A strategy guide

Darni on 2019/10/03 00:51 of Chaotic Elven Wizard

With people evaluating the game, I thought it would be nice to provide a strategy guide... The game is beatable with some experience in it, probably hard if you're new. I've separated tips in two sections, the top ones (labeled as TIPS) are gamerules that can be useful (and you'll probably can figure out yourself if you pay attention), and the second section (labeled as SPOILERS), has some tricks that you might want to discover by yourself:

TIPS

• Each level has an entrance and an exit that you should try to find
• Different actions take different time. Take a look at the clock on the bottom left, you have until the end of day seven or you lose.
• There's always a path to the exit of each level. If you don't find it, try searching (S key) for hidden doors in the perimeter of the explored area. If you don't have high awareness, you may need to search each square a few times to find it.
• You'll see small dark grey extensions of a corridors to the sides indicating paths that are yet unexplored.
• Check your HP bar if you're taking damage. If it's low, you can always rest (R key); that recovers all your HP. You spend a lot of time, but resting should make it unusual to lose because your HP got down to zero.
• Items can give you bonuses to actions, but you have to choose to use the item on the relevant menu. Those options are shown in green (and are generally better than the equivalent non-green option)
• You can only carry one pair of boots, if you pick one, you have to drop the other

SPOILERS

• You are trying to get to the top of the tower, not explore everything/pick up all items/kill all monsters. If you go for a "completionist" approach, you'll most likely run out of time. many obstacles you can just walk around
• If you need to get extra items, fight monsters. They sometimes drop loot.
• Alternating search and walk makes you go more slowly, but lowers the chance of stepping on a random trap significantly.
• There are never traps where monsters or items are. And traps within doors only affect you when trying (successfully or not) to open it.
• Breaking/unlocking a door triggers a trap, but destroys the trap afterwards. Trying to untrap it might trigger it many times instead. Depending on how strong/agile you are, you might choose to take the hit. (especially if you are in a hurry)
• Walking through a trap is sometimes a good option if you're in a hurry (and the trap is not the kind that delays you)
• The exit of each level is always in the bottom right corner of the map. Try to always make progress towards it
• Try to have something on your feet always, even if you don't use it. Those acid trap pits are nasty.
• Depending on what you're good at (fighting monsters vs opening doors), you most likely want to choose a path where you can take advantage of your skills/items.
• This is a balance issue that I'd like to fix: There are more than enough health potions. So upgrading your health is usually not worth it
• This is a balance issue that I'd like to fix: escaping a monster is usually a bad idea (if you don't want to fight it, don't move into its room on the first place!). That makes the boots of escaping a pretty useless item... except for protecting your feet. Very occasionally an escape is useful (if you get to a monster room to check what's behind a corner and see that it's a dead end with nothing of value).

Good luck!