A lot of people go into this game and get incredibly frustated when they die. It's understandable! Most modern singleplayer games are designed to keep the flow going and keep you from dying, so you have to do exceptionally bad if you die.

Enter the Gungeon is not one of those games. Dying happens quite often - in fact, it will happen to about 100% of your first few runs.

In order to get far more fun out of this game, set your goals differently. Instead of saying "I want to complete the game now", think "I want to get to the first boss". Then later set your goal to "I want to beat the first boss" or "I want to beat the first boss without taking damage".

If you focus more on the progess you make each run instead of being bitter that you died, you'll have a much more enjoyable time.

Further, keep in mind that this game is heavily based on chance in regards to loot drops. Sometimes you just have no luck. You'll get crappy guns, you'll waste your keys on useless crap and you'll die. That happens. Just jump right into the next run and do better!

And to help you, here's a quote: "Sometimes you can do everything right and still fail"
(Great life advice too by the way)

I highly recommend to play this game with mouse and keyboard. Of course, you can play with a controller (and have to if you want to play cooperatively), but you'll perform much better with a mouse than a controller, simply because you can see exactly where you are aiming instead of having just a vague direction.

That said, the games initial controls are a bit awkward to say the least. Pressing Q or E in the middle of combat can be difficult, especially since you need to take your hand away from the movement keys. Therefore, I highly recommend you to map your important actions (using a blank, using a consumable, etc.) to your mouse or to other fingers.

Here is my configuration as an example:
Mouse 4 & 5 are special keys on the side of my mouse

As you can see, I mapped a lot of the keys to my mouse, so my left hand can focus more on movement, while the right hand focusses on aiming and shooting. Of course, you don't need to do this, but if you run into trouble, perhaps consider remapping your keys.

Even though the game doesn't look like it, it's mostly about ressource management. Yes, really!
Here's a list of all ressources you have and what they do:


That's a lot of ressources and they want to be spent wisely. What differs a gungeoneer from a great gungeoneer is how well they spend each of those things: Sure, you can use a rocket launcher against a single small gundead, but it's not really a wise choice. Let's look at each of those in detail now:

Health is your most important ressource. If you run out, your run is over.
I know, this sounds obvious, but I've seen far too many people who don't buy health at a trader and instead buy a fancy gun "for the boss fight", only to die in the next room and never even make it to the boss. So trust me, if you can, always buy health!

Armor sits ontop of your health and blocks a single hit per point of armor, then dissolves. Armor can either be found, bought or granted via items. It also has the effect of giving you a free blank per hit (even with all blank buffs, should you have any).
I personally find it very useful, but it's very expensive too. You have to judge for yourself if you have enough money to effectively "overheal" you, or if you'd rather get a new gun.

All weapons except your starting pistol (And I'm sure at least one weapon you can find) have finite ammo. That means you'll have to manage which gun you use to kill what. Always using the biggest and most badass gun you can find to kill what just happens to stumble infront of you is a surefire way to be stuck with a pistol in the bossfight - aka. bad.
It's a good idea to use lesser guns to clear the room and better guns for the bossfights.
Also, ammo pickups disappear once you leave the room, so it's now or never to refill a gun.

Blanks clear the room of all bullets and temporarily prevent enemies from spawning new bullets. This gives you a room to breath and is incredibly helpful if you dodged in the wrong direction. A great thing about blanks is that they always get replenished to 2 upon entering a new chamber. In other words, you can use them as you please. Think about them as an additional layer of armor.

Keys are one of the most valueable ressources, as they are a way of aquiring weapons inside the gungeon. Keys can be obtained in various ways:

• Can appear upon clearing a room
  
• Can be found by the Dog when playing as Hunter
  
• Always spawn when killing a Keybullet Kin (Key-Shaped enemy)
  
• Can be bought in a shop
  
• Can be dropped by bosses

I'm sure I missed something here, but it can't be that vital
Keys can be spent in 3 different ways: Opening chests, opening minor locks and buying items from a certain NPC vendor. We'll get into that in more detail later.

You can not only fire weapons, but also sell them for money or give them to the gun muncher, which takes two guns and spits out a new, fully loaded gun. It might be a good idea to give away bad guns and hope for a better one, or even give away a good, but empty gun if no ammo can be found or afforded.

Items can be active or passive. Passive items always give you an effect, while active items usually only do that when you activate them. They can be considered a ressource, as some active items only have a limited number of uses. Think wisely if and when you are going to use which item. Also, since you can only carry two active items, it's worth considering which one you'll give away if you find a third one.

Money can be used to buy other ressources in shops, or to pay NPCs for various things. Consider if it's worth buying a mediocre gun now vs. the possibility of buying a better gun in the next chamber. Money also allows you to buy health, ammo, armor and keys, should a shopkeeper offer such. In general, money management can be a very tough thing and it's always associated with a certain risk.

Chests come in different colours, which indicate the different qualities of the content:

Brown chests are the lowest tier and usually only contain garbage. I highly recommend against wasting a key to open this chest, as the key is usually worth more than the content. If you play the Pilot, you can use your lockpick to attempt to open the chest, which might succeed. Otherwise, shoot the chest to get either Junk (which you can sell) or sometimes even something of worth.

Contrary to what you might expect if you ever played an RPG before, blue is worth less than green in the gungeon. Blue chests are the first tier of chests which I would open, but only if it was the only chest in the chamber and I had no gun other than my pistol before the bossfight. Sometimes blue chests contain interesting items, but sometimes items of...questionable usefulness.

Green chests are usually a good find and almost always contain something of good value. There are exceptions of course, but they mostly depend on personal preference than an item or weapon simply being alround bad.

When you first see such a chest, it should immediately strike you that these are valueable. Painted red and gold and with a crosshair on top, red chests always carry something great inside. The gun or item you'll find will usually ensure that this run will turn out great! Just hope you still have a key somewhere.

Black chests contain the best and rarest weapons and items in the gungeon - hands down. Just hope you have a key to open them.

After looking at each tier of chests, let's take a look at the general strategies you want to follow. Simply opening every chest you see will be a surefire way to run out of keys - especially when you need them for a good chest. So instead, try to open chests when you either see a red or black one, or after you've seen every room in the chamber except for the boss.

That way, you can open the best chest in the chamber and use your keys more effectively. However, a word of warning for gungeoneers who play the pilot: If you use your lockpicks to attempt to open a chest without a key, failure to do so will render the chest unopenable.

Chests you can't or don't want to open can still be shot open for the possibility to get at least something. Sometimes destroyed chests drop health, blanks or even keys.

You may expect to see a detailled description of each gun or item here, but I don't want to go that far. That's what the wiki is there for.

Instead, this guide should help you set foot in the gungeon and help you dive deeper and deeper with each run. Who knows, perhaps you'll even be able to kill your past someday.