So the main point of the game is to work your way through the level(s) with limited resources - in terms of keys to get through doors, health which allows you to fight monsters, and gold from defeating those monsters to make yourself more effective in combat. You constantly have to make decisions of which doors to open, which monsters to fight and when, which items to target, and how to upgrade yourself. Note that I will assume you will be playing through story mode first, and probably a few times (at least 3 or 4 completed runs are needed for various achievements), as having a bunch of soul stones banked tends to make Maze runs a lot easier.

The primary thing that will help you win the game fairly easily is to know which target(s) are next, and not to get distracted from that goal. While beating up a bunch of monsters that are only doing a little damage to get a few minor items may not seem critical, all those little bits of damage can end up being the difference between victory and failure sometimes, so it is best to keep focused. Obviously as most of the levels are somewhat randomly generated you have to adapt at times to deal with roadblocks that get thrown up.

The story game is split up into 5 zones with a boss at the end of each, and generally the plan of attack for each zone follows this pattern:

• Open up as many levels upwards as you can without taking too much damage (killing only the weakest mob type in the zone mostly)
  
• Find and fight your way to the sword (except zone 5)
  
• Get the shield
  
• Get the zone special item
  
• Quickly clean up the previous zone (except zone 1) presuming they now all do 0 damage (leave any that do to later)
  
• Get all the attack/defense gems in the zone (should be 7 of each)
  
• Get all the healing potions that aren't well protected
  
• Get the red key
  
• Defeat the Boss

A few miscellaneous tips before going into the zone by zone guide, some you may already have noticed or worked out, but hopefully some will be useful

• There are secret walls scattered around all over the place, some aren't useful but it is worth checking to save keys or defer fights while getting at whatever is behind a locked door. Just click on a wall and you will check if it is real - note this includes the walls in front of the items on the altar which are for sale (for soul stones, once you have some)
  
• When buying from an Altar defense looks attractive because it is twice as much a bonus compared to attack, but concentrating on raising attack works out better in the long term, especially when you have to fight. Health is almost always a bad idea, as the Attack/Defense benefits pay off over and over for the rest of the game.
  
• The four altars give increasing benefit as you ascend higher up the dungeon, but the cost is based on how many times you have used any altar, so the later you spend your money at altars the more powerful you will be in the end - I generally try to not spend any money until level 25, although sometimes you may have to spend a little in level 37 if you have to get past a scorpion to get a key item. Often this means almost running out of health when reaching 25, but then you suddenly power up and can clean up all the health potions now accessible.

Firstly the generic items (and altar upgrade effects) that appear in each zone, just with higher stat values as you advance. One thing to note in the table is the relatively small increase from zone 3 to 4 for potions, Gems and the altar upgrade. Every little helps though.


Other Items:

• Magic Mattock: Remove adjacent walls (not doors) - you should get 2 during a run normally, and both are required for the Fire Sword Quest
  
• Scroll of Height: Teleport to the level above - you get 1 or 2 during a run, and they normally should be reserved for use on levels 18 and 7 to get to levels 17 and 6 for the genie and fire sword quests respectively
  
• Scroll of Depth: Teleport you to the level below - always found in zone 5, the only real use is on level 49 to get to level 50 to fight Morenth
  
• Mithril Armor: 100 Defense, gained from the Dwarf Smith on 35 once you have the Wand of Freeze and you aren't planning on forging the Fire Sword (for the achievement presumably)
  
• Vampire's Fang: 5% health steal, found in zone 5 and a great bonus once you are free farming monsters that your health slowly goes up
  
• Cloak of Shadows: Immunity to attack on sight ability (Hell Hound, Zreluhm's Head), don't think it does anything else (definitely not explode on death, don't think it blocks drain life either)
  
• Lucky Coin: 10% gold bonus, always found in zone 4, once you have it go farming!
  
• Dragon Slayer: Zone 5 item that gives double attack against dragons (Young Dragons, Morenth)
  
• Relic: Zone 2 item that gives double attack against unholy (both Zombies, Vampire King)
  
• Scroll of Chaos: Resummon monsters on level, great for farming cash before the final battles
  
• Golden Key: Open all yellow doors, can get one in zone 4 if you aren't doing the secret ending (revive the King with your wish)
  
• Wand of Freeze: Gained from Morenth, turns lava into floor - useful in level 3, essential for the Fire Sword quest, and can also give you more options on level 1 (although in most cases everything except Imps should be 1 hit kills and thus this rarely matters)
  
• Wand of Flight: Found in zone 1, allows you to teleport between floors, see where items, altars, vendors and large potions are. Most essential item of the game if you don't want to take ages to play each run
  
• Crystal Ball: See the level above. Never really found a use for it.
  
• Scroll of Teleport: Teleport to the opposite side of the level you are on. Be careful with this, it is really easy to not end up where you expect to if you don't pay attention. You should get two by the time you get to level 3 where both are needed to get to the bottom corner with the Dragon Slayer gauntlets before you have the Wand of Freeze
  
• Scroll of Earthquake: Can subsitute for 2 Magic Mattocks during the Fire Sword quest, or getting past the last Red door in level 0 without buying anything (if trying to get Penny Pincher), otherwise use wherever convenient if you are lucky enough to find one
  
• Bomb: Found in zone 1, best used very late on to get past a important roadblock - such as getting the shield in zone 5, blowing up two of the Elementals protecting Dragon Slayer, etc.
  
• Water of Life: Can be gained from an Elder in zone 3 (doesn't always appear) if you answer that you are going to destroy the lamp. The longer you wait to use it, the more health it will give you, so if I get it I usually wait until just before the final fight(s) if I can

Note that virtually every item that always appears in a certain zone (including swords/shields) can be found again in later zones as a random drop, so you can sometimes get 2 bombs, a second Knight's Sword (useless), etc.

Upgrade Costs

The cost of the upgrades from the altar follows a fairly simple pattern:


Following this pattern the 23rd would cost 5080, which you won't always get to. So a normal amount of upgrading would be 10 * +8 attack (level 25 altar) and 12 * + 10 attack (level 15 altar), for +200 attack from spending cash.

The first zone is the easiest, and generally pretty fast to run through once you have the hang of it. You should be able to progress up the levels killing mostly green slimes (and the odd purple one) - avoiding any you can walk around - until you can see the sword or shield (shield is good here as it means you can clear out all slimes without taking damage). Once you have both of those get the staff next unless it is too costly to get still, and then clean up all the rest of the gems which should take you to 26/26 attack/defense, plus the ones on level 10 (killing two skeletons and two spiders only). If necessary hunt down some large potions, then the red key and then take out the boss.

Places of interest in this zone:
Level 49 - Where you start from, we will come back here much later
Level 45 - Altar you won't use, and some soul stone merchants
Level 40 - Skeleton Kings lair

Note that because you shouldn't spend any money in the altar for this zone, and should clear up all gems and key items, you should always reach the boss fight of zone 1 with 27 attack and 27 defense, which means we know how much health you will need for the boss fight: 75 for each skeleton knight, 30 for each skeleton, and 304 for the king; which is 634 in all (424 if you use the bomb, but I would save it as it can be far, far more valuable later - in fact I usually don't even collect it until I have cleared zone 2, as I know I will most likely use it in zone 5, so why spend health getting it now?).


The first few columns here are self explanatory (and can be seen in game in the bestiary or by hovering over the monster). The ABn columns are Attack breakpoints - once you get your attack up to the value shown you will defeat the monster in one less round of attacks (and thus take one less round of damage from them). This means for example if you have 22 attack it is best to leave any Black Spiders you need and item from behind until you have picked up one more Gem, but once you have 23 it won't get much cheaper to kill them as you won't reach 28 while doing zone 1.

The formula for attack breakpoints, in case you want to calculate a higher value than 7 rounds is (ceiling essentially means "always round upwards" if you aren't familiar with it):

Ceiling((Monster Defense*Combat Rounds+Monster Health)/Combat Rounds)

The second zone is still fairly easy, again just kill the easy mob of the zone (Bats in this case) that generally creates a route to the next level and open up as many of the levels in the zone as you can get to without taking too much damage, while locating and getting the sword and shield on the way if possible. Try to leave any headless zombies until after you have the Cross, but often you will have to bite the bullet and kill something a bit harder to get to one of these three items, which then makes it possible to get the other two. Once you have them clean up zone 1 as nothing there should do you damage any more, then work you way through the gems, then potions, then kill the boss. Same as ever basically.

Places of interest in this zone:
Level 37 - Altar you probably won't use, and some soul stone merchants
Level 35 - Dwarf Smith trapped behind lava, we will come back here much later
Level 30 - Vampire Kings lair

Again because you shouldn't spend any money in the altar for this zone, and should clear up all gems and key items, you should normally reach the boss fight of zone 2 with 64 attack and 64 defense (unless a gem is stuck behind a scorpion), which means we know how much health you will need for the boss fight: 945. If you need to get behind a scorpion (for the cross maybe), you will need to buy a couple of +4 attack, just be aware every boost you buy now is -4 attack for the rest of the game once you reach level 25.


Notes: Headless zombie, Zombie and Vampire King are all unholy and you double your attack against them, so remember this when checking the attack breakpoints column.

The third zone is where things start to get a bit hairy if you have been following my advice and not spending any gold yet - Orc Warriors are the "easy" monster for this zone (and thus will usually form a route to the next level according to the way levels usually build in DungeonUp) but will do 420 damage per fight (or 350 if you meet the 74 attack breakpoint). So the challenge is to get to level 25 as soon as possible, don't even divert for the Sword/Shield here if you find them before (unless they are really easy, which is rare). Make sure you know the secret passage in level 28 to save a lot of fighting, and use your keys and check for more false walls where it can avoid any fights. If you start getting in danger of not making it (I assume 2 fights per level on average) the earlier you take action and go back to the altar and increase your attack the better - pay attention to the Orc Warriors breakpoints in particular.

Once you have got to 25 I normally spend everything - the altar at 15 gives 10 attack instead of 8, but this isn't the doubling of previous zones, so it is a fairly good tradeoff to get the bonus now - and with the dangerous monsters in this zone you will need to spend a fair portion of the cash you have found just to make it. Still if there isn't any big breakpoints in range saving the cash you make during the rest of this zone will give a little extra boost later in the game.

The main target to get to is 150 attack, which will need the Steel Sword to reach, at which point you can usually clear a lot of the zone (shield, gems, easy potions) and then go on to the boss fairly quickly - I frequently leave quite a lot of mobs in this zone to clear up later as they take a lot of attack increases before they become free to kill.

Places of interest in this zone:
Level 28 - Spiral room with the dwarf you met at the start who shows you a hidden wall, and some red keys you won't be able to get until later
Level 25 - Altar you wil be very happy to see if you are following my advice as finally you can kick some ass, and some soul stone merchants
Level 20 - Dwarf Captains hideout

One thing to watch out for with the boss fight is that the stats visible when you mouse over a monster assume you attack first. When you go into the boss fight here the monsters will attack you first, and thus all get one extra attack in compared to normal. For most of them this is only slightly painful. For the lizard warriors which you now should one hit, it means getting hit for around 1500 damage, so be aware of this when determining if you are ready for the boss fight.


Notes: There are a couple of other monster types on level 28, but they only guard red keys used in the zone those monsters usually appear in, so I have omitted them and put their details in the zones they are normally found in.

The fourth zone is very awkward early on as with the last zone - until you find the anti-magic ring moving next to any of the casters is generally a bad idea. Necromancers are just about okay, as you will take 100 extra damage to what is listed. High Mages you have to ensure you can approach from a direction where it can't retreat as every time you move adjacent they will hit you for 200 damage then back up (one special case might be if you only need him to retreat to access a door/corridor maybe). Illusionists retreat like High Mages but take 25% of your health each time. This does mean they have trouble killing you as they end up doing just 1/2 damage when you really get down, but the damage is already done.

So unlike most zones the anti-magic ring is the number one priority, and only after that the Knight's Sword and aiming for 330 attack (which will one shot all three casters), then carry on as normal plans, leaving things like High Knights alone unless absolutely necessary. You will need to go back to level 28 to get a red key, which is guarded by High Knights, but do this just before the Boss fight (see below for details of how to fight the Illusionist Lord).

Places of interest in this zone:
Level 17 - Secret level you can only access using Scroll of Height (or presumably Depth but you have better things to do with that), where you meet the Genie
Level 15 - Last altar in the game, and some soul stone merchants
Level 10 - Illusionist Lord's room

One thing to be careful of when you meet the Genie - if you click "Ok" rapidly to get rid of the text you will accidentally declare war on him too early by chosing the fourth item which sites in the same spot on the screen, so be careful here, because you don't have the attack and probably health you need for the final fight yet. The two choices you have here are to revive the king, get a golden key, and win normally, or wish that everything wasn't real which will open up the secret ending.


Notes: As mentioned the abilities of the casters is a key thing to consider here. If you don't have the antimagic ring the three casters (Necromancer, High Mage, Illusionist) will do 100, 200 and 25% of your entire health every time you move adjacent to them. To make it worse if the space behind them is free the High Mage and Illusionist will retreat after casting at you, which can be horrendous, particularly the Illusionist - basically consider moving adjacent to them off limits until you get the ring as chasing one down a corridor can cost thousands of health.

How to defeat the Illusionist Lord:

As the Elder tells you during the level, you need to kill 4 of his subordinates to form an X shape of 5 on a dice. The thing to be aware of is the illusionists only retreat if you are immediately adjacent to them (not diagonally) and they can only move directly away from you, if that square is empty. So you just have to stay away from them when moving around to the next target, and be careful when you kill that you don't move into the space they were in (which will cause the "corners" to move away).

More explictly starting from immediately after the illusionist spawns and you are at the bottom of the "dice 5"/X shape you want to form:

• Kill North
  
• Move East 3
  
• North 2
  
• West 1
  
• Kill West
  
• East 1
  
• North 2
  
• West 1
  
• North 1
  
• West 2
  
• South 1
  
• Kill South
  
• North 1
  
• West 2
  
• South 1
  
• West 1
  
• South 2
  
• East 1
  
• Kill East
  
• Illusionist Lord now attackable

The fifth and final zone to clear can be awkward depending on where the key items are located. Avoid killing Young Dragons until you have the Dragon Slayer gauntlets from level 3 (and probably the Fire Sword as well, see seperate section for instructions on that) as they should be easy after that - although you may also want to hold off on killing as much as possible until you can get the Vampire's Fang found in this zone, so you can actually gain health fighting the easy monsters.

Anyway move around the level killing mostly only Imps, although as they do an unavoidable 200 damage when they die, generally only the ones needed to progress through the zone. The Fang is a moderate priority, but also the Cloak - it avoids Hell Hounds getting an extra attack in, and sometimes will be useful to pick up something adjacent to one without being forced to fight it, or passing by one. Ghosts are best avoided as well until you can one shot them or they might respawn in awkward locations which might force you to fight them again (but no gold this time).

Places of interest in this zone:
Level 6 - Secret level you can only access using Scroll of Height where you meet the last Elder who starts the Fire Sword quest
Level 3 - Dragon Slayer gauntlets room
Level 0 - Zreluhm's Lair

For the final fight against Zreluhm see the seperate section that covers the detail of that fight.


Notes: Imps hit you for 200 damage when they die regardless of your equipment/defense. Hell Hounds attack you if you move adjacent to them unless you have the Cloak. Ghosts respawn somewhere else on the level if you don't one shot them. Sons of Zreluhm drain life (not much though, although this means the AB listed above are wrong but I haven't found the exact numbers to use).

I have included Morenth's stats here despite being on level 50 because you will kill him during the zone 5 phase of the game, and he would look really out of place in the zone 1 list. Morenth and Young Dragons are vulnerable to the Dragon Slayer gauntlets and your attack is doubled once you have that.

So you have basically cleared zone 5 (or at least got up to level 3 open the red door there, and that you found the scroll of depth in zone 5 already) and now you have heard about this amazing sword that can kill of the demon. How do you get it?

So first the items you will need to have kept, or buy from the vendors (either for cash in some cases or soul stones if you have any spare):

• Two Magic Mattocks OR one scroll of Earthquake
  
• Scroll of Height to get to level 6 (if you haven't already been there)
  
• Scroll of Depth to get to level 50
  
• Red Key for level 50 (tne one you would have used to get into level 0)
  
• Scroll of Teleport, plus you will get the second one in clearing through level 3
  
• One Blue Key, a couple of yellow keys
  
• A bomb if necessary if killing the Elementals is going to be a tough fight
  
• At least 1200-1500 health

So first kill off the one Son of Zreluhm and get to the second teleport scroll. Move back to two to the right of the Elder in the top left and use one of the teleport scrolls to move to one left of the Young Dragon in the bottom right. Note that you can skip killing anything not in your way here, as you will be back shortly and you won't need teleports to move around the room any more.

Travel up the right hand side of the level, kill the Ghost and the Young Dragon at the top and move two left from the top right of the screen and use the second teleport scroll to get to the bottom left section. Blow up or kill at least one elemental and get the gem and the Dragon Slayer gauntlets. Skip the rest of the elementals for now unless they are cheap.

Now travel down to level 49, right at the start, and use the earthquake scroll or the two mattocks. If using the mattocks be careful to use them in the right places - in the top left cell it the left of the top wall, in the top right cell it is the middle of the top wall. Once in just follow the hidden walls back to the sword parts. If in doubt as the rogue tells you, the map of level 6 matches level 49 to guide you where to dig/explore.

Next up is to use the scroll of depth while still in level 49 to get you to Morenth's lair. With the Dragon Slayer and a decent attack he shouldn't be too much of a problem. Pick up the Wand of Freeze and use it and grab all the stuff including the third sword part (or last if you have already done the next bit).

If you haven't already go to level 7 and use the scroll of height to get to the hidden level 6, beat up the two elementals (maybe detour to level 15 and check if you can buy some more attack if they are still tough for you at this point), and talk to the Elder to get the last piece of the sword (also talk to the merchant for some free gold).

Now you are ready to go to level 35 open the door, skip the dialog and use the Wand of Freeze again and go up to the Dwarf and carefully ask him to forge the Fire Sword (carefully because you don't want to get a +100 defense Mithril armor and leave you with a bunch of useless sword parts right at the last step!). Voila, one Fire Sword - now go massacre everything left in zone 5 (except the Imps probably) and prepare for the final fights.

So you arrive at the final fights - are you going to win? Generally I expect to need about 6000 health to defeat Zreluhm and 9000 for the Genie, but it can rise rapidly if you had to spend gold earlier than planned (or if you are trying to win without the Fire Sword - in which case you should skip the secret ending for this run). As a guide my last run ended at 716 attack, 616 defense which is fairly typical for a normal run I think.

For the first phase of the battle you have to get to his head and kill it. There are two possible routes - legs, chest, head or dig out a wall and go horns then head - I had to do the second when doing the no Fire Sword achievement as his legs kept respawning, luckily you have two mattocks spare which mean getting Penny Pincher at the same time. If things are tight on health this second route can be preferred (there is usually a vendor selling a spare mattock for cash if you need it, or else spend a couple of soul stones).

This will cause Zreluhm to explode across the level but you now need to kill all eight pieces before you can attack the head again. He will also fire off a scroll of chaos like effect, but this generally just gives you some free kill fodder to gain health using your vampire's fang - just leave the Imps as usual unless they are blocking you. Using the Wand of Freeze can help open up extra options over the lava pools, this is more important when doing the no Fire Sword achievement as you will want to skip virtually everything you can except Young Dragons with your lowered attack.


In terms of special abilities - the wings have explode on death for 500 damage (ouch), but they should do no damage in melee normally to make up for it. The claws have drain life but it doesn't seem a big drain - I think it is the same as for your vampire fang 5% of damage done. The head has attack on sight (like Hell Hounds), which makes it essential to have the cloak as the head does a lot of damage per hit.

Kill off the bits in any order, which will open up the head to defeat again, and you finally can win.

Well, unless you activated the secret ending on level 17 by wishing all the monsters weren't real, in which case you now have to fight the Genie as well. This is a simple fight, you either have enough attack and health or not.

To save anyone needing to work it out the next attack breakpoints for the Genie are (starting from AB8 and going to AB30):

1278, 1185, 1111,
1050, 1000, 957, 921, 889,
861, 837, 815, 795, 778,
762, 747, 734, 722, 711,
701, 691, 683, 674, 667

Given his attack, every one of those you can get higher than is nearly 400 less damage you will take (300 if you have the mithril armor instead of the Fire Sword, but you will take probably 10 more rounds of damage).

As a general rule it is probably a good idea to play on easy mode when going for the less straightforward achievements, and have a stock of soul stones so you can work around problems that playing for the achievement might throw up.

I won't cover all of the achievements, most are gained playing story/maze mode enough times or through following other parts of this guide.

Ali Baba: This is easiest to get just by not immediately spending money after you craft the Fire Sword, which lets you massacre your way through the remains of zone 5 (if you need a bit more and have a respawn scroll, I tend to use it on level 3 after using the ice wand). This should usually be more that 10000 gold (and probably only buys you +20/30 attack by this point anyway)

Speed Runs for each zone: I recommend not really trying this until you have played through a couple of times (and you might get one or two just playing normally) and have the hang of the game. I also tend to prep up - deliberately spend at the altar early, and clear a zone before taking on the boss, so you can spend all the time in the zone you are trying to beat the time on. Generally zones 2/3/4 are fairly easy to beat, zone 1 is tough because it is only 5 minutes to clear 9 levels, and zone 5 also because you have loads to do with all the Fire Sword quest, Zreluhm to fight, etc.

Open-Plan Dungeon: Generally wait until you get to the final fight and be extra careful to avoid spending blue keys unless absolutely necessary, and this is one where playing on easy is almost mandatory to avoid spending lots of soul stones or chewing through loads of cash with the merchants to get all the yellows needed (but does mean you spend a lot of time waiting for the counter to tick down). Find out which zone has the least blue doors (and less than you have saved!), and slowly work through it all. Wishing the king back to life can save some time here with that extra golden key.

Terminator: Again probably a good one to have easy mode on to avoid running out of yellow keys (or cash for the merchant that repeat sells them for 200 gold each) so you can get to all of them, but otherwise this should be fairly simple to get.

I know a Shortcut: Easiest way to just to open up all the secret walls in the altar rooms, just be careful not to accidentally buy something - there are 40 of these per run, so it is easy (if boring) to get this in 2-3 runs depending on how much normal searching for useful secret walls you do.

Traditionalist: You should always not use the bomb in zone 1 anyway, so this should be automatic.

Heretic: The thing to be aware of here is that the Cross works on the Vampire King, so without it the boss fight goes from trivial to very tough. Unlike the normal advice you will want to probably want to spend all your cash to boost your attack to get past him without this artifact, which means the rest of the run will be a bit sucky - if you continue the run anyway, wish for the king to be revived, because it is very unlikely you can take on the Genie with your stats lowered by spending them early for this.

Braveheart: Ehh, I always fight the Dwarf Captain anyway, it costs a bit over 2000 hit points (mostly from the Lizard warriors getting first hit). Never even bothered to work out how to avoid him actually.

Send Someone Better: If you followed the advice in this guide, you kill the Dwarf Captain in a single hit and get this achievement every run.

A Key Principle: Each time you reforge the Fire Sword you end up one Red Key short and buy one from a merchant, so you get this on the third or fourth run through the game (along with most of the Kill Boss three times achievements)

Tesla: Okay this one is painful in the extreme. You will need to carefully pick your way through zone 4 (as normal) and get the sword of this zone only (shield if relatively easy). Make sure you have enough attack to one shot casters (330+). You will need a lot of health because the Illusionists around the Lord will take about 25% of your health every time you move adjacent to one of them - which you do 5/6 times (the last move adjacent to two of them). When I did this I started at around 7000 health and defeated the Lord with about 70 health left, then had to chase the last four Illusionists around and finished with 4 health with them doing 1-2 damage per move at the end as I had so little health left (pick up the potions that appear after clearing these guys if possible).

The Weak Point/Penny Pincher: A good time to do these achievements is on a run where you meet the Elder that asks you a question - answer "to destroy the lamp" and you get a freebie mega health potion that is worth 15000 health or so if you drink it just before facing Zreluhm. I combined it with the penny pincher achievement as not getting the Firesword leaves you free to use the magic mattock to bypass the red door in level 0 without paying for it (or the key as normal). Note that you still defeat Morenth, this gets you a little more Attack and also you can get the Dwarf in 35 to give you some armour worth +100 defense instead of forging the sword. Skip the genie or revive the king, as you won't be able to take him with so much lower attack than normal. Not sure if it is deliberate or I had a bug, but without the Fire Sword Zreluhm's legs kept reappearing each time I killed them, so I used the second mattock to drill in via his left horn which worked and the fight went back to normal.

First thing to reiterate if before playing the Maze Mode you will want to build up a few spare Soul Stones so you have the option of buying stuff from the vendor (if you can get to him). You don't get any back for winning here, so don't spend unnecessarily here otherwise you will have to play through story mode again just to replenish your soul stones for later runs.

Generally Maze mode plays out a lot like running through the zone in story mode, except without the stairs (making the staff less useful, but still a bit useful to see where bonuses are). One key thing to find out early is whether you need a red key or not, from my experience it is about 50/50, and given it is usually guarded by something tough if you can avoid that fight, that saves you some time/health. The other things to be searching for are as normal - sword, shield, special items, altar, and the vendor.

As with story mode put off as many fights as you can, try to unlock and defeat monsters so you can get to as much of the map as possible without spending too much health/keys, the items stuck behind monsters don't go away so you can normally leave the gems/potions until later when the mob is much less dangerous. Once you have all the main items and have spent all your cash at the altar, at that point move on to picking up gems and potions where the cost is low. Try and check the boss as you progress - you don't carry over anything to later runs, so as soon as you can even narrowly kill the boss do so, rather than carry on farming stuff to make it easier.

One tip about items - Golden Keys, and I think the Scroll of Chaos (but there is very little reason to use one here), only affect what you can see when in Maze mode - so position yourself carefully to see the most yellow doors that it would be useful to have unlocked before firing it off if you buy one.