The HoloCure item tier list helps differentiate between the many pick-ups that boost a character’s healing, stats, or utility.
With over 30 items in the game, it’s inevitable that some will be better than others. Like with weapons and collabs, “better” refers to their general usefulness in most scenarios.
This means that the best items are those which can be picked up by pretty much any character in any situation.
HoloCure S-Tier item list
- Halu
- Membership
- Just Bandage
- Nurse’s Horn
- Study Glasses
It’s a testament to the depth and variety of HoloCure that there are very few items in the list that qualify for the highest tier.
These items can be taken by any character, meaning they have to be universally powerful.
Membership is the most coveted as it is effectively the only item in the game that increases a character’s damage and defense at once.
While it will continually drain coins, it’s not hard to earn more money than it loses, and that cost is especially moot if you’ve already bought all the characters/upgrades you want.
Relatedly, Halu is a difficulty amplifier, but is important for two reasons: it guarantees coin farming, and its increased spawns means more enemies which means more EXP. Players can get enormous boosts to gold and EXP by keeping it at Level 3 and choosing to not max it out.
Just Bandage and Nurse’s Horn are the two best healing items, depending on what the player wants. Just Bandage gives large HP recovery if hit. Meanwhile, Nurse’s Horn grants a small heal on kill and a chance of a burst heal on low health.
Finally, Study Glasses is S-tier but only if the player can get it early (ideally in the first 10 levels). Its level-based damage bonus does not apply retroactively, and the enhanced EXP gain is most important in the early levels.
This means it’s the bottom of S-tier depending on when it spawns, but if obtained early it’s one of the most valuable items in the game.
A-Tier
- Body Pillow
- Face Mask
- Full Meal
- Headphones
- Gorilla’s Paw
- Uber Sheep
- Breastplate
- Kusogaki Shackles
- Beetle
The items in this tier are widely useful and generally good. However, particular quirks means that some characters may be better off ignoring them entirely, while others will consider them essential for their build.
Body Pillow, Headphones and Breastplate are similar as the best defensive items in the game.
Body Pillow guarantees the character’s health is protected, so it’s ideal for characters like Kronii or AZKi who absolutely need full health.
Headphones grants increased dodge chance to negate a hit, while Breastplate increases defenses and grants a thorns effect to retaliate against anyone who hits the wearer.
Face Mask and Gorilla’s Paw are the best items for increasing damage output, but are dependent on what type of damage the character needs (or if they want more damage at all).
Face Mask grants damage and haste at the cost of taking more damage, turning the character into a glass cannon. Gorilla’s Paw grants more damage but lowers crit chance, meaning crit-based characters will want to avoid it.
Full Meal and Uber Sheep are the next best healing items. Full Meal increases all healing, making it practically mandatory on any of the healing characters like Sora or Choco. Uber Sheep is a less consistent form of healing than Just Bandage or Nurse’s Horn, but it’s still healing.
Kusogaki Shackles at max completely negates the debuffs applied by certain items. This means its value is entirely dependent on what other items you get, but with the right build it means you get to use the strongest items with none of their limiting drawbacks.
Beetle is also situational in that it amplifies all skill damage. This means characters like Matsuri whose primary damage comes from their skills will covet this item, while weapon characters like Ame will completely ignore it.
HoloCure B-tier item list
- Credit Card
- Knightly Milk
- Plushie
- Piki Piki Piman
- Chicken’s Feather
- Idol Costume
- Energy Drink
- GWS Pill
- Hope Soda
- Blacksmith’s Gear
- Focus Shades
- Researcher’s Coat
Majority of the HoloCure items fall in this tier. Most will rarely make or break a build and are general all-rounders. Others will be critical to certain characters but totally useless for others.
Credit Card, Chicken’s Feather, Blacksmith’s Gear and Researcher’s Coat are all generic boosters that can be useful but are rarely essential to any build.
Knightly Milk, Piki Piki Piman, Energy Drink and Hope Soda all boost certain stats but mean that they’re useless or possibly detrimental to characters that don’t use that stat.
Similarly, Idol Costume and GWS Pill interact with the character’s Special cooldown, which doesn’t mean much if your character doesn’t use their ultimate that much if ever.
The Plushie is one of the weaker defensive items, turning a portion of received damage into a DOT effect. It can prolong a character’s life, but doesn’t provide the healing that’ll actually keep them alive.
Focus Shades is also exclusively dependent on weapon class, buffing ranged/multishot weapons’ crit damage. If the character is melee or doesn’t really use crit or many ranged weapons, then it’s not really that useful.
C-Tier
- Sake
- Limiter
- Injection-Type AsaCoco
- Stolen Piggy Bank
- Super Chatto Time
- Devil Hat
- Ninja Headband
- Candy Kingdom Sweets
These are the items that are too niche or have too large of a disadvantage to reasonably overcome.
Limiter, Stolen Piggy Bank and Super Chatto Time are generic boosters to Pick-Up Range or gold generation. This means they’re pretty useless on any run that isn’t specifically aiming to farm.
Sake and Ninja Headband provide boosts to crit and melee weapons respectively. Unfortunately, crit isn’t that good a stat and Sake’s no-hit requirement means it’s too inconsistent as a consistent stat boost.
Meanwhile, there aren’t enough good melee weapons to really justify running Ninja Headband over any of the other damage amp items.
Injection-Type Asacoco, Devil Hat and Candy Kingdom Sweets have too large deficits to reasonably overcome.
The constant life drain of Injection for an Attack stat boost (not even immediate damage boost) is an unreasonable risk for pretty much every character, even those with dedicated healing/sustain kits.
Sweets grants plenty Haste and its potential to double output is theoretically extremely good, but the damage penalty is just too harsh for effectively the entire cast.
Devil Hat’s damage amp requirement needs enemies to be outside a particular range from the character, with an outright damage debuff if they’re within that range.
This is frankly an unreasonable demand in a game where the screen at any given time is full of enemies charging at the character. It is especially true in later stages when they attack in specific formations with too much health to reasonably take out.
Lastly, while the Shackles can turn Injection and Sweets into top-tier items by removing their downsides, it can only remove the damage penalty on Devil Hat. It doesn’t help the core issue that its damage amp is rarely useful since majority of targets will be on top of the character.
