Just started playing! looking for any tips and tricks that might help.

[Otter Chaos]

I'm no stranger to rougelikes bu i thought it would be best to ask the community for advice before i dived in.

[Haldurson]

The best general discussion I've seen of skills is here:
https://community.gaslampgames.com/threads/project-community-skills-guide.3033/

The attached document is a bit more concise than the actual forum discussion.

1. You are going to die. You will die a whole lot. But hopefully you will die wiser in the ways of the game. So just roll a new character and start again. Victor in any roguelike is doing better than you did last time.
2. If you don't know what something does, try it.
3. Use your resources. Later on, when you get better at the game, you can be more conservative, but for now, just use everything if you think it will help.
4. When desperate, try something desperate.
5. Running away, either to another level, or to get better positioning is a perfectly sound tactic. Remember that you are not a hero, you are a rogue. You definitely don't need to kill everything (and occasinoally, you will find yourself in a position where you can't kill everything).
6. When you first start playing, try different skills. Figure out for yourself what workds well with your prefered playstyle and what skills compliment each other. Don't worry about whether a skill is a mage skill or rogue skill or warrior skill, just make sure you pick the fun skills (what you think would be fun).
7. Check out the guides -- and not just because I wrote a couple of them.
8. Don't be afraid of crafting
9. Don't carry around everything with you -- you have a perfectly good bank vault to store things in, and it's called your personal dimension. Furthermore, I've proben that you don't even need to hold onto most of what you will certainly think you'll need (I did a run where I limited myself to only items on my toolbar + a lutefisk cube (you'll find one eventually) and actually made it all the way to Dredmor (Dredmor did kill me though lol -- I didn't have enough to survive HIM, but I did have enough to survive the dungeon leading to him).

[Austellus]

And one final tip: Fully explore levels. Don't go down stairs immediately upon finding them.

[Kazeto]

One tip from me: even if you are playing a fully-melee build, do use ranged attacks against named monsters.

Not heeding that advice is an excellent way to die like a [insert whatever word that means a stupid person here, as the profanity filter is being cute and the non-vulgar word I tried to use got censored].

[Soul of Taneyev]

/*/ SPOILER WARNING/*/
My tip: Almost all skill trees are balanced. Try them all out and see how it suits you. For
example: If you got to floor 5 with a rogue build and then got to floor 8 with a mage build, next run use mage based skill trees. Personally I beat the game with a damage sponge but you can try what suits your personal playstyle. If you think that you've tried everything and nothing worked. Try pressing "randomize" to get a different skill tree every time.

If you're a mage, go with fire spell tree (i don't remember what it's called), it has basically a dragon summon pet that takes all the damage whike you pwn them with a gigantic fireball.

If you're a warrior, axe skill tree for the win! (i beat the game with an axe tank) After you upgrade the skill tree enough, you'll blackjack them before they even attack you.

If you're a rogue, use all points for assassination skill tree and sneak skill tree. (i don't remember what it's called) After maxing them both just spam ninja vanish and run, come back and stab them.

[Reinator]

Don't forget to keep an eye on your health bar, I've died at least twice because I didn't pay attention to how much health I had left before opening a door...

Production-oriented skills like smithing come with some stats, but mostly they are for guaranteeing you get better equipment and more supplies than you would otherwise have (remember, you're giving up having more abilities and higher stats to get that equipment, so make good use of it)... The "don't be afraid to use items" advice goes double if you take a skill like alchemy or fungal arts...

[Haldurson]

I disagree with Emmi with keeping to either roguish or warrior or mage skills. Mixing and matching is perfectly fine. It's ok to do so, and if you are going for something very specific, then sure, that can work. But don't assume that the BEST builds are pure builds.

[Haldurson]

Talking about great builds that are not pure anything, the type of build that I've won the most games with (that's GR/PD) have been crafting builds -- ones that involve taking at least 2 or 3 crafting skills + Perception. Granted, it's not as good if you are a beginner, so when you are just learning, make sure you at least dabble a bit with crafting to see if you like it and to learn the basics of it.

Furthermore, you can win the game with almost any build, even on the hardest difficulty level with permadeath -- it may not be as easy with some builds, as with others, but ALMOST any build is actually a viable winner. They may take a bit of extra luck, and there are a few skill combos that simply work very poorly together. But ALMOST any combination of skills can be a winner, if you play carefully and thoughtfully and have a decent understanding of game mechanics.