Maximising your loot in endless (NOW WITH TIPS)

Endless is fun! To unlock tokens, achievements or having high scores, this will be your smart guide to have higher survival odds.

changelog

2019:
v 0.95 :
-added general information

2020:
v 1.00: release of the guide
Added:
-grammar
-Tips and tricks
-Companion overview
-Faction effective items
-The swapping trick

v1.10: The Lord of sorrow update
-Added general tips to help players complete lord of sorrow achievement
-Curse oriented tips
-too many tips! Tips divided into sections

v1.11:
-fixed grammar

2021:

ver 1.15. 2 feb 2021
added tips for blessing and curses
upcoming: v1.20:

-Veles Overview
-Rearanged the tip section
-complete manaclypse tip
-Adding tips from Ludor (Thank you!)

ver1.16 14th mai 2021
- 2 more combat tips (yay)

ver 1.23 30th may 2021
-updated the swapping trick
-New section: how to correctly end an adventure
-grammatical error
-added combat tips

v1.30 Jun 14 2021
-Added a new section: tips on fighting rare ennemy yay
-moar grammar

Starting class

In endless you can pick a companion to assist you on your looooong journey.
What you are looking for is a teamate that make combat easier and/or increase survival chance.
-Malaclypse: Offers a shield that can block 1 hit. extremly durable as I am on wave 21 with him.

-colbjorn: The dice gambit is by far the most popular gambit. the ability to redo a dice is awsome.

-----DLC
-hubie can recharge artefacts and attract foes. If not malaclypse I'd say this is second best.

-Veles: haven't played him but his camp ability looks promising.

Items to look for

Most key items will be available once you unlock Endless mode.
-If going for a high score it is highly recommended to finish Campaign mode first
-If it is farming tokens or achievements go right ahead!
The key to success is to have items that gives X food/fame/gold after Y condition is met.

To make the most of these items, you need to meet Y condition as much as possible.

The 3 golden Armours!! More resources = more survivability

-Armor of gluttony: gives food after every food gain. it also gives a huge amount of armor when stacked on food. I also use it against difficult encounters.

-Jousting armor: Gain fame after every fame gain.

-Berserker's Creed: gain gold after every gold gain. Who doesn't want gold?

(inquisitor's Raiment: trading max life instead of damage from starvation)

these 3 (4) armor gives a valuable income without any risks.

-------------------------------
The 3 Silver "armours". Situational assets that shines if used in the right time and the right place.

Gladiators helmet: Gives food when not taking more than 15 damage. Also gives a random blessing when no damage is taken (1 time every map).

Spiked Boneguard. Negate a curse ONLY ONCE. I suggest to sell it once you negate a curse to have the effect again.

Suit of ice: (synergy with gladiators helmet). Receive 1 gain card every blessing gained.
-------------------------------
3 amazing shields.
Valiant Aegis. Served as a buckler for a quicker weapon charge. also do not consume food every 3rd step. (extremely valuable when under the curse spell of aging)

Ward of the innocent. used to scout 2 cards every map. A strong Anti ambush measure.

Ram Shield. Does bonus damage to armour.

The Swapping trick

This is your bread and butter, this trick (may be tedious) will boost your gain by a lot!

Heres an example to better picture this trick
Lets take a common encounter: Arm Wrestling
Swap to your Berserker creed (gain +3 gold for every gold gain card) and proceed to gambit.
After looting that gold quickly change to Jousting armor to receive bonus fame

This can also be used in battles: swapping to your harvest blade or gladiators helmet to get food from battles will add up and eventually ending up with to much food to spare. Since food can be used to complete trials or gain hp it's really good.

Finally, When exploring a new territory, you can swap to your gamblers hood for more gold and your Ward of the innocent to discover 2 encounters. (This is extremly usefull to avoid ambushes and snake parandrus).

Faction effective items

These will be items that are Very effective against a certain faction type.

After getting all 3 "golden armors" These will be the next priority.

Northeners: nazgar's reckoning (shield) is strong since ripost will be your main source of damage. Winter's bane is good for a quick knockdown.

Thief: I find the Lionel special really effective killing hordes of them in a single bomb. most AoE effect works as well.

Goblins: As they often steal all your food, Thief folly can and will prevent that. Mischief makers is the way to go.

Undead: all AoE with holy purification being top tier.

Empire: weapons that has armor breaker such as cardinal blade.

Treants: What do trees fear the most? This will be a HOT topic...

Shadows: Sword of light can be aquired early on.


Always wear items effective against the faction of campaign to avoid bad ambushes.

-You can switch items in a northerner ambush if you have elusive charm
-thieves ambush also gives you time to switch items before battle

The tip of miracles and sorrow (blessings and curses)

in this section, I will cover the must haves blessings and tips for lord of sorrow achievement
(have 25 curse in a run in endless) along with miracle (huge success one dealing with thieves)

Blessings

-While for items ressource gain boost are core, Gambit blessings will prove to be your savior:

-They will Skyrocket your success rate and can avoid toll gate for a while (by taking the sneak option).

your three golden card will be
divine intervention,guardian angel and gamblers bouquet (2 food gain every dice roll is really good)

there is however an super omega platinum rare blessing called... eternal hope (useful for the miracle achievement)

Curses

there are also the 3 golden curses to NOT have :
Arcane affliction, balanced spirit and spell of aging. Those are prioritized when getting rid of curses

-When choosing trials do not go over you're head and pick 8 blessing when you have only 2.

-CUrses are bad. the only way to get rid of them is to go to underneath and remove all curse AND blessings. couple encounter can help with that such as little devil and Healer that removes one at the price of fame.



Miracle achievement walkthrough:

you need to have unlocked the ring of damnation (unlock gold token in devil)
While endless gives you time to gather what you need, it is sadly up to rng to determine if you can pull it of. (tip: you can top it off with enough determination :) )

you need ingredients to have such power:
simply take A devil's horn from the Little Devil
An angel's feather from the Dwarven Haggler
and 3 Blessings

once your bucket list is finished, use the ring in camp and voila, the blessing is yours for taking

Next, take the trial Sacred ground (dont forget to stack on blessings, try to avoid using temporary) and have Dealing with thieves as the reward.
Finally encounter the card next adventure and land the huge success the blessing offers to complet it.
There are couple tips to lessen the rng factor:
-have the guardian angel blessing
-have anything that slows shuffle cards
-take Ariadne as a companion
-try to unlock the LEAST amount of platinum encounter aside of dealing with thieves one to have bettter odds during trial rewards

Lord of sorrow walkthrough:
-When going for Lord of sorrows, Good luck. I got the encounter on floor 1,2,4,7,15. (got lucky at first but after it gets Really frustrating).
there really are 2 ways to get it: either go for the long run or the fastest way:
either choices are good. you can take all 5 curse and only need 5 encounters or pick those that impact you the least. the only drawback is you need to encounter him more, so assume you are going to do at least 30 floors.

Combat tips

This is a list of tips that helps you help you have a deeper understand on the combat mechanics.

When battling, Enemies ALWAYS attack one at a time (the exeption here will be their riposte that could happen even when someone else is attacking).

There are 2 types of attacks, Red and Green. Green being parryable and red can only be dodged.

Advance tip 1 :
When a foe use a RED multi hit move. When dodged you can freely attack him or other a couple of time before you get attacked again. This is currently the safest way with riposte to land hits without being slammed yourself.

Advanced tip 2:
When a foe use A melee GREEN attack. It is possible to First Parry then dodge without latency. I cannot consistently do it but it is useful in multiple of ways:
-when using a buckler you can have a weapon charge
-A fast way to reposition yourself and attack with less risk.
-against multi green hit move (northerners), When you block first attack, you can get free hits since he uses another attack that most likely wont be aimed at you

Advanced tip 3: (Life saver)
Using finishers don't always go as you expect, sometime you get HIT while finishing off foes, sometimes you don't.
The secret here is timing. When pressing F make sure no one attacks you (even ranged) after a small time. You can dodge right after if you think you will get hit and try again.
if you get the timing right, any attacks you receive will be IGNORED since you will have i-frames when in finisher animation.

Advanced tip 4: When facing only 1 baddie, you can alternate between bash and attack to safely dispose of em.

Advance tip 5: If your companion is between a ranged attack and yourself, it will take the bullet for you! this can be good or bad depending of the curses you have.


Advance tip 6: Cardinal blade can do full damage on 1 monster. that's 8*20= 160

Advance tip 7: When bashing foes remaining armor, you become invincible. your welcome.

Advance tip 8: Shield breaks after any AoE. Even under finishers and armour break "invincibility"

advance tip 9: When you take damage during a battle you can negate max hp loss if you end combat with more or = health than you started
advance tip 10! rusty gear do not have their damage lowered! You can use it for minor fights.

tip 11: (sword and shield only): you can attack in between northerner combo (in between parry there is time to attack. that means you can attack up to 6 time after a full combo)

tip 12: weapons super charge has a REALLY long range feel free to experiment its range

tip 13: the deadly kick dance
On a single target it is possible to alternate between kick and attack for a Massive COMBO
(doesnt work with ogre, wraith and anything not affected with stun)
On big maps you can Isolate an ennemy and kill him rapidly.

tip 14: bashing will always give priority to armored targets. You sadly cannot do the kick dance with multiple armored as it will mess up the pathing.

TIPS!

this section will cover tips that didn't fit anywhere else

-you do not have to encounter all the cards. you can keep track of the dealers card at the beginning of each adventure and take note of wether its safe or not to wonder around.
-when taking the map for the empire trial the blessing fates path is perfect since you will discover all the cards without the need to encounter them



-going for Max health is often useless as you lose max health after 100. I rather use ring of food for... food.



-Dont be greedy with artifacts. When faced against undeads, always have a purification with you.
there are also mad to be used... dont be too leniant


-Always pick skeleton or treant quest. Free lot and easy killing.

I did my whole run without any platinum until wave 20 it is not necessary but helpful.

If you want to live DO NOT fight bandits, you will regret it later. Poisoner Is strong :(


-Do not be discouraged when dying. IT's just the part of the process. Plus, you can unlock shards and tokens to make your next run better. It is of course RNG dependant.

If I had one recommendation is to finish campaign first and do DLC as well as they give solid cards.


I might add some more. Most of the tips came from my mistakes: I can be mistaken on some but I'm fairly confident bandits are the hardest class to deal with.
and finally

Tips on fighting rare ennemy

not used to some rare ennemy? heres a list of tips against them.

-Ogres
Big and heavy, his attacks are heavy and does a lot of damage.
-Bring your best 2 handed weapon.
-He repost every 4 attacks. It follows by 2 green and 1 red.
-after his combo, you can freely strike a big chunk of HP.

-Wraith
Most fearsome ennemy of the game, especially in endless.
-when hit too much, he teleports somewhere else.
-try to prioritize him in a multi battle
-save up weapon charge on him

-Assassin
teleports behind you up to 3 times on attack or teeport on EACH it.
-the kick combo doesnt work. Just keep a eye on his red attack and always counter on green
-Try use armor charge to stun him

-Goblin Chief
spawns imps to bind you. Has 2 red attacks that hurts aswell.
-kill him fast
-find time to get rid of the spawns to not get overwhelmed

How to correctly end an adventure

Once the current adventure ends, you start another one and will do so until that life bar is depleted.
Here are the tips you can follow at the end/start of each adventure :)

TIP 1: Once the boss is down, you can use the swapping trick described section above! before your trial ends, make sure to swap for gambit items or gain boost for better rewards.

TIP 2: Choose your next adventure wisely, (I'm I prepared to take on shadows KNOWING you wont have your companions? Do i have the correct items for it etc...)
Keep in mind after each adventure the foes of this faction gets stronger so the choice order is important

TIP 3: Choose the order of TRIALS wisely.
If feeling bold, trial can help you gain platinum stuff, massive fame boost and soo on.
However, it happened to me failing 1 gambit trial leads to the failure of another like a snowball effect. for example:
I lost card gambit and lost all my food as a result, I then lost the food delivery I supposed to have and then got 3 curses.
this would not have happened if I choose them in a different order.

TIP 3.5: take into account the Trial failures.
Make sure to weigh in the downside with the potential perks. Do not expect to have the good encounter draws or set of items you need.
Some trial gives you curses as a fail. You can use that to succeed on the dark sanctum trial giving you platinum items as a reward!

tip 4: (or potential bug?) (need someone to verify)
Apparently, boss room and the spawn on next adventure is considered one and the same?
you can use bounty hunter's helm and armor of glutony twice!
At start of mission, go to camp, buy food or use an artifact (like delivery list) and you get the gold or food boost from them. Wierd

The end

Did you die/win? This is just part of the game. After all this game is a roguelite = your character have access to 'stronger' equipment for future runs.
hope you enjoyed this healthy guide and may luck be with you.

Once my char dies will post a screenshot in memories of him

[Ludor Experiens]

It's just a little bit dangerous to become too careless if your current and max hp differ greatly.
E.g. if you enter a combat at 180/250 and lose just 1 hp, you will get penalized with 30-50 max hp reduction (don't know the exact multiplier). So you need to make sure to heal up before you deliver the final blows but not too late that your companion accidently finishes the fight before you can heal.

[warking]

Hello Ludor and thank you so much for your feedback, I clearly didnt see the Potential of Hali's ward and also didn't know You could negate Max hp loss by healing before end of combat (Truly an amazing tip)
All of your remarks are a perfect fit here as I Will update this guide shortly!
Will also add you as a contributor

[Ludor Experiens]

And some advanced remarks:

-You don't lose max hp if combat ends with at least as much hp as you started it, even if you took damage during the combat. So healing potions are really good combat artifacts if you are above 100 max hp.
-You want to take easy curses, e.g. 1 enemy with 200% health, 20% less damage when full health, losing gold when starving, .... This makes Last Hope the strongest weapon. You can easily get to 30 damage per hit with only small drawbacks.
-You can have your max hp a constant 150 if you encounter Temple Prayers and take Monk's Vitality. Buying 1 food in camp can be used to increase your max hp by 5.
-As your health is 150 hp now at all times, you can use only Berserker's Creed to increase your own damage when getting hit.
-Hali's Ward destroys any bigger group; just throw it into a crowd and they all vanish within seconds.
-Shrapnel Bomb instantly kills Spire of Blight and knocks down Terror and Juggernaut. Additionally it helps with Knight and Captain.

[Ludor Experiens]

I'll post some more remarks:
-Ambushes are set by the faction who is currently your target. E.g. raider ambush can only happen on an adventure against Northerners. If your target is an unknown threat, all ambushes can appear.
-IMO Dionysius Revenge is best for undead as it instantly kills every basic skeleton with 2 uses and recharges its uses back to 3 after that. Same goes for the Briarfolk which is just an undead reskin with other abilities.
-There are more ways to get rid of unwanted curses, e.g. Little Devil, Cunning Man, Healer.
-Never use your equipment with the highest defense in combat as you need it for Ogre ambush to survive.and defense degrades when used in combat.

[Ludor Experiens]

Overall good basic tips.

IMO Veles is king. If you run him, you will never blindly run into an ambush and you can prepare ahead for some encounters that instantly throw you into a gambit. And you can revive him whenever you want (as long as he is not kidnapped) by sacrificing 5hp for every turn he is unavailable. You can heal your damage with food, so optimise your build for that (Ring of food, Ring of feast, Gladiator's visage. Ring of feast synergises well with visage, too). This makes encounters with forced curses easy to beat as you can sacrifice Veles with King's Crown to avoid the curse and call him back after the encounter; on long runs that means any other character would be unavailable for 20 turns, not Veles. And you can ignore any Pain card you want, whenever you want with the Sacrificial Bond ring (same drawback as King's Crown).
As another plus he can give you gold whenever you want.