Beginner Guide

The first goal of a run is not to assemble a perfect archetype. It is to solve the next few fights without filling the deck with cards that stop working later. Good runs grow from a sequence of small answers: enough damage for early enemies, enough defense for dangerous turns, and eventually a repeatable way to become stronger during long fights.

This guide focuses on decisions that remain useful across all five characters. Exact numbers may change during Early Access, so follow the linked card and enemy pages when a detail matters.

Read the Run in Layers

At the start of each floor, ask three questions:

1. What can hurt me before the next rest site? Check the visible path, likely encounters, and whether an elite route asks for more immediate damage than your starter deck provides.
2. What does the act boss test? A boss with a repeating pattern may demand sustained block, scaling damage, multi-target pressure, or a way to survive one concentrated turn.
3. What resource am I spending? Health, gold, potions, and card rewards are connected. Taking avoidable damage can turn a planned upgrade into a rest; hoarding a potion can cost more health than the potion is worth.

Pathing is therefore a risk budget, not a rule such as "always fight the most elites." A strong deck with a useful potion can take a harder branch. A fragile deck should preserve the rest site or shop that fixes its immediate weakness.

Take Cards for Jobs

Every card should have a job. Early in a run, useful jobs include:

• Efficient damage: ending ordinary fights before chip damage accumulates.
• Front-loaded block or mitigation: surviving a bad opening hand.
• Multi-target pressure: preventing several enemies from acting repeatedly.
• Consistency: drawing, retaining, or recovering the cards that matter.
• Scaling: increasing damage or defense across a longer fight.

A card can perform more than one job, but "it is generally strong" is not a job. Before accepting a reward, name the turn on which you want to draw it. If there is no convincing answer, skipping is often better.

Do not judge a card only by its best possible synergy. Ask what it does now, what support it needs, and how many future rewards must cooperate before it becomes reliable. One payoff card can justify looking for support. Three unsupported payoffs usually make the deck less consistent.

Keep the Deck Coherent

Starter Strikes and Defends create a useful baseline, but their efficiency falls as enemies become more demanding. Adding cards is only half of deckbuilding; removals and skips increase the chance of drawing your best cards.

Use a simple draw-pile test: if the deck is shuffled and five cards are drawn, how often does that hand contain something productive? A deck with excellent individual cards can still fail if too many are expensive, situational, or dependent on a setup card that has not appeared.

Balance energy as well as card count. Several expensive powers may be excellent in isolation but impossible to deploy while blocking. Zero-cost cards are not automatically free either: they occupy draw space and may need specific payoffs.

Upgrade Bottlenecks, Not Favorites

The best upgrade is the one that changes a decision:

• A cost reduction lets setup and defense happen on the same turn.
• Additional draw finds a key answer reliably.
• More block crosses the damage threshold of a dangerous attack.
• More damage removes an enemy one turn sooner.
• A stronger scaling effect shortens a boss fight enough to matter.

Upgrade the card that limits the deck, not necessarily the rarest card. If a deck already deals enough damage, improving damage again may be less valuable than fixing a weak defensive turn.

Spend Gold With a Purpose

Enter a shop knowing the deck's largest problem. Card removal improves consistency; a relic can reshape future choices; a potion can make a planned elite safe; and a card purchase can fill a missing job immediately.

Avoid buying something merely because leaving with gold feels wasteful. Gold retains option value, while a mediocre purchase remains in the deck. Conversely, do not save indefinitely when a purchase enables a valuable route or solves the known boss test.

Use Potions Before the Run Is Lost

Potions turn uncertain fights into controlled fights. Their value is not measured by how long they remain in the belt. Use one when it prevents meaningful health loss, secures an elite reward, or protects an upgrade at the next rest site.

Before ending each turn, check whether a potion changes the outcome now. Waiting until lethal damage is visible can be too late, especially when an earlier offensive potion would have removed an enemy and prevented several attacks.

Learn From the First Failure

When a run ends, identify the earliest repeated problem rather than only the final blow:

• Did ordinary fights take too long?
• Did one large attack overwhelm the deck?
• Was scaling present but drawn too slowly?
• Were too many rewards accepted without a clear job?
• Did the route spend health that the deck could not replace?

That diagnosis gives the next run a concrete experiment. "Take more cards" is vague; "add one early damage card before the first elite" is testable.

Next Steps

Continue with Deckbuilding and Scaling, then use Character Archetypes to recognize synergy packages without forcing them. Before the end of an act, open Boss Preparation and the relevant entry in the enemy index.