How To Death Acolyte

This guide is intended to provide some strategies for playing Vagante while using the Death Acolyte background. As of right now, there are a few things I'm not positive about and need more research. If you have any info of relevance, put in in the comments, and I'll test it. If it seems valid, I'll put it in with credit to your username.

What are you getting in this guide?

First is the important step of unlocking this background in the first place. You probably have it if you're looking at this guide, but it's still a precaution for convenience.

Next will be some general tips that should probably apply to any playthrough or class you pick for using Death Acolyte.

After that will be successive sections detailing what you might want to do with specific classes, in order of character select. (Knight, Rouge, Mage, Wildling, Hound Master)

Alright, we've got that out of the way. On to the content!

How do I get the Death Acolyte background?

First, you're going to have to play until you find a piece of equipment with the special effect "Death is easier to encounter". Once you put it on, your health will be reduced to 1 but you'll do a lot more damage when you hit an enemy. Now that you have that, you need to complete 3 floors while wearing this gear. I'm not entirely sure how much of the floor you have to wear it for, but I'm pretty sure these floors don't need to be in a row, just 3 in total. You'll know that you've got the background when the game tells you after a run is over.

General Tips

Regardless of what class you're playing, any form of ranged attack is generally a good thing. It won't necessarily be as high of a damage output, but it's generally safer since most enemies are confined to melee attacks of some form. Just remember that you can't move while drawing a bow unless you're a rouge, bombs are rare, and charging magic limits your movement unless you're a mage.

Ice spells and freezing enchanted weapons are valuable, due to the fact that a frozen enemy is free hits with melee for maximum damage output. Shocking gives stun frames, but if you aren't careful around water, you can shock yourself. Burning and envenomed/coated in poison are extra damage, so that's always good. Long story short, get enchanted weapons.

Practicing without Death Acolyte is probably a good idea to make sure you can consistently use certain weapons efficiently without getting hit. Being able to avoid enemies is also a good idea. I haven't made a guide to bosses, but someone else has. Go look at that if you're having trouble with one, otherwise certain areas can end up a lot harder to traverse.

Play with other people. If you die, they can revive you while you explain that you are in fact, not bad at the video game. If they die, you can revive them for free, so they can revive you when you die again. You can also just let them deal with bosses for you, as those are easily some of the biggest threats.

If all else fails, play the game some more, you'll figure it out.

Knight

Upgrade Sword. Sword Spin is ridiculously powerful and it's amazing. You don't have a reason to not invest in Sword unless you get a really good melee weapon that isn't a sword.

If you aren't confidant in your abilities to not fall to your death before level 3, upgrade holy once before going sword. Holy is also very good, as Divine Weapon gives you a projectile with every weapon, and Second Chance makes your first screw up per floor mean a little less. Upgrading Sword first is still probably a better idea.

Defense is worthless. I think. I admittedly don't use it enough to really know whether blocking is just damage reduction or if you can completely nullify damage to you altogether.
Further research is needed on this.

Rouge

Acrobatics is a good idea to upgrade. Rolling to avoid attacks and getting a decent chance to completely avoid some attacks is pretty useful when taking any damage will kill you.

Archery makes ranged really good. Probably a good idea, as it usually is.

Dagger is decent. Throwing the dagger still does increased damage, just not as much. Small price to pay for the range it gets.

I'm not sure about Stealth. I'm not exactly sure how much use you get out of enemies not detecting you. More research is needed.

Mage

Alchemy doesn't have any real steps up or down from normal. Take it if you want, but other choices may or may not be a better option.

Spellcaster is nice because you get to have better spells that do good stuff. Always great.

Enchant is very nice because you can make your weapons freezing and shocking with just your base spells. Enough said.

I don't think Rod is the best investment. Maybe if you get a wave rod, but Enchant makes any weapon really good on Mage, so I don't know.

Yeah, I don't play Mage enough to know this stuff. I'll have to research.

Wildling

Upgrading Fist means you get to punch a lot for a lot of damage. It's pretty good, but there's the obvious shortcoming of extremely low range, which is dangerous.

Berserk is still nice, but some of the perks don't matter anymore, so you have to commit more points if you don't want to waste them completely after rank 1.

Animal. Uh... I have no clue, I never used these perks. They don't seems good enough to choose this over the other options however. More research needed.

Hound Master

Pet Bond is nice because it makes you doggo survive longer sometimes. Your dog already has a good amount of health, but survivability is always good, especially since you sure don't have any.

Pet Offense makes your doge good at making your enemies get hurt. He gets to lunge. Not much else to it.

Pet Utility mostly makes the barks better, which I legitimately have no idea what it does. Also bouncy pet.

Club is good. Shockwaves from your melee weapon is nice. Having this is probably a pretty good idea.

I need to play Hound Master some more to confirm all of these, but this seems mostly accurate. More research needed for this entire class.

Conclusion

Be good at the game and you'll do great.

In all seriousness, I hope this helps at least someone, and if you have tips, don't forget to comment them and I'll test them out.

Thanks for reading.

[Staxolotl]

i would think that bear stomp would b affected by the buff and if so then you might have some of the best burst damage in the entire game combined that with the at max 10 seconds of psychical invincibility from wolf sprint and the projectile deflecting properties of lion roar i would imagine that animal would be good

[Medic]

Also for mage you should use elegance instead of your melee because it has more range and your staff as your ranged and only melee with staff if you need an angle or more charges but you can also just use elegance once it runs out just don't use it in water cause u die.

[Medic]

Ok so wildling animal 1 gives him a rawr that stuns enemys which is pretty good especially if you have eyebats and you have no weapon knight's block is decent you either stack 1 or 5 level but keep in mind this doesnt stop magic or elemental attacks at all, the reason you get block 1 is to just block attacks levels 2/3 dont really matter level 4 can help you kill mushroom golem and later those golem esc thing on the floating level because they land on you and if you reflect block they instant die but dmg is reduced to like 1 with boulder prot, mage's alc 1 is good early if your impatient because posion will just instant kill you and if you get a speed potion alc 3 sometimes lets you drink pots multiple times so that would be really nice and rouge's stealth can be ok early game if you are constantly dien to floor teeth because you can just explore the level and i dont think they trigger if your invis (i could be wrong).