Not particularly enjoying the starting hours of the game.

[GLM]

Had my eye on this game for a while, and now that I finnaly bought it... I'm not particularly impressed, specially how repetivive it is right now.

Had about 10 runs, where I felt I'm smashing my head against a brick wall, I'm yet to defeat Yigdrasil but I feel like everything has too much HP, and the game doesn't give you jack-digglidy-scrap in the beggining.

Am I supposed to just batter my head against the game until I have enough Witch Upgrades to steamroll the starting area? Suuuure that kinda worked for Hades and the mirror, but this game doesn't have any of the supporting elements to back that up, and its much much more unforgiving than Hades, and I'm not sure if its for the right reasons.

Doesn't help that the game insists that I must be using Ent, Ent, and ONLY BLOODY ENT whenever a skull is offered, where are the insteresting skulls? it seems my holy trifecta is Ent, Shield, and Recruit, because the game will only ever offer me those, I got Sword and Werefolf like once, and the rest was just a combination of the three above.

[NeonRed]

So I'm not 100% sure which tips to give you, but I'll try for some really general starter ones.

-Luckily the starter skull is actually very solid; you can deal out some good early damage by using the skull toss in melee so you pick it up automatically after it lands and basic attacking between tosses. Skull toss is also good for picking off range enemies by either finishing them off with it or using it to close the gap with the teleport and basic attack them.

-Focus down ranged enemies to make life easier: they're a bigger threat than melee enemies and can end up whittling your HP away.

-Try to take gold doors (plain looking, nothing special around them) over item doors (has boxes of treasure around them). Until you unlock the trait that lets you sell unwanted items for gold you'll have more control over your build by taking the gold and using it in the shop.

-Knowing when to dodge is very important: until you get more familiar with what enemies do I wouldn't try to play overly aggressive; you only find healing occasionally off enemy kills (orbs of +10 HP), food in the shop (which can be expensive and take away from buying items) and after boss/adventurer kills.

-For first boss I mainly assume it's his fist pound catching you off guard; dodge as the fist is coming down to avoid, hand swipes you double jump to avoid.

[Deus]

Few things..
1) The fox only gives you the common skulls, which there are 7 of, seems unlucky that you keep getting the ent and shield. You said you had 10 runs, which means at most you had 9 with the fox freed. Getting the same 3 out of 7 choices isn't something that is crazy over only 9 "rolls".
2) As someone else stated, the starter skull is perfectly fine and pretty strong in it's own right. If you are struggling to get past Yigdrasil... Don't blame the skull you have because, just going to be honest here, the first half of this game is more based on skill than the items or skull you have.
3) You are complaining about a rogue-lite being repetitive... not sure why you bought this game.
4) Yigdrasil is probably the easiest boss in the game, his ♥♥♥♥ is very telegraphed and easy to dodge. My guess is that you think this is just a beat 'em up game and don't even bother dodging while just trying to kill a boss as fast as you can before it kills you. Maybe try dodging instead of thinking if you mash attack fast enough it will die?

[RubyNips]

This game IS repetitive and not in the good way, read the reviews folks and stop defending it like it has no flaws.

- Majority of Skulls sucks or very risky
- If ur Skull and items dont have synergy by the second boss, reroll...
- Certain enemies are not random and their whole purpose to mess with you (unreachable locations, spikes at the top, spikes at the bottom and cant reach platform with double jump, tripple range enemies, etc...)
- enemies the same color as the background while special effects all over the place, ez death.
- Some runs no coins before first merchant
- Magic Skulls VASTLY superior to Physical due to no contact with enemy.
- Legendary Yaksha IS TRASH compare to Lich or Death.

Thats what i got so far, over all if you can see the artificial difficulty that ruining the amazing game, its like Ghost n Gouls for NES and SNES, the game just fking with you and every run feel like a total gamble, no need to say itgs a roguelite, TOO MUCH RNG!

This game can be 10/10 but certain design like Skulls and enemies placement are just cheap and ruining game loop.

This game need to learn from Dead Cell how to place enemies with quality and not quantity.

Again, who the f design the Skull and anyone even bother to balance them!? Terrible design!

[Punchchoke]

Turn on rookie mode in settings and you can get your traits as well as stages done.