The Escape Artist's Handbook [WIP]

Struggling to get beyond the first few levels? Here's some handy tips for making deeper runs into the Dungeon of the Endless.

General Tips

So let's lay down a few ground rules to keep ourselves alive.

1. Keep some food in the pantry

In the middle of a wave, sometimes you need to heal. You can't heal if you have no food. If you can't heal, your character(s) may die. Death isn't good!

Therefore do not level up a character if it leaves you without at (a bare minimum) 10 food, preferrably 25 or more. Scale these numbers up as you progress through the levels. If you want to hire a character found in the dungeon but it will leave you short on food, try not to do so unless you are sure they will die with the next wave.

2. Maximize your output!

Certain characters have the operate skill. Those characters should be on modules. Since it takes a turn to get their bonus active, you ideally want them to be on modules at choke points or near to them so they can catch any creatures that slip through. The extra resources this delivers are critical to staying on top of your run.

3. Don't be wasteful

Avoid building modules in vulnerable rooms. We'll discuss choke points later, but understand that the game does not go easy on you when you waste resources and you'll soon be playing catch up if you do.

If you can't defend a room then it is generally not a great idea to build in it. The same goes for researching at an artifact as you'll soon see it destroyed and your science wasted.

4. Know your shortcuts

Pause with 'space', numbers 1-4 to select heroes, select everybody with 'Q', and use your mouse's scroll wheel to move to the map view. You can issue commands whilst the game is paused, so your finger should be almost glued to the space bar during incoming waves.

5. Keep an eye on your team

The most important thing on the screen is health bars of your heroes. Look away at the wrong moments and you'll be losing heroes regularly. During waves, you should almost certainly be watching them any time the game is not paused. If you want to do something else, pause first.

6. Waves don't spawn in occupied rooms

If you can't power a room, put a hero in there before opening the door. You can do this in the early period of a level, or around a choke point, or use it to help extend your run to the lift.

Step 1: Establish your choke points

The strategy for starting a new level doesn't deviate much from 1 through to 12; the main differences come down to difficulty as lack of early dust in later levels may mean lots of movement of heroes.

Choke points

The principle goal is to establish strong defensive rooms - choke points. These are rooms into which waves are funnelled and you can hold them there with, preferably, all your heroes and supported by minor modules. Of course, levels are not always so conveniently laid out so sometimes you have to establish 2 choke points. In desperate cases, you may even have to have 3.

Beyond the choke point we will establish corridors - chains of unpowered rooms where waves will spawn (more on corridors later).

What makes a good choke point?

• Lots of minor module slots - 4 is a minimum but 3 is OK for defending small corridors
  
• Not next to the crystal room - sometimes a monster will slip through so give yourself wiggle room to chase it
  
• 2+ doors - I will get into this later

Your choke point(s) will be the focus of your battles for the level, so it is important to pick a good one. Since we don't know what is behind any given door - thus do not know how far a particular corridor behind it might extend - a bit of flexibility may be required and new choke points may need establishing if we reach the end of a corridor.

First doors and rooms

The crystal room, in which each level starts, can have up to 4 doors but will usually be 2 or 3 (the exception being level 1 with 1 door). We start off with 24 dust, which gives us 2 rooms that can be powered, although later levels start with even less.

As we do not want to be wasteful, the main goal - other than finding a good stronghold location - is to minimize the risk of losing any modules but at the same time not building turrets but rather relying on our heroes for holding off any discovered enemies.

The easiest to defend rooms are the ones that are isolated. You can build modules in these rooms and pretty much forget about them. How do we get isolated rooms? We have to open doors in all directions, until a choke point is picked where unpowered rooms are to extend beyond it.

Using heroes to minimize waves

As dust may be at an early premium, if you are not able to power rooms then occupy them with heroes. That means, if you have 4 heroes, you can have up to 3 unpowered rooms before or around your chosen choke point (or even after it, to minimize the size of waves).

This tactic should give you the flexibility to establish an early choke point and isolate a branch or two from the crystal room.

Step 2: Resources, resources, resources

Without resources in Dungeon of the Endless, you die. It's that simple.

Given that food is used to heal and level up heroes, you might be forgiven for thinking it is the most important resource. It is not, industry is. Industry drives everything. The higher your rate of industry uptake, the more food modules you can then subsequently build. If the latest waves really stretched your defense, then industry allows you to either rebuild or build additional minor modules.

The only time the first module I build is not industry is when I have plenty and am literally starving food-wise. After level 3, you want to be finishing levels with upwards of 100 industry. It means you get started quicker on the next level. In Dungeon of the Endless, momentum is everything.

This is a WIP

More to come. Will eventually add screenshots etc.

[Minderbinder]

Very interesting and educational guide. I look forward to this being updated in the future.

[Leon Mercury]

I learned choke points on my own, called them nexi xD. Great guide, btw. Don't forget to stress how important the "minor" resource science is!

[Dr_Zaszus]

A great summary, thanks!

[Psyclops]

This is really good! As a new player a lot of these things are very helpful, like making the mistake of rushing food every game.

[BARTMAN]

Great info thanks!

[hecatiel]

I was terrible at this game & could only get to floor 3 then read this learned to establish a choke point and got to floor 9 thx :D great tips

[Markus_Torres]

nice tips

[Foxtelemetry]

Helped me a lot :D

[edgyz]

Good! Thanks!

[lpzedu]

nice tips! tks!