Beginner's Guide

Detailed below is a translated guide for beginners compiled from opinions given by the Japanese wikiwiki community.

The strategies provided consist only of translated material and do not include the personal opinions of any of the wikia's English administration (Currently just Quotation, who sucks at the game anyway), but have been contextualized out of necessity due to originating from machine translations.

If you're interested in slightly more intimate details of the game check descriptions in the Category Pages:

* Dark Lords
* Monsters
* Heroes
* Corrupted Heroes
* Rooms
* Relics
* Skills

Or other more discrete objects of interest like Fate Cards or Torture in the Top Navigation bar above for detailed information.

If you're interested in considerably more intimate details of the game visit the Discord! Numerous veteran players dwell there and will give great insight into more advanced strategy.

## Table of Contents

* How to start a game
* Basic Tips
* Overcoming the first 100 Days
	+ 100 Day Tactics
	+ Preparing Monsters
	+ Preparing Rooms
	+ Extra Tips
* You've reached Day 100, now what?
* Quick and Dirty Succession Strategy

## Basic Tips

**First Time Strategy**

In the beginning the Dark Lord won't have any guard Monsters to accompany them in their room. Make sure to always protect the Dark Lord's Room with a Battle Room just outside of its entrance.

During the first 40~ Days the Heroes won't be very strong, do consider referring to the Minimap  and tackling as many Elite Battles as you can.

If you win you will get a Relic with a useful effect that persists for the rest of your run.
**On the minimap you can tap cards to highlight them, they will appear highlighted on the normal screen as well and stay highlighted day after day so you can map out a good path with ease!**

As the number and strength of Heroes increases as the days go by you may consider avoiding Elite Battles later on while aiming to clear 100 Days. Fill out lots of Battle Rooms with Monsters, don't hold back!

**First Boss Battle, Day 20**

Not at all something to worry about, the important thing is to watch out for the special reward given after the Boss Battle.

It's best to take one of the Pickax Relics as your reward from the boss, this will become a pattern.
Even if your luck isn't great you can pass this stage with just a few monsters and traps, go for it!

**About the Abyss Shop**

Devil Stones () are awarded for increasing the account wide Reincarnation Level and completing Achievements. This currency can be used to draw permanent effects from the packs in the "Abyss Shop".
Drawing various abilities, units, relics, and more that can completely change the game and add incredible advantages and options one should readily draw with Devil Stones when you get them.
The Succession Abilities in the packs are the most desirable draws.

* Starting in June 2018 the Awakening Pack and then the Advanced Pack and Corruption Pack following it were added, but for beginners the Original Pack should be top priority.

When you find a new Dark Lord as an option you can consider taking her as an investment. Raising her personal level to 10 will earn you another 10 Devil Stones for another Original Pack draw.

For Abyss Shop recommendations refer to the letter ratings on the left side in the Original Pack page.

**Aim for Day 100**

Surviving 100 Days is an Achievement for all stages of every tier of Difficulty and will award 10 Devil Stones straightaway. As of **v1.8.0** all stages of difficulty in one tier are unlocked when reaching day 100 of the 10th stage of the previous difficulty (e.g day 100 in a run of Hard 10 will unlock Trial 1-10) making things much faster for new players than they were previously (1 stage at a time).
Additionally skipping to the 10th stage and reaching day 100, 200, and 340 will count for the same achievement of any lower stage in the tier you have yet to reach that day in.

Means of obtaining Devil Stones are limited and Reincarnation Levels don't come too quickly at low difficulty levels. As a result hasty progression through tiers along with other easy Achievements like getting Dark Lords to reincarnation level 10 are important goals.

**Raising Fusion Monsters**

A Fusion Monster is a powerful and relatively easy to obtain 6★ unit. Through a service given by the Monster Trader you will want to actively procure the materials to make them.
Initially you will want to look out for:

* Lizardman Girl and Sahuagin for Thetis
* Reaper Girl and Ent for Arachne

Thetis and Arachne are available from the start and are great blessings to a beginner's dungeon.
Note that every time you fuse the cost to fuse increases by 15 gold. This detail is minor now, but will be of slightly noticeable impact later.

**About Shrines**

A Shrine is a room that benefits Heroes and is undesirable to have in your dungeon. It is impossible to simply overwrite the room by oneself. It can only be removed by specific Events and Relics.
These Shrines are installed randomly in empty rooms as a result of certain events, difficulty conditions, or start conditions, but if all the rooms are filled at the time of installation it will randomly overwrite an existing room.

**Check your Recipes**

Tapping the scroll in the upper left corner allows you to check both the Fusion Monster and Special Room Recipes (even during battle). Recipes that you currently have all the necessary materials for are conveniently displayed at the top and lit up. (Like the Monster Trader, the Facility Trader's service is necessary to build Special rooms).

**Growth over time**

Fighting Battles will provide a small trickle of experience to all Monsters and Rooms.
Monsters will grow whether or not they are deployed, regardless the rate is extremely slow. Once you get an idea of what Monsters and Rooms are invaluable to your survival, you should enhance them actively.

## Overcoming the first 100 Days

Hitting 100 Days and climbing through difficulties is very important for hastening progression, detailed below will be some techniques.
Also consider that if you reach the 100th Day, dying during the Boss Battle will still give you the Achievement, 10 Devil Stones, and unlock the next degree of difficulty so just worry about reaching it.

100 Day Tactics

* Normal Battles and Elite Battles provide Gold, Souls, EXP, a Battle Reward, and in the case of Elite Battles, a Relic which will surely strengthen your dungeon, sometimes dramatically. If one faces battles often the rewards acquired will almost surely allow easy access to Day 100 in Normal and Hard Difficulty.
* Events and Dungeon Cards seem to provide a wonderful array of exciting effects and options at first sight, but expected average value is observed to be less than that found even in Normal Battles.
One might find the effects provided by Books attractive, but they unlikely to be impactful especially considering the time frame of 100 Days. There is little time to spend engaged with the various effects of Events and Dungeon Cards while attempting to fill out your dungeon with powerful Rooms and Monsters.

**Consider Traders at roughly 70 Days**
* With a hefty sum of Gold prepared before hunting down a Trader card you can conduct a great deal of business all at once. A massive number of Monster Eggs from the Monster Trader as well as a backlog of Fusion Monster material gathered over several dozen days can be handled all at once and the same can be done with the Facility Trader for Rooms allowing you to power through the last stretch.
* As the only objective is to reach Day 100 the true hurdles are found on Days 20, 40, 60, 80.
Boss Battles on Day 20 and 40 are considered rather weak, and the 60th day isn't considered too dangerous with a good set of Battle Rooms filled out. This makes it a safe bet to hold out until after Day 60 to muster the power Merchant services to face the final Boss Battle on Day 80.
	+ On the topic of facing Day 80. While climbing difficulties this is considered the easiest place to die. Spend every bit of Gold you can at Merchants just before the battle and gain every little advantage you can before facing these Heroes.

**Completing 80 Days is technically a win!**
* The Boss Battle of Day 100 is naturally stronger than the one faced on Day 80, but winning or losing is of no consequence because you will receive your rewards and progression even if you lose here.
The only possibility that you can lose after facing and completing Day 80 is during an Elite Battle. Due to the quantity and variety of Heroes in these battles being noticeably greater in both cases one with bad luck can face an Elite Battle more difficult the previous Boss Battle.
* If you're not feeling confident aim for the 100th Day with a path through Normal Battles. It also becomes an option to avoid Battles completely by targeting Event and Dungeon Cards in order to still gain some advantage as the days go by.

The main objective is to pass the 80th day and it is a simple yet effective strategy to have a column of 3 Battle Rooms right beside the Dark Lord's Room. This is actually a necessity if you're lacking draws from the Original Pack Ability Dark Lord's Guardian.
For absolute security it is an excellent goal to, before the 80th day, have filled the 3 columns next to your Dark Lord's Room with Battle Rooms (3x3 ~ 9 Battle Rooms) that are themselves filled with decent Monsters (3x9 ~ 27 Monsters).
**High ★ preference**
The base stats of Monsters is important in the early rush to 100 due to the simple damage calculation in this game (DEF - ATK is taken from LIFE).
★'s are observed to outright determine the fighting power of monsters, so if you gather an accompaniment of 5★ Monsters you're in excellent shape.
**Quality over quantity**
When combining (not enhancing) two monsters the outcome may gain a ★ or two.
As a result there are cases where 5★ of Goblins and Slimes may be acquired, but their raw performance will correspond to their ★ count so you don't need to fret too much over recombining them into a better base creature.
It is entirely possible to gain a surplus of low ★ but high level Monsters in later Days. Since increasing the number of ★'s on a Monster is unreliable it is better to just use Combination Enhancement (if you've drawn the benefit Add Enhancement Option) or Enhance Dark Lord if you've filled out your rooms.
**Low ★ Monsters to consider**
Although it is exciting to gather up materials for the powerful Fusion Monsters or carefully raise 5★ base or combined monsters if you have an insufficient number of monsters deployed the Heroes will march on into the Dark Lord's Room and you'll find yourself with a Game Over.
At last it is given that a general guideline is to quickly expand the dungeon with Pickax Relics, fill several Battle Rooms with monsters, and raise their strength with surplus.
When taking Monster Eggs as rewards it's natural to pick high ★ monsters, but when only 2★ monsters are available consider the Lizardman, Gargoyle, Mimic, or Harpy for their better than average survivability (as of v1.5.4). If you somehow only drew 1★ Monsters... Better luck next time! The Goblin is no longer as useful as he used to be.
※ Ultimately it is best to decide what strengths provided by monsters most effectively fit with the dungeon you've made. As you gain experience this will come naturally.

Available from the start Pickax Relics allow you dungeon to expand to a maximum 3 Rows by 6 Columns, but not every room will see equal Hero visitation. The Heroes' Entrance Room (left of the X) and the Dark Lord's Entrance Room (right of the Dark Lord's Room) become especially crucial rooms.
If you build your dungeon with fully aware of their importance you will surely be able to effectively repel the Heroes.
**Near the Heroes' Entrance**
* This Room's most common role is to spread debuffs such as Slow and Blind.
A Trap Room may easily be invalidated by the Hero specific buff Dodge Trap, but a Battle Room's effect can not be prevented.
Many Battle Rooms trigger an effect on Hero entry. If the Monsters within are cleared out you luckily don't need to worry, the Battle Room will continue to trigger even without any deployment.
* Extraction : Top priority. A blessing in the form of a Trap that reinforces (Adds Elite tag) to Monsters one after another by simply installing one at the entrance. It'll save plenty of days this way.
* Sloth : High priority. A highly efficient Battle Room that gives both Slow and Weak effectively weakening Heroes to half strength between the two. Raising the Room's Lv is easy too to extend its effects.
* Darkness : Next in line. The Blind Status effect is an incredible debuff, but although Battle Room is strong experience shows that it is difficult to raise the Room's Lv and increase its value.
* Panic : A fringe option. Few Heroes with strong skills will appear until the last few Days of the 100 so Panic doesn't play a big role.
* Ice : Better than nothing. Slow is an excellent Status Effect with good synergies. As a Trap some heroes may avoid it with Dodge Trap so be on the lookout for better options.
* Icebolt : Better than Ice. An exception Special Room due to its extremely easy to complete recipe, you may find an opportunity to make this before even finding your first Extraction. It lacks the firepower to really weaken Heroes so you can place one at the entrance and look into options that take advantage of its Slow.

**Mid-Dungeon**
* Detailed before, the Second and Third columns in addition to the First column of rooms next to the Dark Lord's Room are good real-estate for Battle Rooms and should be filled with such in order to halt and rout Heroes. The theme for these Battle Rooms is to buy time.
To supplement these rooms a variety of Facilities or traps may fill the Fourth and even Fifth columns to strengthen Monsters or weaken Heroes before they clash.
On the topic of Battle Rooms, consider the Blood Altar and Sprout to help the hold the line. Even at Lv1 they can greatly extend the survivability of Monsters.
* Blood Altar : Top priority. Vampire is extremely effective during earlier days. One of the materials for the easy recipe for Bloodlust, a very powerful Special Battle Room.
* Sprout : High Priority. The raw performance and growth of this room is better than Blood Altar with a greater Regeneration gain than the former's Vampire gain. Your monsters will feel invincible.
* Gigantify : Next in line. Enhancing this to Lv6 is absolutely necessary and enhances the Gigantify effect to 3x ATK. If you simply place a 5★ or your prized Fusion in it, it will become a truly menacing (and Basic) Battle Room.
* Graveyard : For the future. Immortality synergies will become more relevant when you decide to push past 100 Days. It'll soon become a crucial factor in survival strategies, but at the present stage it is decent pseudo-Shield.
* Barrier, Sword and Shield, and Battle : Filling out that 3x3 beside the Dark Lord's Room can't always be pretty. Take it if you must.

**Near the Dark Lord's Room**
* After a few runs you may find that a loss looks something like this: A lot of Heroes find their way into the Dark Lord's Room, your buffs wear off, and then your darling Elizabeth's health VERY QUICKLY becomes zero. Even if your Dark Lord is up to the thousands in LIFE you'll find death to be rather sudden anyways.
It becomes a point of importance to absolutely thrash Heroes with an exceptionally dangerous Battle Room just before the Dark Lord's to both heavily reduce the number of leaks and only leak heavily weakened Heroes.
* Frenzy : Top priority. Not actually wanted for its Fury Status Effect, its performance is technically not much better than Arena, but it is a major component in the recipe for Warhorn and Bloodlust, the former of which may simply take you straight to Trial Difficulty. Honestly, it's only up here to get your attention, don't let this Battle Room slip.
* Rage : High priority. Acceleration is an incredible buff that increases attack speed by 50% for an action per stack. This is an effective way of getting your powerful 5★ to throw out their Unique Skills as well as quickly burn through the mass of Heroes converging on the Dark Lord's room.
* Meditation : Next in line. Focus is a good buff that increases ATK damage dealt by 50%.
* Arena Better than nothing : If you must use it, know that it is a reasonable alternative to the others purely in the context of reaching just 100 Days. This is due to how easy it is to raise its Lv.

**Rooms to consider**
* It may not be desirable to have these at the entrances, but their effects are not to be underestimated even for just a 100 Day run.
* Lounge : Top priority. A facility that increases ATK and DEF power by 3 at base and increases in Lv. quite easily. In the context of a 100 Day run it is very powerful.
* Hatchery : Especially good for Elizabeth or Emma. Since the stats of Monsters actually don't raise consistently per Lv. gained it's preferable to use Lounge to strengthen them, but Dark Lords always gain 5/1/0.5 LIFE/ATK/DEF every Lv. allowing you to use Enhancement to turn them into an incredible offensive force.

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## Extra Tips

Arachne and Thetis are Fusion Monsters which have already been mentioned. There 13 of them total and the other 11 must be drawn from the Original Pack. In-game once you acquire the materials you can add them to your dungeon through a service provided by the Monster Trader.

These 6★ Monsters will outdo even your most powerful 5★ Monsters in raw stats but are most valued for their incredible Innate Skills.

Recalling the crucial room slots detailed above we should place these monsters at the two Entrances to best take advantage of them.

Remember to keep an eye on the Recipes by tapping the scroll in the upper left corner of the screen, they're the key to longevity!

## You've reached Day 100, now what?

First of all, congratulations on reaching Day 100 for the first time (or 11th).
Still looking for pointers? No sweat, as long as you've enjoyed your first hand experience, that's all the matters.

At the moment there will likely still be many restricted functions in the game hidden away in the Abyss Shop Packs. This game has plenty more content waiting for the right tribute of Devil Stones.

So you've arrived at D100 for the first time. Well now you have a choice to make, either Withdraw and head to the next degree of Difficulty or push as far as you can. Either way, if you were playing Elizabeth she should reach Level 4 even if it was your first run and be well equipped for your climb through Hard.
Withdrawing should be considered.
The higher the difficulty you face the more efficiently you'll gather those precious Devil Stones ! Also, as of 1.7.0+ you won't be able to access one of the most exciting features of the game until you reach Trial, Corruption! (Info here and here.)

Brief advice (and mostly reiteration) on what to aim for in a typical game from here on out.
Take what follows as loose advice, survival is all that truly matters and like in most games with 'rogue-like' fundamentals you need to be ready to adapt.

Ideally you'll go for Monster eggs a vast majority of the game, you'll likely only skip out on eggs when you see a particularly interesting facility, found a good Book to read, or the level of rewarded facilities has risen high enough to warrant enhancing your own.
There's nothing wrong with building a surplus now with the services offered in the Monster Trader and the continued usefulness of new acquisitions resulting from Hatcheries.

Training a Monster provides a very powerful boost to any monster, but using a day to strengthen one isn't particularly efficient. Unless you're absolutely sure of a particular monster's usefulness you should consider dropping an Extraction in your dungeon and letting that take care of things.

Once again, the room next to the Heroes' entrance is an extremely important room and the driving force of many strategies.
A Trap Room is actually not a particularly common choice. Dropping a Curse, Icebolt, or even an Extraction (to quickly boost your succeeded monsters) are nice choices, but Battle Rooms have so much more to offer.
Rooms like Darkness, Panic, and Temptation are favorites that give debuffs that can't be avoided by heroes that come in with Dodge Trap.
The fabled Special Room Warhorn works at an exciting degree of efficiency in that slot and will carry you far.

Additionally, even if a monster like Arachne or Shiva is occupied by the torrent of heroes when deployed at the entrance their powerful Spider Web or Poignant Chill skill will afflict every hero that passes through even if they have Hide.

Elite Battles are a massive priority. While it may be a pain or even somewhat threatening to go after them, the best survival strategies involve the support of a hefty number of Relics. As a result its best to start working away at the 1-2★ Relics quickly as you likely won't see many of the powerful 3★ Relics until you've gathered them all.

The Hatchery ~~is~~ **was** one of the most incredibly useful rooms in the game. It very simply increases the base Lv of monsters hatched from eggs.
While the Hatchery is still more functional than most basic Battle Rooms and a few Traps, EXP gain of Monsters and the Dark Lord was increased significantly in **v1.7.0**.

Stat increases are a bigger factor in your survival than one might expect. Fancy skills and effects are attractive but they only work when there's a good stat foundation to build off of.
Lv to stat efficiency for the Dark Lord is exceptional, if you hoard a few monsters early on do make sure to take advantage of their growth Enhance your Dark Lord later. Even with purely passive battle exp your monsters grow quite quickly and can be used to make your Dark Lord feel truly Final Boss-ish.

**Quick and Dirty Succession Strategy**
Succession is an excellent acquisition from the Abyss Shop and is crucial for facing higher difficulties. Luckily it is possible to attain it early on and put it to quick use in climbing to Legend difficulty.

The goal for Facility Succession is simply Warhorn for the entrance.

The goal for Monster Succession is some combat oriented Fusions like Arachne, Bone Dragon, Red Wyvern, Suparna, or White Fang (Corrupted Elite Villagers are excellent for getting through Trial Difficulties once you reach them) that have inherited Eye of Truth, Willpower and room wide attack/debuff Common Skills like Earthquake, Sandstorm, or Spin Strike to sit in it.
If you get lucky and decide to try and push further you may also consider trying to get your hands on a Corrupted Priest though it will be a painstaking process with default Torture Tools.

With these tools, practice, and a bit of luck you should have no problem pushing through Trial Difficulty at which point you'll definitely be familiar enough with the game to tackle Legend and more!

**Thank you for reading this far. Please let me know in the comments if there is a point that should be added, removed, or reinterpreted.**
 Gamecoaster, the developers of this game have poured a great deal of time and affection into this game to keep it fresh, interesting, and fair (most of the time). This also means that relevant end game strategies (and what's even considered end game) change almost monthly! While the subjects of this guide are very basic, please take the time to visit the Discord and share in the communities' experiences.