Din’s Curse is slightly more complex than your average action RPG and it may seem overwhelming in the beginning. Here are some hints and tips for those starting out.
- If the town is being assaulted and you’re not sure where the attacker is, pay attention to how the townsfolk are oriented. Use that in combination with the mini-map to locate the invaders.
- If NPCs are under attack in town or in the dungeons, hit P to pause the game and throw them some food and/or a health potion to save them.
- To a catch a stealthy thief in town, move the mouse cursor slowly around the vendors. If present, the thief will become faintly visible.
- Enemies respawn in the dungeons depending on the pace of the world. If you can’t seem to find enough of a species on a particular dungeon level to complete a quest, consider completing other quests. Alternatively, try searching on other dungeon levels.
- If you can’t seem to find a boss or item on a level, it’s probably because there’s a hidden room somewhere. Note that there are sometimes hidden rooms behind hidden rooms.
- If potions and food seem more expensive than usual, it’s due to a shortage. (There should be a flashing icon or two in the vendor inventory.) Visit the Apothecary and make the related quest the main priority.
- Be sure to stock up on potions and food before you leave a saved town. Prices might be prohibitively high in the next town or there might not be any vendors there at all.
- Watch out for bosses with the Regeneration ability since standard hit-and-run tactics work in their favour. Use damage-over-time effects (burning, bleeding, poison, etc.) to negate their health regeneration.
- You can see precisely how much health minions and foes have by selecting them and hovering the pointer over their health bars.
- If a battle seems to be unusually prolonged, select the opponent and check the skill icons beneath the health and mana bars for a clue.
- Keep an eye out for travelling vendors who appear in towns and dungeons. Some of them (e.g. The Enchanter and The Beastmaster) offer services and items you won’t find elsewhere and they can be a lifesaver in some scenarios.
- Bodies of foes disappear after a short while. Keep this in mind if you plan on using a skill that targets a body (e.g. Raise Dead).
- Raised and summoned minions disappear upon exiting the game so if you’ve managed to obtain a rare Elite minion, consider completing a few tough quests before quitting.
- As of the latest patches, minions are healed as the player character heals at Din’s Altar in town. If badly wounded, minions will sometimes use the healthstones and lifestones down in the dungeon. You can also drop a health potion or food on them or their health bars to heal them during combat.
- If locating minions in the heat of battle is a hassle, press A to select the nearest ally. In towns, this is usually one of the townsfolk.
- Be warned that minions that die in the vicinity of an Undead totem may return as a hostile undead creature.
- Steer clear of barrels. Most contain nothing but contempt and hatred for all humanity which builds and builds until they explode — preferably in close proximity to the object of their antipathy. These are the deadliest wooden containers since Rincewind’s Luggage and they subsist primarily on Hardcore characters.
- Fires spread and player characters are particularly combustible.
- The game saves a log for each town. You can use this to relive your triumphs and tragedies, and read up on all the drama that went down while you were focused on staying alive.
Demon War
- Evidence of dastardly deeds may be found in town if one keeps an ear to the ground. So to speak.
- Stamping out infestations in town can be annoying when it snows or rains. (This is presumably the designer/programmer’s attempt to convey just how frustrating it is to find and squash bugs in a game with a high randomness factor.) If you don’t manage to locate and stamp on all the tiny moving specks immediately, finish some other quests and try again later.
- If things are spiralling out of control a lot faster than you can handle, reduce the Pacing and NPC Pacing settings at the Set Up World screen and enable Low Stress mode.
For additional help, read the manual, check Stephen A Hornback’s beginner’s guide and visit the official forums.
