How do you...?

[Lizzard]

Instead of ♥♥♥♥♥ing about it being difficult, I'm wondering how some people do it. How are people who consistently get to the lower levels, getting there? How are the people who can spend 1 hour on a level, able to spend that long on a level?

My health always drains too quickly on any play through, to stick around too long - maybe a few minutes per floor before I'm down to 10 hp or so.

So, some questions:

How do you know when to move on? Do you try to limit yourself to a time frame, health, gold, or some other detail?

Assuming you have standard tier 1 wands and spells, how do you navigate through the extra levels at the start, like the Mines?

Other than getting really lucky with the RNG, how do you stay alive for 30+ minutes, like some people seem to do?

What tips or tricks do you have to avoid taking too much damage and survive long enough to not immediately escape to the end of the map?

[Grimshot]

1. I generally explore until I'm at roughly 20 hp, higher on more difficult areas unless I know I need to improve my wand..

2 & 3. I stay as far away from enemies as i can when fighting them, use environmental objects if they are present, keep myself wet and a water flask on hand, use other flasks when they are needed (you can sometimes skip a whole level if you feel like it with the stealth flask for example).

4. Most enemies with guns will not shoot at you if you are above them so you can hover over them and shoot them in the head. Snipers will miss you if you just levitate straight up. My favorite spell combo at the moment is homing shurikens with autocrit on bloody and oily, lets you kill things around corners really effectively.

Edit: Forgot to mention, I'm always on the lookout for a good wand with no shuffle, a low recharge rate, and at least 6 slots.

[Stafford's Bees]

Use a water flask liberally and keep filling it by diving in deep water with it equipped. Hose down sludge to water it down. Try to keep yourself wet, especially if you need to move through flame.

Resist the urge to go after dangerous gold nuggets, including following them into unexplored pits or if they are covered in more than a toe-ful of lava.

Digging is a huge advantage. It's loads of free gold, but even more importantly, it lets you take on fights from better angles. It lets you make pathways that a lot of enemies can't follow you through, cutting down on the times you get surrounded. It lets you make peeking ledges to shoot from with good cover.

Most enemies will have trouble fighting you if you're above them. Jetpack guys can't shoot straight up or down at all. Working your way to the right along the top of levels 2 and 3 to start with means you aren't surrounding yourself with so much unexplored territory at once.

Don't forget about useful potions. Invis and berserk are very powerful.

There are 5 tedious but easy max health pick ups that you can always get before going through the 1st portal. If I'm tryharding I'll grab them all after I've cleared out the mine level. You need to spray water to bridge over the lava lake. You can fly the gap with good booster usage, but a wand with recoil helps, or you can use polymorph. Also want polymorph to get above the spawn point to get the platform orb and the pyramid orb. You can get the two dark area health pickups without anything special - bomb out the lower passage to get it to drain. Equip your water flask and open your inventory screen. Right click on the flask to empty it, and also drink by holding down while going up for air. You'll drain the rest of it surprisingly quickly. Do the dark last because there's a health restorer in there, and you'll probably stumble into it. I usually save the first holy mountain health restorer for later.

[Grimshot]

Stafford raises a good point about digging. I'd like to add that the bomb wand you start with is usually the best candidate for digging spells. I often end up keeping mine around just for that, unless I find a bunch of black hole spells.

[Lizzard]

Digging spells, though, I find are a luxury I rarely have. I also do pretty well with digging, but what if you only have those 3 bombs you start with?

[Baron von Dapper]

Originally posted by Lizzard:

Digging spells, though, I find are a luxury I rarely have. I also do pretty well with digging, but what if you only have those 3 bombs you start with?

If you're desperate to get to chests early on, you can kick about explosive crates and barrels. You can just come back later on if you find a digging bolt or energy orb though.

Also, if you have a tentacle spell, you can drag wands out of the Holy Mountain and they will cost nothing once outside. Don't know if that applies to wands from the random shop though.

Originally posted by Stafford's Bees:

There are 5 tedious but easy max health pick ups that you can always get before going through the 1st portal. If I'm tryharding I'll grab them all after I've cleared out the mine level. You need to spray water to bridge over the lava lake. You can fly the gap with good booster usage, but a wand with recoil helps, or you can use polymorph. Also want polymorph to get above the spawn point to get the platform orb and the pyramid orb. You can get the two dark area health pickups without anything special - bomb out the lower passage to get it to drain. Equip your water flask and open your inventory screen. Right click on the flask to empty it, and also drink by holding down while going up for air. You'll drain the rest of it surprisingly quickly. Do the dark last because there's a health restorer in there, and you'll probably stumble into it. I usually save the first holy mountain health restorer for later.

Just to note, the orbs will only give spells the first time you find them.

[Vndtta]

Yeah, sounds familiar OP. It's not the fastest but you can keep an eye out for wooden things. There's usually at the least an oil lantern on the wall nearby. Set em on fire by shooting/kicking/whatever the lamp, and you might open up a new passage. Or danger! Whee!

Edit: Sorry if this sounds stupid. Admittedly it took me a bit to figure it out.

[Lizzard]

Actually I know most of the basics, but there are so many people complaining, I figured I'd start a thread and see if there were any additional details I was missing, that others would like to know too :) The orb locations are useful though! Thanks for that.

I'm sorry. What I meant in the OP was "The Collapsed Mines" People say to go explore those for better loot, but Going there with the starter wand kills me, so I need to explore the rest and then that part whittles me down to almost dead with random damage. By the time I get to the Collapsed Mines, I'm too far hurt to explore anything :(

[Garuda]

You definitely don't need to spend 1 hour on each level... Unless you want to collect the orbs. Which is a very bad idea if you didn't win at least once.

I speedrun the first two levels. Don't bother exploring and run past enemies; it takes like 1 minute to get to the Holy Mountains.

If I got good perks, but a bad wand, I climb back to the first level from the pit connecting the first and the third levels and I explore what I missed. Don't forget to switch the spells of the first two wands.
If I got good perks and a good enough wand, I don't bother exploring.
If I got bad perks, I just restart.

With good perks and good wands, take your time and use your water flasks to clear DoTs. Other than that you just need to know how enemies work, so if you die just retry and adapt your playstyle.

A win takes something like 15-30 minutes, if I don't bother exploring.

[☭Woodsman☭]

Use explosives lying around or even lanterns where you can to clear openings since you have limited bombs.

Lure fire wizards into puddles of water instead of trying to shoot them.

Learn all the spells/perks and how they interact with each other, and understand that until you know that you will kill yourself as often as your enemies.

Learn the whole map and how to get back to previous areas

[Doombringer]

Learning how to read wands so you don't kill yourself 'testing' something that is obviously suicidal is a good start.
Also learning how spells/mods/wand stats work so you can build usable wands is important.

Generally having a dps wand, a digging wand, and some nuke wand is useful.

Generally better to clear from the top down, much less likely to have burning oil or bombs (or other nastiness) drop on your head that way.

Drink sludge/fire/lava/oil when its on a surface so it doesn't get you when you are running away from something - careful with fire/lava though, easy to burn yourself if you aren't...

Always carry a water flask, always dump a few drops in toxic sludge so it becomes water (shooting the pool causes it to mix faster but may splash some out) and turn the surface of lava pools into rock. Also useful to put out fires, but that usually takes a LOT of water - make sure you know where you can refill it.

If I don't get edit wands anywhere perks:
Generally if I can kill the lich, I dig into/out of temples instead of using the exit - using the exit disables wand editing, but tunneling in/out means you can come back and swap wands/spells any time.

For digging into/out of a temple, usually go to the middle portal of the level, get a wand with acid trail and some cheap spam-cast spell (Avoid bouncy spells: yes they make more acid, but they also tend to get you covered in it too) and use the acid trail to eat your way down.
(It is much harder to work your way up - earthquake works, but will probably need all 3 charges to go up 1 floor - black hole works a bit better and is safer)
There is a way from Snowy Depths back out, so digging out is more important for the temples after it.

Acid trail also lets you shortcut levels: sit by the hole you cut out of a temple spam casting it across. Beyond a certain distance off screen stuff doesn't happen, so once you have acid'd out all you can, drop down and repeat. (Temple of the Art has some small areas of dense rock acid wont cut through, so digging bolt or whatever it)
This lets you drop straight down through the level and use a high recoil wand to boost your way back up it.

[Lizzard]

Hehehe I did have a rapid fire acid trail once. The level just melted away below me. The Lich, however, was a little more than I could take on with that wand.

In reading these, it seems perks seem to be the main make or break mechanics in success for a lot of this. Wands seem second to that. So would people agree that it's more important to get good perks, or are good wands better?

My best run so far, has come from spells that enhanced the perks and vice versa - contact spells + "bouncy" perk and Knock back spell with knock back perk. On a rapid fire wand, a few contact-triggered-Sparkbolts was enough to shred everything apart on a single level. BUT... I couldn't do that without also having a shield perk. So I'm leaning towards perks as being the real "make or break" mechanic in any run so far.

Going back up and down between the levels is good advice though!

[Botji]

I typically look around the Mines for a wand, if I dont find anything useful I used to go to the Collapsed Mines to search there but I typically dont find a lot there and its usually not much better than what I found in the Mines.

So now I often skip most of the Collapsed Mines and go down to the ice area past the lava and see if I can find a wand there around the edge. Even if its a wand with crappy spells on it, the stats are much better so its still a large upgrade compared to what I have before even if I fill it with crap spells it can carry my through the Caves and the Fungus tunnels or whatever its called.

That place usually have lots of wands but is filled with dangerous enemies, the better stats on the wand from the ice area helps a ton here in getting new and better spells to put into said wand from the ice area before actually going down to the ice area... if that makes sense.

When I have started to clear the ice area and take some damage I go back up to the Mines over the lava area, back to the Collapsed Mines and the dark area on the left of that to pick up the 2 max health items and 1 full heal. With that I either go back down directly to the ice area to continue clearing it or I backtrack into the Holy Mountains to pick up spells with the new gold I have before going on in the ice area and Hiisi base.

[Matti]

Originally posted by Lizzard:

Instead of ♥♥♥♥♥ing about it being difficult, I'm wondering how some people do it. How are people who consistently get to the lower levels, getting there? How are the people who can spend 1 hour on a level, able to spend that long on a level?

My health always drains too quickly on any play through, to stick around too long - maybe a few minutes per floor before I'm down to 10 hp or so.

So, some questions:

How do you know when to move on? Do you try to limit yourself to a time frame, health, gold, or some other detail?

Assuming you have standard tier 1 wands and spells, how do you navigate through the extra levels at the start, like the Mines?

Other than getting really lucky with the RNG, how do you stay alive for 30+ minutes, like some people seem to do?

What tips or tricks do you have to avoid taking too much damage and survive long enough to not immediately escape to the end of the map?

experience you get used to some enemies a.i. and dodging, you always remember where water/oil/blood/slime is in your surroundings in case you catch fire or toxicsludge, you always try to have water/blood on you if possible, if you see a flask grab it, rightclick it if useless (to empty it) and get water instead. and rightclick in emergency or throw if u have a few flasks...
maybe take the level 1 tablet on the right and in case of crazy enemies throw it on them or lure them into water so they drown.

just gotta play smart. the only time i feel like i cant do anything is because rng doesnt give me any wands or flasks at all, not even half decent ones or bad ones, its like walking through a half empty level with just enemies, and even if u get something by level 3, then a worm angered the gods and you pay for it and die, thats extremely infuriating only a hotfix/patch can fix.

[Stafford's Bees]

The times where a worm spawns and I just never notice it before I go through the portal are rare.

If there's a worm on the level, just put your feet on the ground near the portal and you'll soon hear the rumble of it coming for you. They can't get very high in the air and they can't maneuver at all once they are airborne. So you can taunt it by landing and then dodge it by taking to the air, giving you a relatively safe way to shoot at it.

If you haven't found a dead worm somewhere on level 3 then there's probably still one around.

[Stafford's Bees]

The behaviour on the jungle spiders seems messed up, though. Sometimes they climb up through the brickwork the moment you enter the shrine between levels 4 and 5.