Spend gold from past crawls on permanent upgrades.
Every crawler earns each achievement, and its gold, on their own.
Tutorial Guild. Your first run starts with a short tutorial from the System AI. Replay it any time with the Tutorial button on the main menu or in Settings. Esc skips it.
Survive. Your weapons attack automatically. Move with WASD or the arrow keys (or drag on touch). Space dashes through danger (double-tap on touch). The bar under your crawler is your dash stamina; climbing out of a Floor 1 crack uses a dash too.
Knocked down? Some mobs put you on the floor: a Rot Sticker's pop knocks you down, Danger Dingos and Mold Lions pin you when a pounce lands, and a Mind Horror's psychic ring gives you a headache. You can't move, so mash dash to get back up (once for the headache, twice otherwise). Your weapons keep firing.
Controller. Fully supported. Left stick or D-pad to move, A or any bumper or trigger to dash, X to ride Mongo, Y for stats, View for the big map, R3 for viewer chat, Start to pause. In the Safe Room, walk with the stick and press A at a glowing spot. In menus, navigate with the stick, A to confirm, B to go back, the right stick to scroll, and LB / RB to switch crawlers on the Characters and Achievements screens. On level-ups, click a stick for Details.
Big map. Press M (View on a controller) to open a large, see-through map of everything far around you: walls, crates, bandaids, cracks, spike plates, loot, elites, bosses and the stairs. You keep playing underneath; press it again to close it.
Level up. Mobs drop XP gems. Every level opens a Bronze Box. Pick a weapon, a piece of gear or a stat point. Hold up to 5 weapons and 5 pieces of gear (a 6th weapon slot opens on Floor 2 and a 6th gear slot on Floor 3); stat points (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Charisma) and the Dodge skill take no slot, so they keep coming. Weapons go to level 15, the skill cap from the books. Levels 6 to 8 change how they work, and levels 10 and 15 are big jumps.
Loot boxes. Bronze boxes hold Common loot, Silver Boxes (elites) hold Rare loot, and Gold Boxes (bosses) hold Legendary loot. The card frame shows the tier. Silver, Gold and Benefactor boxes can also hold Skill Potions (each raises one skill from the books), spell Tomes, and the rare Cheat Code Potion (+3 levels to your top weapon). None of them take a slot.
Pets. Mongo, the Rottweilers and Bautista's figures have health bars now, and mobs can hurt them. A pet that goes down stays where it fell: stand on it for a few seconds, or heal it with Healing Light or an Alchemy puddle, and it gets back up. Train pet health, armor and revive speed on the Characters screen.
Puddles. Your potion puddles poison mobs. A violet inner ring means mobs in it take extra damage from everything. A gold puddle with rising crosses is a Healing Potion from Mordecai's Alchemy: stand in it to heal.
Evolutions. Max a weapon and own its paired item (the card tells you which), then open a Gold Box. Once every slot is full and maxed, boxes offer Overloads that stack forever.
Bosses. Every floor has a boss, and some neighborhoods have one too. Watch the dashed rings and lanes, learn their weak spots, and kill neighborhood bosses before they get bored and leave.
Viewers. Every kill brings in views, and combos bring in more. Your Ratings (under the view count) multiply the views you earn, from ×0.5 to ×2: they climb with kills, big combos, elites, bosses, close dodges and comebacks, and sink when nothing has died for a few seconds and the audience gets bored. Fill the sponsor meter and a sponsor sends a Benefactor Box.
Descend. The clock counts up through the whole run. Five minutes into each floor its boss shows up: kill it for a Gold Box. A few minutes later the stairwell opens somewhere far away and the floor starts to collapse. Reach the stairs before the countdown hits zero or go down with the floor. Each floor is much tougher than the last, so level up while you can. Clear all three floors to win.
Achievements. The System AI hands out achievements during a run. The first time you earn one it pays a box or viewers, plus gold you claim on the Achievements screen; after that it pays less.
Characters. You start with Carl and Princess Donut. Lifetime milestones unlock the rest for free, or buy them outright with gold on the Characters screen. There you can also spend gold on each crawler's Training: toughness, power, footwork and a head start for their first weapon.
Safe Room. Gold carries over between runs. Spend it on permanent upgrades.
Broadcast. Tab shows your stats. C hides or shows the live chat. Damage numbers, the minimap, quality and the System AI voice are in Settings. M mutes. Playing Donut with Mongo? F (X on a controller) climbs on or off his back.
Debug: press ` in a run for test hotkeys (god mode, skip to boss, autopilot, speed-up).