Thank you for taking time to read this review. It's my hope this guide can help you have as much fun playing the game as I had by giving you some direction and tips to playing the game.

Disclaimer:

There are a ton of ways to skin the Karin in the Mountain cat. I'm not saying these are the "best" ways, but they certainly work. Here's my top score to show you that these strategies do work just fine.




You won't win on your first time

Karin in the Mountain is a roguelite game. It took me 7 games to get to lvl 99 and I'm sure you can do it faster with this guide. You won't be able to unlock everything, upgrade all units and get every ending the first time through. That's okay and as intended!

Unlocking Every Ending

The game has multiple endings. If you are like me, you'll want to see every ending, but not necessarily go back through the beginning every time. You can save your game, click on each character's ending, view it, and then reload your save to continue where you left off. You'll still get the achievement and Art Gallery picture saves even if you do this.

Gold

One of the more limiting things in the beginning stages of the game is gold. You never seem to have enough, especially if you know the tips on how to get it. Here's how you make sure gold is never a problem again!

Location Location Location

You won't get a lot of gold just from fighting the monsters. This is where your dungeon works for you! Not long after you start your game you will unlock a veggie garden. This is not very good, but if you can keep it alive, you get 500g more per round. It's a start and you can unlock a unit from it, so it's worth getting for starters.

The next thing you'll get is a food stand. The food stand is where we can start to get money flowing. You will want to make sure the food stand is the first room in your dungeon. As it heals monsters, they start at full health so taking their money to give them no health is only a win for you. This will start getting you 1-3k more per round depending on how many enemies you fight.

You need to play until you unlock what you really need to win gold, the Donation Box. The donation box doesn't heal like the food stand does so it only gets money from enemies without giving anything back.

There is nothing wrong with putting multiple donation boxes in a dungeon. In fact I highly recommend it. Attackers do not have a set amount of gold, meaning every monster could hypothetically give gold to both boxes each round!



IMPORTANT TIP If you use Karin's special attack that sends all the enemies back to the beginning, you have another chance for them to donate again (or for the first time) netting you even more gold!


How Much Gold Do You Need?

Your dungeon generally comes first. The more you can upgrade your dungeon with rooms, better traps, etc, the better chance you have to defeat. Proper dungeon layout can save you from spending gold you'd like not spend because there is no moving rooms, only constructing at full price wherever you want it.

You'll have three dungeon upgrades:

3,000 G

30,000 G

100,000G

Each upgrade comes with more rooms to lay more traps. It's generally a good idea to upgrade as soon as possible because more rooms mean the enemies are in the dungeon longer which means more time for your SP gauge to build up!

As there is nothing more frustrating than being able to upgrade your dungeon but not having enough gold, it's crucial to have the gold before you need it. For the first upgrade, you'll either be just under or at how much you need. The second and third one you can certainly have money to spare if you do the donation box strategy.

After you have done your second upgrade, I have found that once you have 160,000 in the bank, you're good to ditch the donation boxes for better traps. This will allow for the 100k upgrade, new traps, unit upgrades, and compass upgrades that will start to pile up.

Gold is needed, until it's not

Depending on your play-through and how far you go, gold is very important...until it's not. I finished the game with over 1 million gold which was unspendable. You need lots of gold, but as you unlock more and more with each play through, some of the big ticket items like the compass wheel are no longer needed to upgrade. Though it did take me a few run-throughs before I didn't need gold, that's why I have the donation box strategy to get me the gold I need to get me over the third dungeon upgrade/trap hump and then I am much less dependent on gold.

So you're now a dungeon manager....

When you start you're very limited in what you can and can't build. Your first dungeon will probably look something like this. A few combat Arenas, the Log Wheel, and Caltrops. That's pretty standard.



As you lvl up each place you'll start unlocking more rooms to grow your dungeon with more variety.

Fun, Attack and Durability

What do I build with all the options? I'm glad you asked! In the first few games, you're restricted by gold most likely. If you need more, I suggest looking in the section above to find out how you can get it as fast as possible. The game has multiple mechanics that work together but also separately and each room has a breakdown of the values for each metric: Strength, Trap Atk, Variety, Fun and Durability.

Strength: These rooms will attack intruders and lower their HP

Trap Atk: While Boss rooms have Strength, other rooms are "trap" rooms that have a chance to be triggered by intruders. The higher the Trap Atk, the more damage it will do to the intruder.

Variety: Not all rooms are created equal. High Variety rating is necessary to unlock dialogue options for some of the girls. I found that having a variety was good anyway for the various debuffs to intruders.

Fun: These rooms don't attack intruders, but will increase the rating of your dungeon (and therefore your experience gain) and many of the room are beneficial to slow down, distract and get gold from intruders.



Bamboo is a high fun value, but no strength. It also has a lower durability score meaning it might end up getting destroyed as intruders walk through it. But the good thing about the bamboo forest is once you place it down it unlocks the steel bamboo forest, a great trap room!



The life drainer has a VERY high strength but is no fun. (I think its fun to drain the life from your enemies) But its durability is very high so it can handle almost any amount of intruders stomping through and still be standing!

Party in the Front, Business in the Rear

So how should you lay out your dungeon? As there is no "right" way to do it, here is what I have found to work. Put your fun rooms in the front and your attack rooms in the rear. To get the highest rating you need both fun and strength. If you place all combat rooms, you will defeat the intruders but get a 0 on fun rating and as a result your dungeon rating suffers and your experience gain suffers.

To fix that, if you put your fun rooms in the front, it guarantees the intruders will go through the fun rooms first, and then get killed in the remaining rooms behind, so you will get credit for both fun and strength.

Here's a basic layout of my second-level dungeon. Pay no attention to the dragon.



I have my double donation box set up because I need to rake in the gold to afford the third level up. I have an electro wave room to paralyze enemies as they come through and I have a fishing hole for fun and a maintenance room (on the left) which is to repair my donation boxes when they take damage from intruders.

Variety? Check. Fun? Check. Combat Arenas with powerful units? Check. Boss to round the dungeon out? Check.

Trial and Error
Some rooms are better then others and not just because some rooms have higher damage than others. Some people want their dungeon to look cool and the bosses unlocked by the compass certainly can do that! Regen blades are a great mainstay until you bring in the more expensive traps.

I personally found the bosses can get overtaken quickly by intruders and have low to mid durability. However, they look pretty awesome for sure and there is something for looking awesome that makes this game good.

The Log Wheel shouldn't be underestimated. It trips intruders up, sends them to the beginning, and can split up a mass of intruders to trickle them into your battle arenas! Try which rooms work for you. Fear the Reaper!


Final Form Dungeon

Here's a picture of my final lvl 99 dungeon.



I have to use all arenas, surrounding a life drainer for healing, electro wave to paralyze intruders, and the first 3 rooms are Fountain, Karin Statue, and Casino. The three highest fun rooms, followed by death and destruction.

Talking to girls can be tough, I know. But joking aside, there can be some confusion as to how to get together with each girl and understand that you must talk to some girls before you can open up talking to other.

Each girl has a trigger and a reaction. Take Fuu for example.



If you look on the left hand side in white it says "Increase Dungeon Rating". To speak to her further you need one talk point, and also an unspecified amount of dungeon rating. As your dungeon levels up (aka playing the game) you can talk to Fuu more.

Also take note that her conversation 5 also says "Advance the Demon Queens Resurrection". Also note that conversation 6 says "Befriend the Berserker" (aka Karon). Some dialogues are triggered by dialogue from other girls. In this case you can only talk so much to Karon, until you talk to Fuu and unlock talking to her further.

Keifa unlocks Shunran and Shuuran love options at conversation 10.

Resurrecting Karin

Talking to Fuu, Karon, and Keifa, and doing the conversations with "Advance Demon Queen's resurrection" will eventually trigger events to revitalize Karin. Karin's dialogue will then open up and talking to her in combination with these advancements, can fully resurrect her.



Important to Note - There is a "point of no return" in which Karin Resurrects and closes Four girls endings regardless of how much you have completed them: Minmer, Shishun, Shaoren, and Renfa.

Shishun and especially Renfa take a while to unlock. The Highway and Capital respectively go up to lvl 50 and can take MANY turns after that to slowly unlock them. At some point I thought I messed up because I was nonstop going to the capital and getting nothing.

Renfa's Endings - To get to Renfa you must go through Shoaren's storyline first, as well as "almost" resurrect Karin. You get about 85% of the way with Renfa and it wasn't until I started doing Karin's resurrection one at a time that I saw the cutscenes with Renfa start popping up again.

Tail and Midari

Tail the Dog girl and Midari the Succubus Reject as additional and extra characters. You come across them in playthrough and unlike other girls, their dialogue is unlocked through leveling up a special unit dedicated to them.

Tail's unit is the puppy girl unit and Midari is the Succubus unit.


Midari



Tail

To unlock Tail's and Midari's dialogue you must level up their units. Lvl 40 is the max level you need to get their ending. Getting their ending does NOT end the game. They only add a cutscene to any additional ending.

Ending and Reloading
Save before selecting any of the girl's ending scene so you can reload and keep your progress to prevent starting completely over. (Unless you want to of course) You will unlock the gallery and then you can continue playing the game from before.

Defending your dungeon involves multiple things: Dungeon Layout, Character Abilities, and Units with their own Abilities. The following section will breakdown and give some tips to how to defend your dungeon against SSS rated invaders

As with most things in Karin in the Mountain, there is no "perfect" way, but I do think there are ways that are better than others.

Disclaimer: I have not lvled all units to 99. It takes far too many Mystic Beads that would require over a dozen more playthroughs to acquire. However, I think it's safe to say that some units are better than others without the need to level everything to 99 to prove it. With that said, these are the units I've seen perform very well and there are always trade-offs to everything.

Character Abilities

Each character has a special ability that you can use with SP during the run. I've attached screen shots outlining each of their abilities with comments.



Kazuto's ability replenishes traps. The maintenance room can alleviate the need for this, but Kazuto is the only one who can bring back completely destroyed traps.



Fuu is great at healing. It can be useful in the beginning parts of the game because it takes multiple hits to kill your guys and you can bring everyone back up to full. She also revives an ally. Note that ally does not mean character, it means any person who has already died. Her ability beomes minimized at higher levels when everything one/two shots you and its tough to time.



Karon's ability is great and gets better through the game! She grants massively high damage, high crit and gets better with each successive level up. Until you get Shuuran's ability up, this is a great go to.



Keifa silences everyone. You may hit a wall in the highway with hi defense turtles that heal themselves from all your damage. Keifa is great at preventing them from healing so you can burst them down.



Shunran gives you higher attack power. I never used it because Karon seemed better in every way. High SP cost for little benefit.



Shuuran becomes the GO-TO for all SSS-rating invaders. Once you get her shield to max level you have effectively DOUBLED the life of every single person in your dungeon. For units with high damage but low life, this keeps them on the board longer. This turns the tide in every battle and makes survival possible.



Karin sends everyone back to the beginning of the Dungeon. It can be extremely useful in the beginning of the game with donation boxes/food stands to squeeze as much gold out of people as possible. It's also very effective at saving your hoard at the last second from invaders who have gotten past your last guy. I found this VERY effective for defeating jumpers like Shuuran and Minmer to bring them back to the beginning.


Units

In the beginning of the game you have few units so you work with what you have. However as you unlock units you start to have options. Some of the units I started with, I did not end with. Once you start battling the SS and SSS rating you have to work with what work and get rid of the chaff. However, here are some units I thought were good to look out for. I understand that many of these are end game units, but a couple I actually got mid game and leveled them to the end.




My Tank unit is the Radi-ant. It has less health than the Minotaur, but has 5 times the defense. I put them in my front lines to delay and weaken invaders for the back line to take on one at a time. I put them with Kazuto to benefit from his ambush and reinforcements buff.



The Rock Ant can take a free hit. Combined with Shuuran's shield ability, they last a long time on the front lines.



Karon sports the Dark Forest Elf. The mass attack is good and the empowering aura helps give Karon even more damage



The Trya was one of the last units I unlocked and for good reason. It blows stuff up amazingly well. I keep them on the back line so they don't get overwhelmed by invaders.



I enjoy the Magma Arms for their lip seal ability given to Shuuran who has range. She can silence people in the next room preventing units from healing or range spell attacks. Very nice partnering.



Last but not least are the Silverbuns, aka bunny knights. Got these in the early mid game and these guys have yet to disappoint ever. High Damage, good evade, but what is NECESSARY is anti-air in the room right before your hoard.

As a bonus Shunran's Ogre Brandish ability allows you a 50% chance to attack first and if you kill the mob, you do not take damage. Very important to hold the line in the last room of the dungeon. You upgrade Shunran's ability from the compass menu.

Unit Highlights

Compliment units to their characters if you can.

Anti-Air is a must in the final room before the hoard

Shuuran's buff allows you to take 1 or 2 hits and deal damage from your units.

Silencing spellcasters and high defense mobs make them easy to take down.

Tanky units are good to delay invaders while damage dealers can take them out fast.

If you'd like me to add something please leave a comment. I hope this guide helped you feel better equipped to dominate the game and have a blast wooing and resurrecting our beloved Demon Queen!