Hello. I’m Nick, and this is a basic manual for new players on how to play Star of Providence. Before we begin, there’s a few disclaimers regarding this manual:

• There will be as few spoilers as possible in this manual. It will cover up to the first big boss, Overlord, but nothing after that.
  
  
• There are more resources out there if you want more information on how to play the game. There is a Star of Providence wiki[starofprovidence.wiki.gg] (but which contains unmarked spoilers), or the main community hub on Discord[discord.gg].
  
  
• Some of the screenshots seen here were taken in a previous version of the game, so there may be some small differences, but the core mechanics and advice remain the same.
  
  
• This manual is also available as a Google Doc[docs.google.com], if you prefer to view it or share it that way.
  
  
• There is an audio version of this manual available, if you prefer to listen to it.

I’d like to take a moment to explain what this manual aims and does not aim to be.

This manual is meant to give brand new players, or those thinking about getting the game, an overview of the game’s fundamentals and core mechanics. If you’re already familiar with the game, this manual probably won’t tell you much you don’t already know.

This manual is not really a “how to play”, in that it won’t tell you which decisions to make in moment-to-moment gameplay, but it does hope to teach a few good habits to new players, if only by making them aware of certain mechanics, and giving a few specific bits of advice.

Part of the reason why I’m doing this is because I want to be very particular about what I try to condition players to do and how to play this game, and also because a lot of times what the “best” or “correct” decision is at any given point is depends heavily on the circumstances of the run. I can’t predict every situation you’ll come across, but I can point out the information and considerations that would help you make those decisions yourself.

The goal is to help you reach a point where you can make your own assessments that go beyond the rules of thumb detailed here.

Let’s begin with an overview of how to play this game before getting into specifics. To win a run of Star of Providence, you have to finish a series of floors before facing off against a final boss. A floor can be broken down like so:

• You have normal rooms. The most common type of room, these contain enemies, and you have to clear all of them to be able to exit the room and explore the floor further. Upon clearing one of these rooms, there is a chance to receive a random item drop.
  
  
• You have special rooms. These rooms usually contain resources and bonuses that will help you defeat enemies, such as shops, weapons, upgrades, and other goodies.
  
  
• You have minibosses. Minibosses are somewhat harder combat encounters, but have two relevant characteristics: Upon their death, they are guaranteed to give you an offer between ammo or health, and most importantly, you must clear all minibosses in a floor to unlock…
  
  
• The floor boss. These are the big, flashy fights that to some extent you must prepare for as you traverse a floor. Each floor has a number of possible bespoke bosses, of which it’ll randomly pick one. When you defeat a boss, it’ll drop a more powerful drop than a miniboss, and open the passage to the next floor. Please note, you can continue exploring the rest of the floor or go shopping after defeating it; you are not locked into going to the next floor immediately after defeating it.

And that’s a very broad look at how you play this game. Go through floors, clear combat encounters, find minibosses, destroy the boss, go shopping and gear up for even deeper floors, until you win. But that’s just the general overview. Now, let’s talk about specific mechanics.

At the start of every floor, you will spawn in the starting room. This is a safe and empty room, from which you can begin traversing the floor. Most of the time, you’ll be dealing with normal combat rooms. Unless you have specific items or upgrades, the map of the floor will start out empty, and as you explore it will fill itself out, and you’ll be able to see what rooms you’ve already cleared.

When you enter combat rooms, all the exits will be locked, and the doors will open once you defeat all of the enemies in the room. When you do, there is also a random chance an item will drop, and it can be HP, ammo, money, bombs, etc.

It is important to note that most items will disappear if you leave the room without taking them, so there’s no reason not to take whatever is offered. Even in the odd circumstances where the item would provide no benefit, like being full on ammo or bombs, the extra item will be turned into money when picked up. So take them, or else they’re lost for good.

You begin the game with 10 current and maximum HP. If you take HP when you’re at full health, you will gain HP parts, and if you gather four of those, your maximum (and current!) HP will increase by one. In this way, HP pickups are never wasted, since they always contribute to giving you more HP, giving you more chances before it’s game over.

You also start with two bombs which you can use at any time to clear bullets, stop attacks, and push some enemies away. More on that in just a little bit.

Combat is quite standard: Use your weapon to destroy enemies as you dodge their attacks, while keeping an eye out for environmental threats in the room. Most enemies will also deal damage if they touch you. All enemies have specific attack patterns that you will pick up on and memorize the more you play the game.

When killed, enemies will drop "scrap", which is basically money. Enemies drop money immediately on death and it will start flying away through walls and eventually off-screen, where it will despawn. Once all enemies are killed, all money still on-screen will then fly towards you and is automatically collected.

The layouts of each of these rooms are not random, and have often been crafted to provide interesting combat encounters, or encourage being cleared in particular ways, or give multiple choices on how to approach them. But exactly which rooms you encounter in a floor, that is random and unpredictable.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that while you’re on a floor, you can freely navigate to any room previously visited in that floor. You can pull up your map, and select any room you’ve already cleared to instantly navigate there. But once you take the elevator down to the next floor, you cannot go back by any means; it is a permanent decision to continue downwards.

If there is one tip that I would give to every new player and that I want them to always have on their mind, it’s this: Use your bombs regularly, whenever you feel overwhelmed, panicked, or cornered. This is one of the most important tools in your arsenal; it massively increases your survivability, makes combat easier to parse, and the game will reward you for it.

How do bombs work? You can use your bombs pretty much anytime you have them, both in and out of combat. When you use a bomb, it will clear all enemy bullets on screen, momentarily pause all enemy beams/lasers, knock back some enemies, and open up shortcuts and secrets connected to the room you’re in. More on that last point later on in the manual.

You can hold a maximum of six bombs. There are two categories of bombs: Normal bombs, and Power Bombs. Normal bombs work exactly as just described. Power Bombs, on the other hand, have other abilities. They might deal damage to enemies, or come with some extra utility. These are usually found as room drops or in shops, and can be extra handy in certain situations. But no matter what they are, use your bombs whenever you need them. Do not hoard them to use solely against bosses.

By using bombs, you give yourself breathing room, a moment to think, readjust, and relocate. Learning how to dodge not just enemy attacks but combinations of attacks takes a while, and even veterans can make mistakes. So using bombs whenever you feel damage is inevitable or very likely is an extremely important habit to develop early on.

A lot of new players might be worried about using their bombs so liberally. They might be tempted to think that they need to hoard them for the big boss fights every floor. But that’s not the case because of a subtle but important mechanic: Bomb regeneration.

When you finish combat in a room, if you have less than two full bombs, you will regenerate one third of a bomb. Meaning, if you’re low on bombs, the game will give you thirds of bombs for free as you clear rooms. This applies even if you used multiple bombs in the current room. The bombs that you regenerate are always regular bombs, never Power Bombs.

If you withhold using bombs and use them only during the boss, you will probably only have two bombs for that floor. But if you use your bombs as you go, you’ll get them back as you continue, completely for free, just for playing the game. This mechanic is actively meant to incentivize using them and not being conservative.

Health lost has to be regained with health that may or may not appear, but bombs used will be given back to you at no cost. Running out of bombs is not a big deal; running out of health is game over.

You start every run with your starting weapon, known as the peashooter. It has infinite ammo, but no special properties. The peashooter is not a bad weapon, merely a very simple one that gets the job done and keeps you going until you find another weapon.

Every floor will have a "weapon trove" somewhere in the floor, which will usually have two weapons, and you choose only one to replace your peashooter. Weapons can also be purchased in shops, sometimes given as rewards in some special rooms, or found hiding in secret rooms.

Every weapon in the game has a few of these properties:

• The weapon type. This tells you whether the weapon is a Laser, Fireball, Revolver, etc. Each type behaves differently, has its own properties, and requires different playstyles to use effectively.
  
  
• The keywords. Keywords are modifiers to weapons that change how they behave. Homing shots will curve towards enemies, Freezing will make enemies move slower, etc. These can massively impact the effectiveness of weapons, and provide serious boosts to power or utility. Every weapon is guaranteed to have at least two keywords, and can have a maximum of four.
  
  
• Some weapons may be "blessed", which means they have more ammo and do more damage. There are also cursed weapons, which give health and damage when equipped, but come with a constant debuff, and cannot be destroyed or removed by any conventional means. You’ll likely have to use it until it breaks on its own.
  
  
• There’s a rare chance that you will come across a Unique weapon. They have an orange tint, individual names, and unusual keyword combinations, or even entirely custom ones. These weapons are flashy, interesting, and cool, but aren’t necessarily the most effective, and can be difficult to use, so they aren’t always the best choice in every situation.

Each weapon comes with a certain quantity of ammo, which gets depleted as you use your weapon. The weapon type and the keywords can modify how much ammo you get. When you run out of ammo, the weapon will break, and you will go back to the peashooter.

It's important to know and remember that Star of Providence actively wants you to always have a weapon. It does this primarily through the Salvaging mechanic.

Salvaging a weapon means equipping a new weapon while you still have ammo in your current one. If you let your weapon run out of ammo, it will break, and you will return to the default peashooter. But if weapons are powerful, and ammo pickups a commodity, why would you not use every last bit of it? Because the game will reward you for salvaging them.

When you salvage a weapon, the game will give you +1 HP, and also some money. These benefits might seem small, but if you frequently salvage weapons, they really start to add up! Finding a few weapons in a floor and salvaging all of them can mean healing 3 HP and having that extra money you need to buy powerful items from the shop.

It makes a big difference compared to letting your weapons run out of ammo and break. You get nothing when a weapon breaks, or for equipping a weapon when you don’t have one already.

The ideal situation is that you are never without a weapon; not because you found one excellent weapon and stretched out its ammo across an entire run, but because you are constantly swapping them, and getting lots of resources for it along the way. Even if the new weapon is not as good as the previous one, you want to keep this chain of salvaging rewards going for as long as you can.

Some players, when finding a powerful weapon, will be tempted to keep it as long as possible, and refuse to salvage it, hoping that they’ll always get more ammo. You might pull that off sometimes, but it’s an important habit to develop early on to swap weapons when you are low on ammo. It’s likely that you won’t find ammo, and then it’ll break, and then you’ll miss out on salvaging. As with bomb regeneration, the point is to encourage players to use the resources the game is offering.

A consequence of this strategy is that as you do this, you’ll find yourself using all the weapon types and keywords. That’s important; it’s encouraged that players become familiar with all the combinations that can spawn, and know how to use them effectively. You’ll almost certainly not like all of the weapons you’re using; but it’s very useful to know how to win fights with any of them, since you never know what you might end up having to use later on.

Every floor has an "upgrade terminal", where your ship can dock and be offered a choice of one out of three upgrades, each with a brief description of its effects. The choice is permanent, the selection of upgrades is random, and once you have docked, you cannot leave until you choose one.

Once you’ve chosen an upgrade, you are guaranteed to not see it again this run. Upgrades that are offered but not taken remain in the pool of possible upgrades. So there is an element of strategy as to which upgrades you might need now, and which ones you might want to leave until later. Though keep in mind that none of them are guaranteed to show up later.

While in the terminal, you can hold down the map key and it will show you an extended explanation of what each upgrade does, giving more details that may not be immediately apparent. I highly encourage everyone to read these extended descriptions carefully at least once, so as to have a better idea of what you’re getting out of it.

Some upgrades are cumulative upgrades, meaning that it’s best to take them as early as possible, because the longer you have them, the larger the benefit you get out of them. However, if you see them near the end of the run, it might be better to take one that has a stronger immediate impact. The more you play, the more you understand which is the better choice based on context.

Every floor has at least one shop, but sometimes it’ll have two. The default shop is the one run by Bloke, where you are offered three random items in exchange for money, but there are other types of shops, any of which can be chosen to take up those slots, so Bloke won’t always show up.

While most room drops will be destroyed if you leave the room without taking them, items in shops are an exception: You can leave and come back as you wish and they’ll still be there, in case you can’t afford them yet. Shops are permanent; they and their items stay even if you destroy the boss.

A good habit for players to develop is to not take the elevator to the next floor as soon as the boss is killed. Instead, go back and check on shops to see if there’s any items that you like. Once you take the elevator, there’s no going back, and bosses give quite a bit of cash to spend. Better to double-check if you’re not leaving something behind that you could really use.

As you go deeper, the price of items in shops goes up. The amount of money you earn also goes up the deeper you go, but it also encourages you to not save your money for later floors. So if you have cash to spend, don’t wait. Later on, you might not be able to afford what was once quite cheap.

Speaking of money, let’s briefly talk about the money multiplier, which affects how much money you’re earning from all sources. It goes up slowly when you destroy enemies, and goes down sharply when you take damage. It starts at the minimum of x1.0, and the maximum is x3.0. It’s another system to encourage playing well and avoiding taking hits, another reason why using bombs proactively and preemptively is a very good habit to develop.

The in-game HUD helps you keep track of your status and resources, and it is always visible, so you can always check up on all that info at a quick glance. Take advantage of the information it gives you, especially when looking at shops and upgrades!

Here’s a breakdown of the HUD elements, starting from the left, going down, then advancing to the right. I’ll take the opportunity to go over a few brief reminders. It might be difficult to remember all of these at first, but you’ll get the hang of it the more you play.

• Starting at the top left corner, you have your weapon type. This shows if you have a Fireball, or a Laser, or your peashooter. If the icon is orange, it means that the weapon is a Unique weapon.
  
  
• Beneath that is the weapon cooldown gauge. What exactly this means depends on the weapon. Sometimes it shows shots left before reloading, sometimes it’s the reload timer, sometimes it means charge level. It’s context-dependent and might take some time to get an intuitive understanding of how it works with each weapon.
  
  
• Connected to the weapon type box, you can see your ammo count, how many shots are left on your gun. Keep in mind that the power and quantity of shots is gun-dependent, so 500 shots on one gun might be low, but 75 with another might be high.
  
  
• Right beneath it is the ammo% tracker, which gives you a rough idea of what percentage of your max ammo you have. Some guns have 80 shots max and others have 1800, so you can’t rely on that number above to know how empty it is. This thin line can give you an idea of whether that’s 95% ammo remaining, or 15%.
  
  
• Beneath that, your bombs. You start with two and can have up to six. Normal bombs will have a plain color, and Power Bombs will stand out with their own color/icon.
  
  
• To the right, HP parts. If you get four of these, your max and current HP will increase by one. No healing goes to waste, and this helps keep track of how close you are to the next increase.
  
  
• Next to that, two numbers. The top one is your maximum HP, the bottom one is your current HP. The lower your current HP, the HUD will turn from a healthy green to a nervous orange and then to a panicked red, with flickering and shaking.
  
  
• To the right of that, your money multiplier. It starts at the minimum of 1 and can go up to 3. Keeping it high will give you lots of money, by killing lots of enemies without taking damage.
  
  
• Beneath that is your current money. That one’s pretty straight-forward.
  
  
• At the top right corner, a little mini-map showing what room you’re in, and the rooms that are close to it. When you enter a room, the mini-map gives you a preview of adjacent rooms. It shows you if they’re a shop, a miniboss, an upgrade terminal, etc. Don’t underestimate the value of having this information! You can make informed decisions about where to go next.

But even that is not all of the information that you can access. If you want an even more detailed look at what you’ve got, you can press the map key to pull up the complete map of the current floor, among other things. (You can do it during combat, but it’s not helping you defeat enemies.)

The map itself takes up most of this screen. The starting room is always in the very center of the floor, so that can serve as your navigational anchor. Rooms that you’ve explored are shown in a brighter shade, rooms that you found but haven’t explored are a darker shade. The room you’re in is made larger in the map to be more visually distinct.

At the top center of the map section, it’ll tell you what type of room is currently highlighted on the map. (“Normal Room”, “Shop”, etc.) When you pull up the map, it’ll default to your current room, but you can move the map cursor to other rooms to see what they are.

As long as you’re not in combat, when you’re highlighting another room on the map with the cursor and press the interact key (or by clicking on it with your mouse), you’ll instantly teleport there.

I’ll repeat that: When not in combat, you can instantly teleport to any room you’ve already explored this floor. This is a huge time-saver; you don’t have to slowly traverse through floors to get to the other end; you can just teleport there immediately. This makes clearing the floor much less of a chore, and reduces the chances of you taking damage by flying into some spikes along the way.

A while ago, I said that bombs are used to open up shortcuts and secrets. You’ll occasionally encounter parts of walls that are cracked, and in the map you’ll see “hollowed out” rooms. These are shortcuts, and they’re accessed by using a bomb in a room that has those cracked walls. These might contain enemies and/or items. You only need to use a bomb once to be able to enter and leave them any way you want.

There are also secrets, which are usually not visible in the map, nor do they have obvious indications. They usually contain good loot, there’s only one per floor, and the best way to find it is using your map. Secrets are usually adjacent to three rooms, but sometimes it’s four or two. Check the map to see where they might be hiding. If any connecting room has an obstacle on what should be the connecting wall, the secret room cannot be in that location.

But there’s even more information on the top of this screen. Starting from the left, going down, then advancing to the right, you have:

• The weapon type you have, or in the case of Unique weapons, their name.
  
  
• Beneath that, if you have a weapon equipped, it’ll show you the keyword symbols of your current weapon.
  
  
• To the right of that, your damage stat. This is a global stat that multiplies all damage you do, so it is carried over even if you switch weapons. Starts at 100%.
  
  
• Your max ammo stat. Another global stat that multiplies the maximum ammo of all weapons you pick up. Starts at 100%. Having a higher max ammo stat also increases ammo you get from pickups, since those are percentage-based.
  
  
• If you have a weapon, it will display “Press the Bomb button to destroy your weapon.” That’s an unusual action to take, only useful in very rare circumstances, but it’s there just in case. It’s generally recommended not to do this. Be careful not to do it accidentally!
  
  
• Beneath that, more text saying “Press the Dash button to get Extended Info”. That is a second information screen you can access that I’ll explain in just a moment.
  
  
• Under that, the run’s score, which is equal to the amount of money earned during the run. Not spent, not kept, just earned.
  
  
• Below that, the run timer, showing how long you’ve been in this run. Pausing the game stops the timer.
  
  
• Finally, all the way to the right, you have the run’s current seed. Seeds are a feature of the game that fall outside the scope of this manual.

What was that about the Extended Info screen? By trying to dash while looking at the map, you will scroll over to a second info screen, where you can check up on your current loadout. (Pressing Dash in this screen brings you back to the map.)

Like the map, you can highlight certain elements to get an extended description of what you’ve got. From top to bottom, you can examine:

• Your current Blessing. Blessings give you powerful boosts, but they are also outside the scope of this manual. Suffice to say, they’re found in a specific special room.
  
  
• Your upgrades, in the order in which you acquired them.
  
  
• Your cartridges. Think of these as passive and permanent mini-upgrades that you can collect, and range from niche to very useful.
  
  
• Your weapon’s keywords.
  
  
• Your bombs. When this manual was written, this wasn’t yet implemented, but by the time the Switch port is out, you’ll be able to review what bombs you have.

Don’t worry if this sounds like too much. Eventually you’ll be able to juggle all this information to help you make informed gameplay decisions. For now, just know that it is there for you to examine if you need it.

The way to progress in this game is to clear the floors, which you do by defeating the boss of each floor. However, every boss’ door will have nimbuses protecting it, which act like seals, preventing it from being opened. You get rid of those by destroying all of the minibosses on the floor.

Minibosses have their own rooms, with their own symbols in the map. These may include other enemies in the room, and it is only cleared when ALL enemies in it are destroyed. When a miniboss is killed, one of the nimbuses on the boss’ door will be removed. Once all are removed, you can destroy the door, which will begin the boss fight. The amount of minibosses that must be killed will slowly increase as you go deeper.

Every floor has four possible bosses, each with their own patterns, strategies, and gimmicks. There’s no way to predict which boss it’ll be, so you have to be prepared for any of the four options. The same applies to some extent with the minibosses, where each floor has a pool of possible minibosses.

Minibosses are guaranteed to drop a reward when killed, a choice between a bit of ammo, or +1 HP. Bosses also have a guaranteed drop, a choice between +2 HP or more damage.

Just because you’ve killed a boss doesn’t mean that the floor is over. You can still return to shops, terminals, or special rooms if there’s stuff left to do. I recommend players to get into the habit of double-checking these rooms before going deeper.

You don’t have to fully explore the floor to fight the boss and go to the next floor. As soon as you kill all minibosses and the boss, you are free to go down. It’s up to you to decide whether you want to go down immediately, or gather more resources, but potentially lose health in the process as you explore the rest of the floor.

Special mention has to go to Overlord. Unlike other bosses, he’s guaranteed to always be the boss of Floor 5. Overlord represents a significant step up in difficulty. He is tanky, dangerous, and even for veterans it’s not a fight to mindlessly auto-pilot. Once you defeat him, you will collect a very interesting reward, and when you leave the room though any exit (except the north one…), the run will officially be over.

Perhaps you should think of your journey through the five floors as trying to prepare for Overlord, and to show up to the fight with as much power and resources as you can accumulate over the run. It’s not an easy fight to win, but if you do, pat yourself on the back, even if it was just barely a win. Whether by deft skill or cunning resource management, it represents your first major milestone cleared. And then you can worry about the door behind Overlord that is also sealed…

In between runs, you’ll be in the hub, where you’ll find Kleines, the cat. This is a safe zone where you can hang out, gather some furniture, put hats on a ghost, play a minigame or two, check up on unlocked features, revisit the tutorial, and talk to the cat.

You can talk to Kleines to get advice, gossip, decoration options, but most importantly to access his shop. Kleines’s shop is how you unlock permanent features, and some new tools for your runs, such as weapon types, Power Bombs, keywords, etc.

Some of those unlocks are one and done. You buy them and you have them forever. Others are toggles, or toggle-able purchases, meaning that you buy them, and then you can choose whether or not they’ll be active when you start a new run. So, that item will have either a check-mark or a no symbol, and this determines whether or not that item will be available to you when you dive, and you can toggle that at will in the shop.

It is important to note that these toggles do not mean you get it as soon as you start a run; rather, they are being added to their respective pools (weapon pool, bomb pool, etc.), so they can be randomly chosen by the game to be offered to you. In a sense, you can partially customize the options you can encounter.

I believe there’s no best order in which to unlock these, so get them in whichever order seems coolest to you. I would recommend that you try everything a few times, making sure it’s toggled on, just to have some experience with all the elements. But ultimately, it’s up to you what you want to play with.

How do you earn the currency to pay Kleines? Simple: The score you finish a run with is exactly how much money you’ll add to your Kleines bank account. Your score is the amount of money you earn during a run. Not how much you spend, or how much you have not spent; simply the sum total of earnings across the entire run. So there’s no reason not to spend your money in a run!

And here’s where this manual ends. It is not comprehensive; even in the first few hours of playing, you’ll see things that haven’t been mentioned, and even after days of playing, you’ll find stuff that’s cryptic or bewildering. I haven’t covered them partly because those aren’t necessary to get started, partly to keep some of the mystery for those who want to discover things themselves. For those that don’t mind being spoiled, the resources I mentioned in the beginning will eagerly tell you everything.

Remember, this is only one person’s perspective on this game, and that some of the knowledge here will become obsolete as you play. That’s part of getting better at the game, knowing what the exceptions to the rules of thumb are.

For all the knowledge I’ve shared, success will always ultimately depend on you, your skill, your dedication to improving. Practice is crucial for getting better. This manual hopes to give you a useful leg up, but the rest is up to you to find and conquer.

Thank you so much for your time and attention. I hope this manual ends up being useful to new players, and that you enjoy the game, and take delight in exploring its mysteries and trials. This is Nick, wishing you the best of luck, down in the facility.