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Basic Guide for the Path

By kethulhu

A detail explanation for most of the Terms used in the class

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Created by

kethulhu
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Category: Gameplay Basics

Posted

Updated

23 Aug, 2023 @ 8:08pm

9 Apr @ 3:34pm

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Guide Index

Overview

Introduction

Main Menu

The Path

Floor map

World map

Character menu

Powers Menu

Base Attributes

Stat

Attack Mechanics

Terms

Skills Active Requirement Terms

Skills Effects Terms

Cycle

Comments

Introduction

This guide aims on letting new players understand the basic game mechanics of this game and starting on their own run. Some of the data are extracted directly from the game, I understand you can check them in game, but I still add them in the guide for people to search easier.
Is up to date for the current version 1.4.4

Main Menu

The Path: Start you run here
Maqbara: Your characters’ grave, check previous characters and walk path of dust here, only characters that are dead or victory will be save, characters that are abandon will not be here. Maximum slots is 100, you can also forget a character at the bottom right corner of Maqbara.

(If you want to keep the characters that are dead, the setting save winners only must set to false)
Path of dust: Go to Maqbara with at least one saved character and choose start. You go through randomly generated levels against enemies that scale exponentially based on your current floor, Preta enemies that combine multiple enemies' trait together will also appear, you can test your build’s limit or gain some early game glory here
Lore: Similar to achievement, are unlock after you achieved certain success, also have some interesting lore behind.
Clearing Data: If your encounter crashes or want to restart entirely, you can hold shift and delete data,
Setting menu: Change you settings here, you can check this guide if you need detailed explanation.
https://sp.zhabite.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3403405062

The Path

1.Culture: First component of your character, hover to preview the culture's base attributes and abilities in the middle
2.Class: Second component of your character, hover to preview the Class' base attributes and abilities in the middle
3.Religion: The last component of your character, hover to preview the Religion's base attributes and abilities.
4.Character Preview: Preview the attributes combination and your character's appearance, you can change the appearance by clicking the Culture/Class/Religion that you already choose.
5.Equipment and Prayer Preview: Each Class comes with a set of Equipment, one of it have associated traits with the class, you can hover on the purple one to check the special equipment.

Each Religion also comes with 3 Prayers which are special actions you can use during the run, Prayer I is unlock from the start of your run, Prayer II and III required glory 10 and 20 respectively during the run to unlock.
6.Search Bar: Search Keyword that you're interested and the things without the Keyword will be darken.
7.Glory: Yellow number/20 that indicates how many glory you current have. Whenever this reaches 20 you randomly unlock a culture, class or religion, you gain glory equals to the glory you have after a run is complete. Can reaches over 20 if you unlock all

Cycle: At the bottom you will see a bar which indicates your current cycles, the format will be “The XXX Cycle of YYY”. The higher the number of XXX, the harder the difficulty and the YYY is name of the cycle corresponding to the number. Will be further explain in the Cycle Section.
Also be noted that the intended game difficulty is First Cycle of Humility.
8.Start: Use your currently selected culture, classes and religion to start a run
9.Load Save: Load you last unfinished run, you can only load save if your character is alive and you quit from the world map
10.Power: You can check all the skills and Prestige classes before starting the path, You can plan your run by searching for related skills and prestige classes' requirement.
11.Armory: You can check all the equipment that are possible to spawn in the path, the purple one means they only exist in later stage of the path
12.Nemesis: you can check all the enemies that are possible to spawn in the path, check their abilities, stats and spawn phases helps your planning a lot.

Floor map

1.Character menu: Check your current attributes, stats, equipment and inventory, also change your equipment here, you can’t change any of your equipment in battle, but you can swap you main-hand and off-hand in battle
2.Powers menu: Check your learnt skills here. Also learn new skills and unlock your prestige class here
3.Life Bar: Shows your health value, maximum health and current health percentage you are at

Divine Intervention Chance: Inside your life bar, shown as little golden Ankh sign, represents your current Divine Intervention chances, will further explain in combat mechanics

Character glory: Shows your character’s glory(level) currently, every time the yellow bar below your Life reaches the max your glory rise (level up), you must choose one of your attributes (STR, DEX, WIL, Vigor) to increase and gain 1 skill point.
You glory also increase your familiar’s attribute, per glory, your familiar gain +20% Life and Hit

Turn Bar: The green bar under glory bar, shows when the turn advance. If the green bar glows and shows a arrow sign point to turn, that indicates your next move will cause a turn to advance
4.Prayers: Shows your currently unlocked prayer and the number of charges left.
5.Summon limit: Shows your current summon limit of non-familiar allies and their current behavior, you can click on it to change between hold position or attack.
6.Units menu: You can check the respective unit’s data by clicking on them, will show enemies that are not yet visible but spawned, will not disappear if all units of the kind dies. Shows both allies and enemies.
7.Effects applied: Show as little icon with a number below your character life bar, you can hover on it to check its effect.
8.Event log: Shows what happen previously, you can click to check the expanded log to discover weakness of your build or just understand your build better
9.Auto-Attribute: You can set this to automatically distribute your point when glory rise, includes all 4 attribute and just random.
10.FPS
11.Units: The icon of the units on the map, you can hover on it to show its detailed attributes. A red square will appeared represent your current target when you use auto play (tab or RMB)
12.Bag: contains item, you can hover to check the item if it is in your current visionary. Always appear at the last floor of current stage, will show it's location event you don't have the visionary.
13.Door: Exit of your current floor, you don’t have to beat all enemy to leave, not even bosses can stop you from leaving unless it’s block your only way out
Vision: You have infinite range of vision as long as no physical object is blocking your sight, you also have a 1 tile range vision of your allies.

World map

1. General information of your current run
2.Stages: You have up to 3 stages to select, hovering to show more details of the stage, choosing any of the stage will not affect the routes to later stages.
3.Stage Description: Shows above the stages, have 3 different detail description of the stage.

It describe the terrain of the stage, although the stage generation is random, the types of the terrain determined the general characteristic of the map, for example forest generally have trees in the middle which act as great cover for the player and thin paths that can force enemy to funnel through, allow the player to deal with the enemy one by one

It also describe the enemy of the stage, there are always 1 to 2 enemy direct shown to you and hidden enemies that reveal by the text, for example the line “You hear the rattle of crude armor” means that the hidden enemy is Hobgoblin, all enemies are shown directly now, but I appreciate the effort here.

With enough experience you can predict the way your stage will go without even entering the stage, it’s crucial in this game to think before entering the stage, you won’t want to enter a stage just to realize the enemies hard counters you and ends your god run here
4.Equipment: Shows the reward you can get if you choose this stage, hover to check the detail.
5.Enemy: Shows the enemies that can spawn in the stage, hover to check some basic attribute, click to enter the Nemesis menu for the enemy details like abilities
6.Special Stages: Contain only 1 types of enemy and 1 floor, contain more items (4-5 usually) the enemy is from later stages so is very dangerous if your build is not ready for it, you can identify by the stage, if it is a natural landscape, it is not a challenge stage.
7.Towers: Stages that divide different phases of the game, towers after red towers are required to enter, each tower contains 5 different enemy types, 1 of which is a boss, contains more floors and more items.

Character menu

1.Attributes and Stats: Shows your attributes and stats, the detail will be explain in the Attributes section and Stats Section
2.Equipment: Shows your currently equipped items, hover to show the detail
3.States: Shows your current states, you can check if you achieved certain requirement for skills.
4.Weapon attributes

Accuracy: Must beat enemy’s dodge for your attack to connect
Increase by DEX

Hit: Your maximum damage on attack
Increase by STR

Damage Types: The damage type of your attack, enemy will take less damage if they resist the damage types and takes more if they have negative resistance to that damage

Range: You can only attack enemies in you attack range, basically equals to tiles ranges, I suggest you turn on show attack range on mouse hover to have a better understanding of where you can attack
5.Inventory: Shows all your items, the maximum item you can have in your inventory is 33, you can sacrifice useless item if you pick up too many item

Sacrifice: Provide 25% of the item's stat to the item that you are equipping and is the same parts, also provide 20 max life.
6.Abilities: Shows all the unique effect you have including form culture, class, religion, skills, prestige class and equipment

Powers Menu

1.Prestige menu: Lights up if any prestige is available, you can check the prestige classes’ effect and requirement in the menu, you can choose prestige class during combat, do not cost a move
2. Elements: Shows how many skill points you already invested in different elements, you can have up to 3 element, also helps you plan your skill points' usage for prestige class.
3.Skills learnt: Shows the skills you current learnt, you can learn up to 7 skills, learning or leveling skills during combat, do not cost a move
4.Points available: Shows the skill points you currently have, every character have 10 points by default and gain 1 point per glory rises
5.Skill List: Shows the Skill in 10 different elements, you can learn the skills here. The skills in the same column is same element.

Base Attributes

STR: Strength. Per point
+25 Life
+15 armor
+1% Poison/Death/Blood Resistance

+10% Block and Armor from equipment (e.g. block from Poise will not be multiply)
+10% hit or 20% if Two-handing from weapon

Negates Encumbrance (Max encumbrance with no hindrance = STR)

Raise minimum Speed until minimum Speed equals DEX + starting speed
Easier way to think is your minimum Speed equals to the lower value between you STR and DEX*2 + Starting Speed
DEX: Dexterity. Per point
+20 dodge
+20 block
+1% chance to Block

+5% accuracy or 10% if Two-handing From weapon
+2 speed
WIL: Willpower. Per point
+10% damage dealt (divided by inflexibility)
+10% healing
+1% chance to recover from each harmful effects on game turn
Your maximum summoned allies = WIL
Grant +10% Speed/Accuracy/Dodge/Block/Armor bonuses to familiars
Vigor: One of the 4 upgradable attributes. When upgrade
+75 Life
Heals you to full life
Cleanses all harmful effects applied on you
The cleansing will not remove harmful effect if you have the respective master skills, for example, if you have master bleed, you will not clear your bleed

Stat

Life: Units’ health, reaches 0 and the unit dies
SPEED: You starting speed is the +Speed from your Culture, Class and Religion
So if you choose Stran (+5 speed), Amir (+8 speed) and Humbaba (+2 speed), your starting speed is 15

Your effective speed is starting speed + DEX*2 + all the modifiers, so the character above will have 25 speed when starts, also as mention in the STR part, your minimum speed is lower one of STR and DEX*2 + Starting Speed

The higher your speed is, the earlier you can act and the more you can act before your enemy act, if you speed is very low, it is possible that enemy can act or even kill you before you can even act
The speed loss effectiveness as it approaches 100, any points of speed above 100 is added to Hit
Resistance: Maximum is 75%, minimum is -100%, modify the damage you take according to the corresponding damage resistance you have
For example if you will take 100 slash damage and you have 25% slash resistance the damage you take = damage*(100%-resistance) = 100*(100%-25%) = 75
Dodge: Your maximum dodge roll when being attacked by enemy
+20 per Dex
-20 per Encumbrance above STR
Will further explain in combat mechanic
Block Chance: Your block chance when being attacked by enemy
+1% per Dex
+15% per held weapon and hand Armor
+50% if holding any shield
Block Value: Your Block value when being attacked by enemy
+20 per Dex
+(1+10%*STR+(inflexibility-1)*25%)*(block from weapons + armor from hand armor)

e.g. block of Stran Templar of Humbaba
=5*dex+(1+10%*STR+(inflexibility-1)*25%)*(block from weapons + armor from hand armor)
=5*20+(1+10%*5+(1-1)*25%)*(10+20)
=135

Will further explain in combat mechanic
Armor: Your Armor value
+15 per point of STR
+(1+10%*STR)*(Armor from equipments)
Will further explain in combat mechanic
Encumbrance: Your current Encumbrance = all your equipped item encumbrance added up
Your maximum Encumbrance = Your STR
Every point of encumbrance above maximum
-2 speed
-20 dodge
Inflexibility: Minimum value is 1. For each point higher than 1,
+25% block scale off equipment (block value, not chance)
Divide Speed (so Inflexibility 3 equals that you have 1/3 of original speed, cannot be lower than minimum speed)
Divide Willpower damage bonus
Common way of gaining inflexibility include golden armors or Frost guard skill
Losing inflexibility can be achieve by Technique or Electromancy skill
Weapon Size: require for certain skills to be good or function.
For example, Agility provide +50 hit if total weapon size lower than 5
Pallas’ second prayer repeat for every weapon size you have

Attack Mechanics

This is a detail explain on attack mechanics, every attack need to bypass 3 barriers before dealing damage to the target, it is the same for both you and your enemy.

The 3 barriers in order are Dodge, Block and Armor

Dodge: On being attack, the target will have a dodge roll and the attacker will have a accuracy roll, the roll is randomly between 1 to their stat, if the attacker's accuracy roll is higher than dodge roll of the target, the attack will connect.
Hence, having 100 dodge against a 10 accuracy enemy doesn't equals to always dodge the enemy attack, it's possible for you to roll a 3 and enemy roll a 6.

Also, there are always 10% chance that dodges fail, as shown in this screenshot, the dodge roll is higher than the accuracy roll, but still connects.
Block: On being attack, the attacker roll a hit roll, target have a chance to reduce the damage from the attack (target's block chance), if the hit roll is lower than block value, target blocked the attack and takes no damage from the attack.
Unlike Dodge, block have a reduce effectiveness against non-physical damage (Damages that are not slash, blunt or pierce)
Against non-physical damage, the effectiveness is 25% + target's resistance of the corresponding damage types.
Armor: After the hit roll is reduced by block, the hit roll is reduced again by the target's armor value, if target's armor is high than the damage, the attack is Shrugged off
Similar to block, have reduce effectiveness against non-physical attacks.

Similar to dodge, there are always 10% chance that your armor fail to reduce any damage, as shown in this screenshot.

If any attack bypass all 3 barrier, a hit is created, the value remaining will be the hit.

All 3 of these barrier only happens when being ATTACKED, so abilities like ice beetles' ice modus that say deal damage will not be affected, abilities like Hamidrake that say perform a hit also will not be affected

Terms

Game Turn: Each game turn occurs at speed 5, you can always check game turn progress at your health bar.
Game turn event includes reducing all effects by 1 stack, trigger on game turn skills of all units etc.
Action: Determine by character’s speed, generally a unit should act once per turn if 5 speed and act 20 times per turn if 100 speed, but due to diminishing return of speed it’s not as accurate. Your character can choose from Attack/ Step / Stand Still/ Prayer per action
Attack: Perform by clicking an enemy that is both in your vision and attack range
Step: Perform by clicking on a tiles that is in your vision and not block by enemy or clicking an adjacent ally to swap place with the ally
Stand Still: Perform by clicking yourself or click an unreachable tile in your vision, attacking without moving is not stand still, and teleport trigger by stand still is still a stand still action
Prayer: Perform by clicking the prayer
Divine Intervention: If any of your prayer is at max charge and your Life reaches 0, you won’t die but trigger divine intervention, your health will be set as 25% but it consumes a random max charge prayer’s all charges, you have unlimited chance of divine intervention as long as requirement are fulfill and divine intervention will always trigger requirement are fulfill
Two-handing: Equips any weapon in main hand and empty offhand, provide bonus to certain weapons and increase hits gain from STR and accuracy gain from DEX.
Bare fist: Equips nothing in main hand, offhand can still have weapon equip, trigger certain skills and weapon abilities, specific weapons also are treated as bare fist.
Allies: Any summon units from you
Familiar: Special summon units from you, doesn’t take up summoning limit, gain +20% Life and Hit per glory and gain 10% speed/accuracy/dodge/block/armor per WIL.

Skills Active Requirement Terms

On Initial Attack: When you perform the attack action. (Thank you for CrabNicholson and :)'s correction, I am sorry for misleading others)
On Attack: When you perform an attack, you can trigger this effect by attacking enemy or extra attack by skills like Technique or Stand Ground. Note that if you have weapon in your offhand, both your main hand and offhand performs an attack, and if you are two handing area weapons, you perform one attack to each enemy
On Hit: If your attack bypass all 3 defensive stat of the enemy, you hit the enemy, you can also trigger On Hit through extra hits from skills
On Step: When you take a step
On Standing Still: When you perform a stand still action
On Prayer: On reciting any prayer
On Entrance: whenever you enters a new floor, trigger after enemy appears and before units actions
On Game Turn: Whenever a game Turn is advanced, doesn’t trigger on entrance
On Dodge/ Block / Shrug off: When respective defensive stats successfully negates an attack entirely
On being hit: When enemies’ attack pass all of your defensive attributes and deals damage to you or when they have ability that cause a hit occur
On Kill: Whenever you kill an UNIT
On Dealing Damage: Whenever YOU deals the required damage, for example any allies deals more than 50 damage cannot trigger cursed flesh, but if you have necromancy and when allies hit and enemy, your follow damage can trigger curse flesh and applied doom
On Being Attack: Enemy perform an attack to you
On Apply XXX: Whenever you apply that effect to a target
On Self Damage: On Dealing damage to yourself
On ally XXX: When ally perform a certain action, any skill/ability that do not have this line require you to do this

Skills Effects Terms

Units: All targets without consider friendly or not, can hit allies, allies will not betray if hit by player
X Tiles range: Imagine there are no obstacle on the map, any location you can go within 1 move is 1 tile range, 2 moves is 2 tile range etc. Doesn’t include the starting point
X Tiles area: include the starting point (No longer exist in 1.4.4)
Adjacent: The 8 square surrounding you regardless your attack range, interchangeable with 1 tile range
Transform Effect: Transform your character model and provide certain benefits and limitations. You may only have one transformation effect, any new transform effect will replace the old transform effect and inherit it's stacks.
In a line: Straight line, ignore all obstacles, can hit allies
In a Path: Shortest distance considering both obstacles and available paths but not enemies or allies blocking the path, also can hit allies
Extra Attack: Use your main-hand weapon to perform an attack, doesn’t count towards initial attack
Perform Hits: Extra hits that bypass enemy’s defense stat like dodge, block or armor, damage type follows your main-hand damage type, damage and times specific in the skills

Cycle

The Cycle system is to let player have a higher difficulties to play, but the intended difficulty is the first cycle, you should not worry about can't clear higher cycles.

Impact on enemies:The difficulty of the cycle is increase by letting some enemy’s certain stat scales randomly according to the cycle, here is example for better understanding

Both of the enemy stat are Hobgoblin from same floor in cycle 32, as you can see, the Life and Hit of the Hobgoblin multiply randomly

Also there are general increase for all enemies, as seen in the first screenshot, every enemy will receive bonus to Hit and Stacks of applied effect.
e.g. Rat-man at higher cycle may affect 80 stacks of sickness on hit. The buffs like meditate applied to the enemies themselves will also be multiply
Other Information: The First Stage will not be scale to allow player clear the first stage.

You unlock higher cycle by getting a victory on previous cycle, the highest cycle currently is Cycle 32

You receive invigoration in higher Cycle, every time your Glory rises, your Life max is increased by cycle number*2, so if you are in Cycle 32, you receive 64 Life max per Glory.

With higher cycle, you also earn more glory for you character which may allow your build achieve power spike before certain waypoint like getting prestige class before green tower boss, this have some very interesting consequence, namely there are builds that can’t beat the first cycle but are able to beat higher cycles.

7 Comments

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Rip Dashworthy 2 Jan @ 12:25am

Fantastic guide. Helps a lot starting out. My only issue is my Maqbara is recording nothing, no wins or deaths out of 35+ runs.

Ted Faster 22 Dec, 2024 @ 3:34pm

Really handy guide. I'll add that you can press S to Stand Still. I find that to be smoother over trying to click the right part of the map.

Woody 26 Oct, 2024 @ 8:37am

This guide was extremely helpful. Thanks a ton. Nice job!

koko ᲼ ᲼ ᲼ ᲼ 30 Jun, 2024 @ 1:36am

thanks dude, real good guide- would love to see it updated with the games patches

:) 11 May, 2024 @ 3:21pm

Good starting guide. One nitpick that warrants correction however:

On Initial Attack I believe is the purposeful attack you make when you walk into an enemy or target them with a ranged attack. This is separate from just the On Attack prefix which would proc on any attack. Technique has an extra attack on both Step and Initial Attack, meaning if you were to step near an enemy you would get the one extra attack, but if you were to purposefully attack the enemy, you would get the Initial attack, followed by the extra attack. Could be wrong, but I think that's how it works.

CrabNicholson 7 May, 2024 @ 2:03pm

On initial attack: are you sure it is once per floor and not once per turn?

spoooon 19 Apr, 2024 @ 6:07pm

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