The Potato Thrower is a control weapon, not a damage weapon. Its cached stats give it 500 range and 20 to 30 knockback on a Support tag — the longest reach and joint-highest knockback in that class — while its tier 4 DPS is only 35.7. Build around keeping enemies away, not around clearing a wave with the potato itself.
What the weapon actually is
| Tier | Damage | Attack speed | DPS | Crit | Range | Knockback | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T2 | 3 | 0.45s | 6.7 | 3% x1.5 | 500 | 20 | 36 |
| T3 | 5 | 0.37s | 13.5 | 3% x1.5 | 500 | 25 | 69 |
| T4 | 10 | 0.28s | 35.7 | 3% x1.5 | 500 | 30 | 139 |
There is no tier 1 Potato Thrower, so it cannot appear as a wave-one purchase for characters that do not start with it. Its only class tag is Support. Explosive damage, explosive radius and explosive items do nothing for it.
Why the knockback is the whole point
At tier 4 the thrower fires every 0.28 seconds — roughly 3.6 times a second — and each hit pushes for 30 knockback. Tier 2 already pushes for 20 every 0.45 seconds. Compare that with the Wrench at 20 knockback and 175 range, or the Hand at 30 knockback but 1.4 DPS and 150 range: the thrower is the only weapon in the cached set that pairs heavy displacement with a 500-range reach.
That makes it a spacing tool. It keeps a chasing pack off your stat line while a second, higher-DPS weapon does the killing. It is a poor main damage source: 35.7 DPS at tier 4 sits far below the top of the table, where Excalibur reaches 303.
Where it sits in the Support class
The Support class has seven weapons. At tier 4:
| Weapon | DPS | Range | Knockback | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Potato Thrower | 35.7 | 500 | 30 | 139 |
| Taser | 58.9 | 200 | 0 | 122 |
| Hiking Pole | 25.6 | 175 | 0 | 130 |
| Pruner | 28.1 | 150 | 2 | 95 |
| Sickle | 21.4 | 125 | 2 | 122 |
| Lute | 14 | 225 | 2 | 122 |
| Hand | 1.4 | 150 | 30 | 91 |
Second in DPS, first in range by a wide margin (the next best is the Lute at 225), joint-first in knockback with the Hand, and the most expensive of the seven. Across all 79 weapons only twelve reach 500 range or more, and the Potato Thrower is the only Support entry among them. The others at that distance — Gatling Laser at 137 DPS, Chain Gun at 64.7, Laser Gun at 60.6 — are there to deal damage.
What to build around it
- Ranged Damage — it is a Ranged weapon with only 3, 5 and 10 base damage per tier. A flat damage bonus is worth proportionally more on small hits than on a heavy weapon.
- Attack Speed — knockback is applied per hit, so more swings mean more pushes per second. At 0.28s a tier 4 thrower already pushes about 3.6 times a second.
- A real damage weapon — the thrower should hold one of your weapon slots, not all of them.
- Max HP and Dodge — long range does not save you from a surround, and those two stats cover what knockback cannot.
Skip Explosive items and effects entirely: the cached entry carries no Explosive tag. Lifesteal is poor value here too, with 0% base lifesteal and too little damage to heal meaningfully from.
Waves 1–20
Early. Only Farmer lists the Potato Thrower as a starting option, and Farmer’s perks push the run toward economy rather than damage: +20 Harvesting, Harvesting rising another 3% at the end of each wave, and −50% materials dropped. That is a character that cannot simply buy its way out of a weak weapon, so a 36-material tier 2 with long-range safety is a sensible fit. On any other character, buy a tier 1 weapon first and add the thrower when it appears in the shop.
Mid. Upgrade to tier 3 for 69 materials. DPS more than doubles from 6.7 to 13.5 and knockback rises from 20 to 25. Keep a second weapon on the same Ranged Damage line so the build still clears waves.
Late. Tier 4 costs 139 materials for 35.7 DPS and 30 knockback. The efficiency improves rather than degrades — 0.19 DPS per material at tier 2 against 0.26 at tier 4 — so the upgrade is worth taking when the run has materials to spare. Do not expect it to carry a boss wave; bring a dedicated damage weapon for that.
Common mistakes
- Treating it as an area weapon and stacking Explosive items — it has no Explosive tag.
- Buying it as a wave-one weapon on characters other than Farmer — there is no tier 1 version.
- Filling every slot with throwers and wondering why wave 20 does not die — 35.7 DPS is a control number, not a boss number.
- Skipping Attack Speed, which is the stat that multiplies its knockback uptime.
Where to go next
See weapons by class for the full Support and Ranged pools, the Wrench turret build for another 20-knockback weapon, and how weapons combine for slot planning.