This is a general guide with hints and tips for improving your survivability. It's not going to get into builds, but rather will provide you with a bit of a base framework of knowledge to build upon.

Everything mentioned in this guide is either from my own experience, or bits I've picked up from the game's Discord, where lots of players who are better at pulling out these numbers than me are discussing the game's mechanics in detail. :D Special shout-out to Saltydayn, who is doing huge amounts of theory-crafting and testing to see how things work. Massive thanks, also to the Dev (Axilirate) who is active in the Discord, listening to people's feedback, and implementing fixes to make the game more balanced and enjoyable. :D

If you have any general advice that I haven't covered here, let me know and I'll add it!

The shop has a bias towards items you buy, and will serve you these items more frequently, but the more you buy, the smaller this bias gets. Given this, it's important to plan your build before starting your run, so that you have an idea of what items you want to look out for in the shop (both to equip, and to 'salvage' in the black market for permanent stats).

Only buying the things you NEED for your build in the shop will help ensure you're decked out in the highest level gear for the higher, tougher floors of the game.


The character rune tree (above) are buffs that apply to your character, not to enemies in the game. Have a look through them and see which combination will synergise with your desired build.

Use the library (where you can see a list of items you've encountered) to plan your build, and note what floor the items you're after start dropping. You'll probably go through one or two sets of gear before getting to your 'late game' final gear set; planning these out will help reduce waste in the shop and ensure you're maximising the store output.

There are a few general stats that are advantageous to progress through the game and will help you get through some choke points with tougher enemies.

Look out for synergies in gear sets and items, too (though these are evolving as the dev balances the game and makes changes to gear and sets); like pairing the Scout set, which lets you dodge attacks, with the Shadow set's bonus, which lets you counter-attack every time you dodge (and throw in a piece of gear from the Demon set for even more multi-attacks!).

If you're struggling with damage in the first few floors, try equipping a weapon with the Swiftness set bonus, which doubles your total attacks. Even if this drops your base attack value, it often lets you kill things faster just from being able to attack more often.

Good Early Sets:

*Scout Set*

Available from Floor 1, it's great for avoiding getting hit early game when you haven't stacked up armour and health yet.
(Update, the current public beta has just been patched with an edit to the Scout character; you can choose the 'Striker' rune where after completing floor 5 the scout will transform into a Striker, with the class bonus 'every time you dodge, attack the attacker')

*Silver Set*

Available from Floor 1, the set bonus casts 'cleanse' at the start of the first two turns, removing debuffs like poison. You only need one item for the set bonus - the overall set itself isn't particularly special, but the bonus is good early on for staying alive against poison-casting enemies. Pair this with the Royal Sin set bonus later on for 10 rounds of Immunity!

*Mercenary Set*

This is hugely useful, both for the extra attacks you get every 8 floors (as of the current beta), and for the gear drops - selling the extra gear you find will help you more than the % gold on items. It's a good early set that you can find from Floor 2, and several folks are running that set at Floor 100+, so it's definitely viable to get you past Floor 60 (the current floor that'll give you the last avatar frame and achievement).

*Ethercrest Set*

From Floor 2, a good set available at low level that has armour pieces, jewelry, and weapons. This set has a good armour stat for defense, and grants Freeze Attack, which applies a debuff to enemies that causes damage. The armour you get from this set, and the damage your freeze attacks do, also scale according to the number of pieces of the set you have equipped.

*Turtle Set*

From Floor 3, the set bonus is 'receive 0 damage first turn', and the set gives great armour and toughness for survivability, as well as the gauntlet that's now available from Floor 15 doing some wild damage if you have high armour (strongly recommended to pair this with Dazzle, which gives you huge armor stacks). The set buff from this set is good for getting past Kotya, who parries on the first turn (the other way of getting past Kotya, of course, is to just skip your first turn - assuming you can soak up or mitigate the damage from the other attacks).

*Demon Set*

From Floor 6. As of current beta, the Demon set gives you multi-attack on the first turn, and if you have three set pieces equipped, multi-attack on the second turn too. Great for ramping up your initial damage output to get through as many enemies as you can before they attack. Using just one piece of this set (usually the ring) is hugely beneficial to upping your damage output.

*Royal Set*

From Floor 7. Pair this with an item from the Silver set for the Cleanse bonus, and the Chromalure set from Floor 10 (or with the character Viran, who has an innate Chromalure set buff), and you've got a nigh-on invincible character (from the Chromalure set, any health damage you take will be applied to you as damage-over-time poison instead; this poison debuff will get cleansed by the Silver set bonus, and the Cleanse will also remove Inherited Sin which will triger the Royal set's 10 rounds of immunity).

*Notable Item* - if you've got enough set slots free, the Common Marauder's Helmet counts as both Silver and Mercenary, giving you the set bonus from both; pair this with the Royal set for extra loot (from the Mercenary set bonus) and the survivability. The Silver set sword is good enough to see you through to level 30, where Throngler (a setless weapon) starts dropping.

At the end of every floor, you have the opportunity to salvage an item in the Black Market to receive its effects as permanent stat boosts on your character. This step is hugely important for your character's survival in the tougher later floors, and it's important to maximise what stats you're getting from salvaging.

* Precision - you need 100 to get past Jupiter's dodge from Floor 20, so it's a good idea to keep a high quality piece of the Hunter's set on you to salvage before Floor 20. This makes the Harpies easier to hit, too.

Any high rarity weapons or armour are good to salvage for the big bumps to armour and attack power.

* Giant's Ring - available from Floor 8, this will give you a good boost to %health.

* Dazzle - Applies 'Sparkle' stacks to the target, then hitting a target with Sparkle pops the stacks and grants you huge amounts of temporary armour. You don't need to worry about salvaging armor from gear if you get Dazzle; I've seen folks in high level floors with 6k+ Dazzle, it's a *huge* help for surviving the attacks from enemies in higher floors. The Amulet gives the best value.

* Cataclysm mask - great for flat power boost.

* Believer's Locket - increases faith, which boosts your damage against elites.

* Bloodedge - huge physical attack boost, as well as life steal and penetration (penetration is important later on for hitting tough armored enemies).

* Turtle Gauntlet - big armored attack bonus. Pair this with Dazzle ( to generage huge armour stacks) and you'll be rolling along. Note, though, that the damage here scales from armour; it doesn't do physical OR magical damage, so increasing 'physical attack' won't help scale the damage from the Turtle Gauntlet. Plan your build and salvages accordingly!

* Rod of Doom - big magic attack power bonus, but I don't think magic builds are very viable to see you to level 60 and beyond right now.

* Throngler - massive bonuses to physical attack, crit, and health. Right now, probably all builds will want to swap to this weapon as soon as it's available, as well as save extra items for salvaging.

Attack order

Sometimes, changing the order in which you attack enemies can be the difference between life and death. As early as Floor 1 you meet an enemy (the boar) that can stun you and prevent you attacking, so you want to kill that first, ideally nuking it before it gets a chance to stun. The Wizard Skeleton, from Floor 4, casts a magic barrier that will eat up all of your extra attacks against it; kill this enemy first, always.

Pay attention to which enemy kills you, and why, and consider whether attacking a different enemy first will change your odds.

Kotya is probably the most (in)famous of them all right now, but he's easy to deal with if you've paid attention to his attack, and to your attack options in the interface. Hovering over Kotya (or checking him out in the Library > bestiary) will tell you that he has Repulse as a passive ability, which makes him parry on the first turn. The solution is easy - just skip your first turn (there's an egg timer button to the left of the Convert button, which is to the left of the Attack button). Any other buff that negates damage you receive on the first turn will help you get past Kotya; dodging his parry attack, the Turtle set's 'no damage on the first round' buff, etc.

Jupiter is the next difficult one that often ends runs for players; Jupiter has 'Exploited Opportunity' passive; they dodge, and if successful, stun you. Having 100% precision (from Salvaging items in the Hunter set) will ensure Jupiter can't dodge your attacks.

The Iron Golem has massive armor and armoured attacks, as well as toughness. Get your Penetration high to get through its armour, and since it uses Armored Attack, dropping its armor will also decrease the damage it does to you.

Converting

Choosing 'Convert' lets you sacrifice items in the shop to add the stats of those items to your character for just one round. It doesn't cost anything (save for the cost of re-rolling the shop when you're done), and can give you huge stat buffs for one round.

For example, if you're dying because you're not doing enough damage to enemies to kill them off before your armour and health run out, re-roll the shop until you get a bunch of items that increase your attack power, and then convert those before attacking.