just a regular player and my first time making a guide. I noticed there wasn't anything for the game guide wise as of writing this so figured i'd note down some of the thing's I've found while playing the game so far.

depending on how changes are made for the game, and how interested I still am I may update, or if I notice people comment anything I've missed. hopefully people find some of this useful.

just some of the basics of the game I've found, and most of this is based on my personal findings and play styles so may not be entirely accurate or may change.

when starting the game, expect not to beat the area boss or mid boss. the game is fairly dependent on RNG and so when you're just starting out with no between round bonuses, you may not have much to work with, but just aim to at least beat the mid boss as a first goal as the ancient god blood or whatever the exact name is will be the most important resource to unlock more round bonuses as well as new mechanics.

spells will be the first thing people play with. one thing i've realized is that the 3 starting spells are actually incredibly valuable, and the first room that you should rush for is the smithy. at first you may be tempted to use these spells to try your luck to get 3 better spells from randomizing them, however a better option may be to upgrade them first into a T2 spell. while the spell itself is somewhat useless, you can then randomize it into another T2 spell at a slightly higher cost, and some of the T2 spells will have new abilities added which can help greatly.

another thing to note early on is that there are very few bad or useless spells, I dislike many of the spells personally, however given the amount of leeway the game gives, believe you can easily create a combo to empower even weak spells to work towards late-game, so the most important thing is trying a number of spells to see what fits into your play style. for example, mine is usually to rely on the summoning series of spells while giving them buffs such as poison or slow/freeze. (IMPORTANT, do NOT give the slime looking summons ANY poison, I have made this mistake many times and have filled the ENTIRE room with poison puddles. this is highly dangerous to enemies...as well as yourself so would take a lot more skill to use well.) a personal early game combo I enjoyed greatly was the butterfly spell with 1, 2 if you can manage it split shots so that the 3 butterflies on ending, turn into 3 more, and I believe if you have the 2nd split, another three, so would then be 3X3(9)X3(27) butterflies per cast, which if you stack a poison it it can quickly home in and overwhelm rooms of enemies if done well.

Wands will be the next thing to focus on. the default wand is generally useless, it's small, has a mediocre recharge, a small capacity and no real bonuses. the best way to get wands is from the shop, or the bosses so you will want to keep an eye out for them. there are 3 key things to look for in a wand,

1:MP regen. this may be most important as it will affect how long you can cast, which will help a lot with summons for examples, but specifically later on when you find the Grimoire summon which will copy the next spell in your wand. T1, the Grim will take 40% of the wands recharge and use it to cast the spell, so a high regen can make this incredibly powerful. for example, with a high regen, two grims and a summon you can put these in a charge slot chain and create a summon, which summons another summons, which then cast the summoning spell, which can bypass the limit currently from what I've noticed as each book counts as a spell source. this takes a while to ramp, but if done properly can flood the screen within a minute.

2:Spell Slots. spell slots will be one of the most important things mide game onwards as you will gain more and more passives or buffs to use, and so each spell slot is a new buff you can compound with your spells. for example, a homing bullet or summon, which can poison an enemy, and on hit will split where each new shot then homes in on surviving enemies. spell chains like this are the key to powering up in the game and need a lot of experimenting to find what works for you, and must be done on the fly as RNG will limit what you have to work with each run, so it will be important to have a general understanding of buffs and what they do, as well as what they work on. the smithy is a good option for this, and I believe the shop, as they have target dummies to test on.

3:Charge Requirements. Each wand with a charge chain on it will have a different way to charge the spells in the slots. some wants may need you to move, some may need you to deal damage over a threshold, others may need you to hit enemies, or kill them. it's important to know the requirement so you can plan how to play, as well as what to put in the charge chain. sometimes it will be smarter to take a weaker wand that's easier to charge so you can increase your output of powerful spells.

there are a few things I have noticed, one of them being a minor secret.

when you fight the area boss,(2nd boss per level) if you manage to defeat the boss while taking no hits(armor hits count I believe) then a hidden room will open on the side of the room. there you can get epic or legendary equipment, however you will have to sacrifice Max HP for each one. typically ou can expect the low end to be about 35, mid to be about 55, and high to be 99. these are mostly good situationally and there are really no bad or good items here, you have to just know the game and how your run is going and make a value judgement here and hope it pans out, sometimes the equipment may not help and the max hp would have been more useful.

for the puzzles, most are pretty obvious, the one tip I recently found is in the 2nd map you may notice a room with a pill with a box on the top or bottom, you have to guess which one to take and if you are wrong you take 2 damage and get warped to start, with the box turning red. there's actually a way to "bypass" this puzzle, if you have a summon or possessed wand. (the costume to move the wand may work? I don't really know as I hate the ability so have not tested.) as a summon or possessed wand count as an "entity" they can step on the box for you, and so if you use the rolly summon, summon it onto the box, if it's incorrect, the summon will take 2 damage and be warped and you can move to the opposite box safely.

while in the room mentioned prior, I noticed sometimes the middle between squares will be open and you can walk between, and sometimes there will be armor there. after realizing I could maybe break them and make it easier I had done so, one of the armors I saw damage numbers pop up, and it transformed into an enemy, (Vine I think. ) on killing the enemy, it dropped the unique Coin launcher spell. from this it seems like certain puzzle rooms may have intractable which will spawn an elite enemy which will drop a reward so keep your eyes out in the future.

as the final advice I have, I will include the best spell combination I had found so far and give a basic explanation of it.





I was able to create a summoning spell bypassing my standard wand capacity and with no summon limit with a 3 spell combination. the first spell is the star(forget the name, will try to edit in later.) which has the effect of increasing the cost, but will shoot a star moving slowly, and will shoot the next spell 20 times or until it hits something. this is a very rare spell so may be hard to find before stage 3 with good bonuses.

the next spell is the mimic, which can copy the next spell and duplicate it, up to the tier of the mimic. this is a cheap way of copying the prior ability. for those paying attention, that will create a projectile, that will shoot up to 20 projectiles, using 20 of the next spell each. by using the tentacle summon that has no limit, this creates a situation where you essentially do 1X20X20 summons I believe, which while being insanely expensive, by using charge slots, can completely destroy maps and bosses, as seen in my pictures.

as an additional note, once you manage to complete your first run on stage three, you should unlock a few epic items. one of these I believe should be the Volcano Core. if you manage to get a high capacity chain, a Volcano Core, and a handful of mimics, you can have them copy the VC, while this does take up a massive amount of the chain, it will likely be extremely powerful as from what i could find it seemed to double damage per each instance of the VC, while mostly keeping the full bonus of the DOT as well. putting this on a summon with split and homing can easily wipe out entire rooms late game from what I have found.

here I'll detail some ideas and update them as I can and play with them more in testing.

1: Ghost Snake.

the ghost snake seems to be a high DPS spell chain currently. the basis seems to be a high lvl ghost snake, combined with buffs such as damage, duration increase (by seconds) and possibly speed and splitting. the key part here is to include homing so the snakes will track, leaving a trail as they move.

this should be a fairly easy combo to get started, and is a great setup if you have full 4 wand slots, as you can have a main wand, and then secondary wands casting snakes or supports for them off hand and making a bullet hell for enemies.

WARNING, high particle effects, known to cause issues.

2: summoning sickness

a personal favorite of mine, though almost impossible to ramp for many reasons, key being the key relic, Merlin's Beard, is very hard to reliably get early on, even with 3-4 rerolls on relics. the key here is to have large capacity wands, a high lvl Mr.Ke head, and then either pops or tentacles( bonus here is an offhand wand boosting regen to 180% on a high regen, and support wands giving all/other bonus regen.) then if you either have the animate wand, or the spell to proc the wand on other spell usage, you can quickly summon books or a summon army. the issue here is if it is too fast things will likely de-spawn, so unless you go for a Parasite buff run on this may be an issue.

having 2 Mr.Ke heads buffed with a LOT of Troll Blood and speed will tank through most fights, and even auto clear rooms, and tank bosses most of the fight if done well, letting you focus on a summon army.

3: flashing

one I found in the discussions and messed with slightly is the lightning dash spell. the spell is average and annoying to control, but the key here seems to be to use the buff for aiming at the mount cursor, then adding 4-8 seconds to duration. if done well, you may be able to be in constant movement with damage and i frames? needs testing.

my run on killing the author. after trying many times i ended up with a few ideas that may work, though it involves a number of things, and may require either high luck with RNG, or a lot of time and save scumming between rooms to get good rng, which normally I wouldn't approve, but for a challenge run may be helpful.

to begin with, you have to have a reliable build with high ramp and dps to wipe maps and bosses. i've found mid bosses to be great for getting upgraded spells, so you can beat them, find "trash" spells for your run, and then just Main Menu and refight them to get something good for the run.

some of the key items you will need for this run are Merlin's Beard (may be replaceable by using 2 books, though will greatly increase ramp is may only be viable for author fight.) you will also need a high level ghostsnake, at least lvl 2, and a magic sword which you get from beating dungeon 3 on normal as an unlock.

the sword will have to not only be VERY large for this setup to work, but has to have a wand interval of around .25 which may be hard to do. for me, the best wand I found for this is the Wand of Impurity, which will be detailed later.

once you beat boss 3 on hard, here will be the most important setup possibly for you and the last chance to make any changes. when you go to dungeon 4, you must have the shop as a choice, as only the shop and the smithy will be a non author room, letting you have one last chance to upgrade. the shop is important as it gives you access to D4 wands, such as the wand of impurity used to win here. you can keep re-rolling the shop to get the wand, and the battery if you are missing this still.

the key here will be to put any summons such as the Mr.Ke head and grimoires to one side, I use the the right side, and you stand to the opposite side so they are not killed. you then will activate your defence spells once the author begins to attack. the one I used is the sword to negate his attacks while the summons kill him, which only takes about 2 minutes now that he's been somewhat nerfed on his hp, though if you can't defend I'm not sure this will make a difference for you on an attempt, so defence is the most important part here.

the other spell I thought may be good here is if you can get a 1+ star pillar, and a LOT of troll blood, mimic or otherwise. with this, you can just throw up a wall that will take a while to break and may work. this is untested and I don't know how long he takes to break them, or if they will even stop the bullets.

finally here, potions are very important as well if you can't get a perfect setup. at max, you have 3 potion slots, and can fill them with a potion that turns you to stone for 60 seconds. at best that gives you 3 minutes of no damage as the summons hit the author.

last will be the video attempt of my run showing what spells I used, as well as the stats at the end. hopefully this helps if people want to challenge the author, there there are likely easier ways, this is a reliable and effortless one if you get the setup, though that will take several hours probably of save scumming through the run, so really is ONLY worth it for something like this boss.


video (click here)