Room Routing: What to Open First
Every floor gives you a handful of rooms and one set of stairs down. The order you open them in decides whether you clear the floor at full health or crawl into the next one at 20%. Find the stairs down first, every time. Knowing where the exit is turns a panic scramble into a short route, and it costs only a few tiles of walking.
Open in This Order
- 1. Stairs down - locate it, do not use it
- 2. Rest room - heal before you fight anything
- 3. Chest room - free loot, costs only time
- 4. Monster rooms - one at a time
- 5. Shop room - last, if you can afford the trip back
Why Not the Other Way Round
- ► Chests before rest: you fight at reduced health for free gear
- ► Shop before chests: gold spent in-run is gold lost on death
- ► Monsters first: you enter a fight with unknown health and no route out
- ► Ignoring the shop: a full heal item is worth more than a Common drop
Gold Discipline
Gold drop climbs about 15% per floor while monster HP climbs about 10% per floor, so every floor you survive is more profitable than the last. The catch is that gold carried into a run is lost when you die, while gold in the bank is permanent. Treat pocket gold as a resource you are spending, not one you are collecting.
Bank Early, Bank Often
- • Take the stairs up when a run goes badly, not only when it goes well
- • A 30% depth run that banks 400g beats a floor 30 death at zero
- • Spending the reserve in the shop is the only real way to lose banked gold
Sell Without Thinking
- • Common items sell for a few gold each - bulk sell them
- • Keep Rare and above for stats, not for their sell value
- • Equipment resets with the run, so a mid-run legendary is not a real gain
Spend Only in Town
- • Permanent upgrades are bought between loops, never mid-run
- • Mid-run gold has no home unless the shop sells consumables
- • If the shop has a health item and you are above 70% HP, skip it
Farming a Floor Band
When you cannot push one more floor, stop trying to push and farm the two floors just below your wall. If Floor 20 is where you die every time, then Floors 18 and 19 are the sweet spot: the enemies are close to your power level, so you actually win the fights, but the gold and XP multipliers are already high enough to matter. Because later loops start on a higher floor, the band moves with you, and the same two floors become a stronger farm each time you return to them.
Handling Enemies
Kiting and Pulling
- Melee attacks only trigger when you are adjacent, so stepping around a monster is free. Circle it, wear it down, and collect the drop without taking the hit.
- Ranged enemies reach three tiles, so a slow kite will get you shot. Close the gap in two steps and hold that distance.
- Pull one enemy out of a room at a time. Two monsters in melee is where runs actually end.
- Retreat through a doorway. Doorways buy you a turn of safety that open floor does not.
Resource Rules in a Fight
- Do not spend a healing item below 50% HP. Save it for the mistake you have not made yet.
- Do not spend a burst ability on trash. The mini-boss every ten floors is where it pays.
- Armor reduces every hit you take, so a single strong enemy is a toughness problem and a swarm is a kill-speed problem.
- If you are below 30% HP, the correct action is to leave, not to try one more room.
Boss Preparation Checklist
Clear the side rooms of the boss floor first. Mini-bosses are stronger with the floor left unclean.
Enter above 80% HP with at least one healing item unused and a full mana bar.
Equip your best stats, not your best item. A Common with good HP can beat an Epic with useless bonuses.
Have enough gold banked to buy your next upgrade before you walk in. A boss kill should fund the run after it.
Know the boss room entrance. If the fight is lost, restart at the bank.
Death Post-Mortem
Most players treat a death as a lost run. Treat it as a diagnosis. After each death, write down three things: the floor you died on, the enemy that killed you, and your health when the fight started. Patterns emerge within a dozen runs.
"Died to a floor 12 enemy again" - the fix is health, and probably Toughness
"Died at full health to a swarm" - the fix is attack speed, not armor
"Died at 30% HP" - the fix is routing, because you should never have entered that room
"Died to a boss" - the fix is the checklist above, not more grinding