Early-Game Guide

Which Quests to Play

Before anything else, you should play the tutorial. It's short, and gives a lot of tokens for you to buy permanent upgrades with.

You should start by beating all of the Normal quests, then move on to the Hard quests. This will unlock Beyond, which has tons of things to unlock and all of the endgame content.

Casual quests don't unlock anything by themselves, but there are some things that you can unlock in any difficulty, so sometimes Casual is the easiest place to do those.

What to buy in the Token Shop

The Token Shop lets you spend  Tokens on permanent upgrades.

Some of the upgrades you can buy are very helpful, some are nearly useless, and some are actually harmful. Your priorities should be:

1. Quests/Hard Quests: These are very cheap and allow you to keep unlocking new content.
2. Specialist (Favor slots): No matter what you're doing, whether you're trying to unlock something or just trying to beat the quest, it will be very useful to be able to boost the drop rates of the items you need.
3. Masteries: These have a huge impact on how you play the game, and some of them are extremely powerful. See #Which Masteries to Use for which ones to buy.
4. Crafter (Heirloom slots and crafting): Heirlooms are unlocked by starting Hard quests, and they're another huge part of the game. Being able to guarantee that you get a specific item means you can make plans that rely on it, and greatly reduces rng.
5. Artificer (Finding Artifacts in chests): Artifacts are needed for crafting heirlooms, so getting more of them is always good.

You should avoid:

• Tokeneer: More Tokens sounds good, but the boost is too small to be useful. Also, this only affects random drops, and none of the good methods for farming Tokens rely on those random drops, so this is useless in late game too.
• XP Boost: Levels don't unlock anything major, so there's no need to rush. This is just a waste of tokens.
• Avatars, Inventories, and Holographs: These are just cosmetic, so don't buy them until you've already got all the useful upgrades.

Legendary items are a special case. Some of them are very powerful, like  Fake Moustache and  Book of Mastery, so you should unlock those once you can afford them. Some of the other ones can be actively harmful, like  Archmage Sceptre,  Giga Health Potion, and  Giga Mana Potion, so you should avoid those. A lot of them are just average though, and unlocking those mostly just dilutes the loot pool so you're more likely to get a mediocre item instead of one of the really good ones that you actually want.

There is no way to refund these Token Shop purchases, so be careful before buying anything, and make sure you actually want to use it.

Which Masteries to Use

•  Novice Mastery is a great one to start with. It's very easy to unlock, and much cheaper to purchase than the other masteries. It's also surprisingly powerful once you have a good grasp on regular Minesweeper logic and understand how the game determines Guesses.
•  Bookworm Mastery is extremely powerful in the Casual, Normal, and Hard quests, though it's less useful in Beyond. It's also not very hard to unlock since there are a lot of Books you can use, and doesn't require much skill to play.
•  Auramancer Mastery is another extremely powerful option. This one is harder to unlock though, since it practically requires you to have a specific omen ( Chemical Rainbow) plus something else that makes lots of auras.
•  Guardian Mastery makes you immune (or at least very resistant) to many of the dangerous effects that can otherwise singehandedly end your run. This makes it less rng-dependent than many other masteries.
•  Marksman Mastery requires a very different playstyle from other masteries, is hard to use, and takes a lot of time to play well, but it is very powerful with a ridiculously high skill ceiling, and is very easy to unlock if you know how to manipulate Chains.

Tips and Tricks

• Chording is very helpful. It helps prevent you from making mistakes because you just misread the stage, since it doesn't let the chord happen when you don't have enough information to solve the nearby cells. It also allows you to dodge harmful auras like  Burning by clicking near the cell instead of actually on it, so you can open it without triggering it.
• Don't always open  chests. If you already have powerful items and the quest is going well, then you have little or nothing to gain by finding more good items. On the other hand, getting a bad item like an omen can ruin your build, potentially costing you the run. You should only open chests if you're still not sure you can win, like when you're in the beginning of the quest.
• Life Loss and Damage are different. Short version: Damage causes life loss. Long version: When you 'take damage', first your armor absorbs as much of the damage as it can, then your defense reduces it further, and then you 'lose life' equal to whatever is left. When you 'lose life', armor and defense do not apply. There are a few things that can reduce life loss, such as  Cursed cells, and these apply to both damage and life loss.
• Death is life loss. Specifically, 'you die' really means 'you lose life equal to your current life'. This means that effects that reduce life loss can prevent you from dying.
• Losing and dying are different. If an effect says 'you lose', then it gives you an instant game over. Revives and other effects that prevent death or life loss cannot save you from losing.