Official Guide — Alternate ways of playing

This is part of the official guide for HyperRogue. The main guide explains the main game in detail, as well as how each land works. This guide explains alternative ways of playing, such as Orb Strategy Mode, Racing Mode, and geometry experiments.

Overview

HyperRogue has much more than just the main game. There are several different ways of playing, and there are also many ways that you can experiment with hyperbolic geometry without having to survive. Maybe you want to try to find new discoveries in hyperbolic geometry, which has already been done via this game.

Or maybe you're frustrated that you have to start over because of a single misclick after collecting 400 treasure. Then Orb Strategy Mode is for you.

Whatever you want, you'll be able to do it in HyperRogue.

Orb Strategy Mode

Orb Strategy Mode is a different way of playing where achievements are still available, unlike most alternate game modes. Instead of getting a game over immediately when checkmated, you gain orbs by getting treasures, and you can use these orbs at any time. If you are checkmated, the inventory screen will automatically be shown. Orbs cannot be found randomly unless these orbs are vital for the land (e.g. Orb of the Sword for Burial Grounds).

For each land, the first orb is gained by getting 10 of that treasure. The next is a random number from 11 to 27; the number is not known until you get it (although if it still says "11 to 27" and you have 26, you know the 27th one will give you an orb). Orbs are given at increasingly rarer intervals, although there is some randomness involved. You can see in what range you will get the next orb by opening the inventory screen. In addition, secondary orbs are given once at 10 treasures, but only once. For example, the Orb of Winter is gained normally in Blizzard, and once each at 10 treasures in Icy Land, Cocytus, Dry Forest, and Dragon Chasms, which are the four lands where the Orb of Winter is the secondary orb in the normal game.

Completing a land requires 50 treasures instead of 10, with the exception that unlocking a land that would require 10 in normal mode requires 25 in Orb Strategy Mode, not 50. For example, Zebra requires 25 Phoenix Feathers. Hell still requires 50 in 9 lands each, and Hyperstones require 50 in every land, which I don't believe anyone has legitimately done, although I have no way of knowing. Usually, getting 50 treasures will give you 3 to 5 orbs for that land, with a small chance of more than 5, but never fewer than 3. Specifically, you have a 23.3% chance of getting 3, a 48.6% chance of getting 4, a 22.6% chance of 5, 4.8% for 6, 0.59% for 7, and 8 or more is extremely rare.

Lands that require 30 and 60 treasures in normal mode require 100 and 200 treasures in Orb Strategy Mode. Scores in Orb Strategy Mode can be over 1000, so getting 200 isn't that hard. Graveyard and Hive require 500 enemy kills instead of 100. Dragon Chasms requires 30 unique enemy kills instead of 20.

Orbs of the Mirror are extremely powerful, and only appear in Orb Strategy Mode. See the "Hall of Mirrors" section for their effect. You get them for 10, 22, 34, 44, 64, 96, ... treasures in the Hall of Mirrors (not random, unlike most; the function is cubic), and you get additional Orbs of the Mirror for collecting the Holy Grail and the Orb of Yendor. Specifically, you get one for the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 8th Holy Grail (and theoretically higher powers of 2), and the same is true for the Orb of Yendor.

Orbs of the Mirror have a special effect. You can only use one if you are standing next to a mirror wall or mirror shard. Using it will allow any other orb you have to gain between 3 and 10 uses, with more powerful orbs getting fewer, in general. Orbs that you have gained, but have used all of them, cannot be mirrored, and each orb type can only be mirrored once.

Orbs of Safety can appear in the Crossroads after collecting 25 Phoenix Feathers, so you don't have to worry about wasting an orb to save or clear memory. Even if you don't have 25 Phoenix Feathers, you can find Orbs of Safety in the Prairie. Orbs of Yendor appear in Crossroads after collecting 50 Demon Daisies, and everywhere after collecting 100.

Graveyard, Elemental Planes, Land of Power, Dungeon, Hell, and a few other lands give bonus orbs, usually of random types, after collecting certain numbers of treasures. This is because they would otherwise be pretty useless; for example, if Graveyard only gave Dead Orbs, that would give very little incentive to go there. Instead, you get 1 Dead Orb for each orb used, and Graveyard gives a random offensive orb every 25 treasures.

Achievements are mostly enabled. However, any achievement for collecting 10 of a specific treasure in normal mode requires 25 in Orb Strategy Mode, any achievement for collecting 25 in normal mode requires 50 in Orb Strategy Mode, and any achievement for collecting 50 in normal mode cannot be completed in Orb Strategy Mode. Some achievements are much easier to get because you can set them up, like using an energy sword to kill a Goblin, and killing 10 enemies with Flash or Lightning.

Tips and Tricks in the Orb Strategy Mode

• Some orbs are much more useful than others. If you are going for the Orb of Yendor, orbs of Flash (Icy Land) and Speed (Alchemist Lab) are worth getting several of. Frog (Zebra) is also very useful, even though Zebra is a difficult land.
  
  
• You might want to collect exactly 22 Turquoises in Hunting Grounds. This is so that treasures can spawn on the edge of lands adjacent to Hunting Ground, and Hunting Ground is a safe land with no attacking monsters until you collect your 23rd Turquoise. Specifically, on the border of any two lands, if the difference between treasures collected is 10 or more, there will be fewer in the land you have collected more of, and with a difference of 20 or more, there will be none in that land.
  
  
• If you enter the Mirror Land from the outside with more than 30 treasures collected, you are almost guaranteed to need to use an orb to get out. This is often still worth it, as you need to be next to a Mirror Shard or Magic Mirror to use an Orb of the Mirror.
  
  
• Orb of Safety in any gravity land returns you to the Crossroads, unless it's a subland (e.g. Lost Mountain returns you to Jungle) or a trap land (doesn't work at all in Haunted Woods or Dungeon). If you're lost in the Haunted Woods, you can't get out, even in Orb Strategy Mode.
  
  
• No matter what your goal is (unless you're going for an achievement), you want to unlock Hell by collecting 9 treasures in each of 50 lands. This is for several reasons: 1. Your first and second Orbs of Yendor each give an Orb of the Mirror (plus 50 points if playing for score). 2. If you're playing for a high score, you can collect 100+ Demon Daisies with little risk. 3. You will also unlock the Land of Power, described in the next bullet point.
  
  
• Powerstones amplify the effects of the Orb of the Mirror. 20 Powerstones will multiply the number of uses by √2 (rounded down, so 3 becomes 4 and 10 becomes 14), 40 Powerstones will multiply it by √3, and 60 Powerstones will multiply it by √4 = 2. This applies retroactively; even if you have run out of a particular orb that has already been mirrored, you can get extra uses by collecting Powerstones. Note that even with 60 Powerstones, you cannot get 2 Orbs of the Mirror by mirroring an Orb of the Mirror; this exception is hard-coded into the game.
  
  
• Some orbs are overpowered in certain lands, like Orb of Lava in Vineyard and Orb of Winter in Minefield (the latter is listed as "forbidden", but I'm not sure what the penalties are).

Experiment with Geometry: Introduction & Basic Tilings

Heptagonal mode, added in 8.2, is a game mode where the normal tiling is replaced by the {7,3} tiling made up solely of heptagons. You can play heptagonal mode by choosing "Experiment with geometry", and then selecting pure instead of bitruncated as a variation, while still in the standard tiling.

In effect, the heptagonal mode switches the standard HyperRogue world for one with even greater curvature. The visibility is lower but you have even more options for movement, making it, overall, a bit easier.

Achievements are disabled in heptagonal mode, with one exception: there is a special achievement for finding the Holy Grail in the heptagonal mode. There is also a special leaderboard for total treasure collected in heptagonal mode, but other leaderboards are disabled.

There are other geometries you can experiment with, but they have no achievements or leaderboards except for those mentioned:

Basic Tilings

• {3,3} (tetrahedron): Bitruncated: Truncated tetrahedron, 8 tiles. Pure: Regular tetrahedron, 4 tiles.
  
• {4,3} (cube): Bitruncated: You are on a truncated octahedron. Only 14 tiles exist. You can also play this without bitruncation (i.e. pure), but with only 6 tiles, it is useless.
  
• {5,3} (dodecahedron): Bitruncated: A truncated icosahedron, with the hexagons and pentagons of a soccer ball. 32 tiles only. Halloween, where you have to collect treats and conserve your orbs, is a minigame in this mode; there is a leaderboard for total treasure collected, and there are achivements for 50 treats and 100 treats. Pure: You are on a dodecahedron, with only 12 tiles.
  
• {6,3} (Euclidian hex grid): 3 hexagons at each vertex, in a (flat) Euclidean plane. This mode is meant to show players how HyperRogue's concepts require hyperbolic geometry to work, and how they don't work in Euclidian geometry. There is an achievement for getting 35 Mirror Images/Mirages in a Euclidian mode.
  
• {8,3} (like standard but with octagons): Bitruncated: Two hexagons and one octagon at each point. This version has a special land called Crystal World, which has parity and Ratlings like Warped Coast does. There are no achievements or leaderboard for Crystal World. Pure: Three octagons at each point.
  
• {3,4} (octahedron): Bitruncated: A truncated cube, with 6 squares and 8 triangles. Pure: A regular octahedron, with 8 triangles.
  
• {4,4} (Euclidean square grid): Another tiling of the (flat) Euclidean plane. Bitruncated: A truncated square grid, with 2 octagons and 1 square at a vertex. Pure: A simple square grid, which is the most popular Euclidean tiling.
  
• {5,4} (four pentagons): Pure: Each vertex has four pentagons. Bitruncated: Each vertex has two octagons and one pentagon.
  
• {6,4} (four hexagons): Same as four pentagons, except replace pentagons with hexagons.
  
• {7,4} (four heptagons): Same as four pentagons and four hexagons, with heptagons.
  
• Variant of the binary tiling: A tiling based on concentric horocycles. The larger curved edge of a cell is twice as long as the smaller one, and cells meet in a brick-like pattern at the horocycles. Instead of selecting variations, it's possible to modify the width parameter, which determines how long the curved edges are, but doesn't change how tiles are connected.

Archimedean Tilings

This submenu of the Basic Tiling menu contains Archimedean tilings, which have different polygon types at a vertex, even when no variation is selected ("pure"). The name is a bit misleading, since this section also contains regular tilings, which only have a single polygon type around a vertex, like the square tiling (4,4,4,4) = {4,4}. This section is also slightly redundant, and contains tilings from the Basic Tiling menu.

The color coding specifies the geometry type, and whether a tiling is regular, or Archimedean:

• Green means Euclidean geometry, blue means spherical, red means hyperbolic, and purple is for unusual spherical tilings.
  
• A darker color indicates that all polygons are of the same type (usually regular tilings), and otherwise a brighter color is used (usually Archimedean tilings).

Experiment with Geometry: Quotient Space Geometries (incomplete!)

From the Quotient Space submenu, the following tilings are available:

• Elliptic geometry in {5,3}: Same as the spherical dodecahedron from the basic tilings, except opposite tiles are identical, leaving only 16 distinct tiles if bitruncated and 6 if pure. If bitruncated, Halloween is playable in this mode the same way it is in Spherical, with the same achievements and leaderboard.
  
• Zebra quotient: Bitruncated: There are still 2 hexagons and 1 heptagon at each corner, but there are only 40 distinct tiles; the world wraps around, and you can see multiple copies of everything, including yourself. If you choose Desert and defeat a Sandworm, you get an achievement. Pure: Three hexagons at each vertex; only 12 tiles.
  
• Field quotient: The world wraps around, but with a much larger space. The default is 18920 tiles (bitruncated) or 5676 tiles (pure), but this can be changed in "advanced parameters". You cannot see copies of yourself, unlike Zebra Quotient.
  
• Torus: Euclidian (hexagons only, no curvature), but the world wraps around. World size defaults to 381 and can be modified.
  
• Elliptic geometry in {4,3}: Same as the spherical cube from the basic tilings, except opposite tiles are identical, resuling in only 7 tiles if bitruncated, and just 3 if pure.
  
• ...

Experiment with Geometry: 3D Tilings

From the Dimension submenu, the following 3D tilings, also called honeycombs, are available:

• 4 hyperbolic honeycombs based on horospheres: Horospheres are spheres with an infinite radius, and have a Euclidean surface. These honeycombs are constructed by tiling concentric horospheres with a Euclidean tiling, like the square grid {4,3}, the triangular tiling {3,6}, or the hex grid {6,3}. Then, tiling blocks are created from the 2D tiles by connecting those with the closest outer horosphere.
  
• The order-4 dodecahedral honeycomb {5,3,4} is constructed from dodecahedra that have a dihedral angle of 90°. Thanks to this property, their vertices are like the vertices of a Euclidean cube, resulting in 4 dodecahedra around edges, and 8 dodecahedra at vertices.
  
• The order-5 cubic honeycomb {4,3,5} is constructed from cubes, but has 5 cubes around edges, instead of just 4. This results in a huge number of 20 cubes at each vertex.
  
• Field quotient variants of {5,3,4} and {4,3,5} are available: Those are just like the above regular hyperbolic honeycombs, but wrap around, and therefore only have a finite number of tiles.
  
• {4,3,4} cube tiling: The most popular (Euclidean) honeycomb, which consists of cubes, and is used in many voxel-based games like Minecraft.
  
• Rhombic dodecahedral honeycomb: Another Euclidean honeycomb, which consists of rhombic dodecahedra. It can be generated from the cube tiling by marking every other cube, splitting each marked cube in 6 square pyramids, and attaching each square pyramid with its base to an adjacent cube. As a result, a square pyramid is attached to each face of a non-marked cube, turning it into a rhombic dodecahedron. The tiles are arranged like spheres in a face-centered cubic sphere-packing (fcc).
  
• Bitruncated cubic honeycomb: One more Euclidean honeycomb, built from truncated octahedra. It can be generated by arranging truncated octahedra according to the body-centered cubic system (bcc), where half the truncated octahedra share the same center as a cube in a cube tiling, and the other half are centered on a vertex in the same cube tiling.
  
• Spherical or elliptic n-cell honeycombs: {5,3,3} has 3 dodecahedra around edges, {4,3,3} has 3 cubes around edges, {3,4,3} has 3 octahedra around edges, and n-cells of type {3,3,x} have x = 3, 4 or 5 tetrahedra around edges. Spherical n-cell honeycombs are tilings of the 3-sphere, and consist of n tiles. Points in a 3-sphere have an opposite "pole", a point whose minimum distance from the first point is maximal. Elliptic space is derived by identifying each pair of poles as a single point, and as a result, elliptic n-cell tilings only have n/2 tiles. For example, the spherical 120-cell has 120 dodecahedron tiles, but its elliptic version only has 60 tiles.

Yendor Challenge, Part 1

Yendor Challenge, Part 1

There are many different strategies for collecting the Orb of Yendor, and this challenge mode will force you to use them.

Each challenge can be played in two modes: easy and hard. In hard mode, the difficulty will increase every time you complete a particular challenge; in easy more, the difficulty will always be the same.

There are achievements for completing 1, 5, and 15 challenges. The leaderboard awards 1000 points for each completed challenge with an additional 1 point for each point of difficulty, e.g. beating the same challenge 5 times in Hard mode awards 1004 points.

Currently, there are 31 challenges:

Challenge 1: Hell with Dead Orbs
You need to collect at least 10 Demon Daisies and 10 Necromancer's Totems (though not in the same playthrough) to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from Hell. You start with 100 Dead Orbs.

Challenge 2: Graveyard with Dead Orbs
You need to collect at least 10 Necromancer's Totems to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Graveyard. You start with 10 Necromancer's Totems and 5 Dead Orbs; additional Dead Orbs will spawn on the ground.

Challenge 3: Desert and Jungle
You need to collect at least 10 Spice and 10 Rubies (though not in the same playthrough) to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from Desert. You will start near the border with Jungle -- you will have to track your way using the Ivies.

Challenge 4: Minefield
You need to collect at least 10 Bomberbird Eggs to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Icy Land, but most of your way will be through the Minefield. You will have to track your way using the uncovered part of the Minefield.

Challenge 5: Emerald Mine
You need to collect at least 10 Emeralds to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Emerald Mine. You start with 10 Emeralds, so Orb of Mind is available. You will have to track your path using patches of dark ground that result from killing Miners.

Challenge 6: Overgrown Woods
You need to collect at least 10 Mutant Saplings to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Overgrown Woods. You will have to use Mutant Ivies as a thread to follow back.
An alternate solution is to cut a wide path you could follow back. You should probably curve it to avoid any region with the Mutant Ivies, though -- once they get in the path, they would be very hard to beat back.
Forest Trolls also appear in this challenge -- their dead bodies can be used to track your way.

Challenge 7: Land of Eternal Motion and Alchemist Lab
You need to collect at least 10 Phoenix Feathers to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from Icy Land, but the Orb of Yendor is in Alchemist Lab where you start and you will go through Land of Eternal Motion most of the way. You will have to follow your own trail of chasms back. You start with 50 Elixirs of Life and 50 Phoenix Feathers; this means that Orbs of Speed are available in both lands (though Orbs of Safety are disabled as they are useless in the challenge). However, monster generation rate is insanely high because of this.

Challenge 8: Alchemist Lab
You need to collect at least 10 Elixirs of Life to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from Alchemist Lab. You will need to create recognizable slime patterns to follow back.

Challenge 9: Ivory Tower and Elemental Planes
You need to collect at least 10 Ivory Figurines and 10 Elemental Gems (though not in the same playthrough) to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from Ivory Tower, though the Orb of Yendor is in Crossroads where you start. All other lands bordering the Crossroads are Elemental Planes (with Plane of Air facing the Crossroads).
In this challenge, the problem is getting to the key; you can use the Air Elementals for that, riding up on their air cushion. Of course, that means you can't just kill them off...
Once you collect the key, the return is easy: since there are less "down" direction than "up" directions, you will be automatically guided almost to the same place where you entered the Ivory Tower.

Challenge 10: Mirror Land and Overgrown Woods
You need to collect at least 10 Mirror Shards and 10 Mutant Saplings (though not in the same playthrough) to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from Mirror Land, with Overgrown Woods close to you. You will have to use the Mutant Ivy to guide you. Note that once outside Overgrown Woods, the Mutant Ivy will be restricted to hexagonal cells only, which will limit its growth a bit and allow you to outrun it.

Challenge 11: Whirlpool
You need to collect at least 10 Pearls to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Whirlpool. For this challenge, you start with 10 Pearls and you get 150 charges of the Orb of Water, allowing you to move against the Whirlpool current. You will need to go outward for the key, then back inward, following the Whirlpool pattern -- and then find the Orb of Yendor on its boat, carried by the current who knows where!

Challenge 12: Icy Land and Elemental Planes
You need to collect at least 10 Ice Diamonds and 10 Elemental Gems (though not in the same playthrough) to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Icy Land. You start close to Elemental Planes, with Plane of Water facing you. You have to track your way using Elementals that create something in their wake (Earth, Fire or Water). Since you can't outrun them, you might be forced to kill them off at times and return back to the Elemental Planes for another "guide".

Challenge 13: Hive and Red Rock Valley
You need to collect at least 10 Royal Jellies and 10 Red Gems (though not in the same playthrough) to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Hive. You start close to Red Rock Valley and you start with 25 Red Gems, unlocking Orb of Space in both lands.
You have several options in this challenge. You can't use living Rock Snakes to mark your way -- they are long, but not THAT long. You can use dead ones: if you find a way to kill one. You can use Red Trolls to mark your path with Red Rocks, but that would require many returns back to Red Rock Valley for new trolls.
Your best bet is probably the Orb of Space. Instead of returning to the Orb of Yendor, you can try finding enough Orbs of Space to "carry" the Orb of Yendor with you. Remember that pulling it in small steps will cost less power than grabbing it over big distances.
And if everything else fails, you can just try to take a piece of paper and note the colors and positions of Weird rocks in the Hive you pass.

Challenge 14: Caribbean
You need to collect at least 10 Pirate Treasures to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Caribbean.
In this challenge, you will note that the islands, however infinite, form only a small part of the Caribbean. The Key will be somewhere in the sea, and you will have to sail there.
To mark your way, your best bet is probably using boats. Try to make big, artificial-looking patterns out of them to follow.

Challenge 15: Ocean
You need to collect at least 10 Ambers to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Ocean. The Ocean you'll be sailing on has no coasts, but it has sea borders with Caribbeans and Living Fjords. You start with 25 Pirate Treasures and 25 Garnets, unlocking Orb of Time and Orb of Fish everywhere, though you won't need them (the Key is on a small island in the Ocean).
The high number of Treasures will attract Pirates and Vikings on boats, so you can use them to build boat patterns similar to Challenge 14. Since Ocean itself doesn't have many boats, you don't need big patterns -- a group of 3-4 boats should be noticeable enough.

Yendor Challenge, Part 2

Yendor Challenge, Part 2

Challenge 16: Palace
You need to collect at least 10 Hypersian Rugs to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Palace. To track your way, you will have to use the trapdoors.

Challenge 17: Zebra
You need to collect at least 10 Onyxes to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Zebra. You can track your way using the chasms, but it's still difficult since you're not the only one who leaves them...

Challenge 18: Vineyard
You need to collect at least 10 Wines to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Vineyard. You have to track your progress with vines you destroy. Note that going along a vine long enough will eventually generate a Vine Spirit you can use to get through it.

Challenge 19: Land of Storms
You need to collect at least 10 Fulgurites to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Land of Storms. Your best bet seems to be to generate Fulgurites by destroying Sandstone Walls and killing Rich Metal Beasts, then leaving them in place as markers.

Challenge 20: Living Fjord
You need to collect at least 10 Garnets to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Living Fjord. You have several options available: you can mark your way using the corpses of Fjord Trolls, but that won't help you when you have to cross water. You can make boat groups to help you, or you can track a way through the land with Orb of Water. A combination of dead trolls on land and boat groups in water should work.

Challenge 21: Jungle
You need to collect at least 10 Rubies to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Jungle. You will probably have to use a specific Ivy to track your progress while making sure you won't get it mixed up with other Ivies.

Challenge 22: Land of Power
You need to collect at least 10 Powerstones to unlock this challenge. You start in the Crossroads and you will be retrieving the key from the Land of Power. You start with Orb of Winter and Orb of Speed, so you can enter Land of Power, but after that you will have to create your own swath of fire and destruction to find your way back.

Challenge 23: Wild West
This challenge is unlocked automatically. You will be retrieving the key from the Wild West. You will need to brave the Outlaws and skip collecting their Bounties so you could use them to track your way.

Challenge 24: Whirlwind + R'Lyeh
You need to collect at least 10 White Dove Feathers and 10 Statues of Cthulhu to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Windy Plains. You start next to R'Lyeh so you could use a Tentacle as a lifeline.

Challenge 25: Chaos Mode + Dead Orbs
You need to collect at least 10 Demon Daisies and 10 Necromancer's Totems AND, in addition, unlock the Chaos Mode by visiting Crossroads IV to unlock this challenge. You start in Hell and you will be retrieving the key from, well, wherever it ends up, as you'll be playing in Chaos Mode. You get 100 Dead Orbs to track your way.

Challenge 26: Dragon Chasms + Dead Orbs
You need to collect at least 10 Dragon Shards to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from the Dragon Chasms. You start with 100 Dead Orbs. You could get lucky and not have a chasm block the way, but it's unlikely. If this happens, getting back is pretty easy, as you have plenty of Dead Orbs to use. It is also possible to get 10 Dragon Shards and use the Orb of Domination to get across gaps, but this is likely much harder, and it is probably not the intended strategy, as you do not start with any Dragon Shards.

Challenge 27: Reptiles
You need to collect at least 10 Dodecahedra to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from Reptiles. Nobody knows how to solve this one.

Challenge 28: Galápagos + Orb of Recall
You need to rescue at least two baby Tortoises (10 Tortoise Points) to unlock this challenge. You will be retrieving the key from Galápagos. You begin with 60 charges each of the Orbs of Teleport, Time, Space, Frog, Energy, Recall, and Vaulting (slightly less than 60 if you have already beaten this challenge). The Orb of Recall will automatically bring you to the Orb of Yendor after it expires. Since the key is 100 cells away, and you only have 60 turns, you need to use the Orb of Frog, Vaulting, and Teleport to get there within 60 turns. Orb of Space is useful for getting the key at the end and for getting the Orb of Yendor if blocked by a Tortoise. Since you have the Orb of Energy, the Orb of Teleport can be used multiple times.

Challenge 29: Cocytus + Living Fjord
You need to collect at least 10 Ice Sapphires and 10 Garnets to unlock this challenge. You will retrieving the key from Cocytus. You begin with 10 Garnets, which is enough to spawn Water Elementals. A single Living Fjord appears near the Orb of Yendor.

Challenge 30: Ruined City + Dead Orbs
You need to collect at least 10 Chrysoberyls to unlock this challenge. You will retrieving the key from Ruined City. You begin with 100 Dead Orbs. You will need to get past the invincible Raiders and then get back to complete this challenge.

Challenge 31: Living Cave
You need to collect at least 10 Gold to unlock this challenge. You will retrieving the key from the Living Cave. You begin with 5 Dead Orbs. You need to take advantage of the fact that having multiple Dead Orbs next to a Living Wall will cause the wall to recede. However, the way back is not obvious unless you mark it in some way, either by using Rock Trolls (which create more walls) or with your extra Dead Orbs (which you only have 2 of, since 3 are needed to be able to recede Living Walls consistently).

Pure Tactics Mode

In Pure Tactics Mode, you try to achieve a high score while exploring a single land. You must unlock various lands by collecting 20 treasures there in the main game, except for Camelot where 2 Holy Grails are enough. Treasure generation rate is initially higher than normal mode treasure spawn rates, but it is static and doesn't increase with number of defeated enemies. If you play in any Crossroads type, Hyperstones will be unlocked from the start and you can find most types of Orbs. Crossroads will look weird, though: they will still have Great Walls, but on the other side will be more Crossroads.

Camelot works a bit differently as well: in pure tactics mode, the tables are horocyclic and there is an infinite amount of tables nested in each other, with wider and wider gaps.

Ocean and all gravity lands have you begin in Crossroads II, where every entrance is to the land you selected.

The score in pure tactics mode for each land is obtained by summing your several (usually 10) last games in that land to offset the random nature of the game.

There are achievements for getting 1000, 5000, and 15000 total points in Pure Tactics Mode. This is the total for all lands combined.

Hardcore Mode

In Hardcore Mode, there is no "checkmate rule" in effect. If you make one wrong move, you'll die.

Two achievements are hardcore-exclusive. One is for winning the game in Hardcore Mode. The other requires you to get 25 Fulgurites from the Land of Storms without escaping from a discharge. If you see the message "That was close", it means you escaped from a discharge and are ineligible for an achievement. And if you step INTO a discharge, you die, since Hardcore doesn't prevent you from making moves that would kill you.

If you are playing in the regular mode and get checkmated, but you believe that the checkmate rule is in error, you can switch to Hardcore mode and make that move. If you don't die, you can continue playing (preferably after switching back to regular mode). Additionally, if you are checkmated one move away from getting an achievement, you can switch to Hardcore mode and make the move. You'll die, but you'll still get the achievement.

Shoot-Em-Up Mode

In Shoot-Em-Up mode, often called "shmup", HyperRogue loses its turn structure. Space and time are now continuous, so you can run all over the hyperbolic land and fight. Instead of sword, you're now armed with throwing knives. This mode is also available for two players in local coop!

Achievements and leaderboards are disabled, except for the ones that are labeled shmup only.

Princess Challenge

The Princess Challenge can be attempted any time after you save your first Princess. You're thrown into a Palace and have to find the Princess. There are no Great Walls and other lands and the special rules in the "prison zone" no longer apply, except there are no treasures in the "prison zone". This means that there are an equal number of opening and closing plates, instead of being 70% and 30%, in addition to several other changes.
You can grab Hypersian Rugs before following the mouse, but this will increase the challenge's difficulty. If you succeed, you will be scored based on your "Hypersian handicap"!
If you have already found an Orb of Yendor, you will start with 99 Dead Orbs in this challenge. Use them as you wish, maybe they will help you on your way :)

Random Pattern Mode

In Random Pattern Mode, you're thrown in one of several possible lands with altered generating rules: the walls and floors will be randomized, but they will repeat in certain patterns. In addition, the "floor plan" of the lands might be different, leading to things like R'Lyeh with forest tile graphics or Land of Power with the Ivory Tower graphics.

As a default, four lands are unlocked in the Random Pattern Mode: Icy Land, Desert, Living Cave and Wild West. In addition, collecting 10 treasures in Alchemist Lab, Graveyard, Land of Power, Living Fjord, Zebra, R'Lyehm Dry Forest, Emerald Mine, Vineyard, Dead Cave, Red Rock Valley or Overgrown Woods in the main game will permanently unlock that land type in Random Pattern Mode as well.

Some maps are impossible; just restart until you get one that works. Achievements are disabled; there are no Random Pattern Mode-specific achievements.

Strange Challenge

The Strange Challenge is only available once every 77 hours. Each challenge has two lands chosen at random in a random geometry, which could be hyperbolic (sometimes more curved than usual, sometimes less), spherical, or rarely Euclidian (in the form of tori and Klein bottles). You have only one chance to play (unless you quit before collecting your first treasure). You also start with random orbs as in Orb Strategy Mode (see above), usually from 6 to 10. Your goal is to collect as many treasures as possible.

There is a leaderboard of everyone who has played that challenge, so you can compare your score to other players after you've played.

Don't be surprised if the game crashes in the middle of the run — not all geometries work perfectly.

Chaos Mode

Chaos Mode



Chaos Mode has been added in 8.2. To unlock it, you must collect 200 treasure and then find a Crossroads IV. This only needs to be done once. In Chaos Mode, Great Walls are abolished in favor of wall-less borders akin to Crossroads IV. Also, the generation of borders is turned up to Crossroads levels for ALL lands. There is an achievement for collecting 300 treasure in this mode.

In the regular game, a land will contain fewer treasures if it is near a land that you have collected 10-20 fewer in, and not at all if that number is 20 or more. For example, if you have collected 18 Spice in the Desert and no Rubies in the Jungle, very few Spice will generate near Jungle borders. These numbers are reduced to 5 and 10 in Chaos Mode, to encourage more even collecting of treasures.

Other modifications: You can leave R'Lyeh after collecting one Statue of Cthulhu, the Temple of Cthulhu can be found anywhere after meeting unlock requirements (not just in concentric circles), and Hell's difficulty increases 4 times as fast, which brings it in line with the other lands (Hell is very gradual in the regular game).

Not all lands are implemented in this mode, since some require more regular structure or more space.

Racing Mode

Racing Mode allows you to race on selected tracks. You can choose from about 20 lands; these lands determine the walls, but there are no monsters to avoid.

You will be racing against 4 other racers to reach the finish line. Use the W key to speed up, the S key to slow down (walls also slow you down automatically), and the A and D keys to turn left and right. The right side of the screen shows the current time and how far you are in the race.

Since the world is hyperbolic, you must stay as close to the center line as possible to win. The track has walls about 10 tiles from the center line, so you can't stray too far. Even if you think you're going perfectly straight, deviation from the center line increases exponentially with distance, so you'll have to adjust within the next few seconds, and this is why you don't want to move as fast as possible.

There is an achievement for winning a race.

[tricosahedron]

You're right, this section needs an update! hotdogPi had asked me to help out with some of the geometries, but I didn't find the time yet. I'll try to update the guide next week, but feel free to ask questions in the forums in the meantime.

[anothrgamer1234]

The "Experiment With Geometry" subsection could use a great deal of expansion; the options have significantly increased since this guide was first made and I wouldn't be surprised if some people (including myself) don't understand what all of them do.