Before I begin this guide, let me assuage your doubts about my capability as a force user:



This was achieved on <The Apocalypse> campaign (increases the base modifier of enemies from the start) with an additional 4x Tough Enemies perks (to multiplicatively increase the modifier of enemies).

There are plenty of reasons. It could be for your own satisfaction - the joy of knowing you circumnavigated the world - or it could be for the riches that come with exploring the latter 5,000km of the map. Items frequently have enchantments such as Godslaying/Mythical/Legendary attached to them, some even in the major enchantment slot. Moreover, there will be plenty of Holy Shrines (usually ~10 per run) passed along the way (which are extremely easy to enter when you cast a single force flare to break the walls later on). Whatever reason you choose, it's a fun adventure.



Really long. Actually, if you have about 9 hours or so in spare time, you can probably do an entire run in one sitting. My experience with Force User has been that my runs are between 8.5 hours to 10 hours long. I have been told that other classes (Force Knight) take anywhere between 11 to 13 hours. So on an efficiency basis... Force User is top dog.

The Force User class is strong throughout the game: your initial damage output just walking out of the castle is unmatched and it only increases from there on. Force Users have the highest damage scaling in the game (easily hitting the damage cap with a well-enchanted staff and some buffs before 3,000km). Force Users' spells never miss (regardless of your accuracy modifier), naturally reach 200% item identification (making the selection of rare items quite simple), and have incredible utility (spells like Paralyze, Detection, and Heal/Rain Healing). You can faceroll through lategame encounters using force flare and lightning to one-shot enemies while not even getting hit. Also, you can cast force flare to destroy the walls of holy shrines/sinner sanctuaries to enter without the requisite conditions.

Force Users suffer early on if they meet a flameproof enemy. It is pretty laughable, but if the first monster you happen to meet is a flameproof bear, you can either burn awakenings to run away or you will die. Force Users take some time killing Lava Golems, due to their flame resistance, though you can just paralyze them and run away. Random things may accidently one-shot you early on if you are not paying attention. If surrounded on all sides without any defensive items, a Force User generally ends up in a coffin.

This guide is based off my own experiences doing multiple 10,000km runs as a Force User. This is likely not the only method nor the best method, but it is the method that worked best for me.

Class: Force User
Perks: Equipment Master x5



Considering a long run, you will probably kill anywhere between 1,500 to 4,000 enemies thus making durability incredibly important. Having the 5x Equipment Master perks will put base durability costs to 57%. Getting a couple of good staffs with 2-4 Sturdy enchantments will easily make the durability costs below 33%. This allows you to cast up to ~450 spells with a single staff of prayers (and that's without repair scrolls or jerryrigging).
Comparing this to using something like 5x Willpower, the extra early damage is nice but it does not scale well into a longer run (such as going for 10,000km). Moreover, unless you are in the "Ultimate" modifier campaign, you can still basically just one-shot most early enemies even without the early willpower.

-Inhumane Odyssey
-Maniac Mode: Yes
Optional: Choosing a daily campaign that is a follower quest, reduced visibility, 1.3x increased experience, increased monster levels, or 3x increased base health with reduced healing campaign will not have a major impact on the force user's journey.
Note: Picking the campaign option that makes everyone have the "Ultimate" modifier is still doable, but expect to burn a few awakenings early on and be forced to restart multiple times if you are unlucky and your willpower doesn't increase quickly.

This guide is designed to be played on Inhumane Odyssey and Maniac Mode. I am not experienced at playing the other modes, but I personally feel that Maniac Mode makes combat significantly easier since you can reliably predict how many tiles an enemy will move in one turn. I prefer Inhumane Odyssey just for the better drops and greater experience gain.

Force User is a class that requires a massive expenditure of energy. You are also pretty glass cannon early on with little to no ability to take damage from enemies that survive your damage. Because of the aforementioned, selecting a good seed is fairly important.

• Only the first ~2,000km matters for the Force User. After passing that point, you generally will be at the point where you can destroy everything without caring or you will have already died.
  
• You want the starting biome(s) to be plentiful in loot that provide energy. Thus try to avoid seeds where the first (or first two or three) biomes are Molten (the lava filled biome that has very few food sources aside from scorched buds) or Snow (where just walking will drain your energy). Optimally, a plains or a mountain biome would be best.
  
• You want there to be semi-frequent towns (or at least not infrequent) so that you can find chefs for meals/lunchboxes.
  
• Daily Campaign seeds are very useful (except the victor/duke/panty ones) because they will get you a guaranteed companion that can either act as a meat shield or, in the case of albert/dosey, scale into a super strong damage source.
  
• If you know of a seed with a guaranteed companion (like those who spawn in towns) early on (<1000km), those are helpful too.

• If there are Elf Villages, managing to have the demon lord or a strong mob (stronger than a normal bat, say a villainous bat) kill the elven merchant and then running to grab the dropped items may land you an easy Elf Staff (Force Power: 20 and Meditation +1). This is especially useful if you have not gotten a Staff of Prayers by around 500km. I do not recommend killing the merchant yourself as the sin you gain is ~16 sin which takes ages to decrease.
  
• If you find a random (human) merchant with a Staff of Prayers you can throw something at them to lure them out before killing them and only accruing about ~8 sin. Of course, you can also just lure a monster over if there is one nearby.
  
• Obviously, if you have the assets to just straight up buy the Staffs, then just purchase them to save yourself the trouble.

1. Stop Movement (Paralyze)
   -This spell is the greatest thing ever. It's instant cast, has a range of 4 tiles, has an effect for 6 turns, and uses minimal energy (8% initially down to 4% at minimum).
   
2. Super Flame (Force Flame)
   -Here is your "nuke" against enemies with high defenses or high health.
   
3. Lightning or Detect
   -Grab Lightning if you want to AoE some enemies. Grab Detect if you want to discover nearby NPCs. Not really important as to the order.
   
4. Lightning or Detect
   -Grab the one you didn't grab earlier.

Note: the order changes in runs where you take negative perks (such as 4x tough enemies) as you will want to take detect first so as not to get killed during the first night by a bat. In that situation, I would prefer going Detect > Stop Movement > Super Flame > Lightning.

1. Rain Healing
   -AoE healing that scales at a rate of 1.5x your force power. Great for you and your followers. By like ~3,000km, you are healing for potentially around 3,000 health each burst. With a Salacia Staff, this healing is insta-cast and even greater.
   
2. Phalanx or Path of Nature or X-Ray Vision
   -Phalanx is useful if you don't have a particularly strong staff and need the damage reduction to survive fights with mini-bosses.
   -Path of Nature is rarely ever effective or useful, but there is that 0.1% chance that it will save your life if you're stuck behind a bunch of mountains with no utility items/awakenings left.
   -X-Ray Vision has recently been my preferred second spell from Aria. It allows me to have extended vision in dungeons so I can decide whether or not it is worth delving deeper as well as being able to see the inside of hard to reach villages (such as elf villages) to decide whether or not it is worth the time/burning a consumable item.

1. Crash
   -Crash is far more useful than flash. It makes the strong enemies that are bats/crows/floating a total joke.
   Note: this spell also kills anything that floats (so "hurricane" modifier bosses, the demon lord, and the dimensional ruler (probably - untested)). A nifty trick would be to make an enemy "float" by throwing a floating drug or using a parchment of levitation and then using crash on them if you have low willpower/for some odd reason need to do this to deal damage because force flare doesn't work. This is really a trick for non-force user classes that learn crash, but hey, you never know when this might save your life.
   
2. Flash
   -Flash is the only spell you can still learn from Auris at this point.

• Emergency Bag - Learning this ability from a Skill Missionary will allow you to pick up an extra 20 weight for 300 turns at the cost of some energy (15% at minimum). It is very useful for getting through gravity zones and for temporarily holding something heavy.
  
• Mystery Oil - Learning this ability from a High-Skill Missionary will allow you to splash a target from a distance with oil. This lowers the target's evasion and accuracy (not really important) as well as multiplies Flame damage to the target by 300% (really important). I find this extremely helpful to use after paralyzing a mini-boss with the "King of Flames" modifier in order to partially ignore the target's flame resistance.

<50 Weight Limit:

• A force user starts with a 15 weight limit. This is pretty low so early on conserving space is vital.
  
• Your priorities early on are staffs and food. If you pick up a super pricy weapon, as long as you can keep most of your food and your staff(s) then take it. If you find an ice crystal, value it extremely highly because it will save a ton of food for you. Believe me, later into the map where you can go 2,000km without even seeing a town, making sure none of your food spoils will literally save you from dying.

>50 Weight Limit:

• When you have around a 50 weight limit (probably around when you've hit level 150 or so) you will want to have a good store of food, say 500-600% energy (more if you don't have an ice crystal). This should take up maybe 15 of that weight limit.
  
• Try to store as many Staff of Prayers, Salacia Staffs, and Elf Staffs as possible. I can't emphasize enough that making sure you have a good staff is vital to a force user. Think of it this way, a level 100 force user with no staff could have maybe 300 force power. A level 100 force user with a Salacia Staff that has 5x Angry enchantments on it could have maybe 4000 force power.

In case you don't believe me:

Plain wooden staff (left) vs. Salacia Staff +10 (right)
The 10x Angry Enchantment Salacia staff is 4783% more effective than a standard staff. Now while it's hard to expect to have a staff like that early on, it is more reasonable to expect a decently strong Staff of Prayers +10 mixed with various enchantments like Sturdy/Sharp/Angry/Quality/etc.



This staff is still nearly 5 times as strong as a standard wooden staff and the disparity is even greater if you don't have a staff at all. While the difference at level 1 is a mere 189 force power, as your willpower increases, the difference also increases.
At 5,000km+, where the enemies easily have 4,000-5,000 health, the difference between 500 force power and 2,500 force power will mean the difference between having to cast 3 force flames or 1 force flame. Furthermore, considering 3 force flames without a meditation +1 staff will allow the enemy to hit you 4 times before you kill it, you will likely already be dead.

• Scrolls of Repair (literally every single one you find you should take)
  
• Scrolls of Jerryrigging (just 2-3 of these should be plenty)
  
• Force Arrows (as many as you find since you can just throw them if you have no energy left)
  
• Parchments of Squall (1 is plenty)
  
• Scrolls of Massive Earthquakes (1+)
  
• Teleport Pills (1+ but I prefer taking lots of these since I use them as my "get out of jail" card)
  
• Scrolls of Confusion (2-3 is plenty)
  
• Scrolls of Summoning (only needed if you don't have a companion to meat tank)
  
• Scrolls of Swordplay/Sword Saint that contain useful enchantments to a force user (Angry, Slayer, Sturdy, Sharp)
  
• Quality Whetstones (not the best enchantments, but useful enough in terms of using it on a disposable staff)

-Preferably have at least two meditation+ staffs. One durable but weaker (lots of Sturdy enchantments) for normal monsters. One stronger (lots of Angry/Slayer/Sharp enchantments or a Salacia staff) for mini-bosses/stronger monsters.

-Early on I prefer something like a spirit robe, chain mail, or plate mail. Later after you pass a few holy shrines, it shouldn't take long to find a decent terra armor or undine cloak.
-The enchantments don't matter much, but preferably something like evasive, tough, flexible, etc.

-Shields are better early on, but after you find a force bracelet you can switch over to it permanently.
-If you find a gale shield and a force bracelet, I recommend keeping both and switching between the two as necessary.

• Until you have a meditation +1 staff, make sure to pay careful attention to your spacing with enemies.
  
• Even after you have a meditation +1 staff, as long as you are before ~1,000km there is no real reason to use it outside of boss encounters so you should still pay attention to spacing.
  
• Keep either a 1 tile distance (normal enemies), 2 tiles (fleet-footed normal enemies/bats/wasps/tigers), or 3 tiles (fleeted footed bats/wasps/tigers) so you can meditate before casting force flame the next turn. If it is an enemy that requires you to cast force flare, double the base distance to account for 2 meditations.
  
• If something catches you off guard and you have a follower, you can turn around to guarantee that the monster will hit your follower instead of you while you meditate.

Example:

• Attempt to be on a different line (a little hard to explain without a visual aid, but I'll assume you guys know how the grid in OWH looks like) that will have them be 1 space away but still on a different line.
  Note: Actually, the position where the bat is compared to the position where the force user is in the above picture is actually perfect for ranged enemies. If you were to cast meditate twice in that position, the ranged enemy would be directly in front of you without having hit you yet. Having a single line between your character and the monster (as shown in that image) while having the monster aggro'd on you, will guarantee that the monster will walk to the location of the bat (along whatever axis this hypothetical situation is following) and then diagonally walk in front you.
  
• If a ranged enemy catches you off guard and you have a follower, you can walk perpendicularly until both you and the ranged enemy are next to each other before turning around to guarantee that the monster will hit your follower instead of you while you meditate.

• I personally avoid dungeons aside from really small ones or the feral dog buildings before level 50. It's hard to get time to meditate between each monster and if you use paralyze for each fight it will waste a ton of energy. Also, a random hit could probably one-shot you at this point still.
  
• Casting X-Ray Vision outside of the dungeon (if you have it) will allow you to avoid any sudden encounters. Casting Detect as well is useful (both for forewarning and to see the invisible shadows).
  
• Standing outside of a wall and meditating 5 times before casting lightning will often let you kill up to 6 monsters before even entering the dungeon. The downside to this is anything outside of the lightning range but still against the wall will reach you immediately. This works best after getting a meditation +1 staff.

• Against most monsters (bats, feral dogs, zombies, etc), a simple force flame will do the trick.
  
• Against Phantom Knights, use Force Flare. You can use force flame to try to one-shot them if they have no name modifier and your force power is >5,000 as well as >50x the +## modifier.
  
• Against Skeletons, use Force Flame if it is alone and unlikely to kill you within 2-3 turns. Use Force Flare if you need to one-shot them.
  
• Against Bears, use Force Flare if you have low force power relative to what you should be at for that distance (or early on, when you just do not have enough force power regardless). Otherwise, if you can one-shot the bear with force flame, use force flame.
  
• Against "Flameproof" or fire-resistant enemies (lava slime, lava golem, etc), use lightning if it does not have a ton of health. If it does have a ton of health (looking at you, Mr. Lava Golem), my preferred strategy is to paralyze it and then run away. If you want to kill it for some reason, paralyze it, equip your strongest staff and some force arrows, then chuck force arrows at it. Casting lightning against a Lava Golem is sub-optimal since it usually takes 4-5 casts even with ridiculously high amounts of force power.

• Avoid using durability if it seems like it's avoidable. For instance, if you have Victor as your follower and he is able to deal 200 damage with a single force flame, there is no reason for you to waste durability against a bat that your follower can one-shot. Instead, just cast meditate while facing the bat and allow your follower to go ham.
  
• In the event you have 2 or more meditation +1 staffs, use the weaker one for normal things and save the powerful one for bosses/situations where you know you need the extra damage.
  
• Before the meditation +1 staff breaks (say at 1 durability), switch to something else so that you can repair the staff if you find repair scrolls or a blacksmith.
  
• Don't waste repair scrolls on a weaker staff and save them for your best one. As for the blacksmith, if your better staffs are in good condition, feel free to repair a 1 durability staff back to full.

There are various ways to boost your power if you need a quick power up to win a fight.

• Spicy Lunchboxes give a 1.3x force power bonus.
  
• Meditation Herbs give +1 meditation for a few turns (coupling this with a meditation +1 staff will allow you to insta-cast force flare).
  
• Super Energy Vials also give a 1.3x force power bonus.

There are probably more, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment.

I cannot really say that there are many strategies for force user after you are comfortably situated in terms of both equipment, food, and powers. You basically either one-shot your enemies or two-shot them. Your health growth is not terrible either (it is likely that you will have 500-600 by the time you are at ~5,000km). Thus, I will just list some tips/preferences below.

Money isn't really an issue for the force user, I found myself with 999,999 gold by 7,000km and still kept picking up expensive items left and right. As a general rule, kill all the monsters that have a red star indicator as it might be an ancient monster which will drop a Crystal of the Ancients. Considering it only takes one force flare anyways, it's not a huge investment and you gain plenty of levels.

My preferred party setup is Dosey (first), Albert (second), and Demon Lord (third).
Dosey is my first because she gives you the free buddy tablets that let you re-recruit her killer hound form (which is pretty darned strong after a while) as well as recruit the Demon Lord after fulfilling the pre-requisites. Also, it is partially because I tend to find myself consuming Natuya fruits more frequently during the beginning of the world.
Albert is my preferred second pick-up as he dishes out literally insane damage as he scales. If you find him fairly early, then by the time you hit 5,000km or so, Albert can kill most "Ultimate" modifier enemies by himself with his combo attack (he is dealing somewhere around 6,000 damage at this point).
Of course, my final pick is the Demon Lord since she scales well, is a very good meat-shield, and frequently casts force flare.
Note: Though this is my preferred party, it is rare that you will get them, especially in order, because follower spawns are not guaranteed outside of special campaigns/the Demon Lord.

You can end demon lord/dimensional ruler encounters very quickly by paralyzing them near the darkness and letting them be swallowed. This is far more useful for the dimensional ruler as that encounter lasts longer.

If you find yourself with dwindling food stores, I recommend storing as much animal meat as you can pick up. Finding barbecue sets (fairly common within the dimensional passageway) will allow you to get 5 deliciously grilled meats which restore 80% energy each. If you cannot find barbecue sets, dropping all the animal meats in one stack then moving a tile off and casting force flame repeatedly will allow you to grill multiple meats at a time. Granted these aren't as filling as the ones from barbecue sets, but they will at least do the trick.

Because Rain Healing is only better than Heal if you have a cooperative NPC (and Force Users don't really benefit much from cooperative NPCs), there are various methods to replace Rain Healing with Heal.
Normally, I learn Paralyze, Lightning, Force Flare, and Detection. This forces me to get Rain Healing from Aria in order to have a healing spell.
If, however, you manage to meet Aria early on and learn Detection from her, you can then just learn Heal as your fourth spell instead. You'll want to meet Aria early on your journey for this to work though, as waiting too long to pick up detection may result in dying prematurely.
This is also feasible, if you meet Auris early on. You can then choose to learn either Lightning or Force Flare from Auris (and just never pick up Flash since it's useless for Force User anyways). This leaves you with not only a free spot for your fourth spell (which then becomes heal) but also a free spell to learn from Aria (since you won't need Rain Healing). In this case, I prefer to pick up X-Ray Vision and Phalanx from Aria to become a fearsome tanky mage.

A good trick for repairing your staffs is that a +9 staff can be jerryrigged to become a +10 staff but the next enchantment will overwrite the 10th enchantment (which is jerryrigged) to become a non-jerryrigged staff. This only works for +9 staffs because the overwriting enchantment will be placed in a random location that is not the 10th enchantment slot.

Saving isn't necessary, but there is no real reason not to save either (I suppose other than bragging rights). If you would prefer to play more realistically, I'd say just save if you need to go do something else. Otherwise, the more cautious player is better off saving whenever they get an opportunity. Below is an image of a 10,000km run where I only saved once because I went to sleep since most of these runs do take a good 9-10 hours of gameplay.



My preferred enchantment setup for my most powerful staff is Angry as the major enchantment (assuming I'm not lucky enough to find a Mythical one) then enough Sturdy enchantments until the durability attrition is at <33% then filling the rest of the spots with Angry/Sharp enchantments.

The remaining staffs (for killing random normal mobs) I just fill with Angry as the major enchantment, if possible, and then a mixture of Sturdy and Quality Whetstones. Generally speaking, I try to get it to 25% durability attrition if possible to maximize the amount of uses I can get while still dealing respectable damage.


After finishing a playthrough of this campaign on IO+Maniac, I found this world to actually be fairly easy -- IF you can find a staff of prayers (or any med+ staff) and lots of food (since you'll need to cast force flare frequently).
It's actually fairly difficult to start with 5x Equipment Master on this world (I did my run with 5x willpower which I don't think was optimal). Probably something like 4x EM and 1x Will or 3x/2x would be best.
I ended up just killing the darkness at ~2,000km since I didn't find a single meditation+ staff in that entire run (i.e. i have no luck at all).
I definitely believe that there would be no problems going for 10,000km in this world if you manage to get a meditation+ staff though. I opened a couple holy shrines along the way too, so someone with better luck would probably get a salacia staff to make their entire run a breeze.

After doing a standard 10,000km run, you will realize that most of the scores end up being around the same (somewhere between 7,000-10,000 points). The variance usually comes in from how many monsters you kill during your runs (since it'll affect your battle grade as well as your ending level). The only effective method to continue inflating your score is to add negative perks.

• 1x No-Pain (cannot see health-bar/damage taken, can see health-bar once every 24hrs)
  
• 4x Tough Enemies (increases the +## modifier of the monsters by 1.5 per level of perk taken)

You can swap out 2 of the tough enemies perks for the other two 30% score multiplier perks. The downside to this is that not being able to tell which npcs/monsters are which may result in poor decisions/inefficiency and losing 1 weight items means you will often lose food items.

• Doing this is not much different than a normal run, except you will probably end up significantly higher levelled and the initial start becomes an even greater pain (since even normal monsters will one-shot you).

• No-pain barely matters since force users rarely get hit and 4x tough enemies is only tough at the beginning (or if you can't find a meditation+ staff).
  
• Tough Enemies x2 is usually optimal for an easy run. The x3 and x4 levels of tough enemies makes the monsters start off at a level where you can meditate 5 times before casting force flame and still not be able to kill them (depending on the monster). If you do plan on doing a tough enemies x4 run, I recommend starting in a biome that has bats as an enemy. Bat +15 enemies are killable with just a double meditate prior to casting force flame, which is a good way to farm levels for early willpower.
  
• If you take at least 2x Tough Enemies, I highly recommend running one of the daily campaign quests with a guaranteed follower because you will level up to the point where the follower is literally one-shotting everything. I did this on Albert's campaign and around 7,000km Albert was dealing 7,000 damage with each attack (not counting the combo hits). I saved his +30% damage steroid until nearly 4,000km before using it (which helped inflate his damage). By the end of the 10,000km run, Albert was dishing out nearly 10,000 damage per attack (i.e. he killed one of the mini-bosses before it even reached me).

Here's an screenshot of how inflated the score gets compared to not taking negative perks (I only used 2x tough enemies and No-pain during this run since I wasn't going for an all-time high-score).



The next screenshot is my personal all-time highest score and it was with No Pain + 4x Tough Enemies on <The Apocalypse> campaign (that also increases the +## modifier of enemies).



To give you an idea of the difficulty of the 4x Tough Enemies + <The Apocalypse> run:
-A feral dog at 5km will have a modifier of +20 and be able to hit you for >100hp when your max hp is 100.
-That same feral dog at 5,000km will have a modifier of +400 and be able to hit you for >2,000 hp when your max hp is ~1,500.
-The dimensional ruler had a modifier of +388 at ~7,000km.
-An Ultimate Phantom Knight at ~8,000km had over 100,000 health when the damage cap is at 99,999.
-Your followers would have >4,000 hp near the end of the run... and a normal bat would still be able to one-shot them.

Just a collection of end-screens from some of my 10,000km runs:

I do not really know what to put here, but I suppose I would like to say that I really enjoy the force user class. I believe it is the class with the greatest potential damage output and it has one of the fastest clear times for a 10,000km run.

If you guys have any advice/questions/things you would like to see added to this guide, please leave a comment. Also, if you think I did a decent job, please give a thumbs-up rating. It would mean a lot to me since I put several hours into making/revising this guide.

Anyways, I hope this has helped. Thanks for reading!