Beginner's Guide

On the night the Ember-Eater fell upon your village, you died trying to stop it. When the First Death came for your soul, you refused its hand — and rose again as a Necromancer who raises the dead. Your goal is simple: find the villagers dragged into the labyrinth and bring them home.

This guide walks you through everything you need when you start out. For each feature it explains what it does, where to open it, and what to watch out for.

Your first hour

Into the labyrinth. After the opening you arrive in the village. Follow the marker to the Labyrinth entrance and start your first stage.
Learn the basics on the first floor. Move → attack (slain enemies leave corpses) → summon onto a corpse → Corpse Explosion → build your legion until your Command runs dry → break the seal statues and reach the exit. The clock is paused during these lessons, so take your time.
Return to the village and follow the Next Rite. After your first clear, the First Death appears in the village as a herald and marks your next task. Enhance one minion, then equip the gear you brought back and level it up.
The Reaper’s power wakes on the second floor. Absorb corpses to fill the gauge, then transform into Reaper Form.
Free Merchant Jeff on the third floor. Defeat the guards around the cage to open it — but the rescue only counts once you clear that floor. If you haven’t enhanced a minion and equipped your gear, the third floor stays closed.
Meet Jeff in the village. His gift of gratitude includes one free purchase. Next, spend your first mastery point in the Necropolis of Dominion. That power stays with you, even through death.
Go deeper. Rescue Hargas the Smith on floor 6 and Doran the Miner on floor 12 to open the smithy and Doran’s Mine. A powerful boss waits every 10 floors.
After your first death, the Gate of Reincarnation opens. Reincarnation is optional — there’s no need to rush. See the Reincarnation section below.

Controls

Action	How	Good to know
Move	Drag the sigil on the left side of the screen.	The camera follows you, and walls that block the view turn translucent.
Attack	Hold the attack sigil to keep firing.	Automatically aims at the nearest enemy in range (not behind walls), and you can shoot while moving.
Teleport	Teleport button	A short leap in the direction you’re facing; it stops at walls. Has a cooldown.
Summon	Tap a summon slot, or hold it and drag onto a corpse.	A tap summons onto the nearest corpse. Drag back onto the button and release to cancel.
Corpse Explosion	Tap, or hold and drag to place the aiming ring.	Every corpse inside the ring detonates. The more corpses you detonate, the shorter the cooldown.
Absorb / Reaper Form	Reaper button	While the gauge is empty it absorbs nearby corpses; when full, you transform into the Reaper. Press again while transformed to absorb and extend the form.
Rally	Rally button	Tap to gather your minions, drag onto an enemy to focus it, or drag onto the ground to send them there.

Your equipped weapon decides your attack’s element. Hellfire Bolt (fire — stun), Frost Spear (slow), Abyssal Orb (dark — targets take more damage), Sanguine Needle (bleed — damage over time). Higher-grade weapons upgrade the weapon skill to a stronger stage.

The combat loop: kill → raise → detonate

Combat revolves around killing enemies to make corpses, raising your legion from those corpses, and detonating the rest. Summoning, Corpse Explosion and Absorb all draw on the same corpses, so every moment you choose: more soldiers, a blast that clears the field, or charge for the Reaper.

Command

Every summon spends Command. The gauge sits at the top of the battle screen.
Command does not refill over time or from kills. Instead, when a minion falls, its summoning cost comes back. Think of Command as “how big a legion you can field at once.”
Other ways to restore Command are the Altar of the Legion and gear or runewords with Command-restoring options. Your maximum grows with gear and Legion Resonance.

Corpses

Slain enemies leave corpses. Corpses rot away over time, and faster the higher the Eclipse climbs.
Elite minions need an elite or boss corpse. Without one, you can offer several ordinary corpses in a substitute rite.

Minion roles and elements

Role	What it does on the field
Tanker	Charges to the front and taunts enemies.
Melee	Your main damage dealers, fighting up close.
Ranged	Shoots from the back line.
Controller	Controls wide areas from the very back.

Elements add effects to attacks: Fire stuns, Freeze slows, Bleed stacks damage over time, and Dark makes targets take more damage (vulnerable). Physical has no extra effect.

When building your deck (three summon slots), check the deck synergies:

Role Loop: triggers when you fill all three roles — Primer (Tanker/Controller), Spreader (Ranged) and Reaper (Melee).
Bloodline Ritual: triggers with several minions of the same race. Skeletons gain attack speed and Command efficiency; zombies gain health and life leech, and with three zombies a fallen zombie rises once more.
Elemental Resonance: several minions of the same element empower that element.

Every minion’s role, element, signature skill and evolution path is in the Minion Codex.

How a labyrinth floor plays out

Seals and bosses

Your core goal on each floor is to break every seal statue. While a seal stands, monsters keep coming. Every 10 floors, and on a few special floors, a boss waits in place of the last seal.

Dark Pacts and the final challenge

On non-boss floors you pick one of three Dark Pacts just before the last area. A pact shifts enemy health and damage against gold, essence and fragment rewards, and decides the final challenge: breaking the seal, Massacre (slay a set number of enemies) or Survive (stay inside the ward). Pacts marked Perilous or Deadly Threat pay more because they are more dangerous.

Altars, chests and cages

Field altars activate when you tap them or walk close, and their effect lasts until the floor ends.
- Altar of War: more minion damage and attack speed
- Altar of Bone: more minion health, resistance and life leech
- Altar of the Reaper: instantly fills the Reaper gauge
- Altar of the Legion: instantly refills Command
Battle chests open when you tap them or stand beside them until the ring fills. They hold gear, minion materials, gold, essence and runes. Sometimes a Mimic hides among them — defeat it for better rewards.
Cages hold allies to rescue. Defeat the guards to open them; the rescue only counts once you clear the floor.

Eclipse and the time limit

Eclipse rises steadily as time passes — breaking seals does not raise it. The higher it climbs, the faster, stronger and more numerous enemies become, and the faster corpses rot. At full Eclipse enemies go berserk — but it is not a failure.
The time limit starts once you leave the starting area (it pauses in menus and card choices). When it runs out, you fail. Don’t put off the seals.

Level-up cards

When kills level you up, you choose one of three cards. Card effects stack for the rest of this life and carry across floors. They reset when you reincarnate, but you can carry some into your next life with the Seal of Memory.

Clearing and failing

When you complete the objective, choose Next Floor or Return to Village.
Even if you fail, gear that dropped during the run is not lost. Items are recorded the moment they drop and arrive in your inventory when you return to the village. You just don’t get the clear rewards.

Combo and clear grade

Keep killing without a break and your combo climbs Reaping → Slaughter → Carnage. While the combo holds, you find more items and of better quality.

Your clear grade (C, B, A, S, SS) is built around your combo, together with tempo (speed), necromancy (how many corpses you used before they rotted) and survival (damage taken).

Without a combo, B is the best grade you can get.
The top grade, SS (Apocalypse), is only possible on a run whose combo never broke (Unbroken).
Higher grades pay more clear gold and essence, and a good necromancy score adds minion materials and runes.
Beating your best grade on a floor earns Essence of Conquest. Re-clearing old floors at a higher grade is a real way to grow. Repeating the same floor gives gradually smaller rewards.

Auto-Hunt

Auto-Hunt is available from the start. Open the Battle Menu with the options button on the battle screen (the game pauses while it’s open) and switch it on. You can toggle auto summon, auto devour, auto detonate, auto Reaper and savor rewards individually, and change the game speed.

To chain floors automatically, turn on Auto-Advance separately. It also picks level-up cards and Dark Pacts for you.
Touching the joystick switches to manual control instantly; auto resumes shortly after.
Losing repeatedly on the same floor turns Auto-Hunt off.
If you retreat to town mid-battle, you keep the loot you’ve earned so far.

The village

Tap places and people in the village to open features. Allies you haven’t rescued yet aren’t in the village.

Place / person	What it does	When it opens
Labyrinth	Stage selection, Monster Intel, loot preview	From the start
Altar of the Damned	Unlock, enhance, awaken and ascend minions; build your deck	From the start
Inventory (chest)	Equip, level up and break gear; runes	From the start
The First Death (herald)	Shows your next task, offers reincarnation	After your first clear
Merchant Jeff	Shop, Jeff’s Ledger	After rescuing Jeff
Necropolis of Dominion	Permanent upgrades for your whole legion	After rescuing Jeff
Hargas the Smith	Transmute, Reforge, Carve sockets	After rescuing Hargas
Doran’s Mine	The Tomb Bell (offline rewards), ore, the Forge of the Colossus	After rescuing Doran
Gate of Reincarnation	Reincarnation, Relics, the Dark Covenant	After your first death
Obsidian Sanctum (a gate in the village)	Siege	After your first reincarnation

The on-screen Menu opens Settings, the Codex (Book of the Dead), Achievements and Daily Rites.

Growing your minions

Getting new minions

Each minion is unlocked with its own fragments plus gold.
Enemies in the labyrinth are the same species as your minions. Kill a species and it drops that species’ fragments; elite-type enemies drop the fragments of their base species.
Each species’ fragments drop only in certain depths. When a new species first appears, a “New Summon Unlocked” banner tells you. Check Monster Intel on the stage selection screen to see what appears where.
Set Farming Focus raises the share of one species’ fragments, and Soul Refinement converts spare fragments into the species you want (with some loss).

Enhance, Awaken, Ascend

Enhance: raise a minion’s level with gold and that minion’s fragments.
Awaken: when a normal minion reaches its level cap, it evolves into one of two elites. Level and stars are kept. You can undo it later with Reset Awakening, but that costs gold and fragments and the original cost is not refunded.
Ascend: only awakened minions can gain stars. Each star adds a new trait.
Minion levels are kept when you reincarnate.

Legion Resonance

Your resonance level is the sum of the levels of every minion you’ve unlocked. At each milestone a new effect opens for the whole legion. Raising minions outside your deck still counts. Check it by tapping the Legion cell on the deck synergy strip of the minion screen.

Necropolis of Dominion

A constellation that permanently empowers your whole legion using Essence of Conquest, earned by beating your best grade on each floor. It has three lines — Undying Legion, Carnage Legion and Command Legion — and their keystones ignite in stages as you invest. Later you can place stars in the Awakening Constellation, and you can take stars back for free at any time.

Gear, runes and the smithy

Loot and gear

You don’t need to pick items up. They are recorded the moment you kill, and arrive in your inventory marked NEW when you return to the village. Gold and essence arrive immediately.
When your bag is full, a new item replaces your weakest one only if it’s clearly better; everything else is automatically broken down into gold and essence.
Gear grades are C, B, A, S, SS and SSS; higher grades carry more options. Deeper floors can drop higher grades, and bosses always drop gear.
There are eight slots: weapon, off-hand, armor, helm, boots, cape, ring and amulet. The off-hand grants the hero an extra skill (Blood Orbit, Umbral Effigy, Cinder Brand or Rime Ward).
Besides standard gear there are Legion (minions), Rite (Corpse Explosion and health) and Carnage (hero damage) lines. Line gear has lower main stats but comes with fixed options.
Unequipped gear does nothing. There’s no auto-equip, so equip items yourself from the inventory.
Leveling up gear costs gold and essence and never fails. It does not raise the grade.
Break gear you don’t need to get gold and essence back. Remove socketed runes first.

Sockets, runes and runewords

Gear has zero to three sockets. You get sockets from drops, Transmute and Hargas’s Carve.
Runes come in Lesser, Greater and Mythic grades. Kills drop rune fragments; synthesize enough fragments into a Lesser rune. Merge three identical runes of the same grade into the next grade.
Socket a rune by tapping the socket in the item window. Removing runes is free.
A runeword forms when you place the right three runes in gear with exactly three sockets. Order usually matters, and some runewords are limited to certain slots. Check recipes in the Runeword Grimoire.

Hargas the Smith

Feature	What it does	Watch out
Transmute	Combines gear of the same grade and slot into one grade higher.	The result returns to level 1; options are kept and sockets can increase. Recover Runes from socketed gear first.
Mass Transmute	Automatically bundles and transmutes eligible gear.	Apart from gear with runes, even items with great options or many sockets can be used as material.
Reforge	Rerolls one option line.	The result always applies, even if it’s worse. Higher-grade material rolls better, and each failure builds Heat that helps your next roll.
Carve	Adds one empty socket.	The material is used up whether you succeed or not. Failures build Pity until success is guaranteed. Risky Enhance costs more but can hit a Jackpot that carves two sockets at once; a failure resets Pity.

Shops: Jeff and Roger

Jeff’s Goods sells gear, rune fragment bundles, essence bundles, minion fragments and the Junk Sack. Everything is paid in gold. Stock rotates regularly, and you get one free reroll per day.
Descend far enough and the Roger’s Emporium page opens, with an Auction whose prices drop over time (another customer might buy first) and Veiled Gear whose grade you only learn when you buy it.
Trust rises through tribute, ledger deliveries and stamps, unlocking discounts and new stock. You can haggle once per item: success means a discount, failure a surcharge.
Hand in wanted items at Jeff’s Ledger for gold, stamps and trust — a good place to get rid of gear you don’t use.
Keep trading and the Back Room opens, with custom orders, chosen runes and Rumors that hide one extra good chest in your next labyrinth run.

Reincarnation

At the Gate of Reincarnation you can end this life and start again stronger.

Requirement: it opens after you’ve fallen at least once. Reincarnation is optional, and from the second time on there’s a cooldown before you can do it again.
Kept: gold, gear, minion levels, Relics, the Dark Covenant, the Book of the Dead and your best grade on each floor
Reset: your level and level-up cards (except those sealed with the Seal of Memory) and your labyrinth progress
You receive: Death Sigils (to empower Relics) and Dark Essence (for the Dark Covenant). If you didn’t climb any new floor this life, you get no Dark Essence.

Also good to know:

Waypoint: based on your previous record, your next life can start straight from a deeper floor instead of floor 1.
Legacy Power: a permanent bonus that only grows from lives that went well beyond your waypoint. Reincarnating too soon won’t raise it.
Seal of Memory: carries some of this life’s level-up cards into the next. You start at a higher level for each sealed card, and sealed cards show up more often next life.
Relics: permanent stats empowered with Death Sigils, unlocking in tiers from Common → Magic → Rare → Unique. You don’t need to max them all — focus on the stats you want.
The Dark Covenant: spend Dark Essence on nodes across three paths — Flesh, Soul and Abyss. A node only works after you Attune it. There’s a limit to how much you can attune, and clearing the Trial of Encroachment raises it.
Harvest Vessel: active after your first reincarnation. Each floor clear uses one charge, and charges refill over time. When the vessel is empty, repeat clears of floors you’ve already beaten give reduced spoils. First clears always pay in full.

Siege: the Obsidian Sanctum

After your first reincarnation the Obsidian Sanctum opens. Here enemies ignore you and march on the altar (the core).

Between waves, at each ebb, you spend souls to buy one of three cards: frontline summons, altar upgrades and mutation cards. In Siege you summon only through cards.
Two cards of the same normal minion merge into an evolved-form card.
Fixed turrets grow stronger with your highest-level minion of the same element.
Win or lose, you earn gold, essence, rune fragments and minion fragments for the progress you made. Clearing a tier for the first time gives a guaranteed reward.
Equipped Sanctum relics also apply in the labyrinth.

Daily checklist

Daily Rites: open them from the Menu. Finish daily tasks for gold and essence, and all of them for gems. They reset daily at UTC, and unclaimed rewards are lost.
Sevenday Pact: three tasks per week. Complete them all for gems and high-grade gear.
The Tomb Bell: an offline reward that gathers gold and essence while the game is closed or in the background. It stops when full, so collect often. At Doran’s Mine you can upgrade your tools and choose how deep to dig.
The Forge of the Colossus: open it from Doran’s Mine. Your first core is free. You need a core to gain a golem — a companion that doesn’t use Command — and for the mine to yield ore. The core decides the golem type (Blood, Shadow, Hellfire or Frost Golem).
Book of the Dead (Codex): records gear, runewords, bosses and minions. First discoveries and chapter milestones give gems and a permanent Collection Bonus — but the stats only apply after you claim them.
Achievements: claim gems manually from the Menu.

Zones of the labyrinth

The labyrinth runs through 11 zones and 200 stages. Each zone has its own atmosphere, enemies and loot, and deeper zones add affixes that strengthen enemies. Wardens such as the Bone Marshal, the Grave Ritualist, the Grave Tax Collector and the Soul Legate bar the way every 10 floors.

01BONE CATACOMBSStages 1–10
02CRYPT OF HUNGERStages 11–20
03FROSTED RELIQUARYStages 21–30
04PLAGUESWAMPStages 31–40
05WRAITH HOLLOWSStages 41–50
06ABYSSAL GATEStages 51–75
07VOID SANCTUMStages 76–100
08CARRION MARCHStages 101–125
09CINDER PYREStages 126–150
10FROSTGORGEStages 151–175
11UMBRAL GLUTStages 176–200

Common beginner mistakes

Not equipping loot. Gear in your bag does nothing. Equip it and level it up.
Expecting Command to refill on its own. It doesn’t. It comes back when minions fall, so summon freely.
The elite slot won’t respond. Elite minions need an elite or boss corpse.
Letting corpses rot. Wasted corpses lower your necromancy score and your grade.
Breaking the combo. Without a combo, B is the best grade you can get.
Thinking death loses everything. Dropped gear arrives when you return to the village. Rescues, though, only count once you clear that floor.
Turning on Auto-Hunt and wondering why floors don’t advance. Turn on Auto-Advance as well.
Reincarnating too early. If you don’t go well beyond your waypoint, Legacy Power won’t grow.
Buying Dark Covenant nodes without attuning them. Nodes that aren’t attuned do nothing.
Losing a great option to Reforge. Reforge results can’t be undone, and Mass Transmute can consume good gear too.
Leaving rewards unclaimed. Book of the Dead bonuses only apply once claimed, and daily and weekly rewards vanish at reset.
Running short on Essence of Conquest. Re-clear old floors at a higher grade.
Having no golem. Forge your first (free) core at the Forge of the Colossus.
Forgetting Jeff’s free purchase. His rescue gift includes one free purchase.