A few tips

[visighost]

Lovely little game, with a good guide on TrueA, and nice tips on the PS4 EU forum. 

The only additional advice I have would be:

 

-To save scum after beating the last boss (i.e. Castle level). You can then proceed to drop a jar on the crown, and trigger the first loop. Reload, and simply wobble to the throne to trigger the “normal” ending. If you have some miscellaneous trophies left to do, go the other way around (regular ending, then loop): ng+ is not that much harder, and your deck should be near perfection by that point, so might as well keep on with it!

 

-At any point when you have over 3000 gold, you can back up your save, abandon your run, start a new run without spending the money to get the relevant trophy, and restore your save. You’re now free to spend!

 

-Remember: Acid pet works wonders. Quit to main menu and use continue to get the Lucky Wheel jackpot. Pick the Random deck and back out till you get an Execution card. Upgrade mana first. Stack “Opening”. Keep all “extra 2 mana” and “draw 2 cards” you get. Lightning Strikes and Cursed Punches with Fumbles ruled my world. At one point, I tried to commit suicide by skipping turns, and my mutations and pets would still win…

 

Ratalaika are upping their game(s), and you actually need to complete the game in order to get the platinum for once! I love it!

[onenaser2]

Thanks 

[GastNDorf]

Here’s a few other tips:

 

- Save scum: you can save scum many things in the game very simply by pressing options and then Exit to menu, this allows you to choose the best mutations, or restart battles if you’re failing or start with a bad hand etc… Unfortunately you can’t reset shops that way. One thing you can do is start a dummy run, save scum until you get a gold mutation from the start, then restart the run to buy upgrades on your next actual run.

- a great mutation to have quickly is the one allowing you to spawn any mutation from totems, this means you can have beneficial mutations from rooms you would have to choose between two handicaps, and have access to the orange mutation, most of which are really good, just save scum to get the best ones and avoid the maluses. 

- Tinkerer familiar is completely OP, I agree the poison ones are good, but tinkerer is so broken, and you can have any other pet in the shape of cards (which also makes them easier to upgrade). Basically tinkerer plays a card at the end of each turn, but this also applies to unstable or perish cards (which means it will still play the card every turn and ignore the status). There’s only one drawback, if the card needs more than one mana, it will take the same number of turns to use it (i.e 3 mana card will only be used every 3 turns) so better use only 1 or 0 mana cards, but there are so many good ones you can use: lightning storm for massive damage, rejuvenation for +3 mana every turn (regardless of max) except the first, any damage card really, it will use it from range even if melee, the potion card for HP gain, shield cards, endurance cards, the +10 poison, you can even have a deck with only openers and have the tinkerer use execute every turn to one-hit kill one mob per turn… and maybe others I haven’t tested.
Things don’t work, due to the fact it casts at the end of the turn and you won’t benefit for the next are the +mana cards as you don’t keep your mana for next turn (only rejuvenation works because it applies on the next turn), draw cards because well you draw a new hand starting each turn and opener, because the mark disappears and the shield and punch are lost. Also you can’t slot the duplication card, too bad.

 

- Alright if you think so far that the Tinkerer isn’t broken enough, there’s some sort of hidden feature, which was probably an hindsight from the devs: when you use the tinkerer the very first time, you will only be able to slot a basic sword or shield, because you only have that in hand (before you can choose a deck) but at some point in the course instead of being able to upgrade it, you can swap the card with almost anything you have in hand, this is why it is so good (maybe I should have stated that earlier…). One extra thing though, is when you abandon or die in your run, the tinkerer will still keep the card you put for next runs, which means you will start with the overpowered upgraded card of your choice . This can help you with the executioner trophy, by keeping an opener or execute card and reset the custom deck until you get more of these.

Edited November 4, 2022 by GastNDorf