Advanced Strategy: Runestone Keeper (Hints/Guide)

[thegrassyknoll]

STARTING OUT:

Guy: You start with one character; Guy. Since you have to progress to unlock other characters, the hardest part of game is managing to make it further each go with Guy. The start can seem very tough until you understand better the game mechanics. The passive abilities you buy in the store do make the game easier, but are not totally neccesary for some reasonably deep early runs.

Guy's Starting Attributes--- Str:5 / Dex:3 / Int:2 / Sta:4

After tinkering with level-up stat allocation, I have found the following set up to be the most useful to making it further and for min-maxxing Guy's equipment Loadout.

Level 10 Attributes---Str:10 / Dex:4 /Int:2 /Sta:7

When you level up an attribute is equally as important which one. The reason for this exact ratio is to use pacticular equipment to min-max what is being thrown at you in the timing of descending the dungeon. Outlined below is when/what to increase and why. Stamina you want to increase early to build up your survivability while the enemies can still reasonably be killed by your default strength. A final strength of 10 is important to use decent weapons/armor later.

Level 2: Sta +1
Level 3: Dex +1
Level 4: Sta +1
Level 5: Sta +1
Levels 6-10: Str +1


The dexterity increase at level 3 is threefold in rational, which i will entail below. Shortly after this increase(floor 3, 4 or 5) you will start to run into ranged enemies and enemies with armor. With 4 dex you can use shortbow and lightcrossbow(modest 8 base damage) for the rest of the game.

1---Ranged Attackers: This helps kill those pesky mana sucking wizards and archers that spawn at the start of the floor quicker than the time it would take to walk into melee range. Especially if you were lucky enough to find/buy armor with counter attack. Sometimes your path to that ranged attacker is blocked by a pitfall/monster or interactive device. Ultimately most the time, even though it does less damage than your melee weapons, it kills your opponent in fewer total turns, thus you lose less/no hitpoints and mana. It is important not to lose your shield against the first monsters. This severly diminishes your damage output for rest of floor if you have counter attack. Also if you take to many hits at start, all those heart drops just go to replenishing hitpoints, instead of increasing your max.

2---Melee Weapons: SInce the most likely weapons to find early all require 4 dex ( dagger/club/brass knuckles ) , your damage output starts falling behind quickly by floor 3-4. You need to be able to weild that second weapon as soon as possible to keep up with the monster's increasing hitpoints. Not to mention the useful passives a second weapon provides. i.e. rattlesnake/stun/double crit damage/extra to hit chance to name a few.

3---Skills: There are a couple of Skills that require 4 dex-namely the one that takes down enemy armor. Yes you have to be lucky to get the right skills early, but increasing your dexterity early makes it less likely that you miss skills. My goal is to always have a second skill by floor 4-6 as even the simplistic non-Intelligence based skills become a game-winning added option you will need to survive further down. Especially good is the one that increase Attack by 4 and resets if you kill within 4 turns. The one that blocks 3 physical attacks. And probably the best of the bunch is the skill that doubles your damage for one attack. Always get any skill offered that you qualify for. They are less than $10 gold anyways and you can always right-click and 'forget' them if you find better later on.

ADVANCED STRATEGIES( and min-maxxing):

1---Using Monsters Against Monsters: You may be thinking "Why do you boycott Strength for so long?" Mainly for the above reasons , but i will elaborate further. The first 3 Floors ALWAYS have at least one ghost or knight( they deal double incoming damage to other mosters)and no enemy healers. Explore as many tiles as possible to find the knight/ghost, and use your class skill that lowers damage to you and target them till the enemies die. Save the ballista if aimed properly for the final shot to kill the damage dealer when you are out of magic or they are the last enemy. By the time you hit floor 4-6 you most likely picked up a secondary weapon ( thanks to your dexterity at 4) to help your damage output when there are too many support monsters(healers/armor and attack buffers) to make opening every tile a viable strategy any longer.

2---Floor Clearing Bonuses: Killing all monsters on a floor gives you a choice of one bonus out of 7 random possibilities: Gold / Health / Magic / Skills / Item store / Weapon store / Rune exchanger.
Never pick the rune exchanger, it is too expensive and you can not even pick what rune you making. And runes are soo scarce that 3 for 1 is a bad deal, even if it feels like you have a ton of bronze ones at the time. Generally the order i go with is 1-Skills 2-Equipment store 3-Health 4-Gold 5-Magic 6-Item store 7-Rune exchanger-NEVER. Basically, always take one of the first 4 on the list unless you have no choice. Priority of picks can change based on your goals and current needs, it is all about min-maxxing. Here are some key picks and some key situations that are common. If there are hearts availible on the floor you havent picked up yet cause you are not at maximum health, use this boost then collect the hearts (never turn over a mist tile if your health is full and there is heart, grab the heart first). That said, topping off so that you are guarnteed to start the next floor at maximum health is a good idea as well where called for. That way you can hopefully collect some extra max health before the fighting starts. If your health is dangerously low, take health. Taking skills/spells is risky as often you dont qualify for any, but generally i will always pick this option until i have at least one extra skill. A common myth is to always take gold( read further as to why this logic is flawed) The Equipment Shop is my most common pick and deserves at category all its own.

3---Equipment Shops, It Takes Money To Make Money: There is lots of cheap gear that greatly enchances survivaility. Cheap stuff to always buy if you can-- low end weapons/armour with armour/counter attack/rattlesnake/regenerate life from tiles on it. Since you swap these items out to hit/crit gear for fights the bonus on them is just as good as if it was late game gear with the same special abilities. Lots of these items can be purchased for under $100 gold, especially a weapon/armour with ONLY ONE bonus on it. Cause all those above bonuses we only care about that one increase. If it happens to have to hit /dodge and and such on it, you probably cannot afford it to begin with, but if you could buy it!

4---Equipment Swapping: It took me probably 15-20 runs until i understood the full value of carrying multiple pieces of equipment for the same slot. SInce then, the learning curve went down drastically. I am never waiting for one piece of gear to fully replace another anymore cause it wont happen often. If any given piece of gear you find/buy does it all, great less micromanaging and better bonuses. I have finished normal/nightmare/chaos a few times each now, and not one of those runs did I manage to find buy a perfect piece for every slot. By games end you are lucky if you have 2 such rare pieces. Weapon set one consists of 2 weapons that each have rattlesnake ( cheap and common find ), but i switch to set 2 to fight with my main weapons. And have a bow and twohander in the inventory for situational combat. If none of these weapons provide armor, than i am carrying up to 2 more weapons by endgame. 8 weapons! lol, but it works. So pretty much collect anything that increases armor and put it on just before you down stairs to next floor. The extra armor points stay even after you take it off. You can then swap it out for gear with better combat stats like to-hit bonuses and such before you swing at a monster. If you find something that gives +1 or more mana when you change floors, or kill a monster make the switch to that gear before your killing blow or you leave the floor. To sum up, You will often have up to 3 pieces of gear for a given slot 1-best armour stat 2-retaliation stats like rattlesnake/counter strike 3-fighting stats ( to hit/crit/etc. Yes this slows down your game pace, but DRASTICALLY INCREASES your survivibility, thus allowing you to go further and earn more $$$gold and runes.

5---Best and Worse Gear: Anything that reveals extra mist tiles per moves is a death sentence. Never equip them as you uncover tiles. If the said piece also comes with other bonuses that are awesome, like +11 to hit for example. Than leave it in your inventory until you swing at monster, unequip when it dies, rinse and repeat till you find something better or sell it. Anything that grants +1 or more life per tile is amazingly good to have. I will often buy one in store even if i cant use it yet. Any 2 -hander with chain lighting on it makes life way easier in the deepest floors. Armour with counter-attack is like adding a third weapon that never misses. Remeber you can keep that padded shirt of counter attack on during the floor, and swap out for some heavy armour without counter-attack to go down the stairs with, and still maintain the maximum increase from having both. That +3 free rattlesnake damage is often is difference between one shot and 2 on the first 2 floors. You take damage if you have to 2-shot enemies. Than you maximum health suffers as you less opportunity to collect hearts at full health. Your primary mission the first 7 floors is to collect as many hearts for max health as possible.

6---Runes: The game is very stingy in giving out runes. However the same rule applies as equipment. Just dont spend them like crazy, and if you have not found some of the gear mentioned above in section 5 by the time you reach floor 8 or so, i would not spend another rune and just accept you are probably not going to make it to 20 or 25. Great things to use runes on anytime: Lightning machine found early on a floor. Spend a silver rune (never gold) and you are pretty much guarnteed at least one more floor at full health. Spend gold rune if you think you are going all the way. There are also some little shrines that give you bonuses much like a tattoo. I will ALWAYS spend a gold rune for +60 luck unless i know i am going to for sure die within a floor. That 60 luck points will net you a ton of good loot in return. Resistance is usually worth using one on as well, i generally skip the rest unless i am already commited to a god and have 3 tattoos, good gear and am thinking i am going all the way. If i think i have a great shot at winning i will always spend runes on everything .

7---Gods: Remeber we are talking about Guy here hence the short section on arguably the most important game mechanic. Rock god is the best to get first, as there is essentially no penalty for leaving him, and no negative for having him. If you get the gold god during a run pretty much stop spending runes and gold, as he is a game killer( unless you are super lucky with events and gear drops after). However i will still grab him if i see him first just to stockpile some cash. The attack god is really good, especially if you leave the rock god for him and got a few tattoos. But-the penalty for leaving him is the harshest---Hitpoints and soulpoints to 1! So while he is decent, leaving him during a mission without some form of healing nearby or +2 life per tile item is suicide. That said, you would only even debate leaving him for contract god anyhow. This is because you usually only see 3, maybe 4 gods per run, roughly ever 5-6 floors. So if you made it that far, gold gods bonuses dont help, and you probably dont need the extra life either from the rock god. Mana god is totally gear/rune/tattoo dependant when using Guy. So if you dont meet that criteria ( and you almost never will) than avoid. I leave the other gods out because the are soooo situational and more gear/rune dependant than the gods of rock/gold/attack and contract, which also happen to be way more common. So stick with that basic 4 for the majority of the time. Also to meet the other gods you have to go deep, and if you making it that deep, than you probably know the game pretty well by then and can make an informed decision as they come up.

8---Consumable One-Shot Items: Dont save highly situational items even if they seem powerful. Often it is better to have low soul point cost items that work against everything. Use items like they are going out stlye! Here is the ranks of the best items to keep around.

Tier 1-All of these items works against elite
1-Freezing Crystal----Works on anything, hits all enemies, and works on end guy.
1-Flower that kills elite monsters-----Insta-gibb that 150 hitpoint boss! Doesnt work on end guy
1-Throwing Knife-----Will save your bacon, but we also have dex 4 and a bow. SO if you can kill anything ranged without ruining your run using these, then do so. Logic is there are super deadly Ogres levels 6-15, and Plague Messengers that appear around 15-19, Those groups have killed many great dungeon dives. Also, insta-gibbs those wizards( who are not always elite and can't use flower on) before they steal all your magic points with one hit. A full bar of magic is often the difference between making it to the next level healthy or almost dead. 10 points to use is cheap, and works on elite like above flower. Doesn't work on end guy.
1a-Stunning hammer---I will always keep any combo of above over this, but how often do you have 3 of above items? So, the hammer deserves special mention. It is cheap to cast 10 or 15 i think, and stuns ANY opponent for 3 rounds, including end boss ( but not always for 3 full rounds). It is also cheap to buy in Item store and very common to find.
1a-Cure Poison Potion---- Situational since you dont use till around floor 7-14 but truly a life saver. Lost many games to stacked debuffs that this potion cures, that said would carry any above items first. Costs a ton to cast. Best to use em as you get em, than saving for a rainy day.

Tier 2---Pretty much use these as you get them, or carry until you find Tier one items.These are in no pacticualr order- most of these are on the cheap end to cast and work on anything, thats why i like them. Basically you are always using these items whenever you can to save the tier 1 items for truly life or death. However, if you ever have even the smallest doubt, fire off all your best items to make it further in the now.
-Guarnteed critical hit-used cleverly can replace the flower or knife to kill super deadly monsters-works on end guy
-Turn enemy into soul-doesnt work on elite
-Turn monster into cash( these are sooooo good, but they dont drastically increase survivibility as much as tier one items, so i cant waste a spot on them if i find better. Once got $1100 gold out of spawning a healing monster, a gnome, and an enemy that buffed monster's hitpoints to double upon death. So i walked around letting the gnome heal while clearing the floor. Then i popped the healer, killed the other buffer, then shot the gnome with this item. Doesnt work on elite or end guy ( yeah i tried! )
-Eliminate one enemy skills---Can literally save your game-Doesnt work on elite
-Eliminate all skills on all enemies---Even better but costs way to much. However works on elite but not end guy
-Bombs- awesome to weaken a tough floor
-Enemy attack to 1- very useful

Anything else: just fire em off to save above items. The remaining items ( dozens) are mostly situational, or are so rare or expensive in gold or soul point cost that my startegy doesnt change to include them. Also many of the rest dont work on end guy. But any item is great if it gets you one more kill, one more floor or the big win :)

Took me 3.5 hours to write this and am sure i am missing lots. I have never written anything like this before about a videogame, so i must really like this game. Thanks for checking it out.

[Dohi64]

why not submit it as a guide? would be easier to find later (for example whenever I start playing the game).

[thegrassyknoll]

I thought i was? Like i said, first time i done anything that comprehensive. Usually i am the guy looking stuff up. How do you submit a guide?

[Dohi64]

this is a topic on the forums, unless it gets stickied by a mod/dev it'll be gone from the first page eventually, but at the top there's a guides section (we're in discussions now), click on it and find the create guide button, then I guess it's just a copy-paste from here, unless you want to do some formatting and such.

[thegrassyknoll]

Thanks dohi64. "formatting and such"- lol ...Ya i have a ♥♥♥♥ ton of grammar errors i just noticed :) good call man

[Sodarulz]

Thanks for this. I am new to this style of a game and was lost a bit. This helped a lot!

[SexyPanther]

I'm surprised you didn't mention the drill as a "go-to" item. On higher difficulties and depending on the situation, I find a drill to be highly advantageous. Typcially, I horde at least one cure-poison potion as it seems to remove ALL debuffs, and floor 18 or 19 is a great time to remove crippling effects to prepare for the boss. Furthermore, the drill can spare you agony upon an otherwise successful run. Case in point, the drill allows you to jump straight to the boss at floor 19, allowing you to bypass killing anything on that floor. Considering I find myself reaching character level 10 anywhere between floors 13-17, forced fighting is simply a means of getting lucky for an item drop or, more likely, a good bet you'll face the boss with too-low health to be effective.

[thegrassyknoll]

Heya sexypanther. I have only ever used a drill once, and that was to skip to floor 10 on harder difficulty to get a new character cause i was bored of playing guy. Even when i was a newb, i tended to kill all monsters, or avoid the bare minimum if the math of one or two fights was too unfavorable. Besides if you are that hurtin that you commonly skip alot of fights, skipping to next floor just=death anyhow, right? Hence i feel the drill is soooo situational, that i have never bothered carrying or even using one minus that one time. Also if you are saving it for floor 19, you are wasting a third slot for a point you may or may not survive till. Not to mention that if you are consistently making it to 19, you likely are already implimenting many of the above strategies and can unlock other characters by now. Now, granted that the drill could save your life, but every item can and will. I just roll with likelihoods. I would prefer an item that gets a kill on a tough foe, rather than dodging it, and the rest of the floor with it. I appreciate the input and think any idea is interesting and plausible.
Want to hear something weird? I have only died on the end boss once and was shocked when it happened. That was around the 40th time(only twice on normal, twice on medium, rest on hardest difficulty) i beat the game. I had great gear and over 700 hitpoints. Just got super bad rolls and made a misclick. Like one in a million bad. From my experience, if you are making it to the end guy, you are probably winning. So am i just that lucky? Or more likely, these strategies make it so that when i reach the end, i am in great condition, have the necessary stats/skills/gear/gods etc to consistently win. These above strategies can and will help get you there in as good of condition as possible. My main purpose in this guide was to simplify strategy for newer players who are probably sick of playing Guy and have died many many times and still havent beat the game or unlocked new characters. And i wanted to dispell the common myth that you must grind and save money to advance in this game. Ironically, as i played more, i noticed that all of the above strategy applies mostly the same to all characters (minus the god selection segment, and stat allocation). But they do not deviate much anyways.

[KotNaKacu]

Few words from me ;)

Chest of Devour item - Turns a non-elite creature into a pile of gold (equal to the creature’s life points). This item can be very good used when you encounter Undead Priest who adds to random enemy health points. How much attach he have that much HP he will add to random enemy. If you leave only one enemy beside the Priest, he will constantly boost that monster HP to very high amount. You know what to do next… Having 2 priests ended in a monster with 370 HP turned into 370 GOLD.
Selling items before certain death - sometimes you know that you will not make it. You know it but this is turn based game, and… you can do something before dying. Why not sell your items (especially expensive yellow magic items) in a shop (assuming there is one) knowing that you would loose them anyway?
Bleed out before imminent lvl up - what does it mean? Lets say you have 7 enemies on the screen, are at about 90% of current exp to lvl up and have 100% hp… why not SMACK all monsters draining their hp, but not killing them. And finally kill one or two to lvl up and safely finish up remaining ones with low hp. This way you will not loose much HP after lvling up.

[thegrassyknoll]

All excellent strategies that i would rercommend all to use KotNaKacu :) The selling and bleed out concept greatly enhance potential profits and survivibility.
Chest of Devour is decent. But it costs alot to cast and doesnt work on elite. Hence why i would carry any of the tier one items i listed above over the chest. Ya i made 1100$$ off the chest item once, and that was fun, yet still dont recommend it. But much like the drill, to each their own.

[SexyPanther]

I'm liking the strategies coming out on this thread. In regards to your comments, grassyknoll, I suppose the drill makes more sense for someone who has a bit of experience and is going for specific achievements, possibly with harder characters than Guy. Now that I've beaten the game with every character, I'm exclusively using Dellamorey for runeword runs. The highest health I've ever attained was somewhere around 440, 700 is insane! I'm not about to comment on whether you were "lucky" in winning the game as easily as you seem to have, but I will say that from my own experience I've gone through many, many failed runs only to go on winning streaks shortly thereafter. I have yet to beat Ancient Memories though I have beat the game on Nightmare with Dellamorey. For that character, my upgrade path is to invest in Stamina until I'm level 4, then, depending on equipment, invest a few points in either Intelligence (preferred, as it starts with 4 and is good for acquiring skills) or Dexterity. The ranged attack I pluck in my secondary equipment slots and I will ensure my Strength maxes out around 10-13. Oh, and Dellamorey is the only character I "forget" my starting skill. Damaging myself using a skill does not seem worthwhile in my opinion.

[KotNaKacu]

Well in the ohase of the game where you collect GOLD like madman, using that item yielded me so much gold, 900, 500+ and few times 300. Worth using anyway ;)
PS: I am preparing guide to quests. Would you want to contribute to it?
Check my google docs document about them - Quests.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/103cVEGKZ_SPUk9Wu1g1C4Vje-BIZ5sCHbCHMsiTKVY4/edit (might probably ask for access).