Wigfrid has, so it will not reduce planar or environmental damage. Despite the alpha tinkering 2 perk being pretty mid, more health is still really good.

I'm personally very fond of Super-gastrogain circuits, as having to eat less and spend less time gathering food gives you more free time to do other activities. The 100 extra max hunger lets you eat foods like meaty stews and tall scotch eggs without wasting any of their hunger values, and the reduced hunger drain works really well with the extra max hunger, making your effective max hunger considerably higher, while also making any food you eat in practice restore much more hunger than normal. It's also just a very nice circuit to throw on backup chassis, as it makes them require less maintenance.

Hardy circuits are in B tier because more health is good, and if you have one extra alpha slot lying around, slotting in an extra 40 health is much better than an extra 40 hunger and 10% reduced hunger drain, or 40 extra sanity and the plethora of sanity perks that come with processing circuits. The armor protection isn't bad to have either.

Super-processing circuits are fine, but are only this high just because of how many sanity related things are unlocked with alpha tinkering 1 and 2. Plugging in 3 will more or less turn off insanity as a mechanic you have to care about, thanks to the halved insanity auras, increased sanity from clothes, higher maximum sanity, and passive sanity restoration. This can be nice for backup chassis that you don't want to spend time on maintaining their stats, or if you have absolutely zero interest in nightmare fuel. Personally I'm not too fond of it since I use a number of items that demand lots of nightmare fuel, but it's definitely not bad, as long as you have alpha tinkering 1 and 2. If you don't, then this circuit is pretty mediocre.

Gastrogain circuits are used pretty much exclusively used as crafting ingredients for super-gastrogains, as they're really underwhelming on their own, even with alpha tinkering 1 and 2. 40 extra hunger isn't enough to get the full value out of meaty stews, so it's only saved from D tier thanks to the reduced hunger drain. They're decent early game at least, making WX's low hunger more manageable.

Processing circuits provide such small benefits relating to sanity that realistically are never going to beat out plugging in a hardy circuit. For the short period of time before you can craft super-processing circuits, they're fine, but I'd never use them past the early game.

Beta Circuits:

Spoiler

Super-acceleration circuit: At its core, DST is a time management game. Being able to move faster in such a game is therefore invaluable. The fact they also make it so you don't need to tame a beefalo to move the marble pieces and celestial altars makes them a must have for every single world you play WX on.

Acceleration circuit: It might seem odd to have the un-upgraded version this high, however I want you to consider that this is essentially a walking cane that you can get on day 1 that leaves your hand slot free. Combined with the lack of other good beta circuits available early in the game, and it becomes a no-brainer to craft and plug in an acceleration circuit. 

Super-illumination circuit: This circuit is hard carried by its 1 slot cost, which makes it super easy to fit into most circuit loadouts. Not having to bother with lantern fuel is genuinely such a freeing experience, that even though the light radius is terrible (even with beta tinkering 2), it's made up for with just how convenient doing anything in the dark becomes. No more swapping your helmet out for a miner hat, or having to pause what you're doing to move your lantern around.

Electrification circuit: While I have minimal experience with this circuit (due to my frankly excessive greed for speed circuits), I can easily say that this circuit is a very good option. For any strategy involving tanking, it is free damage and in some cases may even prevent you from taking more damage thanks to the stun effect. It's especially good vs clockwork enemies, as you'll be able to get a ton of free damage in after getting hit thanks to their vulnerability to electricity. It also provides immunity to electric damage, which is a bit niche, however getting to avoid the longer stagger animation can be invaluable during the Warbot fight.

Rangebooster circuit: This circuit is primarily useful for increasing the range at which you can control mapping drones, making mapping out the world, and specifically the ocean, considerably easier. This alone gets it to B tier, as ocean exploration is incredibly painful and tedious, and this circuit gives your mapping drones the range to let you skip out on all of that. Outside of that, it could be plugged in as a replacement for the super-illumination circuit if you have and extra circuit slot and no longer need the light it provides, however from my testing the range boost you get on exploiterator drones isn't very noticeable, so its mostly helpful for letting you see more of the screen at once.

Thermal circuit: The thermal circuit is an amazing circuit, however its not in A tier as its only really useful during winter. That being said, during winter it is easily one of WX's best circuits, especially if you're doing any cave content during this season. Not having to stop and warm up every 2 seconds is such a nice experience, it essentially makes winter into a second autumn. The 3 circuit cost is quite expensive though, meaning you'll have to either give up light from the super-illumination if you want 2 speed circuits, or give up 2 speed circuits to keep light circuits. The beta tinkering effect is okay, however its pretty niche, only really being useful when fighting ice hounds or crystal deerclops. With 1 thermal circuit, you can kill 3 ice hounds back to back without getting frozen, and with 2 thermal circuits you become completely immune to being frozen. This freeze resistance is kind of a big deal, since its one of the few ways in which WX can lose charge. 2 thermal circuits are pretty much never going to be worth it (especially since it makes your food spoil 50% faster), but 1 thermal circuit means you can kill both Mactusk hounds without getting frozen.

Refrigerant circuit: The refrigerant circuit is good, however I find that you need a source of warmth much more often than you need a source of cooling, hence why its below the thermal circuit. It's good for summer, and it's good for the fumerole biome, however it doesn't help a ton with the caves outside of the fumerole biome. The beta tinkering perk is also not as useful as the thermal circuit's, as it only provides burning resistance/immunity. Not as many bosses have fire attacks, only Dragonfly and Klaus really have fire attacks, and I guess technically the possessed varg can summon fire hounds that can create fire when they die. The decreased spoilage time is nice, but in practice its mostly just counteracting the increased spoilage rate of summer.

Opteoelectronic circuit: Don't get me wrong, infinite night vision is very powerful, however the circuit is just a bit too demanding with its 4 circuit cost requirement. Thats a thermal circuit + super-illumination circuit, 2 speed circuits, or a speed + electrification circuit. Back before WX's skill tree, this circuit was easily S tier, but nowadays we have many more options and combinations, which makes it very difficult to justify 4 circuit slots. It is very comfy to play with though, especially with a thermal circuit, as you get to ignore tons of game mechanics as your baseline.

Spacializer circuit: The main thing holding back this circuit is how late into the game you have to be before you can craft it, plus a lack of items that you'd want super large stacks of. The only ones I think are particularly useful are repair kits, specifically void ones for your maul, or gears. If you take the time to farm tons of gears, you can store them all in your spacialized circuit slot and skip out on carrying a bearger bin around. If you could craft it earlier into the game, I could see storing tons of nightmare fuel in its slots quite good to keep a magi or bone armor fueled.

Chorusbox circuit: This circuit is pretty meh on its own, as all it really does is provide a relatively high sanity aura of 4.44/min. This applies in an area around it, which sounds good, but in practice wont be that helpful as you'd have to be hugging the WX with the circuit plugged in to get any meaningful sanity from it. The more notable perk it has is the ability to tend to nearby farm crops in a pretty respectable 2 tile radius. This ability is a lot better with warm standby, as you no longer have to swap into the body to tend to the crops, however warm standby is a pretty lackluster skill and I don't really recommend doing so unless you're super late game and have an extra skill point lying around. Beta tinkering 1 will let it function like an infinite one-man band, but without the sanity drain. I've never tried to use this in a world myself since pigs kinda suck and bunnies are hard to get in large numbers on the surface, but you could probably do some funny things with it.

Illumination circuit: This is one of the few beta circuits which could actually compete with the acceleration circuit in the early game, however despite that, there's very little contest as to which is better. It provides the exact same light radius as the super-illumination circuit despite costing more circuit slots, so there's very little reason to ever plug this circuit in outside of a surface rook world, so you can get early access to super-acceleration circuits.

Gamma circuits:

Spoiler

Spin-cycle circuit: Easily WX's best circuit, as it gives them access to arguably the best source of AoE damage in the game. It's also just an incredibly fun circuit, as now every combat encounter or resource gathering session becomes a small game of trying to maximize how many things you hit at once. The single downside this circuit has is that most axe/pickaxe weapons are pretty mediocre, and the only good one is the Shadow Maul, however that weapon is a pain to use because of how easy it is to accidentally break it and cause it to lose all of its levels. Despite that, it's still absolutely the main gamma circuit most players will use.

Sonic-invoker circuit: Fear is an incredibly powerful status effect in DST, so being able to apply that at will in a respectable radius is quite a good ability. The only downside is that you have to stand completely still in order to channel the sonic waves, greatly reducing this circuit's use cases. In multiplayer it can turn WX into a very good supporter, being able to shut down the minions of bosses such as Bee Queen so your teammates can focus on killing the boss. In solo it could be a great "get away from me" tool, however enemies take a second to be feared, and during that time they can still hit you, breaking you out of the channel. If they instantly lost aggro of you when you cast the ability, it'd be considerably more useful.

Redigestion circuit: In my experience, this circuit usually isn't worth the effort of killing tons of catcoons for their tails, as most of the time I or the people I'm playing with don't need nutribricks for food or fuel. That being said, I can definitely see the value in turning tons of spoiling food/rot into something more useful. 

Chessmaster circuit: This circuit is pretty meh, as it's main use for most people will just be making clockworks neutral towards you. Being able to befriend more clockworks is nice, and it is technically free damage you can tack on to everything else you have going on, however you're reliant on full moons in order to get new clockworks, plus the clockwork farming process is pretty tedious. It's not too expensive though, being able to be tacked on to every combination of gamma circuits other than spin/sonic + 2 redigestion or blocking + spin/sonic, assuming you have the 7th circuit slot unlocked.

Blocking circuit: This circuit has so many issues: its non bio data ingredient is a rare drop from a tedious to kill enemy, it takes up more than half of your total gamma circuit slots, you can't do anything while blocking, and as far as I'm aware, it doesn't have any taunt effect to properly take advantage of the higher damage reduction period. It's pretty much only useful with 3 electrification circuits, and even then it's still not that great. If it at least had a repeating taunt effect, then it could let your teammates focus on damage while the enemy focuses you, but because it doesn't it just means enemies will hit you once, then change their target to one of your teammates.

 

[RubLog6]

Redigestion above chessmaster; six slot speed circuit above thermal, refrigerant, opto, illu and spatialiser 💀

Never cook again 🔥

 

[mima_]

chess master is an S tier cus if fit well with 2 spin XD and make ruins so peaceful :3 spatial circuit is S tier too. imagine collecting all woods from bearger run, picked and filled in one go also it moved with one click to tall chest. with warm standby will make awesome farm for stone fruit, grass, twig, reeds. and u can just move them easily by changing body and transfer to chest with one click.

Edited June 2 by mima_

[Baark0]

2 hours ago, RubLog6 said:

Redigestion above chessmaster; six slot speed circuit above thermal, refrigerant, opto, illu and spatialiser 💀

Never cook again 🔥

 

The fact you commented on six slot speed being above all the other beta circuit is exactly how I know you didn't read the post

[Mysterious box]

Personally I like redigestion for it's tinkering effect since it essentially doubles the life span of foods and even removes all the negative effects of any rotting foods while only giving the benefits.

[Wawchik]

I feel like putting the six slot speed in A but chess master in C is a little contradictory. 

Acceleration circuit is good early game, sure, but at the same time you can swap it out for night vision on like day 4 and you'll never use acceleration after acquiring any other beta circuit either way so is it really fair to put it so high. And like... Redigestion higher than chess master? Making clockworks neutral is arguably way better for early-mid game than recycling rot into low tier food, you can just tame the broken chess pieces to help you against ancient guardian/fuelweaver too and it's a 1 slot circuit either way so it's always an option. 

[Baark0]

3 hours ago, Wawchik said:

I feel like putting the six slot speed in A but chess master in C is a little contradictory. 

Acceleration circuit is good early game, sure, but at the same time you can swap it out for night vision on like day 4 and you'll never use acceleration after acquiring any other beta circuit either way so is it really fair to put it so high. And like... Redigestion higher than chess master? Making clockworks neutral is arguably way better for early-mid game than recycling rot into low tier food, you can just tame the broken chess pieces to help you against ancient guardian/fuelweaver too and it's a 1 slot circuit either way so it's always an option. 

The chessmaster circuit could definitely be higher, however the circuit isn't very helpful outside of the ruins, and even then clockworks already have reduced aggression towards WX.  Personally I never bother interacting with the clockworks in ruins rushes, as they're annoying to fight (especially in large groups) and their drops aren't very good save for the purple gems from bishops, so being able to not have them aggro you entirely is kinda nice. Honestly the more I think about it, the more I realize that chessmaster and redigestion should just have their places swapped.

I still standby acceleration circuit being a great circuit, I personally will never swap it out for night vision or honestly any beta circuit until I unlock super-acceleration circuits, as a free cane's worth of speed is simply invaluable in the first few autumn when there's a ton of stuff to get done. 

[David808]

45 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

as they're annoying to fight

I don't know if you know this, but if you use morning star on them you can just stunlock them with electric damage. Or just hit every 3sec or so. Large group annoyance still stands kinda? but even then electric spreads out to the group of enemies so idk. This is a thing I recently discovered while I was doing ruins with my friend and the moment I saw it I thought I cannot do ruins without morning star now lol. Well you might already know about this you look like you have lots of hours but I still wanted to share this interaction because with this they are literally free to fight.

Sorry if this is a little off-topic since this is about circuits lul 

 

Edited June 3 by David808

[Wumpair]

16 minutes ago, David808 said:

I don't know if you know this, but if you use morning star on them you can just stunlock them with electric damage. Or just hit every 3sec or so. Large group annoyance still stands kinda? but even then electric spreads out to the group of enemies so idk. This is a thing I recently discovered while I was doing ruins with my friend and the moment I saw it I thought I  cannot do ruins without morning star now lol. Well you might already know about this you look like you have lots of hours but I still wanted to share this interaction in case someone doesn't know. 

Sorry if this is a little off-topic since this is about circuits lul 

 

I agree! Morning star for ruins and in general mid-game is an amazing weapon! And in the case of clockworks, you can start by stunning a knight and killing it for gears, then stunning a bishop and recruiting with said gears, then repeat slowly recruting your army to the max whichever it is - then your new army will destroy any other agressive clockworks for you. And what does WX get from that? Those sweet-sweet gears! Its a snowball effect, start with a small gear investment and get lots of profit later on! 

[lowercasename]

Is Beanbooster really that good?

I haven't read up on how exactly Hardy-Alpha Tinkering (-2.5% damage per slot) effect stacks with armor, but being available much much earlier and without having to do Bee Queen (even if you can just do like 5 Bee Hats+4 Gold Axe+2 Spin Circuit+Hardy Circuit Stacking with 30 Pierogis to kill her with a Solo WX) should put it up much higher.

[Baark0]

5 hours ago, David808 said:

I don't know if you know this, but if you use morning star on them you can just stunlock them with electric damage. Or just hit every 3sec or so. Large group annoyance still stands kinda? but even then electric spreads out to the group of enemies so idk. This is a thing I recently discovered while I was doing ruins with my friend and the moment I saw it I thought I cannot do ruins without morning star now lol. Well you might already know about this you look like you have lots of hours but I still wanted to share this interaction because with this they are literally free to fight.

Sorry if this is a little off-topic since this is about circuits lul 

 

I'm aware of this, however the times I clear the ruins are either super early game before I have a goat horn for a morning star, or post rifts where I have access to brightshade/void weapons and therefore am not thinking about other weapons. I'd consider trying a rush with a morning star, however that can add a lot of time to the time before entering the ruins due to needing to find the oasis and actually getting the goats to drop a horn.

[ArtiTheFool]

6 hours ago, Baark0 said:

The chessmaster circuit could definitely be higher, however the circuit isn't very helpful outside of the ruins, and even then clockworks already have reduced aggression towards WX.  Personally I never bother interacting with the clockworks in ruins rushes, as they're annoying to fight (especially in large groups) and their drops aren't very good save for the purple gems from bishops, so being able to not have them aggro you entirely is kinda nice. Honestly the more I think about it, the more I realize that chessmaster and redigestion should just have their places swapped.

I think the thing that makes chessmaster so valuable is that its the only one-slot gamma circuit, meaning with most gamma configurations that you'll realistically use you will have 1 slot left over which chessmaster will perfectly fit within

[David808]

4 hours ago, Baark0 said:

I'm aware of this, however the times I clear the ruins are either super early game before I have a goat horn for a morning star, or post rifts where I have access to brightshade/void weapons and therefore am not thinking about other weapons. I'd consider trying a rush with a morning star, however that can add a lot of time to the time before entering the ruins due to needing to find the oasis and actually getting the goats to drop a horn.

Yeah for rushing ruins that's probably not the way to go. But if you don't mind the time it's so worth it imo. It all comes down to play style I guess.

7 hours ago, lowercasename said:

Is Beanbooster really that good?

I haven't read up on how exactly Hardy-Alpha Tinkering (-2.5% damage per slot) effect stacks with armor, but being available much much earlier and without having to do Bee Queen (even if you can just do like 5 Bee Hats+4 Gold Axe+2 Spin Circuit+Hardy Circuit Stacking with 30 Pierogis to kill her with a Solo WX) should put it up much higher.

The comfort of getting healed passively without you needing to do anything will always make me put this in S tier. I was doing ruins pretty much armorless just because of this little circuit xd.

[Baark0]

8 hours ago, lowercasename said:

Is Beanbooster really that good?

I haven't read up on how exactly Hardy-Alpha Tinkering (-2.5% damage per slot) effect stacks with armor, but being available much much earlier and without having to do Bee Queen (even if you can just do like 5 Bee Hats+4 Gold Axe+2 Spin Circuit+Hardy Circuit Stacking with 30 Pierogis to kill her with a Solo WX) should put it up much higher.

The protection hardy circuits give with alpha tinkering 2 unlocked is counted as protection, which is the same type of damage reduction you get from football helmets and other pieces of armor. Protection is different from damage reduction (which is the thing Wigfrid and Woodie's weremoose form have), as protection only reduces incoming physical damage, so hardy circuits do not reduce how much damage you take from environmental effects like overheating and freezing, nor does it protect you from planar damage.

The protection gained from hardy circuits applies after protection from armor, so if you were to take 100 damage with a football helmet and 2 super-hardy circuits, you'd normally take 20 damage, but then that gets reduced by 10% thanks to the super-hardy circuits, meaning you instead take 18 damage. Imo, this effect is really weak and shouldn't be considered when considering if you want to unlock alpha tinkering 2, unless you have a tendency to take unarmored hits a lot, as the damage reduction is considerably better for those hits, however you really shouldn't be taking unarmored hits if you can help it.

If you need a comparison to see how good the beanbooster healing is, take a look at Wormwood's photosynthesis skill and Wurt's hydrous healing skills. Wormwood and Wurt both heal 1 health every 10 seconds, meaning 6 health a minute. The catch is that their healing is conditional and requires several skill points in order to unlock. WX on the other hand, heals 5 health every 30 seconds, or 10 health a minute, and the healing is unconditional as long as the beanbooster circuit has power. It also doesn't require any skill points, which is especially nice as WX has lots of good skills to choose from. You also have a plethora of sanity related buffs on top of the healing, which firmly puts it into S tier imo.

Edited June 3 by Baark0

[tHe_silent_H]

I wouldn't put bean booster that high, it's a boss unlock from an annoying boss, and a sanity circuit+hardy gives the same bonuses as the bean booster with tinkering but is easier to refill. As for the passive healing, foods that heal are abundant and cheap and extra useful with wx to to no spoilage penalty

[Baark0]

2 hours ago, tHe_silent_H said:

I wouldn't put bean booster that high, it's a boss unlock from an annoying boss, and a sanity circuit+hardy gives the same bonuses as the bean booster with tinkering but is easier to refill. As for the passive healing, foods that heal are abundant and cheap and extra useful with wx to to no spoilage penalty

Bee queen is a super easy boss for WX as long as you have spin-cycle circuits, you don't even need pick/axes to kill her in a timely manner. All you need is 3 gold axes, 3 beekeeper hats, 5 marble suits, 200 health worth of healing, and an electrification circuit (also make sure to bring 2 speed circuits with beta tinkering 2 so you don't get slowed down as much by the marble suits and bee queen's honey trail). With this set up, it took me about six and a half minutes to kill bee queen, which is pretty good considering you're using golden axes as your weapon. 

[Jakepeng99]

On 6/3/2026 at 12:17 AM, Baark0 said:

The chessmaster circuit could definitely be higher, however the circuit isn't very helpful outside of the ruins, and even then clockworks already have reduced aggression towards WX.  Personally I never bother interacting with the clockworks in ruins rushes, as they're annoying to fight (especially in large groups) and their drops aren't very good save for the purple gems from bishops, so being able to not have them aggro you entirely is kinda nice. Honestly the more I think about it, the more I realize that chessmaster and redigestion should just have their places swapped.

I still standby acceleration circuit being a great circuit, I personally will never swap it out for night vision or honestly any beta circuit until I unlock super-acceleration circuits, as a free cane's worth of speed is simply invaluable in the first few autumn when there's a ton of stuff to get done. 

Just tame a single bishop and you can perma stun them all and make them as easy to kill as catcoons.

[lowercasename]

Speaking of the temperature circuits, I also feel like thermal should be put lower than refrigerant.

The faster drying isn't meaningful enough and doesn't feel like it contribute to +waterproofness if it reduces passive wetness gain from rain at all, the faster food spoilage is a downside (the only circuit with a downside even, other than having high sanity on Lunar areas), and the fridge circuit also has that thing where it sets wetness to zero if you hit 90 wetness (usually from drowning) too.
Oh and winter as a season is just not as dangerous as summer is.