Rise to Ruins Complete Guide to Monsters & Corruption in RtR 1c [WIP]

Overview (incomplete cheat sheet)

 
This is an unfinished draft of cheat sheet examining every aspect of monster stats in the game. To make this, I’ve consulted the top expert players, the developer and the source code itself. I’ll explain the graphs individually beneath… 
 
 
 
 

Monster Damage Resistances, Vulnerabilities and Basic Info

 
 
 
Above, you can see that: 
 
• Poison tower upgrades are a bad plan, with no monsters vulnerable to it, but several highly resistant and most not taking any poison damage over time effect, at all. (Note: this is currently planned to be reworked to acid.) 
 
• Ice and magic ice upgrades are a safe bet, with no monsters resistant, and the most troublesome Fire Elementals highly vulnerable. This is the go-to for most experienced players, in the current patch, 1c. Towers alone Won’t freeze a monster solid, but lower its body temperature so that the Cold Aura spell will do, more quickly. 
 
• Electric, primarily from the Static Tower, is also a good bet. But it’s hard to use, in practice, past day 16, when Fire Elementals start appearing – they have a fire projectile, with a longer range that theses towers, burning them down quickly. However, if you are able to split spectres off, into a separate maze, Static towers will grind them very efficiently – they currently don’t take extra energy per monster hit, despite the tooltip. 
 
• Fireis pretty good against most monsters, but doesn’t do damage over time, to most and is useless against Fire Elementals. It will also defrost monsters frozen solid by the Cold Aura spell, by raising their body temperature. Hence I never bother with fire. 
 
• Blightis only relevant if you charm a zombie to fight for you. Magic Firefrom charmed Fire Elementals. Pure Magicfrom Spectres. Slashingfrom Skeletons or villagers with swords. Default melee attacks are crushing, including from Doggos. 
 
• All the bipedal monsters, excluding fire elementals, can pick upand use weapons and armour/shields. Giving them much higher attack/defence stats, respectively. 
 
• Spectres can not cross natural crystal fields, walls containing crylithium, God walls, or natural rock/tree terrain. They attempt to destroy any of these obstacles, at the weakest point, if there is no clear route to where they want to travel to (including when charmed). 
 
• Similarly, Fire Elementals will never choose to path across a single tile of water! Hence water mazes are sadly mostly unhelpful. However, they can not destroy water tiles (like Spectres can with crystals). Hence Fire Elementals can be entirely detered from attacking with a moat ALLthe way around a village. However, this will freeze in winter, allowing them in again (ironically). Dry-outs in peak summer can be avoided by using the storm spell to trigger map-wide rain. 
 
 

Monster Scaling Stats and Notes

 
 
 
For those who want to see the raw numbers used in the graphs below. Plus a couple of key details about the variants of basic monster types. 
 
 

Monster Pathing Tips

 
• Don’t fully wall off your village or any of the towers in your maze. Monsters that are aggro’d by damage from them will simply break through the shortest route to get to them. 
 
• If a maze route is too long, monsters will break through a wall instead. Using curtain walls and layering walls will discourage this. 
 
• Gates are perceived as significantly less of an obstacle than walls of the same build material (approx 1/2 to 1/3). However, they might still cause monsters to break through a maze (or perimeter) wall, if they are used to fully enclose any area. 
 
• Using several gates in series can, in theory, prevent monsters wanting to attack through them. However, they may still do, if a friendly NPC/mob that they are attacking uses the first gate, etc. 
 
• Pathing is ultimately decided on the basis of total move cost, with even open tiles having a small cost. Hence, monsters may attack the back of a base, if the maze entrance is all the way across the map, for them, and the walls at the back are relatively thin. 
 
• Congestionincreases the move cost through a tile, for monsters. This is an invisible mechanic that may cause a perfectly working maze route to be ignored, once more monsters are spawning, per night. If there are too many currently *planning* to travel the same route. Hence some players ensure their maze path is 2 tiles wide, throughout. Reducing perceived congestion. You will see many monsters taking an outside line that’s longer than necessary. 
 
• Earthquakes and meteors can spawn rock that can, rarely, block a maze. Trees may grow and spread, so too crystals. 
 
• FIRE ELEMENTALS WILL NEVER CHOOSE TO WALK ACROSS WATER! Beware. They will break through any width of walls instead. Always have a clear route for them, unless you can reliably moat your entire village, perfectly. 
 
 

Monster Health Scaling

 
Simple linear increases, based on their level. But at different rates for different types and with slightly different starting offsets. 
 

Here we come to an end for Rise to Ruins Complete Guide to Monsters & Corruption in RtR 1c [WIP] hope you enjoy it. If you think we forget something to include or we should make an update to the post let us know via comment, and we will fix it asap! Thanks and have a great day!