General Tips and Tricks

Unfortunately, Darkness Survival give the players little in the way of help or advice, with the exception of badly spelled and almost cryptic signposts. Some of these tips will likely be repeated on more related pages, such as weapons or potion. For more detailed tips on scrolls, potions, and weapons, visit their pages. Without further ado:


 * The very first tip, super important, and something I have only just figured out, by accident, after a week of playing this game::: You choose a warrior, and select your runes to take into the dungeon. Fill in the warrior slot. Great. Now you have adventurer slots that you unlock as you reach a certain depth in the dungeon. There are adventurer runes you can choose from, but if you look carefully, you may see small symbols at the top representing other classes, like 3/4. As long as it is not 0, you can select it and CHOOSE A RUNE FROM ANOTHER CLASS. This way you are not stuck with only adventurer runes. This option is unlocked only after level 20+.
 * Use the "Info" command! At first, this may seem a useless command because it simply tells you 'this is dirt' 'this is water', but when used properly, it can be a lifesaver. Info can be used to...
 * Identify wells. Is it a poison well? Mysterious well? Regular well?
 * Give you a bland description of walls, doors, floors, monsters.
 * Tell you the name and stats of items lying on the ground, so you don't need to wast turns walking over and picking them up.
 * Interact with open doors! You can close them. This will be discussed next.
 * Monsters will randomly spawn after you have cleared rooms. This can be important if you are trying to get a little extra exp or meat. However, it is mostly just another annoyance and danger to you. On hardmode, these spawned monsters have an uncanny knack for tracking you down, which can easily lead to your death if you are struggling. By closing doors at bottlenecks, you not only prevent them from making their way to you, but it also seems to cause them to cease their spawning.
 * If you are being chased, doors can slow monsters down by breaking their line of sight and maybe even cause them to stop chasing you. Keep in mind that humanoid monsters can open doors.
 * Jumping from cliffs will only deal small amounts of damage, and can be used to escape foes, and is often the only way to access secret areas (gated rooms).
 * Throwing items into wells can be a real gamble. Don't risk your best items, they are likely to not come back or be traded for something you want. If you want to throw items in wells, try a weapon or armor you don't need. Sometimes, the odd well upgrades or returns you a rare weapon of the same type, other times it gives you a very basic item.
 * Unidentified items at the shopkeep can be bought on the cheap. Consider not identifying certain items, like potions, until you can purchase them.
 * It is possible to stock up on health potions on the cheap by not using any for 25 floors! Take steps to ensure the health potion is not identified and you can continue stocking them up on the cheap until you absolutely need to use them near the end of the game. Unidentified potions are much cheaper to buy than identified health potions (200 gold vs 500 gold, and 1.5x every shop subsequently.
 * Always buy bags from the shopkeeper.
 * The weight-stone reduces required STR by 1.
 * Ghosts hit hard, but have low health, and die easily if you can hit them. Use abilities, potions, or spells to target them, as these don't miss.
 * Piranhas hit hard. Deal with them from range (hunter is good at this) or try to kill them in a single turn, as their attacks can literally take 50~75% of your health, and there's usually 4 fish in a group. The risk can, however, be worth the reward. They often guard treasure.
 * When fighting skeletons who can cast lightning, do not stand in water, and try to break their line of sight, casting takes two turns. Lightning + you in water = death, almost.
 * If you can learn the lightning spell, enjoy maneuvering your enemies into water and frying them. It does roughly 3x the damage.
 * Tiredness accumulates over time, recover it at a campfire. Some of these will already be lit, others you need to light yourself.
 * When you rest, around 10% of your gold will be stolen. You can prevent this by dropping your gold on the ground, but be warned your crafting materials (1 item) will be stolen instead.
 * It doesnt matter if there are enemies in the same room. You can still sleep and get a full recovery if there are no random events generated.
 * Before sleeping, cook any meats you have, because the fire will go out after sleep.
 * Traps start appearing on the fourth floor, and can be found by using the search function (guiding dog ability is super useful as it will show a red exclamation mark when a trap is close by).
 * Traps can be detected by throwing a seed. If it's a space where you can usually throw it but you can't then it's a trap.
 * Searching allows you to more easily spot traps, hidden rooms, but consumes TWO turns per turn, allowing monsters to move or attack twice, and increasing the rate at which hunger and tiredness increase.
 * Hidden rooms tend to be found near torches, but not all torches have hidden rooms. Hidden rooms are fairly uncommon.
 * Locked doors and barricades can be destroyed by fireball spell, fire potions, torches and grenades. Keep grenades for bosses instead.
 * Depending on what type of an equipment you throw in the Mystical Well, you can get a unique equipment of the same type and tier by chance.
 * You can farm Memory Crystals by starting a new game then dying immediately. If you're lucky you may even get an whole intact Memory Crystal.
 * If you take the upper staircase, you can come back to the previous floor at its explored state (enemies u killed are dead, items u picked up are gone). Quite useful for picking up items you didn't get for whatever reason (full bag), and obtaining more money to buy items from merchant.
 * "It's hard to dodge in small space" - a tip that needs to be taken advantage of. Very important if you play any other class aside from the warrior, as the early game (F1-5B) can be brutal with only a dagger even in normal mode. I personally tested this and found out if u stand in a corner space covered by 2-3 surrounded wall, you pretty much have 0 dodge. Melee the enemy when standing in space covered by <1 wall to get more dodge. Pull the enemy out onto larger room if necessary. Prepare an escape option if surrounded by group.
 * You can tell if an item is cursed if it doesn't show up in recipes.
 * You can use your old equipment to upgrade new one.
 * You can use dreamweed potions and plants to recover from tiredness, altough this will damage you.
 * You can tell if an unidentifyed potion is a fire potion if you can target a closed door.
 * Blessed potions will always give you beneficial effects.
 * Throwing a purifying potion into a polluted well will purify It making it safe to drink,
 * Accesories aren't afected by curses or downgrades or upgrades, they always give their beneficial effect no matter what.