A Beginner's Primer on Massive Chalice

This is a brief guide to help newbies, here's what it will cover:

• Bloodlines and how to manage them.
  
• The permanent choices and what strategies to use with them.
  
• A heavy focus on the Hunter Class and its benefits (as of Beta).
  
• Basic combat preparedness.
  
• Tactics for dealing with enemies.
  
• Dealing wth random rvents.
  
• The gameplay quirks that exist right now (as of the Beta).

If you found this guide useful please upvote it so others can find it.

UPDATE There's been a major balance update since I finished this guide, including the addition of mixed classes. The guide is still good as a primer regarding how to play the bloodlines and understanding how they work, but I need to go back to the game and look at the classes again and see their strengths and weaknesses. The Hunter is no longer the only strong class. I have so much work to do on my own game that it won't be for a while though. In the mean time, please take this guide as a starting point, not the be-all and end-all of guides. Take what works and leave what doesn't, let me know about complete innacuracies and I will fix those.

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I am also an indie developer working on a historically accurate roguelike about exploring the Antarctic called Heroes of the Antarctic [thinkpadius.com], please check it out and see if the game is something you'd be interested in playing.

Starting a New Game

Your Starting Heroes Are Randomly Generated

The Heroes you get in your first battle are chosen at random. Since this game relies so heavily on Hunters right now, my first recommendation is that you keep starting a new game until the heroes in your first battle consist of at least 3 Hunters or at least 2 Hunters with one of them being at Level 2.

Once you've done that, save the game with a name like "Best Start" so that if you ever want to play a new game you don't have to re-roll for those Heroes unless you want to try for something better.

Bloodlines

To survive through the 300 years having a productive set of Keeps will be absolutely necessary. Five Keeps is probably best. Four is essential.

It's worth thinking about Bloodlines in three ways:

Baby Factories

You want your Keeps to pump out babies as often as possible for as long as possible, for that to happen you need to have a young married couple, particularly a young female. Look for traits that increase the likelihood of them having children.

Levels First, Traits Second, Personality Last

Children seem to inherit the class-specific stats from their parents first, before any modifiers are placed. This means that if you have a Hunter (regent) with an Alchemist (partner) the children will inherit the class stats from the Hunter, and it seems that includes things like Dexterity and HP and Evasion etc. So it may behoove you to marry two Hunters to try and get the best class stats from each parent into the next generation.

The children in the bloodline will gain levels depending on the levels of the parents. I believe it's done in the same way as the Crucible they'll simply gain a certain amount of XP per day until they turn 15. My guess is that it becomes the average of the two parents' levels. Use a crucible to continue their training after they've come of age.

Traits are inherited second and can develop as the child grows, and will modify stats. Personality will develop as the child grows into adulthood and will also modify stats.

So what does this mean?

• Traits and Personality issues and starting levels can be fixed using the Crucible and a good trainer with the right traits and personality.
  
• Building Keeps and other buildings on the right areas can make up for weaknesses in any builds you've got.
  
• A third thing, because otherwise it's not a list.

So it's really important to focus on Stats First, Traits Second, and Personality Last. It's up to you to experiment with the best stat combinations, but I've found that working on Dexterity and Evasion results in greater success than trying to work on accuracy or damage modifiers.

Safety Nets

There's nothing wrong with having one bloodline in multiple Keeps. This is especially true when you've got an excellent family trait that you want to breed everywhere, and still keep producing the same character class. This way you double the production of one of your best bloodlines, while also protecting it from the Cadence in the late game.

This is an example of a good potential Regent

Permanent Choices

One at a Time Please

It's critical to take a few moments to plan out every action during the metagame because every choice you make is permanent, until someone dies or it's completed. Here's a list of the permanent choices:

• Picking a Regent - this will remove one of your heroes from the "active" pool and they won't be able to fight again. Thinking in broad strokes, you want to pick young, fertile, high stat, characters that aren't carrying any relics. Remember, don't worry so much about personality, you can fix that later.
  
  
• Picking a Partner - see above. I like to choose Heroes that I'll never use in battle like any high level alchemists or caberjacks that I win in battle. Also, it seems this game has no issue with incest, so feel free to marry within the family.
  
  
• Choosing a Standard - Crucibles add experience to all your heroes on a daily basis while you're not fighting, and you can increase that daily amount by choosing the right Standard to work in the Crucible. Be careful though, because they will also pass on personality traits. This is one of the areas where you want to round out any of the issues you have with your heroes, so if you have some Hunters with bad aim, maybe you'll want to put in a Standard with the Tranqui personality trait
  
  
• Choosing a Saigewright - You can have three of these "researchers" in one building. I've played for the first 150 years without a single one, so it's perfectly possible to work without them. They do have they're advantages though, reducing research time and supposedly making the Random Events more interesting. But as of the Beta release, it's really not been made clear what the impact intuition has on anything, so it's difficult to make any informed decisions. Just remember to pick infertile, high intuition heroes that have really bad character traits for combat.
  
  
• Research - You can only pick one at a time, so you have to pick carefully. I like to prioritize Vitalibands, Advanced Hunter Armor, Hunter Veil Armour, the aim enhancing arm band thingy and the two Hunter bows, beyond that, it's really about experimenting with what works. (again, as of Beta, the Hunter is the only build strong enough to handle the Cadence throughout the 90% game, hence the focus)
  
  
• Relics - Who should inherit a relic? This is a good question, you can either go young or old. If you go young, make a note of it on paper somewhere, because the game does a poor job making it clear that someone owns a relic. Often it's easier to go with someone older, because older people are the people you want to send into battle anyway, they're beyond the age of making babies, so you should use them in combat more often.
  
  
• Placing Buildings - It's good strategy to alternate putting one Keep on a Special tile, and then another Keep on a safe inner tile. Another strategy is to build a Crucible on an inner tile because during the late game, you'll be encountering some obnoxiously high level versions of the same type of enemies you've encountered before they'll have about double the HP.
  
  
• Picking Your Battles - Remember that you always have THREE choices when a Cadence event occurs, you can pick the first or second to fight on or third, you could choose not to fight at all. Sometimes choosing to avoid a battle might be a better option altogether. Particularly if you're only a few years away from completing some research.

The Hunter and How to Use Her

Scout, Bomber, Assassin

The Hunter is not overpowered, it's just that the other two classes are intially quite weak. You have to put a lot of effort into making those two classes work. Currently, you can send out a full group of Hunters and kick ass. They're work well as a team.

The Alchemist only has 5 shots making him useless after the midgame unless he's already powerful and hits a group of enemies. The Caberjack is advertised as a fighter/meatshield, but has the same health and defense as everyone else given its role, making it a terrible choice unless its heavily armoured. Both of these classes require a lot of time invested in researching armour and items.

That may just be the issue with game balance and the current Beta release though. Regardless, this is the best way to think about using the Hunter for the majority of the game:

• Use the Hunter's ghosting ability to move everywhere. If you can't ghost somewhere in the current turn, wait until the next turn.
  
• A hunter can eventually use a Blunderbow or a Bone Barb Bow, they both have amazing pros, but keep in mind that they are potentially harmful to your own teammates or allies, so you have to position your hunter carefully.
  
• The Blunderbow has a recoil which pushes the hunter backwards, if she hits anything, she'll be stunned for a turn. If she hit another a teammate, that hero will also be stunned, so be careful!
  
• The Bone Barb Bow will go through multiple enemies, including your own teammates, so again, be careful about positioning.
  
• You can send an entire team of Hunters out to fight, but don't have them all be specialists. You will need at least two Hunters using standard/Relic crossbows.
  
• Veil Armour is excellent.
  
• The Vitaliband is a great item to have until you find something better in the late game.
  
  
  
  
  

  Some Setups

  
  Here are some examples of loadouts, they're not optimized, but they work up to the midgame.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Common Problems To be Aware of

  
  There are plenty of things to be aware of, I took some screenshots to show them off, but here's a list too:
  
  
  • Don't over extend - if you send your Hunters too far forward and spot too many enemies it may become too difficult to engage the ones you're already dealing with.
    
  • Don't forget to retreat - backtracking is a great way to take a breath and rethink your tactics it also draws enemies out and separates them.
    
    Cooldowns
    
    
  • Some of the Hunter's best abilities take a long time to reboot, you don't want to get caught in a situation where you can't use a killer blow when you need it most. The best way to approach with hunters is often to stagger your big hits while relying on standard shots in the interim.
    
    
    
    
    Self Inflicted Friendly Fire!
    
    
  • The Blunderbow is really powerful, but as this image shows, it can cause some serious problems with recoil. If you look carefully, the Hunter in front has fired the Blunderbow, causing a recoil which resulted in her hitting the Hunter behind her, who then hit the Hunter behind her. The result was three stunned Hunters - making them completely useless for one round.
    
    
    
    

Combat Strategies

Combat Strategies to Maximize Damage or Survival Odds

Until the issues with game balance are resolved, for this section I'm going to assume you're running an almost full Hunter set of heroes.

Enemy AI and Level Design

As of the Beta, the reason why the Hunter is so strong is because the enemy behavior all demands quite similar behavior from the player. There are three ranged enemies, and three of the four melee enemies cause so much havoc that you have to kill them before they get close enough. The Alchemist would be good if it weren't for the fact that she runs out of potions so quickly despite the typical battle lasting about 15 or more minutes after the mid game.

The enemies never patrol or move very far either. They scoot around in their little area until they see your heroes. This means that they remain in their groups and are always clumped together. It's very rare to find a solo enemy after the early game.

The level designs are setup so that that the enemies are never very far apart from each other making exploration a pain in the ass - travel too far forward in the middle of a fight and you suddenly activate five new enemies and the battle becomes uncontrollable. This is why veil armor and ghosting are so great - you can finally explore without risk of activating a whole new set of enemies.

These are issues of game balance that make the Caberjack and Alchemist too weak for the current game, but with a bit of tweaking they could be much stronger. For instance, if the Caberjack could always get a free move after a successful hit, or the Alchemist could be allowed to carry more potions with additional research, the game would open up.

• Enemies will only "activate" when they see you, not when you see them or they see their friends get hit.
  
• Enemies are often clumped together in groups, so try and get to the edge of the clumps and snipe them.
  
• Don't travel too far forward too fast, you risk activating too many enemies and losing control of the fight.
  
• As a general rule, take out the ranged enemies first, the strong melee fighters second, and ignore the weak melee fighters until last.

A Bad Landing
Every so often your heroes get a bad landing and you start off surrounded by enemies. You have two options based on your situation and terrain.

You can run away. This gives you the opportunity to ghost and get control of the situation on your terms. Yes, you lose a combat turn where you could do damage, but you also save yourself from receiving any damage, and that's critical.

You can fight. If you do fight, then you have to think things through three turns ahead. It's unlikely that you'll take all your enemies out, so you have to be prepared in advance for who which enemy is likely to survive and how much damage they could possibly do. This is where repositioning matters. I'll usually take out all the enemies "to the left" and reposition my Hunters their before firing a flare into zone on "the right" where the other enemies are, which effectively blinds them and makes them useless for the next turn. (Of course by "left" and "right" I was picking concepts to help.)

Which brings me to my next point - don't ever pick "Hobble;" it's really useless against the enemies you need it to work on - the Twitches can literally teleport so why do they even care if they get hobbled? And the Wrinkler(?) is so incredibly fast moving that a hobble attack is a wasted turn to slow it down. The Ruptures, even in their advanced form, will likely never do enough damage to you to justify the wasted skill, you're better off just moving out of the way if you can.

Terrain

Use the land to your advantage. The hardest levels are the Keep defense levels and the gray depressing ones with the skeleton eggs and the wooden bridges.

The temptation in the Keeps is to overextend yourself in order to find your enemy, and to unite the extra two heroes you are given. Those two heroes are your regent and partner, if they die, you'll have to pick a new regent and partner for the keep Be extremely careful about how you use those two extra heroes. I tend to keep them ghosted almost the entire battle until I'm certain they're safe. I'm also likely to give them kill shots only - this way they gain XP, which is great for the future of the Keep, if the Regent gains a level then fantastic!

The other one I mentioned is difficult because you can become exposed to ranged attacks from enemies and not be able to reach them from your current position. This is particularly true if there are Seeds and Twitches on the map, which can just ruin your day. So stay ghosted and take things slow, remember that unless you have veil armour, you can't ghost while crossing a bridge so don't sprint across them, inch across them.

The others have their own qualities. The easiest is probably the woods - which is great for hunters without veil armour because of the trees and the rocks. The wasteland terrain is obnoxious - it's usually big and there's always a straggler that you have to travel all the way around the map again to find. It's also difficult because after midgame they tend to clump Bulwarks and Wrinkler's together.

Dealing with Enemies

Enemies and How to Dispose of the Them

Until the issues with game balance are resolved, for this section I'm going to assume you're running an almost full Hunter set of heroes.

Blind & Stun

I find that these are fantastic ways to delay the actions of the enemy and there are a number of ways to do that. When you kill a Lapse - the ranged ghosts that reduce XP - they explode stunning anything nearby, including enemies. You can use that to your advantage take certain enemies out of play for a turn, giving yourself the opportunity to focus on the harder to kill enemies.
Flares will blind enemies for a turn, and reduce their aim after that. I usually have all my hunter's learn the skill because they only get two shots per battle. The effects are powerful though, and you can blind you own heroes so just be careful where you aim it.

Prioritize Your Murder Death Killing

Let's just assume you're surrounded by every enemy the game has, at approximately the same distance from you, they've all seen your heroes. Who do you try and eliminate first?

• Twitches - because their teleportation technique results in a location swap with one of your heroes, you either need to blind, stun, or eliminate the Twitch before they have a chance to do this. The good news is that if the Twitch is within a certain walking range, it won't teleport, but at that point you run the risk of getting a beat down. While blinded, the Twitch will wander aimlessly in your general direction if it can, if it can't it will wander into the fog, this is the general behavior of all the AI while blind.
  
  
• Wrinkler - since most of your high level heroes will be in their 50s or 60s you really can't risk an attack from these enemies. They all do decent damage and have high health. Again, you have the choice of blinding, stunning, or eliminating them outright.
  
  
• Seed Queens - Can't quite remember their names, but these ladies are pumping out seeds and chuck them at you like an alchemist throws a grenade, the only difference is that you either take damage, or a new enemy shows up right next to you. The standard version has 58HP so take it out. The Advanced version has 78 HP and gets two shots sometimes, so take it out quickly.
  
  
• Lapses - The truth is that you should take these ghosts out at the most opportune moment because they will stun nearby enemies when they die. So it may behoove you to upgrade them to the top of your list if you find that you can't kill your Twitch in the first turn. They take about two hits in the early game. Even in their advanced form, they are relatively weak and with veil armour on your heroes should be fine.
  
  
• Bulwarks - if you've been putting enough effort in your bloodlines to maximize dexterity and evasion then it's okay to let Bulwarks drop this low on the list. Their aim is usually bad, the issue is that they position themselves to try and take out more than one of your heroes at once. If you can't take them out in one shot, don't waste a second shot trying to kill them because it will only do 1 damage. Instead use the opportunity to blind them with a flare. Here's another scenario given the nature of the Bulwark AI; if you have 5 ghosted Hunters and you reveal one Hunter to shoot the Bulwark and it doesn't die, don't reveal the other ghosted Hunters tough it out and let your exposed Hunter try and dodge the Bulwark's next attack, otherwise the Bulwark will reposition himself to try and hit more than one of your hunters, which could be devastating.
  
  
• Ruptures - These can be one-shot-killed by a level 3-4 hunter, and the reason they're so low on the list is because when they explode they usually only do about 2 damage. Even in their advanced form, they'll only do about 4 damage because by then your heroes will have significantly better stats and will be wearing veil armour, and any other potential research perks you've looked into as well. They are distractions; rather than attack them, you should try and avoid them until you are ready to kill them. The best solution is to keep your Hunters separated enough that they won't all take damage if one explodes near them.
  
  
• Seeds - These guys are annoying. They can be one-shot-killed usually but if you don't kill them in the first shot, either in their basic or advanced form, they gain the "slippery" trait which makes it even harder to hit them a second time. I find that they're worth moving up the list if one of my heroes can gain a level within the battle, which would grant a quick tactical advantage. Just remember that they only grant 60 XP.

Early Release Issues

The Biggest Problem

When I first started playing I noticed that after I researched the health potions that all my heroes were equipped with one. So I assumed that all loadouts were automatic after you researched them, and that you were simply adding to the total that each Hero would carry with each bit of new research. This is not the case.

This could be fixed later by simply clearing things up with a reminder notification.

Remember to always check your hero's equipment before you fight

In the image below you can see where you can set up your loadout.

Random Events Popups

Dealing with the Cadence Randomly

Although some of the Random Events are there just to enrich the story behind the game, a lot of the decisions help you find relics, eliminate some of the Cadence, or even give new traits and abilities to your heroes.

The basic approach to decision making is that the more "corrupt" your actions are, the more likely the results will cause the Cadence to spread. But oddly, you can choose to make decisions that would appear to have negative consequences, but as long as you don't hide the reasons then you're less likely to have problems.

For example (I'll find a screenshot soon) when a riot happens and some of your heroes get a bit rowdy trying to restore order. You have the option to;

• Punish them for 10 years
  
• say you'll punish them, but do nothing.
  
• Do nothing.

Oddly, you can choose to do nothing and your countrymen will understand because you've got a war to win. The middle choice is likely to cause a spread of the Cadence though.

Other random events require expreimentation.

For example, there's one random event where a childbirth is going horribly wrong;

• You could save the mother
  
• You could save the child
  
• You could put them both in the chalice

The best option is usually to save the mother, but it doesn't always work. Putting them both in the chalice seems to be the equivalent of rolling the dice on the low chance of giving them both a chance to live.

A good rule of thumb is to choose options that preserve life, and are the most "hands off"

Here's another event: Picking option 2 will remove a hero from your pool for a certain number of years, and the results could be good if you have enough heroes. Picking option 3 could result in disaster though, I've tried it in other events and it usually results in the Cadence actually spreading without a fight. Option 1 won't have repercussions.

Help Me Improve This Guide

I'm always looking to improve this guide and make it more relevant, so I'll keep it up-to-date. Anything you think I've forgotten, just add to the comments and I'll plug it into the guide to round it out. Also, if you've discovered anything that's incorrect, please let me know so I change it.

Thanks!

[Cool Hand Luke]

Super out of date now :)

[Elden D Prawn]

Great guide! Lot's of well-thought tactics!

[Kit]

I wish I took a look at this before going through the whole game with Hunters taken from searching for more heros... then getting to the final battle and failing because I was using heros from other bloodlines that stomped in every battle before that. Yet the game doesn't ever tell you to keep your starting bloodlines. So I'm kind of upset by this.

[nyhsa]

Nice guide, thank you!
Please think about updating it.

In my walkthroughs, I find acuracy more important than you suggest. If you can kill an enemy for sure or reliably stun it, you'l have a tactical advantage and it's more fun :)
The info on intuition is outdated. The more your hero has, the faster your research is completed. The game also shows the exact benefit.
There are also updates to alchemists and caberjacks. Caberjacks for instance can get an armor from bulwarks. After one hit, the incoming damage is reduced to 1. Also the shadowjack has some very useful skills. In addition they can hit and stun multible enemys if you use their knockback properly, especially with the rupture-weapon. Don't ever use "slow" caberjacks. Look for "quick" ones! I overlooked them quite a while, but they do good damage and a good placed stun is worth it.
Alchemists are my backup to kill crowded enemys or to kill hidden enemies behind a obstacle

/Wall 'o text end/

[Tasthesose]

my world is almost gone :(

[Citizen of Steel City]

Thank you. It's very usefull

[Astral]

Juicy information I just confirmed that after about 10 kills if they receive a title the likelihood of their weapon becoming a relic after retirement is big.
Now I'm not sure if it's 10 kills spread between battles or if it's 10 kills in 1 battle that and I didn't test it to be sure that is guaranteed will try to see if I can make a relic out of a cadence weapon next.

[Astral]

This time I got the option to save the mother's life again and again I choose the chalice the result was pratically the same except instead of it happening immediately she was sent to the future on one hand she was old enough to be a good sagewright on the other hand the baby took quite sometime to appear either way it didn't affect my plans.

The option to get the relic through chalice travel though didn't went well instead of a chalice my hero got the withdrawn trait which was good since she had terrible personality.

[Astral]

I'm trying to do a playthrough mostly based on hunters but it's a bit hard since at the beggining they will miss half their shots making you have to concentrate more on their battle survivability instead of developing other stuff, although after developing the steady hander their ability to fight has improved so they are still one of the best classes.

In my first Iron Brutal playthrough I got 3 hunters 1 alchemist and 1 caberjack in the first battle and that battle ended with an almost dead hunter as my only survivor, it doesn't help that a brutal seed can kill a hunter in 2 strikes.

[Astral]

Ok I was able to find that the relic is not made by the level of the hero since I got a relic with a lvl 2 hero so I guess it's the hero's kill score on retirement (read death or sagewrighting).
Also I'm finding problems in this playthrough it seems that they have a limit on the incest thing I was unable to marry a aunt to her nephew and since that bloodline had so many good traits that I used them as procreation I got screwed over and had to do a hero discovery to keep it going.