Dwarves: Glory, Death and Loot is a tactical, looter, min-maxer's paradise. At the current state of the game's early access, 3/21/2025, there are some common stumbling blocks people come across, so hopefully this will help.

You need to reach level 50 to unlock all the menus in game, so if you haven't yet, this may mention things you haven't seen yet.

There are things here that are true for the first ~100 levels but change past that point.

1. Main Menu

On the main menu, occasionally dwarves will drop chests with gems, seems to top out at 5-6 chests after an hour. There's occasionally a drum roll and a bucket headed dwarf appears that sparkles that moves quickly. You can click on them until they drop a chest of gems and the sparkles disappear. Overall, this is a slow way to get gems, but useful if you need just a couple more or go AFK for a bit.

2. Start Menu

All the clans are the same, they are just different save files. The rune trees can be configured differently. There is a VERY important button here in the bottom right for Daily Quests. This button is also buried in the Formations Tab in the main game. These refresh daily, each give you 100 gems for completion, and you have many rerolls (15) to get them to things you know you can achieve, so reroll them until you get ones you know for 100% sure you can do.

Easiest ones include:
Kill 50 orcs with Damage Type: Fire (use fire staffs)
Forge X green or blue rarity items
Kill Orc named "..." (reroll fights until an elite appears and check to see if it has the right name),
Use formation "..." (look to make sure it's something you can do)

3. Rune Menu
There are + shaped buttons on each arm, rune, and advanced class. These are what you press to level up that arm, that rune, or that advanced class. There are 3 tiers of runes, depending on how far out the radial arm they are. The runes are offensive, defensive, ultimate and support. You can change runes by clicking on them, some versions require gems to be unlocked. You can pick runes to target a specific class for a 3x bonus by right-clicking the rune and paying gems to unlock that class-targeted rune. Some runes start targeting specific classes.

Intelligence (2 o'clock pistion) Tier 2 & Tier 3 is set to Mage
Dexterity (3 oclock position) Tier 2 is set to Archer
Stamina (9 o'clock position) Tier 1 is set to Knight (Only Knights and their advanced classes have block chance anyways)
Strength (12 o'clock position Tier 3 is set to Warrior

In general, the best stats to invest in are Stamina and Dexterity because they benefit all classes. However, unlocking advanced classes can be worthwhile once you have the gems. Rune cost goes up per upgrade, so it's best to activate all runes you've reached, then start investing in them equally, eg. Get them all to +1, then +2, etc.

The only difference between gems and Rune Points is gems can be used to unlock specific runes choices in the rune slots, so don't worry about saving gems unless you really feel like you need a specific rune choice. Once unlocked, these rune choices are unlocked forever, but only apply to that Tier. IE, you have to unlock Lightning Resistance in Tier I, II & III separately.

4. Difficulty
Play either Easy or Medium difficulty until you really understand the game. Hard difficulty might be tempting, but it only multiplies the gems from retiring your clan, and when a dwarf dies in Hard, you lose ALL the XP and equipment (including precious artifacts) they had.

5. Gems
Your main source of Gems is daily quests and retiring clans. You will also occasionally get some from other sources. The amount you get from retiring the clan goes up every 10 levels, and is greater the further you go. IE. You get 15 at level 10, but 34 at level 20 (more than 2x).

6. Main Hall
In the main Hall, you can click on the formations tab, then click the ! icon in the top left to see your quest progress and turn them in for your reward once finished.
Do NOT sell dwarves in the main hall, only sell them in the Tavern so you get Beer for their XP levels. Level 1 dwarfs don't matter.

7. Recruitment and Market
You will occasionally get artifacts for sale, dwarves with double the regular stats, and at level 50+ "Veteran Dwarves" for sale. They have special symbols and/or green stats to draw attention to them. If you cannot afford them, you can lock them with the padlock icon so they stick around.

To get advanced class weapons, you need press the chest icon in the bottom right of the marketplace. The items will be of random rarity according to your shop level. While they cost 5000 initially, they cost 1000 to reroll their bonuses when upgrading at the forge.

Advanced class weapons require 10x of 2 different stats (Cannoneers need 20 Dex). Only earned stats from class and artifacts count (the blue number in the tavern).

8. Forge Menu (no spoilers)
The recruit and veteran items with no stats are useless, and never break down to mythril and sell for 0. However, if you combine 3 of them (but NOT all of the same one), you will get a random item with stats.

If you put a single item on the left of the forge, and forge it, you'll get a single white item, letting you reroll it's extra stats.

Double check the stat bonuses of the zone you're in before forging, as that'll dictate the stats on the item.

When you forge, max bonus stats have a special rune symbol pattern to draw your attention to that one being the highest stat. For example, you can roll Str 3, 4 or 5 and the last has the special rune pattern.

6. Tavern Menu
You can put artifacts on a dwarf and level them here to get the stat bonuses. You can also have up to 10 dwarves in reserve. This does NOT work with the golden nugget's money, as it specifies "from battle."

7. Battle Menu
You can right-click a battle, which will then show how much XP each dwarf will get in other menus, allowing you to see what dwarves are about to level.

Rare Battles with champions are primarily for money, as they often give less XP, so they may not be worth it. They are also more difficult and can cause wipes (be ready to retreat if your side is doing badly). Particularly look out for champions that deal damage types you don't have resistances to, such as a Frost Mage.

When you reroll battles, you occasionally get a freebie "treasure card" that gives you some mythril. There is no downside to taking the treasure.

8. Team Composition: Follow the 1+3+3+3 Rule

The 1+3+3+3 rule is a general guideline for building teams, although there are teams that don't follow this rule. The way it works is you have 1 tank (generally a warrior with a shield), then 3 priests OR 3 banners, then 3 of two other classes.

A few examples/synergies

Cannoneers unlocked (and no other advanced classes):
1 Warrior with Shield,
3 bannermen (can start as priests until enough banners unlocked and found),
3 assassins
3 archers.
Over time, you'd replace the archers with cannoneers, and perhaps the rogues, too, if you get that far.

Staff Users:
1 Warrior with Shield
3 Priests
3 Mages
3 (your choice)

Paladins Unlocked
7 Warriors
3 Priests
Over time, replace warriors with Paladins.

9. Archers Kind of Suck, so does Poison
You may notice archers kind of suck, and so does poison. Bows have NO extra stat damage on their regular attacks. Archers really can only do 3 things right now. The first is, 3 of them giving you the formation bonus to boost all your other physical damage dealer's damage. The second is, leveling up your dex for Warlock or Cannoneer, although assassins can also do this. The third is, with specifically the Bow of Wrath and Explosive quiver, they can do a lot of damage to large groups with their ultimate.

Poison sucks because it needs to be stacked a lot. This means having lots of assassins, having rune tree unlocks that boost poison, and poison artifacts.