Am I missing something?

[Jumbletoon]

I love this game, but so much of it feels like luck. I know a lot of rougelikes like this tend to feel like complete luck at the beginning, but after almost 38 hours my ability to get past the third area still relies almost entirely on find incredibly high damage spells like lightning bolt or glowing lance. I just don't get it, it feels like i can explore almost all of the first and second areas but it still seems like I almost never have the health or damage to stand a chance past there. Even in those few runs I've gotten to the lab I've still only had the spells to make 1 decent wand. So what am I missing? It feels like I need to explore more of the lower areas, but even combing through the first two or three doesn't seem to have any guarantee of giving you damage or health to do that.

[Oragepoilu]

Here a few tips. THIS INCLUDE SPOILER OF THE MAP BE AWARE.

1- Grab all the health bonus ASAP. I added beteween () the most easy requirement to do it safely.
-floating island over the mountain (teleporting, blasting from under to make it fall, better flying);
-the one over the pyramid in the east (to get over the mine, either blast once in the wall to rest before levitate over it, or teleport, or use some weapon with recoil to help you fly);
-Left side of the first biome, there is a dark cave with 1-2 upgrades. (faster swimming perk, digging, light);
-right side of the first biome, cross the lava and grab it (water on the lava). Something bad can spawn if you go back, might kill you, so either you levitate at the end and dig out up or you jump under the bridge down to reach the cold biome (good weapon, digging tool, speed/teleportation, pheromone flask, invisibility ...);
-In the same time, cut the bridge and go down near the west wall. At some point you can her another orb (need a digging tool);
-When you reach the cold biome, go wets and grab the orb in the other biome. Few enemy but powerful quick attack (speed, light, teleportation)


2- don't take the full health in the holy moutain unless you really need it. Take the health bonus before.

3- Health bonus can spawn in chest. Health bonus can be hidden under coal pile, snow, etc. Use spell to dig them out. Clear every dark area.

4- A luminous drill & teleportation can help you cheese nearly everything.
Hug some wall/ceilling, dig inside, and teleport inside. You will end in a closed safe space; no liquid inside. From here, aggro monster, go back in the safe space and kill them from the inside.

5- Abuse the flask. Pheromone make them fight for you; including the healer (green gun) and will heal you full life.

6- Do NOT abuse any ploymorphine/teleportation liquid unless it's your last option. Both can instant kill you. Morph into something weak or vulnerable (fish, fire head get OS by water ...) or teleport into some lava.

7- reroll the perk. Once a reroll statue is found, his price the starting price is fixed for this one; eventually discover another or two before you reroll to get overall lower cost.

8- If you have the tool for it, there is a lot of gold waiting for you hidden somewhere. To help you reroll. Grab a mining tool and fly to the ??? area top/east. From here dig top/west, there is a chunk of 250 000 gold.

9- You can get a lot of chest if needed (they spawn health bonus, wand, flask). It's tedious though. Grab the weird floating ball item and dig/use liquid to carry it on the floating island. It will be gone, and more chest will rain. Only a cave chest can trigger this.

10- Explore the other world. You can cross either west or east map wall, but it's big. After that you will find another world, and you can repeat as much as you want. To do it, either a luminous drill (super long), with some ambrosia to avoid the cursed rock damage, and a teleporting wand to avoid moving while you dig so the ambrosia stay on you. Make a little puddle before you cross the cursed rock area, and teleport back and forth to refresh the statue effect.
You can also just chaos polymorph into a big worm (do it 3 times; 2 layer or dense rock and one layer of cursed rock) but you WILL Anger the god if you polymorph too much, and you WILL not polymorph back if you abuse it too much. You can also get stuck as a worm if you aren't used to it. You can also fall into the ocean s a worm and drown.

11- you can dig around the holy moutain if you want too (using a black hole void spell is easy) to go back and forth. You won't anger the god if you dig up right where the tunnel to get out is located.

12- don't watse your time clearing the left biome of the first two level. One include some magic liquid that can instant kill you, and another include a mix of enemy that teleport, blind, poison, acid, knockback you. Usually all at the same time while you drown because of the flamable gas/ purple growing stuff. Almost never worth it.

13- you can climb back from the ice biome. Go east, levitate on the east wall; when you are stuck switch wall and finish climbing. (in case you don't haev a better way to go back)

14- Alchemist throw flask at you; if he is in a pool of liquid the flask won't break, so you cna take them with you. They are x4 slower to refill and carry x2 less if you refill it, they are just good to throw if you don't have a form of indirect damage.

15- if you REALLY need to go back to the holy moutain, and can't dig up (luminous drill is op for that, dig a small step to rest), you MIGHT be able to sacrifice a flask if you are close to be able to get in to give you the last push by swimming, and/or use spell with knockback.

As for specific tactic.

In the cold biome,you take freezing vapour damage. Never go in the bubble. You can "dig" the "ground" that spawn them sometime to avoid waiting, or teleport around.
The overall start is to ALWAYS fight from above, and ALWAYS fight them outside of your screen range.
The tank/turet might be best to ignore unless you can have indirect damage (gravity projectile, bouncing, digging under it)
The sniper need to be burst little by little, since he is slow to target and fire.
The big one is easy to dodge but come with friends. Kill the small one first, they are faster, go back and wait for them to come.
When they fly, you can knockback them. This can cancel what they do. Shotgun spell knockback, the bouncy ball do not.
Some enemy do NOT aggro if you attack with a weak spell like the bouncy ball, from far away.
They take poison and fire damage.
You can break some ice, they take some damage when it fall. Can also stuck them.
Cold water freeze into ice too, it can stuck them.

As for specific wand/spell.
Even the spark is enough here, if you have more than two. Be sure to read the fine print on the spell and wand; sometime it's OK to use a low regen hight mana capacity wand if it has a low cast/recharge speed. The bouncy ball for example reduce cast speed, so sometime you can double/triple spell with it super fast. Hit and run tactic.
Another example, the shotgun spell is OK, but spread too much; place in in a wand that reduce the spread with some other spell that do the same.
Different enemy have different resistance. Some of them don't care about magic damage but might get full arrow damage. Keep some variety if possible.

[Lucid]

You are correct that wand construction is key to surviving deep unless you're highly experienced and cheesing your way through but there is a huge amount of utility beyond simply finding a high damage wand.


Don't feel the need to explore every area fully. It's perfectly feasible to clear out the Mines, Collapsed mines. and the coal pits with very basic wands. But you can't keep playing that way, at least not every run.

There's a risk/reward element to the game. Getting a good perk in Holy Mountain can make a huge deal to a run. Clear a path there first, then explore. If you're low health just bounce out and move on. It's better than dying.

Flasks! Ambrosia is invulnerability, basically. Douse yourself in it. Make a pool of it and keep returning. A full flask will last for ages if you're just making puddles and scooping it back up. Invisibilium can let you scout ahead in dangerous areas. It's risky but practice will help you learn how to avoid getting unnecessarily stained.

I don't want to undersell how great a powerful wand is, and with more experience you will learn how to turn more and more spell combos into murder machines. But you can go really far without a death dealing wand and learning how to delve into dangerous areas without a murder wand will make many more runs viable.

A lot of the game is learning how to take what you've been given and build a strategy around it. A lot of the tools are unconventional.

[N.Wiseman]

It sounds like your problem might be over-reliance on high-damage high-mana spells. Try messing around with trigger spells, extremely fast-firing wands, and various projectile modifiers like fire, electricity, freeze...

Remember that the best thing to do with your wand slots is diversify - have a wand that can dig, a go-to for damage, perhaps a wand with some high-mana limited use spells on it, a wand with a bunch of crystals and explosives on the end of a trigger spell, a wand just for teleport... the list goes on.

Also, try speedrunning the first few bits of the game a little, if you're finding dodging difficult. Or just stand in front of an enemy and repeatedly dodge their attacks.

Everything everyone else has said is also good advice - play the way that works for you.

[lil'thang]

I'm not OP, but someone who is also 30ish hours into the game without a win. These posts are all very helpful and full of useful insights.Thanks Oragepoilu, Fugue and Wiseman!

I'm definitely over-reliant on high damage high mana spells and haven't gotten very creative with wandbuilding.

I don't really use flasks outside of a water flask (even though I hoard all flasks I find) except to douse flames/clear toxic stains etc. I've started using water flasks on flame boys now as they are a fairly tanky unit in the early game but get demolished by water flasks. How often should I be using flasks aggressively? Or in the case of ambrosia, when you've got a flask of it do you douse yourself all the time or just before choice encounters?

Is there anything I can do when getting stunlocked by multiple enemy projectiles? I have a feeling the answer to that one is "No"/"Don't get in a position to be stunlocked by multiple enemy projectiles" but thought I'd check to see if there's some sneaky manoeuvre I'm missing.

[Oragepoilu]

Ambrosia : If you see any encounter that don't "destroy" the ground and/or add too much liquid (slime blood etc), just making a little puddle (a few click really) will avoid you taking any damage.
Moving remove ambrosia, like any stain, but teleporting (aim at the ground, don't fall since it count as moving) let you move out of your puddle while keeping the bonus.
Monster gain it too - be careful.
Side note : ambrosia is 'heavy" and never catch on fire or is removed by fire. Having the fire ball item let you remove most liquid while standing in the puddle, so you can get most of the ambrosia back in the flask with nothing else mixed in.

Gun power, fire, lava : putting things on fire often make them retrait and/or stop them from attacking. A good early example is the flying slime ball; a few good spray over them while they try to path around a corner will lit them, and they often either don't use the ranged attack or just fly around before they die. That's true for monster, less for the technologic faction (using gun).

Oil : See the early little bugger that throw bomb/etc ? Move the oil down, since they often go down too. them lit it on fire with a lantern or smth. Oil burn for a long time and there is a LOT of it.
This avoid you taking shotgun damage, bomb damage, etc. (plus more money)

Water : good for fire enemy. Also good if you need to walk into a fire, douse yourself before. if you are badly poisonned (50%+) do NOT try to spray, just break the flask immediatly on yourself and stick in the water while you deal with whatever send you the poison.
In the case of fire monster, don't hesitate to throw the flask if you will get stuck near them.

Slime : it's better to douse off fire than using some water if you spray, and same for poison. Sticking inside some slime (and it's not hard to do, it doesn't move much) might be more helpfull than using water at time, especially if you need to cross an area destroyed by acid with lot of very small pixel puddle.

Poison : top tier early flask to get. You can throw a empty flask into some poison to fill it, then add some water before you go in and take the flask.
Unless there is some water around (hint : fire remove the water), you can spray on monster or make little puddle and wait for them to step in it. Example : in long corridor, if you are chased go back and leave some poison behind you. Use water after to remove it safely.

Acid : if you can some, and do not have a luminous laser, take some. It can allow you to make a path to the next biome from above so you can climb back later. It's not a bid deal to anger teh gods anyway, he often die by either tthe rock falling from his trap or the red particule cursed damage. In any case, you have some acid, right ? Use it on him.
Also, might be dangerous, if you are above a pack of tech monster with gun in the cave (big one followed by small one) throwing a acid flask can solve your issue.

One note, flask break if you leave it on the ground. Sometime because of growing plants, sometime simply because the world reload the area. If you want to store a liquid, dig a hole and store it here, not inside some flasks (example : massive puddle of blood)
I tested storing flask in liquid (water, blood, slime) on different ground (dirt, wood, sand, snow) and they ALWAYS break at some point.

TL;DR liquid are OP, abuse them early unless it's 100% safe to kill with a wand. Flask are "infinite" if you find the alchemist (he throw them, if it's in water, you can catch them back) but lower filling speed & capacity. There is plenty of liquid early.


As for the stunlock. A perk let you get immune to it, but yeah, you will fall down if you take a heavy hit. Some spell and perk get you a shield, it can repell some ranged attack that would otherwise stun you; And a teleportation spell will let you move while you fall down, it can svae you.
A black hole wand can also let you dig out of the way if you fall somewhere you don't want too, this can quickly let you get out of the line of sight. Or might make you fall even further into more problems.

That's kinda why you don't want to have "direct" damaging wand early. Use trigger, bouncing, etc to attack from outside their line of sight. In the cold cave, jumping back and forth around so you can see if they try to fire at you. Don't just jump down somewhere you can't see.
The "bubble" type of spell, even the big one, don't hurt you from their explosion damage and have a good ratio mana/damage usually.
Also, using a trigger let you use your wand once then immediatly hide while the spell goes on.
Or better, you can use a long trigger chain on one wand, then immediatly swap to another wand. Just don't forget to swap back to the trigger wand to reset his cooldown before next encounter.