Tips

Here are some useful tips. Add your own!

Being big doesn't mean you'll be successful. Even the smallest snake can kill the biggest one if it is in the right place. As you get bigger, it can be smart to move away from the middle and take a more conservative approach.

So, this means you should take more risks when you're younger. When you're not on the leaderboard, you have less to lose.

In contrast to the similar game Agar.io, you do not lose length as time goes on. So you don't have to keep eating pellets right away, and you can take as long as you want to enjoy being big.

"Coiling" is a common strategy in which you use your length to surround an opponent in a full circle and slowly crush them until they have to run into you and "pop." But when you coil around an opponent, you look like a much smaller target and can be coiled yourself. Depending on who you talk to, this move is also called "Anaconda-ing" or the "Ouroboros Manuever."

You can also use coiling to protect a large group of pellets from being eaten by other players by putting them in a circle.

Coiling can take a long time, and if there are a lot of pellets nearby, it may be better to stop coiling.

Don't be afraid to double back on yourself. In Slither.io, you can cross your own tail, which you couldn't do in the old arcade game. You can use this to your advantage if someone is trying to get in your way or if you don't want someone to get the large number of pellets you're going for.

You can sometimes use the tails of other snakes to your advantage, since your tail and the tail of another player can work together to cut off a third player.

Be careful around snakes that look like you and are the same size and color. You might think you're crossing your own tail, but when you find out it was actually an opponent, it's too late.

One defensive use of speed boost is to get out of dangerous places (for an example, from being coiled). It can also be used to scare other players away when they are trying to get pellets or cut you off.

Speed boosting doesn't change how fast you can turn, but it does change how far you can turn. When you boost your speed, you have to make a much bigger circle to turn around than when you don't boost. For example, if a player is boosting in a crowded area and someone blocks their way forward, it is much safer to stop boosting before finding a place to turn around. If not, the player would jump right into a different snake.

When you have 10k or more mass, one way to defend yourself is to go around in a big circle and keep going around. This means that whenever there is a threat, it will be safe to run inside the circle. This can cause other players to coil you, though. When there is no danger, it is smart to eat pellets that are close by.

Try not to be too rough with a snake when you play. There's a good chance they'll see the right time and use your plan against you. When eating a recently killed snake, you should also think about this plan.

If you are eating a recently killed snake and see another snake coming from the opposite direction, move away.

If you can, use some of the snake's remains as bait while you're coiling. Leave a small hole in the circle so you can close it up if a snake comes to eat.

Speeding up when you're small is more dangerous when you're feeding off a snake you just killed, because short snakes have much worse vision.

The game's vertical vision isn't as good as its horizontal vision, so speeding up or down while moving up or down is more dangerous.

If you want to play the web browser version, make the browser size square. This will zoom out a bit and make the distance between your snake and the edges of the screen look the same.

If two snakes are moving at the same speed and hit head-on, the smaller snake will always die. But if the smaller snake is speeding up and the larger snake isn't, the larger snake will die. Use this to your advantage if a bigger snake comes up on your screen head first. The other player will probably try to avoid you, but if you "charge" at him and he doesn't do the same, you will win automatically. On the other hand, if you are a bigger snake and you want to kill other big snakes that are a little bit smaller than you, you can "headbutt" them when they don't expect it.

This is a double-edged sword, though, because if another snake thinks you're going to use this technique, it can turn away just before you hit its head, sending you into its body instead and killing you.

Keep an eye on the minimap in the lower right corner so you don't get caught off guard by the edge of the map, which will kill you if you touch it.

Try not to move your cursor through the middle of the screen when you turn around. This could cause you to turn in the wrong direction by accident, which can kill larger snakes.

If you have lag, you can reduce it by switching to low graphics in the upper right corner of the main screen or by closing other tabs or apps that might be slowing it down.

On older computers, when a snake dies, the game can stop for a few seconds, which can be fatal in crowded areas.

Do not try to out-turn much smaller snakes if you are a big snake. Even when boosting, they may have a better turning circle. Instead, go faster than them or don't let them try to turn in front of you in the first place.

If you're headed toward another snake that's coming at you at an angle, turn toward the other snake's tail. To get back to you, they have to turn at least 180 degrees, while you only had to turn less than 90 degrees. If you instead turned at the HEAD, especially without boosting, the snake could turn faster than you could move out of the way, even if you were the same size, speed, and rate of turn. In fact, sometimes it doesn't even need to turn, it just needs to boost. If you are bigger than it, it can also follow your turn and get to you before you are safe in your own coils.

Going between two snakes as a large snake is risky. You don't know if a small snake is waiting to cut you off on the other side.

The edge of the map is risky. Your snake will die, but it won't drop any eggs. You could use this as a threat, since a snake who wants to get pellets from you won't want you to run off the edge of the map. On the other hand, if they call your bluff, you're dead either way, and some snakes don't just want to kill for pellets, but also for fun. You can also use the edge of the map to pin other snakes. However, keep in mind that there is a 50/50 chance that they will disappear and not drop any pellets, or that they will do it just to annoy you.

A small number of players use bots that automatically move around the server to find food for them. You can easily get rid of these bots, but keep in mind that other players could pretend to be bots to get you to let your guard down. Also, these bots follow their master's head right away, so they can be used to find a snake to kill that is usually big but hasn't been killed before.

If you are bigger than about 50, you can circle in place to get someone to coil you. Wait until they are committed enough to you, say 75%, and then run out in front of them. If you turn back toward them after getting away, they will almost always crash. This is a pretty easy way to get a lot of pellets, but if you don't do it right, you could crash or get coiled.

If there are a lot of pellets where one or more big snakes have died, don't just run straight through them. Move back and forth or loop and coil in pellet-filled areas that are far enough away from other snakes that you won't be killed. If you keep boosting during this, your movement may look shaky and cause more chaos around you, causing you to drop even more pellets. This also lets you kill another small snake and kill quickly and easily anyone who is stupid enough to charge into the area where you are eating pellets. This often kills six small snakes almost by accident.

If you spend a long time with a snake but don't put it in any kind of danger, you probably won't kill it. It is more likely to kill with a single dart, coiling attempt, tail swipe, etc., and then switching targets or techniques. You can also try to get a snake into a position where it is easier to kill it.

Boost-racing, which is when two snakes try to kill each other by charging at each other side by side, is usually dangerous, wasteful, and pointless. If you want to beat them in the boost race, it's likely that you won't. Boost races that result from or are themselves attempts to coil are better, but once the chance of cooling is gone, you should keep boosting and pull away from the other snake and in the opposite direction to finish off whatever started the boost race.

When a fairly big snake dies, it's both tempting and dangerous to run as fast as you can through the pellets it left behind. No matter how you feel about this strategy, keep this in mind when you use it: when you or a nearby snake kills, you can't know if another snake is running towards you down the path, so pay extra attention to try to avoid the super-fast collision (your chances of dying are 30% luck, 30% relative positions, and 30% reflex). On the other hand, if you are, say, at the tail of a dead snake, you are much more likely to meet the killer further up the path, so you can count on it and have a slightly better chance of getting away.

When you play with hacked-in snake skins, keep in mind that some parts of the snake are just for looks and can't kill you.Don't try too hard to get too much! If you hurry to get other snakes food, you might run into another snake, so just eat what you need.