Advice for New Players

# Preface

Unlike other pages on the wiki, this page will be written in a less formal style and will include subjective opinions on how to play the game based on what has worked for the writer(s) of the guide (Currently User:Falterfire and User:VeratoTheRed). Following this advice is not guaranteed to lead to success and ignoring it is not guaranteed to lead to failure, this is just intended to be some general tips and tricks for players who are new the game or genre and find themselves struggling a bit.

This guide is originally being written in September 2021 based on Breach Wanderers version 0.4523. Although parts of the guide may have been updated since then, it's also possible that some references to how cards or enemies behave will be obsolete if you're reading this in the future. As this wiki is a community project, I invite you to update any out-of-date references you may notice.

This advice will also be geared primarily towards the goal of completing Depth 3 runs successfully, as that is the highest difficulty currently available. In general, any strategy that is successful on Depth 3 will work on easier difficulties for obvious reasons.

This guide is a work in progress (although if you're reading this sentence later than like October 2021 it's pretty safe to assume progress has stalled) and some sections may be missing or very light on information at present.

# How does Breach Wanderers work?

Breach Wanderers is a game in the Roguelike Deckbuilder genre that was popularized by Slay the Spire. Like other games in the genre, gameplay is divided into runs. At the start of each run, you'll pick a character and a difficulty (In Breach Wanderers difficulties are called Depths). You'll start the run with a fairly weak starting deck and over the course of the run you'll improve your deck by adding and upgrading cards as well as by acquiring Items that provide a variety of bonuses. Runs will continue until you either complete all of the areas (the number of areas in a run is determined by the Depth selected) or die trying.

After a run, the character you played as will receive some Experience and you'll receive some Coins and Aether you can spend in the various buildings in town before setting out on your next run. The various things purchased with Coins and Aether persist between runs, with the exception of bonuses purchased from the Market, which are one-time use and only apply to the next run.

Unlike many other Roguelike Deckbuilders, you have a lot of control over both the deck you'll start with and also the cards you'll see during a run. You can build both a 12-card starting deck for your character (made out of Common rarity cards) as well as a Card Pool of cards that you'll be offered as rewards after winning fights. By building a good deck you can make the game substantially easier than it is when working with the default decks for each characters.

## How do I skip taking a card?

You don't. Part of the reason Breach Wanderers balances out the control you have over your deck and card rewards is by ensuring you have to actually take those cards as they're offered. Although in other deckbuilders it is often correct to take only a relatively small number of cards and get your deck down to the absolute smallest size possible, the developer of Breach Wanderers specifically intends for you to play with larger decks where you can't just loop the same four cards until you achieve victory.

This is not to say that you can't end up with a fairly small deck or that infinite combos are impossible, just that they require a lot more active effort to put together than in other games and you're less likely to be able to consistently pull all of the required pieces together.

## How do I unlock new features?

When you first start a new save, your first run will always be a Depth 1 run playing as the character Raodan using his default starting deck. After you finish that run (win or lose), you'll gain access to town.

In order to **play higher depths** you must first complete the previous one. Winning a run on Depth 1 will allow you to start a run on Depth 2, and winning a run on Depth 2 will allow you to start a run on depth 3. Right now there are 3 depths in the game, with additional depths being planned for future updates. Once a depth is unlocked, it will be unlocked for all characters, however level 1 character can only play Depth 1 runs even if you have higher depths unlocked.

You can change the depth for the next run on the right side of the character select screen when using a character that is level 2 or higher.

In order to **customize your starting deck**, you must be using a character at level 2 or higher. This is unlocked separately for each character.

In order to **customize your card pool**, you must be using a character at level 3 or higher. Like customizing the starting deck, this is unlocked separately for each character.

In order to **play Quickplay mode** you must be using a character at level 3 or higher. To enable quickplay mode, select the option on the right side of the character select screen before starting a run.

In order to **unlock new characters**, you must buy them on the character select screen for Coins. Each character will start at level 1, and characters may be purchased in any order.

In order to **unlock new cards**, you can purchase packs for 500 Aether each while in town. Cards opened in packs are Generic Cards, which means they can be used when building decks for any character. Each pack contains 3 random Generic Cards that you don't currently have unlocked. As the unlock order is random, it is unlikely that any two players will receive the same cards in the same order. You only need to unlock each card once, and after purchasing enough packs to unlock all of the currently available Generic Cards you will be unable to purchase additional packs.

In addition to the Generic Cards you can unlock by opening packs, each character also has 15 Character Cards unique to them. Six of these are unlocked at level 1, and then three more each upon reaching levels 2, 5, and 8 with a given character. Unlike the cards opened in packs, the unlock order for character cards is fixed - For example, every player will unlock  with level 1 Raodan and won't unlock  until Raodan reaches level 8. Character cards can only be used with the character they are associated with.

## What Can I Spend Coins On?

Coins can be spent on the following things:

* Purchasing upgrades in the Forge
* Purchasing additional quest slots on the Quest Board
* Purchasing new slots in the Market
* Purchasing Market bonuses for the next run
* Unlocking new Characters

With the exception of the market bonuses, all of these unlocks are permanent purchases that won't be reset unless the player starts from a fresh save.

## What Can I Spend Aether On?

Aether can only be spent on buying packs of Generic Cards. Each pack costs 500 Aether, and once all Generic Cards are unlocked there is no further use for Aether aside from waiting for more Generic Cards to be released in a future update.

Once you have unlocked all Generic Cards, the Quest Board will begin paying out in Coins instead of Aether in order to avoid flooding the player with a currency they no longer need.

# Gameplay Strategy

There are a lot of pieces that go into winning a depth 3 run. I've decided to split things into three categories to hopefully help make this more readable:

## Deckbuilding Tips

Going into a run with a well-constructed deck is the easiest way to improve your odds of coming out victorious. You're already going to be fighting against all the Monsters the Aether has to offer, you don't need to also be fighting against your own cards. This section has various tips on things I've found helpful to keep in mind when putting together a deck.

### Mana Cards Are Your Friends

By far the easiest mistake to make in Breach Wanderers is not including enough mana cards in your deck. The absolute minimum number of mana cards you want in your starting twelve is 4, and it's often worthwhile to run 5 or even sometimes 6.

Playing more mana cards ensure you'll be able to afford to play out your hand every turn and makes it possible for you to take and play expensive high-impact cards like  or .

This applied to more than just your starting deck - By including 6-8 mana cards in your card pool you can ensure that you'll be offered mana cards often enough that you'll be able to take them when you need them. If you don't include enough mana cards in your pool, you can find yourself in a doom spiral where your deck is low on mana and you keep having to take more non-mana cards that make the problem worse and worse.

In general, the more mana you can get out of a card the better.  may seem great at first, but since it will only ever generate 2 mana you'll often find that you're better off running something like  that can generate 4 mana, leaving you with 2 extra mana that you can spend on doing something far higher impact than just getting 2 shield.

### Build With A Plan In Mind

Although mana is a universally useful additive for all decks, the other slots are a lot more flexible without much in the way of concrete rules for what you need to include. With that said, you should have an idea in mind of what your overall gameplan is and then pick cards that help support that plan.

For example, if you're playing Raodan you might want to build your deck around using  Frost to freeze enemies. Once you've decided that, you can begin evaluating cards through that lens. This leads to some obvious choices ( and  are not subtle about what they do) but here are some other cards you might consider:

* provides  Adept, which will increase the amount of Frost you're able to apply with all of your Frost generating cards.
* will trigger Arcane Detonations, which do more damage against Frozen targets and can remove buffs like Plated or Tough that can stymie your efforts. Plus it's another way to gain  Growth from Raodan's level 4 passive.
* will provide you with  Evasion stacks. These stacks will stick around until they're needed, which means if you draw it on a turn where you've frozen all the enemies that are attacking you can pre-emptively prepare to negate enemy attacks later in combat if you have a turn where you can't re-apply freeze.

Regardless of which specific cards you end up choosing, you should know why you ended up choosing the cards you did. Not only will this lead to a stronger deck, it'll also make it easier to improve your deck if it doesn't work. After all, if you know what a card is supposed to be doing you can pay attention to whether it's actually succeeding at doing that when you play it during a run.

### Be Prepared For The First Boss

When building your starting deck, the most important thing to figure out is how you plan to beat the Area 1 Midboss. On depth 1 and 2 you'll always be choosing between  and , and on depth 3 there's a chance one of them will be replaced with  instead.

There are only four nodes before the first midboss fight, which means you'll be relying primarily on the deck you start with to see you through the fight. All three of these enemies have around 180 health and ways to discourage you from drawing the fight out for too long, which means you'll want to make sure you have some way to hit hard enough to bring the fight to a close and effective defensive options that will stop you from taking too much damage while you do so.

Even if your deck is very good at handling the fights leading up to it, you might find you struggle with the Midboss itself. For example when playing a  Frost based deck as Raodan it's fairly easy to keep normal enemies and even Elites in Area 1 frozen for the entire fight, but bosses have a higher initial Frost maximum and that maximum scales upwards quickly, especially on Depth 3. If you don't have a defensive plan aside from "Just keep the enemy frozen for the whole fight" you may find that you start to take a lot of damage after the first few turns once the enemy gets beyond the point where you can consistently re-freeze it.

## Navigating A Run

Once you're in a run, you'll have many paths to choose from. It can help to take a bit of time to think about what direction you want to go to ensure you'll get the most out of each area. This section has some advice on what you might want to consider when deciding which way to go.

### The Things You'll See Along The Way

The basic things that you can find along a path are: Common Fights, Elite Fights (which have a silver border), Boss Fights (gold border), and Events. In addition to these, you can sometimes also have Quest nodes, which are represented by a "!" space. Let's take them in order:

Common Fights are just normal fights. Winning the fight will grant you a card reward. You'll be offered a choice between two cards which will come from your card pool and the third which will be dependent upon the monsters you just fought.

Elite Fights are fights against harder enemies. If you win, you'll be offered some rarer (and generally more powerful) cards for your card reward. In addition to that, you'll also receive one of the following bonuses:

* the ability to remove one card from your deck,
* the ability to upgrade one card from your deck,
* a reroll horseshoe, which can be used to reroll and try again if you don't like the cards or items you were just offered, or
* camping supplies, which will allow you to rest one more time during your run.

Boss Fights are similar to Elite Fights except they are harder, offer the very rarest (and generally most powerful) card rewards, and they also will always give you a Card Removal, Card Upgrade, and ALSO some camping supplies - which is a fantastic package of rewards! The placement of Boss Fights is not random: you will always be forced to fight one boss at the midway part of an area (after you've visited five locations) and also at the end of the area.

Events are locations that tell you a story, then allow you to choose how to respond. Depending upon what you choose, the story might end with you getting an item, some gold and experience, a special card reward, or even getting in a fight! While the stories you encounter are randomly selected, the choices that you are offered will generally be based upon the cards in your deck or the character you're playing.

Quest nodes only show up while you are doing certain quests. If you see one, make sure you pick a path that goes to it!

### How to Choose Which Way to Go

When you're considering which path to go down, I think there's a few things to consider:

First: If you're on a quest, then you've got to remember to path through any Quest nodes that you see. If you miss a Quest node, then you won't be able to finish the quest on this run. This can be easy to forget, and it's what makes some of the quests so difficult: instead of choosing the best path, you're forced to choose whichever path will lead you to the "!" space.

Second to that in importance is considering the enemies that you'll face along the way, particularly the Boss Fight that's halfway through the area. Each area will offer you a choice between two different boss fights halfway through. It's worth considering which one your path will lead to and whether your deck can handle it. Some midbosses are basically just a showdown with a single tough monster, while others have you fighting a summoner who will call in an endless stream of enemies for you to deal with.

Finally, you may want to try to control how many cards are in your deck. One way to do that is to encounter as many Event spaces as you can. There's a good chance that the event you get won't add any cards to your deck. You can also manage your deck size by fighting as many Elite Fights as you can handle, since they often will allow you to either remove or upgrade one of your cards.

## Winning A Fight

Having the best deck and a great sense of direction will be unhelpful if you don't know how to effectively win the fights you'll get into along the way. This section contains tips on actually coming out on top in a brawl as well as some easily-overlooked mechanics that can have an impact on your success. In particular, I will look at Killing the Enemy, Staying Alive, and Status Effects.

### Killing the Enemy

The main goal of fights is for you to kill your enemies, and you'll usually want to do it as quickly as possible. But one thing to keep in mind is that in each run, every step you take makes every fight harder. You might start out fighting little Loreblossoms with 40 hp or so, but you'll eventually be facing groups of Shadowbone Hunters and Prowlers that have hundreds of HP and bosses that have over 1000!

This means that you'll need to maximize your damage output if you want to survive. One way to do that is to add cards to your deck that buff yourself with status effects such as Powerful, Critical, or Mighty, all of which will make your damaging cards hit harder. You can also increase your damage output by finding cards and items which will debuff the enemy with status effects like Vulnerable (which causes your cards to hit harder), Poison, and Curse (which damages the enemy each turn).

### Staying Alive

The most basic way that you can defend yourself against the enemy's attacks is by gaining shield - one shield will negate one point of incoming damage. However, you can also defend yourself by giving yourself status effects such as Evasion or Hidden, which cause the enemy's attacks to miss you entirely.

You have a maximum amount of shield that you can retain between rounds. This **doesn't** mean that you can't go over that amount. You can end your turn with as much shield as you can generate! What it means is that after the enemies all get their turns, you will lose any remaining shield that's in excess of your maximum shield amount. So, for example, if I can have 10 shield max, but I give myself 30 shield, it will stay at 30 while the enemies take their turns. If the enemies only do 15 damage to me, then my shield will soak up all of the damage, and then it will drop down to 10 at the start of my next turn.

Some cards can also heal you, which helps you to recover from the hits you take in battle. However, you should be aware that your character will only be able to heal up to a point - taking too much damage in a fight will drop your Maximum HP, which means that you won't be able to regain it afterwards! When this happens, don't panic! Sleeping at a campfire after the battle will heal you and also restore your lost Max HP.

### Status Effects

This game has dozens of status effects, and the details of what they do can be very confusing. In this section, I intend to give an outline of some of the most dangerous/helpful status effects.

Arcane, Frost, and Shock have special mechanics which no other status effects share. Each character has three color-coded status bars that will show up beneath their HP bar when one of these is applied, which fill up as a character takes one of these types of status. Once the bar is all the way full, an effect is produced:

* The top bar (purple) fills up with Arcane. When it is full, it produces an Arcane Detonation, which does 10 damage and dispels that character's buffs.
* The middle bar (blue) fills up with Frost. When it is full, it causes the character to be Frozen. For enemies, this means that they will lose their turn. For the player, it means that your cards will become frozen, making them unplayable until you discard two cards (or else end your turn).
* The bottom bar (yellow) fills up with Shock. When it is full, it causes the character to be Shocked. This means that the next attack the character receives will do double damage.

Most of the other status effects in this game wear off over time and give the same bonus no matter how many levels someone has of them. For example, it doesn't matter whether you have one rank of Adept or ten ranks of it, it'll give you the same effect on your turn. For status effects like these, increasing the number of ranks that you have will increase their **duration** - you'll typically lose one rank of it each turn, and so having ten ranks of an effect means that it will last for ten turns.

There are a few status effects that ignore this trend, and instead have their **intensity** increased when they have more ranks. These status effects usually don't wear off over time, which makes them uniquely potent and dangerous:

Crystallize - this debuff increases the damage of incoming attacks by 5% per rank.

Curse - this debuff does 2 damage per rank to the affected creature at the end of their turn. Unlike most damaging debuffs, this one doesn't wear off when it's triggered!

Plated - this buff reduces incoming damage, Arcane, Frost, and Shock by 1 per rank. If this makes an attack do 0 damage or status, then it will dispel one rank of Plated afterward.

Poison - this debuff does 1 damage per rank to the affected creature at the end of their turn. Once this debuff does its damage, it loses half of its ranks.

Powerful - this buff increases the amount of damage done by 1 per rank. It also increases the amount of Arcane, Frost, and Shock applied by 1 per rank.

It's good to pay special attention whenever an enemy is stacking up multiple ranks of one of these status effects on itself (or on you). Having multiple ranks of these status effects can make a fight escalate quickly, turning what was a very manageable enemy into an unstoppable nightmare! If you notice that an enemy is doing this, you should go out of your way to stop it, either by killing that enemy first or else using an ability to Cleanse yourself (if it's a debuff) or to Dispel the enemy (if it's a buff).