Have a Nice Death

DO NOT USE QUICK RESUME. This game does not work well with it and can get stuck in infinite loading screens, and closing the game may delete your save.

Maximum breakdown is breakdown 15. This requires you to complete a run on each breakdown level before it to unlock, meaning at least 15 completed runs. If you're used to roguelikes, that might not sound so bad, but Have a Nice Death is incredibly poorly balanced and extremely luck dependent.

Breakdown 15 imposes the following on your run:

1. Sorrow's HP +25%
2. Sorry Damage +25%
3. Thanagers gain 100% Stun Resistance
4. Thanagers Damage +25%
5. Minions gain bonus Defense
6. Minions damage +25%
7. All prices 25%
8. Collect Less soulary from Sorrows and Thanagers
9. Reduces maximum Anima by 1
10. Golden Animas heal less
11. More penalties among curses
12. Last upgrade in control room costs +100%
13. Take 5 damage when you switch weapons
14. Sorrows don't inflict injuries
15. Take 1 damage every time you leave the elevator
16. Curse penalties come in twos
17. Thanagers gain new behaviors
18. Animas heal less
19. Sorrows gain new behaviors
20. Sorrows enter combat in phase 2
21. Start run with only 25HP

Overall Strategy:

- Mostly stick to just improving the scythe, as it's the only guaranteed weapon you'll have.
- Unlock nothing at Joe's other than stuff that helps at the beginning of a run + a couple of the strong weapons. Most of the items you can unlock are either literally useless or just not good at all. I unlocked Moskillto, the chalice that gives you 999 mana, and the rpg. This makes it more likely you'll actually get good items. There are some other items that are potentially good, like slaygore, nihilaser, and frostoxic.
- Check all walls and floors for hidden rooms, they can provide really nice boosts to your run
- Floor priority is O'Shah/Thanager, Prismium, Equipment, Store/Control Room when available. Basically all other floors are useless.
- Expect to lose a lot. The way getting hit in this game works + short i-frames + stun locking means that sometimes you'll lose 70% of your health to one attack hitting you multiple times and interrupting your dash/jump

Curses to Avoid:

Basically anything in the green tree. Poison and burn quickly become useless as you go up in breakdowns. Basically all ceasefire effects are worthless, crows/butterflies will do 0 damage (unless you have bleed). Most periodic effects are also not worth taking. Inflation, backstab, retrain are all bad. Frozen does not slow down enemy attack, but can occasionally be useful for bosses that move across the stage before attacking. Charge attacks should never be used or upgraded.

Strategies That Work:

Infinite Damage

Level 2 red curse gives you 1 damage every time you get hit. Combined with basically any armor from the blue tree/fridge + any consistent healing (like health regen on hit, periodic pure heal, etc), you can get infinite damage by just standing around and letting the crows hit you in the Modern Warfare Department. Makes the rest of that department and Time department a breeze. You can also gain damage on spikes in Intriguing Floors early in the run by just walking back and forth on them - be warned the spikes do more damage later in the run though.

By standing next to an edge, you can get the crows stuck in their attack animation and speed this up signifficantly:

Bleed

By far the best on hit effect you can get and can make runs a bleed. Every attack does the damage of the attack + the number of bleed stacks on the enemy. Combined with the curse that allows bleed to stack 2 at a time and the +50 max stacks curse, this adds a ton of damage. It also works extremely well with Moskillto and frostoxic. Combine with base damage to the scythe + crit and you've got a pretty good run.

An example with Frostoxic, butterflies, bleed and chalice (this only work because of bleed)

Moskillto

The only spell that makes the green tree curses worth taking. If you can get the chalice in the fridge that gives you 999 mana until you get hit, you can just spam these and dodge and they will kill your opponent. Make sure to look for base damage to spells + mana regen. Also works extremely well with bleed.

Random Tips:

- I only ever used the Scythe or the Diss scythe. All other scythes seemed pretty bad, but this may be play-style dependent so find what works for you.

- You can save scum your runs by saving and quitting at any time. This will just restart you at the beginning of the level you're on.

- You can view the curse tree to see the way your curses will stack up. Curses which contain penalties are almost always a rank lower, that is, if it is a slot 2 curse with a penalty, it will almost always give you a Level 1 curse as a choice.

- Picking a level to "Upgrade Red/Blue/Green Curses" does not upgrade anything. What it does is remove common level curses from the selection pool for the chosen color, potentially giving you better curses (but since this game is poorly balanced, many of the higher rarity curses are worse).

- Overall, don't worry about level choice much and go with whichever path you find easiest. I almost always went red - green - red - red - red.

- Always get the last Control Room upgrade with prismium

- Upgrading the shop also restocks it, so if you have the money you can purchase 2 or 3 curses in one shop.

- Look for sales in the store and upgraded items, you can often buy them and immediately sell them for a profit.

- Technically, most curses can be made to work if you get the EXACT rng you need, but its mostly not worth going for anything other than upgrading the scythe

- I almost always took contracts to get 100 soulary and 2 prismium - 100 soulary right away, prismium whenever. That way you are for sure able to buy a curse at the first store (which you're forced to go to)

- Hold to speed through boss intros/outros

DO NOT USE QUICK RESUME. This game does not work well with it and can get stuck in infinite loading screens, and closing the game may delete your save.

Maximum breakdown is breakdown 15. This requires you to complete a run on each breakdown level before it to unlock, meaning at least 15 completed runs. If you're used to roguelikes, that might not sound so bad, but Have a Nice Death is incredibly poorly balanced and extremely luck dependent.

Breakdown 15 imposes the following on your run:

1. Sorrow's HP +25%
2. Sorry Damage +25%
3. Thanagers gain 100% Stun Resistance
4. Thanagers Damage +25%
5. Minions gain bonus Defense
6. Minions damage +25%
7. All prices 25%
8. Collect Less soulary from Sorrows and Thanagers
9. Reduces maximum Anima by 1
10. Golden Animas heal less
11. More penalties among curses
12. Last upgrade in control room costs +100%
13. Take 5 damage when you switch weapons
14. Sorrows don't inflict injuries
15. Take 1 damage every time you leave the elevator
16. Curse penalties come in twos
17. Thanagers gain new behaviors
18. Animas heal less
19. Sorrows gain new behaviors
20. Sorrows enter combat in phase 2
21. Start run with only 25HP

Overall Strategy:

- Mostly stick to just improving the scythe, as it's the only guaranteed weapon you'll have.
- Unlock nothing at Joe's other than stuff that helps at the beginning of a run + a couple of the strong weapons. Most of the items you can unlock are either literally useless or just not good at all. I unlocked Moskillto, the chalice that gives you 999 mana, and the rpg. This makes it more likely you'll actually get good items. There are some other items that are potentially good, like slaygore, nihilaser, and frostoxic.
- Check all walls and floors for hidden rooms, they can provide really nice boosts to your run
- Floor priority is O'Shah/Thanager, Prismium, Equipment, Store/Control Room when available. Basically all other floors are useless.
- Expect to lose a lot. The way getting hit in this game works + short i-frames + stun locking means that sometimes you'll lose 70% of your health to one attack hitting you multiple times and interrupting your dash/jump

Curses to Avoid:

Basically anything in the green tree. Poison and burn quickly become useless as you go up in breakdowns. Basically all ceasefire effects are worthless, crows/butterflies will do 0 damage (unless you have bleed). Most periodic effects are also not worth taking. Inflation, backstab, retrain are all bad. Frozen does not slow down enemy attack, but can occasionally be useful for bosses that move across the stage before attacking. Charge attacks should never be used or upgraded.

Strategies That Work:

Infinite Damage

Level 2 red curse gives you 1 damage every time you get hit. Combined with basically any armor from the blue tree/fridge + any consistent healing (like health regen on hit, periodic pure heal, etc), you can get infinite damage by just standing around and letting the crows hit you in the Modern Warfare Department. Makes the rest of that department and Time department a breeze. You can also gain damage on spikes in Intriguing Floors early in the run by just walking back and forth on them - be warned the spikes do more damage later in the run though.

By standing next to an edge, you can get the crows stuck in their attack animation and speed this up signifficantly:

Bleed

By far the best on hit effect you can get and can make runs a bleed. Every attack does the damage of the attack + the number of bleed stacks on the enemy. Combined with the curse that allows bleed to stack 2 at a time and the +50 max stacks curse, this adds a ton of damage. It also works extremely well with Moskillto and frostoxic. Combine with base damage to the scythe + crit and you've got a pretty good run.

An example with Frostoxic, butterflies, bleed and chalice (this only work because of bleed)

Moskillto

The only spell that makes the green tree curses worth taking. If you can get the chalice in the fridge that gives you 999 mana until you get hit, you can just spam these and dodge and they will kill your opponent. Make sure to look for base damage to spells + mana regen. Also works extremely well with bleed.

Random Tips:

- I only ever used the Scythe or the Diss scythe. All other scythes seemed pretty bad, but this may be play-style dependent so find what works for you.

- You can save scum your runs by saving and quitting at any time. This will just restart you at the beginning of the level you're on.

- You can view the curse tree to see the way your curses will stack up. Curses which contain penalties are almost always a rank lower, that is, if it is a slot 2 curse with a penalty, it will almost always give you a Level 1 curse as a choice.

- Picking a level to "Upgrade Red/Blue/Green Curses" does not upgrade anything. What it does is remove common level curses from the selection pool for the chosen color, potentially giving you better curses (but since this game is poorly balanced, many of the higher rarity curses are worse).

- Overall, don't worry about level choice much and go with whichever path you find easiest. I almost always went red - green - red - red - red.

- Always get the last Control Room upgrade with prismium

- Upgrading the shop also restocks it, so if you have the money you can purchase 2 or 3 curses in one shop.

- Look for sales in the store and upgraded items, you can often buy them and immediately sell them for a profit.

- Technically, most curses can be made to work if you get the EXACT rng you need, but its mostly not worth going for anything other than upgrading the scythe

- I almost always took contracts to get 100 soulary and 2 prismium - 100 soulary right away, prismium whenever. That way you are for sure able to buy a curse at the first store (which you're forced to go to)

- Hold to speed through boss intros/outros

Curses are the priority. Get specific combinations of curses and the game becomes a walk in the park. I highly recommend the Billhooks as your scythe.

Main curse we want is Level 2 Red Curse Manic Monday. Followed by combinations of the following.
- Blue Curses. Level 1 Anger leads to hatred.
Level 2 Veiled Anima/ Level 5 Hidden Anima.
Level 2 Tomb Helm/ Level 3 Mound Helm/ Level 6 Mausleum Helm/ Level 6 Straw Helm.
Level 4 Eye for an Eye.
Level 5 Lacis Sanguechor
Level 6 Tooth for a Tooth
- Green curse. Level 2 stable job
Level 2 Imminent Reverie

1) Go for any contracts that give you rerolls.

2) Get Billhooks. Restart if not available.
--- The attack clears rooms and gives you a bit on invulnerability if timed right. Great against Thanagers & Sorrows. Dash side to side whenever you take a hit.

3) with the first T. O'Shah, take whatever the level 1 red curse is. Unless theres a decent blue or yellow available such as Anger leads to hatred, Bounty hunter, hidden cache or infuse lightning.

4) Prioritize HR department over EVERYTHING. Rerolls are gold! Followed by shops if you have the soulary, Thanagers if not (I avoid certain ones at all costs). Then Soulary floors followed by Vitams. Prismiums are not important as we have no need to go to the control room, upgrades mean nothing when youre dealing 800+ damage They are handy to upgrade the shop though for extra curses, given you have the soulary. Theres only a handful of equipment thatvare useful so I dont focus on finding any. If i come across them on my travels, happy days. (Jabelin, Sisword, Slaymore, Slaygore, RocketLauncher, Firebow, Bees, Moskillto, Frostbreeze) Sell everything else.

5) Now take whatever the level 1 red curse is regardless of whats available if you havent already. Then on the next opportunity, reroll on the curse until Manic Monday becomes available. Our entire plan rests on this. Hopefully it doesnt take too many rerolls. Plenty of times ive used 15 rerolls and still no luck. If no luck, i either restart or focus on the second part of the plan, defense. Seek out more rerolls in the meantime. Once you have it, focus on any curses that improve your defense, give you animas etc...

6) Once you have the Level 2 red curse manic monday and a combination of other curses that synergise, you are ready. This should be done at the latest half way through modern warfare department but preferably just after killing Brad.
During the modern warfare department you will encounter flocks of birds or whatever. Allow these to attack you and watch your damage go up. Get to atleast 800 and the rest of the game becomes cake.