STATS AND WHAT THEY DO: http://steamproxy.net/app/331440/discussions/0/620700961114019996

When you die and it's game over, you do get to keep all the black coins you've collected so far. But that's it, everything else you lose.

The overworld (aka outside) map stays the same always. The dungeon maps slightly randomize though.

In the lower left, the red half of the orb is your life, and the purple half is your stamina/magic. Your stamina drains from blocking attacks, but some weapons let you cast magic which can drain stamina also, and using a staff to attack or charge up a spell will use up tons of your stamina.

When your stamina is drained, every hit on you will take damage, you will not be capable of blocking, and you will also be unable to run which means you will be even easier to hit and kill. Running out of stamina is most likely the thing that will get you killed in every single playthrough of this game. Try to watch your stamina, and if it's low, run away. If your stamina drops from max to empty after only a couple of hits, you're probably using a staff which is a magic weapon. Try to never use staves, ever. Don't even pick them up.

Your stamina only refills after a couple of seconds out of combat. There can still be enemies on the screen, and you can still be blocking, as long as you aren't being hit, or as long as you aren't hitting enemies.

When you find a room in the game that has a selection of stat orbs, I think you should only take ones with strength or dexterity. That's what you'll want for beating the final boss anyway.

The game scales with your level. That means that enemies become stronger the more levels you have. It's probably more about gear. You want to find a way to get some excellent gear, either through luck, or finding those two shops that sell decent stuff (the black chest room near the mountains, or the guy selling orange gear in the forest).

Try to full clear the normal world's game map. You can find secrets and get great items, or at the very least get tons of experience and level up, or get a good chance at good gear. Just look for black squares you haven't discovered. This is my opinion anyway.

When you die, your big blue extra life heart drops wherever you died. You can return to it and pick it up to get your extra life back, and you should do this.

That extra life is the girl's ghost from the beginning of the game. When you get to the final boss, you put the extra life into her tomb and lose that extra life, so you can't do the fight with an extra life.

Life steal can be a very good stat if you can get it.

The item quality goes like this, from weakest to strongest:
Gray
Dark Blue
Orange
Purple
Green
Red
Bright Blue

There are a few extra shades of purple and blue that are quite similar, but in general you should go by item level, and whatever stats you think are better. For example, you probably want strength instead of spirit, but if the damage is higher go for that anyway.

Holding A (on a controller) lets you block, but you should be facing the enemy to make sure you really block. You can also parry and counterattack by blocking. Holding A can also let you charge up a magic attack or buff.

A quick tap of A (on a controller) will do a quick strike.

Simply running into an enemy will auto attack with a flurry of attacks, and this is your best way to attack and hit an enemy hard and fast. Learn to build a rhythm of laying into an enemy and then blocking their attacks.

Don't take on more than one armored knight at once. They will stun you which will paralyze you and will kill you easily. Try to single them out in a clear part of the screen, and do a lot of hit and run attacks on them, blocking won't be enough because they will drain your purple meter stamina juice extremely fast.

RISKY WEAPONS: Bows and staves can be tricky, especially when you're just starting off. Bows are fun to play with but enemies will tear you up, especially in dungeons where it's more cramped. At least that's how I played, I was big on blocking and parrying. Some people swear by the bows and they love bows, and the bow would make the true final boss super easy because you can snipe her from across the room. I leave this decision up to you ultimately.

As far as staves, holding the block button with them will charge up a spell, which drains your stamina massively. Try not to confuse a staff with a spear, as spears are great weapons and are one-handed weapons so you can duel wield them with any other one-handed weapon.

G.Sword or G.Axe are two-handed weapons. Everything else can be dual wielded, such as hammers/maces, daggers, swords, spears, staves, axes/hatchets, books/artifacts (off handed only), shields (off handed only). Dual wielding I think is better than using a two-handed weapon, but again, it depends on how good the item is in general.

Press Y (on a controller) to go into your inventory. Pressing A (on a controller) with an item selected will let you drop an item. This is good if you want to drop a one-handed off-hand weapon instead of replacing your main-hand weapon, if you're duel wielding and see an upgrade over your other hand weapon.

Some trees or even dungeon walls can be run into to open a secret doorway which will have a cave inside that usually has a good purple piece of gear. These seem to appear kind of randomly. You can sometimes find maps on the internet of where these secret areas are supposed to be.

Always try to keep track of where a camp fire is, using the camp fire refills your health. Sometimes when you wake up from using the camp fire, someone will suddenly be there. If you talk to them, they'll fight you, but they're almost always incredibly easy, just run into them a bunch and do some blocking.

Inside a dungeon, if you clear a room, purple dog creatures will be feeding on the corpses of enemies. These purple dogs have a MASSIVE chance to drop a healing potion when you kill them. If they don't, you can almost always backtrack back and forth through the doorway to get more purple dogs to spawn, so you can farm them for health potions. This is a great way to get your health back if you've taken too much damage.

The easiest way to get through the mountain or frozen mazes: look for which exit point has a missing bush/rock, and go through that exit point. When you realize this, the mazes are no problem. The frozen maze has a big golem, and you have to talk to him first before you can do damage to him. He takes a ton of damage, but is really kind of easy to kill, just alternate hitting with blocking, and back off if your stamina gets low.

Do as much fighting and exploring as you can before you enter the Dark World dungeon. The Dark World has tons of rooms with stat orbs in them, try to get as many as you can.

The enemies scale with your level, so it doesn't quite matter what level you are, although to me the more you fight enemies, the better gear you will find, and you want some top notch gear to try to finish this game fully. There is a room in the mountains where you can spend 300 black coins to get a purple item, which is good, but that's a lot. There's another room in the forest where you can spend less than 20 coins to get an orange and that's a better value.

DO NOT do any grinding once you finish the Dark World dungeon. Run through fast and tear through everything and tear through the bosses. You won't be able to recover any health, unless you have a good life steal weapon.

The boss of the Dark World dungeon won't attack for the first 5 seconds, but then will start to charge up a gigantic super mega beam. So for those first seconds, press into the boss and hit him constantly. If you see him charging up the beam, you still have a second or two to hit him. After that, start running around the room in a circle to avoid the beam, you can also block some of it if you're facing it, but it will drain your stamina fast. If you begin fighting him from one side, when he fires the beam you can just run in an arc to his other side and the beam shouldn't be able to hit you.

The boss after the Dark World dungeon is easy and works about the same way, press into him, though he will attack sooner, and you can just block that. Keep hitting him until his life meter is empty.

After that is the true final boss, the Ghost Girl.

MY PERSONAL OPINION: You want to be at least level 70, but ideally level 80. The higher the better. A guy in the comments said he did this at level 30, and since the game scales with level this should be possible. I think the key to beating this boss is just knowing the game, so you can do this at whatever level, as long as you know how this boss goes, and some general tactics. Looking up a youtube video could help greatly also, I think there should be a couple of the final boss. Maybe not, I dunno.

After two boss fights in a row (that are not too hard but you have to really chew through those bosses before they pull out their tricks) you get into a room with a tomb, and your extra life gets deposited into it, the ghost girl comes out of the tomb and turns into the hardest enemy in the entire game, and she has a lightsaber.

She will kill you in 2 to 3 hits, maybe 4 hits if your level is high (like 90 or so) or you have good gear.

If you're blocking (and facing her) she will drain all of your purple juice meter (your stamina/magic) in 2 to 3 hits. When your stamina is gone, you take full damage.

So when it comes to fighting her, run up to her and press into her. This will let loose with your flurry of attacks. Don't hit or tap A, just press into her and keep hammering her with attacks, until you see her raise her lightsaber like she's going to attack. That's when you block, but you can only block a few hits.

Block a hit or two (make sure you're facing her) and then run away from her, or simply try to run away from her BEFORE she's going to move to attack. Try to keep an eye on your stamina, don't let it get low if you're blocking OR attacking. Try to avoid her big spinny magic projectiles that she will throw. After that, and your stamina is at its top again, go back and press into her again. Run, or block a few hits and run. If you only do a tiny bit of damage, that's fine. Just repeat this process, going back and forth, running away and then running back to hit her, carefully and slowly and gradually.

You may still die, but the game overall is short. If you die at any point, or during the final boss, try to take a lesson of what you did that got you killed (did your stamina get drained? did you get hit by a specific attack, and what was that attack's pattern? did you not run away far enough?), and that you could do differently on the next attempt. This game took me about 3 or 4 days to get every achievement on, so it wasn't too hard, it just took practice.