If you're new to the game, you might have had a rough first session.
You walked around your starting area, couldn't do much because you had no XP to use the shrines, and smashed some crates which didn't drop a thing.
You entered a mirror (probably the northern one) and were pushed around by batbirds and hogs, felt like a pinball killing a herd of slimes and those darn archers always jumped just out of your weapons range, just to pester you with another arrow.
And when you died, you most likely didn't get enough XP to level up. Well, maybe a percent or two which won't make a difference anyway, right? Screw this!

If any of this sounds familiar, let me give you a head start.
There will be some (fairly minor) spoilers.

If text floats over an image, it's due to caching issues. Just reload the page.
You can also click on any picture to enlarge if necessary.

This may be lengthy, but I think it's important for new players to get some insight into the reasoning of some design descisions.
Let's talk about the elephant in the room: you get killed, most of your XP deleted, and the few level-ups you can afford feel utterly inconsequential.
Thing is, that is pretty much intended, while not communicated in the game itself - leveling up is more seen as bonus activity, something you do on the side if you know you can't spend all your XP in the hub.

So, a few of us backed up our saves recently (start of sept '17) and actually gave it a try with a clean profile. And while I'm talking a very small sample set here, I think we agreed that: the game is perfectly fine at level 1 if you know what you're doing and don't care about saving XP.

For the 1st part, know what you're doing, I hope this may serve some players, also keep an eye on Nerava's WIP guide, he knows a lot more than I do and is without a doubt the better player.

The second part, not caring about saving XP is tricky tho. It's counter-intuitive in a game with permanent progression, usually you aim to level up as quickly as possible to get to "the fun part" of the game.
Just give me the benefit of doubt and believe me when I say don't be stingy with your XP. Buy mementos, spells, blessings at the shrines, and while it will take some time to find stuff that works for you, you can perfectly well beat the game with a low level character that's buffed by all the stuff you come across - not every time, but still.
You gotta invest to live of the interest, you have to be able to beat the first few boss encounters to bank some XP to level up later. So instead of banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall by trying to keep as much as you can, hoping the violence rating wont be too bad after you die - spend it, buff yourself and then, after a boss, bank what's left.

If you didn't make a good haul, take the XP into the game, buy blessings, a better weapon (if unlocked), maybe upgrade it. Keep in mind tho: everything not spent in level-ups or inside the hub gets deleted upon entering the first mirror. If you can't afford anything substantial, buy some resources, stock up on wood in case you find a bow for example.
I know it sounds nuts, but you will make more XP by buying everything in sight than by trying to save up for leveling (be reasonable with shrines tho, they increase costs exponentially for blessings - the next shrine will start afresh at 10).

Thanks for your time, consider giving the guide a thumbs up if you've found anything helpful here.
Cheers.

2 things worth pointing out that may not be clear at a glance:
1) When you select a character, in the top left corner appear icons of the gods this character has slain so far. From left to right: Obelisk, Shield, Brearg, Veil and Free.
2) When redistributing stats or after you've found a XP chunk which grants a free level, the number of levels not requiring XP to spend appear on the bottom left, next to your current level, as + X.

In-game help screen: Tab is your friend. Or one of the 'back' or 'start' buttons on your gamepad.

Without repeating too much of the in-game help screen, some things might be worth mentioning:
The leftmost, seperated and darker parts of the Health (red) and Stamina (white) bars are negative values. If your health goes negative, you don't die right away but bleed to death. It will go down to about -(max hp / 2) before you die to give you some time to heal up. Negative stamina means the next hit you receive will certainly stun you. The silvery bar to the right of your health represents your Armour which will block at least one hit completely, even if the damage dealt to you exceeded its value.
Below the bars you have 3 slots for your spells, followed by the amount of XP and keys.
The number '4' in the top left corner is the amount of your surges.


In the top right are your collected materials: wood, metal, stone and crystal. You can trade them in at the crafting/trading stations for keys, armour, weapons and such. The 'price tags' of the items are colour-coded, purple means XP gems, brown wood and so on. Wood also serves as ammunition for your bows and crossbows.



In the bottom left, we find information about hunger, speed, body temperature and bolow the bars a slot for one potion you may carry.

On the left is your hunger meter, divided into three sections with breakpoints at 30% and 10% of saturation. In the bottom all's well, in the middle section your actions will use more stamina, and when it reaches the top you are starving and will lose max hp over time. It's not that bad and gives you ample of time, but this loss can not be recovered by simple healing in this run.

In the middle we see the speed information in the lower part, the upper part is your noise indicator. The bottom part shows how you adjust your speed. If it's fully green, you're walking/running at 100%, if you use your mousewheel to change it, it can go down to a minimum of 25% - which is actually useful in trap-riddled dungeons.
Update 0.8.13 added sneaking up on enemies "The player now makes noise that enemies react to. Moving slower will decrease your noise and make it more difficult for enemies to spot you if you sneak up behind them. Other actions, such as hitting a wall, will make noise as well. Some ambient effects can soften your noise, such as nearby fires and rain. Any allies will probably give you away."

Next to it is your body temperature. Usually the bar is grey, I was actually burning when taking the picture. If you are subject to changes in temperature, it will light up in blue or red - if it goes all the way to the bottom you freeze, at the top end you catch fire. Using ice or fire enchantmens on weapons will change your temperature with each swing for a little moment. A fast weapon thus enchanted might kill not only your foes!


In the bottom right are your weapon stats, on the left damage and power for the primary attack, on the right for the secondary.
Damage means just that, raw damage which might be mitigated to some extend by your opponents damage resistance stats.
Power on the other hand comes into play for the knockback of your weapon, stunning enemies (it basically deals stamina damage) and the ability to break wood, rocks and other items.






You can get poisoned by some enemies, environmental hazards or eating raw meat.

Julian Edison clarifies:
"The duration of poison should usually be 16 seconds, but the damage can change a little depending on your resistance to it.
Similar to how the little temperature meter will rise when you're in danger of catching fire, the transparent green meter that grows over your HP represents building up toxicity. When you actually succumb to the poison [reaching the right end of your health bar, your maximum health], each poison damage has a 30% chance to lower your maximum HP by one."
You can take a chance when your hunger is dangerously low. It doesn't matter if the green overlay passes your current health, the effect only kicks in at the very right end.


Surges are magical shockwaves centered on yourself, cast with the Ctrl key; they heal you (and closeby allies) somewhat (heal amount and surge range is based on your fortitude), restore your stamina fully, damage/stun enemies close to you and break items like rocks or shrines. Surges are refilled after each boss battle to the max, so it makes sense to use all of your surges before the boss goes down to get the maximum out of your heals.
Experiment with them. Breaking some things might lead to interesting results.
Apparently, they also heal the ticking damage (the yellow bar overlaying your health after you took damage) completely, which I did not know for 70hrs. Thanks DaftSkunk.

It happens extremely rarely, but if it does:

Left hunger bar before returning, right one after.
Don't take the amount for granted, your mileage may vary due to differently sized hunger bars and mayhaps some memento influences.

Brought up with 'Q' it's pretty self-explanatory, just don't forget its usefulness in a couple situations like:
Inspect: can be used (just hover) on mementos and spells inside their crystals to make them out if you don't recognize them at a glance.
Collect XP: very useful when XP gems are behind a barrage of arrows or on top of floor traps. Will drain stamina when used.
Follower commands: good to keep them alive e.g. in a dungeon, just let them wait at the entrance until you need them or you've found the exit. Summoning takes a few seconds and will drain your stamina.

Treasure maps can be rotated and deleted with the little buttons next to them, and are rendered differently than the zone map. The second treasure is just at the lower left tip of the player's cursor in this image. As you can see, the zone map renders via line-of-sight, leaving the inside of the pillar blank, while the t-map renders it as a solid block. Thick edges like the ones in the top map refer most likely to some area at the fringe of the zone.
When you stand on top of the treasure, use your radial menu to dig. Careful, digging increases your hunger by a substantial amount.


Information is revealed gradually, based on how often you've picked up an item, cast a spell, killed an enemy etc. Picking up mementos and items, casting spells or killing enemies in the Sanctuary do not count towards revealing more information.
Mementos look a bit different since they will display their lore 'blurb' fully on the left, while the more precise information is revealed on the right hand side.

When you click on a memento in your inventory screen, the view jumps directly to the notes section of this memento.

Actual pickups/casts/kills needed to reveal the information fully:
Mementos: 15
Equipment: 10
Spells: 50
Weapon Kills: 100 (possibly 101)

Big slimes split into 2-4 smaller ones on death, often behind you. They may drop a red squarish item that heals for 10hp. Slimes love those as well, so you may need to rush in to get them. The small ones drop XP.
Like to shoot homing projectiles, but need a while to charge up again. Lead them a bit so you can get behind a corner if needed.

Apparently, Batbirds are Hawks, as proven by this little article:
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=815255857
I still like Batbird better.

Usually, the level sequence runs like this: exploration, boss, exploration, boss.
In each of the exploration levels, you can find a black key. If you have this on your character after leaving a boss battle, an optional dungeon level will be inserted, changing the sequence to exploration, boss, *dungeon, exploration ...

After each boss battle, a book and a mirror to the next level appear. By using the book, you will bank your current XP for your next character. Try this: bank your XP after you have killed the boss, then scoop up the XP on the floor to have some currency in the next level.
If you hit the mirror with your weapon, a shard will drop out just above it. Using this shard saves the game. This can only be done after beating a boss, not in the other levels.

If you don't know what they are, throw them away, preferably at an enemy ('C' key; the potion will land at your cursors position in the world, not just fly further in the general direction until it hits something). You may miss out on a regeneration potion, but believe me, always identify the unknown ones by throwing them somewhere else. Potions can be broken by your weapons, so be careful around them (for example when there are lying 3 pots on a table and you try to break the table because you need wood for your bow *ahem*).
The beneficial ones cannot be consumed like in other games, you just aim at your own character and throw them at your feet to use them. Once used, the first tab in your menu will list the known potions on the right-hand side - no need to second-guess their effect when they just go *poof*.

I still have to get my head around it, so I'll quote Whiskeh from the forums:
"When you cast a spell, a deficit is created. That's the number that appears on the spell. From this point you've got a couple of options. You can cast the spell again, in which case you will be charged experience points (pretty sure the charge is the amount that appears on the spell, but I've not bothered to check in all cases). If you can't afford the charge, you'll cast the spell but it will also be destroyed in the process. Your other option is to collect experience; while the aforementioned deficit exists, experience will not go to your experience pool, but will instead be consumed to mitigate the deficit (thus reducing the number that appears on the spell). Once you've collected enough experience, you're back at square one should you choose to cast the spell again.

Basically, casting a spell will always leave a debt to be filled, unless you already owe a debt and can't afford the charge, in which case the spell is destroyed. There's a little bit of toying you can do to bend this system to your advantage, though the extent of that surely depends on your ingenuity."

Thanks Whiskeh.

Jenkar picks up on the subject and observes:
"Also keep in mind that cycling spells is definitely viable. Example :
I cast magic beam. Now there's a big fat pile of exp. I move to my magic bullet [...] and shoot it once. Pick one exp (which refills BOTH spells), shoot again. Pick one, shoot ect."

I got confused here and thought refilling the 1xp spell would pay for the other in total, so Jenkar elaborates:

"It doesn't pay off the cost [in total].
But the thing is, say your three spells have their debt created.
Let's say the debts are 1, 6 and 4.
You pick up 1 exp. It doesn't go to your bank, but your debt.
And now your debts are 0, 5 and 3.

By cycling, i mean that when i start as a priest, magic beam costs 6 and magic bullet 1.
And so i can go : Cast beam, cast bullet, pick up 1 exp (drops debt on beam to 5 and on bullet to 0), cast bullet, pick up 1 exp (drops debt to 4, bullet back to 0) ect ect.
Thus, since i needed to pick up the 6 exp to fill the debt from beam, it also can fill 6 casts of magic bullet that hence essentially become free."

Thanks Jenkar.

Casting spells leave circles below your feet - these are not purely decorative but have interesting effects. E.G: the red circle left by casting a leech spell upon enemies will heal you (fully I think) if an enemy is killed within this circle. The yellow circle left by the Thunder spell will cast a lightning bolt upon an enemy that enters it. Other spells leave circles that cause additional effects when you cast another spell while standing inside it. Experiment!

Your cursor changes depending on the type of spell currently selected.
The left one is untargeted or centered around yourself, the middle is a single-target spell, the right a targeted AoE spell.

The current map of the starting area (0.7.12.x)
Outdated, most of the general layout is the same as of 0.8.24.x, but there are some additions on the fringes which I couldn't figure out yet
Since the additions to the map are part of a puzzle, I decided to leave the image as is to avoid spoilers.

S: Start, weapon racks, smelter and grindstone
A: Achievement case
L: Library with lore bookcase
M: Meadow mirror
D: Desert mirror
1: Sow
2: Song
3: Shield
4: Brearg
5: Obelisk
6: Veil
7: Free
8: Thousandfold's hut

Using the smelter will turn one rock from your inventory into one metal ingot at the cost of 1XP.







Levels up your weapon at the displayed cost which are colour coded: purple XP, brown wood, white metal, beige rocks, blue crystal.




The board in the hallway a bit to the right of your start will display the achievements you've already got and hints to others you have yet to fulfill. Hints appear when you unlock achievements next to them.
It's worth pointing out that all achievements have in-game consequences. Some unlock characters, some starting weapons or spells for specific characters or a general reduction in cost for unlocking memento crystals.

The book case in the library collects the 50+ pages of lore you may find in your travels.

Grindstones enhance your weapons at the cost of XP and materials and are found right at the start of a new run as well as in the world as a randomly generated structure.



Upgrading adds +1 damage, +5 power, +5% speed per level. After these additions, your current aggressiveness and strength modifiers are applied.
Each weapon has different initial upgrade costs. For a straight sword you have to pay 10XP, 5 wood and 10 metal to upgrade from level 0 to level 1.
The following table lists the additional upgrade costs to enhance it further (hence the 0s at level 1, you have to add the original costs). Each additional level increases the costs by 10XP and 5 materials (consecutively).
A level 5 short sword would cost you 110XP, 55 wood and 60 metal in total. Just add the initial costs to the last 2 columns of the chart.

Your inventory can hold a maximum of 99 units of any material, if the grindstone's cost would exceed this value, its cost gets fixed at 99 - thanks redlid for figuring this out.

There are a couple ways to heal, including potions and magic, but let's keep it simple:
Without other options, surge when your health is near 20-30% of your maximum, do not wait until you start bleeding out.
Reason being, every second you bleed, you go further into the negative, which means you have lower HP after the heal.
Example 1: you have 20HP, heal for 20, get hit for 30. You still have 10 HP.
Example 2: you have 20HP, get hit for 30, bleed out at -1HP per second and keep on fighting for 8 seconds before you surge. Prior to the surge, you were at -18, after it you are at +2. Close call.

Don't hope for a healing item if you're about to fight or might stumble into a trap in a dungeon just to save a surge.
As mentioned before, surges are refilled after each boss battle to the max, so it makes sense to use all of your surges before the boss goes down to get the maximum out of your heals.

Stay reasonably fed. As mentioned above, if your hunger goes up into the middle section your actions will use more stamina, which in turn makes you more prone to get stunned and hit by enemies. While hunger/saturation levels are no reason for huge concerns, every bit helps in the beginning.

Getting your hand on healing items:
1) Large blood slimes are a great source of healing items (which are small, square-ish and red). They drop frequently when the slimes split up and will heal for 10HP. Make sure you get them before the small ones eat them.
2) Song's shrines, broken up by a powerful weapon or a surge usually drop a few healing items and additional surges. Pray for healing until it gets expensive, then break the shrine.
3) Buy surges and healing items at crafting stations if available. They are quite cheap and will pay out.

Usually I refer to the yellow damage bar as 'ticking damage' for ease of use, but technically it's a window of opportunity to undo recently received damage.
As you can see in the image, my actual health is already at a lower value - the yellow bar that ticks down to my current health is not reducing my health, that has already happened.
Instead it means, that if I surge right now, I will undo the yellow bars amount of damage, and afterwards heal my normal surge amount of damage.

Example:
Let max HP = 100
Surge heal strength = 20
Actual health = 24
Yellow damage bar stretch up to 67HP

If I surge right now, I will have 67+20 = 87HP.
If I let the yellow bar tick down and surge afterwards, I will have 24+20 = 44HP.

It also means, that if you receive damage to deplete your health bar fully, you'll die instantly despite the yellow bar stretching well into your positive HP.
The yellow bar is NOT a damage-over-time mechanic.

(In-game the yellow bar is refered to as 'depleting damage' in one of the memento descriptions)

Some personal preferences, some untested theories, but in general this section should hold up. Pray tell if you find discrepancies.

Your 10 stats as seen in your character selection and your pause menu are:

Dexterity - weapon speed
Aggression - weapon damage
Strength - weapon power
Speed - movement speed
Mobility - dodge effectiveness and stamina regen
Perception - sight distance and piety
Health - hp
Stamina - sp
Fortitude - surge effectiveness and resistances
Knowledge - magic cooldown (i.e. higher knowledge reduces the debt you get for casting a spell) and spell strength.

After each run, you get thrown back into the character selection and may have enough XP to increase some of them by one or a few percent. But which?
Of course, it all depends on your prefered playstyle. That said, let's discuss some not so obvious points here.

As far as I can tell, the game cuts off decimals. If your base weapon inflicts 7 damage and has 20 power, a 10% increase in aggression will leave its damage at 7 (7.7 cut off). Putting 10 levels into strength on the other hand will increase its power to 22. The higher the base value, the sooner you'll see an actual increase. Health and Stamina are the exception since they increase at flat values, giving you 1 hp/sp per level.

Strength, Dexterity or Aggression?
Strength by a long shot. Using the grindstone to increase your weapon's level will make it more powerful, hit harder and swing faster anyway. With that in mind, you'll benefit the most from more power. You'll knock enemies around to get a breather, stun them with leisure and - most importantly - be able to smash things to pieces.
Different weapon classes have different thresholds to cut down trees (try axes) or break rocks (blunt weapons like hammers excel here), but even a normal blade like the straight sword will cut rock and break shrines at about 100 power. Power means more loot.

Health, Mobility or Fortitude?
That really depends on your prefered playstyle... Fortitude sounds good, it raises your resistances, probably scales well since it *should have* a 100 point base and surges will heal you for more points.
I think fortitude starts coming into play when you find yourself picking up enchantments more often. Some will deal elemental damage to you as well or seriously change your temperature (and at tier 3 these effects get very strong), so having higher resistances across the board will mitigate these effects. I wouldn't try to raise it one by one tho, wait till you can reliably redistribute your stats to make runs with 20 or 30 levels assigned.
Or you have good reflexes and can parry your opponents with ease and might like mobility for the dodges.
Personally, I prefer to keep it simple, all points I can spare for survivability go into health which leaves my not-so-good surges to break things for loot instead of relying on them to heal me.

Speed. I think the default speed is too slow when traversing the map, but since the game is balanced around the default values, it's unlikely to get a big buff soon. At high levels (I'm talking 40 or more) it also makes it considerably easier to kite enemies or avoid spells and arrows without having to spend additional stamina for running. I like Speed a lot since I'm positively rubbish on dodging/parrying, but would keep it as an afterthought for new players.

Knowledge reduces the costs of spells, so it is useful - I rarely use spells, so praying to Obelisk suffices for me - also, crystal is rarely used elsewhere. If you frequently cast spells, the cost reduction lets you keep more XP for buying things or leveling up.

Perception is by far the best one to invest into once you're sure to survive.
- It increases the lit up area around your character in dark places,
- reveals hidden treasure, cracked walls and traps in dungeons quicker and more reliably,
- seems to increase the XP you get from slain enemies,
- reduces the cost of consecutive blessings from shrines
- and maybe, just maybe influences world generation to some extent as of the spawn chances of shrines and mementos.
It was somewhat nerfed since I originally wrote this section, e.g. consecutive blessings are now coded to drastically increase at the 5th prayer, but at the same time inter-level dungeons have been made more worthwhile with very nice rewards - so I stand by my point in the conclusion.

Once you get to a point where you have enough left over XP to carry into a new run (leveling up gets seriously expensive later on), you might want to redistribute your stats.
If you can level up a weapon and afford to pray for the stats you miss, why assign them in the first place? I recently redistributed my stats (I'm lvl 151 right now, so 150 level-ups to spend) to 60 Speed, 40 Health and 50 Perception. I had my stats somewhat balanced before, and while the new distribution makes it slightly harder in certain places I get ways (WAYS) more stuff.

Find and kill Obelisk. This will add 1 to your respec counter, displayed on his heart just above his shrine in the sanctuary. Using his heart with 'F', your stat points will be reset for the next run - since you won't lose XP for dying in the sanctuary, you could now suicide via the menu or by jumping down the hole at Veil's shrine for example.

Next time in the character selection your levels will be displayed as 1 + X, X being the number of levels you can distribute without XP cost.

Additional to the stat enhancements, Shrines may drop mementos, spells or equipment when you pray to them. Some seem to be tied to the specific shrine, some may be completely random.

Big thanks go out to the following for their help and contributions:

Whiskeh and Jenkar for patiently explaining the magic debt system to me.
Rhawkas for pointing me to the fact that spell circles are not purely decorative.
MurhaajaFasaani for bringing weapon upgrades to my attention and abusing the grindstone so it could be fixed.
DaftSkunk for casually mentioning that ticking damage is healed by surges.
redlid for figuring out that the grindstone's cost wont exceed 99 materials.

Julian Edison for his patience, willingness to explain things, responsiveness, upbeat nature and positive attitude. Oh, and for his game.

Everyone else.

If you find errors, please point them out.

The game is fair. I don't know if it's actually programmed that way, but for all you can see playing the game, enemies have the same restrictions as you do. They have windup times for their weapon strikes and limited stamina, cannot chain-cast spell after spell and so on. They (initially) may have higher stats than you, but you will always be the smarter one and if you stick with it, you may end up wanting for a higher difficulty level.
The game can lead to unexpected results quite often - Go nuts, try things, who knows what might happen.

Btw, at this size, it hits like a truck!

Have fun.