Beginner guide

What you are doing

You walk down five floors of a sealed crypt. Every floor is a map of rooms. In a room the doors lock, monsters pour in, and your weapons shoot on their own. You only steer, dash and choose.

Killing monsters drops souls that fill an experience bar. Each new level offers a choice of cards: a new weapon, a stronger weapon, a relic or a body part. At the bottom of each floor waits a boss, and behind it a hatch to the next floor.

Controls

• Touch anywhere and drag to run. The hero follows your finger. On a computer the movement keys do the same.
• Dash through enemies and bullets. You have two dash charges that refill over time. A dash makes you untouchable for its whole length.
• Bomb: breaks stone and the cracked walls of secret rooms.
• Pause: opens your build, so you can see every weapon, relic and body part.
• Reroll changes the offered cards. Banish removes a card from the game for good: tap it, then tap the card.

Hearts, hits and the dash

Health is counted in hearts, and the game tracks halves. The Wanderer starts with four hearts, the Smith with six. Hearts are not the only way to survive: the dash is your best defence.

• After any hit you are untouchable for one second.
• The dash gives untouchable frames for its whole length, and you pass through enemies. Use it to leave a bad spot, not to run in a straight line.
• The charges refill continuously, one dash per second of recharge, so you are never fully out for long. The Wind charm and Spur relics add a charge and speed up the recharge.
• Hearts drop from monsters and chests as halves. The Salt bread heals half a heart on every room clear, and a Fountain heals fully once.

Level-ups and cards

Every level offers three cards, four if you carry the Fourth candle. A card is one of four things:

• A new weapon at level 1.
• A weapon you already hold, one level higher. A weapon tops out at level 5.
• A relic: a new one, or one more stack of a relic you have. Every relic has its own stack limit.
• A body part for one of the eight slots.

The game leans towards what you already hold. Upgrades are more likely than new weapons, and a relic that completes an evolution of a weapon you own shows up about two and a half times as often. As your arsenal grows, fresh weapons get rarer in the offers.

You start with one reroll and no banishes. Use a reroll when none of the three cards fits your plan, and save banishes for cards that would only dilute the build, such as a weapon of the wrong style.

Evolutions: the main goal of a build

Evolution is how a weapon becomes strong enough for floors four and five. The rule is short: a weapon at level 5, plus the matching relic anywhere in your build. The next level-up offers the evolution as a gold card, always first in the list. Take it and the weapon is replaced by its evolved form.

There are 161 recipes: every weapon has exactly one, and each relic evolves a few weapons of different families. Look at them before the run, because the relic is the easy part to miss. The full table is on the Combos and builds page. The Wanderer, for example, starts with Candle spark and Orbit blade: the first becomes Funeral pyre with the Slow fuse, the second Blade mill with the Rosary.

An evolved weapon cannot be levelled any more: it is already at its best. It takes the slot of the old weapon, and the relic keeps working as a normal stat bonus.

Relics and body parts

Relics are passive and they stack. Whetstone gives +10% damage per stack, up to five stacks. Every relic has its own stack cap, shown on its page.

Body parts work differently. There are eight slots (head, eyes, arms, back, skin, heart, legs, tail) and each holds one part. A new part replaces the old one. Parts both give stats and add a special effect, and you can see them on the hero. Taking a part for an empty slot is almost always right. Swapping is a decision: check what you give up.

Reading a floor

The map in the corner shows the rooms you have seen. Special rooms sit at dead ends. Look at the map when you enter a floor and plan the route: boss last, everything useful before it.

• Treasure room first: it is free and it can change a build. See Treasure room.
• Keep a key for the gold chest of an elite or challenge room. The elite itself drops a key.
• Spend bombs on cracked walls. A secret room gives seven coins and a chest.
• Shop prices are low for a heart (3 gold) and it raises your maximum health. Buy hearts before gear if you have the gold.
• A Shrine costs a heart and offers a full set of cards. Enter it with spare health, never with one heart left.

Fighting well

• Keep moving. Standing still is how most runs end, because crowds close in from every side.
• Walk the edge of the room in wide circles and let the weapons do the work. Pull the crowd into a line with your movement.
• Collect souls between waves, not in the middle of them. They are drawn to you from a distance, and you can raise that distance with the Soul magnet.
• Kill ranged enemies first: the Cultist fires slow orbs that home in on you.
• Every trap in the game warns before it hits. Learn the signals and use traps on monsters too.
• Dash through the end of an attack warning, not at the start of it.

Souls and heroes

Souls you carry out of a run go into a bank that is yours for good. Spend them on new heroes: Huntress costs 120, Smith 160, and so on up to Gunslinger at 400. Each hero has their own start weapon, health and trait, so unlocking one changes how a run plays.

The Soul prism makes every soul worth one more, the Book of names adds experience. Defeating a boss gives thirty souls at once.

Your first run, step by step

1. Play the Wanderer. Their start weapons are already half a recipe each.
2. Take upgrades for Orbit blade first. It is a good starter: it circles you and protects you at the same time.
3. When a Rosary or Slow fuse appears, take it. They finish the two evolutions you can reach.
4. Open every treasure room and the shop. Buy a heart if you have three gold.
5. In the first biome, use dash only to leave danger. By the boss you want both charges.
6. Face the first boss with a fully upgraded weapon or an evolved one. The Wenna the Drowned is slow, but she calls helpers.
7. When you turn to ash, look at the end screen: it shows which weapon did the most damage. Build the next run around that.

Common mistakes

• Taking every weapon you are offered. Evolutions need a level 5 weapon, so spread-thin builds never finish anything.
• Ignoring the relic of an evolution. A level 5 weapon with no relic is a half-built recipe.
• Using a shrine at one heart, or a fountain at full health.
• Spending the dash charges early in the room. The last wave is the dangerous one.