Tips and Strategies
1. The goal of this game – as is the case with most platformers – is to beat the living tar out of every moving thing in the dungeon whilst avoiding the same fate yourself. As is the case with any game in which healing is limited, that means avoiding and reducing damage is of the utmost importance – and this, quite frankly, is most easily accomplished with a ranged weapon.
Other Dungreed Guides:
A ranged weapon gives you time to react to enemy ranged attacks and avoid them, while also keeping you away from melee attacks. Captain obvious, right? Well, the ranged weapons you start out with all kind of suck, to be honest. The best of them by far is the hand crossbow, and when combined with a modicum of skill, it can take you all the way to the final boss – plenty far enough to find the Gunsmith, who by unlocking the vast majority of ranged weapons in the game, will make future runs indescribably easier.
2. Once you unlock the priestess, you can make offerings on an altar to increase your favor. When your favor reaches the maximum, you can talk to the priestess and recieve a mythical item for the next dungeon run. These items can often be (but are not always) of run-defining power.
3. Extra gold is a great perk. With as little as 40% extra gold, you can offer all of your unused items at an altar and still have enough money to buy all the food you can eat (provided you don’t get extra-lucky with special food items) and even buy some additional items from the shop. Just do yourself a favor and save some of the really expensive items in case you find yourself needing a few extra thousand gold for that Meat Special or Minotaur Steak.
4. A ring of Midas is better than a gold perk, for obvious reasons.
5. The moment you reach level 20, put all your points into the Mystic tree. The final perk allows you to keep one item from your dungeon run indefinitely, and the moment you get the Blood of Srarabos or the Dragon King’s Blade, you’ll be glad you have it.
6. It’s worth taking the Aegis option when you reach level 30, provided you’ve unlocked all the villagers (namely the gunsmith). It doesn’t just add a single skill point – it also provides various stat boosts, and by level 5, you’ll be starting with an additional 30 HP, finding 20% more gold, you’ll have some extra defense and crit… I’m still finding the exact numbers, but it’s enough to make Aegis worth considering.
7. Take note of item synergies and set effects you find easy to create. It’s worth keeping those items when you find them, since it increases the chances of gaining a run-changing combination over the course of your run. For example, you might hang onto the Taser even if you only have two-handed weapons, as it makes rapid-fire one-handed weapons incredibly powerful. If you have the Ring of Midas and find the Pocket Watch, you might hang onto it since they make a set with the Coin Gun that causes it to no longer consume money as ammo.
Items I keep a look out for as I play:
- Grenade (for any gun)
- Taser (for any 1-handed, rapid-attack weapon)
- Spiked shield (Any shield really; they’re great with 1-handed items.)
- Bullet splitter (In case I build for true damage)
- HP increasing/decreasing items (See #11 and #12)
8. Managing your Satiety is an important part of this game. If you eat as much as you can as soon as you can, it’s almost guaranteed that the next floor will have much more powerful buffs you’ll wish you had room for. Don’t leave the first floor in an area with a satiety higher than 70 or the second floor in an area with a satiety higher than 75. Only break this rule if you’re purchasing one of the special foods with a powerful buff.
9. I mean it. It’s better to hit 0 Satiety for a while than to lose the opportunity for the very powerful food buffs. If you’re on the last room of the ice level and have 20 Satiety, and all the food items fill you with 60+, just move on. You may lose some of your food capacity, but nine times out of ten this will put you on top in the end.
10. Important foods to watch out for:
- Smoked Salmon, but only prior to the desert. It drops your satiety by an extra 1 every time you explore a room. By the time you reach the Desert though, the satiety decrease won’t offset the cost of eating it.
- Meat Special, which adds gives you Toughness. Enough toughness can turn you into a massive tank.
- Minotaur steak, which will let you revive. Clearly a powerful buff.
- Lemonade, which increases reload speed. Really powerful for most of your ranged weapons.
- Strawberry Pie, which adds true damage. This is conditional on you finding a weapon with high attack speed, since True Damage builds really only work with weapons like machine guns and at least 4 True Damage.
- Supreme Pizza, which increases critical damage. If you have the usual 50-60% crit chance, it can add a further 25-30% to your DPS.
- Bibimbap, which gives you an additional accessory slot. Sometimes you won’t have any good accessories, but most of the time you’ll find a use for it.
- Smoked eel, which gives a massive health bonus. Normally I don’t build for health, but I do find it useful against the (true) final boss.
11. If you use accessories that increase your maximum health, take them off before using fairies. Because you’re adding flat healing to a lower maximum health, it will heal a higher percentage of your health, and that will carry over when you re-equip your items. For the same reason, if you have items that decrease health, put them on before using fairies.
12. A similar trick is true for buying food. If you have any items that increase health by a flat number, wear them. Take off any items that decrease health by a flat number. Percentage increase/decrease items don’t matter here.
13. If possible, you should leave restaurant visits and fairies until the end of the floor, to avoid wasting any healing. This is not as important as wasting Satiety, however – so never leave the restaurant if your Satiety is zero! The buffs you recieve from food are almost always more important than the healing.
14. Watch out for enemies with flaming or darkness particle effects. Flaming enemies inflict the Burning status, which will eat through your health faster than you can blink regardless of defense or toughness. The darkness effect is Poison, and it’s like Burning’s weaker cousin. Annoying, but probably not lethal.
15. Dogs are really annoying, since they can keep up with you and almost always damage you if you’re on the ground. Fortunately, they jump before attacking. While it won’t help against the big dogs, the small ones can be dashed under once they jump to avoid damage.
16. Some items are very useful against bosses but not mobs, and some are useful against mobs but not against bosses. I’ll often switch a couple items for fighting bosses, prioritizing damage over health, gold drop or defense.