Help for a Newbie

[whexican]

Hi all,
I'm having a real hard beating any of the normal dungeons at the start of the game. I've run through Den of Danger 12 times with a human fighter and I feel like no progress is being made. Any ideas? I've done the puzzle quests and I feel like I'm playing smart.

[Sidestepper]

Well, there's a heck of a lot of technique that goes into DDT, but that's huge topic. There are a few specific things you can do to get yourself unstuck.

Practice attacking higher level monsters. Tell yourself that you will only attack things at least one level higher, and stick to it, making exceptions only when something is blocking you or when there are no higher level monsters left. This isn't perfectly optimal, but it's also still pretty good.

Bring preps! The shield from the blacksmith can help enormously with getting that first kill. If you find the Fine Sword, buy it and then retreat from the dungeon and locker it. The Fine Sword is very good, on par with some of the endgame content. That plus the shield will help a lot.

[Dreamdancer]

Two ideas:
1) you can look into the wiki. Most of the game mechanics are explained and also many helpfull tips are given.
2) (Think it is the better idea) Watch the youtube videos from Jay and read the thread about them
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2675
Think Jay started really early with recording the vids during the end of the beta, so there are almost no changes mechanic-wise and you see another person playing who just started. Even better, The Avatar commented many of the vids (think from page 3 or, from the above mentioned thread), and one can learn many things from his comments.
There is even one video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJUwJRzihn4
where you see Jay playing but the audio lines are Avatars comments.

[Blovski]

Fine advice from Sidestepper -

I would say there are three main things to get as a new player:

1) when you can, fight higher level enemies and preserve lower-level enemies.
2) learn how to and when you can regen fight enemies.
3) you usually need to either bring or pick up an edge starting out - in a new game the best options are normally to go look for and pick up a useful glyph or two.

Once you've got those three things down the game will become way more manageable.

[Lujo]

You might also want to unlock a god or two as they make the game much easier and let you focus on something while you do your run. You find gods in subdungeons in the so-called directional dungeons (the ones to the north, south, east and west of the centre of the map). You can find Mystera Annur in the Northern Desert and Earthmother in the Southern Swamp (if you solve the mini puzzle of their subdungeon they unlock and remain unlocked even if you die/exit without winning). They're both newbie friendly.

You can also try west for Taurog who is incredibly newbie friendly but the western dungeon is a bit tricky to navigate. The Earthmother and Taurog subdungeons have you picking fights and can mess you up for that run, Mystera is more of a puzzle. To the east there's the Glowing Guardian but, eh, he's a bit of jackass and even completing his unlock "quest" can be intimidating. Not to mention worshiping him (it's not that hard but it can give you a nasty heart attack or two before you figure it all out).

[JayPlaysIndieGames]

glowing guardian killed me so many times when I wasn't paying attention early on.

[Lujo]

glowing guardian killed me so many times when I wasn't paying attention early on.

Eh, the way the bugger is introduced (most likely while you're on a priest run of all things) is/was designed to make sure noone ever touches an altar after that. Or at least it worked like that unintentionally.

[whexican]

Thanks fore the advice. I've found 2 gods so far in basements, but I'm not sure how they are unlocked for other dungeons. Do I need to build a church or something to use them?

[Lujo]

Thanks fore the advice. I've found 2 gods so far in basements, but I'm not sure how they are unlocked for other dungeons. Do I need to build a church or something to use them?

Did you solve their puzzles in the, err, basements? (love the pharsing) I mean, did you end up worshiping them? Do you have codex entries in your codex? (i suppose it would mean they are unlocked). Which ones have you found and what did the, err, basements look like?

If you managed to solve the challenges presented by the basements then every run you do will spawn a random altar from the gods you've unlocked. I think you get 1 altar per run if you've unlocked up to 4 (?) 2 altars for 6 and 3 altars for 8.

[Urthop]

Might've run into the Pactmaker twice I guess. That one won't unlock for a while yet, but you need to meet him like that a few times to qualify for the eventual unlock.