Rogue Legacy
29 Achievements
1,000
35-40h
Xbox One
Xbox Series
Thanatophobia
WITHOUT using the Architect, complete the game dying 15 times or less
100
0.46%
How to unlock the Thanatophobia achievement in Rogue Legacy - Definitive Guide
Zapster2Z
TrueAchievements
TrueAchievements
The special rooms, which are the ones which have a question mark on the map, regenerate breakable items when you quit to the main menu. Because of this you can farm infinite gold and health/magic which makes the Thanatophobia achievement very easy to obtain. The process is as follows:
1) Explore a bit of the castle until you have several special rooms accessible.
2) Quit to the main menu.
3) Go back into the game and use the warp to jump quickly to each special room.
4) Quit to the main menu and rinse and repeat.
Because you can farm infinite gold you should be able to level up your second or third character enough to reach and beat all bosses fairly easily. You can also use this method to refill your health and magic so you can safely clear out the castle room by room.
Every so often you should exit out of the game and make a backup just in case you die. Even though you can get back full health any time you want it is very easy to die at level 0 once you start exploring further in the castle.
This is not the quickest method as the farming is a bit of a grind but it guarantees that anyone should be able to achieve this achievement.
You have to do this on a brand new save slot, Play through 2 will not work
Video credit goes to hipo5 on PSNProfiles
Exploit Credit goes to Throw7 on PSNProfiles
1) Explore a bit of the castle until you have several special rooms accessible.
2) Quit to the main menu.
3) Go back into the game and use the warp to jump quickly to each special room.
4) Quit to the main menu and rinse and repeat.
Because you can farm infinite gold you should be able to level up your second or third character enough to reach and beat all bosses fairly easily. You can also use this method to refill your health and magic so you can safely clear out the castle room by room.
This is not the quickest method as the farming is a bit of a grind but it guarantees that anyone should be able to achieve this achievement.
You have to do this on a brand new save slot, Play through 2 will not work
Video credit goes to hipo5 on PSNProfiles
Exploit Credit goes to Throw7 on PSNProfiles
30 Comments
Yeah it has to be a new save.
By The Allslayer on 13 Jun 2015 11:27
How do you make a backup of your save?
By AlertLouielouie on 03 Jun 2015 11:25
Lord Agrius
TrueAchievements
TrueAchievements
So i decided to make a solution just to expand on CDWhildings solution above
So the objective is to find a clown carnival room with the dagger game. So before you attempt this achievement, you should be pretty familiar with the game enough to explore the first castle area without any upgrades etc.
So start a new file and explore the castle until fully explored - If you don't find a dagger game room, delete your save and start a new one. Keep doing this until you have the carnival game spawn.
Now you can take part in the game and hit the targets, but do NOT throw the last dagger. As long as you don't throw the last dagger, you can play the game as much as you want.
Now follow these steps carefully:
1. Throw all daggers except one - generating approx 200 gold +
2. With 1 dagger left, press start to pause, then press y, then quit to main menu. This will make what i will call a soft save. It will bring you back to the press A to begin screen. You can then press A, and you will start at the start of the castle with the gold you just acquired. Now make your way back to the dagger room and repeat.
3. Do this as many times as you want until you have had enough.
4. Now you need to do a hard save. Repeat the steps for a soft save, but when at the press A to begin screen, press the guide button, highlight the game and press start, then quit the game.
5. You should be back on the dashboard - this will then hard save your game to the cloud system. Make sure you do this every time you have finished grinding, or every 5-10 k gold to be safe.
WARNING : DO NOT FORGET TO QUIT THE GAME. IF YOU START ANOTHER GAME OR JUST TURN THE XBOX OFF INSTEAD YOU MIGHT LOSE YOUR PROGRESS.
6. Repeat until you have enough gold that you want.
Just be careful you do not die when heading to the carnival room every time. There are 3 barrels that can give you hp, but do not die or you will lose the castle and it will be randomized again.
Hope this helps someone.
So the objective is to find a clown carnival room with the dagger game. So before you attempt this achievement, you should be pretty familiar with the game enough to explore the first castle area without any upgrades etc.
So start a new file and explore the castle until fully explored - If you don't find a dagger game room, delete your save and start a new one. Keep doing this until you have the carnival game spawn.
Now you can take part in the game and hit the targets, but do NOT throw the last dagger. As long as you don't throw the last dagger, you can play the game as much as you want.
Now follow these steps carefully:
1. Throw all daggers except one - generating approx 200 gold +
2. With 1 dagger left, press start to pause, then press y, then quit to main menu. This will make what i will call a soft save. It will bring you back to the press A to begin screen. You can then press A, and you will start at the start of the castle with the gold you just acquired. Now make your way back to the dagger room and repeat.
3. Do this as many times as you want until you have had enough.
4. Now you need to do a hard save. Repeat the steps for a soft save, but when at the press A to begin screen, press the guide button, highlight the game and press start, then quit the game.
5. You should be back on the dashboard - this will then hard save your game to the cloud system. Make sure you do this every time you have finished grinding, or every 5-10 k gold to be safe.
WARNING : DO NOT FORGET TO QUIT THE GAME. IF YOU START ANOTHER GAME OR JUST TURN THE XBOX OFF INSTEAD YOU MIGHT LOSE YOUR PROGRESS.
6. Repeat until you have enough gold that you want.
Just be careful you do not die when heading to the carnival room every time. There are 3 barrels that can give you hp, but do not die or you will lose the castle and it will be randomized again.
Hope this helps someone.
G02 Fret King
TrueAchievements
TrueAchievements
So while the gold farming exploit is there for you to use, with a bit of practice and planning, this is very doable without the need for farming a bunch of gold on one character. Even if you do farm a ton of gold, it won't help if you don't know how you should be upgrading or at what level/life you can reasonably take on a particular area. That being said, here's an outline of how you can go about doing this achievement:
1. With the first knight you start as (Sir Lee, lv 0), you want to kill the first boss in the castle, Khdir. Ideally, you would explore the whole castle and then kill the boss, but you run the risk of not having enough health when you go into the fight and while not getting hit is relatively straightforward with that first boss, things happen. So long as you start the fight against Khdir with more than 86 health, you can take two hits before the next one will kill you. Once you've beaten Khidir, continue to explore the castle and start exploring the forest as well. The more gold you get and the more chests you open, the better.
2. The general strategy going forward with each heir is to explore the different areas, open chests and acquire a heap of gold until you're feeling confident in your ability to take on the next boss. The bosses themselves are relatively straightforward to beat I'd you've already played through the game before, more so if you've beaten the remix versions of them (which you DO NOT need to do for this achievement). In general, I found that if I was able to defeat most enemies in an area in 1-2 hits, I was good to take on the boss. That being said, just because you're feeling confident in a boss battle doesn't mean you stop exploring to make a beeline for the boss door in an area. With every run, you want to explore and get as much stuff as possible so that if things go sideways during a boss fight, or if you overestimate how strong your character is, then at least you still found some new blueprints and got plenty of gold. You need to be taking in at bare minimum 2500 gold with each death early on.
3. When it comes to upgrading your stats and gear, it depends on what class you like to play. My advice however, is to keep things basic and try to stick to using either the paladin or the barbarian. After your first death, you should be able to unlock the following from the mansion:
Blacksmith -> Health 1 -> Paladin -> Weight 1 -> Enchantress -> Architect -> Barbarian King/Queen -> Strength 1
While you won't use the architect, you need to unlock him so that you can buy the strength upgrades. I know people will suggest unlocking the Shinobi class, as it does a bunch of damage, but you lose a ton of health in the process, so I personally found that it wasn't worth doing. If you want to run a knave build, you can unlock the Shinobi to the get access to the critical upgrades (both crit chance and crit damage), but if you don't unlock any additional classes beyond the starting 4, you've got a better chance of having an heir that's a class you're actually good with (and even then, there's still a chance you wind up with 3 mages).
Even though you're taken to the manor screen upon choosing an heir, you can exit it and talk to the blacksmith and enchantress first to buy equipment and runes before spending your gold on stats. In terms of equipment, you'll want to use stuff that gives you the most strength, the most health and the most armour, depending on what blueprints you get. The blood set give you vampirism at the cost of health, so make sure that if you're going to use it, you upgrade your health to negate the loss from the gear. Other than that, it depends on your build. Since I was focusing on using the barbarian and paladin, I didn't bother buying any bracers until I got the guardian bracers, which gives you armour. The other bracers only increase magic damage, which I wasn't using, and I didn't get the blood bracers for a while.
With the enchantress, she'll always have a vault rune and a dash rune unlocked, all the other ones you'll have to find yourself. Ideally, you'd have those two runes and then 3 vampirism runes to get health after every kill, without needing to use the blood gear and suffer a health penalty, but the grace, haste, bounty, balance and retribution runes are all useful too, just depends on what you get.
As for the stat upgrades, you want to mainly focus on upgrading strength and health. Only upgrade weight when you can't equip a new piece of gear, and only upgrade it to the point where your weight stat will be maxed out with the new item in order to conserve as much gold as possible for other upgrades. If you've got enough money for other upgrades, but can't afford to upgrade strength, health or weight and there's no other runes or gear you want to buy, you can either not spend it and lose it all when you go back into the castle, or feel free to increase your mana or magic damage, either option is fine.
4. Make sure you know how to fight each boss and what will be more effective on certain ones over others.
Khidir: Like I said before, you want to fight him with the first level 0 character. Stay on the floor and dodge his attacks, jump up and attack when you're in the clear. When he starts his spiral attack, avoid the projectiles while moving around the room and if you have to jump over him, do a downward strike, otherwise you can't clear him and will take damage. And again, have more than 86 health going into the fight so that you can't take two hits before a third one will kill you so that you have room for error.
Alexander: Vampirism and high damage will make the fight very easy and consistent. Try to stay below the boss, because when he launches his beam attack, he stays still and if he's close to the ground, you can avoid his attack while whacking him from underneath. If you can 1 shot the additional skulls he spawns, you'll be able to keep your health topped up the whole way through.
Ponce de Leon: The barbarian shout is handy, but if your damage and health are high enough as a paladin and your movement around the arena is good, you'll be fine. Stick to the edges as much as possible, use your dash for lateral mid air movement if you get caught in a circle of fire balls and also use it when Ponce stops in place to prep his charge attack. It'll put you just beyond where his charge ends, so while he recovers, you can get a few hits in for free. If you have a retribution rune and get hit by a spike ball floating around the arena, it should get destroyed, giving you more freedom to move around.
Herodotus: Much like Alexander, high damage and vampirism will be your greatest allies, but only if you're patient. Herodotus spawns a mage every time he splits into two, and while the slime balls can bounce around quite a bit, they're not as much of a threat compared to the mages and their rock spike attack. Be patient, do enough damage to make Herodotus split and then immediately kill the mage that spawns. Then, focus on one blob, make it split, kill the mage, so on, so forth. Don't try and be even handed with it, focus on one blob until it's permanently gone, then do the next. You'll find that if you stay higher in the arena, you can effectively engage in a one on one fight with a blob while the other blobs try to figure out where you are. Again, patience and deliberate targetting will make it a breeze.
Johannes: You'll want to be very good at dashing along the ground to win this fight. If you can replace any vampirism runes/gear with other stuff that has better stats, do it so that you have as much of an advantage as possible. Don't bother with the paladins shield either, it doesn't seem to block this guy's attacks. Jump the dagger burst attack, stay under him and dodge his axe throws when he jumps up and don't pursue him if you hit him, as he'll more than likely dash backwards and throw a blade wall down. Backing yourself into a corner actually works decently well if your character can knock him back when you hit him (there's a trait that your heirs can have called Muscle Wk which prevents enemies from being knocked back when you hit them) but more than anything, being able to hit and dash away is what will make this fight doable.
The Fountain: Surprisingly, the strategy of hit and dash is pretty good here too. Try to stick in the centre of the arena, because if you can get the fountain to do his ground spear attack, you can easily jump to one of the platforms you have to strike to make appear and stay completely safe and once the spears start to drop back into the ground, you can hop down and get a couple of free hits in. When he's moving towards you, hit him and then dash away and just pay attention to what he's doing. If he stands still and his sword flashes, he's about to attack, but his position will determine what move he does and you should know what to expect.
So yeah, there's quite a bit to this achievement, but it's very doable without needing to use a gold farming exploit, provided that you know what you're doing. Hopefully that outline helps a bit and good luck to you if you're going for this achievement, cause you'll definitely need some with this game.
1. With the first knight you start as (Sir Lee, lv 0), you want to kill the first boss in the castle, Khdir. Ideally, you would explore the whole castle and then kill the boss, but you run the risk of not having enough health when you go into the fight and while not getting hit is relatively straightforward with that first boss, things happen. So long as you start the fight against Khdir with more than 86 health, you can take two hits before the next one will kill you. Once you've beaten Khidir, continue to explore the castle and start exploring the forest as well. The more gold you get and the more chests you open, the better.
2. The general strategy going forward with each heir is to explore the different areas, open chests and acquire a heap of gold until you're feeling confident in your ability to take on the next boss. The bosses themselves are relatively straightforward to beat I'd you've already played through the game before, more so if you've beaten the remix versions of them (which you DO NOT need to do for this achievement). In general, I found that if I was able to defeat most enemies in an area in 1-2 hits, I was good to take on the boss. That being said, just because you're feeling confident in a boss battle doesn't mean you stop exploring to make a beeline for the boss door in an area. With every run, you want to explore and get as much stuff as possible so that if things go sideways during a boss fight, or if you overestimate how strong your character is, then at least you still found some new blueprints and got plenty of gold. You need to be taking in at bare minimum 2500 gold with each death early on.
3. When it comes to upgrading your stats and gear, it depends on what class you like to play. My advice however, is to keep things basic and try to stick to using either the paladin or the barbarian. After your first death, you should be able to unlock the following from the mansion:
Blacksmith -> Health 1 -> Paladin -> Weight 1 -> Enchantress -> Architect -> Barbarian King/Queen -> Strength 1
While you won't use the architect, you need to unlock him so that you can buy the strength upgrades. I know people will suggest unlocking the Shinobi class, as it does a bunch of damage, but you lose a ton of health in the process, so I personally found that it wasn't worth doing. If you want to run a knave build, you can unlock the Shinobi to the get access to the critical upgrades (both crit chance and crit damage), but if you don't unlock any additional classes beyond the starting 4, you've got a better chance of having an heir that's a class you're actually good with (and even then, there's still a chance you wind up with 3 mages).
Even though you're taken to the manor screen upon choosing an heir, you can exit it and talk to the blacksmith and enchantress first to buy equipment and runes before spending your gold on stats. In terms of equipment, you'll want to use stuff that gives you the most strength, the most health and the most armour, depending on what blueprints you get. The blood set give you vampirism at the cost of health, so make sure that if you're going to use it, you upgrade your health to negate the loss from the gear. Other than that, it depends on your build. Since I was focusing on using the barbarian and paladin, I didn't bother buying any bracers until I got the guardian bracers, which gives you armour. The other bracers only increase magic damage, which I wasn't using, and I didn't get the blood bracers for a while.
With the enchantress, she'll always have a vault rune and a dash rune unlocked, all the other ones you'll have to find yourself. Ideally, you'd have those two runes and then 3 vampirism runes to get health after every kill, without needing to use the blood gear and suffer a health penalty, but the grace, haste, bounty, balance and retribution runes are all useful too, just depends on what you get.
As for the stat upgrades, you want to mainly focus on upgrading strength and health. Only upgrade weight when you can't equip a new piece of gear, and only upgrade it to the point where your weight stat will be maxed out with the new item in order to conserve as much gold as possible for other upgrades. If you've got enough money for other upgrades, but can't afford to upgrade strength, health or weight and there's no other runes or gear you want to buy, you can either not spend it and lose it all when you go back into the castle, or feel free to increase your mana or magic damage, either option is fine.
4. Make sure you know how to fight each boss and what will be more effective on certain ones over others.
Khidir: Like I said before, you want to fight him with the first level 0 character. Stay on the floor and dodge his attacks, jump up and attack when you're in the clear. When he starts his spiral attack, avoid the projectiles while moving around the room and if you have to jump over him, do a downward strike, otherwise you can't clear him and will take damage. And again, have more than 86 health going into the fight so that you can't take two hits before a third one will kill you so that you have room for error.
Alexander: Vampirism and high damage will make the fight very easy and consistent. Try to stay below the boss, because when he launches his beam attack, he stays still and if he's close to the ground, you can avoid his attack while whacking him from underneath. If you can 1 shot the additional skulls he spawns, you'll be able to keep your health topped up the whole way through.
Ponce de Leon: The barbarian shout is handy, but if your damage and health are high enough as a paladin and your movement around the arena is good, you'll be fine. Stick to the edges as much as possible, use your dash for lateral mid air movement if you get caught in a circle of fire balls and also use it when Ponce stops in place to prep his charge attack. It'll put you just beyond where his charge ends, so while he recovers, you can get a few hits in for free. If you have a retribution rune and get hit by a spike ball floating around the arena, it should get destroyed, giving you more freedom to move around.
Herodotus: Much like Alexander, high damage and vampirism will be your greatest allies, but only if you're patient. Herodotus spawns a mage every time he splits into two, and while the slime balls can bounce around quite a bit, they're not as much of a threat compared to the mages and their rock spike attack. Be patient, do enough damage to make Herodotus split and then immediately kill the mage that spawns. Then, focus on one blob, make it split, kill the mage, so on, so forth. Don't try and be even handed with it, focus on one blob until it's permanently gone, then do the next. You'll find that if you stay higher in the arena, you can effectively engage in a one on one fight with a blob while the other blobs try to figure out where you are. Again, patience and deliberate targetting will make it a breeze.
Johannes: You'll want to be very good at dashing along the ground to win this fight. If you can replace any vampirism runes/gear with other stuff that has better stats, do it so that you have as much of an advantage as possible. Don't bother with the paladins shield either, it doesn't seem to block this guy's attacks. Jump the dagger burst attack, stay under him and dodge his axe throws when he jumps up and don't pursue him if you hit him, as he'll more than likely dash backwards and throw a blade wall down. Backing yourself into a corner actually works decently well if your character can knock him back when you hit him (there's a trait that your heirs can have called Muscle Wk which prevents enemies from being knocked back when you hit them) but more than anything, being able to hit and dash away is what will make this fight doable.
The Fountain: Surprisingly, the strategy of hit and dash is pretty good here too. Try to stick in the centre of the arena, because if you can get the fountain to do his ground spear attack, you can easily jump to one of the platforms you have to strike to make appear and stay completely safe and once the spears start to drop back into the ground, you can hop down and get a couple of free hits in. When he's moving towards you, hit him and then dash away and just pay attention to what he's doing. If he stands still and his sword flashes, he's about to attack, but his position will determine what move he does and you should know what to expect.
So yeah, there's quite a bit to this achievement, but it's very doable without needing to use a gold farming exploit, provided that you know what you're doing. Hopefully that outline helps a bit and good luck to you if you're going for this achievement, cause you'll definitely need some with this game.
Archer Spense
TrueAchievements
TrueAchievements
This achievement requires skill, but here are a few exploits to make getting it easier:
btw, the architect is the old guy with the glasses outside the castle right before you go up the stairs and cross the drawbridge to death. Using him will prevent the castle from randomizing keeping the exact same layout as your last life. OBVIOUSLY DO NOT DO THIS, OR IT WILL VOID THE ACHIEVEMENT.
If you're having a bad run and have died too many times and want to scrap your save and start over, your runes and armor blueprints will persist between saves AS LONG AS YOU DELETE THE SAVE IN-GAME (from the title screen, press
, highlite your save and press 
to delete). I'm not entirely sure if everything will carry over, but I had all the collected runes and blueprints appear in my new save.
Unlock and max the Gold Gain Up stat ASAP. I'm not entirely sure what you need to buy to get there, but it is in the lower right corner of the castle. I think you need to buy the miner class for it. Its right below that.
Save scumming: basically reloading your save if you die, which Rogue Legacy basically won't let you do. You will be safe from having the game save and upload to the cloud as long as you disconnect from the internet BEFORE moving on from the death screen displaying killed enemies. After disonnecting from the internet, from the dashboard, you want to highlight the game and press
, select quit. Press again and go into Manage game & add-ons and delete the save. Make sure the save is completely gone before reconnecting to the internet and restarting the game. If you did everything right, you'll resume playing as the character who died.
Save scumming for lots of money: basically you're looking for a Cheapskate Elf room. He's the guy wearing a white cloak standing in front of the 3 treasure chests. If you're really lucky, you can find 2 of him in 1 castle. Anyway, you want to have as much money as you can before you play his game, so play through the areas you're comfortable with (without dying easily). Once you're satisfied, save and quit. Then dashboard, press on Rogue Legacy and quit the game. This will upload your save to the cloud. Restart the game, and go to the Cheapskate Elf. If you lose his game, disconnect from the internet and delete your save. Reconnect to the internet, start up the game, and try the elf again. Be aware the winning chest is not set, it is always random. The only way to know which is the winning chest is to start with a character that has a sight disability and getting the glasses item from a statue. The glasses reveal the winning chest. Anyway, this will give you lots of money far faster than the other solution.
Arguably the most OP class in Rogue Legacy is the knave/assassin. If you max out crit chance and crit damage on your castle, and have the slayer set on him, you'll be an OHKO machine. Loading him up with vampire runes will make the castle a cinch as long as you aren't terrible and soak up too much damage too fast.
I'm not sure how the game keeps track of deaths. I beat the game on my 13th life, and the final post-credits screen said I had 11 total children.
Again, this achievement requires skill. If you can't beat the first boss and survive the forest area within your first 5 lives, you're going to have a rough time of beating the game wtihin the first 15 lives.
btw, the architect is the old guy with the glasses outside the castle right before you go up the stairs and cross the drawbridge to death. Using him will prevent the castle from randomizing keeping the exact same layout as your last life. OBVIOUSLY DO NOT DO THIS, OR IT WILL VOID THE ACHIEVEMENT.
If you're having a bad run and have died too many times and want to scrap your save and start over, your runes and armor blueprints will persist between saves AS LONG AS YOU DELETE THE SAVE IN-GAME (from the title screen, press
, highlite your save and press to delete). I'm not entirely sure if everything will carry over, but I had all the collected runes and blueprints appear in my new save.Unlock and max the Gold Gain Up stat ASAP. I'm not entirely sure what you need to buy to get there, but it is in the lower right corner of the castle. I think you need to buy the miner class for it. Its right below that.
Save scumming: basically reloading your save if you die, which Rogue Legacy basically won't let you do. You will be safe from having the game save and upload to the cloud as long as you disconnect from the internet BEFORE moving on from the death screen displaying killed enemies. After disonnecting from the internet, from the dashboard, you want to highlight the game and press
, select quit. Press again and go into Manage game & add-ons and delete the save. Make sure the save is completely gone before reconnecting to the internet and restarting the game. If you did everything right, you'll resume playing as the character who died.Save scumming for lots of money: basically you're looking for a Cheapskate Elf room. He's the guy wearing a white cloak standing in front of the 3 treasure chests. If you're really lucky, you can find 2 of him in 1 castle. Anyway, you want to have as much money as you can before you play his game, so play through the areas you're comfortable with (without dying easily). Once you're satisfied, save and quit. Then dashboard, press
on Rogue Legacy and quit the game. This will upload your save to the cloud. Restart the game, and go to the Cheapskate Elf. If you lose his game, disconnect from the internet and delete your save. Reconnect to the internet, start up the game, and try the elf again. Be aware the winning chest is not set, it is always random. The only way to know which is the winning chest is to start with a character that has a sight disability and getting the glasses item from a statue. The glasses reveal the winning chest. Anyway, this will give you lots of money far faster than the other solution. Arguably the most OP class in Rogue Legacy is the knave/assassin. If you max out crit chance and crit damage on your castle, and have the slayer set on him, you'll be an OHKO machine. Loading him up with vampire runes will make the castle a cinch as long as you aren't terrible and soak up too much damage too fast.
I'm not sure how the game keeps track of deaths. I beat the game on my 13th life, and the final post-credits screen said I had 11 total children.
Again, this achievement requires skill. If you can't beat the first boss and survive the forest area within your first 5 lives, you're going to have a rough time of beating the game wtihin the first 15 lives.
Vo1cl
You need to start a brand new game and complete it dying no more than 15 times. In order to start a new game, you need to select a new save slot on the main menu of the game by pressing 
on the PS3 or Vita, or by clicking the 
on the PS4.
Once you have started the new game, you must carefully work your way through the game again. Also be sure to not use the Architect to lock down the Castle, as it will void the trophy. As long as you take your time to work through the game, you shouldn’t have much of an issue.
Tips for Thanatophobia:
- Take your time going through each room. If you walk into a new area and don’t like the look of the layout, then leave and try to find another path. Sometimes it’s easier to use the minimap to look for a different path in than it is to fight your way.
- Leaving a room resets enemy positions. This is useful if you manage to kill a bunch of enemies, but are about to be swarmed. The enemies stay dead, but the living ones go back.
- Don’t smash statues unless you need to. There are statues before each boss door, and in between the different areas. These are all usually accompanied by a teleport pad so you can quickly pick up a bunch of health if you are desperate.
- Collect all the gold you can, and only spend on what you need. Health, damage and armor upgrades are probably the most important. Runes will depend on your play style and luck, but you start with the Sprint and Vault runes, which are very helpful in avoiding attacks.
If you are having difficulty with this trophy, you can back up your save to have repeat attempts. For more details on backing up your save, see the information at the end of the Roadmap.
Necrophage33
*MISSABLE*
If you don't do this on your first playthrough, you'll need to start a new game on a fresh save file to attempt it. It is NOT POSSIBLE to complete this achievement on New Game+ and beyond, because your death count and Architect usage carry over.
There is a ton of information available across the internet relative to this achievement, and I have done my best to consolidate it all here. First, I will go through the various exploits that are available, all of which you can take advantage of to make this easier. After that, I will go through general tips and advice that you should be using throughout your playthroughs, regardless of which and how many exploits you use, and finally a rough walkthrough of how I progressed, which I believe anyone should be able to manage with enough practice and patience. Even with all of these exploits, tips, and this guide, this will be a very stressful and challenging achievement, so be prepared to use all of the practice and skill you've developed from your previous two or more playthroughs.
Exploits
Money Farming Exploit #1
Speed: 1/10
Luck Needed: 1/10
Skill Required: 1/10
This money farming exploit is very quick and easy to do, but it is insanely slow. The rate you will amass gold is agonizingly slow, but if you don't mind grinding for literally tens of hours to get plenty of gold, then this stress-free way to do it is always an option. How it works is that, when you pause during a game and quit to the main menu then continue your game, you start back at the first room of the castle, all rooms you've cleared and enemies you've defeated stay that way, with one big exception: all rooms marked with a pink question mark (such as miniboss rooms, rooms with Spiritual Shrines, rooms with jukeboxes, rooms with journal entires, etc.) will have the breakable objects in them respawn. You can take advantage of this by going to those rooms marked on your map and breaking all objects in them, collecting any gold that drops, and then pause, quit to the main menu, continue your game, warp to that area, and revisit them to break the objects again. You can repeat this forever, amassing as much gold as you'd like. However, as noted above, this can be insanely slow. Of course, the more pink question mark rooms you can revisit on each reload, the faster this will go.
Money Farming Exploit #2
Speed: 7/10
Luck Needed: 9/10
Skill Required: 4/10
As you can see, this method is far faster than the first method. Unfortuantely, it requires a massive amount of luck. The goal here is to be lucky enough to have a dagger-throwing clown game spawn in your playthrough, This can spawn in any of the four areas, not just the castle. For this minigame, you have 10 daggers and need to hit 8 targets to win. Every target you hit gives you money immediately. So the exploit here is that you are going to throw all but one dagger and/or hit all by one target (i.e. ensure you do NOT complete the minigame), then pause and quit to the main menu. Continue your game, and now you can warp back near the minigame room and head back to it. You'll have all your money you gained from hitting targets, but can now start the minigame over from the beginning. You can repeat this forever to amass as much gold as you want.
Note on Money Farming Exploits:
The biggest question you'll have with using an exploit to gain money is "how much money is enough?" That will definitely depend on how confident and skilled you are with the game (the worse you are, the more money you should amass to boost your stats even more). As a point of reference, during my successful run I didn't use the second method at all and barely used the first, and I ended up spending somewhere in the range of 40,000-50,000 gold to get to around Level 50 for the final boss. It took me multiple tries to beat Herodotus and the final boss, and I consider myself above average with these types of games. So hopefully that helps you gauge how much gold to save up.
Food/Mana Farming Exploit:
Speed: 4/10
Luck Needed: 2/10
Skill Required: 1/10
This isn't actually a separate exploit. The exact same exploit described above for Money Farming #1 can be used to farm health and mana infinitely too. Gold will drop the most frequently, then mana, and then food, but you can use that exact same method to refill your health to full before every boss fight. Once again, the more applicable rooms you have available, the faster you'll be able to find health items to refill.
Blueprint Farming Exploit
Speed: 10/10
Luck Needed: 5/10
Skill Required: 6/10
I haven't really seen mention of this exploit anywhere, but there is an incredibly fast way to collect every blueprint available in your first playthrough in a matter of ten minutes or so, allowing you to purchase great gear very early in your playthrough. The caveat is that this exploit requires you to find and defeat any miniboss in the game. Sometimes you'll find two or three minibosses in one playthrough and sometimes you'll go five playthroughs without finding one, so there is decent luck with this one. But, once you do find one and beat it, this method is such a fast way to collect all of the blueprints. You have to be a little more careful with this one since it works a bit different from the money farming exploits above. Here are the steps:
Cloud Save Exploit
This is probably the most important exploit in the game, as it will theoretically allow anyone to get this achievement on a single playthrough regardless of your luck. You will, however, still need a ton of skill to beat all of the bosses, but this exploit gives you unlimited attempts and makes it 100% safe so you aren't taking any unnecessary risks. You may have heard or be aware that it's possible to back up your cloud save for Playstation users, who can take a more obvious and direct advantage of this, but it is still 100% possible to do so on Xbox too. Here is a step by step guide on how to back up your cloud save and reload it if you mess up:
General Tips and Advice:
Playthrough Walkthrough
With the knowledge of all of those exploits above, feel free to dive in and play using any combination of them if you're skilled and confident enough. What I've detailed below is the route and strategy I used to find and beat every boss in the game. I did it with six deaths, four or which were intentional. Also be aware that I won't be referencing any of the above tips in this section, as you should be using them constantly regardless of which exploits you're using.
The other thing worth noting is that, of the exploits above, Gold Farming #2 (Clown dagger game) and Blueprint Farming are both entirely luck based. I therefore won't be mentioning either in the walkthrough here, because there's no telling when you'll happen upon the dagger game or a miniboss, nor do I think you should waste time continually starting new games until you find either. Instead, when you encounter the dagger game or a miniboss, I highly recommend taking advantage of both.
Life #1 - Level 0
Your goal in this first life is to explore most (preferably all) rooms of the Castle and locate the boss room, then kill Khidr, collecting as much gold as possible on the way. You will obviously be very weak, but you'll still be able to kill all regular enemies in two or three hits, at most, in all rooms of the Castle. This is the best time to put all of those tips into practice above. Take your time, because each hit can take a huge amount of health off. You can obviously abuse the Cloud Save Exploit to the extreme and create a new save after every room you clear, but that's excessive and I wouldn't recommend it. Instead, progress until you at least find a new warp room (either leading to a new area or the boss room). That's a good opportunity to make a new backup save. When you do find the boss room, if your health isn't at least 84 or so, use the Food Farming Exploit above to refill your health. This will allow you to take a couple hits in the boss fight without dying, making it far less stressful. Once you've farmed some health, definitely make a backup save there, before the boss fight. As mentioned in the tips, this (and all) boss fight should be done offline so you can reload your save if you die.
Khidr Fight: the biggest difference between this fight and when you beat him in previous playthroughs is that you won't have the ability to double jump. So you should have no problems avoiding the majority of his attacks (especially after beating Neo Khidr), with the only exception being his spiral attack. If it spirals away from you - no problem, just follow it around to the other side of him. If it spirals towards you, this will require you to jump over him to dodge the projectiles. Without double jump, the only way this is possible without getting hit is to do a downward strike on top of him. The timing make take a couple tries to get down, but it's not really difficult to master after a couple attempts. And if you have enough health, you can take a couple hits without dying, so it's not critical to avoid all damage.
With Khidr dead, you should definitely have over 5,000 gold on you. Immediately make a new backup save. While it's technically possible to beat more bosses at Level 0, it's a hugely unnecessary struggle. Instead, after you beat Khidr, I recommend finishing exploring any rooms you haven't yet in the castle, collecting any money chests you didn't get. Consider going after a fairy chest or two. Lastly, feel free to progress into the Forest to track down more gold if you haven't died yet. I had around 10,000 gold when I took my first death, so that's a good point of reference but it's not absolutely critical. I would say 7,000 or more is solid. At this point you have no other classes to choose from, and class isn't really important, so no need to make a backup save before dying to choose your next class. Take a death whenever you're ready to upgrade for the Forest and second boss.
Upgrades:
Life #2 - Level 10-20
As soon as you enter the castle for this life, remember to make a backup save and play offline again. The goal of this life is to find and beat the second boss. While you could explore a good deal on your way, I recommend finding the door to the second boss as soon as possible, to maximize the amount of health you have when you get there. Still kill enemies along the way, and even if you don't progress through rooms, it's still a good idea to pop into every possible room along your path just to have it added to your map. The castle will feel far easier now with how strong your attacks are, but you still want to be careful because you'll still take decent damage. Slowly work your way right through the castle, and carefully explore the Forest to find the boss door, then make a backup save.
Alexander Fight: No real difference here whatsoever compared to the first fight against him, aside from you'll obviously take more damage from attacks. The important thing to note/realize here is that touching Alexander or getting hit by his energy balls does huge damage to you, whereas touching a Fury or getting hit by a white energy ball does significantly less. So if you're ever in a bind, it's far better to purposely run into a Fury or its projectile than to touch Alexander. Other than that, make use of your double jump and hack away at him until he's dead. You should have enough attack strength that it shouldn't take very long to finish him off.
With Alexander defeated, immediately make another backup save. Now, I definitely recommend fully exploring the castle rooms and all Forest rooms. Kill the enemies and collect most or all of the regular chests. Grab any easy fairy chests too. I ended up with close to 15,000 gold on this life, as a point of reference. I got all the chests in the Castle and Forest regions, and even explored some rooms in the Maya just to get more gold. Again, not hugely critical, but I would say you should shoot for 10,000 gold at least. Once you're satisfied, make a new backup save before taking your next death.
I recommend going offline for your death to ensure you get to pick a Shinobi class with good (at least, no bad) traits. Its high damage will make it very easy to kill enemies in the Maya and will make the boss a piece of cake. So I recommend reloading your cloud backup save until you get a good Shinobi class to choose from.
Upgrades:
Life #3 - Level 25-30
Once again, make a backup save as soon as you start, since you'll be exploring the Maya this time which can be quite perilous with all the enemies and fake treasure chests. Like before, your goal is to locate the boss door as soon as possible. Once you find it, make a new backup save to fight the boss offline.
Ponce de Leon Fight: Literally no difference from your first fight with him. For me, I was a Shinobi with plenty of Attack Up, so this fight was over in a minute or two at most. Nothing new to add to the standard strategy here.
With Ponce dead, just like with before, fully explore the rest of the Maya to get money, then do the same for the Castle, and then the Forest. Your goal here should be again 10,000 to 15,000 gold, which should be no problem with all the chests you have available at this point. Once you're done exploring and have plenty of gold, feel free to explore into the Dungeon somewhat too for more gold. As a side note, I was lucky enough to find a miniboss in the Maya at this point, and I farmed all of the blueprints from it here. Hugely luck dependent though, obviously.
Once you're happy with your gold amount, make a new backup save before dying. This one is very important, so you can use it to get a good class for the fourth boss. Herodotus can be very unpredictable and a huge pain. This fight can be made worlds easier by getting a hero with the P.A.D trait, which makes floor spikes inactive from walking on them. I highly, highly recommend reloading your backup save to get a hero with PAD. I didn't, and it took me easily 20 tries (probably more) to beat Herodotus on the next life, and that was even after farming blueprints and having the best gear. It's worth it to get a PAD hero to save yourself the frustration.
Upgrades:
Just like before, head to the Smithy first and get any improved gear, then return to the manor and spend all your money on Attack Up. At this point, Health Up will be expensive enough that you won't be able to use your leftovers on it, so if you have leftover money, use it on any helpful runes for your playstyle. Vampire runes are great for the upcoming boss, if you have them available. An extra jump could be very useful too.
As another point of reference, I was level 43 going into this life.
Life #4+ - Level 35-45+
Just life with previous lives, your goal here is to get to the boss door in the Dungeon, make a backup save outside it, and then fight and beat Herodotus offline. The Dungeon and Herodotus are, in my opinion, the hardest region and boss in the regular playthrough, so this will be the hardest part of this playthrough. The good news is that if you made it here on Life #4 like with this walkthrough, you have a ton of lives to spare for this achievement. So if you find yourself struggling immensely with enemies, surviving, and/or Herodotus, there is absolutely no reason to force yourself through that on Life #4. Instead, feel free to deviate by spend this life fully exploring the Castle, Forest, and Maya again to collect all of the gold. You should easily be able to collect another 10,000. You may also get lucky enough to find a miniboss room to farm blueprints if you haven't already. Once you've fully explored and gotten tons of gold and maybe more runes too, kill yourself, upgrade your stats more, buy new gear and/or runes, and attempt the Dungeon and Herodotus again. Because you have enough lives to spare, you could potentially do this a couple more limes to buff up your stats even more. I still recommend doing each life offline though, just so you don't waste one getting only a couple thousand gold and can't really upgrade your attack anymore.
While you could've done this farming of gold and buffing up earlier too, I found it not as needed, and also far easier to do now with how strong you are. The Castle and Forest in particular should be a breeze since you should be able to kill all enemies in one hit. So feel free to spend a handful of lives exploring just to farm gold and improve your stats further. None of it is wasted, since it'll only help you against the final boss too.
Herodotus Fight: Once you're ready to fight it, this fight can be a pain. The absolutely ideal state is that your attacks kill the Gravisors in a single hit, greatly simplifying things. Either way though, this fight has a ton of randomness to it that makes it challenging. If you managing to reload saves to get a PAD hero, it'll be far easier since you can just stand at the bottom and hit any blobs that come near you, safely under the center platform.
Home Stretch
With Herodotus dead, the door to the final boss opens. Now it's up to you how many more lives you want to spend grinding gold to buff your stats before the final fight. While you can theoretically wait until your 14th life to go against the final boss, it's risky, and it's not necessary to grind that much. I say it's risky because if you make a mistake with your backup save or miscalculate, you risk having to start all over. It's also not necessary to grind that much because you don't need to be that strong to beat the final boss.
As a reference point again, I was level 50 going into the final boss fight. I also was able to grind out blueprints, so I had the best Sword, Helm, and Chestplate available in the first playthrough. It took me probably ten or so attempts to beat him, and I did it on my sixth character. So my recommendation would be to use around ten heroes to be safe, so you have leeway before 15 but also get a bunch of gold for improving your stats. That should make it much easier for you than it was for me.
The most important thing to know for this final fight is that you do NOT need to be online when you beat the final boss to unlock this achievement! Treat this boss fight the same as the others: make each attempt offline, and if you die, try again either with your backup save or a new hero. Once you beat him, and the credits end and you're back at the main menu, close the game and delete your local save before going back online. This is to ensure that you have another chance in case you miscalculated and used too many heroes. If you were successful, when you go back online and launch the game to restore your cloud save, the achievement will unlock shortly after you launch the game. Once it does, you can be extremely proud of your completion, even with some exploits!
If you don't do this on your first playthrough, you'll need to start a new game on a fresh save file to attempt it. It is NOT POSSIBLE to complete this achievement on New Game+ and beyond, because your death count and Architect usage carry over.
There is a ton of information available across the internet relative to this achievement, and I have done my best to consolidate it all here. First, I will go through the various exploits that are available, all of which you can take advantage of to make this easier. After that, I will go through general tips and advice that you should be using throughout your playthroughs, regardless of which and how many exploits you use, and finally a rough walkthrough of how I progressed, which I believe anyone should be able to manage with enough practice and patience. Even with all of these exploits, tips, and this guide, this will be a very stressful and challenging achievement, so be prepared to use all of the practice and skill you've developed from your previous two or more playthroughs.
Exploits
Money Farming Exploit #1
Speed: 1/10
Luck Needed: 1/10
Skill Required: 1/10
This money farming exploit is very quick and easy to do, but it is insanely slow. The rate you will amass gold is agonizingly slow, but if you don't mind grinding for literally tens of hours to get plenty of gold, then this stress-free way to do it is always an option. How it works is that, when you pause during a game and quit to the main menu then continue your game, you start back at the first room of the castle, all rooms you've cleared and enemies you've defeated stay that way, with one big exception: all rooms marked with a pink question mark (such as miniboss rooms, rooms with Spiritual Shrines, rooms with jukeboxes, rooms with journal entires, etc.) will have the breakable objects in them respawn. You can take advantage of this by going to those rooms marked on your map and breaking all objects in them, collecting any gold that drops, and then pause, quit to the main menu, continue your game, warp to that area, and revisit them to break the objects again. You can repeat this forever, amassing as much gold as you'd like. However, as noted above, this can be insanely slow. Of course, the more pink question mark rooms you can revisit on each reload, the faster this will go.
Money Farming Exploit #2
Speed: 7/10
Luck Needed: 9/10
Skill Required: 4/10
As you can see, this method is far faster than the first method. Unfortuantely, it requires a massive amount of luck. The goal here is to be lucky enough to have a dagger-throwing clown game spawn in your playthrough, This can spawn in any of the four areas, not just the castle. For this minigame, you have 10 daggers and need to hit 8 targets to win. Every target you hit gives you money immediately. So the exploit here is that you are going to throw all but one dagger and/or hit all by one target (i.e. ensure you do NOT complete the minigame), then pause and quit to the main menu. Continue your game, and now you can warp back near the minigame room and head back to it. You'll have all your money you gained from hitting targets, but can now start the minigame over from the beginning. You can repeat this forever to amass as much gold as you want.
Note on Money Farming Exploits:
The biggest question you'll have with using an exploit to gain money is "how much money is enough?" That will definitely depend on how confident and skilled you are with the game (the worse you are, the more money you should amass to boost your stats even more). As a point of reference, during my successful run I didn't use the second method at all and barely used the first, and I ended up spending somewhere in the range of 40,000-50,000 gold to get to around Level 50 for the final boss. It took me multiple tries to beat Herodotus and the final boss, and I consider myself above average with these types of games. So hopefully that helps you gauge how much gold to save up.
Food/Mana Farming Exploit:
Speed: 4/10
Luck Needed: 2/10
Skill Required: 1/10
This isn't actually a separate exploit. The exact same exploit described above for Money Farming #1 can be used to farm health and mana infinitely too. Gold will drop the most frequently, then mana, and then food, but you can use that exact same method to refill your health to full before every boss fight. Once again, the more applicable rooms you have available, the faster you'll be able to find health items to refill.
Blueprint Farming Exploit
Speed: 10/10
Luck Needed: 5/10
Skill Required: 6/10
I haven't really seen mention of this exploit anywhere, but there is an incredibly fast way to collect every blueprint available in your first playthrough in a matter of ten minutes or so, allowing you to purchase great gear very early in your playthrough. The caveat is that this exploit requires you to find and defeat any miniboss in the game. Sometimes you'll find two or three minibosses in one playthrough and sometimes you'll go five playthroughs without finding one, so there is decent luck with this one. But, once you do find one and beat it, this method is such a fast way to collect all of the blueprints. You have to be a little more careful with this one since it works a bit different from the money farming exploits above. Here are the steps:
- Locate the miniboss room and kill the miniboss so it drops a gold chest
- Open the gold chest
- DO NOT leave the room or quit to the main menu
- Press the Guide button on your controller and force close the game app
- Launch the game and continue your game. You'll be back in the first room of the castle but will have kept the contents of the chest
- Warp back near the miniboss room and head back inside
- The gold chest will be there, closed, allowing you to open it again for another reward
- Repeat the above steps over and over
Cloud Save Exploit
This is probably the most important exploit in the game, as it will theoretically allow anyone to get this achievement on a single playthrough regardless of your luck. You will, however, still need a ton of skill to beat all of the bosses, but this exploit gives you unlimited attempts and makes it 100% safe so you aren't taking any unnecessary risks. You may have heard or be aware that it's possible to back up your cloud save for Playstation users, who can take a more obvious and direct advantage of this, but it is still 100% possible to do so on Xbox too. Here is a step by step guide on how to back up your cloud save and reload it if you mess up:
- Reach a point in your playthrough where you're happy with your progress, gold, etc., and then pause and quit to the main menu.
- Press the Guide button and then force close the game app. This creates a cloud save backup of your progress (I always waited a minute or two after closing the app to allow the save to get loaded to the cloud).
- Launch the game app and continue your game. You will be back in the first room of the castle, but all enemies you've defeated are still dead, and all your progress is saved.
- Press the Guide button, scroll right all the way, and then choose Settings. Go to Network Settings, and then choose the option "Go offline."
- Close all those menus and go back into your game, where you're now playing offline.
- Make all your progress and attempt all your boss fights offline!
- Close the game app
- Press
on the game tile and choose Manage Games and Add-Ons - Scroll down to Save Data for that game and choose it
- Choose Delete, and then choose the option Delete From Console to delete the local save
- Press the Guide button, scroll over to Settings, Network Settings, and choose to Go Online
- Launch the game app. It will sync with the cloud and restore your cloud save
- After continuing your game, go back offline and try again
- Pause and quit to the main menu, then continue your game. This puts you back in the first room of the castle and ensures with 100% certainly that you will not accidentally die while creating a new backup save
- While in your game, press the Guide button, scroll over to Settings, Network Settings, and choose Go Online
- Once it connects, go back to your game, pause, quit to the main menu, then press the Guide button and force close the game app. This will create an updated cloud save to work from
- Launch the game again and continue your game, then go offline again before progressing further
General Tips and Advice:
- Complete all other achievements betore attempting this. In particular, definitely defeat all of the remixed bosses. They will be very challenging, and will make the regular boss versions you fight in this playthrough feel so much easier.
- While you can technically not kill enemies and instead just avoid them and progress to the next room, my recommendation is to slowly kill all enemies in every room before progressing to the next. This prevents you from an unpleasant surprise when you backtrack to go a different direction and accidentally get hit and potentially die.
- Use the peek-and-run technique to scout every room before engaging in it. Enter the room and immediately leave, taking note of any obvious enemies you saw in the split second you spend in the room. While in the safety of the room you came from (presumably you've killed all enemies in it already), pull up your map and check out the room you just added to your map. If there are no chests and no other exits from that room, then definitely completely ignore it. If there are chests, it's up to you if you want to attempt killing enemies and/or reaching the chest(s) depending on how many enemies there are, and how much risk you'd need to take to reach the chests.
- Dead enemies stay dead when you leave a room, but alive enemies reset. You can take advantage of this to slowly kill enemies in a row one at a time. Slowly enter a room and kill an enemy or two, and if you see more coming after you, quickly leave the room to reset them, then kill another one or two, etc. This is the safest way to clear rooms.
- This should be pretty obvious after your first two playthroughs, but save the statues in each teleport room for when you really need the food (or mana).
Playthrough Walkthrough
With the knowledge of all of those exploits above, feel free to dive in and play using any combination of them if you're skilled and confident enough. What I've detailed below is the route and strategy I used to find and beat every boss in the game. I did it with six deaths, four or which were intentional. Also be aware that I won't be referencing any of the above tips in this section, as you should be using them constantly regardless of which exploits you're using.
The other thing worth noting is that, of the exploits above, Gold Farming #2 (Clown dagger game) and Blueprint Farming are both entirely luck based. I therefore won't be mentioning either in the walkthrough here, because there's no telling when you'll happen upon the dagger game or a miniboss, nor do I think you should waste time continually starting new games until you find either. Instead, when you encounter the dagger game or a miniboss, I highly recommend taking advantage of both.
Life #1 - Level 0
Your goal in this first life is to explore most (preferably all) rooms of the Castle and locate the boss room, then kill Khidr, collecting as much gold as possible on the way. You will obviously be very weak, but you'll still be able to kill all regular enemies in two or three hits, at most, in all rooms of the Castle. This is the best time to put all of those tips into practice above. Take your time, because each hit can take a huge amount of health off. You can obviously abuse the Cloud Save Exploit to the extreme and create a new save after every room you clear, but that's excessive and I wouldn't recommend it. Instead, progress until you at least find a new warp room (either leading to a new area or the boss room). That's a good opportunity to make a new backup save. When you do find the boss room, if your health isn't at least 84 or so, use the Food Farming Exploit above to refill your health. This will allow you to take a couple hits in the boss fight without dying, making it far less stressful. Once you've farmed some health, definitely make a backup save there, before the boss fight. As mentioned in the tips, this (and all) boss fight should be done offline so you can reload your save if you die.
Khidr Fight: the biggest difference between this fight and when you beat him in previous playthroughs is that you won't have the ability to double jump. So you should have no problems avoiding the majority of his attacks (especially after beating Neo Khidr), with the only exception being his spiral attack. If it spirals away from you - no problem, just follow it around to the other side of him. If it spirals towards you, this will require you to jump over him to dodge the projectiles. Without double jump, the only way this is possible without getting hit is to do a downward strike on top of him. The timing make take a couple tries to get down, but it's not really difficult to master after a couple attempts. And if you have enough health, you can take a couple hits without dying, so it's not critical to avoid all damage.
With Khidr dead, you should definitely have over 5,000 gold on you. Immediately make a new backup save. While it's technically possible to beat more bosses at Level 0, it's a hugely unnecessary struggle. Instead, after you beat Khidr, I recommend finishing exploring any rooms you haven't yet in the castle, collecting any money chests you didn't get. Consider going after a fairy chest or two. Lastly, feel free to progress into the Forest to track down more gold if you haven't died yet. I had around 10,000 gold when I took my first death, so that's a good point of reference but it's not absolutely critical. I would say 7,000 or more is solid. At this point you have no other classes to choose from, and class isn't really important, so no need to make a backup save before dying to choose your next class. Take a death whenever you're ready to upgrade for the Forest and second boss.
Upgrades:
- Start off by buying the Smithy, Health Up, Upgrade Knight, and Equip Up, then buy the Enchantress on the right. Now back out before buying any more upgrades.
- Head to the Enchantress first and buy the available Vault Rune (Helm). This is critical to surviving the second, third, and fourth bosses.
- Head to the Smithy next. Here is where a lot of variation will come into play. If you managed to farm blueprints during your first life already, then you'll obviously be spending a lot more money here to buy higher level gear, but your money will dictate how many you can buy, since you'll need to upgrade Equip Up to afford the heavier stuff. The second thing to mention here is that your playstyle could influence your equipment. For example, I never used mana/magic at all, so I never bought a cape or bracers. Instead, I bought the highest damage sword, the highest health helm, and the highest armor chestplate. Top priority needs to be chestplate, because it's your only source of increasing your armor, following my walkthrough.
- Once you've bought your gear and that Vault Rune, head back into the manor and buy the Architect (won't be using this but needs to be bought to access more upgrades), Upgrade Barbarian, and Unlock Shinobi. Unless you farmed blueprints, you should have enough money to afford all those upgrades easily.
- Now spend the rest of your money on Attack Up until you can't afford any more. Any remaining money should be spent on Health Up.
Life #2 - Level 10-20
As soon as you enter the castle for this life, remember to make a backup save and play offline again. The goal of this life is to find and beat the second boss. While you could explore a good deal on your way, I recommend finding the door to the second boss as soon as possible, to maximize the amount of health you have when you get there. Still kill enemies along the way, and even if you don't progress through rooms, it's still a good idea to pop into every possible room along your path just to have it added to your map. The castle will feel far easier now with how strong your attacks are, but you still want to be careful because you'll still take decent damage. Slowly work your way right through the castle, and carefully explore the Forest to find the boss door, then make a backup save.
Alexander Fight: No real difference here whatsoever compared to the first fight against him, aside from you'll obviously take more damage from attacks. The important thing to note/realize here is that touching Alexander or getting hit by his energy balls does huge damage to you, whereas touching a Fury or getting hit by a white energy ball does significantly less. So if you're ever in a bind, it's far better to purposely run into a Fury or its projectile than to touch Alexander. Other than that, make use of your double jump and hack away at him until he's dead. You should have enough attack strength that it shouldn't take very long to finish him off.
With Alexander defeated, immediately make another backup save. Now, I definitely recommend fully exploring the castle rooms and all Forest rooms. Kill the enemies and collect most or all of the regular chests. Grab any easy fairy chests too. I ended up with close to 15,000 gold on this life, as a point of reference. I got all the chests in the Castle and Forest regions, and even explored some rooms in the Maya just to get more gold. Again, not hugely critical, but I would say you should shoot for 10,000 gold at least. Once you're satisfied, make a new backup save before taking your next death.
I recommend going offline for your death to ensure you get to pick a Shinobi class with good (at least, no bad) traits. Its high damage will make it very easy to kill enemies in the Maya and will make the boss a piece of cake. So I recommend reloading your cloud backup save until you get a good Shinobi class to choose from.
Upgrades:
- Before spending any gold in the manor, back out and go to the Smithy first. Any better Chestplate or Sword should be bought immediately. You can also visit the Enchantress if you want, for any runes you prefer. I personally never bought any runes beyond that original Vault Rune. I don't recommend wasting money on any other movement runes unless you have money to spare (see below).
- Head into the manor and spend all of your money on Attack Up until you can't afford more, then spend the rest of your money on Health Up.
- If you still have a few hundred gold left and can't afford another upgrade for those two, you should back out and buy an Enchantress Rune that'll help you. You could potentially spend that money on an upgrade for Mana Up or Magic Damage Up, but I never used them so didn't bother.
Life #3 - Level 25-30
Once again, make a backup save as soon as you start, since you'll be exploring the Maya this time which can be quite perilous with all the enemies and fake treasure chests. Like before, your goal is to locate the boss door as soon as possible. Once you find it, make a new backup save to fight the boss offline.
Ponce de Leon Fight: Literally no difference from your first fight with him. For me, I was a Shinobi with plenty of Attack Up, so this fight was over in a minute or two at most. Nothing new to add to the standard strategy here.
With Ponce dead, just like with before, fully explore the rest of the Maya to get money, then do the same for the Castle, and then the Forest. Your goal here should be again 10,000 to 15,000 gold, which should be no problem with all the chests you have available at this point. Once you're done exploring and have plenty of gold, feel free to explore into the Dungeon somewhat too for more gold. As a side note, I was lucky enough to find a miniboss in the Maya at this point, and I farmed all of the blueprints from it here. Hugely luck dependent though, obviously.
Once you're happy with your gold amount, make a new backup save before dying. This one is very important, so you can use it to get a good class for the fourth boss. Herodotus can be very unpredictable and a huge pain. This fight can be made worlds easier by getting a hero with the P.A.D trait, which makes floor spikes inactive from walking on them. I highly, highly recommend reloading your backup save to get a hero with PAD. I didn't, and it took me easily 20 tries (probably more) to beat Herodotus on the next life, and that was even after farming blueprints and having the best gear. It's worth it to get a PAD hero to save yourself the frustration.
Upgrades:
Just like before, head to the Smithy first and get any improved gear, then return to the manor and spend all your money on Attack Up. At this point, Health Up will be expensive enough that you won't be able to use your leftovers on it, so if you have leftover money, use it on any helpful runes for your playstyle. Vampire runes are great for the upcoming boss, if you have them available. An extra jump could be very useful too.
As another point of reference, I was level 43 going into this life.
Life #4+ - Level 35-45+
Just life with previous lives, your goal here is to get to the boss door in the Dungeon, make a backup save outside it, and then fight and beat Herodotus offline. The Dungeon and Herodotus are, in my opinion, the hardest region and boss in the regular playthrough, so this will be the hardest part of this playthrough. The good news is that if you made it here on Life #4 like with this walkthrough, you have a ton of lives to spare for this achievement. So if you find yourself struggling immensely with enemies, surviving, and/or Herodotus, there is absolutely no reason to force yourself through that on Life #4. Instead, feel free to deviate by spend this life fully exploring the Castle, Forest, and Maya again to collect all of the gold. You should easily be able to collect another 10,000. You may also get lucky enough to find a miniboss room to farm blueprints if you haven't already. Once you've fully explored and gotten tons of gold and maybe more runes too, kill yourself, upgrade your stats more, buy new gear and/or runes, and attempt the Dungeon and Herodotus again. Because you have enough lives to spare, you could potentially do this a couple more limes to buff up your stats even more. I still recommend doing each life offline though, just so you don't waste one getting only a couple thousand gold and can't really upgrade your attack anymore.
While you could've done this farming of gold and buffing up earlier too, I found it not as needed, and also far easier to do now with how strong you are. The Castle and Forest in particular should be a breeze since you should be able to kill all enemies in one hit. So feel free to spend a handful of lives exploring just to farm gold and improve your stats further. None of it is wasted, since it'll only help you against the final boss too.
Herodotus Fight: Once you're ready to fight it, this fight can be a pain. The absolutely ideal state is that your attacks kill the Gravisors in a single hit, greatly simplifying things. Either way though, this fight has a ton of randomness to it that makes it challenging. If you managing to reload saves to get a PAD hero, it'll be far easier since you can just stand at the bottom and hit any blobs that come near you, safely under the center platform.
Home Stretch
With Herodotus dead, the door to the final boss opens. Now it's up to you how many more lives you want to spend grinding gold to buff your stats before the final fight. While you can theoretically wait until your 14th life to go against the final boss, it's risky, and it's not necessary to grind that much. I say it's risky because if you make a mistake with your backup save or miscalculate, you risk having to start all over. It's also not necessary to grind that much because you don't need to be that strong to beat the final boss.
As a reference point again, I was level 50 going into the final boss fight. I also was able to grind out blueprints, so I had the best Sword, Helm, and Chestplate available in the first playthrough. It took me probably ten or so attempts to beat him, and I did it on my sixth character. So my recommendation would be to use around ten heroes to be safe, so you have leeway before 15 but also get a bunch of gold for improving your stats. That should make it much easier for you than it was for me.
The most important thing to know for this final fight is that you do NOT need to be online when you beat the final boss to unlock this achievement! Treat this boss fight the same as the others: make each attempt offline, and if you die, try again either with your backup save or a new hero. Once you beat him, and the credits end and you're back at the main menu, close the game and delete your local save before going back online. This is to ensure that you have another chance in case you miscalculated and used too many heroes. If you were successful, when you go back online and launch the game to restore your cloud save, the achievement will unlock shortly after you launch the game. Once it does, you can be extremely proud of your completion, even with some exploits!
SeanStrange
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