Curse of the Dead Gods Gameplay & Tips

Each game begins with you choosing a room to start in, there is a total of 7 rooms excluding boss rooms, I´ll quickly go over what each one contains.

Weapon room – Three waves of enemies, starting with simple to defeat working up to elite enemies in the later waves. Defeating everyone in the room unlocks the weapon shop.

Relic Room – Contains a relic shop at the end, some rooms don’t have shop at the very end, but about 80 % of the end, with a room fight after them, so make sure to not miss them along the way.

Treasure rooms aka Gold rooms – These rooms contain the biggest amount of breakable walls, which hide gold or treasures behind. Breakable walls are destroyed with either enemy projectiles, renegade swings, the explosive urns you can trigger, trap projectiles, or heavy hammer/sword hit. There is always gold scattered around to be collected and sarcophagi which yield random drops of relics and weapons with a set amount of gold. There is at least one sarcophagus per gold room, some have two.

Haven – Appears only once per boss, on normal runs its always right after boss, on hard run its randomized. Serves as a healing room at the cost of corruption, 10 corruption per use. I’d like to advise to avoid these rooms and learn to play without them, the best use they have is to give you a stack of grace of the temple for + 2 dexterity as you dont take any damage when passing through.

Time – A bowl of gold sitting in the middle of the room, your task is to defeat the all the enemies spawned ASAP to gain the most of the gold as it slowly disappears after you start the battle. If there are traps in the room make sure to use of them as they can make the fight much faster.

Blessings room – A room which contains a buff shop at the very end, it’s good to go through these rooms as you can always afford their blessings, and even if not the corruption cost is only 40 at most for a possibility of 250 hp and 10 % damage boost. A steal if you ask me.

A “?” room – A randomized room, can be anything from the above mentioned.

Boss room – Self explanatory, big red skull.

I’d like to mention that not only treasure rooms contain breakable walls, keep on lookout for them.

You start each game with the same machete and the same revolver, but in the right hands these weapons can take you really far.

The weapon types you can find are –

Main:
Swords – They possess a combo string which always ends with a critical hit at the end.

Maces – Slower than sword, hard hitting, three hit string with slightly bigger reach than sword.

Claws – Fast attack speed, lower damage, you can close in on distanced enemies, the charge attack is meh, all around decent though, especially because of the mobility.

Secondary:
Pistols – A really good secondary if you always perfect shot, fast, good range, AOE off-hand combo.

Daggers – If they have poison attacks and decent damage its not a bad weapon, otherwise I´d stay away, you can dodge hits with their off hand combo.

Shields – Have a single tap bash attack, their charged up attack is a forward dash that stuns and interrupts all enemy attacks and casting, except for bosses. Very decent, especially against Guardian Eyes

Heavy:
Spears – Long reach, Aoe charge attack, good for clearing lurkers, or reaching the mages when they teleport.

Two handed hammers and swords – Share the same jump charge attack, slow, but hard hitting. Swords have wider swing. Their attacks interrupt enemy abilities. Can break Walls.

Bows – As pistols they can perfect shot, some make their shots pass through all enemies so its good if you have enemies lined up.

The heavy weapons, as well as ranged weapons, expend one stamina point per attack.

There are also special cursed weapons, each of them has a unique prefix, such as heal 10 % of damage dealt by the weapon, or each kill increases the base damage by 5%, up to 200%. They rarely appear in weapon rooms.

Also about fire prefixes, fire does not burn enemies for damage as one might think, it merely lights them up so they become a light source, or you can use that weapon to trigger light sources and traps.

I’ll briefly talk about the light here. You should learn to play in the dark, even though you take increased damage while in the dark, the possible damage buffs you get in the dark are far better than light offers, and it wastes time to light stuff up. If you learn the map variations and their trap placements you won’t really need the light, except for, of course, the god-forsaken shadow word, heavens help you if you get that curse.

I´ll go over the enemy types here and how to approach them.

Lurker – The first enemy you see usually, contrary to their look you should keep them close, their charge attacks from distance have much bigger range than their standing sweep which makes it a real pain to dodge when there is a lot of enemies around. They only have two attacks and a roar, either the charging sweep or the standing one, the same applies to the Elite Lurker.

Sacrificed Virgins aka mages – Basically the pesky guys who throw the shadow orbs at you. You can dispatch them with the full machete combo and then a perfect shot behind you in the beginning. Their behavior is to throw orbs at you, or use their shadow explosion if you are really standing on their toes. After they take a full string combo they always teleport behind you. Their orbs extinguish light sources when they hit them. Elite version shoots three shadow orbs in a cone instead, otherwise they are the same.

Renegades – The big guys with the big hammer. They have two attacks, a three hit combo ending with a ground slam which stuns all enemies present at the hit, or a forward double spin. Take note that their swings destroy pretty much everything that is destroyable – traps, walls, pillars, light sources, so if you have shadow word dont let them swing near your light source. Elite version is red instead of blue and hits faster and recovers faster as well.

Guardian Eyes – The flying eyeballs with the hard hitting explosive laser. They have rather high health pools, but no more than one guardian eye can attack you at the same time. You can bait them to damage themselves if you position them near a pillar or explosive urn and hide behind it, since their own blasts harm them. You can use their shots to light up light sources as well. You can also parry their shots if you feel like it. Elite version has higher health pool and more damage.

Healers – The tall red guy which heals enemies that are injured. If no enemy is injured or if he is the last one alive, he proceeds to spawn a lurker periodically. After he takes a full combo string he teleports behind you. He tends to teleport towards injured enemies if they are far. Their summoned lurkers do not count as live beings, they don’t increase greed counter, and even if they are alive another wave will spawn in the weapon room. Therefore if Healer is the last one alive he will keep spawning more and more enemies. Healers cannot healer another healer though. The Elite version has much more health and spawns Elite lurkers periodically, make him your priority.

Jaguars – You wont be seeing them until after the first boss. They have two attacks, either leap at you from range in a straight line, or spin and hit you with their tail if you are near them. They also sometimes roll back to dodge you if they are within your striking distance. The Elite version has increased health pool by a lot, and is substantially larger.

Curse bats – Spawned from dead enemies, 2-6 spawn from a slain enemy. They run away from you if you hold torch, but approach you otherwise, after standing near you for some time they will try to attack you. They can be killed in one hit, but their numbers are annoying and they ruin the Sacrificial sword single enemy critical hit trigger. They also dont refund stamina for kills, nor increase greed counter, but they do extend it’s timer when hit.

In combat you can either dodge or parry attacks. Dodging at the last moment is called perfect dodge and refunds one stamina point by default. Parrying refunds 2 stamina points, and if you parry a melee attacking opponent it makes them vulnerable, which means they take a bit more damage and stuns them briefly, parrying ranged hits does not affect the enemy.

Greed mechanic gives you about four seconds by default to chain hits and kills to increase the greed counter by 1, each greed counter increases the next enemy’s gold worth by 50% – Therefore should you chain-kill 10 enemies and have a greed counter of 10, the 11th enemy killed will be worth 500% more gold.

You get a curse each time your corruption meter reaches 100, or 120 if you wear a certain blessing. Each room traversal costs 20 corruption by default. You can also build up corruption by offering blood instead of gold to shrines, or by getting hit by certain enemies.

The curse you get is random, apart from the fifth one, which makes you rapidly bleed until your health reaches 1 Health point, so make sure to not get there. Curses can be lifted after killing a boss, if you only have one active, it´ll clear it, if you have more it´ll let you choose which one to lift.
I´ll go over the curses here.

Shadow Word – Probably the worst one you can get, normal enemies are invisible in dark unless they attack, for some reason this applies to elite lurker as well, or maybe it’s just the summoned one. Your attacks ALSO phase through all the invisible enemies. The need to constantly set enemies on fire to see them if there are no light sources around is really dangerous and tedious later on, and it basically ruins your build if you have damage bonus in darkness.

Dark Swiftness – Probably the second worst, even if it might not seem so, let me explain. Dodging makes you intangible, basically giving you longer invincibility frames, but you do not get perfect dodge stamina refunds anymore, this is very problematic in boss fights as you have to ration out your combos more carefully and it takes a longer time to deal with the bosses. There is a bigger issue though, and that is if you dodge with dark swiftness it puts out your torch for a brief moment, so if you have to go through layers of traps and suddenly everything goes dark its gonna really hurt you unless you have memorized every trap layout on every map. Dark swiftness also destroys projectiles that hit you when you dodge into them, without you taking any damage, therefore you can take hits for traps if the projectile would otherwise destroy them.

Mortal Harvest – Replaces the gold inside urns with blood that you can consume for a bit of corruption in return. Not a problematic curse.

Blinding Greed – All gold that is on the ground has a timer when you spot it after which it disappears, the gold on the ground is worth a bit more though.

The take damage lose gold curse – You lose gold equal to health lost, but all health damage taken is reduced by 25 %, I suppose if you had a shield with 10 % damage reduction and got this prior to a boss fight it might not be so bad, otherwise it’s rather bad for you.

Temple’s Bite – Makes all traps trigger themselves sequentially, doesn’t really affect you, it’s still easy to jump over the traps, apart from one or two rooms.

Shadowflame – Some light sources cannot be lit up and extinguish any light source in their vicinity. Does nothing really, unless you have shadow word with it, at which point all I can say is RIP.

Volatile Remains – Enemies killed by fire attacks or while on fire explode after a short delay. Again, unless you have a fire attack weapon you won’t really pay it any heed, and even then just dodge. The explosion damages enemies as well so it can trigger a chain reaction wiping all the enemies just by killing one lurker.

Raging Temple – All jaguar statues now trigger fireballs. Basically all the fireball statues are now active instead of having a chance to be active. Honestly its rather a buff than a curse, you can use them to deal damage to enemies.

Visions of Madness – Taking a hit causes hallucinations. If you get hit you won’t able to see your HUD, that means healthbar and everything else. The whole screen also gets a bit discolored, not a big deal though. One of the better curses to have.

Cadaverous Infestation – Regular enemies can spawn additional creatures when killed. I´ve actually never had them not spawn, not sure why it says there is a spawn chance as they spawn all the time. It spawns the curse bats as mentioned above in the enemy section.

On your explorations, the enemies and bosses will drop spectral skulls which are used as a currency in the game lobby. Higher difficulty runs drop skulls more often.

You can spend your skulls for blessings, which you can carry up to three of at once, or divine favors, which allow you to re-roll a shop’s offers. Divine favors are not expendable so don’t worry about that seemingly high price, every run you are given as many divine favors as you have unlocked in the lobby, if you have four divine favors, every run you will be able to reset the shops that many times.

Now it depends on which way you want to go, either avoid corruption or accept it. I tend to stay away from corruption because I don’t want to risk Shadow Word or Dark Swiftness, but unless you get these two you´ll be fine pretty much.

I´ll briefly go over the three stats here:

Constitution – each point adds 50 health flat.

Dexterity – each point adds 2 % of damage to all your attacks.

Perception – each point gives 5% more gold gain from all sources.

As for the possible builds –

If you can, try to get health when passing through doors relic, as thats really some S tier healing, especially if you get the 15 % one. This one should take care of all your healing needs if you learn to do the rooms without taking any, or little damage.

If you run grace of the temple which adds 2 dexterity for perfect rooms (not taking any damage) it should take care of most your damage troubles so you can run pretty much all weapons, I only tend to stay away from maces because I am not really sure what they should be excelling at, apart from the jewel mace which is the only weapon that provides light source passively.

If you want some ridiculous damage I suggest the grace of the temple and getting + 45 % damage with fire attack relics, paired with a fire weapon. Just look at this.

The best build I always try to go towards is the Sacrifical sword which makes you do critical hits against single enemies, and since the bosses are alone in their rooms, it works like a charm. If you get increased crit damage relics and healing on critical hits the bosses get shredded super fast. The healing on crits also makes you stay at full health in normal rooms most of the time.

I´ll briefly go over how I deal with the bosses, you can use any weapons pretty much, shouldn’t make any difference in most cases.

Blood Hunter aka the guy who chucks jaguars at you –

He does only two things – Summon a Jaguar periodically, or throw a spear at you, the spear can either be one, or he throws two in succession. The spears can be parried if you don’t feel like dodging. His summoning circle inflicts damage and corruption so stay away from it when he summons.

The way to deal with him is quite simple, when you enter the room, he already has one Jaguar present and summons another one, stand in front of the summoning circle to bait the first Jaguar to leap at you, then when the second spawns you can take them both out with melee hits. First get rid of the jaguars, then proceed to hit the boss, its a simple loop. You can get two combo strings on the boss after dodging his thrown spears, after which he summons another jaguar, rinse and repeat.

The Twins aka flame whip lady and the dark feather guy –
First phase, the fire one, only has two attacks. She spawns orbs which you can destroy, and her
1-2 whip attack which detonates said orbs. This phase always starts with the spawning of the orbs, therefore you can take couple a free hits on her. Once she loses about 25 % she switches with her Twin, initiating the second phase.

Second phase changes the arena from light to dark, so if you have any darkness damage buffs, here is where they come in handy. He also only has two attacks, one is 1,2,3–4 combo, which has a slight delay before the last hit, and a charging slash which he always does when he teleports to the middle of the arena. After he loses about 25 % they switch again.

The strategy is simple, when you run in go straight to hitting her, then lure her where there are no orbs and dodge her hits, afterwards hit her again, until she switches with her dark twin. Try to keep him close so he initiates his 1,2,3–4 combo, dodge through him after the third hit after a short delay and hit him back, sometimes you might be slightly further away from him but even if he turns around and you hit him from the front he´ll still get stunlocked by the combo so don’t really worry about it, they´ll proceed to switch again, and thats basically it.

Third boss aka the Flame Jaguar –

Has some huge health pool and hits hard. Has more attacks than previous bosses as well as changing arena. The arena is 16 tiles 4×4 squares. It will periodically switch from non-burning, to having a burning outer layer, or the burning middle 4 squares. If the boss steps into the fire he gets enhanced, his attacks deal more damage, inflict burning, and his detonation has larger radius.
His attacks are:
A huge sweep in front.
1-2 sweep in front and the second hit tracks you
A leap from middle to long distance, slamming the ground at your position.
Detonating himself.
Spawning five fireballs moving forward in a cone – You can’t dodge through them without dark swiftness, I tried, got burnt.
When at or below 50 % – moving 1-2-3 sweep charge.

You should try to make him stay away from the fire as he gets more dangerous after he is set aflame, but other than that stay close to him, dodge his sweeps and hit him back, thats basically all there is to it. It can get rather dangerous though if you are stuck on the middle four squares and he blaze detonates himself, I haven’t tried but perhaps the detonation is parriable.

If you find any mistakes or something I am missing feel free to comment below, I´m currently trying to get everything right.