Tips and Tricks

[Vico-Chess]

I've been playing for a good amount of time and I've have not gotten that far. Does anyone have any tips and tricks to give me an edge.

[santi]

After years of not playing i felt like installing this game again and stumbled upon your thread. I honestly never understood why this game got the amount of flame it received and was considered so difficult. As for tricks, here are a few i can still remember from back in the day.

1. It might not seem like a game which is dominantly based on turns, but at times it is very helpful to not click anything and just think. Take your time.

2. Melee is a joke, in my humble opinion. I exclusively went for Range or Magic damage.

3. Dont get discouraged by dying. With dying the game gives you more and more heroes to play with, ergo more opportunities to experiment and defacto making you stronger.

4. Never open doors standing right in front of them!!! Always open them from a diagonal angle.

5. Never open doors when some parts of the dungeon are still unexplored. Always uncover the rest of the accessable map, before opening new areas. There might still be an enemy creeping around. Sometimes it is a good idea to stand in front of a door and hit the next turn-button a few times, without opening said door. Just to be sure. I also prefered to scavenge a floor before proceeding to the next one. You never know what useful items might still by lying around.

6. Dont despair at the view of a large group of enemies. Move slowly backwards and definitely break line of sight with their range units.

7. Fleeing out of a battle and forcing the enemy into a choke point might seem like a good idea, but can backfire fairly easily, because of the now blocked enemies not standing in the choke triggering different groups of enemies. Not saying you should avoid chokes, just prepare for potential consequences.

8. Kill those pesky Rush Goblins first. The ones which have two actions per turn. Once in melee range, they will melt your healthpoints.

9. Always read an items' title before picking it up, if possible. Often the title reveals the benefitial or detrimental bonuses.

10a. On death 20 or so you should get the Human Amazon, a range hero with a holy damage bow. As mentioned above, range and magic heroes can be quite powerful, in MY opinion of course. And, if i remember correctly, holy damage has a higher hit chance than the other elemental attacks, can boost your stats, and offers penetration, in other words, the projectile can pass through enemies, if someone in the back rows would be a more dangerous threat than the one enemy standing right in front of you. Other useful heroes which were to my liking were the Human Enchantress, the Pixie Mage, Wizard, and the Human Cleric.

10b. After receiving the Human Amazon, try to beat Mask of the Boy King. Lots of enemies there are vulnerable against your Holy Bow, and the quest reward is the Burial Mask. Since the Human Amazon starts with an empty helmet slot, the Burial Mask fits this slot rather nicely and comes with a decent defense bonus. The heightened vulnerability towards lightning damage is not so dramatic. Honestly, i find lightning is the weakest of all the elements in the game. This relic should give a benefitial edge for the other dungeons.

11. The easiert relic to farm is the Unicorn Horn located on the second floor of Battle for Stormrise. Mostly useful for mage classes, but it offers a fair defence bonus as well.


I know this post comes "a little" late. It is only so often i browse through my games list and visit the games' forums. Still hoping any of the above helps anyone in 2017.

[Vico-Chess]

Thanks for the tips.

[SilverAgeFan]

Santi, looking at your profile, I see you have completed the games achievements 100%. Any tips specifically geared towards Ultimate Warrior and Iron Man, i.e. Starting character or dungeon?

The other achievements I have yet to do are just a matter of time.

And nice job on your 68% overall completion rate. Trying to break 60% myself, hopefully this summer.

[Oddball]

There's a bug in the Ultimate Warrior acheivement(which I never got around to fixing) that means you can complete it over multiple run throughs. As long as you get the other stat acheivements you'll get the Ultimate Warrior acheivement. Iron Man is easiest with the Titan or Eye Terror characters. Also remember that you can take an artifact at the start and still get the Irom Man acheivement. I recommend the Ring of Gax if you have it. Or for a more interesting run the Wizard's Slippers .

[SilverAgeFan]

Thanks Oddball for responding here. Always appreciate a developer who checks in on some of their older titles.

[santi]

Originally posted by SilverAgeFan:

Santi, looking at your profile, I see you have completed the games achievements 100%. Any tips specifically geared towards Ultimate Warrior and Iron Man, i.e. Starting character or dungeon?

The other achievements I have yet to do are just a matter of time.

And nice job on your 68% overall completion rate. Trying to break 60% myself, hopefully this summer.

As far as i can remember, i achieved Iron Man and Ultimate Warrior both in the dungeon They dwell beneath. I found that this dungeon had a higher drop rate of potions and scrolls (compared to the other dungeons) which will benefit towards these achievements, either by boosting all your stats for Ultimate Warrior or for making up for the missing equipment for Iron Man.

I played Ultimate Warrior a bit counterintuitively by deliberately not picking up gear items which would raise my main stat (range, melee, magic) and making up for that by using a necrotic or holy weapon. The sheer amount of enemies in that dungeon will give you high health points and main stat farming. But, of course, you either have to start with such a weapon or have enough luck finding one early enough. It is, however, achieveable without bug using.

As for Iron Man, one useful tip would be fire resistance. You start with so little equipment that one single destroyed item can screw your whole run over. Do this by using preferably Guldar's Helmet as your start relic or by scrolls which in their name clearly indicate immunities, and once you have this resistance try to not pick up any more of said scrolls. Or just prioritize the enemies with fire damage firstly. I would also recommend range or magic damage, because in They dwell beneath are fire lizards and fire rats which explode on dying, which means melee classes have a higher probability of losing items if not resistant against fire.

Toy Soldier can be achieved by using Black Leather Necronomicon as your start relic and just dropping your weapon, and playing a hero with high health points and defence.

The Collector achievement is farmable either by dying a lot or playing Tower of the Magus, which is what i did. The layout of this dungeon makes runs very predictable, fast, and you can choke point the enemies with ease almost the entire time.

As for characters, i almost exclusively played Wizard, Amazon, Pixie Mage. I just completed Iron Man again as Amazon with holy damage bow and no relics on They dwell beneath, just to make sure i can backup my tips. xD Screenshots are down below.

Good luck! ^_^


http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=882317487
Amazon on They dwell beneath. The high stats are a result of potions, scrolls, and the buffs of the Holy bow. As you can see, with the right gear you can also aim for the Ultimate Warrior. Just look at those juicy health points! yumm

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=882317631
Since the save games are stored locally on the computer and not in a cloud i lost all my progression from years ago. I simply did not care to save them. It took a few tries, but i managed to beat the achievement again. xD

Originally posted by Oddball:

There's a bug in the Ultimate Warrior acheivement(which I never got around to fixing) that means you can complete it over multiple run throughs. As long as you get the other stat acheivements you'll get the Ultimate Warrior acheivement. Iron Man is easiest with the Titan or Eye Terror :eyeterror: characters. Also remember that you can take an artifact at the start and still get the Irom Man acheivement. I recommend the Ring of Gax if you have it. Or for a more interesting run the Wizard's Slippers :geldoffon:.

By the way, David, i love your game!

[SilverAgeFan]

Originally posted by santi:

As for characters, i almost exclusively played Wizard, Amazon, Pixie Mage. I just completed Iron Man again as Amazon with holy damage bow and no relics on They dwell beneath, just to make sure i can backup my tips. xD Screenshots are down below.

Wow! Very impessive and quite inspiring!

Plus thanks for the additional tips.

[Jims9350]

Originally posted by santi:

After years of not playing i felt like installing this game again and stumbled upon your thread. I honestly never understood why this game got the amount of flame it received and was considered so difficult. As for tricks, here are a few i can still remember from back in the day.

1. It might not seem like a game which is dominantly based on turns, but at times it is very helpful to not click anything and just think. Take your time.

2. Melee is a joke, in my humble opinion. I exclusively went for Range or Magic damage.

3. Dont get discouraged by dying. With dying the game gives you more and more heroes to play with, ergo more opportunities to experiment and defacto making you stronger.

4. Never open doors standing right in front of them!!! Always open them from a diagonal angle.

5. Never open doors when some parts of the dungeon are still unexplored. Always uncover the rest of the accessable map, before opening new areas. There might still be an enemy creeping around. Sometimes it is a good idea to stand in front of a door and hit the next turn-button a few times, without opening said door. Just to be sure. I also prefered to scavenge a floor before proceeding to the next one. You never know what useful items might still by lying around.

6. Dont despair at the view of a large group of enemies. Move slowly backwards and definitely break line of sight with their range units.

7. Fleeing out of a battle and forcing the enemy into a choke point might seem like a good idea, but can backfire fairly easily, because of the now blocked enemies not standing in the choke triggering different groups of enemies. Not saying you should avoid chokes, just prepare for potential consequences.

8. Kill those pesky Rush Goblins first. The ones which have two actions per turn. Once in melee range, they will melt your healthpoints.

9. Always read an items' title before picking it up, if possible. Often the title reveals the benefitial or detrimental bonuses.

10a. On death 20 or so you should get the Human Amazon, a range hero with a holy damage bow. As mentioned above, range and magic heroes can be quite powerful, in MY opinion of course. And, if i remember correctly, holy damage has a higher hit chance than the other elemental attacks, can boost your stats, and offers penetration, in other words, the projectile can pass through enemies, if someone in the back rows would be a more dangerous threat than the one enemy standing right in front of you. Other useful heroes which were to my liking were the Human Enchantress, the Pixie Mage, Wizard, and the Human Cleric.

10b. After receiving the Human Amazon, try to beat Mask of the Boy King. Lots of enemies there are vulnerable against your Holy Bow, and the quest reward is the Burial Mask. Since the Human Amazon starts with an empty helmet slot, the Burial Mask fits this slot rather nicely and comes with a decent defense bonus. The heightened vulnerability towards lightning damage is not so dramatic. Honestly, i find lightning is the weakest of all the elements in the game. This relic should give a benefitial edge for the other dungeons.

11. The easiert relic to farm is the Unicorn Horn located on the second floor of Battle for Stormrise. Mostly useful for mage classes, but it offers a fair defence bonus as well.


I know this post comes "a little" late. It is only so often i browse through my games list and visit the games' forums. Still hoping any of the above helps anyone in 2017.

Thanks very much!

[SilverAgeFan]

After chipping away at this title in the background for almost two years, finallly got 100% last night.

Last run was with the Swart Overlord on Dark Hearts and Evil Minds. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone, but it was a really interesting combo of dungeon and character class. Played much more differently than I expected.

It’s the touches like these that made my time with HSL that much more enjoyable. I wish more people were able to get over the initial learning curve and frustration many first feel with this game. It’s a pretty fun title once you move beyond the absence of the more common RPG tropes, including character levels.

And unlike most games, which for me lose their luster after the first 1/3 or so, HSL really only began to shine when I was halfway through the content present in the game.