Hi, I'm PsychoticSoul.

This guide will cover mechanics In the game as well as provide information and tips for each car and driver.

Death Roads is a Roguelike deckbuilder game where your deck of cards is entirely tied to the equipment of your car, plus a few innate cards to each driver and Car.

Each Car in the game, both yours and your enemies have a basic set of stats. This section will cover them.

Health - Self Explanatory, this is the red bar and if this goes to 0, the car is destroyed. Health can only be restored at fix-it stations and during random events.

Armor - The Gray shield. Armor is reduced before health, and restores to full after each battle. Armor is typically better than health to have on a car because it restores for free and without the opportunity cost of giving up a chop shop opportunity.

Handling - This is the blue bar, and is required to play cards. If this bar is low enough, a car cannot play cards and effectively is CC'ed. One of the strategies in this game is to leave opponents at 1 handling so they cannot do anything during their turn. If Handling goes to 0, a Car randomly uses cards from their skid Deck equivalent to their Gear Number, then ends their turn if it was their own turn. If a car skids when it is not their turn, then after all skids are resolved, it regains handling up to their handling regen stat. Note that skidding is not necessarily bad, and the actions from the skid deck can often benefit the car that is skidding. There is even a driver built around this mechanic. Handling returns to full at a start of a car's turn. Handling is an extremely important stat and is very important to get equipment for in the game.

Handling Regeneration: The amount of handling restored after a car skids on an opponents turn. This is not the full handling number, but is often enough to still play some cards - hence why its often better to leave enemies at 1 handling and not skid them.

Gear - Each car begins in Gear 1. Gear acts as a modifier to cards. Cards often have stronger effects at higher gear, but higher gear also comes with greater risk when you skid, so it is necessary to balance how high gear you want to go.

Bash Condition Damage - Red - the amount of health damage your car does when it bashes another car

Bash Handling Damage - blue - the amount of handling Damage your car does when it collides with another car.

Your Deck consists of the following.

3 innate 'driver cards', which are kept in a separate part of your hand and can be used once each turn.

The Rest of the Deck is made out of the cars parts and is shuffled normally like a typical deckbuilder. The base hand size is 6, and any cards not used remain in hand. This can be good or bad depending on whether those cards are useful cards or dead cards.

3 of these cards are Innate 'Car' cards that can never be removed from the deck, but this is typically fine as these are usually good cards.

The remainder of the deck is tied to equipment slots, of which each car has 5-6. Each equipment slot when filled, can boost status and/or add cards to your deck


Engine - All Cars have this Slot. Typically front or back move and status cards. If you have no engine equipped, there are 2 default weak move cards here.

Wheel - All cars have this slot. Typically left or right movement cards. If you have no wheels equipped, there are 2 default weak move cards here.

Trunk Weapon - not all cars have this slot. Typically targets enemies behind your car.

Roof Weapon - not all cars have this slot. Typically targets enemies to the sides

Hood Weapon - not all cars have this slot. Typically targets enemies to the front.

Utilty - not all cars have this slot. Adds stats and/or utility cards





Cards can have many effects, and many of them have 'on hit' effects. Check the description of whether that effect happens to the user of the card, or the target.

Cards Can apply these statuses:

Block and grip are completely lost upon start of turn. All other statuses decrement by 1 stack at end of turn

Block - Prevents damage to hp up to block amount
Grip - Prevents damage to handling up to grip amount
Punch - Doubles Bash Damage
Rage - Doubles Weapon Damage
Overload - increases damage of both bash and weapon by 1 per stack
Engine Lock - Engine Cards cannot be played
Driver Lock - Driver Cards cannot be played
Weapon Lock - Weapon cards cannot be played
Wheel Lock - Wheel cards cannot be played
Burn - discard 2 cards at start of turn
Rumble - Take 1 health damage per stack at start of turn
Web - Take 2 health damage for every move
Flat - Take 4 health damage for each skid card used
Brittle - Deal 25% less hp and handling damage from Bashing
Weak - Deal 25% less hp and handling damage from weapons
Fragile - take 50% more hp and handling damage from all sources.
Shift - Option to change gear, up or down, by the indicated amount.
Discard - Discard the amount of cards shown - randomly chosen
Draw - Draw the amount of cards shown
Swap - discard X chosen cards and draw the same number of replacements



Each Driver also has a skid deck that occurs when they enter skid status. The number of skid cards played equals the gear the car was in when skid occurs. These cards can either move the car back, left, or right, or bash in those directions, and may also apply harmful status to the car that is skidding. Skids, however, will NEVER be forwards. If deliberately trying to skid, you can position yourself between or in front of enemy cards to try and make the bashes hit them.

When you enter a battle, your car will spawn on the field along with the enemies.
Player always gets to move first, and will draw up to their hand size randomly - but will again always have access to their driver cards at any time.

Battlefields consist of any number of lanes, anywhere from 2-6/
Lanes may be Gravel or Paved.
If moving from a paved to a gravel road, the car that moves automatically moves back 1 space in the new lane - bashing if it hits another car.

Lanes may change between paved and gravel, and even have obstacles appear on the lane as turns go by - these are indicated on the right hand side of the map.

Lanes may also close - the lane is marked by a skull if it is about to. Closures happen at the end of the players turn, so the player is much more able to react to them. If a car is in a lane that will close - it dies instantly at end of turn. You can often take advantage to it.

Hovering over an enemy car will let you see their atk range. You may also right click to examine their deck. Enemy cars operate on the same principles as the player - 6 card draw and 3 driver cards they always have access to. However, because they have extremely lean decks except for challengers and bosses, they will almost always have access to their weapon unless inflicted with burn. Take this as a lesson to your own deck - Remove bad weapon equipment from your car - lean is often good.


When you have examined your battle situation, you can choose what cards you want to play. Each card has a handling cost. Should you use your full handling allocation - you enter skid and your turn ends. You may also choose to end your turn before this occurs. Choosing whether to skid on your turn, where you have more control, than on the enemies turn is one of the more frequent decisions you will make.

If using a move card, you will be allowed to move the amount of spaces indicated on the card. Purple is left to right, orange is forward or back. Both is 4 ways movement. Some cards allow you to move more than once. Moving can be use to bash opponents, get in range of weapon cards, or run away from enemy weapon ranges. You should often try to stay out of as many enemy weapon ranges as possible. If you use a move car to hit an opponent, they take damage equal to your vehicles bash stats - both health and handling, but you do NOT move to their spot UNLESS the card specifies that it also moves the opponent. Such cards are rare and often the best move cards as they can force move the enemy to instant Death.

Move Cards can also bash instead of moving. Bashing does NOT move your car. It only bashes the enemy. Like move, there are also some rare bash cards that force move the enemy, which can again force them to death lanes or barriers.

if you, or your opponents are forced into barriers, they take significant health and handling damage.

Weapon cards, naturally, are mainly used to attack. Each has an indicated range of area and does some amount of indicated damage - which can be health and/or handling. Some weapons apply their effects to all in the affected area. Some only to the first enemy caught in their range. Weapons that have no valid targets are often dead cards in hand, but *can* still be played if you want to, just to remove them from your hand. This is often valid strategy to cycle your deck.

There are also utility cards that apply status to yourself, typically for block, grip, or other helpful statuses.

Battles end when either all enemy cars are dead, you are dead, or all enemies have been escaped from.


If an enemy car is more than 3 spaces off screen, you 'escape' from them. This is a useful tool for difficult fights, but you only get 5 escapes per run, any more is a game over. Escaping from a challenger or the Final boss is a game over, however.

Do note that sometimes escapes occur involuntarily. If you (or an enemy) skids to escape range, the escape still happens.

When Starting a new game - you are first prompted to choose a driver. There are 10 in total, but only 1 is unlocked at the start. Unlocking other drivers requires defeating them when encountering them on the map. Only 4 other drivers spawn each game, and they are random. If you want to unlock a specific driver, you may want to restart until you see them, then select a location close to them at the start. If other drivers encounter each other, they can eliminate each other, and if that happens you cannot unlock the eliminated driver that run - you have to beat them yourself.

Each Driver has 3 Driver Cards unique to them and a starting Gadget. Defeating that driver during a run gains you their trinket.

Below are my thoughts on each driver:


Captain Richard - Has one of the best starting gadgets there is. 3 handling when an enemy skids is a huge boost and because of it he's capable of running through entire decks in a turn. One of his driver cards can also force enemies into instant death, and another refunds handling if u hit.

Chevelle - Handling Handling Handling. So important, And Chevelle gives 2 free, every turn. And that card even gives a free shift up to boot. If you have a lot of dead cards at the end of turn she can get rid of them too, which helps use her starting Gadget. This Driver can make the bottom tier cars work.

Robin - Strong weapons character, with a very easy to use gadget that increases weapon damage as she starts with a 0 cost shift up card. resistance also nice to stop chip dmg.

Tetsuo - Overlord character, can bring surge up quite high as his gadget isn't too difficult to activate, also has the ability to push enemies into instant death - very useful.


Zoe - Like Zed her gadget needs gear 5, though its better that its block over grip, since she also has a driver card that gives grip for cheap - so she rarely is at threat of skidding. Her shift up comes with draw too which is nice, and her move card can cause fragile for DPS so she's solid.

Bob - The Skid guy. He's meant to enter skid and his trinket helps protect him while he's there. Due to the random nature of skid he's more rng based than others, and needs lots of gear up to replace what he loses from skid, but the overall performance is fine. Obviously wants a brawler car.

Zed - Starting driver and he's essentially average as far as the drivers go. Primary selling point is the card that swaps 2 cards, so you can cycle your deck and drop bad cards easily, plus a 2 cost 4 way move. his shift up is expensive tho cuz it gives block, so hard to use his gadget.

Frank - One of the hardest to use gadgets in the game, good luck using 2 4 cost cards. Otherwise the driver card set is good though. Punch on demand, though expensive, cheap shift up, and the only driver move card that lets you move twice


Alberto - Trash tier gadget you will never use. Who doesnt move during their turn? Driver cards are ok in that he can move with 2 of them, then apply bash on top. Cheap shift up with draw too, and the negative will go away at turn end so its really non-issue unless you started turn with it from an enemy. bad skid deck though. Risk of burn sucks.


Eddie - The worst Driver in the game, by a mile. I don't know what they were thinking with this guy. Essentially has only 2 driver cards because 1 surge is not worth 1 burn unless its the last turn of a fight and you've calculated you will win that turn. Also has the worst skid deck in the game - you are essentially never allowed to skid with eddie because if you do its -2 hand for the rest of the fight, which is utterly crippling. Requires being carried by the Dart or the Torcia to win with this guy.

Once you choose your driver, you will be prompted to choose your car. Again, only one is unlocked at the start. Unlocking new cars is different from drivers, however. They are unlocked based on your player level, which increases each run - the farther you go in a run, the faster the player level rises. Each level unlocks new equipment to spawn in future runs, as well as cards to select.

Below are my thoughts on each car, ordered by the order they unlock:

Buck continental - The Starting car, and the only car that has only 5 equipment slots instead of 6. It's also hurt by its absolutely garbage starting weapon configurations. Remove the trunk and middle weapons until you actually get something worth putting on and it will perform much better. It's actually a solid basher with a 3/2 profile and should be used as such. Good handling too, though low on the armor.

Daison A2000 - The Buck with a utility slot, more armor and handling, but 1 less bash hp damage in terms of stats. I also prefer its innate cards to the buck's, as they allow you to cycle dead cards, which, with 3 weapon slots, and mehish starting weapons, you will be doing.

Buck Contender - Unfortuantely a low handling car, which needs fixing either directly by Chevelle, by making opponents skid with Rick, or not caring about skidding like Bob. 11 handling sucks, sorry. And again unlike the monster truck it can't cc for ages because of its lower base handlign dmg - you need to build up its surge to get the necessary dmg for that, which takes time, though the innate cards help with this, and handling you don't have

Little Monster- A premier basher and CCer. Has the highest base handling bash damage in the game, at 5, which means that for the vast majority of enemies, 2 bashes and they are cced and cant do anything for a turn. Also starts with a 10 handling dmg weapon that you can also use to CC any cars behind you. The nature of CC play means fights are going to be a little slow, especially with only 1 base condition dmg, unless you can utilize its push card to knock enemies off road, but it still gets the job done reliably. Also has 25 Armor too. 11 handling sucks but the rest of the car is good enough that its still strong.

Dart Hot Rodent - Highest handling in the game at 14, and still respectable 25 armor. with the same equipment slots as the torcia with slightly better bashing. Also has a rage card but requires gear 5 - more mobility cards thoigh. overall the tradeoff is negative with the torcia - but a worse Torcia is still a really good car than can also still carry bad drivers.

Beta Elemento - Another High armor and Handling Car. That typically makes a car good. Also has an innate card that locks everything but driver cards to cc an enemy for a turn. low base bashing stats, so you'll need to get improvements as you travel, but it can be managed.

DCM Brawler - the worst car in the game, by a mile. 150 hp is great til you notice it has all of 0 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ armor, meaning no free heals. Forcing you into more fixits, and therefore you have less gadgets. It also can't do ♥♥♥♥ with its pitiful 10 handling. They even had the gall to give one of its innate cards 4 cost. Though at least the other 2 are fine. And then it has 0 bash handling so it cant CC anything, AND lacks front and back weapons, so it can never have rockets. It's like they decided to take all the worst attributes possible and put it on a car. A run with this car is miserable. Chevelle can do it, Probably rick too and someone's done it with Bob, but its not pleasant.

Gently High Roller - 10 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ handling. UGHHHHH. you will struggle to do this with this thing without the aforementioned 3 drivers named on the Contender's blurb. It's also not very innately mobile because 2 of its innate cards don't allow movement. really good bashing stats though. So again. Rick, Chevelle, or Bob.

Torcia Olympic - The last car to unlock is also by far the best. A Whopping 50 armor, double the next closest armor, means you should take no hp damage in battle and therefore fixits should only be for out of battle damage. This means all your scrap can go to gadgets as you snowball to a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of them. And then it even has top tier 13 handling on top of that. The car also has access s to a rage card and one of its cards can cause fragile too. Low on the bash damage, but thats the only weakness. This thing can carry even the trash tier drivers to a win.

Once you Choose your car, you will be sent to the map. Unlike most roguelikes, the map itself is actually fixed, and there are 5 possible starting locations. However, each location is tied to a sponsor, which is randomized each time. Each Sponsor gives a buff. Once you select a sponsor, 4 other drivers are spawned randomly in the locations you did not select.


Sponsors are presented here, in order of , in my opinion, worst to best.

Loco Coco - Extra free healing at each fix station.
The Problem here is that if you are visiting more than 1-2 fix stations in the first place - the run isn't likely to win. Free healing saves you 20 scrap at each station. This is a god awful benefit even if you somehow go to all fix stations - the next sponsor is strictly better.

Post App - 20% more scrap from battles
Strictly better than the above, but still not a sponsor I advise taking.

Eon Conglomerate - gives an Extra component to choose from at the end of battles.
Normally you only get a choice of three components at the end of every battle. This makes it 4 and thus more likely you get a useful part. This is the first sponsor that can be worth taking as it is a strong benefit, but its still not what i recommend.

Aztec - Start with a random additional gadget.
This is potentially the strongest Sponsor in the game provided you have levelled up enough to unlock the quads gadget. However, its extremely inconsistent and requires lots and lots of rng. If you get quads - you essentially win the run, and it is technically feasible to keep restarting until you do, though i don't really recommend it. If you don't get quads, then the other ace cards and possibly some of the rage or punch granting gadgets can be better than the last sponsor, but on average IMO this is 2nd choice

High voltage - Regular enemies have 20% less health
This is a significant reduction in enemy difficulty. You are not actually likely to die to a contender or the boss in this game if you make it there. You are far and away more likely to die to random enemies, especially the battles with 4-5 of them. This lets you kill enemies faster, take less damage and need less fixits, and save more scrap for gadgets.


There are a few types of nodes in the map.

Skulls are battles. You can hover over each battle to see the enemies you will face. Equipment can be changed before each fight to tailor your gear to opponents. Battles award scrap for each enemy destroyed, and a random choice of 3 components at the end.

Question marks are random events, as you would find in a typical roguelike. Note that unlike regular battles, you CANNOT change your equipment if a random event results in a battle.

After 2-4 of the above nodes is a city node. each city Node may be a shop shop, fix it station, or a combo of both. It is possible to encounter other drivers here. If so, you will fight them at the end of the node.

Fix-it Station - You have the option to either choose 2 scrap nodes, which can container either scrap or a random component, or enter the fix-it node yourself and repair your car. 10 free repair is offered at each station. Additional cost of 1 per hp after that.
If encountered early, you should take the scrap. Late game you should only use 1-2 of these generally. Take more and your run will probably fail from lack of gadgets.

Chop Shop - You have the option to either choose 2 scrap nodes, which can container either scrap or a random component, or enter the chop shop and make purchases.
If encountered without any scrap to purchase anything, take the scrap nodes, else shop. Sell anything you aren't using, and buy any useful gadgets or gear you may want.
You really want to enter these as much as possible. Gadgets are very important and increase your chances of winning.

Combo- you have the option to choose chop shop or fix it. There are very few of these and they are all late in the run.

ECCT - the Final Node.

You will first fight any remaining challengers here.
Once you win that, you will be healed to full for free.
Lastly you will fight the final boss.

The Final boss has 240 hp, divided into 3 80 hp segments, as well as 15 handling.

It has strong weapons that hit to the front and back of it, but cant really do too much if you are to the side of it.

Once you remove each of the first 2 hp segments, the boss becomes invincible and spawns 2 drones with 40 hp each. The Drones must be killed to be able to damage the boss again. The boss can spawn drones only a maximum of 2 times.


Because of the triggers for drone spawning, the optimal way to take down the boss is to deal just under the amount of dmg for triggering the first drones, and then burst through the 2nd hp bar all the way to the 3rd in one turn. This will require either a high amount of surge, or rage/punch. This ensures you only face the drones once. Its technically possible to burst the boss all the way without facing drones - but don't expect that to be common.

Because the boss has 15 handling, the 'optimal' bash handling damage to have is 7. this means you can bash it twice, and it can't do anything during its turn. You can then repeat this until its near the first hp threshold before bursting.

If you have 6 bash dmg, you can leave the boss with 3 handling after 2 bashes and it still wont be able to do much to you. 5 is poor because you'll force skid (unless you are richard and/or have his gadget).

If you have 4 bash handling dmg, 3 bashes can cc the boss at 3 handling. this is reachable for any car, and you will by the time of the boss usually have enough handling to do it. Overload can help reach these thresholds if you don't have the right about from equipment.

In terms of weapons, its recommended to remove weapons that are primarily handling damage, as they cannot kill the drones.

For Dealing with drones (or bursting the boss with rage) - rockets are recommended. They have massive range front and back. There are versions for both trunk and hood. If No Rockets, rear AOE lasers or Grenades can work. Roof Weapon can be drone for sabotage, although the best option is the massive AOE weapon that also gives a different card that provides free rage. Rumble from surround stereos are also good.