Golden Krone Hotel – Ein Leitfaden zur Verzweiflungsschwierigkeit

Einführung

I wrote this guide after beating the game on Despair difficulty with all 18 Klassen. That required tons of savescumming due to the insane difficulty level, but I did get at least one entirely legitimate Despair win, zu (with Assassin).

Dinge, die Sie beachten sollten:

• This guide is full of spoilers! Plus many of these tips are entirely superfluous below Despair difficulty
• So if you’re just starting out with the game, I recommend skipping this guide, going into the game blind, and playing on Easy until you feel like the game is too easy, or like you’re no longer having fun or no longer getting better.
• I’ve only played with WASD-movement, not with diagonal numpad movement, so this guide is written as such.
• This guide is not meant to be comprehensive. If I have nothing to say about a character, Fluch, Monster, oder Bereich, then I won’t mention it.
• This guide took a ton of effort to write. So if you like it or benefit from it in any way, I would very much appreciate a comment. Writers are notoriously starved for feedback.

Game Progression

• Es gibt 9 rings in total: 7 from branches, Und 2 from the Underworld.
• You only need any 4 rings to win.
• So you can skip several side branches, including the entire Underworld if so desired.

• In Despair mode, it’s already easy to die on the first floor.
• Gesamt, the game is hardest in the first few floors, though it remains challenging throughout.
• Enemies and obstacles become more dangerous as you climb the Hotel or enter side branches.
• So an important goal is to keep up with this rising danger level, or to even outpace it.

• Your character gets permanently stronger via levelups, better stats (from levelups or stat tomes), better equipment, better abilities (spells from grimoires, or vampire abilities from demon blood), as well as rings from branch bosses.
• Außerdem, your character can get temporarily stronger, strong enough to e.g. beat a branch boss, via temporary buffs and effects (from spells, Fähigkeiten, oder Tränke), as well as by making good use of the environment.
• The Hawkers (shopkeepers) can give your build whatever power boost it needs. Mark items you’re interested in for later, then buy them later as a vampire, even if you have to descend a few floors.

• Als Faustregel, prefer climbing the main hotel over entering the side branches, because the latter are often super lethal.
• Jedoch, some side branches can be cheesed or easily beaten with specific builds. If you have the Glaciate spell, Zum Beispiel, then go into the Baths early; or if you’re a Vampire, you can at little risk get great free equipment from the Mausoleum. See the sections on the side branches below in this guide.
• Auch, some characters start with combat-related potions (z.B. Berserker with the Big Potion). Those characters can consider clearing a branch boss early.
• If you can’t cheese side branches, then begin tackling them once you reach floor 6 oder 7. The Hotel itself becomes really scary around this time, via monsters like Vampire Nobles, Vampire Knights, or Ruby Golems.

Core Gameplay Mechanics

• In principle, one can move faster via the Shift key. In der Praxis, I think that just gets you killed.
• I recommend mostly unbinding the Rest key, and binding those keys to Wait instead. Resting works decently well as a human, but gets you killed as a vampire.

• Stärke (Str) affects Attack and Defense, d.h. how much damage you deal and how much damage you take.
• Geschicklichkeit (Dex) affects Accuracy and Evasion, d.h. how likely you are to hit and how likely you are to be hit.
• Intelligenz (Int) affects maximum mana, spell strength, hunger cost from spellcasting, and defense against Psychic damage.
• Equipment affects your Attack and Defense.
• Vampires do not benefit from swords, Schilde, or pistols, but can use plate and leggings. To compensate, vampires have higher base stats (higher dex, higher speed).

• Geschwindigkeit: this affects how often you get to move, relative to other monsters. If a monster is slower, you can flee from it or hit it more often than it hits you; if it’s faster, it can chase you, and it gets bonus hits against you. Most monsters are faster than humans.
• Widerstände: Resistances range from 1 (verletzlich: nehmen +50% damage and have a higher chance of suffering from status effects like poison) Zu 2 (Normal) bis 5 (immune). Zum Beispiel, humans are immune to Sunlight, and vampires are vulnerable to it.

A winning 4-ring run ends around player level 9 oder 10. (Level-ups are also capped at 15, aber das’s a purely theoretical limit.) So while level-ups yield a lot of extra hitpoints and mana througout a run, you can only expect to get up to ~9 extra stat points that way.

So how to spend those stat points? As a baseline, I like the recommendation of level-up strategies in

(<-> Abschnitt „Baut“): alternate Dex-Str in a 1:1 ratio for melee builds, or alternate Int-Dex in a ratio of 2:1 or higher for spellcasters.

Adjust these recommendations based on the equipment you find. Zum Beispiel:

• Warp Mage really wants to be a spellcaster based on its base stats (-1 Str, -1 Dex, +2 Int). But if you find no early grimoires, then putting stat points into Int will not make you any stronger, and you might well die before finding your first combat spell. In diesem Fall, it makes sense to put the first 1-2 stat points into Dex, and to then pivot into Int once you find grimoires.
• The Assassin gets +4 Dexterity when hidden, so it makes sense to put most stat points into Str.
• If you find a great sword early, then that’s like having put extra points into Str, so it makes sense to put comparatively more into Dex. Note that vampires can’t use swords, but they get their own Str bonus.

Time Limits & Clocks

• The basic timers in the game are the human food clock, the vampire soul gauge, and the vampire’s life loss.
• The food clock is important early on. But it can be removed by clearing the Hive or Icehouse. And sometimes one can even skip these side branches by finding enough food, or by buying extras from Hawkers.
• The two vampire-related effects are essentially turn limits: one can survive for a while as a vampire, but must eventually return to being human to rest. And only a small number of Soul Essences are available to revert to becoming human.

The game warns you not to cast too many spells because of the hunger mechanic. But in Despair mode, my impression is that the vampire soul gauge is even scarier: spellcasters put most of their stat points into Int and hence want to spend little time as vampires, but there may not be enough Soul Elixirs to do so. So what can they do?

• Don’t explore the huge floors 8-9 in their entirety. That just takes too long and costs too many resources.
• If you have enough food, it might be worthwhile to use teleportation spells like Blink and Teleport to move around, d.h. to trade soul gauge for hunger. Movement just costs too much time otherwise.
• Buy extra Soul Elixirs from merchants.
• If the Pharmacopoeia branch is available, then that yields a lot of extra potions, including extra Soul Elixirs.

• You lose life more quickly the more life you have.
• You cannot die on 1 Leben. Or at least my level 1 vampire survived waiting to turn 1500 in Despair mode.
• ICH’d previously thought that I had to use a heal effect once I reached low health, even if an area was free from danger; aber das’s not the case.
• So once you’ve cleared a few floors as a vampire, you could in principle always wait until it’s night, take all the time you need to walk around between shops etc., and eventually either heal up via a health item, or use a Soul Elixir to rest.

Kampftipps

• Try to always get the first hit. Most enemies have higher speeds than you do, which means that they occasionally get a free move towards you. In diesem Fall, they can hit you before you get a chance to react. Against those enemies, once they’re 1 tile away from you, move backwards: they’ll move towards you, eventually close the gap due to their superior speed, and then you can get the first hit.
• Try to never fight more than one monster at once.
• As a vampire, stay in the shadows. This grants the „versteckt“ status and allows actual stealth gameplay (siehe unten).
• As a vampire, try to fight in areas where you can reach spilled blood, d.h. not in corridors.
• Never fight in water, even as a human. This causes the Submerged status, which slows you down and gets you killed. (Jedoch, Es’s fine to flee from vampires into water, wo sie können’t follow you.)

• Wenn du’re faced with monsters which cause fire damage (like bombs, Magma Golems, Imps), Und du’re a human, you can briefly touch water for the Wet status, which yields 5 turns of increased fire resistance.
• Lure monsters without night vision into darkness so that you can use stealth combat (siehe unten). You can even do this as a human, where it’s most useful against some bosses.

• Hier’s how stealth works: Monsters without night vision (like humans or golems) display a ? oder ! above their heads. If they see you and you move into darkness, they move towards the last tile where they’ve seen you, then stop. So you can ambush them there.
• Jedoch, even such monsters *will* notice you if you move into melee range next to them.
• If you want to lure a stationary monster towards you so you can get the first hit from darkness, there are a bunch of options: briefly step outside the darkness, so it sees you and moves towards you; or hit or shoot something to produce noise; or briefly toggle a nearby torch on and off again.

• Kill particularly damaging low-health enemies with your Revolver or a ranged spell: z.B. Worker Bees, which deal a *lot* of damage via poison; or the exploding goblin.
• Bullets are really strong. Besides the above, another great use for them is to damage enemies so you can kill them in fewer hits. Zum Beispiel, if a monster requires two hits to kill, and you can ensure the first hit, then the fight will progress as hit-get_hit-hit-win. Im Gegensatz, if you shoot first, you can just shoot-hit-win, without taking damage at all.
• If you die with lots of bullets in reserve, Etwas ist schief gelaufen.

• Inspect enemies before you fight them. Here are some indications for whether a monster is dangerous: the description says so; it has a level-3 spell which deals damage and can’t be played around; you have a much lower chance to hit it than it does to hit you.
• Each floor has a chance to spawn monsters „above its level“, z.B. a Vampire Noble can spawn several floors before you’d ordinarily expect one. Treat such monsters with extreme care.
• If a monster seems dangerous for some reason, then treat it as such. Be very careful, ensure a line of retreat, use potions and ranged abilities, or evade them entirely if possible.

• Do not use potions or spells in melee range unless you must, because that costs a whole turn. Giving enemies free hits is the fastest way to die. Es’s much better to prepare in advance, at a distance.
• Vampire abilities cost 0 dreht sich, Also sie’re fine to use in melee range.

Charaktere

• Meiner Erfahrung nach, the strongest or easiest characters in Despair mode are those with the best combat stats, d.h. ones capable of winning battles in melee combat.
• This includes the Assassin, who can have +4 dex in all fights.
• And the Berserker, who starts with +2 str and -1 Dex, and has the Enrage for more stats. She can also beat a boss via the Big potion, and has a Nostrum as essentially an extra life.
• Und schließlich, the Shapeshifter, who can stay in permanent Werewolf form once you find the Focus spell.

• Apothecary has poison damage and poison resist, which gives her the perfect damage type and resistance for the Hive. Auch, as of v1.10.1, Miasma can hit through honey comb awlls. Gesamt, if you have Miasma 2 and turn off the torches in the Hive, the floor should be easy to clear.
• Ice Mage can only get Ice spells, d.h. only the four spells Encase, Sturm, Eis, and Glaciate. While I don’t like Encase, the other three spells are a good set of spells, enough to beat the game, and the limited spell selection guarantees that you’ll get to level up those spells to a high level. Glaciate can by itself trivialize the Baths; Tempest plus Glaciate is a valid win condition; Tempest by itself is great against vampires; and Ice is a good damage spell which also slows down enemies and thus weakens them for melee combat. Beware of the Menagerie and the Icehouse, obwohl: Ice Bears and Ice Golems are immune to Ice damage.
• Light Mage: On paper this character sounds like a mage. But the Focus spell is also well-suited for a brawler build: Es’s already powerful on level 1; es kostet nur 4 Mana; und es’s too situational to be relied on by a spellcasting build. Permanent glow is annoying for a vampire, aber es’s manageable.
• Revenant has an interesting peculiarity: While you can neither regen health nor mana, you also don’t lose any health as a vampire. So you can remain a vampire indefinitely and profit from the improved combat stats, d.h. higher speed and strength.
• Shapeshifter: I initially didn’t understand how the Shapeshifter was supposed to work, given that she starts as ravenous. But werewolves have a 40% crit chance and get „satiated“ (reduce their hunger) from crits. Auch, once you get the Focus spell, you can just cast it whenever you’re not standing in sunlight, which instantly turns you into a werewolf. The ability to permanently be a werewolf (with extra stats and insane crit rate and speed) is enough to easily win the game, so if you can’t find the Focus spell in grimoires, that’s reason enough to buy extra Grimoires and Legendary Grimoires.
• Warp Mage: This character is so weak that all combat is a struggle. Ich ziehe an’t have any great tips here; just try to survive and dodge monsters until you find a spell that helps you win fights. Damage spells are ideal, but in a pinch, even something like Stupefy will do.

Monster

• Regular monsters follow you up and down staircases. This can be a blessing or a curse – a blessing because you can separate monsters, or a curse because those monsters get a free action. In jedem Fall, Jedoch, branch bosses cannot be brought through staircases.

• Artificers are reasonably easy to kill as a vampire (and naturally hostile to them). Aber Vorsicht: they can spawn a Sunstone Golem next to you, which is disastrous.
• Harpyien (flying monster in the Baths): I didn’t understand these for a long time. They flee from you when they’re alone, and swarm you when another monster is in the vicinity. To lure them, an easy method is to walk outside the melee range of a shark.
• Naiads (water fairies) have the Tempest and Glaciate spells, turn their surroundings into water, and then freeze it. They’re a bit tricky to kill as a vampire. Two strategies that work against them are to either flee until they run out of mana. Oder noch besser, to flee on top of a staircase, which cannot be submerged by the Tempest spell.

Zauber, Fähigkeiten, and Potions

Before you pick your first spells, ask yourself whether you’re a spellcaster build or a melee build. For some classes that’s obvious (z.B. the Scholar is obviously meant to be a spellcaster), for others less so (z.B. Vagabond can be both). Melee builds want support spells, like ones that help them fight better (Enrage, Eile), heal up (Heilen), escape to safety (Blinken, Teleportieren, Disappear), oder ähnliches. Im Gegensatz, spellcasters want at least two damage spells (because every damage spell has a limitation, or enemies which are immune to it), and can make do with one escape spell.

These are not necessarily spells I consider strong, just ones I think warrant comments. They might have unobvious benefits, Zum Beispiel.

• Bombe: For me this is more of a utility spell than a damage spell. Bomben, including the Bomb spell, can destroy any walls. This has a whole bunch of uses throughout the game: you can destroy windows (though a pistol is likely better here); destroy the Crystals in the Gallery to gain extra resources (and all it cost you is one spell slot and a bunch of useless potions); destroy walls in the Hedge Maze or Menagerie (though neither case is usually necessary or desirable); free the imprisoned golems in the Workshop or escape from those golems by bombing through the walls; get Arcane Hammers in the Great Hall (though bombs from monsters do the same job there); …
• Heilen: Reading grimoires and prmiers requires full health; Heal can help with that. It can also cure bleeding (Ich finde). And if you’re uninjured, Heal can even heal an adjacent ally.
• Miasma: I initially skipped this spell because it just got me killed. If that’s your experience, I recommend trying the Apothecary character. Miasma turns out to be a perfectly legitimate damage spell to build a spellcaster around, one that deals absolutely fantastic AoE damage. Jedoch, it has two significant shortcomings: many enemies are immune, and it damages you, zu. The way the Miasma spell works is that it explodes in the tile in front of whatever obstacle you aimed at, from which a cloud of miasma expands in all directions. In an entirely open area, that’s just a 3×3 grid centered on the explosion (so you’re safe if you aim at an enemy that’s 3 Fliesen weg). But in a closed area or corridor, the miasma can reach you even when you’re 1-2 tiles further away. So the Miasma spell must be cast from a big distance, and ideally in open areas, but that’s not always possible. Zum Beispiel, what if you enter a staircase and enemies are close? In such situations it’s important to either have a second damage spell, and/or an escape spell like Blink or Teleport. Zur Not, the Fetter spell might also be enough to gain distance from enemies.
• Quills: This spell is an interesting mix of pseudo-heal effect and damage spell. It’s both defense and offense. Of particular note is that it scales with your hitpoints and thus with your level. So it stays relevant throughout the game, whereas other damage spells at level 1 become useless in the lategame.

• Aura: I still don’t like the Aura ability, but I’ve at least found a use for it: It’s great against spellcasting bosses without Summon effects, like the Gorgon or the Princess. Such bosses deal ultra-high damage at the expense of both mana and cooldowns, and Aura makes them waste both.
• Raserei: this is a great shield effect, just like Quills. But because it puts you to 1 PS, only use it against enemies that bleed, so you can quickly regenerate that health. So while this spells sounds like it resets your health to 1, and thus costs health, I consider it to be more of a heal effect instead.
• Wring can extract blood from furniture and environmental doodads. Most furniture has little HP and thus yields little blood, but Wring covers a decent area around you, so it’s still possible for it to provide net lifegain. And some furniture has lots of HP, z.B. the pot or the organ; or it comes in big chunks, like the bushes in the Greenhouse, the tombstones in the Graveyard, or the chairs and tables in the Library.

• Potion of Bounty is game-winningly powerful. It grants roughly your current turn counter in $. So if you use one after turn 1000 oder später, you can buy pretty much everything that’s available from Hawkers.

Side Branches [A-Ga]

Lighting: No windows, but lots of torches.

How it can kill you: All the monsters here are scary in their own way.

• The shark is just powerful.
• The eel has a ranged attack which it can fire quickly and repeatedly, one which doesn’t cost mana and might not even be able to miss.
• And the harpies flee from you until they can swarm you (= they only come closer when another monster is close-by).
• As soon as the Rusalka bosses see you, they cast Entrance 3 on you to beckon you into their pool where they drown you. The way Entrance works is roughly that, after you take an action, your character automatically takes 2-3 steps towards the closest Rusalka within sight.

How it can help you win:

• The area is full of fountains. Fountains last for 100 turns once discovered, give you an identified potion effect (z.B. you don’t have to drink from bad fountains), and identify the corresponding type of potion.
• This side branch can already spawn on floor 3, is easy to cheese, and provides tons of XP. In my Despair mode runs I regularly reached level 7 before floor 4 by beating the Baths.

Tips for survival:

• All the monsters here have significant weaknesses; insbesondere, most are water-bound and are thus easy to evade.
• Wenn möglich, ignore the sharks by staying outside their range.
• Wenn möglich, stay outside the range of eels, zu.
• You can lure harpies to you one by one by staying close but outside the range of a shark or eel.
• Do not get close to the Rusalkas unless you’ve cleared out most of the harpies, or they’ll swarm you to death.
• Turning off enough torches to create patches of darkness is hard, but can be profitable.
• Being a vampire in a water area is very dangerous. If you get Entranced and risk getting pulled into water, consider using a Soul Elixir.
• The entrancing Rusalka is boss is ultra-scary as a vampire. But humans have a whole bunch of ranged abilities to combat them.
• The Entranced status forces you to move towards the entrancing source, *if you see it*. So if you can move out of sight, then you won’t be forced to move even if you’re still Entranced. Ähnlich, if you can turn off enough torches, or blind yourself with a Blindness potion, then you won’t be forced to move.
• Auch, the Rusalka pool is surrounded by four pillars, and when you stand directly diagonally behind one, you sometimes don’t see any Rusalkas because they’re obscured by the pillar. That’s an unreliable method of survival, but can at least be used to rest or recover mana.
• If you’re entranced and too close to the Rusalka pool, escape via utility spells and potions, like Teleport or Blink. Auch, Cleanse can remove the Entranced status outright.
• Bullets can finish off injured Rusalkas, though they can’t typically kill them all, because the Rusalkas have lots of HP and pistol accuracy decreases with distance.

Can this area be cheesed?

• The Rusalkas are very cheesable because they can’t follo you. Zum Beispiel, you can alternately cast ranged damage spells from maximum range, move backwards if Entranced, and briefly rest to recover mana.
• Glaciate, the spell which turns water into ice, can cheese the entire area. Tatsächlich, if you know that there’s a Baths area, strongly consider picking this spell to make this area *much* easier. The Rusalkas become essentially harmless once Glaciated; just beware of the harpies.

Lighting: Lamps or something? Dungeon-wide lighting can be toggled via a button in the center of the Dungeon.

How it can kill you:

• The Dungeon is full of spikes.
• All the monsters here are suited for a spikey area: Some can fly or attack from range; others can cast Levitate or Vortex.
• The human boss is scary when it chases you into the spikes before you can deactivate them.

How it can help you win:

• The area contains several Tomes of Anguish, which upon reading give you +1 stat, +1 tome level, and shuffle your stats and spells. For many characters that can be a significant advantage, especially if you get multiple Tomes for lots of extra stats.
• The Dungeon contains demonic imp monsters, which drop demon blood and can thus yield a vampire ability.
• The area contains multiple Iron Maidens; the allies therein can help you kill other bosses. Just don’t open the Iron Maidens until you’ve disabled the spikes, or your allies will immediately die.

Tips for survival:

• Spikes trigger every three turns, and furthermore there are safe zones.
• Due to all the ranged enemies here, it’s preferable to be a human with bullets or ranged spells.
• A Levitate spell or potion could help here, but is not necessary.

Can this area be cheesed?

• Überraschenderweise, once you reach the boss, you can kill him while you’re human, and at essentially zero risk: Once you reach him and his „control center“, turn off the spikes. Fetch a Cape for temporary levitation, then turn off the lights, wait until the boss moves into a spike area, and turn on the spikes. Then stay close to him and wait until the spikes kill him.

Lighting: Fackeln.

How it can kill you:

• The Gorgon turns you to stone, then hits you with a Blast 3 spell for 100+ Schaden.
• The floor contains several monsters which have been turned to stone. These monsters are only turned to stone for some large but finite number of turns.

How it can help you win:

• This area contains lots of powerful items, encased in Crystals.
• These Crystals can be destroyed via your own Blast 3 oder 4 Fluch, by using bombs.
• You can even open them by taking hits from the Gorgon’s Blast. This is not advised unless you can survive a hit for >100 Schaden, z.B. via the vampire’s Aura ability.

Tips for survival:

• Turn off the lights, even as a human.
• Try not to give the Gorgon a free line of sight; stone form only lasts for a few turns, so if the Gorgon needs more time to reach you, that gives you time to break free.

Side Branches [Gb-K]

Lighting: Fireflies and a few torches. So mostly darkness.

How it can kill you:

• Lots of skeleton monsters, including ranged archers.
• Contains few blood sources.

Tips for survival:

• Überraschenderweise, skeletons don’t have night vision. So turn off the torches to have an easier time.

Lighting: Few torches, so mostly darkness.

How it can kill you:

• There are tons of vampire enemies, including the ultra-scary vampire nobles. (Other monsters are harmless and little more than blood sources.)
• Contains relatively few blood sources.
• The boss swarms you with vampire minions.

How it can help you win:

• The Mausoleum contains some high-powered equipment. In Mausoleum I, it’s just lying around, so a vampire can reach it for little cost.
• In Mausoleum II, there’s lots of guaranteed equipment inside the boss arena, „gesperrt“ behind water, where you’re expected to reach it as a human, usually after figthing the boss.

Tips for survival:

• I initially thought that the boss, Vlad (Strigoi), could summon infinite monsters, but he has mana and cooldowns. So if you can’t cheese the boss, then it might also work to pick off his summons one-by-one, though this is definitely much riskier than if you cheese it.

Can this area be cheesed?

• If you have 2x Celestial Essence (which generates a few turns of sunlight), you can transform into a human relatively close to the boss, then use those Essences to kill both the boss and the summons.
• The Tempest spell can also be very strong here, to flood the area in water.
• It might also be possible to pull vampires into the water by moving into one of the four water-locked niches, then using the Vortex spell.
• If you’re a vampire with the Bat ability or with a Levitate or Bat potion, then you can pick up the equipment in Mausoleum II as a vampire.

Lighting: Fackeln, Bomben, and magma.

How it can kill you:

• The area is absolutely swarming with goblins. The scariest goblins here might be the ones that blow themselves up if they get close.
• The boss throws lots of bombs.
• If you move too quickly, it’s very easy to accidentally run into a bomb.
• The bombs can knock you into other bombs, or into magma.
• The boss spawns a lethal bomb on death, the Bib One, which covers the entire level. (I once survived the Big One bomb when I had fire resist 4 (= -50% Schaden), when I took 89 Feuerschaden. So it might deal 180~200 fire damage.)

How it can help you win:

• The area contains some walled-off Arcane Hammers, which can be reached via bombs from monsters, or maybe via a high-level Blast spell.
• The center area with the magma contains a walled-off locked chest. The magma can be circumvented via levitation or turned into water via the Tempest spell.
• All these goodies disappear when the boss‘ bomb explodes, but they’re strictly optional to collect.

Tips for survival:

• Move very slowly and cautiously so you don’t accidentally run into a bomb.
• I don’t know if there’s a way to defuse the Big One bomb; my preferred solution is to lure the boss to the staircase, and to kill him such that I can climb the stairs within ~4 turns of killing him. Then I wait until the Big One explodes, and climb back down to collect the ring.

Lighting: Like outside, d.h. flooded with sunlight during the day (6 bin zu 6 Uhr), and dark during the night unless it’s a full moon.

How it will kill you:

• In sunlight, Green Men are really scary: they gain a bunch of buffs, including better stats and higher speed (so they can chase you down), and are even healed during sunlight. In Despair mode, they’re nigh-unkillable in sunlight.
• The Varcolac boss is a harmless human during the day, and transforms into a werewolf at night. He transforms every night, but gets extra healing during the full moon. Werewolves are very fast, Sehr stark, heal when they hit you, and are nigh-unkillable during the full moon.

Tips for survival:

• If you can flee from a Green Man to the staircase, then you can take it to the general floor, where it will still keep its buffs but at least will no longer get healed.
• Only challenge Varcolac to a straight-up melee fight after using multiple potions, z.B. Big Potion + Krafttrank.

Can this area be cheesed?

• It might be possible to kill the Varcolac boss as a vampire during daytime (via potions like Unholy Essence), but I’ve never tried that.
• It might also be possible to fight Varcolac by transforming into a werewolf during daytime (via the Luna potion, or as a Shapeshifter by using the Focus spell outside the Greenhouse).

Lighting: Fackeln.

How it can kill you:

• The Hedge Maze can cost lots of time to navigate, which increases hunger and the white soul gauge.
• Contains no blood, so a vampire will lose tons of life here.

How it can help you win:

• Leads to the Hive, which yields honey.

Tips for survival:

• The best way to navigate this area is when you’re a human in a floor close-by, and are very low on health. If you’d rest in that situation, instead spend that time to navigate part of the Hedge Maze to find the entrance to the Hive, even if you’re not yet strong enough to clear the Hive.
• You can’t trust the main screen here, so look at the minimap instead.

Can this area be cheesed?

• The mapping (Wissen?) potion can reveal the entire map.
• Hedges can be destroyed, for instance via the spells Blast, Feuersturm, or Bomb. But this is usually not necessary.

Lighting: Fackeln

How it can kill you:

• Killer Bees are genuinely very strong, while Worker Bees are individually weak but come in big packs.
• All monsters on this floor deal significant poison damage.
• The Queen Bee summons larvae as soon as she sees you, which transform into more bee monsters.

How it can help you win:

• The area contains enough honey to make the food clock unimportant.

Tips for survival:

• Bees don’t have night vision. So turn off the torches, even as a human.
• Insbesondere, if you don’t turn off the torches, then the Queen Bee can see you through a wall and begin summoning monsters before you can even reach it; that can make the Hive unconquerable.

Side Branches [L-Z]

Lighting: Fackeln, Fenster.

How it can kill you:

• In Laboratory I, time is accelerated. So blood evaporates instantly, and hunger and soul gauge rise very quickly. Für den Menschen, health and mana regenerate very quickly, and vampires lose life very quickly. Auch, the sunlight pattern moves super quickly.
• In Laboratory II, time is decelerated, so blood lasts essentially forever, and health and mana don’t regenerate.
• The area also makes you Unstable.

Tips for survival:

• In Despair mode, the time and resource losses incurred in Laboratory I are so severe that I’d skip the area entirely unless I had a mapping potion.
• Because of the Unstable status, don’t use blink or teleport abilities, and don’t hit volatile crystals.

Lighting: Fackeln.

How it can kill you:

• This branch can contain all or most regular monsters, and they’re all anonymized by a permanent hallucination effect.
• Those monsters could be anything, even Ruby Golems which can one-shot you from full health.
• Pharmacopoeia II contains a very fast Faerie boss which

How it can help you win:

• This branch yields lots of potions, including precious Soul Elixirs.

Tips for survival:

• Turn off the torches, even as a human.
• Stealth can help you survive, and it can also help you identify monsters by whether they have night vision.
• You don’t need to clear Pharmacopoeia I before beating the boss. And after you beat the boss, all monsters will be de-anonymized.

Lighting: A few torches. Mostly darkness.

How it can kill you:

• A bunch of monsters have knockback, and can throw you into the pit: Brawler vampires, explosive goblins
• Some other monsters benefit from clear lines of sight (toadstools, spellcasters) or mobility (bats and demon bats).
• The Demon Bats in particular are extremely strong against spellcaster builds whose spells can’t kill them in melee range (z.B. Miasma, Quake).

How it can help you win:

• The Demon Bats drop demon blood, which yields vampire abilities.

Tips for survival:

• Abilities like Levitation or the Bat potion could help here.

Lighting: Like outside, plus a few torches. So the tower is flooded with sunlight during daytime, and is otherwise only lit by torches except during the full moon.

How it can kill you:

• Contains tons of gargoyles try to surround you and then turn to stone, which makes them nigh-unkillable.
• The boss has the Quake 3 Fluch, which deals a ton of damage when he’s close.
• You instantly die if you fall off the tower. And IIRC the boss might have knockback.

Tips for survival:

• The boss is really slow.
• Stay out of range of the boss and defeat the gargoyles first.
• Then beat the boss via hit and run.
• Turn off the torches to make the fight easier.

Lighting: Fackeln, electricity grids, and a few golem varieties (z.B. Sunstone Golem, Magma Golem).

How it can kill you:

• The area contains a few artificers and tons of golems, but no boss.
• There are a ton of golems in the area with the ring, all behind Crystal walls. Once you pick up the ring, the golems are freed.
• For vampires, there’s almost no blood here.

Tips for survival:

• A spellcaster with spells like Quake or Blast below level 4 could kill the golems from range, while they’re still imprisoned.
• As a melee character, it’s probably ill-advised to try to fight your way out legitimately. Golems deal way too much damage in Despair mode.
• A vampire with the Wring ability could maybe clear this area, but risks getting OTK-ed at full health by something like a crit from a Ruby Golem.

Can this area be cheesed?

• If you have a Teleport or Blink spell or potion, or a Recall potion, you can make a beeline for the ring, then escape that way.
• You might also be able to escape by destroying walls via a high-level Blast spell or bombs or something.