I love these kinds of games, turn based tactical combat, RPG and Sim/Management sprinkled in, procedural worlds, permadeath, sweet!

In this guide I'll record my blind journey to try and 100% achievements in the game in the least runs possible, why? I dont know, its fun to me.

I often have trouble beginning new games as of late, making a guide for them really motivates me to get going, you know?

In the end, I really liked this game and I wish I could have started sooner, hehe.

If I got something wrong, you know something useful I didnt put in here or just want to tell me somethying about the guide, please do leave a comment, thank you!

So yeah, here we go!

Edit: Thank you for the awards! ❤✔🎉🍖😁🎂✨✨🎮✌

Ok, so the game has you create an academy and send your graduate heroes out to the world to gain fame and riches and invest on the academy to make it better and better!

The thing, there is this achievement:

The Iron Will of a Dungeonmans
Create a brand new Academy and defeat the final boss with your first graduate. No deaths!

This means, our first hero has to be the one to win.
Im going to go with a rangermans build as described in this guide (go check it out :) )
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2904557039

The game has an ironman mode but I didnt see any achievements tied to that.
So it will be very important not to die! This means, slowly but surely get my hero stronger and stronger, flee dangerous encounters and just be very careful where to go.
Thankfully, the game has no time limit.

Lots of other achievements involve maxxing out stats/skills and defeating bosses and secrets.
I didnt see any missable achievements (Thank God) and am fairly confident I can get them all in a single run, my first one even!

Im ready! Are you ready? I am!

As I mentioned before, no Ironman achievements, so lets go and do a normal game.

I feel that a normal person would just not care about achievements and just do normal mode for introductions to the game mechanics and stuff.. but we wont be able to fully go out and live dangerously as a newbie because we must have our first hero survive until the end.

So I named my hero after the two greatests heroes I know, his name will be: Ashley Doomsguy!"

Now on to the character creation, we have some weird words like someone who is eating a muffin but refuses to swallow. The guide above mentioned to make it balanced because the rangersman build needs a bit of everything to survive, which is fine to me. Although, it looks like you could point buy the stats when the guide was made but now its random.. ugh.. is the guide outdated? ♥♥♥♥...

Dont mind, dont mind. It looks like the stats are super random, kinda like a 3d6 in D&D.
So I just need a balanced spread, everything above 14 if possible.
I had to remake Ashley a few times (had to make a new academy too) until I found one I liked:

I chose the rookie difficulty (rangermans) and the two perks that the guide mentioned.

I had a few Ashleys with their own academies as I tried for better rolls.
To make it easier, just add up the 2nd digit of every stat until it equals 18 or more.
It is below 10, substract instead of adding. yay! maths!
My PC has 20 points: 7+2 & 5+6 = 9+11 = 20

Your background (i.e. Rangersman) will give you some class skills to begin with but eventually you will be able to max out everything from all classes.

In the end, dont spend too much time rerolling, you will get a lot of stat boosts during gameplay through proofs of stremf. Maybe try 3 to 4 times? :shrug:

For perks I picked tireless (excellent choice) and world champion (this wasnt that good since you can eventually fight in infinite dungeons for infinite proofs), All weather perk would have been a good choice too but I guess with world champion you can get stats faster? hm.

Oh boy.. why do I get a bad feeling out of this? haha.
Wish the text was bigger, my old eyes strain a bit with this font size.
But if you are like me, there is a solution.
Go to settings and turn on experimental zoom view!

Remember that the world is procedurally generated so my world might be different than others.
The headmaster tells me its dangerous south and east, good to know.

"Should you seek more advice on your journey peruse the wall of text over yonder"
-Headmaster

Lol.

Alright, one thing to note is that to save the game, you need to ESC then click on save and quit, easy, no? It also autosaves after enetering a new area or doing something important in town or the academy. Anyway, let's go!


Groovymans has entered the game.

I think you can play with a controller, but I didnt test it.
Arrows work but you cant move diagonally as easy.
If you hold down the shift button and then use an arrow key, you can move diagonally.

You can use the numpad or these buttons:
K=Up;L=Right;J=Down;H=Left;U=UpRight;N=DownRight;B=DownLeft;Y=UpLeft

You can use the mouse too but.. I prefer the old ways, I suppose this would be good for Steam Deck. hm.

This is a turn based game so, every square you move or action you take, the world moves too but at your own pace. I love this. You can skip turn by clicking on yourself.

You can also move by clicking down on the direction you want to move, be careful, you'll move super fast.

Edit: After a day, I actually read about how to modify the keybinds in the game, there is a keybinds.txt file %AppData\Roaming\Dungeonmans you can modify to your likings, I exchanged the arrows for AWSD, im used to that movement and targetting with the mouse.

Alright, so here's the screen, Ill give a quick rundown on the user interface.
I suck at drawing arrows, sue me :P

Green Arrow, is the hotbar! Click on the number on your keyboard and activate the thing!

Red Arrows are your skills and the stat menu below it. You can open your masteries with the A key too. There are more mastery categories if you scroll down by using the mouse or the little triangles on the top and bottom left, these triangles are grey too so they might be hard to see. Drag and Drop an active skill into the hotbar (it'll be on your right when the skill panel opens) You can also configure your hotbar in the skills menu (Click S key)

Masteries which icons are square are active skills, the ones with a downside triangle part below it are passives. Armor Passive skills are active regardless of the armor youre wearing.

You can learn more about masteries here:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2286208804

Up top, Pink Arrow, is the area name and if you click on it, you open the map, you can also use the M key, here you will also see the area's difficulty.

Lastly, Yellow Arrow is the inventory and stat summary, inventory is organized by tabs. You can open this with the I or E keys too, if the item is usable, click on an item to equip it or use it, you can also drag and drop items to the hotbar. You can also see the XP you need rfor the next level here, its below the character's name and how many coins you have (bottom right).

There is an extra hotbar that uses the F1-F12 keys, you can go to the settings and enable it.
I use this hotbar for items.

If you right click on an item in your inventory, you can lock it, this is useful to prevent melting things by mistake.

You can right click on the ground to move there or rest.
You can also just move into the space of an NPC to talk to them.

Anyway, lets explore this dump!

Right! We got the warchest over there in the middle, it will give us rewards when we upgrade the academy.

Up north is the orb and the wall of text, the text has several lines you can read through, some are funny other hold secrets, its fun! Check behind the wall for a present.

The orb is a container for starshards which are dropped by some bosses and king-tier enemies, they are used at a temple found in the late-game to create powerful weapons.
Remember that if you die, you lose all your coins, gear and inventory but stuff that you store at the academy, like shards at the orb or special equipment at the armory can be taken out by future heroes.. but we dont want to die, right? yeah, we need to finish the game with our initial hero for an achievement.

Edit: Im pretty sure you can retrieve your lost stuff if you go back for it to where you died.

East is the library, here you can give books to the librarian to level up the place, upgrading it will make scrolls drop as identified more often according to their power tier, books can give you free mastery points and are really valuable but if you dont plan to use the skill it gives, its best to turn it in. Each level up of our character will give us a mastery point anyway, but.. 15 is the max level.

After you fully upgrade this place and one of your graduates dies after level 10, a ghost will appear here giving you a random fully unlocked mastery tree based off the last dungeonman that died but we wont be able to do that in this run cuz we wont die.

If you read a book and the mastery tree is already maxed, you lose the book but gain nothing!'

You need to donate 10 books to max out the library.

Once you max the place out, a new building will be unlocked and you'll get back 4 of the books you donated, which ones? it's random.

The building that unlocks is called the foomwarden research station , its used to make adventure maps that spawn new dungeons, its the system used in case you run out of dungeons to explore.. it has other things like special enchants you can craft and even mods to them, which is pretty cool.

On the west side there's the science lab and armory.

Upgrading the science lab will make more and more potions drop as identified so you dont need to guess, it can be leveled up to 3 times, dungeon bosses often drop the relics needed to ipgrade it. Its weird that it looks like the lab has a 4th upgrade but I never found the item to upgrade it, maybe its just my imagination? hm.

The armory will let you melt down extra gear to keep and reuse their enchantments by buying upgrade hammers you can use on your equipment, it also has a storage for some high grade weapons you might bring back, upgrading starting gear means that when a new hero comes, their starting gear will be stronger but.. we dont want to die on our run, so ignore that option for now.
Later on, you will find blueprints on boss drops so you can make legendary weapons with cool effects.

There are different tiers of materials you will need in the forge, the rarer the item (1-5 stars), the higher tier material it's made of, so, in general, the higher level dungeon you get items from, the better material, the better enchantments you can make hammers of.

You can use a scroll named Salford Solvent to remove enchantments from items and try again.

When you melt an item, usually, its enchantment gets recorded so you can make a hammer out of it later and apply that enchantment to any item with an available enchantment slot but there are a few rare enchantments that cannot be made into hammers.

Here is the list of enchantments you can get off melted items:

DO NOT melt your starting weapon, yesterday's knife. You can tranform it to a powerful 6 star weapon in the endgame.

Outside, to the SE its the training grounds, here you can change proof of stremf for upgrades, you can also get a free amulet! I'll let the screaming woman explain:
This means, points get carried over new graduates after you die, which is awesome but if youre the one that brings the proof, you get two points. Since we need to keep the first hero alive, we wont think much about the perks the spare heroes can get if we die.
Make note that the higher your stat value, the more points it will take to upgrade.
If you ask, she will also give you an amulet that grows in power as you invest in psychomancy mastery tree.

On the other side its the graveyard, this is where you'll see the graves of your dead heroes but hopefully it will be completely useless on this run.

After we explore a dungeon and come back, talking to the headmaster will enable us to identify items with him, for free.. all of them! He will also recieve all different kinds of items we need to upgrade the place.

Later on, you will find a relic which will enable you to build the museum.
That place will act sort of like a monster compendium giving you bonuses against enemies and letting you see data on them, like numerical HP which is very useful to make battle decisions.
It will also store other relics you found that will turn into powerful items, but only for the next hero, not you.. so its kinda useless for us for now. (cuz we dont want to die until finishing the campaign).
To use this legacy system, talk to the old man wandering in the museum.

Also, on your explorations, you'll find a mysterious egg which will unlock the battle poultry, these are pets/minions/pokemons. You can only have 1 poultry active at a time but it can be active with mostlys (undead minions). The egg (pokeball) must be equipped then use a whistle to summon it. As you feed the bird steaks, its stats and behavior will change, the steak description will tell you the stat change. You can sell unwanted eggs/steaks to the bird dude for items. I usually carry 5~6 battle poultry, they are great as distractions and offense, if one gets on low HP, equip another egg and summon that one while the original heals inside its pokeegg, the whole system is kinda broken honestlybut there are some enemies that banish poultry for several rounds, so dont get overconfident.

From the poultryman, you can buy a pig box to upgrade the pig farm, but I didnt find the pig farm in my first world, had to talk to the headmaster and make a new overworld to find the seller in a town, so keep in mind you might not have it in your world either.

Alright, let's get out of here!

Come on, Burrito! Let's Adventure!

Ahh.. now take your time to touch some grass? done? good!

My map had a town really close by, so I went there.

To enter a location, move over there and press Enter key or click on it.

Pretty cool, you can sell your extra stuff here but you got to be careful not to sell cool stuff by mistake so make sure you use the item lock system (right click on items you want to keep and lock).

Shops are affected by the town's prosperity, i'll let mayor scuttlebottom explain it:

In my world, the farthest town had a 10 prosperity, I wonder if that's the max? hm.

You start broke AF, you can see your zero copper coins at the bottom right corner of the screen.
Coinage follows standard RPG rules, 100 copper = 1 silver; 100 silver = 1 gold

At the local pub, the barmaid runs a weapon black market and the bartender sells information.
If you rest at the Inn, you'll get an XP gain buff that lasts 1500 turns.
Do note that different shopkeeps buy stuff for the same prices! Prices can be better if the prosperity is higher, up to you if you want to save the items until you can upgrade the town or not.

The real selling price is the one told to you by the shop, not the value on the item description.

Things you sell at shops can be rebought later but you sell around 10% value and buy at full price, so yeah.

I was looking for the adventurer's guild but I guess this aint that kind of story, haha. No quest-givers in this game, Im afraid.


Ok, let's go make some money!

Near my academy is the first dungeon that the headmaster mention.
Kobolds live here! erm.. I mean, Scrobolds!

You can right click on the ground to move to a known exit, the game will pause if you see an enemy, dont worry.

Anyway, I just clicked on the first enemy I saw moving and got my first coinage and xp, sweet!
This is gonna be easy!

and Im almost dead. haha! Beware glowing enemies with red auras, those are champions and they hit like a truck! dont let them get near you, if youre not confident, run to the exit, fight a bit and if you are losing, gtfo. Use your skills, specially dash or move skills to run away if hurt!

Your inventory is infinite and there is no weight limit, loot everything! hoard! hoard! hoard!

You recover both health and stamina outside battle, make sure you pace yourself if hurt.
If you right click on the ground, you can choose to rest, the game will quickly pass turns but only if there are no nearby enemies and it will wake you up if one shows up.

You will notice a lot of items are unidentified and their effects unknown to you, when you want, you can go back to the academy and ask the headmaster to identify everything! Some items are cursed and you wont be able to remove them without special magic, so be careful what you equip.

So I did get out of there and went back, identified everything and delivered the proof of stremf I got from the champion and I received my first achievement:

Proof of Stremf
Turn in your first Proof of Stremf

I sold stuff and bought stuff, grabbed the light shield skill when I hit level 2, it requires light armor to work, so I had to buy a light armor piece and remove all my medium armor accesories like my boots, sold those and bought their light armor versions, we're good to go! I kept healing potions, identify scrolls and a escape scroll I found for emergencies.

Leveled up and got shellbreaker shot from rangermans masteries, I also found another PoS. (Proof of stremf)

Edit: I later found out that Proofs only drop if the champion you slay are not trivial, pretty sure is at most if they are 1 level below you but Im not sure... a challenge scroll will always upgrades all enemies to your level, use this info to farm for proofs. After level 15, the XP requirement is insane, so you might as well treat L15 as the player's level cap.

Found my first boss on Floor 3, hehe.. I like this game. LOOT!

Anyway, went back to the academy, delivered the relic and a book I found, deliovered PoS and upgraded my stats, got my rewards and went to the next dungeon, it said it was beneath me so it quivered below my might dungeonmans might and just spew out some loot, yay!

I wish I could have gone in to look for champions though.. but you cant, oh well but I wouldnt worry too much, there's a lot of dungeons and battles ahead and you can always recreate the overworld if you need even more, seriously, the world is BIG and there's like so many, many dungeons.

A place in the road led me to a bandit barricade (which you can destroy), lots of bombs and ranged attacks but my light shield saved the day, found the museum relic here, fought the boss and won.

Back in the academy, I unlocked the museum and got:

Reason's Foothold In A Land of Beasts
Upgrade the Academy Alchemy Lab and Library at least once, unlock the Museum, and turn in a Proof of Stremf

Went back out to explore and realized there ARE random encounters.. and dangerous ones. I shouldnt have gone that far away from the academy but luckily, using some healing potions, light shield and move skills I ran to the edge of the area and escaped.. be careful!

While on the overworld, you can tell if the area is dangerous because the area difficulty is shown on the top center of the screen, next to the world's name.

I also noticed that dungeons you already went in then went out dont follow the auto-clear mechanic. Champions inside the dungeon dont drop proofs if you are too leveled up compared to the dungeon (the dungeon area name says Trivial/Mundane), you need Adventurous for proofs to drop.

I did get into the farthest town I found with 6 max prosperity and gave them the relics I found in the barricade stage. Prices were better but not by much.

When I reached level 5 I started necromancy because an achievement needs a Mostly which is like an undead minion, i also found an egg which I hatched back at the academy and got my first battle poultry. They level with you and its going to be one of my tanks along with the mostly.

In a dungeon, my dungeonsman felt there was a secret nearby but I bumped into all the walls and nothing..

except when I tried bumping corner walls diagonally, there it was!
Some secret areas have interesting dungeon shops in them.
Make note of these shops, sometimes they sell books and you can actually return later when you are rich to buy them, so yeah. Write it down.
A wise eyes of Yanssir scroll will reveal secret areas.

I reached level 6 and got my raise mostly skill, these creatures last around 10 turns and they are a good decoy, you can only have 1 at a time but it doesnt use stamina, so its cool. The achievement reads: Kill 30 enemies within the lifespan of a single Mostly but I dont think you need a mostly alive to do it, I dont think, first I have to find 30 enemies :S

I finished off some more dungeons and upgraded the lab to max (Level 3) and got:

Academy: Alchemist
Fully evolve the Academy Alchemy Lab and unlock the Grand Chemistress sprite.

I also reached level 7 and got Pinomizer, found a book and advanced delves and used it.

In the next dungeon I found an area with a purple aura boss enemy.. (Ancient King Darl) he was dangerous! He moved twice! I used several stamina potions to just shoot and dive and run back while summoning poultry to stall him (I had 3 different poultry tanks), I managed to pin him down a few times with Pinomizer he ahd lots of HP but I got him. He dropped great loot and relics.
I also found that Pinomizer doesnt work twice in a row on enemies, it has a small cooldown, not sure how many turns enemies get inmunity to it, but its at least 5 after the effect wears off.

There were teleporter traps in this dungeon, they dont go away once you trigger them and always teleport you to the same place, useful to run away (I used one while running from the king).

Went back to the academy to deliver the artifacts I got from the king, the armory and museum and the orb got upgraded somehow but I dont know how. I did find out something cool.

If you use curse eater scrolls, there is a chance to get a +5 max health but uncursed items will get their enchantments deleted too, so remove your best stuff and equip lame stuff first, Im not sure but I think if the more enchants the cursed item has, the more likely you are to get the health bonus.A curse eater scroll purges all your cursed items even in your inventory.

Found a graveyard that spawns zombimans every dozens of turns that give no XP or coins, I might be able to use them to gtet the 30 monster mob for the mostly achievement, maybe? hmm..
I went down below and found several more champions, very sweet.
The necromancer champion can DRAIN and steal your stremf but after you kill it, you will get the points back.
The water wells here can give you buffs or debuffs each lasting 100 turns, so gamble if you want.
A very interesting thing about the lower floors of this place is that enemies dont respawn at all.

Leveled to 8 and grabbed shooting stance to increase DPS and get Typhoon next level for AOE.
I also found a book of herald triumphant which gave me the ranged banner, sweet!

I went out to go to the academy and encountered a random encounter, it was a dying bandit with a map! how fun! He left behind a Terraforming scroll that can remove mountains! interesting.
the map can be found under the tab research and will uncover a dungeon somewhere if you follow the map and are close enough to it, that tower is a story beat, I highly suggest you go do it but I didnt back then. The place is called: The Tower Imperiled

Finished the graveyard and the boss dropped a blueprint and a legendary scroll.
That unlocked:

Damn Son, Where'd You Find This?
Pick up a Legendary item

The scroll made it so I could give a weapon a powerful enchant at the cost of 4 STR.
Ill save it for the endgame.

On my way back I found a bandit camp, it's like a barricade which is only 1 area long.

I went into a quickslime cave and got to level 9, grabbed Typhoon, I didnt find a single champion here. The lizardman pope boss had a gimmick, it was an entertaining fight. Got some legendary gloves, did another cave nearby and did the same thing, got a pope ring this time, no champions in there again.

While shopping at a town I decided to buy a costly unidentified scroll, turns out it was a Xespera's Challenge scroll, it turns up to 7 enemies to champions, pretty cool.
The graveyard had zombiemans which dared me to use this scroll on them.. hmm.. Ill go visit all the towns to see if i can find more, they are a bit pricey but I found 2 more.

Went into a new dungeon and found a secret room with a champion portal.. I made the mistake of going in unprepared.. should have went in buffed.. lots of champions in there including a king! Used 4 poke-chickens and mostlys to tank for me while I used my light shield, stamina pots, pinomizers, ranged stance and a banner, I managed to survive thanks to some teleport traps in there that moved me away from the chasing king. I realized kings are the ones that drop orb shards. I leveled up to 10 and got Treasure Hunter from the Delve mastery. Headed back to Academy to heal my chicks and upgrade gears. I bought 2 Enstremfinize armor scrolls earlier and used them on my legendary lizardman pope ring with good results. Went back to the dungeon and finished it, the boss fight was easier than the champions fight and I also found a cartography book.

My stats at level 10, for reference:


The next cave wasnt called quickslime but it was the same as the last two caves, I hoped to get the final set item from the pope here and I did :), It was a hat, very cool.

I found a new graveyard next, it had adventorous difficulty so I decided to use a challenge scroll on the zombimans to experiment.

It worked, kinda?
They dropped poof of stremf.. not quite like a real proof but I know they will be useful later, still.. Im not gonna waste the scrolls on these for now.

Since Im here Im going to try to kill 30 zombimans in less than 10 turns using typhoon, first i have to gather them so I unequipped my pokeball so the poultry doesnt kill them, now to make a zombie train! Each wave spawned around 4~6 zombimans, so it took a few minutes to gather them all.

Nice! it worked!

Down In The Dungeon Just Mostly And Me
Kill 30 enemies within the lifespan of a single Mostly

I exited the graveyard because the level below was danhgerous and went to a cave, hit level 11 there and picked dual wield because I can craft swords that give me +6 skills and the tempo buff is nice since it buffs all damage and my pokemon benefits too!

The cave was a lizardman cave again and I wondered if the boss would drop another pope item and it did, I got another hat. the next dungeon had a king on it, used pin scrolls this time and killed it quickly, gave me a shard, there were 2 other secret rooms in that floor and of particular note: I drinked from a well and it gave me a permanent +1 STR. Then something new happened, my taquito was banished for 18 turns! my chicken! :( It came back eventually, but.. as I entered the boss room, there was one of those banisher wizards there and my chicken was banished! The fight was harder than usual without poultry and the boss was casting ice spells left and right so pin didnt do much. It was a fun fight, used scrolls of protection and bees in a cone to get rid of the mobs and then I won :)

I now went to a temple deep in the mountains, using a terraforming scroll to remove a few mountains and the skip from shoot and move, i was able to get in there. Actually, you dont need the terraformer scroll, just jump through the mountains, weird eh?

The temple has fire traps like turrets, its really different.

I had decent gear, a 600HP shield and 445HP, regenerating 5 stamina per round thanks to the two swords and some sandals I found, six poultries to back me up and tons of parry and dodge I felt powerfulm no longer a rookieman. Yeah, this is the midgame.

The temple had 1 big first floor and lots of champions along the halls that make a big square around the locked center zone but It was a trivial area for me, unfortunately.
Edit: In a later temple I found when I was lvl 14, temple was mundane but champions still dropped proofs for me.

Fire Pillars can kill enemies too and to progress, you need to kill the gate keeper to unlock the center zone. The keeper is north but you have to go to one side, then north, then center.

In the center zone, there is a small maze and you have to find the stairs down, once you do, go down to confront the traplord! A very unique boss.

How to beat:
You need to destroy his statues around the floor first to make him vulnerable.
Yeah, I do what I want, Craplord!:P

He dropped a shard but thats it, loot was lame probably cuz the difficulty was mundane for me.
It was fun though :)

Getting back at the academy I delivered more proofs and unlocked:

Proof Positive
Turn in 50 Proofs of Stremf to the same Academy

After exploring the next dungeon, I hit level 12 and got the next banner ability (Sudden Storm) which will let me steal stamina if I hit, it combos really well with typhoon. Found a book and learned 2H weapons from it and it unlocked:

A Learned Mans
Learn 20 points worth of masteries on a single hero, including the 5 you started with

Went back to the graveyard and found lots of champions (I got out with 14 proofs, 2 blueprints and 6 artifacts), yeah, graveyards are great for proof hunting but.. I also noticed there werent any secret areas so, I guess its balanced?

At these levels I was finding 4 and 5 star weapons, 4 stars sell for about 200 gold and 5 stars for 2000! I was able to buy some books after a couple runs.

I went to mountain fortress next, once you go in, the only way to get out is to finish the area or use a escape scroll. It was so weird, I think it was bugged because:

These were the stairs.

The skybridge and arena areas were pretty cool, should have come earlier, now the areas were mundane. :( I overleveled again, haha. The arena bosses have cool attacks, I really enjoyed this fight, pin to win! The loot.. well, I won on mundane so it was lame but they still dropped a shard and a proof each but the dungeon is not over yet!

At the top you'll fight an uber boss, its attacks are powerful but slow, I was overlevel and it took 3 poultry to take him down, he attacks with mostly fire and physical.
After I won and talked to him, got an achievement.


Oh, You Mean THAT Dread Spire?
Discover the secret location of the Dread Spire

With the spire in sight, we get ready for it by getting 4/5 star equipment and put some good enchants on them.

I also farmed for poofs of stremfs in a graveyard before I overleved it, used 2 scrolls of challenge to get the required 500+ poofs. Remember that the challenge scroll turns any monster you can see within 7 tiles to a champion.
Banner+Typhoon is too OP.
https://youtu.be/e8ychelMwVQ
Got to level 13, picked the cross banner power for extra dps and went below the graveyard to kill champs.

When i returned to the academy there was a box of books out front and when I talked to the headmaster he said I needed to upgrade the library, time to make some money for books, I guess.

Bought a cartography book to grab Read the sky to unlock Starlight temple and I went there to check it out. As it turns out, The Way Home skill lets me warp between here and the academy, sweet. I went back and grabbed some shards. One of the cool things about the stellar anvil is that you can enchant rings, which you cant do using scrolls or hammers. Wish I had my starting knife but i didnt know about the secret 6-star weapon you can forge here using the yesterday's knife.

Check out B.O.B.'s guide for more info on the anvil and the weapons:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2966804151
Hey B.O.B! I remember you from Wasteland Remake, hi! :)

You can also enchant your poultry here increasing their Pluck value.
For now, ill try and find 5 star armor and more shards.

I was wondering what the map that random encounter gave me.
Since I had now cartography, finding the place was easier and when I activated the map near the supposed location, the dungeon (The Tower Imperiled) just appeared. It was trivial, though :(
This new dungeon was different and wished I would have come here earlier, the first two floors are empty of enemies but have treasures, as you get to the top, you'll fight waves of enemies.

After beating the boss, the first time, the game bugged out and the portal never appeared so I had to alt-f4 and do the fight again. I have to admit, I did panic when he did that final attack, haha.. but, it's the perfect time to go for the Going Ham achievement but I havent seen any bacon sellers yet, so I wasnt prepared. Anyway, got another crate of books, so I guess I needed to do this part eventually, it was alright.

I went to another tower on my map, the area was the same as the story tower above but there were enemy bandits, the strangest thing was that even if the area was Trivial for me, champions I found here still dropped proofs. Odd. but hey! Fine with me! On the 3rd floor I found a one use key, this is to open one of these vaults or to unlock chicken colors back at the academy. Inside each vault were a bunch of money, a champion and a guard that dropped another key.. champions on these vaults didnt drop proofs though. The boss gave me two 5 star bows which is awesome! I'll go do the other towers I found to see if I can find better bows from the bosses there. The 2nd boss dropped the same two 5-star bows, one of them had diff enchants though. Its fine. I also noticed I had two adventure maps, must have found them while doing the towers. Cool, probably this will lead to infinite dungeons? hm.

I entered a 3rd tower but the boss wasnt an archer this time, it was a knight.
I defeated him and he dropped knightly loot including 5 star polearm and shield.
Towers are really great to gear up and make money!

The tower bows were super valuable and I was able to buy several bows with the money, I kept the best one and enchanted it at the starlight temple and used all my 3 cursed legendary scrolls too.

Goodbye Stremf, Not the best, but it'll do, it still has room for 1 more enchant.

I found better bows later but at that time, I felt I made the right decision.
Anyway! I also enchanted 4 star armors with purple enhancing enchantments and sold the rest to finally get the 10 books required to max out the library and open the foomwarden research station.

I unlocked:

Academy: Librarian
Fully evolve the Academy Library and unlock the High Libromancer Straum sprite

The new research station is for adventure maps and I guess to discover new dungeons in case you run out, you can also craft enchantments and stuff.. neat.

I explored around my overworld and found the spire in the legendary zone of my world, I kept running away successfully from random encounters thanks to my scouting skill. This made me realize I was underleveled fornthe final dungeon so, I had to go get stronger. Decided to go into the next adventurous dungeon I could find.

In the next dungeon, I found a super awesome monster party portal! Finnally :)
I declined to go in and got:

Smart Mans
Turned down an invitation to a Super Awesome Monster Party

THEN I buffed up, shield up, scrolls ready. I prayed a bit then went in.
I used the challenge scroll on turn 1, cuz.. the achievement needed it and got:

Throw Down
Use Xespera's Challenge on your first turn in a Super Awesome Monster Party

Then I used movement skills to move northeast towards the exit, the fight was going fine until something hit me and the damage went through my light shield, holy crap.. I almost had an accident on my chair as my eyes went wide and I entered panic mode. This is why we invest in Stremf, resistances and HP boys.. to survive these situations! I dont know what attack it was but looked like 3 black fireballs doing around 230 damage each.
i got the fight video here if you want to check it out:

I also found an enemy that was a dancing commander? I dont know, I one shot it and didnt even realized what it was but I got the achievement.

YOU Give The Orders Here!
Defeat a Dance Commander

Im guessing this is like the boss enemy in a monster party.
It was fun.. very surprising but fun, I walked out with 20 proofs of stremf, a book and a 5 star medium armor I cant use.

This is the party room layout, not sure if every party room is like this but here:


https://youtu.be/xYtIj_3jJBw

At the end of the dungeon I hit level 14, put a point in necromancy to get defense boost on skull pickup (Manabones) and bought a light armor book to grab the light armor passive (cant believe I didnt get it earlier, its super good).

Edit: I later found an awesome combo with detonate and manabones while fighting ambushes, the deadpulse on the floor are like mines and they can chain detonate, if you see a lot of them on the ground, explode one and watch how they destroy everything in the room.

This unlocked:

Renaissance Mans
Learn 30 points worth of masteries on a single hero

I went to a fallen castle next.
This place was a ruin in a forest and the special thing about this is that you need to kill a champion for more champions to spawn and kill those then a boss will come. I was on mundane here but still got proofs from the champs. When I checked, they were level 15 vs my 14, so thats may be why they still dropped the proofs. This is when I found out that Proofs only drop if the champion you slay is the same or higher level than you, challenge scrolls level enemies to your level if below you, so that explains it.

This is a good place to get around 30 or so enemies in a big open space then challenge.

I found a peculiar table with some plans, when I "bumped" into it, I got a blueprint.
There are also some prosperity boxes here and there you can pick up.
Tree slayer aces can also be found, some areas are locked by trees so use them if necessary.

At this point the remaining dungeons were all dangerous or above for me so I decided to do some adventure maps, funny thing is, the monsters were below my level but the area still said it was dangerous and it still dropped proofs, idk whats going on but found several books which I used and I also hit level 15 and chose gravemooks for boss/ambush fights as distractions but I also found out one of the mooks uses an aura that grants you extra actions! pretty cool.

This is when I realized I needed 99,999,999 XP to the next level, LOL.
Ok then! I guess Level 15 is max level, haha.. I got out of the dungeon with around 200,000 XP so.. maaaaybe level 16 is possible? hm.

I went to clear a tower in hopes of getting 4-5 star light armor and I got a piece, sold a bunch of stuffs, bought several books I really didnt need but counts towards mastery achievo.
I unlocked:

True Smarty Mans
Learn 40 points worth of masteries on a single hero

I finished enchanting all my top gear to get ready for the Spire.
The Cosmic enchants done at the Stellar Anvil are really, really good.


Ok, let's do this.

Dont be afraid, game is being silly and marking this level 15 area as legendary.. but youre level 15! It'll be fine, right?


Im pretty sure those dark fireballs that almost killed me at the monster party were purple magic so a 60% resist will keep me from being one shot, I hope and I have around 3300 Shield now, so I have 5000 effective HP. yeah.. the worst that can happen is you die and have to restart again.. cuz one stupid achievo, hahaha.. haha..

Ok, let's go in.

There's noone here? hmm.. I found several portals though.
yeah.. I bet I have to win all the portals first before the main portal opens for me.
Man, this really feels like a last stage! yeeah!

Enemies here were level 13 with champions 15, they werent that tough and dropped top gear, I reckon that I should have come here if I wanted to find 4 star armor easier.

Most enemies here did purple damage and were inmune to it, Im happy with my purple resist even though I do less damage. Some enemies cast resist down, you could get almost killed in the middle of a big fight because of this, be careful.

Read from bottom to top, he cursed me then hit me, I was left with 500hp, hehe..keep your shields up.

After going into another portal inside the portal, I found a boss, 24k HP Starwarper Catastrophus (Oh man, what a name!) and of course he inflicts and resists starlight damage! Mothertrucker!
I was trying to not get hit, starlight is my weakest resist afterall, using decoys and poultry swapping, I eventually killed it. A path opened with some treasure and a portal back to the main hub. Alright! 1 down.. some more to go!

Ok, so after going into the portal, you go through a floor called descent and the next floor is the boss floor, got it. Shellbreaker shot shined here against the high armor cavaliers. I also realized you can jump over crystals. Gatekeeper Gurlak is the boss and he is a mean Cavalier!
30K HP this time and absolutely ridiculous armor! You gotta keep him armor broke and whittle him down, luckily his damage wasnt as scary as the other boss. He was really distracted by my trickery and I eventually killed him off easily.

The Ascent zone is normal but the Charnel itself has lots of kings and secret doors.
Yeah, dont try and fight more than 1 or 2 kings at once, you know, for your health.
Asram, the boss uses cold and melee and he is very, very dangerous.

Holy Crap! Taquito! Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

I kept away from the slow guy and whittled him down, my 3k+ shield kept my alive, haha but in the end I avenged my poultry!

Lots of teleport traps here in the ascent, I did find a secret room with a monster party, I didnt want to gamble it and instead saved it for when I got the achievement later. (I still need to deliver 500 proofs) the next level is filled with beasts doing lots and lots of poison but if you play with light shield like me, it shouldnt be a problem, keep your shield up!

The boss, squeakytips looks weak but dont let that top hat fool you! On 2nd thought, yeah he was easy. he only had like 14k HP. His gimmick is that he attacks more than once as he gets more damaged, I used messenger of oblivion skill on him and I was doing like 3k damage, it was insane.

I went back to the academy to heal my chciks and turn in my proofs, shards, relics, etc.
I found out that I got some legendary items, specially one called the Beryl Buffalo Breaker which boosted my Defeat Armor stat by 10000% yeah, you read right, haha. With it equipped, I had 2757 defeat armor, so yeah.. awesome, I enchanted it and used the vault to store the other legendaries I had. I sold a lot of 5 star weapons to get tons of gold then melted the rest, it was a great haul!

...of the main campaign, that is.

You have to descend several floors until you get to the final boss.
I dont want to spoil anything, its super fun stuff.
You can watch (and skip around) the video I made about the whole final battle here:
https://youtu.be/LVoA5OIjT2Y


After the final hit, I unlocked:
A Legend is You
Defeat Final Foom and complete the Dungeonmans campaign

and


The Iron Will of a Dungeonmans
Create a brand new Academy and defeat the final boss with your first graduate. No deaths!

YAY! I can die now! erm.. but I dont wanna.. haha.

Ok,l enjoy the credits!

The music is so epic and cool, good job devs! good job.

Make sure to have looted all 4 set pieces of the scroboss that the final boss dropped.

Go back to the academy and equip the set, go out to the first cave and a text dialogue will appear, they will ask for 500 poofs, I already farmed those but if you dont have them, look in the sections above, basically, go to a graveyard, get a lot of zombimen together and challenge them with the champion scroll and get poofs.

After you get the poofs, talk to them again to unlock a cool axe and:

Bringer of the End
Careful, o Dungeonmans...

You should have unlocked the following achievo by using the power of the scroboss set.

Master and Scromander
Called forth your tiny crimson vassals to die in battle

The power can only be seen while having the set equipped, open the skills and powers interface, drag and drop master and scromander skill to hotbar and activate it.

For the next achievement, grab the bringer of the end axe and take it to the stellar anvil, upgrade it with a shard and you'll get:

The True Dungeonmans Starts Here
Unlocked Amaranth Pandemonium. Have fun!

The above achievement didnt unlock until I got back to the academy.


Proof Eternal
Turn in 500 Proofs of Stremf to the same Academy and unlock the Battlemaster sprite

For the proof grind:
My achievement bugged out, maybe the steam counter overflowed or something and it went back to zero! I panicked but It popped when the Going Ham achievement did, so.. try NOT to leave this achievement until the final one.

The instructor will tell you how many proofs you have.

Use challenge scrolls while gathering lots of enemies in random encounters or in ruined castles/walls.
Remove your 1h weapons so you dont counter and kill accidentally (with tempo or wit), use dodge and shield to avoid getting low on health.
If possible, run in circles so they stack close together then jump in the middle of them using a jump scroll.
Champion slime's spawn forever but they cant be turned into champions.

Dont do this, it doesnt work

I got it despite recreating the overworld (to look for a pig farm) but maybe that is why it bugged out? I dont know.


Going Ham
Recover from critical health with a bite of Flavorful Pre-Baconized Bacon

Because my world didnt have a pig farm, this was my last achievement.
It was easy, go to the headmaster, redo the overworld, find towns, if you find the pig seller good.
If not, reroll.

Once you buy the bacon, go INTO a firepillar in one of the temples and skip turns to whittle down your HP until critical (around 10~20% of max HP) then use the bacon. There you go!

If you try to enchance the scroboss death bringer axe with the stellar anvil, a portal will appear.
This portal is an endless chain of dungeons, you wont be able to go back to the Academy anymore BUT every service except the map station will be available to you after you finish several floors (maybe every 5 floors?) and hop into the exit portal after defeating an ancient king.

Death is the only way out.


First you need to find a nearby town that has a pig farmer. Whether your entire world has a pig farmer or not (or even more than one) is completely RNG. So it is possible to have a world with no pig farmer. If this happens you will have to go to the academy, talk to the head master, and regenerate the entire world.

Once you have found a pig farmer, buy all of his available pigs.

Return to the academy. Got to the poultry guy. Visit his shop. Buy a [Porkloin Inventory]. Cost 50 burger points. You can get burger points buy selling unused / unwanted Monster steaks to him if you don't have 50 points.

Return to the pig farmer. Give him the [Porkloin Inventory]. His shop will upgrade and add 2 new types of pigs. Buy 1 or more (I recommend more) Potbellied Wealth Generator pigs.

Go to a dungeon. Kill mobs. Try to avoid picking up any gold on the ground - including gear in case the gear image covers the gold image. I also recommend not having your Chicken out as the chicken will loot gold. Fully clear the dungeon as much as possible. Spawn (by using) the Potbellied Wealth Generator. Go around and have it pick up all the gold loot. Loot any gear lying around.

I recommend doing this in a dungeon type that does not have a respawn. I personally think the Towers are the best for this because they don't have respawns and they have the treasure rooms. I usually spawn the piggy before doing the treasure rooms cause I don't want to pick up gold while getting the next treasure room key. I just do my best to kill whatever mobs are in the treasure rooms as quickly as possible.

The reason for this is the piggy is a bit weak and mobs will attack and kill it.

Now that you have some gold banked by the piggy, return to the Academy. In the room with the Headmaster and just left of the treasure chest in the middle room will now be a piggy bank. Interact with the piggy bank. You need to buy a [Porcine Farming License]. Costs 100 gold. I don't remember if it is automatic after buying - you might need to interact with the Headmaster. But once you've bought and interacted with the Headmaster, it should re-work the poultry area a little and add the pig farmer.

Also, don't do this in super high level dungeons like I did. The gold it collects has a fairly low overflow amount, which can result in your piggy bank having a negative amount of money. Specifically, I believe the piggy bank gold (unless recently patched) is just a 32 bit integer and it's actually stored in Copper. This means it goes from -2,147,483,648 copper to +2,147,483,647 copper. Since 100 copper is 1 silver, and 100 silver is 1 gold, you can loot about 214,748g, 36s, and 47c before overflowing.

If you do overflow, not a huge deal, just go loot some more and try to time it so you end with a positive amount of gold.

Last note, the piggy stays with you until it dies. So you can loot more than 1 floor of a dungeon and more than 1 dungeon, as long as you can keep it alive. But it likes to wander and again mobs attack it.
Source: B.O.B in https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/288120/discussions/0/3825289852124667801/

What is Q Movement in the settings?
Im not sure, but Im guessing you can move using the QWEASDZXC keys.
I tried turning it on but nothing changed for me.

This option is useless?
Yup.

Can you get to level 16?
I've seen adventure maps with level threats to 18, so maybe?
I quit the game at level 15 with 8Million XP out of 99Million.

I can keep donating books at max library, is there a point?
I dont know, I stopped at 34.

What happens to the academy and your hero if you recreate the overworld through the headmaster?
Nothing, like it says, you keep the academy and your hero data you do lose all town prosperity because they are different towns now and the starlight temple and the spire have to be found again.
Any shards you left in the orb of the temple will be gone.

The ring behind the wall of text respawns though.

Swamp dungeons and Caves dont have champions but the lizardman boss always drops a pope set item that scales with the levels. No secret areas.

Castle/Walls dungeons are the best to find champions and use scrolls on. No secret areas.

Graveyards have good loot and a fairly amount of champions underneath, enemies there never respawn. No secret areas.

Dark Dungeons have secret areas, including portals and bee/book merchants, go into those if youre looking for monster parties.

Towers have lots of gold and guaruanteed champions as well, tower boss always drop good equipment. No secret areas.

You can use tricksonometry->gift exchange to transfer your buffs to your poultry or minions, light shield included. Use this on your colonel gravemook to steal his haste/high guard buffs if you want.
Triumphant Banner + AOE stamina skills are awesome.
Manabones to make enemies drop lots of deadpulses then detonate one.. its glorious.
Psychomancer's Keep the Good, Discard the bad will help you get rid of dangerous debuffs.
Psychomancer's amulet powerup only works if a hand is empty as it boosts your fist attacks, dual wield is better in my opinion.

I never found a 5 star non-set/legendary armor.

What is the renown journal for?
Use it on a weapon to power it up, the weapon will gain damage and you will be able to choose 1 out of 3 very powerful enchantments for every renown level you acquire.
It works even if the item has max enchants already.
You get renown by killing champions while being equipped with it, 1 per champ but 10 if you kill a king.
You get the book used to enchant a weapon from the final boss (I got two of them actually).

Straight from the devs baby, good picks!

I also made guides for other tactics/strategy games, if you liked this guide, check them out.
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2690169092
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3572047031
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1983449973
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1774409726
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2829930768
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2827088846
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2818780814
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2799539236
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2211514822