Overview
This guide is supposed to assist you with basic game functions and survival tricks.
About the Game and the Controls
The game starts with showing you the keyboard and gamepad functions – in this guide I will refer only to the keyboard setting.
Note: If neccessary you can access the key-manual any time from the options menu in the game.
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The goal of this game is to survive inside a cave full of hazards long enough to grab some treasure and make it back to the surface to sell it.
If the main character faints, she will wake up back in town with an empty inventory and the cave will be reset to a new random map. Everything that was left inside the old cave will be lost.
The only things rescued over are items the main character has equipped and money.
Objects left in the storage in town are also safe.
Your health can be reduced by:
1) Falling – Avoid walking/jumping off high ledges. Also the ground can collapse below Lesath sometimes. Watch your footing or wear specialized boots.
2) Cave-in – Rocks are falling everybody dies. Avoid the unstable looking ceilings or use a beam to stabilize them. The deeper down you get in the caves the more violent the cave-ins will be. They will be responsible for 90% of Lesath fainting.
3) Poison clouds – Use an air cleaner, don’t try to walk through them unless you absolutely can’t avoid it.
4) Exploring – The miasma will slowly whittle away at your health simply by staying inside the cave. Eat something to compensate or return to town on time.
5) Bombs – Consumeable items you can buy in the shop in town or find occasionally. When using, drop them and run! My suggestion is not to use them at all. They can bring the entire ceiling down on you in the intermediate and deeper layers.
The compass will always point towards the exit. Equipment or consumeable items like the treasure trackers can add additional functions to the compass.
You can also monitor the remaining duration of active consumeable items like torches or treasure trackers in the upper left corner.
If you have assigned consumeable items to the hotbar, they will be displayed in the lower middle.
How many slots are available depends on the capacity of the equipped backpack.
1) Appraisal – here you can check what you found or use a consumeable item.
To identify your treasure click right on the unknown item. It will change its displayed appearance, will get a description text, an entry in the catalogue if it is new and will also give you appraisal points to level up your ability to identify higher level items successfully.
Note – There are 5 categories for appraisal
a) Artifacts – pots, jewellery and ornaments (rare)
b) Books – self explanatory (unusual)
c) Equipment – very helpful items Lesath can wear (unusual)
d) Natural treasure – gems, rocks, eggs, moonberries etc. (common)
e) Aethertech – forbidden old technology (super rare)
Each category has more or less common to rare items as well, the rarer the item, the higher the price it can be sold for, but they also require a higher appraisal level. The chance to find something rare increases significantly on the deeper layers of the cave.
The appraisal abilities come at 4 stages:
a) ????? – You haven’t found any items of this category yet.
b) Adventurer – You have found at least one item of this category. Common items can be completely identified, uncommon items are marked with an ‘?’, rare items are marked with an ‘?’.
c) Treasure hunter – Common and uncommon items can be completely identified, rare items are marked witha ‘?’.
d) Archaeologist – You can fully identify all items of this category and you no longer need appraisal points from this category.
You have to level up each appraisal category individually by either appraising or selling items from it.
If the appraisal level is not high enough, the object will be displayed with a question-mark. You can sell the object, but it will fetch a higher price, once it is fully appraised.
Note – Equipment needs to be fully appraised before Lesath can use it.
2) Equipment – here Lesath can put on successfully appraised equipment items she finds in the caves. At the start she only has a basic backpack – try to find an upgrade as soon as possible.
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3) Catalog – Everything Lesath has found (Treasure, Creatures, Lost Lands and Quests) will be listed on this page with a full description.
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There are a few quests given by the townsfolk, but they are basically all about finding locations or items within the caves and are very hard to complete. However, there is no time limit to them.
In-Game Tutorial
The tutorial throws you right into the cold water – or rather right into the dark cave.
The main character Lesath finds herself in a small chamber with an empty inventory.
You can move around with the ‘WASD’ – keys. Leave the small chamber for the bigger chamber to get notified of your first quest.
– Flicker is tired and hungry: Find a Moonberry to feed it to Flicker.
Flicker is a ‘Shadowtail’ a tiny green dragon, who is Lesath’s companion. He is sitting on a rock at the exit of the big chamber.
You can’t leave until you have fed him.
Time to search for treasure like the one displayed on the screenshot.
First of – ignore the glowing mushroom! Mushrooms are only decoration and can not be collected, so don’t waste your time trying to pick them up.
Now walk around the room and pick up items with a glowing outline – use the ‘E’ – key to put them into your inventory. The treasure items in this room may look like a bunch of crystals or a fossil. They belong to the natural treasures category.
Some of the items may be stuck in the walls or even in the ceiling. You can dig out ‘stuck’ items with your claws. Use the hotkey ‘1’ to change into claw-mode you can now dig with the left mouse button. (Later in game you can also purchase a pickaxe for faster digging.)
If you can’t reach an item you want to dig out, use the ‘Space’-bar to jump. be careful however, digging at the ceiling might cause a small cave-in and if you jump off a ledge the damage might be higher than just walking off.
Keep an eye on your health.
Hint: Gem Ore – there are two spots in this room where the material of the wall looks different. Remember that color and texture. If you dig here gems will drop. You may encounter veins of this gem ore in the caves in the future. They are a surefire way to get rich quickly.
Once you think you have found everyhing in this room, open your inventory with the ‘I’ – key.
Warning: Time does not stop in the inventory screen! Stay too long while in a cave and you’ll faint. If you need to pause, use ‘Esc’ instead, for opening the menu options.
You will notice that the inventory is now nearly filled with unidentified natural treasure.. Identify them with a right click on the item.
One of the treasures should turn out to be a Moonberry (if not, search the room again).
Move over to Flicker and talk to him with ‘E’. And chose to give him the Moonberry. You can now finally move on.
Follow the corridors until you find a glowing waymarker. You can either pick it up with ‘E’ or leave it be.
The trail of waymarkers will show you towards the exit.
The next thing that will happen is, that your torch dies. Luckily there are three new torches lying as little bags on the ground. Pick them all up. Most consumeable items stack in bundles of 3. Waymarkers stack in bundles of 50 and some consumeables wont stack at all (bombs, air purifiers, beams)
You can move a stack of those consumeables to the second hotbar slot – they will then be useable with the ‘2’ – key ( ‘1’ is always default digging with the claws).
Note: If your inventory is too full at some point, you can drop some of the treasure you found by dragging it into the garbage can on the right of your inventory. Items dropped inside the cave can be picked up again even on a later visit as long as the cave doesn’t get reset. ( The tutorial cave will reset automatically after leaving so only drop items you don’t want to keep). Items dropped in town usually disappear after a visit in the cave – better sell stuff you don’t need, if possible.
Anyway open the inventory and click right on the torches to light a new one.
technically you could save the torch and try to move forward without light, but the next hurdle are two chasms with some pillars to jump over, seeing where you are going will be very helpful.
Once you crossed the chasms, you will find a wall with a rope hanging from it. Grab the rope with ‘E’, climb up with ‘W’ (or down with ‘S’) and jump off from it with ‘Space + W’ once you are at the top.
There is another stack of discarded consumeables waiting for you.
This time it is basic food, pick it up with ‘E’. Eating some ‘conchas’ with a right click will return a small bit of health to Lesath. Unless your health is already in the red, you can save these conchas for later, the exit is near.
But before you get there you have to neutralize a poison cloud. Pick up the air cleaner, move as close to the cloud as you can without touching it and use the cleaner from the inventory with a right click. Move on carefully.
One last hurdle to take is a rockface. Pick up the rope near it with ‘E’. Ropes are easiest to handle from the quickbar slot but you can also use them from the inventory with a right-click.
Once activated an anchor point and a preview of the rope will be shown. use the mouse to place the anchorpoint at the ceiling in front of the rockface. Click left to anchor the rope. You should now be able to climb it up and jump to the ledge above the rockface.
Note: In case something goes wrong with the placement of the rope, switch into digging mode with ‘1’ instead and try to dig a foothold into the rockface. This method is time consuming and can cause cave-ins, so keep an eye on your health. Try to jump up the foothold and repeat until you are on top of the rockface.
Depending on where you apply it, this method can be far more reliable than using a rope.
Once you are on top of the ledge you are only some steps away from the exit. Move closer to the exit, watch the unfolding cutscene and you’ll find yourself back in town.
The tutorial ends here and the cave resets automatically at this point.
The Town
Inside the town you are safe, your health is restored to maximum and you can take care of your inventory. If you have a used pickaxe in your inventory, it also gets restored to full durability.
Here is a list of things you can do in town:
1) Storage: Your house, directly next to the cave entrance. Flicker will rest on a small boulder in front of it. You can drop off a few items you want to keep for later. Mostly useful for half identified treasure or equipment. You can also stash free consumeables you may have found, until you need them in the cave.
2) Treasurer (treasure chest sign): Sell all the identified treasure or unneeded equipment here. You will get money and appraisal points.
3) Inn (concha sign): Buy food.
4) Adventurer shop (star emblem sign): Buy Torches, Air Cleaners, Ropes and Waymarkers. (More variety of items only after shop upgrade).
5) Carpenter: (The shop door is next to the windmill-door) Upgrade the town buildings for more options.
6) Tureis the Geomancer (He is standing outside at the backside of the Inn): Talk to him and he will ask you whether you want to reset the cave to a new random map. Do so, if the current cave is too unstable, you can’t find a path further down or you want to respawn easy to reach surface treasure.
(7) The Well (town center): Will give you random consumeable items sometimes, after you upgrade it at the Carpenter.)
(8) Shrine: Have the carpenter build it, it will passively protect the item(s) in the first slot of your inventory from getting lost, whenever Lesath faints.)
You can also talk with the townsfolk and get new quests or report back on quests.*
* There is currently a bug with Flicker’s second quest that keeps resetting your progress, if you give him moonberries one by one. Store the moonberries you find in your house instead, until you have gathered a total of 3 and then give them to Flicker in one go to complete the quest.
Exploring basics
Your typical starter backpack should contain:
1) 20-40 waymarkers
2) Three ropes
3) Three food items
3) Four torches
(4) One Air cleaner – Backpack space is limited, so alternately you can scout a cave first and only bring an air cleaner on the next visit, if you know an area is blocked by a poison cloud.)
– Light the extra torch when you get inside and start dropping waymarkers all few steps. Some of the waymarkers will get eaten by slimes or carried away by dusklings. You may also have to find your way back in the dark without a torch so make sure to drop a lot of those things.
– Drawing a map will not be very helpful, since the cave layout is changing after every reset and the 3D layout is hard to keep track of anyway.
Generally the path that leads deepest down should be the most opposite of the entrance. So keep the ‘home’-symbol on the compass rose in view.
Note: Identify everything as soon as you find it – you never know when or how Lesath might faint before you make it back to town. This way you will at least get a part of the appraisal points and the catalog entry for new items. Also you may be able to equip some new piece of equipment in an empty slot and keep it, even if you faint.
– Side tunnels may often end in a Lost Land. Lost Lands can have some rare treasure, high quality consumeable items or equipment. Which lost land you may find depends on how deep down in the caves you are.
– The further down you get in the tunnels, the more violent the cave-ins will be, but the treasure will be more valuable and rare as well.
– Try to upgrade the facilities in the town first before you explore deeper. Save up some money for consumeables as well. Unless you risk to have to go back into a new cave without any items, because you lost everything after Lesath fainted.
Once you have upgraded the Adventurer shop, and found a bigger backpack take the following items with you:
1) 40+ Waymarkers (or Shimmering Waymarkers if you have money to spare – Slimes wont eat those)
2) Three ropes
3) Six food items (Empanada)
4) One air cleaner
5) Three Antler Pickaxes (much faster digging than with the claws)
( 6) 4 Sturdy torches -> unless you have a light-gem glove equipped)
( 7) 4 to 6 treasure trackers* -> unless you have a tracker-gem glove equipped)
( 8) One climbing rope ex ** -> only if you know you’ll absolutely need it – they are hard to anchor correctly).
* There is currently a bug that gives a single treasure tracker endless duration, until the game is reloaded. The bug wont work anymore after you get the compass-upgrade from completing a quest.
** There is currently a bug that gives a chance to teleport Lesath back to the cave exit when jumping off a climbing rope ex.
Recomended Equipment
Lesath’s character screen has five slots for pieces of protective gear which can be equipped at the same time.
What equipment exactly is available depends highly on luck though, as it can not be bought, only found in the caves with the exception of the starter backpack, which Lesath owns from the beginning.
1) Goggles (goggles or facemasks): Depending on type these can for example help highlighting treasure -> making it easier to spot, or grant some protection from poisonous gases.
2) Garb (shawls or jackets): A piece of garb is a rather rare find in the caves. They can for example offer a boost to maximum vitality, increase the healing effect of food items or slow down Miasma damage. (If you happen to find a second garb aside from the one you chose to equip, put it into storage, there is a quest that requires finding a ‘garb-item’.)
3) Gloves (also called ‘gems’): Gem gloves can either provide continuous light, serve as a treasure radar on the compass + signal tune or as a danger radar on the compass + signal tune. There is a possibility that high level gem gloves exists which serve more than one of these functions.
From the ‘easily available’ gloves the ‘treasure tracker’-gem and the ‘light gem ex +’-gem are the best choices.
– The treasure tracker will help locating hidden treasure stuck in the walls or the ground, though after the adventure shop upgrade a consumeable treasure tracker item can be easily obtained.
– The ‘light gem ex +’ is dropped sometimes when catching a will’o’wisp. It makes torches obsolete and lights the cave as bright as daylight. The only drawbacks are that it is difficult to appraise and that obtaining it successfully from a will’o’wisp can be a tad risky, since they tend to float above deep chasms. The Will’o’Wisps can also drop both weaker versions of the light gem glove, which can be appraised and equipped immediately. Also there is a good chance to find a standard light gem glove while simply exploring the cave.
4) Boots (< that): Boots come with a range of effects, from speed boost to actual floating.
The two best relatively easily to obtain boots discovered so far are the ‘featherfall’ and the ‘hover’ boots – both can also come as ‘ex’ variants which are even more efficient but rarer to find.
– As the name implies featherfall boots will reduce some the falling damage.
– Hover boots allow Lesath to literally walk through the air for a few steps, which can prevent her from falling into chasms, from taking falling damage in case the ground suddenly crumbles below her and allow her to reach some ledges which are hard to get to without a rope. Handling them correctly takes some practice.
5) Backpacks (< that): The better the backpack, the more items can be stashed and the more hotbar slots are available to Lesath. Any consumeable which is stashed in the hotbar is freeing up a previously occupied slot in the main inventory.
A simple upgrade backpack to the starter bag can be found at 100% rate in the ‘Mining Camp’ Lost Land or relatively often as random equipment treasure in the caves.
Monsters
None of the monsters in the game are especially dangerous but most of them can’t be killed.
Slimes: Green gelantine globs with a bright core inside. They will eat normal waymarkers like candy and also enjoy to snack on some natural treasures like Peridots.
Lesath can shoo them away with her claws, if neccessary.
Dusklings: Blue birdlike creatures, which often carry off waymarkers or treasure. Very annoying but mostly harmless.
Cumulo: Little, white, whool covered bouncy creatures. If you manage to grab one it will drop a healing berry, which Lesath instantly consumes for restoring a measurable amount of health.
You can hear them bounce around from quite a bit away.
Will-o-wisps: From afar they look like waymarkers – looking closer they levitate and have little wings. While they are dangerous in the sense that they tend to hover over deep chasms and lure you off the path, they disappear once you snatch them and leave a useful item behind so you still have space in your inventory. (They have 4 different drops, one consumeable light orb, which is just a stronger version of a torch or light gem gloves of standard, ex and ex+ quality).
Pangomole: Little red pangolins with big shovel-claws on their front paws. They dig holes into the walls and floors of the cave. They are basically harmless, though their in-game description sais their digging can be as forceful as a bomb. Best just ignore them and give them some space.