Before you start you should unlock a few things and they are as follows:



Pugnala, Gallo, Divano, Zi'Assunta (These require you to discover and open the coffins which you will start to discover once you find the map that is described below in items.)



Randomazzo (optional but will make your life easier) Follow the green arrow in Stage 4 - When the stage starts immediately start going up and try to keep consistently moving in an upward direction until you get to where the green arrow leads you.
Yellow Sign To get this you must survive for 14 minutes in Moonglow using a basic character (Not Gallo or Divano for example) Using Antonio is a safe bet. This will get you to a hidden level called Holy Forbidden and once you completely make it through this area and get to the end you will find a "Yellow Sign" on the ground. After you have done this Holy Forbidden will no longer be accessible.
Map This is the key item from Stage 3. Follow the green arrow. once you have this item pause your game and click "Show Guide" You will now see arrows on screen that point to items that can be found around the map you will additionally have a map on your pause menu now.


Guide:
You can defeat death with literally any character if you use their base weapon with the following combo of weapons. The main Idea here is that you must get the guns and whips upgraded into their most elite forms. This is a deadly combo that can just blast you through anything pretty much. Axes are a nice touch to stack some extra damage afterwards. so here's the build I have come up with:
-Whip -> Evolve it into bloody tear (requires Hollow Heart)
-Vento Sacro (blue whip) -> Evolve it into Fuwalafuwaloo (Requires Bloody Tear)
^This combo will combine the two whips into one item which will free one weapon slot.

Blue Guns (Eight The Sparrow) & Red Guns (Phiera Der Tuphello) Max them out and get Taragisu to evolve them. They comibine into one item which is 4 pink guns (Phieraggi), thus freeing up yet another weapon slot.

In the meantime you will also want to pick up your Clock Lancet and Laurel these are ideally your first 6 weapons.



Don't panic if you fill your inventory with a starting weapon, two whips, two guns and a Laurel and you can't get your Clock Lancet right away. when you crunch down your first set you will have a slot for clock lancet after. Really when I say Clock Lancet here I mean "item x" where x is any of the items that you may need for this to work. sometimes it's the blue gun, sometimes it's laurel. It depends what the game gives you and when. Just make sure you are grabbing items you need as soon as they pop up because you don't know when they will come around again. It's better to have them first and upgrade your other stuff second to that.

After all of this mayhem is over you will have 1 or 2 item slots open for a weapon or two of your own choice. If your character isn't one of the ones from the required characters list you will have 1 slot aside from the one your base weapon is consuming. I do suggest Axes as your final weapon of choice which you will need to use along with a Candelabrador. Then you will be able to evo the Axes into Scythes for massive damage. If you have been observant so far, you will also notice that I enjoy using the Wand as well. If I have two open slots Wand/Axe is a pretty solid choice for my final weapon choices, since the upgraded wand not only fires at the nearest enemy but it's also full auto without a cooldown.

Use your Re-rolls and banishes whenever the game gives you a set of items that don't work for your build. Keep in mind that it can be better earlier on to banish an item that you will not be using in the run before resorting to a Re-roll. This is good earlier in the game because if I know I'm not using an item like Runetracer, and then I get a useless hand with Runetracer it just makes sense to banish it right away before it wastes an item option 4 more times down the road.

Another good strategy that I use to keep my leveling tidy is to select an item that has 1 level to go to max it. Every time you max out an item you are removing it from the the deck and making it not consume an item slot on your level ups, which will obviously make it more likely that you get the things that you want. Over all, leveling your items will happen one way or another and you will eventually max out everything. It's just all about prioritizing what to max out and when. I guess that's where the real strategy comes in and that part of the game play will be entirely up to you.

The last item slot is the one that is left for your base weapon which will evo (or wont depending what it is) and it's evo item will also differ accordingly. What matters here is getting your Guns and Whips maxed and getting your Laurel and Clock Lancet the other one or two weapons don't really matter as much for this combo to work, but the axes are a nice touch for that extra damage output.

If it's your first time fighting death -> It's a rough grind because you have to do a lot of running around in the mad forest to collect everything you need fast enough to actually succeed. I say mad forest because if you beat death in mad forest you will last 31 minutes as well and this will cause you to unlock a very amazing card for your Randomazzo Deck which will make every other encounter with death way easier. You must run through and collect the two rings and the two Metaglios (red arrow looking items. These appear after you have obtained your Yellow Sign item). It's crucial to move toward these right away when you start the level but don't collect them until your passive item inventory is full or they will consume a slot on your second row.

Fill out your rings and Metaglio right and left. and then evolve your laurel into crimson hood (do this one first since you can still succeed as long as you have this) Then evolve your Clock lancet to infinite corridor. At this point you are probably going to be at 28 or 29 minutes and it's time to kill death.

Alternatively if this isn't your first time killing death just use the card form the Randomazzo deck that looks like a green card with a tree on it called "Mad Groove" this is card number VIII. Don't choose this as your first card choose it as your second card. Then you have time to level up all of your stuff in the meantime. This card will attract all of the items in the map toward you every two minutes which will be extremely useful since it also attracts all of the chests and crystals you have left behind. First timers will be able to do this in runs after they have successfully unlocked this card. You certainly can choose it as your starting card. I just say not to because it can be mildly annoying when you are starting out getting all of these extra items thrown towards you when you don't need them yet.

Without this card it is definitely easier to kill death for your first time on the Inlaid Library but you won't get the card mentioned above by doing this. Some people might want to do the Library first then try the forest after just for simplicity's sake. It's your call at the end of the day.

When you finish this tutorial Red Death will unlock in your Character Selection and he is super fast! I wound up using him to unlock Leda and it worked like a charm.


This strategy works while playing with any Vampire in the game. Have fun!


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