Pixel Dungeon: Introduction

Have you tried to retrieve the amulet of Yendor, but failed miserably? Have you just bought the game and feel a bit lost? With over 15 hours spent in Pixel Dungeon on Steam, and countless hours of playtime on my tablet, I am ready to share my knowledge with you!
*Also, I decided to share this guide before finishing it, to let you correct my dumb mistakes before I start confusing people. This guide is not finished in any way, it is not even halfway through.*

What is this game about?

Pixel Dungeon is a turn-based roguelike game. It features perma-death, magic, chests and godlike Goo.
(Seriously, i think defating this boss is harder than the second and the third bosses combined...)
It might seem a bit confusing, but it is very simple, if you manage to get past the first 10 minutes of playing. This guide is written based on my personal experience, so you might consider parts of it a heresy. Please, don't kill me because of this.

Basic game mechanics

The game mechanics are very simple. Your character has only two statistics: [Str]ength and Health. Every character starts with 10str, with exception of warrior, who starts with 11. It can be increased by drinking Potions of Strength. It cannot be raised by leveling up, like classic RPG/cRPG/LARP/Whatever players might think. All weapons and armor have a strenght requirement. When you are using a weapon with a strenght requirment lower than your strength, you get bonus speed, while using an armor in simillar situation will grant you bonus dodge. It gets inverted if the weapon/armor is too heavy: weapons get decreased speed and armor lowers your dodge chance.

By trampling tall grass, you can get seeds and dewdrops. The seeds can be picked up. If you are under your maximum health and walk over a dewdrop, it will disapear and heal you. If you have full health, they won't automatically pick up, but you can force-pick up them, though it is a waste of a dewdrop, except when you have a dew vial - it can hold up to 10 dewdrops. You can drink it(through the inventory screen) to heal for the amount of the dewdrops collected. Also, if you have full dew vial and you die, you get revived and the vial gets empty(but you get to keep all your items, see the "Inner Cat" in the advanced section).

Also, one more thing: the monsters spawn once every 50 turns, but when you play at nighttime, the spawn rate is changed to 25 turns. This can be used to change the difficulty. Personally, I do prefer playing at nighttime(you can achieve this by changing the system time), because you can level up to sick levels, like level 10 on 5 floor, very easily.

Classes

There are four classes in Pixel Dungeon: Warrior, Mage, Rogue and Huntress. First three classes are unlocked straight from the start, and the Huntress is unlockable by defating the third boss by any other character class.

Warrior:
Arguably the easiest class to play. It is the only class that starts with 11Str instead of 10. He gets a shortsword that can be later reforged to upgrade another weapon. Potions of Strenght are also identified from the beggining. Also, every piece of food restores some health.

Mage
A wizard profficient of magic(duh). He gets a Wand of Magic Missile, which can be disenchanted to upgrade another wand. Scrolls of Identify are identified from beggining. They can fight with wands as a melee weapon, they recharge them faster and they regenerate one charge to all their wands when eating.

Rogue
My favourite class to play. He is designed to do stealth playthroughs, just like a Spy in Team Fortress 2 ;). He starts with a Ring Of Shadows +1, allowing him to sneak near monsters, without them noticing. Rings are partially identified just by putting them on(that means, if you put an unidentified ring on, it will say something like "Ring of Herbalism", but you will not know the bonus(+1,-1...). Also, he needs less food, which is especially helpful in the first few levels.

Huntress
She starts with 15HP and a boomerang. She also gets more HP from dewdrops and she always senses neighbouring monsters. She is profficient with missile weapons.

Subclasses

After defating the second boss, Tengu(IMO the easiest one), you will obtain the Tome of Mastery. You can read it and choose a subclass, one of the two given. Even after you complete the game - either by dying or finishing it - every new character with the same class will have it in his inventory upon starting the game.

Choosing a subclass is a very important choice. It can either ruin or make your game a lot easier. As the Tome of Mastery's tooltip says, reading it will take some time, so try to find a safe - in a manner of speaking - place to read it.

Warrior:

• Gladiator:
  Each successful hit on an enemy will do consequently more damage.
  
• Berserker:
  If your HP is below 40%, you will do more damage as your health decreases.

Mage:

• Battlemage:
  If you have a wand equipped as you melee weapon, each hit (doing more than 0 damage) will regenerate a charge to this wand. It will also deal more damage depending on the number of charges.
  
• Warlock:
  With every XP-giving kill you satisify some of your hunger and gain some health.

Rogue:

• Free Runner:
  (from http://pixeldungeon.wikia.com/ )
  "When unencumbered (not wearing armor that exceeds Strength level) & not starving, speed is multiplied by 1.6 for certain actions:
  walking speed
  Mirror Image swap speed
  Armor equip/unequip speed"
  
• Assasin:
  While attacking unaware enemies, you will deal ~50% more damage.

Huntress:

• Warden:
  You have a lot higher chance of getting dewdrops and seeds from trampling grass.
  
• Sniper:
  The Sniper has increased accuracy with ranged weapons, ignores enemy armor while using them and gives Zeroed in buff (when you hit with a ranged weapon, the next ranged attack will be twice as fast.

Advanced

Inner Cat
To prevent yourself from dying(for good), you can do two things.

Dew Vial, is the better way. If you have a full(10/10) dew vial in your inventory, upon death your character automatically empties it and revives himself. You got to keep all your items, in contrast to the Ankh.

Ankh, an item that can be bought from shop. Upon dying, it disapears from your inventory, and your character gets revived. You lose all your non-equipped items(except the Amulet of Yendor, the end game artifact). Also, I understand, Egyptian mythology and all these stuff, but why Ankh? In Spelunky the Ankh also revives you, so it does in many other roguelikes(like Heist, one of my games, but shhh...). Weird. Illuminati confirmed?

[Real2022]

Nice

[f0x3rmonsta]

is possible to have game adorned or ? am i just making stuff up. not even sure if that is a thing or just something i've made up in my mind to explain the statues.

[Iraq Lobster]

Yeah, I know.

[Ryuu]

you can also freeze meat

[Iraq Lobster]

I had a blazing sword, I killed a sewer crab, and it dropped mystery meat. My sword made fire all over the place, and it cooked the myster meat. I ate it. Yum.

[★Sokol_Glou★]

А как на русском игру сделать...так легче игралось бы а то...пытаюсь по кускам разобрать что за свиток или зелье)

[NoLifeIsPower]

How many times have you retrieve amulet of Yendor?

[Kami]

very good, i like it. but wouldn't a catagory on monsters be useful?

[D3agl3-Cross- I'm not]

something useful to add. When you're not in combat remove your armor, helps make your food last.

[Chocolate Cheddar]

Thanks for the helpful intro advice! Hope to see your guide keep growing.