General Tips

Now that I've shown all sorts of things that you can expect to encounter, I'll finish up this guide with some important advice. Numbered again, because I feel like it.1. BOOKS. Always... always... always... look for them, always read them, and if they say something important, mark it into your journal, which you can look at whenever you want. Books are CRUCIAL to solving pretty much all of the game's puzzles, and the thing about those puzzles is that they are just as procedural as everything else; the solutions change from one run to the next, and a single screwup can prevent you from ever getting the reward. In addition, they can tell you about useful crafting recipes, hint at secrets that can be found on later floors, and give all sorts of very useful info.2. NEVER DRINK AN UNIDENTIFIED POTION. Ever. Dont do it! I dont care what your reasons are: Dont drink any potion with a purple background. Or a red one, either.3. For that matter, try to avoid using unidentified (purple) equipment. These can seriously screw you up, and can even bring about the end of your run entirely.4. Find a Detect Magic scroll early? Dont use it right away. Wait until you've accumulated a variety of unidentified gizmos, and THEN use it so that you can get an idea as to wether each one is positive or negative. This way, you get the most bang for your buck.5. Scrolls, however, are usually safe to read. The "negative" scrolls arent all that bad, with the Descent one actually being useful and even necessary. If you havent yet found the all-important Identify or Detect Magic scrolls, it's a good time to read random ones to see if you can find them. However, it's best to wait to do this until you have some other unidentified stuff, in case you do in fact find a Detect Magic scroll. That way, it isnt wasted in the process.6. Negative potions are useful to you. Obviously, you dont want to drink them. But you still want these things. Throw them at your enemies! Of course, not all potions are directly useful in combat... but ALL of them do provide some sort of useful function. Some of these even can do unexpected things in some situations. There is a certain type of thing in the dungeon that tends to enhance (multiply) magical effects, for instance... what might happen if you throw a Drain Magic potion at this particular stuff? One way or another, negative potions are just as important as positive ones. Unlike negative staves and equipment, which all just suck.7. Sigils are powerful things, and wonderful to find. They dont do anything at all by themselves, but you can take them to a forge and attach them to any piece of equipment, be it weapon, armor, shield, whatever... to give that equipment a powerful magical effect. Each type of sigil can produce a different effect depending on what type of equipment you use it on. Experiment alot with these to see what you can learn about them. What happens if you combine a Magic Missile staff with a sigil?8. RIGHT CLICK THE HECK OUT OF EVERYTHING. When you find a new item? Right click it to see it's full description. No, I dont care WHAT it is, just freaking do it. Learning all you can about the game's many, many items is pretty much all-important.9. You can pause the game at any time by hitting escape. While paused, you can still look around, hover over monsters and things to see their descriptions, and interact with your inventory (including moving stuff around and changing your equipment). Note though that quaffing a potion or using a scroll will instantly unpause the game. I strongly recommend making good use of the pause feature. This isnt a twitch game, after all... being tactical is a must.10. Explore everywhere! The game gets exponentially harder the deeper you go. The best way to deal with this is to EXPLORE. The more you explore, the more floors (including optional ones) you clear, the more puzzles you solve, the more powerful stuff you'll find, and the better your odds will be of surviving to the final floor. Optional floor branches in particular tend to hold great rewards. Bosses also tend to guard useful things.11. Strength potions. Use these the MOMENT you find them. This is perhaps the most important item in the entire game, as your strength stat determines wether or not you can use/wear equipment... and equipment is everything. These potions are another reason to explore and solve puzzles, as it's rare that they're just in plain sight, nice and easy to get. The upgrade to your strength stat is PERMANENT. So, again, use them immediately.12. Dont fight absolutely everything. If you see an enemy that you think might be a bit too much for you? Try to sneak by, or otherwise avoid him. Of course, sometimes a difficult battle cannot be avoided... just remember that your weapon isnt the only thing you can use to your advantage during a fight. Pause the game and check your inventory to see if there is anything that might help you.13. Many magical items, such as staves or even defensive items, have a charge meter. When they are activated in some way, it drains. Unlike in old traditional roguelikes, things like staves dont break when they run out of power; instead, they simply enter a drained state, and they need time to refill. Drained weapons and armor still function as basic weapons and armor, just minus the special effect until it recharges. A scroll of recharge will recharge EVERYTHING all at once. Since things like staves dont break, dont be afraid to use them! You can increase the power of magical items by using enchant scrolls on them. A staff of fireball is powerful by default. But a staff of fireball +4 is more like a nuclear weapon (yeah, be careful with that).14. If something seems like a river, dont swim down it. If you're NOT finding solid ground to walk on.... you're going the wrong way, is the rule here. When you are in the shallows and hit deep water, *immediately* get back to the shallows or dry land, whichever is closest.Now, there actually is a helmet that allows for water breathing, but I dont believe it's used as one of the game's special items (the sort that the dungeon will build itself around) since certain classes cant equip the thing. So you're not going to see floors that use deep water as a barrier.15. The trick for dealing with murky water is a few things. Take it SLOW. Observe the hell out of the area you're going to try to wade through before doing it. The deep end isnt the threat: The things living in it are. Fish and Bog Worms are the problems here. Look very carefully for areas that seem to have more bubbles appearing than usual. When you are ready to head through the water, hold a sword of some sort in front of you. Because it means that if you crash directly into an enemy in the water, the enemy will take the damage instead of you, and you'll have plenty of time to backpedal or otherwise deal with it. Again, if you hit deep water, immediately backpedal. Dont keep going.16. When it comes to fish, yeah, they can shove you into the deep end, and that's pretty much their entire function. So.... dont let them do it. Keep yourself with your back to dry land when dealing with fish. Use a sword or other solid stabbing weapon, and let the fish come to you, not the other way around. If you think you might get hit, backstep onto dry land and give the fish a moment to move away before resuming your attack. DONT use swinging attacks against them. Just dont. Stabbing or lunging only, for fish. Same for bog worms actually (though ideally you'll just avoid those, they take quite a beating to bring down). There is no time limit in this game, so dont be afraid to backpedal a bit when you encounter some fish, so you can lead them to an area that is advantageous to you instead of to them.