I wrote this guide after beating the game on Despair difficulty with all 18 classes. That required tons of savescumming due to the insane difficulty level, but since then I've gotten a ton of legitimate Despair wins, too, including 7x as Cultist, 5x as Scholar, and 5x as Apothecary.

How to use this guide:

• If you're already experienced with Despair mode and want just the highlights of this guide, check the section "Strategies by Archetype".
  
• If you're just starting out with the game, I recommend skipping this guide, going into the game blind, and playing on lower difficulty levels until you feel like the game is too easy, or like you're no longer having fun or no longer getting better. After all, this guide is full of spoilers, and many of the tips are far too detailed and entirely superfluous below Despair difficulty.
  
• If you'd like to ease into Despair difficulty, then I've documented a bunch of Awesome Seeds in the appendix.
  
• Otherwise, if you're curious about or struggling with a specific topic, consult the corresponding section.

Things to keep in mind:

• I've only played with WASD-movement, not with diagonal numpad movement, so this guide is written as such.
  
• This guide is not meant to be comprehensive. If I have nothing to say about a character, spell, monster, or area, then I won't mention it.
  
• This guide took a ton of effort to write. So if you like it or benefit from it in any way, I would very much appreciate a comment. Writers are notoriously starved for feedback.

• 2023-07-30: v3.0. Huge update. Added sections on Strategies by Archetype and Awesome Seeds. Expanded most sections, and made several sections much easier to read via rewrites and better formatting.
  
• 2023-06-01: v2.0. Huge update: Significantly lenghtened the sections on Characters (now called Disguises), Spells, Abilities, Potions, Monsters, and Areas (including new sections on Grotto, Library, and Icehouse). In Combat Tips, added a tip to seek cover. In Game Progression, added sections on the Hotel Layout and on Scouting. In Core Gameplay Mechanics, added sections on Levels, Factions, and on Misc. Mechanics. Finally, added a new section, "How one dies in Despair".
  
• 2023-05-19: v1.0. Initial version.

• There are 9 rings in total: 6 from branches, and 3 from the Underworld.
  
• You only need any 4 rings to win.
  
• So you can skip several side branches, including the entire Underworld if so desired.

• In Despair mode, it's already easy to die on the first floor.
  
• Overall, the game is hardest in the first few floors, though it remains challenging throughout.
  
• Enemies and obstacles become more dangerous as you climb the Hotel or enter side branches.
  
• So an important goal is to keep up with this rising danger level, or to even outpace it.

• Your character gets permanently stronger via levelups, better stats (from levelups or manuals), better equipment, better abilities (spells from grimoires, or vampire abilities from demon blood), as well as rings from branch bosses.
  
• Furthermore, your character can get temporarily stronger, strong enough to e.g. beat a branch boss, via temporary buffs and effects (from spells, abilities, or potions), as well as by making good use of the environment.
  
• The Hawkers (shopkeepers) can give your build whatever power boost it needs. Mark items you're interested in, then buy them later as a vampire, even if you have to descend a few floors.

• The main hotel consists of 9 floors, with Fane residing on the 10th floor.
  
• Floors 3-9 have side branches, so there are 7 side branches in total.
  
• Four of these side branches contain 1 ring each.
  
• Another side branch (e.g. Library or Gallery) contains a ring and a staircase to another branch (e.g. Dungeon or Great Hall) containing a second ring.
  
• Another branch contains food: either Hedge Maze / Hive, or Menagerie / Icehouse.
  
• And finally, there’s the route to the Underworld: Grotto / Sewers -> River -> Maelstrom -> Underworld I. Underworld I contains 2 rings, and leads to Underworld II which grants another ring.
  
• So 6 rings come from regular side branches, and the remaining 3 are reachable via the very difficult Underworld.

• As a rule of thumb, prefer climbing the main hotel over entering the side branches, because the latter are often super lethal.
  
• However, some side branches can be cheesed or easily beaten with specific builds. If you have the Glaciate spell, for example, then go into the Baths early; or if you're a Vampire, you can at little risk get great free equipment from the Mausoleum. See the guide sections on the various side branches.
  
• Also, some characters start with combat-related potions (e.g. Berserker with the Big Potion). Those characters can consider clearing a branch boss early.
  
• If you can't cheese side branches, then begin tackling them once you reach floor 6 or 7. The main Hotel becomes really scary around this time, due to monsters like Vampire Nobles, Vampire Knights, or Ruby Golems.
  
• Finally, consider skipping floor 1. In lower difficulty levels, this floor is more of an extended tutorial which features relatively little challenge. But in Despair, even a floor of Grunts and Goblins can kill you, or force you to rest a ton or use lots of precious bullets. Besides, the floor takes a lot of turns to traverse, but contains almost no loot and little XP.

It's good practice to briefly climb every close-by staircase you see. This has a bunch of benefits:
• You'll get a brief glimpse of the entrance of the next floor.
  
• You might be able to risklessly pick up items which make you more powerful.
  
• When you do this on regular hotel floors, you'll discover multiple potential "escape routes" in case you're chased by a scary but slow monster like a golem.
  
• You can toggle torches in advance - on or off, depending on preference or situation.
  
• Sometimes the upper end of a staircase is in a corner and contains nothing of importance. In that case, you can later skip exploring that part of the floor and save precious time.

Notable downside of this approach: it makes subsequent climbs more dangerous, because staircases are no longer guaranteed to be safe.

A few spots in the game contain extra loot:

• In the main hotel levels, items can spawn surrounded by spike traps (trivial), monster zoos (usually too dangerous to clear) or pits. I call the latter "levitation puzzles". They can be cleared e.g. via Levitation, a Float Potion, the Transform ability, Dash, or even a Bomb from yourself or a Goblin Arsonist or Hurler.
  
• The main hotel levels can also contain square 5x5 rooms, surrounded by a square corridor. These treasuries contain 4 piles of gold. You can enter them by bombing them (including via goblin assistance), or by blinking inside. The room contains a bomb button which can be used to escape.
  
• There's also treasure in the side branches, but I mention that in the corresponding sections.

I distinguish between three broad archetypes: human fighters, human spellcasters, and vampires. These archetypes all have very different strengths, weaknesses, and starting conditions, and thus require different strategies in Despair mode where everything is deadly.

As a human without spells and equipment, you are at a significant disadvantage in melee combat. Even weak monsters can crit you for a good chunk of your health, and a few monsters can outright one-shot you with crits. Additionally, you have lower speed than many monsters, and thus risk taking two consecutive hits. Overall, in comparison to a vampire, you have worse melee stats, a lower speed, and no ability to recover health mid-combat.

Implications:

• You benefit from all items you find, and monsters on higher floors are too powerful. So explore each floor thoroughly without skipping ahead.
  
• If you play a human disguise without a combat spell (e.g. Warp Mage, Officer), then you're underpowered in melee combat. So your top objective is to find a grimoire with a spell which helps in combat. Meanwhile, make use of my Combat Tips section, take advantage of sunlight to kill vampires at minimal risk, use your bullets, etc.
  
• Rest a lot: you need the health buffer. (Though never rest to full; that wastes your natural regeneration during exploration.) The weaker your character's melee combat ability is, the more damage you'll take, and the higher your risk to be overwhelmed in combat or even one-shot. So the more you have to rest. Overall, resting is good with all melee characters: starvation and running out of Soul Elixirs are longer-term risks, and it's more important to avert the short-term risk of dying quickly.
  
• In the early game, once you find a single grimoire or manual, flee to safety and immediately rest to full.
  
• If you find Blood early on in the form of a potion or Fountain, consider transforming into a vampire early.

Berserker and Merchant are two great disguises for this archetype.

If you have a damage-dealing combat spell like Shock, Miasma, Quake, Ice, or Firestorm, then you can eschew melee combat almost entirely by putting all stat points into Int.

Your main dangers are:

• Immune monsters (e.g. Lapis Golem vs. Shock or Miasma): flee from them. Some can also be killed via bullets, or even fought in melee combat (e.g. Big Sludge).
  
• Running out of mana mid-combat: So before entering unexplored territory, rest enough that you can always cast ~2 damage spells.
  
• Running out of food or Soul Elixirs: So don't rest to recover health.

Both Scholar and Apothecary (both 100% Int) are great disguises for this archetype, and among my most successful disguises.

• As a vampire, you are comparatively *overpowered* in 1v1 melee combat against any monsters that bleed.
  
• In contrast, sunlight is an ever-present danger which can easily kill you. Fortunately you enter the Hotel in the evening, so you're safe from sunlight for the first ~200 turns.
  
• You hardly benefit from finding items: books (grimoires, manuals, primers) and most equipment (swords, shields, pistols, bullets) are useless to you until you transform.
  
• So the main way you become stronger is by leveling up, and later on, by obtaining rings from side branches. (And sometimes you can buy potential Demon Blood potions from Hawkers.) Technically, you also benefit from the Plate and Leggings equipments, but those are quite weak (+1 defense for every +3 in equipment levels).
  
• Higher-level monsters yield far more XP than lower-level ones.
  
• The goal is to collect 4 rings, and 5 out of 9 rings are on the floors 6-9.

Therefore I recommend the following exploration strategy:

• Skip floors 1-2 (which never have side branches). So search for a staircase and climb it at the earliest opportunity, while only picking up items and fighting monsters within sight.
  
• On floors 3-5, keep a look out for the Menagerie. If you can find it, clear it to reach level 6 early. Otherwise prioritize fighting monsters in sight and quickly climbing to floor 6.
  
• From floor 6, explore the floors patiently and thoroughly like a human, and prioritize entering and clearing any side branches which seem beatable as a vampire.

The best disguise for this archetype is Cultist (100% Str), due to extra max health, extra health items, and starting with a vampire ability. It's the disguise I've had the most success with in Despair mode. Assassin is more difficult than Cultist, but still a good disguise for this archetype.

Every disguise has its own pros and cons... but some disguises feel outright hopeless. For example, Warp Mage has miserable combat stats (Str 9, Dex 9), and her high Int is wasted on an almost useless spell (Blink).

Human fighters without spells already struggle in Despair mode, so what do you do if your character is even weaker than that?

Hence these tips, which ignore most unique characteristics of disguises, and can thus be used as a fallback strategy for most of them:

• Until you find a useful spell, you'll have to fight in melee, so put your first 1-2 stat points into Str, even if your disguise is ostensibly best suited to be a human spellcaster (like Warp Mage). If you've found some extra bullets, you can put the points into Dex instead.
  
• Once you find your first grimoire (which can happen as early as floor 1 or as late as... very late), decide which archetype to pursue, and which spell to take, based on your current stats.
  
• Rest to almost full after every fight.
  
• If you cast zero spells, then your vampirism gauge fills faster than your hunger gauge, so you'll become a vampire without starving. In numbers, you become a vampire at turn 1000, but only starve past turn >1221 as a human. Once that happens, the run becomes a bit easier, because vampires are much better at combat.
  
• More specifically, at Int 12, you can cast <=11 spells and still transform into a vampire before you begin to starve; at Int 10 it's <=7 spells.
  
• If you pursue the spellcaster archetype later on, your lategame food consumption is much higher than if you'd gone into pure Int from the start. For example, if you find a grimoire after putting two points into Str, then you're down 2 points of Int throughout the run, resulting in hunger costs of ~1.6x. (Calculation: 2 points of int reduce hunger to 0.8^2=0.64. So your hunger costs are 1/0.64 = 1.56x of that.) So you'll likely need to obtain extra food from Hawkers or Hive / Icehouse.

• In principle, one can move faster via the Shift key. In practice, I think that just gets you killed.
  
• I recommend mostly unbinding the Rest key, and binding those keys to Wait instead. Resting works decently well as a human, but gets you killed as a vampire.

• Strength (Str) affects Attack and Defense, i.e. how much damage you deal and how much damage you take. In addition, every point of Str above 10 yields a damage reduction of 1.5%.
  
• Dexterity (Dex) affects Accuracy and Evasion, i.e. how likely you are to hit and how likely you are to be hit.
  
• Intelligence (Int) affects maximum mana, spell strength, hunger cost from spellcasting, and defense against Psychic damage.
  
• Equipment affects your Attack and Defense.
  
• Vampires do not benefit from swords, shields, or pistols, but can use plate and leggings. To compensate, vampires have higher base stats (1.5x Str multiplier, higher speed).

• Speed: this affects how often you get to move, relative to other monsters. If a monster is slower, you can flee from it or hit it more often than it hits you; if it's faster, it can chase you, and it gets bonus hits against you. Most monsters are faster than humans.
  
• Resistances: Resistances range from 1 (vulnerable: take +50% damage and have a higher chance of suffering from status effects like poison) to 2 (normal), to 4 (only 50% damage taken) until 5 (immune). For example, humans are immune to Sunlight, and vampires are vulnerable to it. Psychic damage causes the Vulnerable debuff, which reduces all resistances by 1. Resistances are also affected by transformations: humans, vampires, petrified statues etc. all have different resistances.
  
• (Ranged) Crit chance: Chance to deal 200% damage. Starts at 5% crit chance.

Level-ups increase many of your stats. Quoting from the wiki[www.goldenkronehotel.com]: “Your Level affects several of your stats including your maximum HP, maximum Mana, Attack, Accuracy, and Evasion. You get to select 1 primary stat upgrade when leveling up.”
A winning 4-ring run ends around player level 9 or 10. (Level-ups are capped at 15, but that’s a purely theoretical limit.) So while level-ups yield a lot of extra stats and mana througout a run, you can only expect to get up to ~9 extra primary stat points that way.

So how to spend those stat points? -> The following recommendations refer to the section "Strategies by Archetype":

• For the Spellcaster archetype, put all points into Int.
  
• For vampires, put all points into Str.
  
• For human fighters, put most points into Str, but put enough points into Int that you can cast your spells consistently (i.e. miscast chance of 7% or less).
  
• For human fighters which have lots of bullets (e.g. Sharpshooter, or from a starting room bonus), put the first few into Dex, rather than Str, until you've spent most of your bullets.

Why this emphasis of Str over Dex? Because a) vampires get bonus Str, but not bonus Dex; and b) the extra damage reduction significantly reduces the risk of being one-shot by melee crits.

• Your hit chance is determined by comparing your accuracy against their evasion. However, against stunned opponents (from Time Crystal or Stupefy), the hit chance is 95%.
  
• Pistol hit chance: If your bullet misses its primary target, then it continues moving along its trajectory and has a chance to hit later targets. So if multiple monsters are on-screen, then it can be worthwhile to aim bullets such that they aim at multiple monsters, even if you aren’t playing the Sharpshooter with her piercing bullets.
  
• Monsters which you don't see and/or which are too far away from you don't entirely exist: they don't necessarily move, take damage from DoT effects, or get burned by sunlight. They certainly don't exist on other floors. (If that wasn't the case, then all vampires on the upper floors would die to sunlight long before you ever reached them.)
  
• Bombs explode after three turns. They can be triggered prematurely by running into or attacking them, e.g. with a pistol shot.
  
• Water gives you the Wet status (+fire protection), Submerged status (you’re slowed down), and cures the Burning status.
  
• Once you've explored a tile, the minimap reliably tells you whether it contains monsters or not. This is far more reliable and powerful than only looking at the main game screen, and even works when the main screen is in complete darkness. Incidentally, there's a hotkey to display the minimap as a huge overlay instead of the tiny map in a screen corner.
  
• How do Fountains work? Once a fountain tile is revealed, you have 100 turns to drink from it. This time limit applies even if you revealed a fountain via a Revealing Essence potion.

• Each monster belongs to a faction or species, and is neutral towards this species. This affects both allies and yourself. For example, you can't harm neutral monsters, even if you wanted to. And your allies will only attack hostile monsters of a different faction.
  
• The four factions are: humans; vampires; wolves and werewolves; bats and demon bats.
  
• This faction mechanic is important in a bunch of ways.
  
• Are you in a tight spot against faction X? You might be able to transform into faction X via an ability, potion, or spell, and then the monsters become immediately neutral.
  
• You can't fight bosses of the same faction, even if you wanted to. This is highly relevant in a bunch of side branches.
  
• However, there are a few ways to affect neutral members of your faction: Explosive Potion deals 15-20 damage to your surroundings; Toxic Sludge from Sludge monsters harms everyone; as do Bombs from Goblin Anarchist and Goblin Hurler. And since Vortex moves everyone, it can pull neutrals into pits.

• The basic timers in the game are the human food clock, the vampirism gauge, and the vampire's life loss.
  
• The food clock is important early on. But it can be removed by clearing the Hive or Icehouse. And sometimes one can even skip these side branches by finding enough food, or by buying extras from Hawkers.
  
• The two vampire-related effects are essentially turn limits: one can survive for a while as a vampire, but must eventually return to being human to rest. And only a small number of Soul Essences are available to revert to becoming human.

• Time passes at a pace of 4 minutes per turn, so 360 turns per 24h or 15 turns per hour.
  
• Beams of sunlight enter from the east for 6:00-8:59, from the south for 9:00-14:59, and from the west for 15:00-17:59.
  
• Altogether, the light direction changes by 180° over 12h, or 15° per hour: it shines towards the left at 6:00, and ends shining towards the right at 17:59.
  
• In more detail, the light direction covers 45° from the east for 3h, then 90° from the south for 6h, and then 45° from the west for 3h.
  
• Resting: Because time passes at 4 minutes per turn, and an uninterrupted rest lasts for 50 turns at most, that means you rest for 3 1/3 hours at most, or 50° of sunlight at most.

The game warns you not to cast too many spells because of the hunger mechanic. But in Despair mode, my impression is that the vampirism gauge is even scarier: spellcasters put most of their stat points into Int and hence want to spend little time as vampires, but there may not be enough Soul Elixirs to do so. So what can they do?

• Don’t explore the huge floors 8-9 in their entirety. That just takes too long and costs too many resources.
  
• If you have enough food, it might be worthwhile to use teleportation spells like Blink and Teleport to move around, i.e. to trade vampirism for hunger. Movement just costs too much time otherwise.
  
• Buy extra Soul Elixirs from Hawkers.
  
• If the Pharmacopoeia branch is available, then that yields a lot of extra potions, including extra Soul Elixirs.

• You lose life more quickly the more life you have.
  
• You cannot die on 1 life. Or at least my level 1 vampire survived waiting to turn 1500 in Despair mode.
  
• I’d previously thought that I had to use a heal effect once I reached low health, even if an area was free from danger; but that’s not the case.
  
• So once you've cleared a few floors as a vampire, you could in principle always wait until it’s night, take all the time you need to walk around between shops etc., and eventually either heal up via a health item, or use a Soul Elixir to rest.

• Try to always get the first hit. Most enemies have higher speeds than you do, which means that they occasionally get a free move towards you. In that case, they can hit you before you get a chance to react. Against those enemies, once they're 1 tile away from you, move backwards: they'll move towards you, eventually close the gap due to their superior speed, and then you can get the first hit.
  
• Try to never fight more than one monster at once.
  
• As a vampire, stay in the shadows. This grants the "hidden" status and allows actual stealth gameplay (see below).
  
• As a vampire, try to fight in areas where you can reach spilled blood, i.e. not in corridors. Ensure that there's always a spot where blood can drop, i.e. there must be at least one adjacent empty floor tile which is not a staircase, water, button, or similar. And ensure that you can reach any spilled blood without needing to first kill the monster. Finally, beware of nearby neutral vampires, who can slurp up your precious blood.
  
• Never fight in water, even as a human. This causes the Submerged status, which slows you down and gets you killed. (However, it’s fine to flee from vampires into water, where they can’t follow you.)

• If you’re faced with monsters which cause fire damage (like bombs, Magma Golems, Imps), and you’re a human, you can briefly touch water for the Wet status, which yields 5 turns of increased fire resistance.
  
• Lure monsters without night vision into darkness so that you can use stealth combat (see below). You can even do this as a human, where it’s most useful against some bosses.
  
• Seek cover: Spellcasters will try to cast spells through environmental doodads like furniture. That's irrelevant for some spells like Shock and Firestorm, but highly relevant for others like Ice. You can make use of this by maneuvering such that an obstacle or monster is between you and the spellcaster.

• Here’s how stealth works: Monsters without night vision (like humans or golems) display a ? or ! above their heads. If they see you and you move into darkness, they move towards the last tile where they’ve seen you, then stop. So you can ambush them there.
  
• However, even such monsters *will* notice you if you move into melee range next to them.
  
• If you want to lure a stationary monster towards you so you can get the first hit from darkness, there are a bunch of options: briefly step outside the darkness, so it sees you and moves towards you; or hit or shoot something to produce noise; or briefly toggle a nearby torch on and off again.

• Kill particularly damaging low-health enemies with your Revolver or a ranged spell: e.g. Worker Bees, which deal a *lot* of damage via poison; or Goblin Anarchist (the exploding goblin).
  
• Bullets are really strong. Besides the above, another great use for them is to damage enemies so you can kill them in fewer hits. For example, if a monster requires two hits to kill, and you can ensure the first hit, then the fight will progress as hit-get_hit-hit-win. In contrast, if you shoot first, you can just shoot-hit-win, without taking damage at all.
  
• What's the best distance to shoot from? Your hit chance decreases with distance, so as close as possible; but if the monster is faster than you, then far enough away that it can't hit you with any potential extra turns. For example, if you stand diagonally next to a vampire and shoot it, then if it survives it has a chance to approach you and hit you before you can react.
  
• The pistol makes a ton of noise, so when you fire it, be prepared for incoming monsters.
  
• If you die with lots of bullets in reserve, something has gone wrong.

• Inspect enemies before you fight them. Here are some indications for whether a monster is dangerous: the description says so; it has a level-3 spell which deals damage and can’t be played around; you have a much lower chance to hit it than it does to hit you.
  
• Each floor has a chance to spawn monsters "above its level", e.g. a Vampire Noble can spawn several floors before you'd ordinarily expect one. Treat such monsters with extreme care.
  
• If a monster seems dangerous for some reason, then treat it as such. Be very careful, ensure a line of retreat, use potions and ranged abilities, or evade them entirely if possible.
  
• To flee from a monster which is faster than you and which has night vision, either change floors via a staircase, or break line of sight by turning around multiple corners.
  
• It's fine to flee down stairs, but never flee into side branches if you might forget that the staircase is dangerous. Otherwise you might clear a side branch and then die once you return.

• Do not use potions or spells in melee range unless you must, because that costs a whole turn. Giving enemies free hits is the fastest way to die. It’s much better to prepare in advance, at a distance.
  
• Vampire abilities cost 0 turns, so they’re fine to use in melee range.

Despair mode is tough. But how do most of those defeats look like?

• Getting surrounded or swarmed.
  
• Encountering a single monster while low on health, and being unable to flee or defeat it.
  
• Encountering a powerful monster while on full health and with plenty resources, and still being unable to flee or defeat it. Such monsters can include bosses; human spellcasters; vampire Brawlers, Knights, and Nobles; and golems. For example, for a spellcaster without escape abilities or potions, a single vampire Noble can be lethal.
  
• Running out of mana as a spellcaster.
  
• Running out of time, i.e. out of food or out of soul elixirs.
  
• Getting one-shot from critical damage. This is a new problem in Despair mode. For example: Grunts (a monster encountered on floor 1) can occasionally deal 27 damage; Wolves can deal 26 damage; Gorgon's Blast 1 can deal 43 damage; Sharks 50 damage; Ruby Golems 126 damage; the Gorgon Queen’s Blast 3 can deal 123 damage; Capcaun >>100 damage; etc.
  
• Getting two-shot from a monster with high speed. For example, a Sand Viper in melee range can deal 37 poison damage with a crit, and then another 16 poison damage.
  
• Climbing stairs as a vampire during the day, and getting immediately hit by sunlight.
  
• Nearby furniture turns out to be a Mimic.
  
• Becoming incautious on floors 8 or 9 after almost beating the game, and then getting swarmed by 2 or more powerful monsters.
  
• Entering a staircase to a side branch, and encountering a monster right next to the staircase.
  
• Dying to a potion, like drinking Holy Water as a vampire or when Vulnerable. Or drinking a Deceleration Potion when suffering from Bleeding or Poison.

For recommended disguises, see my section on archetypes.

• With -15 starting HP and -3 melee stats, but also +3 speed as a human, this class only makes sense as a pure spellcaster build, where it's on par with the Scholar.
  
• Beware: Miasma is a double-edged sword of a spell. It’s very powerful and deadly, against both monsters and yourself.
  
• Miasma 2 causes Confusion, which is also extremely powerful, because it prevents spellcasting and keeps melee fighters away from you.
  
• Apothecary is very powerful at a distance, but essentially helpless in melee range. That makes doors and very fast enemies (like the pouncing tigers in the Menagerie) particularly dangerous. That’s why it’s highly recommended to find a second damage spell or an escape spell.
  
• Advantaged areas: 2-3 casts of Miasma 2 at a decent Int level can kill Varcolac in the Greenhouse at low risk. Apothecary also has poison damage and poison resistance, which gives her the perfect damage type and resistance for the Hive. And as of v1.10.1, Miasma can hit through honey comb walls. Overall, if you have Miasma 2 and turn off the torches in the Hive, the floor should be very easy to clear.
  
• Because Apothecary starts with 4 poison resistance, and Antidote slightly increases poison resistance for 30-ish turns, she becomes immune to poison damage for the entire duration. This is very helpful against poisonous enemies like bees and snakes.

• Assassin starts with the Fade ability, and can thus become Hidden on command to gain +4 Dex for ~15 turns.
  
• However, Fade costs 10 HP to use, so it's preferable to become hidden by turning off torches instead.
  
• You gain bonus dexterity even as a human, so turn off torches even then. Since you can't see anything then, navigate by temporarily turning on torches for a mere turn, as if you're the protagonist in a horror movie.
  
• Humans also benefit from the Disappear spell, so prioritize that when it's on offer.

• Your knockback chance (of seemingly >=20%) is both a blessing and a curse.
  
• If you knock back monsters, they can't immediately retaliate, which is great.
  
• And sometimes you can position yourself such that you can knock monsters into environmental hazards like pits, water, lava, or sunlight.
  
• But if you move too fast during combat, you might run towards a monster you've just knocked away, giving it a free hit.
  
• Regarding the Enrage spell, you have a 13% miscast chance at Int 9. So be prepared for it to miscast several times during each run.
  
• Berserker starts with two fantastic potions. Big potion is fantastic against bosses, and Nostrum is essentially an extra life.

• Recruiting vampires or humans by talking to them is a free action and doesn't cost a turn.
  
• A minor strength of this disguise: as a vampire, you don't die if you hit 1 HP. That's usually not useful, because a vampire on 1 hp can't engage in fights and thus can't produce blood to recover. However, you can still recruit allies even on 1 life. Once they fight for you and produce blood, you can recover from the brink of death.

• Ice Mage can only get Ice spells, i.e. only the four spells Encase, Tempest, Ice, and Glaciate.
  
• While I don't like Encase, the other three spells are a good set of spells, enough to beat the game, and the limited spell selection guarantees that you'll get to level up those spells to a high level.
  
• Glaciate can by itself trivialize the Baths; Tempest by itself is great against vampires and in the Mausoleum; Tempest plus Glaciate is a valid win condition; and Ice is a decent damage spell which also slows down enemies and thus weakens them for melee combat.
  
• Beware of the Menagerie and the Icehouse, though: Ice Bears and Ice Golems are immune to Ice damage.

• I initially thought that Focus was too situational to be relied on in a pure spellcaster build, but it can be cast consecutively to turn torchlight into fire.
  
• Nevertheless, try to explore the floors in such a way that you're close to sunbeams as much as possible.
  
• If you're injured, rest at night.
  
• Light Mage's permanent glow is convenient in dark areas like the Menagerie or the Grotto, but it's annoying as a vampire, who can never surprise monsters. It's also problematic in areas like the Hive or the Gallery, where you'd like to turn off the lights even as a human.

• The ability to heal from gold is great as a human, but amazing as a vampire.
  
• If you optionally leave some gold piles lying around, you can even treat them like blood pools which never disappear.
  
• If you do the latter, then you can even recover from 1 HP as a vampire, just like the Commander.

Be super careful with Holy Water. I've lost lots of runs to trying to heal to full health via Holy Water while I was Vulnerable.

• While you can neither regen health nor mana, you also don't lose any health as a vampire. So you can remain a vampire indefinitely and profit from the improved combat stats, i.e. higher speed and strength.
  
• Revenant loves side branches which grant extra potions, i.e. food from Hive or Icehouse, and the various potions from Pharmacopoeia.
  
• Revenant also heals from using Fountains, including those in the Baths.

• Scholar is a powerful class, but that's all the more reason to be super careful at the beginning: at level 1 you don't quite have enough mana to cast 2x Shock consecutively, so you get a significant power bost at level 2.
  
• You can save on food by lining up monsters so you can hit multiple ones with one Shock spellcast.
  
• Shock can't damage golems, so run away from those.

• Werewolves have a 40% crit chance and get "satiated" (reduce their hunger) from crits.
  
• That's also how you're supposed to recover from starting as ravenously hungry.
  
• Once you get the Focus spell, you can turn into a werewolf any time you stand in torchlight. The ability to permanently be a werewolf (with extra stats and insane crit rate and speed) is enough to easily win the game, so if you can't find the Focus spell in grimoires, that's reason enough to buy extra Grimoires and Legendary Grimoires from Hawkers.
  
• The bonus stats from lycanthropy (plus night vision) temporarily make you the apex predator of the hotel, even in Despair mode, except against monsters which could oneshot you from full health, where the Shapeshifter's lowered max health is a disadvantage.
  
• Early-game strategy: You enter the hotel during a full moon. Instead of wasting that time exploring the lower floors, it’s better to spend it fighting enemies while you're strong, then exploring once you're weak again. So I advise trying to seek out enemies, and climbing the first staircases upwards you can find, while regularly entering moonlight to prolong your lycanthropy status and healing up. You might reach floor 3 or 4 that way, and reach level 3 or 4 before daybreak.

You start with unexceptional combat stats, but with 21 piercing bullets. Use those bullets relatively generously to survive the early floors.

• This character is so weak that all combat is a struggle.
  
• I don’t have any great tips here; just try to survive and dodge monsters until you find a spell that helps you win fights. Damage spells are ideal, but in a pinch, even something like Stupefy will do.

• Regular monsters follow you up and down staircases. This can be a blessing or a curse - a blessing because you can separate monsters, or a curse because those monsters get a free action. In any case, however, branch bosses cannot be brought through staircases.
  
• Delayed attack patterns from monsters like the Champion or the vampire Bishop can damage monsters regardless of their current attitude towards you (hostile, neutral, allied).
  
• Here are a few ways in which ostensibly neutral monsters can get you killed: they block projectile spells like Miasma. Neutral vampires can eat your precious blood pools. And neutral humans can turn into werewolves.
  
• Do not fight psychic monsters like Samca or Moroi within water or sunlight. Any psychic hit can make you Vulnerable. (Chance per hit at default resistances: 40% as a human, and 75% as a vampire.)
  
• Pulling or pushing monsters into pits (e.g. via Vortex, Whirlwind, or Berserker's knockback) does not kill them directly; they just take fall damage. The Watchtower is an exception.

• Artificers are reasonably easy to kill as a vampire (and naturally hostile to them). But beware: they can spawn a Sunstone Golem next to you, which is disastrous.
  
• Big Sludge: As a vampire, sludges can be used to kill monsters slower than you. Just circle around while keeping a distance from the Toxic Sludge tiles, while the other monsters run into it and take poison damage.
  
• Devourer (the ~level 3 vampire): Devourers are counter-intuitive. First of all, outside of melee range they only pursue you if they can't see blood; otherwise they prioritize casting Blood Warp. Secondly, they're stunned for a turn after casting Blood Warp, so if they warp next to you, you can get a free hit in. Two, even, if they teleport from next to you to next to you: one for when they cast Blood Warp, and one for the turn after. Thirdly, if there’s only one blood pool in sight, you can move on top of it to prevent Blood Warp. But because Blood Warp stuns for a turn, that's not necessarily worthwhile to do.
  
• Eel: Despite lacking a mana bar, the eel’s ranged attack is a normal Shock spell, including the limited range of 7 tiles. They also have a separate electric melee attack.
  
• Floating Eye: It can petrify you from range, and then attacks from a distance of 1 tile, so it's hard to flee. However, its eye closes once damaged, at which point it no longer sees you irrespective of light levels, and can no longer follow or petrify you, nor attack you from a distance. Once damaged, the Floating Eye will move to the last spot where it saw you. It can still see and attack you if you move into its melee range, however.
  
• Goblin Anarchist: these exploding goblins are dangerous; preferably kill them from range via a Pistol or spell. Alternatively, water in the vicinity could grant you the Wet status for more fire resistance, and it can also remove the Burning status. When playing as a vampire, these monsters are very scary because you can use neither of these options to deal with them. So your best bet as a melee fighter is to flee from them into darkness.
  
• Goblin Hurler: These throw bombs and can hurt both themselves and allies, so this can be abused.
  
• Green Man: besides becoming nigh-unkillable in sunlight, Green Men also heal in water. The latter is hardly ever relevant, though.
  
• Husk (from Green Man and Elder Green Man): Monsters will not attack Husks, and cannot swap places with them. So if you're being chased by a bunch of monsters during daytime, you can kill a Green Man in a corridor, and it will block your other pursuers. This strategy does not work at night, because the Husks will turn into toadstools.
  
• (Vampire) Knights: these are ultra-tanky, not because they have so much HP, but because of their high resistances. They still die quickly to water and sunlight.
  
• Harpies (flying monster in the Baths): I didn't understand these for a long time. They flee from you when they're alone, and swarm you when another monster is in the vicinity. To lure them, an easy method is to walk outside the melee range of a shark.
  
• Jester: Usually moves like a Chess knight. It will (almost?) never jump voluntarily into sunlight, but can be made to jump into tiles that will light up next turn. Easy to kill via 1-2 bullets.
  
• Naiads (water fairies) have the Tempest and Glaciate spells, turn their surroundings into water, and then freeze it. They're a bit tricky to kill as a vampire. Two strategies that work against them are to either flee until they run out of mana. Or even better, to flee on top of a staircase, which cannot be submerged by the Tempest spell.
  
• Sunstone Golem: The Unholy Essence potion temporarily disables their sunlight, and thus allows you to fight one even as a vampire.

• Spell choice is one of the most impactful choices you can make in the game.
  
• Each spellcast costs hunger.
  
• Most or all spells cause Noise 4 when cast.

• Before you pick your first spells, ask yourself whether you're a spellcaster build or a melee build. For some classes that's obvious (e.g. the Scholar is obviously meant to be a spellcaster), for others less so (e.g. Vagabond can be both).
  
• Melee builds want support spells, especially ones that help them fight better (Enrage, Haste) or heal up (Heal). They also like ones which escape to safety (Blink, Teleport, Disappear), or which can clear side branches (e.g. Tempest for Graveyard, Blink for Workshop).
  
• In contrast, spellcasters want at least two damage spells (because every damage spell has a limitation, or enemies which are immune to it), and can make do with one escape spell.
  
• Beware of over-leveling spells: even if you have enough int and max mana to support a level 3 or 4 spell, your mana regeneration doesn't improve throughout the game, and the extra damage from level 4 damage spells is mostly wasted as overkill damage.
  
• If you have a level 3-4 damage spell, strongly consider picking up Hone for extra mana regeneration.

• Spells have a miscast chance based on your Int level and the spell level.
  
• Miscasts do not cost hunger.
  
• Miscast chance is capped at 1%.
  
• A level 1 spell fails 13% at Int 9, 7% at Int 10 and 2% at Int 12. A level 2 spell fails 25% at Int 10, 13% at Int 11 and 7% at Int 12.
  
• The rule here seems to be that powering a spell up by 1 spell level requires +2 Int to keep the miscast chance the same.
  
• Miscasts on combat spells are quite bad: they hurt you (and can be outright lethal), cost precious mana, and take up a whole turn.

How is spell hunger cost determined?
-> Quote from the dev[discord.com]: "hunger is on a 100 point scale (100 completely stuffed, 0 dead). hungerCost = spellLevel * 8 * (0.8 ^ (intelligence - 6))"

• So hunger cost is purely based on the spell level; neither mana cost nor spell type matter.
  
• The exponent in the formula essentially means that every additional point of intelligence (above the minimum of 9) reduces spell hunger cost by 20%.
  
• This formula is one more reason not to overlevel spells without reason, because the effect of the higher level can't always compensate for the increased hunger cost.
  
• Implications for the Hone spell, which increases Int by 2: Hone 1 costs a level 1 spell's worth of hunger, and then reduces the cost of subsequent spells by 1-0.8^2=36%. So Hone is a net hunger cost if you cast less than three spell levels' worth of spells afterwards, and a net hunger saving otherwise (0.36*3>1).

These are not necessarily spells I consider strong, just ones I think warrant comments. They might have unobvious benefits, for example.

• Level 1 destroys glass and doors.
  
• Level 2 destroys wooden walls, columns, bookshelves, stone walls, hedges, and Hive walls. It doesn’t destroy the trees in the graveyard.
  
• Level 3 destroys the Crystals in the Gallery.
  
• Higher levels of Blast can destroy multiple weaker walls at once, but even Blast 4 doesn't penetrate through Crystals.

• In Despair difficulty, I don't like teleport spells for evasion purposes: They can outright fail if cast repeatedly due to magical instability, or move you from danger to danger (you teleport away from a scary enemy, and land next to another, only now you're Unstable). Spells like Disappear or Quills Shield don't have those problems - they can be cast repeatedly.
  
• What teleport spells are good at is quick movement, entering or exiting from treasuries or dead ends, and to escape from the Workshop.
  
• Blink's destination is extremely unreliable and undeterministic when cast in any direction, but completely predictable and deterministic when used to swap spots with a monster or environmental doodad.
  
• Blink can blink through doors, and then monsters can't follow you.
  
• Blink can be used as a dubious and extremely situational combat spell by swapping places with monsters into unfavorable terrain. In particular, you can move into water or sunlight, then swap places with a vampire. And if you also had Levitate or an Ephemeral Cape, then you could throw monsters down pits by swapping places with them.

• At level 1, I consider Bomb a utility spell rather than a damage spell.
  
• Bombs, including the Bomb spell, can destroy any walls. This has a whole bunch of uses throughout the game.
  
• Bombs can destroy walls and glass windows.
  
• Bombs can destroy the Crystals in the Gallery to gain extra resources, at the cost of nothing more than one spell slot and a bunch of useless potions. You can also get Arcane Hammers in the Great Hall this way, but there it's preferable to use the bomb monsters.
  
• Bombs can destroy walls in the Hedge Maze or Menagerie. This is usually unnecessary in the Hedge Maze, but makes the Ice House in the Menagerie less risky to reach.
  
• You can free the imprisoned golems in the Workshop to fight them one by one, or escape from those golems by bombing through the walls.
  
• All bombs, including the explosion from Goblin Anarchists, throw you two tiles in the direction of the explosion, including across one-tile gaps. At sufficient HP (>50), this can even be used to obtain the item from a levitation puzzle.
  
• At level 2+, this spell deals significant damage even against bosses, but this option is only relevant for the Bombardier. Furthermore, the bomb pattern of level 2 bombs becomes bigger, increasing from range 1 to range 2 except for the corners. This makes it more dangerous for both monsters and yourself.

Like all spells, casting the Disappear spell causes Noise 4. So it attracts nearby monsters even if you cast it to refresh the duration while you're still invisible.

• Focus channels torchlight into moonlight, moonlight into sunlight, and sunlight into fire.
  
• Crucially, focused moonlight or sunlight persists for 1 turn and also covers your own tile, so you can chain these Focus casts together, and turn any torchlight into highly damaging fire at the cost of 3 turns and 4x3=12 mana.
  
• Samca and Moroi, the two floating psychic monsters, are vulnerable to Moonlight. Samca is easy to kill with Focus, but as of v1.10.1, Moroi’s darkness effect overrules moonlight from Focus.

Casting this while standing in water does not harm yourself.

• Reading grimoires, manuals, and primers requires full health; Heal can help with that.
  
• Heal also cures Bleeding.
  
• And if you're uninjured, Heal can even heal an adjacent ally.
  
• Heal allows you to replace the ultra-slow process of recovering HP via resting, with the much quicker process of recovering HP via mana. I suspect Heal also costs somewhat less food (though I haven't done the calculation), but the Soul Elixir savings are certainly significant.

I initially skipped this spell because it just got me killed. If that's your experience, I recommend trying the Apothecary character.

• Miasma turns out to be a perfectly legitimate damage spell to build a spellcaster around, one that deals absolutely fantastic AoE damage.
  
• However, Miasma has two significant shortcomings: many enemies are immune, and it damages you, too.
  
• What determines the shape of the Miasma? A cloud of Miasma explodes in the tile in front of whatever obstacle you aimed at, and then expands in all directions. In an entirely open area, that's just a 3x3 grid centered on the explosion (so you're safe if you aim at an enemy that's 3 tiles away). But in a closed area or corridor, the miasma can reach you even when you're 1-2 tiles further away.
  
• So the Miasma spell must be cast from a big distance, and ideally in open areas.
  
• But that's not always possible. For example, what if you enter a staircase and enemies are close? In such situations it's important to either have a second damage spell, and/or an escape spell like Blink or Teleport. In a pinch, the Fetter spell might also be enough to gain distance from enemies.
  
• At level 2, Miasma applies a Confusion debuff. This debuff makes it much harder to cast spells (= increased spell failure chance). This is great against spellcasting bosses like the Gorgon Queen or Strigoi, but it's deadly when it hits yourself.
  
• As an amusing side effect, Confusion can force water monsters out of their water.

These are not necessarily spells I consider strong, just ones I think warrant comments. They might have unobvious benefits, for example.

• This spell is an interesting mix of pseudo-heal effect and damage spell. It's both defense and offense.
  
• Quills scales with your hitpoints and thus with your level. So it stays relevant throughout the game, whereas other damage spells at level 1 become almost useless in the lategame.
  
• The Quills shield can protect you from (most) status effects, because status effects are usually applied as a chance upon taking health damage.
  
• Beware: noncombat damage, like from Bleeding or Poison debuffs, or from sunlight or water, gets through the shield.
  
• I've never gotten the Quills spell early enough to build around it as the primary damage spell of an Int-based spellcaster, but I think it would work.

This spell has a finite range of 7 tiles. That's relevant both when you use the spell, or when it’s used by opposing eels or human sorcerers.

• Creating water works much better in corridors than in open areas.
  
• Tempest is particularly good in the Mausoleum.
  
• So Tempest is a great spell choice for brawler builds, because it helps you clear the Mausoleum, which contains great loot and is guaranteed to spawn in every run.

• How does the Umbra spell work? It grants you one point of Shadow Form in exchange for reducing your level by 1. This fortunately reduces your XP requirements, too. (That is, whether you start on level 1, or use Umbra to drop down to level 1 again, Grunts yield 8% XP in either case.)
  
• Losing a level costs lots of stats, and Shadow Form reduces your stats further.
  
• In exchange, you recover hp and mana from hitting enemies, and you get a 10% chance per level of Shadow Form to convert enemies into shadow minions.
  
• However, I don't like this spell in Despair mode, because sacrificing so much max hp makes it too likely to get one-shot from full health.

• The obvious use case of Vortex is to pull or even kill a bunch of pesky flying monsters at a low mana cost. It directly kills Worker Bees, and makes fights against Samca and Moroi and Floating Eye easier.
  
• Vortex can also be used to pull aquatic monsters out of the water, vampires into the water, or ground monsters into pits. The latter sounds like a gimmick, but because the main hotel floors often contain a few 1x1 pits, this is a genuinely strong ability, albeit situational.
  
• Enemies affected by Vortex are predictably moved clockwise around you.
  
• If the Vortex spell successfully moves a monster, i.e. if no wall is in the way, then it can't move or attack in its next turn.
  
• Vortex can also be used to move orthogonally adjacent monsters to diagonally adjacent, where they can't hit you. This is a minor benefit, but occasionally comes in useful, like when you need a turn to use a potion.
  
• Vortex is already good at level 1, costs little mana, helps if you struggle against ranged enemies, and is thus overall a good support spell for melee builds.
  
• For pure spellcasters, Vortex is probably too niche. The exception is if your main damage spell is Quake: then this spell perfectly compensates for Quake’s inability to hit flyers.
  
• Vortex affects neutral monsters, too.

• Ward only makes sense as a support spell for a melee build, and even then it's pretty weak.
  
• The main benefit of Ward is that you can cast it in advance of combat, without wasting a precious combat turn; compare that with trying to Heal during combat, and immediately taking enough damage to negate the Heal.
  
• The problem with Ward is that level 1 only raises your resistances from 2 to 3, which means only -25% damage taken, including a slightly lower debuff chance.
  
• Ward is at its strongest against the Vulnerable and Petrify effects, where increasing your resistance from 1 to 2 reduces damage taken by 1/3 (from 1.5x to 1x).

• This spell deals less damage than Vortex, but can also be used to push monsters out of or into water, or into pits.
  
• I find this spell much weaker than Vortex, however.
  
• Whirlwind's knockback distance increases with spell level, e.g. to 2 tiles at level 2. This makes it a bit tricky to push monsters into pits which are 1 tile wide, unless there's a wall behind the pit.

In contrast to spells, vampire Abilities do not cost a turn; using them is a free action.

• I don't particularly like the Aura ability - it's expensive, symmetrical, and awkward to use.
  
• But I've at least found one decent use for it: It's great against spellcasting bosses without Summon effects, like the Gorgon Queen or the Princess. Such bosses deal ultra-high damage at the expense of both mana and cooldowns, and Aura makes them waste both.
  
• Aura can also help you take less damage from Goblin Arsonists: their bomb still explodes, but now both you and they survive.
  
• And Aura allows you to cross environmental hazards like sunlight, water, or lava.

• Dash benefited a ton from the patch which made abilities no longer cost a turn.
  
• For 10 hp, you can dash away from danger by 4 whole tiles, without losing a turn.
  
• Or you can dash into an enemy who is 4 tiles away, which deals >30 damage and either one-shots the enemy or gives you a good chance to kill them with your first normal melee attack. In either case, you take no damage from the enemy.
  
• You can Dash even when petrified. That’s merely mildly convenient most of the time, but genuinely useful in the Gallery.
  
• Finally, Dash can cross gaps, and hence solve levitation puzzles.

Sapping mana and slowing down nearby enemies is particularly great in the Library.

• This ability grants the FireVeins status, and modifies your resistances as follows: -1 ice resistance, +2 fire resistance, +2 sunlight resistance.
  
• That means you take half the fire damage (1x -> 0.5x, including ~no chance of burning), and half the sunlight damage (1.5x -> 0.75x), but more ice damage.
  
• You also deal fire damage, including some AoE damage.

• Frenzy is a great shield effect. But because it puts you to 1 hp, only use it against enemies that can bleed, so you can quickly regenerate that health.
  
• While this spells sounds like it resets your health to 1, and thus costs health, it often functions as a heal effect instead.
  
• Frenzy can be used to kill or greatly harm neutral vampires, including the Strigoi: move next to your target, activate Frenzy, and then drink a Soul Elixir in the next turn.
  
• Beware: Frenzy's Quills shield does *not* protect you from noncombat damage. Regular damage won't make you bleed or poisoned if the shield prevents the entire damage; but if a monster *ability* inflicts Bleeding or Poison, that goes through the shield; and environmental damage like from water or sunlight also goes through. So such effects can easily kill you if you use Frenzy.

• Siphon only damages enemies who bleed.
  
• Siphon drains health, and can overheal you like Demon Blood does. Overheal from Siphon is capped at 2x max health, however, so if your max health is 120, then Siphon can reach 240 at most.
  
• Siphon can even kill bosses outright. I once killed the Rusalkas purely by casting Siphon.
  
• If you also have Wring, you can use Siphon to drain health from any monster(s), including all the golems in the Workshop. This synergy is relevant for Alchemist, but too unlikely and speculative for other vampires.
  
• Beware: Siphon makes you Glow, which is dangerous as Assassin, or against e.g. the Gorgon Queen.

Throw deals the same damage regardless of whether you throw the target for 1, 2, or 3 tiles.

• Transforms you into a Bat.
  
• Bats have an ultra-high speed of 18, can fly, and belong to the bat faction.
  
• In exchange, their attack is atrocious, and their defense is lousy.
  
• So this spell can be used for levitation, and to run away from danger. But remember that once you use it, both humans *and* vampires become your enemies, so you must run from both.
  
• Also, bats are not vulnerable to water and sunlight.

• Wring can extract blood even from furniture and environmental doodads. Most furniture has little HP and thus yields little blood, but Wring covers a decent area around you, so it's still possible for it to provide net lifegain.
  
• And some furniture has lots of HP, e.g. the cooking pot or the organ; or it comes in big chunks, like the bushes in the Greenhouse, the tombstones in the Graveyard, or the chairs and tables in the Library.

• Acceleration Potion: This effect is really bad if you're a vampire, because it makes you lose health faster; Blood disappears immediately; and the sunlight changes direction extremely quickly.
  
• Big Potion: besides increasing your Str, this potion makes enemies in range vulnerable for 15 turns. This effect reaches far: in a straight line, at least 7 tiles.
  
• Bounty is game-winningly powerful. It grants roughly your current turn counter in $, or maybe more in earlier turns (a Bounty fountain igranted 299 gold in turn 99). So if you use one after turn 1000 or later, you can buy pretty much everything that's available from Hawkers.
  
• Combustion: This potion sounds strictly negative, but it only deals 27 fire damage to you, and the explosion (of radius 2, bigger than normal bombs) destroys all walls in the surroundings, including crystals in the gallery etc.
  
• Deceleration Potion: This potion gives you 50 turns of the Deceleration effect, which slows down time by 10x and thus prolongs debuffs by 10x. This is lethal if you have a damage-dealing debuff like Bleeding or Poison.
  
• Holy Water: Beware of Holy Water: It heals you by a ton... unless you're vulnerable, in which case it kills you first. More specifically, when you use Holy Water as a vulnerable human, you *first* take some significant water damage (though less than as a vampire, because you still have water resistance 4), and then, *if you survive*, heal for a ton.
  
• Silence: Very convenient when used close to Strigoi or Princess before you transform into human/vampire.
  
• Volatile Poison can damage allies and neutrals, but the damage isn't high enough to kill bosses. Because the potion causes Confusion, it can be used in a similar fashion to the Silence Potion, to kill spellcaster bosses like the Princess or the Gorgon Queen. But Confusion also makes your own moves erratic, and is a liability if other monsters are close-by, so it would be less useful against Strigoi.

Lighting: No windows, but lots of torches.

How it can kill you: All the monsters here are scary in their own way.

• Sharks are just powerful.
  
• Eels can repeatedly cast Shock from long range (up to 7 tiles). That's an attack that can't even miss.
  
• And the harpies flee from you until they can swarm you. That is, they only come closer when another monster is close-by, i.e. within 3 or 4 tiles.
  
• As soon as the Rusalka bosses see you, they cast Entrance 3 on you to beckon you into their pool where they drown you. The way Entrance works is that, after you take an action, if there's a Rusalka in sight, then your character automatically takes 2 steps towards the center of the Rusalka pool.

How it can help you win:

• The area is full of fountains. Fountains last for 100 turns once discovered, give you an identified potion effect (e.g. you don't have to drink from bad fountains), and identify the corresponding type of potion.
  
• This side branch can already spawn on floor 3, is easy to cheese, and provides tons of XP. In my Despair mode runs I regularly reached level 7 before floor 4 by beating the Baths.

Tips for survival:

• All the monsters here have significant weaknesses; in particular, most are water-bound and are thus easy to evade.
  
• If possible, ignore the sharks by staying outside their range.
  
• If possible, stay outside the range of eels, too.
  
• You can lure harpies to you one by one by staying close but outside the range of a shark or eel.
  
• Do not get close to the Rusalkas unless you've cleared out most of the harpies, or they'll swarm you to death.
  
• Turning off enough torches to create patches of darkness is hard, but can be profitable.
  
• Being a vampire in a water area is very dangerous. If you get Entranced and risk getting pulled into water, consider using a Soul Elixir.
  
• The entrancing Rusalka boss is ultra-scary as a vampire. But humans have a whole bunch of ranged abilities to combat them.
  
• The Entranced status forces you to move towards the entrancing source, *if you see it*. So if you can move out of sight, then you won't be forced to move even if you're still Entranced. Similarly, if you can turn off enough torches, or blind yourself with a Blindness potion, then you won't be forced to move. Additional ways of preventing Entranced include the Clarity potion, which lasts for 40 turns and prevents Entranced; as well as the Acceleration Potion. Unholy Essence can also save you from Entranced in a pinch, because it makes the Rusalkas invisible, but it doesn't last long enough to kill them.
  
• Another way to combat Entranced is to prevent your own movement: Once you stand on the edge of the pool, in melee range of the Rusalkas, then you can use a Petrify potion or the Calcify ability so you can't be pulled into the pool.
  
• Also, the Rusalka pool is surrounded by four pillars, and when you stand directly diagonally behind one, you sometimes don't see any Rusalkas because they're obscured by the pillar. That's an unreliable method of survival, but can at least be used to rest or recover mana.
  
• If you're entranced and too close to the Rusalka pool, escape via utility spells and potions, like Teleport or Blink. Also, Cleanse can remove the Entranced status outright.
  
• Bullets can finish off injured Rusalkas, though they can't typically kill them all, because the Rusalkas have lots of HP and pistol accuracy decreases with distance.
  
• The Quench ability (which turns off nearby torches in a large radius, and throws the area into darkness) only helps a bit against Entranced: the Rusalkas can still cast Entranced once you're in melee range, and you'll still be pulled into the water as a vampire, probably because you see in darkness.
  
• The Focus spell can *not* clear the Baths, because you have to cast Focus 3x on consecutive turns to deal fire damage, and Entranced interrupts that.

Can this area be cheesed?

• The Rusalkas are very cheesable because they can't follow you. For example, you can alternately cast ranged damage spells from maximum range, move backwards if Entranced, and briefly rest to recover mana. With this method, the Rusalkas are easy to kill via Miasma 1, even by a human fighter with Int 9.
  
• Glaciate, the spell which turns water into ice, can cheese the entire area. In fact, if you know that there's a Baths area, strongly consider picking this spell to make this area *much* easier. The Rusalkas become essentially harmless once Glaciated, since they can neither move nor cast Entrance (because their pool no longer exists); just beware of the harpies.
  
• The Vortex spell can pull Rusalkas out of the water, but this strategy is quite risky because Vortex has a shorter range than Entrance.
  
• Repeated use of the vampire Siphon ability can kill the Rusalkas by itself. But this strategy requires getting within vision range of the Rusalkas, and is thus very dangerous.

Lighting: Dungeon-wide lighting can be toggled via a lever in the control room of the Dungeon.

How it can kill you:

• The Dungeon is full of spikes.
  
• All the monsters here are suited for a spikey area: Some can fly or attack from a distance; others can cast Levitate or Vortex, or petrify you on top of spikes.
  
• The human boss is scary when it chases you into the spikes before you can deactivate them.

How it can help you win:

• The Dungeon contains a few Blood items. This also means that you can always become a vampire to fight the boss.
  
• The area contains several Tomes of Pain. Once you read one, you get +1 random stat point and +1 level on a random spell. Then your spells are randomized, and your stats and spells are "scrambled": i.e. if you had str 10, dex 11, int 18, and randomly gain +1 int, then you have 10, 11, and 19 stat points respectively, but your new 19-point stat can be any of str, dex, or int. -> For most characters that can be a significant advantage, especially if you get multiple Tomes and thus multiple stat points and spell levels. Also note that vampire Abilities are not scrambled.
  
• The Dungeon contains demonic imp monsters, whose Demon Blood can grant vampire abilities.
  
• The area contains multiple Iron Maidens; the allies therein can help you kill other bosses. Just don't open the Iron Maidens until you've disabled the spikes, or your allies will immediately die.

Tips for survival:

• Spikes trigger every three turns, and furthermore there are safe zones.
  
• Due to all the ranged enemies here, it's preferable to be a human with bullets or ranged spells.
  
• If you see monsters immediately upon entering this area, then lure them upstairs through the staircase. This way you don't have to fight them amidst spikes.
  
• A Levitate spell or Float potion could help here, but is not necessary.
  
• Beware: The damage from Tome of Pain is Psychic, and can make you Vulnerable for 15 turns.
  
• Because the Prince boss uses a delayed attack, he is quite easy to beat, all things considered, provided you don't fight him in a corridor or on top of spikes.

Can this area be cheesed?

• Surprisingly, once you reach the boss, you can kill him while you're human, and at essentially zero risk: Once you reach him and his "control center", turn off the spikes. Fetch a Cape for temporary levitation, then turn off the lights, wait until the boss moves into a spike area, and turn on the spikes. Then stay close to him and wait until the spikes kill him.

Lighting: Torches.

How it can kill you:

• The Gorgon Queen turns you to stone, then hits you with a Blast 3 spell for 100+ damage.
  
• The floor contains several monsters which have been turned to stone. These monsters are only turned to stone for some large but finite number of turns.

How it can help you win:

• This area contains lots of powerful items, encased in Crystals.
  
• These Crystals can be destroyed via your own Blast 3 or 4 spell, by using bombs.
  
• You can even open them by taking hits from the Gorgon Queen’s Blast. This is not advised unless you can survive a hit for >100 damage, e.g. via the vampire’s Aura ability.
  
• Some Gallery treasures are in 5x5 enclosures, and one can Blink into those.

Tips for survival:

• Turn off the lights, even as a human.
  
• Try not to give the Gorgon Queen a free line of sight; stone form only lasts for a few turns, so if the Gorgon Queen needs more time to reach you, that gives you time to break free.
  
• The Gorgon Queen can be killed by darkening the area, then shooting a bunch of bullets with diagonal trajectories. However, aiming in the darkness is difficult.
  
• When petrified, use an escape ability like Blink, Teleport, or Dash.
  
• The Cleanse spell can remove Petrify.
  
• The Ward spell significantly reduces damage taken from Blast after being petrified, specifically by 1/3 (from 1.5x to 1x).
  
• Be careful when using the Siphon ability here, as it makes you Glow.
  
• The Disrupt ability is good here, but when used at a distance of 1 diagonal tile, it's not quite enough to prevent Petrify + Blast.

Lighting: Outside but with no sunbeams. Also fireflies and a few torches. So it's bright during the day, and mostly darkness at night.

How it can kill you:

• Lots of skeleton monsters, including ranged archers.
  
• Contains few blood sources.

Tips for survival:

• Surprisingly, skeletons don't have night vision. So turn off the torches to have an easier time.

Lighting: Dark except for a few unlit torches.

How it can kill you:

• There are tons of vampire enemies, including the ultra-scary Vampire Nobles. (Other monsters are harmless and little more than blood sources.)
  
• Contains relatively few blood sources.
  
• The boss area often contains Moroi enemies, which are scary from a distance.
  
• The boss, Vlad (Strigoi), swarms you with vampire minions. Specifically, he can summon Devourers, Brawlers, or Nobles directly next to you.

How it can help you win:

• The Mausoleum contains some high-powered equipment. In Mausoleum I, it's just lying around, so a vampire can reach it for little cost.
  
• In Mausoleum II, there's lots of guaranteed equipment inside the boss arena, "locked" behind water, where you're expected to reach it as a human, usually after fighting the boss.

Tips for survival:

• Vlad (Strigoi)'s summon ability requires mana and cooldowns. So if you can't cheese the boss, then it might also work to pick off his summons one-by-one, though this is definitely much riskier than if you cheese him. Only attempt this if you can confront Strigoi in a corridor, and then only if you can see yourself quickly beat 2 Nobles in melee range.
  
• Do not fight the boss if you cannot fight or escape from powerful vampires in melee range.
  
• If you have an Invisibility spell or effect, you can attack Strigoi from a distance, and he won't summon monsters. However, this doesn't work in melee range, where he can still see you and summon his minions.

Can this area be cheesed?

• If you have 2x Celestial Essence (which generates a few turns of sunlight), you can transform into a non-vampire (human, bat, werewolf) relatively close to the boss, then use those Essences to kill both the boss and his summons. However, the Strigoi area contains Morois which must first be defeated before this strategy becomes viable.
  
• Tempest 1 is enough to clear this floor (assuming you have some spare food), but any missteps can easily kill you. For example: Vampire Nobles can survive for a few turns in water; Brawlers can knock you into the water, at which point Strigoi might summon a new vampire on the tile you'd just occupied; and if you don't clear Morois beforehand, they'll kill you from a distance and make you vulnerable to the water you summon with Tempest.
  
• It might also be possible to pull vampires into the water by moving into one of the four water-locked niches, then using the Vortex spell.
  
• If you're a vampire with the Bat ability or with a Float or Bat potion, then you can pick up the equipment in Mausoleum II as a vampire. However, vampires are hostile to you while you're transformed into a bat. So only transform into one if the Strigoi is far away, or if you don't intend to defeat him; otherwise he will summon a horde of vampire minions you'll eventually have to deal with.

Lighting: Torches, bombs, and magma.

How it can kill you:

• The area is absolutely swarming with goblins. The scariest goblins here might be the Goblin Anarchists which blow themselves up if they get close.
  
• The boss throws lots of bombs.
  
• If you move too quickly, it's very easy to accidentally run into a bomb.
  
• The bombs can knock you into other bombs, or into magma.
  
• The boss spawns a lethal bomb on death, the Big One, which covers the entire level. (I once survived the Big One bomb when I had fire resist 4 (= -50% damage), when I took 89 fire damage. So it might deal 180~200 fire damage.) This damage seems independent of distance.

How it can help you win:

• The area contains some walled-off Arcane Hammers, which can be reached via bombs from monsters, or maybe via a high-level Blast spell.
  
• The center area with the magma contains a huge walled-off treasure vault. The magma can be circumvented via levitation or turned into water via the Tempest spell. You can also cross a 1-tile-wide magma pit by getting knocked over it via any bomb (h/t Keriew).
  
• All these goodies disappear when the boss' bomb explodes, but they're strictly optional to collect.

Tips for survival:

• Move very slowly and cautiously so you don't accidentally run into a bomb.
  
• I don't know if there's a way to defuse the Big One bomb; my preferred solution is to lure the boss to the staircase, and to kill him such that I can climb the stairs within ~4 turns of killing him. Then I wait until the Big One explodes, and climb back down to collect the ring.

Lighting: Like outside, i.e. flooded with sunlight during the day (6 am to 6 pm), and dark during the night unless it's a full moon.

How it will kill you:

• In sunlight, Green Men are really scary: they gain a bunch of buffs, including better stats and higher speed (so they can chase you down), and are even healed during sunlight. In Despair mode, they're nigh-unkillable in sunlight.
  
• The Varcolac boss is a harmless human during the day, and transforms into a werewolf at night. He transforms every night, but gets extra healing during the full moon. Werewolves are very fast, very strong, can crit you for ~50 damage (with a crit chance of ~45%), heal when they crit you, and are nigh-unkillable during the full moon.

Tips for survival:

• If you can flee from a Green Man to the staircase, then you can take it to the general floor, where it will still keep its buffs but at least will no longer get healed.
  
• Only challenge Varcolac to a straight-up melee fight after using multiple potions, e.g. Big Potion + Strength Potion.
  
• Definitely do not fight Varcolac during the full moon.

Can this area be cheesed?

• You can fight Varcolac in his weaker human form by transforming into a werewolf during daytime (via the Luna potion, or as a Shapeshifter by using the Focus spell outside the Greenhouse).
  
• Varcolac is super scary in melee range, but easy enough to defeat with ranged level 2 damage spells like Miasma 2 or Shock 2. However, you might need a mana regeneration effect like a Mana potion.
  
• You can likely beat Varcolac by creating a shooting gallery via the Encase spell, assuming you have enough bullets (15+).

Lighting: Mostly dark. A few unlit torches. During the day, sunlight shines through a few holes in the ceiling.

How it can kill you:

• There are lots of scary monsters, like Crocodiles or eels.
  
• All the beasts are entirely invisible in darkness, in contrast to vampires with their red eyes.
  
• At 6 am, a vampire could get surprised by the sunspots.

How it can help you win:

• In contrast to the Sewers, this area contains items and potions.

Lighting: Torches.

How it can kill you:

• The Hedge Maze can cost lots of time to navigate, which increases hunger and the vampirism gauge.
  
• Contains no blood, so a vampire will lose tons of life here.

How it can help you win:

• Leads to the Hive, which yields honey.

Tips for survival:

• The best way to navigate this area is when you're a human in a floor close-by, and are very low on health. If you'd rest in that situation, instead spend that time to navigate part of the Hedge Maze to find the entrance to the Hive, even if you're not yet strong enough to clear the Hive.
  
• You can't trust the main screen here, so look at the minimap instead.
  
• The labyrinthine path to the Hive is not necessarily unique.
  
• The spells Blink and Teleport are great here.

Can this area be cheesed?

• The Revealing Essence potion can reveal the entire map.
  
• Hedges can be destroyed, for instance via the spells Blast, Firestorm, or Bomb. This could be warranted if the route to the Hive seems likely to be long.

Lighting: Torches

How it can kill you:

• Killer Bees are genuinely very strong, while Worker Bees are individually weak but come in big packs.
  
• All monsters on this floor deal significant poison damage.
  
• The Queen Bee summons larvae as soon as she sees you, which transform into more bee monsters.

How it can help you win:

• The area contains enough honey to make the food clock unimportant.

Tips for survival:

• Bees don't have night vision. So turn off the torches, even as a human.
  
• In particular, if you don't turn off the torches, then the Queen Bee can see you through a wall and begin summoning monsters before you can even reach it; that can make the Hive unconquerable.
  
• Shock can shoot through the destructible Honey Comb walls.
  
• Most Honey is in the Queen's room. Once cleared, you have enough food to win, so there's no need to clear the rest of the Hive. You can do so if you want, but this increases vampirism as a human, or costs health as a vampire.

Can this area be cheesed?

• Miasma I can clear the Hive easily via darkness (i.e. this rules out Light Mage). Just shoot Miasma at honeycomb walls when Killer Bees or the Queen Bee are directly on the other side.
  
• Vortex ignores walls, so Vortex 1 can easily clear the Hive... except for the Queen Bee, which contrary to appearances does not actually fly.

Lighting: Torches, windows.

How it can kill you:

• In Laboratory I, time is accelerated by 10x, same as with the Acceleration Potion. So blood evaporates instantly, and hunger and vampirism rise very quickly. For humans, health and mana regenerate very quickly, and vampires lose life very quickly. Human spellcasters can cast their spells every turn with no cooldown. Statuses only last 1/10 as long and hence expire very quickly. Also, the sunlight pattern moves super quickly.
  
• In Laboratory II, time is decelerated by 10x, same as with the Deceleration Potion. So blood lasts essentially forever, and health and mana don't regenerate. Statuses last 10x as long. This area also makes you Unstable.
  
• Statuses that would normally not be too bad last nigh-forever in Laboratory II and are hence extremely scary. Like Bleeding for a few dozen turns, Burning for ~100 turns, or being Slow for ~150 turns.

Tips for survival:

• In Despair mode, the time and resource losses incurred in Laboratory I are so severe that I'd skip the area entirely unless I had a Revealing Essence potion to reveal the map.
  
• Because of the Unstable status, don't use blink or teleport abilities in Laboratory II, and don't hit Time Crystals.
  
• In Laboratory I, you can hit Time Crystals to gain a few precious turns of reprieve. These can also be destroyed from a distance, including via the pistol. Note that they grant 5 turns of Unstable, and this timer only counts down once time resumes. Do not destroy a second Time Crystal while Unstable, lest you might get teleported to the Maelstrom.
  
• If you're affected by a scary status effect in Laboratory II, go back to Lab I.
  
• Laboratory II contains scary monsters like vampire Nobles and Ice Golems. To combat them, you can break the windows in the outer walls; the ensuing sunlight will damage both.

Lighting: Torches.

How it can kill you:

• The Princess is a very powerful spellcaster and can easily kill an unprepared vampire. She can cast both Glow and several damage spells.
  
• There's so much furniture that the risk of mimics is high.
  
• This area contains some of the most dangerous monsters in the game, like human spellcasters, Vampire Nobles, and Ruby Golems.

How it can help you win:

• The area contains tons of grimoires, manuals, and primers.

Tips for survival:

• The area is easier to traverse as a human.
  
• The princess is much easier to fight in the darkness, and you can turn off the torches in preparation.
  
• Anti-spellcaster effects are great against the princess, like the Disrupt ability or the Silence potion.
  
• Do not fight Ruby Golems in melee range. They can OTK you at full health.

Lighting: A few torches, some unlit. Mostly darkness.

How it can kill you:

• The area is filled with strong beasts.
  
• The beasts have high damage and/or high hitpoints.
  
• Crocodiles can pull you into the water.
  
• Many beasts can see in the dark.

How it can help you win:

• The beasts here yield a lot of XP, so you can usually reach level 5 or 6 by clearing the area.

Tips for survival:

• The beasts are not worth fighting as a human. Melee fighters take too much damage, and level 1 combat spells don't deal enough damage.
  
• Conversely, vampires have an easy time in the menagerie, because all beasts bleed.
  
• Crocodiles can oneshot you with a crit, but prefer to drag you towards the water. If you manipulate the crocodile's position such that it always pulls you towards but not yet into the water, then you can get free hits in and heal without ever getting dragged in.

Lighting: A few torches. Mostly dark.

How it can kill you:

• The water is cold and deals damage every turn. If you stay too long in cold water you get the Slow debuff. And then dampness, the equivalent of the Wet status, deals some more damage.
  
• One typically reaches this area by dropping down the pit in the Menagerie, in which case one could land in cold water, or close to monsters.
  
• This area contains several scary monsters. Yetis can deal high damage from range, Ice Golems heal while on ice, and Naiads are more scary in water areas.
  
• All monsters in this area are invisible in the dark until they move next to you.

How it can help you win:

• The area contains enough Ale to make the food clock unimportant.

Tips for survival:

• The area is only dimly lit by torches. Because most of the monsters here cannot see in the dark, you can somewhat reduce the danger here by turning off the torches and only walking around when rested.
  
• This area is safer to reach if you can use the stairs, e.g. via Bombs or a high-level Blast spell.
  
• If you drop down into this area, you can't predict where you'll land. So rest to full health before dropping down, be prepared to immediately use escape abilities, and think twice before dropping down as a vampire.

Lighting: Torches.

How it can kill you:

• This branch can contain all or most regular monsters, and they're all anonymized by a permanent hallucination effect.
  
• Those monsters could be anything, even Ruby Golems which can one-shot you from full health.
  
• Pharmacopoeia II contains the Spiridus boss, an extremely fast flying Faerie which attacks with psychic damage and hence has a 100% hit chance and a chance to cause the Vulnerable status. It has moderate resistance to Fire, Ice, and Electric damage.

How it can help you win:

• This branch yields lots of potions, including precious Soul Elixirs.
  
• Pharmacopoeia I also contains a hidden entrance to the Temple, which can be entered once.

A few tips for identifying anonymized monsters:

• If you can see glowing eyes in the darkness, the monster is a vampire.
  
• If the sprite hovers, it's a flyer, like a Harpy. If the monster both flies and is also extremely fast, it's Spiridus.
  
• If you're in melee range and the Talk button appears in your toolbar in the bottom right, it's an ally, i.e. either human or vampire.
  
• Potential exploit or bug: If you see a new monster on-screen, try to rest. If it's an enemy, the log will say "There is an enemy nearby. You wait one turn."

Tips for survival:

• Turn off the torches, even as a human.
  
• Stealth can help you survive, and it can also help you identify monsters by whether they have night vision.
  
• You don't need to clear Pharmacopoeia I before beating the boss. And after you beat the boss, all monsters will be de-anonymized.
  
• It's easy to identify the boss in floor II: whichever creature moves about the fastest is the boss.
  
• In Despair difficulty, assume that every slow enemy that a) follows you and b) has no night vision is a golem, and thus potentially a Ruby Golem which could one-shot you. I've been hit before for 126 damage.
  
• Do NOT use Holy Water to heal vs. the boss here, if you're already Vulnerable.
  
• Note that the Quake spell can't damage the boss here, so skip this area if that's your only source of damage.
  
• Vortex is great against Spiridus: because Vortex stuns monsters for a turn, you can spam this spell to damage the boss and to pull it into melee range.

Lighting: A few torches. Mostly darkness.

How it can kill you:

• A bunch of monsters have knockback, and can throw you into the pit: Brawler vampires, exploding Goblin Anarchists
  
• Some other monsters benefit from clear lines of sight (toadstools, spellcasters) or mobility (bats and demon bats).
  
• The Demon Bats in particular are extremely strong against spellcaster builds whose spells can't kill them in melee range (e.g. Miasma, Quake).

How it can help you win:

• The Demon Bats drop demon blood, which yields vampire abilities.

Tips for survival:

• Abilities like Levitation or the Bat potion could help here.
  
• Stair-hopping is powerful here: if moving between levels would put an enemy on a floorless tile, it directly falls down.

Lighting: A few torches. Mostly darkness.

How it can help you win: It can't, so just skip this area. In contrast to the Grotto, this area contains no items, so it's just not worth entering in a 4-ring Despair run.

Lighting: A few torches. Mostly darkness.

How it can kill you:

• The area contains a few powerful vampires, including Vampire Nobles.
  
• Vampires can quickly heal in the blood pool.
  
• The captive spellcasters in the bottom-left and bottom-right corners can easily kill you if you're a vampire.

How it can help you win:

• You can enter the blood pool to easily transform into a vampire and thereby heal to full health.
  
• Alternatively, you can navigate the challenging area as a human in order to rescue the human spellcasters and gain some very powerful allies.
  
• The area also yields two potions in the top-left and top-right corners.

Tips for survival:

• The Temple can only be entered once.
  
• The Temple entrance room contains a locked door. It can be opened with a Master Key.
  
• The door can be circumvented via a Blast or Bomb spell, or a teleport effect.

Lighting: Like outside, plus a few torches. So the tower is flooded with sunlight during daytime, and is otherwise only lit by torches except during the full moon.

How it can kill you:

• Contains tons of gargoyles which try to surround you and then turn to stone, which makes them nigh-unkillable.
  
• The Capcaun boss can oneshot you in melee range. He also has the Quake 3 spell, which deals a ton of damage when he's close.
  
• The Capcaun boss has ~300 HP, or maybe less HP but a bit of health regeneration.
  
• You instantly die if you fall off the tower.

Tips for survival:

• The boss is really slow.
  
• Stay out of range of the boss and defeat the gargoyles first. For example, you can pick off gargoyles by abusing the staircase. They can't even turn into stone statues while hovering above the pits in the Rafters.
  
• Then beat the boss via a ranged hit and run strategy. If you can't fight him exclusively at range, and deal 300+ ranged damage to him, then skip this area.
  
• Turn off the torches to make the fight easier. The boss doesn't seem to cast Quake when it's dark, for instance.
  
• Capcaun can be easily killed by throwing him off the Watchtower. But this is not recommended because it makes his ring inaccessible.

Lighting: Torches, electricity grids, and a few golem varieties (e.g. Sunstone Golem, Magma Golem).

How it can kill you:

• The area contains a few artificers and tons of golems, but no boss.
  
• There are a ton of golems in the area with the ring, all behind Crystal walls. Once you pick up the ring, the golems are freed.
  
• For vampires, there's almost no blood here.

Tips for survival:

• As a melee build, it's ill-advised to try to fight your way out legitimately. Golems deal way too much damage in Despair mode, and once Magma Golems follow you into the corridor, they fill it with magma to boot. Spells like Levitate or Tempest can help against the magma, whereas Dash or transforming into a bat won't work.
  
• A vampire with the Wring ability could maybe clear this area, but risks getting OTK-ed at full health by something like a crit from a Ruby Golem.
  
• If you turn off the torches and also have an invisibility ability like Invisibility or Fade, you might be able to escape from the most dangerous section, the corridors before the golem holding area. However, this strategy is very dangerous, because invisibility doesn't last long enough. And the golems will start moving towards you as soon as they see you.

Can this area be cheesed?

• If you have any of the spells Quake, Blast, or Whirlwind, you can kill the golems from range, while they're still imprisoned. This does not require a spellcaster build; even a human with Int 9 can do it, assuming you have lots of spare food. Non-spellcasters can't kill the Magma Golems, however, because those heal up faster than you can damage them.
  
• If you have a Teleport or Blink spell or potion, or a Recall potion, you can make a beeline for the ring, then escape that way.
  
• You might also be able to escape by destroying walls via a high-level Blast spell or bombs or something.

I hope you found this guide useful. Let me know either way in the comments :).

While you won't be able to get achievements this way, these seeds can be used to practice specific characters under easy starting conditions. Note that you must choose both the given seed and the given disguise, otherwise the map generation will be different.

• Alchemist, seed PZWUYPFDOGQVEY: The starting room contains two fountains with Demon Blood and Soul Elixir. By floor 2 or 3 there are at least 4 grimoires, plus there's a key on floor 2 and a chest on floor 3.
  
• Berserker, seed ECEASHJEJYDLCO: There's a Fountain of Bounty in the Baths, and there are lots of grimoires available on the ground and from early Hawkers. So this seed is e.g. very suitable for a pure Int-based Berserker.
  
• Officer, seed CIOSPIEVUUYGDI: You'll find a silly number of grimoires by floor 5.
  
• Warp Mage, seed BUHHCVGKVCZGTP: You'll find 4+ grimoires by floor 3 (!).
  
• Warp Mage, seed YCLUZTMVXMTUAR: You'll find lots of grimoires throughout the run, including 2-3 early on. And here's a link[www.goldenkronehotel.com] to the victorious morgue file.
  
• Warp Mage, seed NIIMXQYJYYWQQD: You'll find ~4 grimoires by floor ~5.