The first thing to know is, don't expect an excessively hand-holdy start to the game. Yes, you start out in a prison cell, but other than that it's not the usual startup trope for this kind of game. You aren't accused of a crime, you're just sick and getting "treatment". Locked up for your own protection of course.

You don't just start at the beginning of a tunnel where someone has left you a variety of starting equipment and a fixed sequence of carefully selected challenges as you move toward the exit. The first area you find yourself in is a full "dungeon" that's worth exploring to find some useful stuff and get some storyline information from, but it's going to require a bit of exploring to find everything.

You don't really need to find everything, but my main point is that you should expect to need to explore the place and not just have everything, including information, just forced in front of your face. In addition to useful equipment, look for notes, signs, and NPCs to figure out what's going on.

As with similar games, the character system is classless but you can make some selections about what sorts of abilities you want to start out with.

The number of points you get from this is only a tiny fraction of what you get later from leveling several times, so it doesn't matter too much what you pick. Since the easiest stuff to find in your starting environment is melee-fighting equipment, it might make things easier to just pick melee fighter answers to the starting skills questions.

Even if you pick melee fighter choices at the start, as soon as you can level you can just start picking mage attributes/skills or whatever you want. The very low level of skill/attributes you get from the initial selection is stuff you'd end up getting rather soon anyway even if your primary focus is magic or stealth, and none of it puts you under any class-like restrictions for the rest of the game. So it doesn't really matter except in the very short term.

For offense, just use the best thing you have found so far. You're not going to be terribly good at anything but whatever you picked for your starting skill/attribute choices will have a little bit of advantage.

The main thing to do at first is find your "dash" button and dodge attacks by hitting dash while moving sideways. Your ability to parry is going to be very poor at the start, requiring the most exact timing, blocking with anything won't work very well, and dashing backward or sideways to dodge is really the only effective way to avoid damage in the beginning. Later on you will have more choices.

Also put healing stuff in your quick slots. The main fast healing items are healing potions, obviously, and White Buttons (mushrooms), not so obviously.

As previously mentioned, the nuthouse that you start out in is essentially a dungeon, in need of some searching around, and it contains some useful stuff that won't be useful if you don't find it.

• Loot stuff off the guard that got killed and equip it.
  
• Use Crouch to sneak everywhere when not fighting. Even with poor sneaking skill, it's still worth sneaking pretty much everywhere because, not surprisingly, there are more guards and mobs around. This also helps you gain sneak skill.
  
• Figure out the "Dash" controls before going anywhere else. Dashing sideways or backward is going to be your best bet for avoiding damage and death.
  
• Don't try to sneak attack everyone you see. Some are NPCs that you can talk to that may have worthwhile info or who will give you stuff.
  
• Don't drink alcohol. One is needed to make every potion, so save those up. (All alcoholic drinks are the same so cider is just as good for potions as moonshine.)
  
• Eat food to heal. You won't heal except with food or a healing potion.
  
• Save healing potions and white button mushrooms for emergency healing in combat.
  
• You can still use food to heal in combat if you can run around or dodge white it slowly works. (I’ve done this a lot in easier fights.)
  
• Also make sure you know how to sprint so you can just run from a fight when needed.
  
• Sleeping in a bed is optional, but it can give you a Rested or Well Rested bonus.
  
• Dash is your main defensive tactic, as previously mentioned.
  
• As always in these sorts of games, just keep looting everyone/everything and equip better items as you find them.

Also, I didn't figure this out right away: Some places have a lot of these mushrooms growing on the ground called White Buttons. There are quite a lot of these around, and you will end up with double digit numbers of them after a while if you always pick them up.

In this situation, White Buttons are almost as good as healing potions when eaten directly. Plan to eat those for healing because you won't be able to get enough normal healing potions in this area.


I don't want to provide a complete list, but here are some basic things that I can confirm are available in the Island Asylum that you will want to be on the lookout for:

• Lockpicks - you can't fully explore everything without these because some locked things don't have a key. There are some lockpicks around, but they aren't common. (You can still escape without any lockpicks, there will just be some loot and maybe info you can’t get if you don’t find any.)
  
• At least one readable item containing Cooking recipes.
  
• At least one readable item containing Potion recipes.
  
• At least one attack spell.
  
• Lots of notes and books with story-relevant info. (and a few books that are totally irrelevant)
  
• NPCs with story-relevant info.
  
• Lots of food ingredients.
  
• Lots of Alchemy ingredients (things like brains, monster blood, and pretty much anything disgusting is probably for alchemy, as are herbs and alcoholic beverages.)
  
• Pick Axe - for mining and removing blockages from passages.
  
• Shovel - for digging chests out of the ground.
  
• A few low level magic items and better-than-trash pieces of equipment.
  
• Two optional and relatively difficult "mini-boss" type opponents that have some better equipment than normal.

You can pick up and take lots of "garbage" items to sell later, but things like plates, spoons, and empty jars only sell for one coin. So It's not worth carrying so much of that stuff that it slows you down or reduces your dashing ability.

(Note that "garbage" is a game term for anything that has no purpose other than selling it for coins, so even things like gold bars are "garbage" since they have no use other than selling them. There isn't much high-value garbage in the asylum, but anything like that is of course worth carrying if you find it.)

Below I'll try to outline your main choices for where to go later on, but these don't matter at the beginning since you can't really level until you escape the starting dungeon.

Also, you will be able to entirely respec your character a very small number of times, so you can always try something out then switch if you want. (See the Respec section for info.)


This isn't really one of those games where you have to throw all your attribute points into one or two attributes and neglect the rest. This is more important at lower level but it's over with pretty quickly.

Attributes in this game only grant small percentage bonuses that only add up to significant amounts at higher levels with more points invested. Few skills give you a special bonus per attribute point.

At low level, the main attributes that matter are the ones that give you HP, Stamina, and Mana per attribute point. So everyone will need Endurance for more HP relatively early, and primary or secondary magic users will need Spirituality early for more MP and to meet minimum requirements for spells.

Assuming you have enough HP, Stamina, and Mana at the moment, the main reason to increase attribute points is to meet the minimum attribute point requirements for equipment and spells that you want to use. Attribute points can be distributed evenly enough among attributes that this isn't usually a big problem, and having a variety of equipment requiring minimums in all your stats tends to encourage more even distribution of attribute points.

The other attribute that's important for everyone to some extent is Practicality because it has a strong influence on the sale price of loot that you sell. Other than that, just increase whatever makes sense at the moment based on the skills you're using.


I wouldn't try to focus on more than two of the main damage-dealing methods, and at least one should be usable at range, though range is not absolutely required (no flying-only opponents).

• 1H + Shield (shield can bash)
  
• 1H Dual Wield
  
• 2H Melee Weapons
  
• Daggers (which have a special skill tree in this game), Dual or Single + Shield/Other
  
• Bows
  
• Summon Spells
  
• Direct Damage Spells
  
• Wands/Cubes
  
• Stealth (Sneak, for its damage bonus, only practical with bows)

Unlike some games, none of these are really completely inferior or superior to the others. So it's mostly a matter of preference. if you don't like the controller twitching needed for shields, don't use one. if you don't like precise aiming don't use a bow, etc.

Since magic doesn't demand too many skill or attribute points in this game, you can actually plan to go with melee weapons + spells if you want. This is easier to manage in this game than it is in other games that require more skill points invested in magic. (Some spells can be sometimes useful even with no skill/attribute investment in it.)

Note that you can't rely entirely on sneak attacks to get through the whole game! This is because you have required "boss fights" where you're forced into melee inside a fixed "arena" barrier. There are no bosses that can be ninja assassinated. The most avoidant you can be in boss fight situations is constant dashing/dodging + ranged attacks.

Still, Stealth + Bows, with enough focused point investment, can one-shot mobs maybe 80% of the time. Stealth + Melee weapons is much harder to use in this game than in some others that allow this to be too overpowered. Backstabbing with melee weapons is only practical maybe 10-20% of the time and even then it's slow and difficult.


I wouldn't try to focus on more than two of these either, and pick just one to start out investing points in:

• Parrying w/ Weapon (blocking with exact timing, most difficult but most effective)
  
• Blocking w/ Weapon (not very timing critical but not very effective)
  
• Parrying w/ Shield (same as with weapons)
  
• Blocking w/ Shield (more effective than with a weapon but not that great)
  
• Dodging using "Dash" (relatively easy and not mujch skill investment required)
  
• Light "Armor" (Has to be very light and is more like clothing than armor.)
  
• Medium Armor
  
• Heavy Armor (slows you down, don't plan to dodge much with this)
  
• Stealth (Sneak, because you can't get hit if they don't notice you)

The main thing to do at first is find your "dash" button and dodge attacks by hitting dash while moving sideways. Your ability to parry is going to be very poor at the start, requiring the most exact timing, blocking with anything won't work very well, and dashing backward or sideways to dodge is really the only effective way to avoid damage in the beginning. Later on you will have more choices.

Note that the weight classification of your armor isn't determined by heavy/medium/light flags on the armor pieces themselves, it's determined by adding up the weight of all your armor and comparing that against a maximum determined by attributes and skills.

I would recommend going for Medium Armor in the longer term unless you're planning to be a mage. Medium gives you no movement bonuses or penalties, and armor that would ordinarily be heavy can be forced into being medium using the Weight Reduction crafting option. Trying to make heavy armor light is either impossible or ridiculously expensive though, so don't plan on doing that.


You don't really need to use any skill points on these, but adding some attribute points to Practicality will help and will be necessary to some extent to increase your sell prices above 10% of base.

Improving your hand crafting (armor/weapons), alchemy, and cooking mostly comes from crafting the associated items. Just keep crafting the stuff you have excess materials for to raise these skills, then sell it gain money.

Speaking of selling stuff, unlike most games that give you decent sell prices by default, this one starts you out at 10% of base. So you're going to need to add a point to the Practicality attribute whenever it seems like you're not making enough money. You can also use a skill tree skill to increase sell prices instead, but this is less desirable since it won't help you meet minimum equipment attribute requirements like Practicality can and it's another skill point taken away from something useful for offense or defense.

Also note that in this game, you mostly have to find weapons and mostly have to craft armor. You can't enchant weapons or armor, so you pretty much have to find something with a bonus or craft something that inherently has a bonus. Almost no rings/amulets can be crafted.

Don't worry too much if at some point you decide you've screwed up skill and attribute selections somehow because it is possible to occasionally respec your character a small number of times. This also gives you a chance to try being one thing then switch to something completely different later if you want.

There's a respec potion called the Origin Potion that will return all your attribute and skill points to the available pool so you can completely respec everything. You'll probably find one of these very early on, and there are at least 4 more that can be found or bought. Eventually you can find the recipe for it but that won't be possible until "act 3" rather late-game, so don't expect to just be able to do this every day.

Basically, by the time you can get the recipe, you've almost beat the game and probably won't have any use for the recipe so it's better to just proceed assuming you only have about 4 or 5 respec attempts. If you only just found an Origin Potion then it will probably be a while until you find the next one. So save up the Origin Potions in your "Stash" (unlimited capacity, multi-location accessible chest). Treat them almost like you'll never find another one because they're pretty rare. They seem to be distributed in different difficulty places so you find one about every 10 levels or so.

After you escape the interior of the Island Asylum you’ll be outside on the beach of the actual island, with your benefactor waiting to leave with you on a boat. Before leaving the island, you might (optionally) want to search around outside because there are a few items you can find and there is no way to return once you leave. As before, this isn’t absolutely required, but every bit of stuff you find helps with getting started.

Note that in these types of games it’s pretty typical to hide some chests under water in various places, so any place there’s water it’s probably worth checking the bottom for chests. They often don’t contain anything terribly amazing, but sometimes they actually do.

Everything else should be pretty obvious, but there is one last thing that I originally guessed wrong: All those “Druid Shrines” you run into later give you permanent stat increases! At first I ignored them because I thought they were only temporary buffs. But for the price of one deer pelt or whatever animal part, it’s a no brainer to just activate every one you see as soon as you see it. (Some with a particular animal theme will have higher costs but are still worth it.)

Anyway, it's up to you how much time you want to spend trying to leave no stone unturned, or fighting things you could avoid. Pretty much everything you can find in the Island Asylum is not important in the long term and is only going to be useful in the beginning. Fighting everything and looting everything will help you start with a little more XP and money though, and give you some equipment advantage.

I think the number one thing I wish I had done a better job of figuring out ahead of time is dodging attacks using Dash, and the number two thing I wish I knew ahead of time is eating the White Button mushrooms to heal.

The last thing I will mention is that this game is pretty well designed to make "power leveling" unnecessary. So "just play the game" as they say and you will usually level up fast enough without any problem. Grinding away on the same mobs is seldom needed if ever.

This work © 2025 by NimrodX on Steam Community is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0[creativecommons.org]

Anyone who wants to translate this guide to any language is free to do so based on the license mentioned above, but please let everyone know about your translation in comments below and link to the original English guide somewhere in your translation.