As the intro to this game states "It's not called We Who Are About To Live..." You will die and die and die and die and die and die and die and die some more.

While not a traditional roguelike, WWAATD does have perma death and a steep learning curve. You will make a dozen runs or more before you get your first win. There are some mechanics which allow you to make progress between runs but they are not really useful/obtainable early on. The real progress you make is learning the combat and being better prepared every run by learning from your mistakes.

So if you're ready to die, read on and remember "Losing is Fun!"

I recommend just rerolling until you see the weapon you like. For your first dozen runs you will just be learning to fight, so things like win conditions and buffs/debuffs don't really matter. I do however suggest reading each of the 5 origins to get to know them for later.

First step: Sell all your armor. That's right, sell all your armor. If you look at the stats you will see each piece reduces your stamina regen and possibly reduces your fame gain rate. Early on you'll be focusing on learning your weapon/shield and using positioning to avoid damage. Just focus on getting the best weapon/shield for your chosen style. Later (once you've gotten an Impressive or better grade weapon/shield) you will slowly buy new armor. When buying armor it is best to balance fame gain with stamina regen loss. You want as much fame gain as you can get without going under 100% stamina regen.

For your first run you will not really have much gold or fame so you may not need this section right away.

Gold is used to buy Scollo upgrades, buy training equipment, buy/repair equipment, bribe patrons, and heal.

Fame is used to buy Scollo upgrades, make special orders from the shop, expand the shop list, expand your inventory, reveal the details of a match, and rerolling your match choices.

There are 2 schools of thought here, some people skip training as your stats do naturally go up, I prefer the early boost training provides. Try both ways and decide which you prefer.

To begin with, you will only worry about training equipment. Buy as much training equipment as you can afford. Now set your training focus to your preferred weapon style first and stamina second. When your weapon skill has reached 70-80, you will change to stamina first and movement second. Next you will want to set the intensity of the training. What you want to keep in mind is: The more intense the training the lower your maximum stamina will be, as represented by the number in parentheses. You want this number to be as close to 100 without going under, while also getting the most out of our equipment by going to the highest intensity for the amount of equipment used without going under 100.

For example, if your training options are 3 equipment equals 150% (120)/160% (110)/170% (105) and 4 equipment equals 180% (101)/ 190% (98)/200% (95), you would use 3 equipment equaling 170% (105) as you can get the most efficacy without going under 100 max stamina, whereas using 4 equipment we would either be wasting the extra potential if we went with 180% (101), or we would get all the potential but be under 100 max stamina 200%(95).

There are many ways to die, 1 v. many, many v. many,many v. 1, 2 v. 2 v. 2 v. 2 v. 2 v. 2, free-for-alls, and many others. Since the intent of this guide is to get you to where you can learn on your own, the best place to start is 1 v. 1. You can learn your weapon and positioning best when focusing on a single opponent. You may want to reveal all the info for a match before starting to see the match modifiers and the patron running the event.

For modifiers, avoid Luck Of The Draw as it takes your weapon away. Be on the look out for Insurance (no equipment degradation) or Prestigious (10% of gold given to next character) as they are both beneficial.

For patrons go for Alloura first as she has an Event which can get you more favor with other patrons. It is best to focus on 2 patrons until their affinity for you is around 20-30%, then you can add a third, rotating between the one with lowest affinity. Early on the gains and losses will be about equal (6-9%), but by mid to late game the bonuses gained (12-24%) will far outpace the losses (6-9%).

Full disclosure: I use third person combat camera and a controller.

I recommend learning on the easy difficulty and switching to medium difficulty when easy is too easy.

Combat is what makes this game great. It is physics based fighting so aiming, speed of swing, and positioning are all very important.

Blocking is not done simply by holding a block button (The block button merely makes you control your shield if equipped, otherwise it makes you hold your weapon in a defensive position.), but instead you block/parry by simply getting any "hard bit" (weapon or shield) between your "squishy bits" and your enemies weapon. This mechanic makes locking on a trap. That is to say, by not locking on you give yourself more mobility to turn your weapon or shield into an oncoming attack.

Speaking of turning into an enemies attack, turning your camera the same direction as your swing increases your swing speed thus increasing your hit damage. Hitting with the tip of your weapon also increases hit damage, as the end of your weapon is travelling the fastest of all.

The quick step done by tapping the sprint button is also a bit of a trap as it is not very effective and consumes a bit of stamina whereas just holding sprint for about a second will get you farther and not use near as much stamina.

If your arms ever get wonky Cursed by the Gods, I find tapping block praying tends to fix it appease the gods and cure the curse.

This should be enough to get you on the right path to learning your preferred weapon. Keep training and you will quickly see improvements. As long as you are learning, losing is never a loss.

This section can be safely ignored for your first few runs.

So you are officially dying less and are thinking "What next?" Well I'll tell you:

Level Ups: Always get the "All future characters get X", this will help you the most in the long run. Then prioritize max health, stamina regen, stamina skill, movement skill, and weapon skill, in that order. After that I recommend taking any short term gifts (money and fame) over skills you don't use.

Scollo Upgrades: There are many upgrades here and they are all good. I recommend getting the healing ones first, then save up for the patron favor one, then the heirloom one, then entourage. The rest is at your discretion

Victories: All the different backgrounds give you a permanent bonus to your future runs once you meet their victory conditions. They all have different conditions of varying difficulty ranging from easy (aspirant:get to a certain renown level) to difficult (Criminal:Get 80% favor with 3 patrons and have 20k fame) I'll leave it to you to find out what the victory conditions and permanent bonuses are. Also you can earn the bonuses on easy first, then play on harder difficulties with the bonuses unlocked, making the transition easier.

Inheritances: Once you find a weapon you like and you have the heirloom scollo upgrade, you can get two copies of your favorite weapon and keep one in the heirloom slot and equip it when you need to repair your equipped copy and eventually pass it down when you die/win. Just remember you can only pass down items of impressive rarity or lower. For money inheritance, just know it is paid out in installments over the course of the first 10 weeks. Which means 2000 gold inheritance is 200 gold a week for the first 10 weeks, 5k is 500 etc.

This guide will hopefully get you started, but this is just the beginning. There is much more to learn about the subtle nuances of physics based combat. Keep killing and dying and eventually you'll be doing much more killing than dying.

Thank you kindly for reading my guide and please comment if there are any corrections/mistakes that need fixing.


To: We Who Are About To Hopefully Die Less, Good Luck!