Dandy Ace

Shard Farming Guide:

To unlock all the cards, trinkets, and upgrades, you'll need a lot of shards. I did some testing and here's a pretty efficient way. Running through the game and killing every enemy takes a lot of time for not a lot of gain (data below). Bosses give WAY more shards, so the best strategy is to speedrun the whole game and *only* fight if you're forced to. From the start:

- Spam your dash card and run past everyone, only fighting in the locked rooms (there are dashed lines on the map to show where you'll get locked in).
- Try to get two blue cards, regardless of level. Dash cards have lower cooldown, but Blink may prevent more damage. I put these on the A and B buttons, and alternate. You never stop dashing. If you get the blue card with "haste", you can put that as a secondary effect.
- Avoid all "key" gates for now. If you get to a dead end (treasure chest, etc.) open your map and teleport to another route. You're simply trying to skip everything and finish the stage.

For your first trinket, equip "Tour Guide" if you have it. This will reveal the entire map. Now:

- Plan your route. Try to avoid all locked rooms unless you HAVE to go through there to get to the mirror exit.
- If there's a treasure chest on a "free" path (no locked rooms in between), go for it, then teleport back.
- I generally avoid yellow cards (sell them), and pick up pink, preferably ones with DOT effects (burn, poison, bleed), but it's all RNG and it depends. Keep in mind that card level doesn't matter when it's in the secondary slot -- only the main card's level matters. So it's worth hanging onto DOT cards for that reason.
- Don't waste gold on upgrades, generally. You'll get new cards at the reward tent and treasure chests, and only need good cards for the bosses. If there are good cards at the shop on the stage before a boss, buy them.

For the next trinkets, I currently like Toughness (extra health, and Tea isn't wasted), plus Cloak of Retribution (or Invocation Mastery if you have a lot of DOT effects), but use what you like. You mostly want to build around boss fights, so things that help kill (or proc effects on) standard enemies aren't as helpful.

Axolangelo seems easier at low levels, because you may have close range cards (fists, etc) and he's easier to get close to. At higher difficulties you may find Scissorella to be easier. Just stay near the edges and you can dodge most of her attacks, but you'll need long range weapons with DOT.

Repeat the above process to run through the levels. You should spend all shards from bosses on Nnif's upgrades, because they are locked behind difficulties (if you *just* started the game, you may want to get Tea potions first). All the other purchases can be done on normal difficulty, which is really easy to farm.

When you get to Severino (or the level before), you may want to ditch your second blue card for a pink or yellow (or simply move your cards around so you have 3 pink/yellow as main cards). You can also get rid of Tour Guide and equip something that helps with damage, since there's only one non-boss stage left.

For Lele, gold no longer matters, so if you have a lot saved, I recommend Goldmancer Ring (you lose gold instead of health) paired with Cloak of the Virtuoso (at full health, you do more damage) if you have them. I highly recommend Goldmancer regardless, unless you're really low on gold. For more general tips, see this guide: Solution for A True Magician In Dandy Ace

Here is my Nightmare run where I essentially follow this strategy:

Shards-per-minute data:

Keep in mind I already had a bunch of extra Tea Potions, card upgrades, and so on unlocked. This may take you longer at first.

On normal, killing every single enemy and going through all gates, I gained about 4 shards per minute, before the first boss (18 min. to get through the first 3 stages, for a total of 74 shards). On hard, it was about 5/min (I could probably do it faster now, but still). Compare that with speedrunning the bosses: on normal it took me 4.5 minutes to get to and beat Axo, for 90 shards (not counting the few I got from the other stages). That's 20/min. Sev gives 150, and Lele gives 300. It took me 17 min. total to get to and beat Lele, for around 32 shards/min. for the whole run.

On Hard, I was able to beat the game in 19 min., for an average of 43 shards per minute.

As you can see, this is WAY faster. Even if you can only beat the first boss, just quit after that and repeat until you have more upgrades unlocked.

If you're able to consistently beat bosses at higher difficulties, it's even more efficient, but you may waste time if you fail, so keep that in mind. By the time I beat the game on Very Hard, twice, I had enough shards to unlock everything.

You'll reach Nnif after each boss fight of the game, the first being either Axeangelo or Scissorella, depending on which route you take.
Only a few of the permanent upgrades are available at the start, the rest will open up after you unlock the beginning tiers and play on higher difficulties.

The ones that will help you the most in your runs are: Quick Wagon Special Deals and Nnif-Tar (this will allow you to use the kiosks during levels to upgrade your cards you're currently using for gold).
The Quick Wagon upgrades will allow you to get the highest level cards available and along with the Jolly Jolly upgrade Reshuffle will allow you to a number of chances per level to find the cards you want.

Nnif-Tar - Upgrade Cost: 250 Shards

Arena Master 1 - Upgrade Cost: 150 Shards
Arena Master 2 - Upgrade Cost: 225 Shards
Arena Master 3 - Upgrade Cost: 405 Shards

Treasure Hunter 1 - Upgrade Cost: 150 Shards
Treasure Hunter 2 - Upgrade Cost: 225 Shards
Treasure Hunter 3 - Upgrade Cost: 406 Shards

Quick Wagon Special Deals 1 - Upgrade Cost: 250 Shards
Quick Wagon Special Deals 2 - Upgrade Cost: 375 Shards
Quick Wagon Special Deals 3 - Upgrade Cost: 675 Shards

Power Start 1 - Upgrade Cost: 100 Shards
Power Start 2 - Upgrade Cost: 150 Shards
Power Start 3 - Upgrade Cost: 270 Shards