Inscryption Basic tips and Act 1 Bosses Walkthrough Guide

A list of general good tips, as well as a walkthrough of each boss in Act 1. If I figure out Act 2 I may update

Basic Tips

• If you are confused about the bottom-right shelf puzzle, think about what happens when your guy attacks a prickly dude.(hint, he dies)
• If you are full on items when you go to a shop, you get a pack rat, a 2/2 that gives you an item each time it is summoned.
  
• Diagonal attack is very strong, it basically allows you to hit enemies that can’t hit you, while at the same time dealing double damage if you are hitting empty tiles.
  
• Search is very strong as a trait; always take it if you can. Looking through your deck to draw a card with impunity is amazing.
  
• Always try to overkill an enemy. Overkilling gives you extra golden teeth, a currency that allows you to purchase pelts from the trapper
• Squirrel in a bottle is OP. Always use this.
  
• Squirrel in a bottle is OP. Always take this.
• Enemies that use kingfishers(like the Angler) are basically damage races. Make sure to pick units that have high attack values. You cannot always rely on the tankiness of your units.
• Overkill-Hitting enemies through other enemies can be very useful, as it breaks through their special abilities, like dive, or poison. This is why attack damage is very important
• If you are planning on not winning/dying, take a urayuli with you. It’s cost is kind of ridiculous, but if you manage to get those stats onto a death card, at any other cost 7/7 in stats is amazing.
  
• Totemswise, squirrel-sacrifice or squirrel-undying is very strong. Anything else pales in comparison.
• Bone-cards are very strong in bosses, especially if you have multiple lives to turn into smoke at the start of the boss.
• Bone-cards are very strong in bosses, especially if you have multiple lives to turn into smoke at the start of the boss.

Boss 1(Prospector)

• He summons a pack mule(which moves around like an elk)on the very left at the very start, as
  well as a 2/1 canine.
• He continues to summon some monsters in other tiles if you do not kill his first life fast enough.
• If you kill the pack mule, the mule will give you five random cards, I believe always including a
  squirrel.
• After you take out his first life, he kills each of your monsters and replaces them with a gold
  nuggets. He then summons a 2/3 Bloodhound.
  
• These gold nuggets are 0/2 and cannot be sacrificed.
  
• He continues to summon adders(I believe up to 3?) until he dies.

Thus ends the prospector encounter.

Boss 2(Angler)

• Angler summons multiple kingfishers to start, I believe 2-3. They have dive and flying, making
  them near impossible to kill and block.
• Every other turn he will steal the most recently played creature you have. This will move all
  creatures in the column up, including his own.
• This can be an excellent way to prevent him from dealing damage to you, if you let him drag
  squirrels onto his side.
• After you knock out his first life, he will clear his side of the board and summon 3 bait buckets
  randomly.
• After you knock out his first life, he will clear his side of the board and summon 3 bait buckets
  randomly.
  
• These 0/1 buckets summon a 4/2 shark with dive after dying, making them extremely
  inadvisable to kill.
• Best way to beat this guy at this stage is to sacrifice any normal creatures and use a flying
  creature to kill the boss without damaging the bait.
• Barring this, you can brute-force the sharks, by blocking their damage with high health
  creatures and dealing damage in turn to the boss.

Boss 3(Trapper/Trader)

• The Trapper’s first phase involves summoning two strange frogs, leaving a space on the left 3
  columns empty to summon one the next turn.
  
• There is also a Leaping Trap that is summoned on the very right(it’s been there all 6ish times
  for me) that kills anything that it defends against, as well as blocking flying units.
• if you kill a frog, you will also summon a leaping trap in its place.
• best way to go about finishing this one is to stall until you get your strong units in hand, then kill
  the traps and move on to the next phase.
• You can also just try to rush to the next phase ASAP to avoid wasting resources on this section
  of the fight.
• The main mechanic here is to sacrifice your creatures for pelts that will be used in the next
  phase, but honestly you’re sacrificing your creatures for random creatures essentially.
• In the next phase, the trapper give you a pelt, and asks you to use all pelts in your hand to
  trade for cards on his side of the field. These will all be one-patch upgraded creatures.
  
• Here you will have to adapt to your strategy, but if you set up your board before, then you just
  need to empty a column and one-shot him.
• If you did not, then you need to make sure to take the creatures that will be your biggest
  problems and make them his biggest problems.
• As an example of how I set it up, I had a 4 attack monster set up, and took all his creatures in
  that column, as well as the turkey vulture. Therefore I had enough to overkill him immediately
  without dealing with his crazy creatures.
  

Final Boss + Leadup

• Before the final boss you will be given the option to pick several boons, if you can pass
  tests(similar to the creature den)
• You can always pass one of them if you have the ring from the cuckoo clock(turn the clock to
  11:00)
• These boons can be game changing, like starting with a black goat, or with 8 bones.
• You always start with extra smoke(s), and the boss has 3 lives this time.
• The boss can use other boss’s abilities, like the prospector’s gold-turning trick.
• He can use the angler’s steal unit ability, with the same targeting logic as the angler(last unit
  played)
• He can use the trapper’s pelt trade ability, and summon two super creatures that you get to pick
  one and the boss keeps the other.
• In the next phase he will summon two death-cards in random columns. As you can see the ones
  he summoned for me are quite strong, but I got unlucky this round.
  
• He can continue to use his three special abilities during this time.
• after you deal with this next phase, he summons the moon on you.
• The moon has 40 hp, attack all tiles, 1 attack, and creature orbit(pulls small creatures to death)
  
• Essentially it’s a giant health mantis god.
• The best way to deal with this crazy creature is to use stinky to lower its attack to 0.
  
• At that point you just have to beat the creature down. Here, triple attacks or double attacks like
  the mantises are very powerful in dealing multiple hits to the moon.
• Poison works on the moon.
• After the moon dies, you just need to kill him; he is defenseless.

Congratulations you just beat the game… or did you? The secrets in this game… I am personally waiting for someone better than me to put a guide out on it 🙂

Thank you for reading!

All escape room things I found(I am bad at this so Expect few)

Spoilers below!

• Safe code is 273(it’s in the guidebook), only works outside of tutorial round, gives you stinkbug.
• There are four shelf puzzles to solve, with 4 rewards, including ants, caged wolf, skink? and one more that I forgot.
• The three painting puzzles unlock the clover, a third candle, and bees(1/1 flying insects) instead of squirrels.
• Turn the clock to 11:00 to unlock the ring.
• You can get three teeth out of the skull every game.
• You can get the knife item by taking the wolf statue to the squirrel statue and slotting it in.
• The angler gives you his hook after you kill him once(it lets you steal an enemy once per game)
• The trapper gives you discounts on his shop after you kill him once.
• your triumph cards go on the door after you win.
• Snuffing out the candles next to the shelf then clicking on the bulb gives you the “smoke” card.