Anime Gigachad Necromancer Ch. 4 Build (v1.10X)

This is the omega sigma ligma guide on basic and advanced theory for the best girl in the game, NECROMANCER!!! Condensed and crystalized knowledge at your fingertips, ready to be weaponized and optimized. The balls-to-the-wall build, holding nothing back. Conquer the jet-black abyss with your skeleton army.

1a. Intro and Goal

In this incomprehensible guide, I will tell you how to use the 4th chapter as a farming method.

Despite appearances, Loop Hero is a very complex game. You are trying to gamify a gameplay loop within a gameplay loop (gameplay loop INCEPTION).

Here's a link to my mini review!

The goal of this guide is to teach you how to maximize your necromancer gameplay to be extremely efficient, with the goal of obtaining hundreds of resources on a single ch.4 run.

1b. Unrealistic Expectations

Based on your skill level, here's what you should expect from this guide.

Beginner: How to play necromancer
Intermediate: Opinions on stats, traits, items, and buildings.
Advanced: How a complete dotard kamikazed his way to the top.
GIGACHAD: How to abuse god and destiny for resources.

As per the title, I do not expect you to emulate this absurd playing style. In fact, I discourage you from doing so. This guide serves to show you what limits could be achieved while maintaining a maximum level of stress. As such, I don't even expect you to read this guide. But if you do, I can only expect you to learn the core fundamentals of each section.

2a. Class Basics

You are the necromancer.

Slashing and stabbing are so overrated. Why risk your physical health when your undead friends can completely cover your back?

Pros

• When things get going, you don't need to worry about HP.
  
• Summoning 5 skeletons will guarantee a high chance of success in any fight.
  
• Scales well late game with the right skills.
  
• Not bounded by stamina.

Cons

• Slowest attacker.
  
• Exclusive reliance on RNG for optimal gameplay.
  
• Battles of attrition are expected, unpredictable, and absolutely boring.

How to Unlock

To unlock Necromancer, you must construct the Cemetery and then the Alchemist's Tent.

Alchemist's Tent	Resources Required	Cemetery	Resources Required
	24x 24x 2x 3x		4x 14x 2x

Equipment

You wield a Grimoire to summon skeleton to fight your enemies. Your amulet provides a magic shield whereas your two rings provide (in)consistent potential. Ignore the potions, we'll talk about that in another guide.

Class Stats Explained

Stat	Explanation
Attack Speed	How fast you attack. Attack has two meanings here, one for casting a skeleton or smacking the enemy with your book. Stamina does not matter to Necromancer.
Regen Per Sec.	Health Points regenerated every second.
Evasion (%)	Chance to completely negate one enemy attack.
Defense	Reduces incoming damage.
Summon Quality	Chance to summon a special skeleton.
Skeleton Level	Level of Skeleton. Affects HP/attack of Skeleton.
Max Skeleton	Increases the maximum amount of skeletons allowed in the encounter

Even though these stats are pretty self-explanatory, the game doesn't do a good job in explaining these stats. This is because of the skeletons. They only scale off of Skeleton Level/Summon Quality/Max Skeletons

What about that last stat? It's completely omitted in the game! Well, wayward reader, you see... That's the secret sauce.

2b. Class Theory

Okay, listen up! Here's the basic list of things you need to do:

• Abuse rivers and thickets for a T H I C C 230% attack speed
  
• Prioritize skeleton substats (Skeleton level, Summon Quality, Max Skeletons)

Skeleton stats for comfiness:

• Skeleton Level: (Loop Lvl) - 2 is where you should be
  
• Summon Quality: Stay at around 50%
  
• Max Skeleton: Minimum 4 for comfy early-game, 5 for bosses/lategame

The rest of the stats are left to your discretion.

Max Skeletons

Max Skeletons is integral to your success. Unfortunately, the stat is beyond rare, appearing once in a while and often times being an underwhelming piece. You'll want to hoard as much as you can, but only if the gods will it.

More Skeletons = More FUN

It's a simple equation. More skeletons gives you more damage. More damage deletes the enemy before they can even lay a finger on you.

How you rip and tear through the abyss is simple. Attack Speed affects how fast you summon skeletons. You build that through Rivers + Thicket cards alone, but we'll talk more about that later.

The Biggest Flaw

Unfortunately, because your success is tied to a rare stat, it also becomes the class' biggest flaw. The flaw presents a giant dilemma whenever you upgrade your gear:

Do you trade one skeleton for more substats?

The answer should always be no, but because of how gear drops work, the question becomes substantially complicated.

The picture above demonstrates the worst case scenario for a Max Skeleton drop. It's a grey level 5 ring. Grey items only have one stat. And because Max Skeletons is ALWAYS +1, it's all or nothing. Yes, this means that you'll be relying on Orange drops for Max Skeletons. Yes, this is an L you have to take. Sorry kiddo.

So how do I make that decision then?

You always have to weigh the pros and cons of both the present and future when making this decision. That sounds like a mouthful, sorry. Just be flexible with this. There will be times where you can't hit the minimum stats and that's okay. Failure is expected.

Here's an example:

Here's a question: Do you want to replace your RIGHT ring for +2 Max Skeletons?

Well... The answer is no because you always want your Max Skeleton gear to have other skeleton stats.

The only time you WOULD replace the other ring would be when you're comfortable for the next couple of loops. But lady luck is a fickle beatch, and you can't trust her to give you what you want.

3a. Deck Build

Now, I know what you're thinking. 15 cards?!??!?!

Yes. This is a run for resources. My highest run on ch.4 has been on loop 34, but I'm confident I can go higher with the right RNG.

Let's start from the top. Left to right.

• Cemetery is used for resources only. Gathering more Memory Fragments is always welcome for the girthy-ass encyclopedia achievement. Much like Ruins, it is best used in moderation.
  
• Village is the de-facto card for setting up your safe space. When a Vampire Mansion is placed beside it, it transforms into Ravaged Village for the next 3 loops. Then it transforms into Count's Land, offering better gear(?) and a stronger quest which heals you upon completion.
  
• Groves is used in conjunction with Blood Grove to help contain situations. It is particularly good for Ruins, since those slithery snakes have a 40% of leaving you in the dust unscathed.
  
• Ruins is good in moderation. On one hand, this is one of the prime ways to get loot. On the other hand, especially when misplaced, it can spell the end of your run because the snakes shooting you from a tile away can deal some SERIOUS damage.
  
• Vampire Mansion is the card that transforms Villages. They're great early game for generating loot and getting those upgraded quests.
  
• Battlefield is great when controlled properly and has minimal impact (using only 2 Battlefields for 3 Blood Path tiles).
  
• Bookery shuffles your cards. It's essential because you'll be burning a lot of cards with my setup.
  
• Road Lantern keeps the situation under control by reducing the max amount of enemies on any highlighted tile by one. It dictates how much and how well you can fight.
  
• Smithy's Forge significantly helps you with damage reduction. Generally, you should not expect a fight to last more than 30 hits, the maximum amount of armor you can carry. Its 20% damage reduction is invaluable late-game, as it eases damage requirements by simply tanking through it.
  
• Forest and River are used for the absolutely OP Thickets + River combo. I'll explain more in another guide.
  
• Suburbs are how you scale into late game by scaling your exp growth. It is absolutely required for late-game.
  
• Oblivion is used to keep progression straight. Deleting goblin and bandit camps maintains my inner peace.
  
• Temporal Beacon is only exclusively used for farming Astral Orbs (for fun). Used ONLY in late game, burned otherwise.

Why not...

• Deserts? Because when you're engaging in combat, you will always want the enemy to target your skeletons. Because of how ridiculously squishy each one is, increasing the enemy's attack speed would do more harm than good. The increased atk spd would lead to more skeleton deaths instead of helping them live. Instead, you should tank the hit. Case and point, the skeletons.
  
• Zero Milestone? You are legit griefing yourself if you take this card. Sure, it helps decreases damage for one half of the map. But it increases the damage taken for other half. Either the kill-zone punishes you, or the bosses slap your ass cheeks into oblivion for taking such a stupid card.

3b. Arsenal is better. (Arsenal vs Ancestral Crypt)

One debate you'll come across is whether to use the Ancestral Crypt or the Arsenal gold card for Necromancer.

• Ancestral Crypt gives you +3 max hp for every enemy with a soul killed. It removes the hp bonus from armor and grants you one resurrection with full HP
  
• Arsenal grants you one extra item slot (the Shield for Necromancer) and lowers the stats of all dropped gear by 15%

The difference between the cards is quite substantial, but Ancestral Cryptbros will believe that their HP scaling will help them long term. And it's true, this would scale exceptionally well with my deck. But it doesn't necessarily solve the gear problem in the higher loops.

In my first attempt, when I beat god on loop 15, I lasted until loop 22 wherein a nasty combo of enemies managed to out damage my build. The problem was clear as day. Gearing in those loops got exceptionally tight since every upgrade needed to have all 3 skeleton stats. My 3k HP and ~1k Magic shield didn't matter and I died a slow death. Perhaps if I had dropped a skeleton for an atk speed drop, maybe I would have survived longer.

There was no further way of keeping up at that point. Because at that point, I had also snagged the achievement for filling out the entire map as a stupid humble flex. As the map was filled out, there was no further way of improving my attack speed and drops. Everything needed to be orange and have all 3 skeleton stats to retain loop comfort.

That means that your chonky HP doesn't matter if your drops can't keep up with Skeleton Level AND Max Skeletons at the same time. This makes Ancestral Crypt only good for the resurrection, which is still a pretty good deal mind you.

But if you don't need the resurrection or you're casually farming Hunter, Arsenal is the way to go. The shield alleviates Necromancer's biggest flaw - the inflexibility over Max Skeletons. Sure, the stat drop does add up and will affect you in all stages, but its benefits far outweigh the flaws. Your shield can also get Max Skeleton, increasing the maximum of skeletons to 7. A death force. If you get lucky and summon 3 Skeleton Mages, the fight's already decided.

I found that taking a shield with Max Skeletons always helps because it frees up the ring drops to be whatever garbage they want. Having 6 Max Skeletons is still comfy, but having 7 guarantees victory.

Which one should I take?

As this guide aims to prepare you for chapter 4, here is my recommendation:

• If you DO NOT have your cemetery upgraded, take Ancestral Crypt
  
• If you DO have an upgraded cemetery, you can get away with Arsenal.

3c. Necromancer Trait Tier-list-kinda-maybe

Ugh. The most subjective part of the guide. But it must be done.

Note: This will ONLY cover class specific traits. Use others at your own discretion.

OBTAIN ASAP

Trait	Description and Reason
Field Practice	Gain + 0.25 Skeleton Level every loop (starting from the loop when this trait was received) It's free power that eases scaling. Best obtained early on, but never hurts to take late-game.
Unseen Care	Gain permanent +0.5 magic shield for every skeleton summoned. This is best utilized when you are constantly fighting strong and plentiful enemies. Best obtained early on, as you can build a shield that can last a while in late-game.
Residual Heat	Receive +(3*loop lvl) as HP after skeleton's death. This is one of the only ways you will be self-sustaining. With the deaths of your undead friends.
Laying Down One's Life	Any direct damage to the hero will be evenly split between him and his skeletons. This is one of the main methods you will be constantly reducing hero damage taken. To be fully utilized will require maximum attack speed so you can constantly summon skeletons. Best used with Residual Heat to maintain a great amount of self-sustain.

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Situationally Fantastic

This next set of traits would help increase survivability by a significant margin, but not as good as the above tier. Ideally, you would pick these traits as a Plan B, something to keep you on course.

If you only had these choices, prioritize the ones on the top.

Trait	Description and Reason
Art of Control	+1 to maximum number of skeletons. A flat +1 Max Skeletons is always welcome in this household.
Edge of Impossible	20% chance to exceed the number of skeletons and summon 2 of them during the last summon. A much worse version of Art of Control, but still viable since you'll constantly hit max limit skeletons. It's just a 20% chance to get another one.
Counterattack	After hero receives direct damage all skeletons have a 15% chance to immediately perform a counterattack. Is nice when you have all of your skeletons on the field.

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AVOID AT ALL COSTS. REROLL IF NEED BE.

Trait	Description and Reason
Ambitions of the Dead	After killing an enemy, skeleton fully heals itself; its damage and hp are increased by 10% until the end of battle. 10% damage and health doesn't matter when the tankiest of skeletons are still unfathomably squishy.
Preparation for a Ceremony	First two skeletons summoned in a day will be strengthened. Not only is this description nondescript, but your skeletons are too squishy for it to ever matter.
Horde	3 strengthened skeletons will be joining the hero on every loop to help in battle Yay. 3 squishy skeletons for free. They can't last 2 encounters with this setup.

3d. Camp Build

This section will outline what buildings you should consider upgrading. With how basic progression is in this game, you should be able to at least build the base building. Upgrading them is a major bonus/cost, so do as you see fit, hero.

Building	Reason
Cemetery	When upgraded to level 2, it grants you 1 rez at 15% health. It only gets better from there.
Forest	Unlocks an VERY IMPORTANT card, Forest and Thickets.
Gymnasium	When upgraded, unlocks the suburbs card. Essential for late-game scaling.
Herbalists Hut	Grants you the ability to use potions in combat. Every upgrade is worth it if you can afford it.
Library card	Unlocks the Bookery card, useful for shuffling dead cards. Essential.
River	VERY IMPORTANT. Unlocks the river card.
Smithy	When upgraded, it unlocks a vital card, Smithy's Forge
Watchtower	VERY IMPORTANT building. It gives you free help within a couple tiles of camp.

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Supplies

While each furniture has its own uses and applications, I will only mention the items I found essential.

Supply	Description and Reason
Alchemist's Shelf (Furniture)	+1 to max number of Potions Anything to increase your survivability.
Antique Shelf (Furniture)	+1 to max HP for every whole Resource gained during this expedition This is the only way that you'll reliably build max HP. As this build is centered around resources, this furniture is PARTICULARLY VITAL for success.
Jeweler's Lens (Tool)	Raises chance of finding a rare item by 10%. Might as well try to make everything an Orange-tier drop, right?
Miner's Pick (Tool)	+1 more preserved pebbles Preserved Pebbles.png while passing through the Campfire tile. Is good for resource building.
Shoe Nails (Tool)	Attackers receive 1 damage after every hit. Free damage. Though, I'm not sure if it applies to skeletons.
Skinner's Knife (Tool)	10% chance to receive 1 Ration after killing a Ratwolf. +5 damage to ratwolves. A handy tool since you have a chance to get a ration AND deal more damage to ratwolves.
Garlic (Food)	+2 damage against all vampires. Bonus damage is always nice
Meat Stew (Food)	Receive additional 5 HP while passing through a village. Admittedly, I haven't unlocked this one yet. But this sounds neat enough to take.
Brass Candlestick (Jewelry)	The hero's damage is increased by 5% when he is in range of a road lantern or a beacon (effects don't stack). Free damage is always nice, especially when Road lanterns are mega-useful.
Exquisite Mirror (Jewelry)	6% chance to redirect lightning (from the Storm temple) or a pure attack to a random enemy. (Note : Can be used to reflect the damage back from the Lich.) Is only useful for the Lich, but considering how powerful he is in chapter 4, anything helps. If it's stackable, the fight becomes a breeze.
Old Painting (Jewelry)	Increases damage done to bosses by 4%. Free damage to bosses is always welcome in this household.
Silver Pendant (Jewelry)	-4 damage from all vampires. Another useful item for vampires.
Silverware (Jewelry)	+2 damage to all undead. Bonus damage to enemies is always welcome in this household.

4a. Basic Map Theory 101

In this section, you will learn how and what tiles you will place on the map. In addition, it will tell you all of the tile combos I use. This section is pretty straight-forward.

Map Tiles

These tiles are place outside of the loop. Here are the only ones you will be using:

• River
  
• Thickets
  
• Suburbs

Do not use the Forest card. The only time it would be useful is if you were REALLY desperate to place a Bloody Groves, but we're gigachads. Not desperate housewives.

Map Preference

Unfortunately, to play Necromancer optimally, you can't just take any map. You need to take a map that's most preferable to rivers because rivers replace the need to have attack speed on your gear.

Example

For optimal river gameplay you will need a 5-tile wide gap between the loop and the edge of the map. Here's an example. The highlighted area should be pretty obvious. (please let me know if it isn't)

Rivers 105

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2424861000
Rivers are 15-BILLION % IMPORTANT. Again, it replaces the need to have attack speed on your gear. As rivers aren't the most straightforward card, I thought it would be in everyone's best interest to remind you how it works.

5-wide River Basics 105-1

On a basic level, here are how river cards work:

• Rivers will DOUBLE the effect of an ADJACENT map tile.
  
• Rivers are multiplicative, meaning that having multiple river tiles touch one map tile will multiply it by a lot. (2x -> 4x -> 8x -> 16x)
  
• Rivers can ONLY have a beginning point and an end point. You cannot fork the river into multiple paths.
  
• Place a river on ONE SIDE ONLY. Preferably touching the loop for Shipwreck synergy.
  
• If you need more information and pictures you should seriously check out the guide above.

If you bothered to check out the guide above, there are two viable types of rivers: 4-wide and 5-wide. There is a substantial difference of 56% in both types. Because this amount can make a substantial difference, I will only talk about the 5-wide river.

5-wide River Placement 105-2

My color choice may not have been the best here, but that's not the point. This picture has been made even more noob-friendly, clearly indicating where you should start placing things.

Result

Obviously, this is a very different looking map from the one depicted above, but you get the point.

Suburbs 106

Rivers aren't the only thing that we place on the map. We place suburbs as well to get bonus xp from monsters. When you proliferate your suburbs, you can get to a maximum bonus xp of ~95-105. That's a substantial amount that you'll be thankful for late-game. Thankfully Suburbs are much easier to understand.



When you first place your suburb tile, you can no longer place them willy-nilly. From the first placement, you can only place tiles adjacent to suburbs.



When you place suburbs in a cross (+ shape), the middle suburb transforms into a town, granting you a bonus of 1 xp per monster. So when you surround a map's worth of towns, this is what it should look like.

• Brighter Green (on the left side, sorry colorblind people :X) = River/Thickets
  
• Yellow = Suburbs
  
• Red = Suburbs Transformed into a town

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Section Conclusion

And with that, I've just solved one piece of the puzzle for you. Optimized map placement! Here's a summary of the map placement rules:

1. Ensure the map has space for a 5-wide river. If not, restart.
   
2. Place the river on the side that's closest to the loop. Refer to the above image for reference.
   
3. Build suburbs with the largest surface area.

Thank you for attending Basic Map Theory 101! See you next lecture.

4b. Intermediate Combat Theory 204

Combat in Loop Hero is something we're indirectly involved in. We don't control the state and flow of the battle, rather, we manipulate the outcome with gear and tiles. This means we should pay attention to the following metrics:

• Did the Necromancer take HP damage?
  
• Did the Necromancer use a potion in battle?

And obviously, here are the answers:

• Did the Necromancer take HP damage? No.
  
• Did the Necromancer use a potion in battle? No.

Obviously, this is the idealistic scenario for each combat encounter. But when you do take damage, these would be your alarm bells going off.

If the Necromancer does take HP damage, it's an indicator that things can be improved (until you know they can't be).

If the Necromancer takes enough damage to use a potion, it's a clear indication that you will have trouble revisiting that scenario. Far from ideal. You will need to further control the encounter.

Crowd Control

The only tools available to keeping things in check boils down to two things:

• Blood Groves.
  
• Road Beacons.

Since we're gigachads, we purposefully run head-on into difficult encounters every single time. This is to keep the resources and the loot flow going. Keep the good times flowin, I'd say. How I use lanterns are very nuanced, so you should use them in your own way to stay comfy.

Blood Groves are the saviour to keeping things under control. They guarantee a kill at 15% HP, which is required for those DAMNED SNAKES IN THE RUIN. Otherwise, they have a 40% chance to escape and harass you in the next encounter.

Note on Hungry Groves

Because Blood Groves can also affect bosses, some people would recommend you to turn it into a Hungry Grove for extra mileage. Instead of executing enemies at 15%, Hungry Groves execute at 20%. However, this comes at the additional cost of requiring an Oblivion card to properly set up. Generally, this isn't worth it since it requires an additional card that you might not be able to get before Lich King.

Tile Synergies

With my deck, here are the synergies that you should be aware about:

Placement	Combo	Result
Adjacent	Vampire Mansion + Village	Creates a Ransacked Village , spawning 4 ghouls + vampire. Transforms to Count's Land after 3 loops, offering better quest healing and items.
Removal	Deleting Groves/Forest/Thickets adjacent to Blood Grove	Turns Blood Grove into Hungry Grove , which occasionally attacks the hero for [5+3*loop] damage but executes anyone at 20% HP.
Area Covered	Temporal Beacon + Abandoned Bookery	Adds Watcher Mages to battles, giving you another avenue for Time Shards.
Adjacent	River + Battlefield	Turns River into Shipwreck , spawning the Siren and her Jellyfish. This offers a good way for Time Shards as well as loot, as a guaranteed chest spawns. But exercise caution with this one. Sirens are tough. Do not have a Shipwreck in range of your Watchtowers near camp.
Area Overlap	Battlefield + Battlefield	Overlapping Battlefields transforms Wastelands tile into Blood Path , offering another avenue of Shapeless Mass + Time Shards. Exercise EXTREME caution, as you could potentially end your own run when a Prime Matter spawns from a Ghost of a Ghost. You should have a decent amount of skeletons to counter this, otherwise you will die in 6 attacks.

Section Conclusion

While a lot less meatier than the previous section, this section is still harder than the previous section due to the fact that you will need to think and apply the theory shown here. While that might be very hard to visualize now, I will provide more theory on how to apply it in the next section.

Thank you for attending this lecture on Combat Theory. Until next time, wayward hero!

4c. "Advanced" Tile Placement Theory 420

This section will describe to you how I place tiles on any given map. This is beyond subjective, debatable, and quite possibly incomprehensible. But I will try my best. As such, this section and the next will not be noob-friendly.

To describe the ebb and flow of how I place tiles, you need to understand that I divide the map into two halves.

1. Vampire Avenue

This half of the map is with the campfire, where you will only exclusively place vampire mansions and villages. This area is pretty straight forward, though it is just as deadly if you can't handle the (initial) heat. The basic idea with this half is to populate it with many villages as possible so that you can heal before and after the campfire.

2. The Kill-Zone

This half of the map is filled out with ruins, cementaries, groves, you name it. The Kill-Zone exposes the biggest flaw with the Zero Milestone gold card, as you will be taking significantly more damage the further you are from camp. This means that if you do employ the gold card, you will take a drastic increase in damage and will eventually kill yourself because of it. It doesn't matter if you place the milestone at the campfire or in the Kill-Zone. You will take a drastic increase in damage either way, whether it'd be from the harsh Kill-Zone or the bosses themselves.

Unfortunately, I can't really guide you on how to build your own kill-zone. This sort of thing is completely subject to your preferences and how masochistic you are. The best advice I can give you is to make sure you have a Blood Groves in the notch before you develop it.

Tile Priority

Here is the general tile priority: [everything else] > Bloody Groves > Road Lanterns

Even though Road Lanterns significantly increase survivability, I see it as a crutch as you reduce the amount of chances you get for loot. If you are serious about employing this silly play-style, I expect you to survive the harshest encounters within reason. That's not to say that you should completely avoid Road Lanterns, but to use it when you feel uncomfortable. Treat Road Lamps like a limiter, as you will feel more comfy with more of them on the map, but more stressed out when that one extra enemy can spell your doom.

Applying the theory gently but firmly.

You should be able to see the clear split. Should be simple enough.

Notches

Notches decide how powerful your loop is. The more notches you have, the more efficient you can be with tiles.

Notches allow you to cram more villages per vampire mansion, more chances to swap cards and expedite the transformation, maintain armor, etc. etc.

Generally, to be a gigachad, you will want to place the higher-priority tiles in the INNER NOTCH. This means a Vampire Mansion in the Vampire Avenue, and Bloody Groves in the Kill-Zone.


The yellow notches are where I would place Vampire Mansions, whereas the red represents Bloody Groves.


You might not like it, but this is what peak performance ACTUALLY looks like. (minus the road lantern and wheat farms i'm sorry)

General Tips

As this section does not talk about how to specifically set up for chapter 4, I will provide some final tips before the next section.

• Try not to place Ruins back to back, those stupid fire snakes are SUPER DUPER DEADLY. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THEM.
  
• You can place whatever you want in-between villages. I prefer Ruins and Cemetery.
  
• I like placing Bookeries and Armories in the Vampire Avenue, as it spawns enemies adjacent to the tile. If I remember correctly, you do not fight on Count's Lands.

4d. Expert 5D Chess Game Theory 690

This is it. Time to win.

I have imparted as much knowledge as I possibly could before you seriously attempt this. Hopefully, you've seen how complex this game is. Now it's time to tie it all together.

Chapter 4 Basics

This chapter will slaughter all casuals who don't know any better. This is because of it's ridiculous pacing, forcing you to fight all 3 bosses consecutively AND as early as possible.

Early-game Obstacles

Given my build, there are two major obstacles that end most runs.

• Fighting a Ravaged Village COMPLETELY raw dog before the Lich King.
  
• Lich King

If you are able to withstand these two obstacles, I guarantee that you have a strong chance of defeating the final boss. Because at that point, you've clearly displayed enough knowledge to properly brute-force through the game in a gigachad way.

Lich King refresher

In case you forgot just how much of an ass the Lich King is, this guy will populate empty tiles around the campfire. Here's what it looks like.

As indicated in RED, if these marked tiles are empty, the Lich King will fill that tile and empower himself with the Lich's Palace.

There are only two ways to counter this:

• Deleting a palace with Oblivion.
  
• Covering a marked spot with whatever tile you want.

Obviously, we don't have the luxury of getting Oblivion cards. You shouldn't take Omicron's blessing either, as your first ability choice will drastically affect your performance long-term. Thus, I shall only focus on the 2nd solution.

Campfire Setup

Typically, what I will recommend is for you to simply wait until you get enough village cards to place beside the campfire. However, this will not work every time. Sometimes you will spawn the Lich King faster simply because you get more Rivers/Thickets. Here is my best advice:

• You simply cannot sloppily place tiles wherever and however you want. There needs to be thought put into it so your setup can survive late-game.
  
• You DO NOT want to place Cemetery/Ruins cards AFTER the campfire. This will cause enemies to spawn in your boss encounter. If you are forced to place a card that isn't a village card, try to wait for a Groves. That way you can place a Bloody Groves afterwards.
  
• If you are trying to conserve on card placements right before the Lich King, avoid placing thickets that do not touch rivers.
  
• Ensure that your Arsenal placement will NOT affect how you plan the rest of the map. Yes, this is one of the more latent advantages Arsenal has over Ancestral Crypt.
  
• Try not to place too many encounters near your campfire. When you're breasts deep into late-game, those guard-towers stop being useful. They end up being a giant liability and can lead you to your unfortunate demise.

It's perfectly fine to let the Lich have 1-2 palaces. If you have Bloody Groves connected, you need not worry about this loser. After all, if you were able to overcome the first obstacle (fighting a Ravaged Village raw dog), I am confident that you have set yourself up for success.


I clearly missed two spots, but I still managed to barely squeak out a kill without dying.

5. Conclusion

Well, I hope this guide was helpful for you! Sure, the later sections do not go farther in depth, but they only needed to guide you through the toughest obstacles in this chapter. The more you think about my guide, the more you see how these systems feed into each other.


This guide doesn't need to teach you how to farm at neck-level end-game. After all, a skeleton encounter is a guaranteed battle of attrition and RNG. While my set-up can exceed loop 30, I guarantee that you'll be absolutely bored out of your mind. If you take it any slower than I do, your chances of pushing loop lvl 30+ becomes that much higher.

Sorry that I didn't take a formal picture of the loot, this particular run ended at 2am (at lvl28) and I was already tired of putting up with these absolutely stupid skeletons. SCREW EM. But nonetheless, the results speak for themselves. Good luck hero, and see you at the top.

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free leave them down below! I'll try to answer as many questions if I can... if there are any.

[Twyler]

Still looping this is fun as f*ck.

[Twyler]

I've read through all of it, it's time to begin my journey.