Rogue’s Tale Tips and Tricks (Updated for The Hoard DLC)

Introduction

Welcome to my first guide on steam, I will slowly expand upon the guide gradually to include new DLC content and perhaps in the future strategies for mini bosses and major bosses. If there are any mistakes let me know in the comments and I´ll fix them.

This game is one of my favorites.
Since this game is brutally hard for beginners and easy for experienced players I thought I would give some tips that found helpful to beat the game more reliably.
Now with that said you will die. ALOT so be ready for that regardless.

I will not go into detail with all the heritages or challenges as there are already excellent guides here on steam by Valorien (heritages) and Pear (Challenges) for that. But I will just mention the heritages I find helpful to get ASAP.
The developer is extremely active and is a very skilled content creator.
The community in the discussion page here on steam is very nice and answers any questions extremely fast.
I would especially to thank the user “Pear” as he has taught me most of the stuff you will see in my guide here through the discussion forum and his own guide on the challenges. If anything in my guide is useful its from Pear, if anything is wrong that part is from me.

I might add sections for bloodlines DLC later but since it is brand new I´ll stick with the Hoard DLC for now.

Lastly this guide is just for fun so feel free to use or ignore my tips as you see fit. It is just a game and this guide is just for fun 🙂

This guide is full of spoilers, you have been warned.

Heritages and Goals for each run

The first tip is to not have it as a goal to beat the whole game each run.
Rather especially in the beginning make your goal to unlock a heritage or challenge. This will keep the game progressing and eventually when you have enough heritages unlocked and enough skill and experience to beat the game reliably.

Here are some heritages that I have found key for the early game.
1 Unlock Woof (Canis Woofus).
This means after getting a decent weapon maybe with 1 enchant on it. Reset the inn till you have a high % chance to spawn bosses when finishing a dungeon. As early as possible.
Once the Dread Wolf spawns find a corridor and beat the wolves one at a time, you don´t need to live you just need to kill the Dread Wolf to unlock Woof.

2 Upgrade Woof through his heritages.
Once Woof is decently upgraded he will carry you up till around level 7 or 8 each run no problem, at that point elementals start spawning and the orcs start to hit too hard for Woof even with the right click healing Woof.
But you will have the early game done reliably. Note you should be trying to level up around the same pace as Woof, the one who is higher level determines the enemies you will face so try to stay same level or one level lower than Woof.

I will go into more details how to survive without Woof later in the guide under Mid Game Tips.

3 Craftalicious, doing the Leo Noerde quest will unlock crafting recipes. You don´t really need to worry much about crafting for now. The nice thing here is that once you have all the crafting recipes each new recipe you find will give you gold. This adds up quickly and getting more gold per run is very helpful.

From here you can start unlocking heritages as you see fit. While you get the easier heritages I would recommend trying to get “One Strange Trip” and all the spell mastery heritages.

For the spell mastery heritages take one school at a time, starting with celestial (for the healing). Once you unlock this you will get one random spell at the beginning of each run and you can scum by killing yourself till you get a heal spell if you want. This will make surviving a lot easier.

Next start doing all the Knowledge Heritages, and try to get the seventh talent through scrolls of knowledge.

Once you have all the spell mastery heritages and the Woof heritages I would recommend trying to get runes unlocked (finding/buying 4 wands of wishing in one run) and then get legendary imbuements by doing the challenges, Drain the swamp and then discovering the imbuements. Cheesy musk is especially good to look into.

This setting a goal that is not just “win the game” really improves the experience and I still do this with every new challenge that is added to the game with the new DLCs.

Early Game Tips

This will be tips for levels 1 to 8 assuming you have unlocked Woof.

First thing,

Sell your food and water and any items from heritages that you wont be using this run.

Buy some alcohol. Alcohol is key for survival. It gives divine shield, and you can survive most early threats with it. Always have alcohol in the inventory ready to go.
You cannot use this on the run where you go for “One Strange Trip” however, but on all other runs get the alcohol.

Check shop for good rings/amulets to buy.
Rings such as:
Ring of shielding, Ring of haste, Ring of the elements, Ring of immunity, Ring of regeneration, and Ring of Control (if you cant eat mushrooms safely yet).
Amulets such as:
Amulet of free action, Amulet of dominance, Amulet of radiance (only use after Woof is dead or tucked away in his dog collar which you unlock through heritages), Amulet of ghost form,
And any other rings or amulets you have good success with.

Note, the amulet of ghost form (if not blessed) and the Ring of regeneration both are weak to magic and fire respectively so if you see a magic user take them off before engaging them, these can get you killed but they are generally worth it if you play a little carefully with them.
If you do not have a blessed version of the ring of haste only put on the Ring of Haste if you see a difficult enemy (or group of enemies) else your food and water needs are too annoying especially when going for “One strange trip”.

Check the shop for cheap and useful enchanted bracers boots gloves and spaulders.
enchants such as
+life, +physical resistance, +light, +stats, +crit, Fear immunity, Instant death immunity, key immunities for eating mushrooms if you have not done “One Strange Trip” – confusion, paralysis, blind.

Don´t kill snails, light torches, disarm traps that are not in your way. You want to minimize the experience you earn and stay low level for as long as possible.

Don´t identify your gear except rings and amulets.

Always identify amulets and rings to avoid cursed rings and amulets.

Let Woof kill more than 50% of the enemies. Woof is hasted so if the enemies are super far away let them come closer before letting Woof charge them as he might die if he is too far away from you that you cant heal him by right clicking on him (or Ctrl + arrow keys on him for keyboard users).

Kill animals with melee,
Kill humans/orcs/ratmen, big mouth daemon thing (they can instant kill you if not immune to instant death), and anything that makes you catch fire, with ranged attacks. The most common way to die is trying to go melee with orcs and daemons too early or fire damage.

If you do happen to end up in melee with orcs daemons or fire breathing things, drink alcohol for the divine shield buff before attacking. You will most likely die if you don´t and its worth spending a little extra gold on the alcohol.
Alcohol will not save you from instant death effects such as the big mouth daemon.

I would not worry about traps if you die this early it does not really matter but you can spam x3 search before every move if you want to play slow. I personally don´t as I find it tedious.
You will be happy to get the Keen Eye talent at level 3 or 6 and at the latest at level 9. Then you will not die to traps as long as you search once or twice right when entering a new floor before moving.

Mid Game Tips

This will cover levels 8 to 18.

I will mostly focus on the gearing up process here and talk more skill later in the builds section.
I will also not cover mage strategies here because they differ a lot from all other builds. I will talk about mages in the mage builds section and the Stats section instead.

By the time you hit level 8 you should have a weapon you like using. Or if you can craft one at this time.
If it is not identified do so now.
If you have found a blessed one or can bless it with a scroll do so.
Enchant it multiple times until it preferably has 2 damaging enchants on it. For example fire and shock.

surviving the mid game from levels 8 till 18 is basically about
1 getting enough damage in time before the enemies are too strong.
2 getting tanky enough.
3 starting to get, identify and enchanting your gear.
4 Don´t trigger the mini bosses too fast.

1 DMG:
Getting high DMG is the first thing to focus on. Once you have good DMG you can worry about 2 and 3.
This is mainly done through leveling up the right attributes STR or AGI first and STA second (unless your a mage which will be discussed in the mage build section).
You also get damage from Enchanting. Enchanting your weapon as soon as you hit lvl 6 or at the latest lvl 8 is extremely helpful.
Enchanting any gear piece with your main damaging stat also adds damage (STR, AGI depending on your build)
And then you can add the enchantments such as +Crit chance gradually here and there as you level up.

2 Tanky:
You need enough Health, armor and resistances to tank 3 hits or more from common enemies. You will be happy to add health enchants on all piece of gear except weapons.
Any of the amulets and rings I mentioned in the early game tips section will help.
but you can try rings like:
Ring of Fortitude, Ring of Shielding, Ring of the Underdog.

3 Getting your gear and enchanting and becoming immune to status effects:

The main way to get gear is to reset the Inn. It costs 50 gold every time and can be done infinitely. Each time the shops will reset with new gear and more room for you to sell items. So keep resetting the shops and find those rings, amulets, spell books, gloves/bracers/spaulders/boots, scrolls, potions, wands and Charms if you have the card dust from the hoard DLC.
Generally speaking it is not worth to buy the helm, weapons and main armor at the shop. Finding it in the dungeon or crafting those is better.

3.1 fire/frost and at minimum shock.
Generally speaking Fire will kill you early game and Shock will kill you mid/late game. Frost is not such a big deal in general. You can use Amulets or even better is if you can find a Ring of the Elements in the shop. keep that on at all times.

3.2 instant death,
saves you from the big mouth enemies early and from some monsters like infernals later.

3.3 curse,
saves you from undead mages.

3.4 fear, confuse,
many things cause fear, and if you get crit by the enemies you get confused so you will need these fast.

3.5
If you can afford it gradually get charm, blind, paralysis, slow, sleep. You can get perma stunned by one of these if the enemy is using poisons so you can keep a Ring of Immunity handy for Ratmen mages especially until you are full immune.

3.6
If you dont plan to go for shapeshifting builds or silent casting youll need Immunity to silence and polymorph eventually but its not a high priority as you can still run away if you get polymorphed or silenced in most cases.

3.7
I generally never go for knockback, energy drain and life drain immunity and I have not died to those ever.

All in all by the end of the game you will need to be immune to the following:
Fire Frost Shock Curses
Blind Charm Confusion Paralysis Sleep Fear Slow, Instant Death
(Polymorph and Silence)

You can also get Stun and Disarm immunity through 2 separate Charms which you will need for some boss fights.

4 mini bosses.

So at this point you will have reset the Inn many times and you will definitely have 58% chance of encountering a mini boss. The % of encountering a mini boss at the end of exploring the dungeon is displayed at the top left of the shop area.
These mini bosses will have a very high chance to kill you. So you don´t want to finish exploring the dungeons. instead explore but leave a corner of the starting room unexplored until you find the stairs. Then when you find the floor where there is no stairs down go back to the previous floor, go to town, and rest at the Inn for 50 gold and reset the dungeon.
You can now look at new items in the shops, have more space to sell gear and you wont encounter the mini bosses before you are ready.
I might make a guide on the bosses later on.

Late Game Tips

This will cover lvl 18 to 20

Once you hit lvl 18 and even 20 the game gets a lot easier. Before enemies will be as strong or even stronger than you and you need to outsmart them. Now you are stronger than most enemies and only need to outsmart Monster type enemies, mini bosses and major bosses.
This is mainly because you health as well as your + health enchants increase a lot just by leveling in the end game. So suddenly you can go from around 45 health to around 75 or 80 health just by gaining a few levels with the same enchants and everything.

At this point slowly replace your random gear with gear sets. So you end up with all plate, or all leather, or all mage gear. You can also use the DLC sets if you have the hoard DLC. What set is best depends on your build. Get it enchanted as you replace it.
When you have unlocked Runes you can do three enchants per gear slot so youll end up with 33 enchants if dual wielding or shield + weapon. And 30 enchants when using two handed weapons.
This leaves plenty of room for a health enchant on most or all gear pieces. Full immunity to all the dangerous things. 3 to 5 +crit enchants (+5 is max).

At lvl 20 be a little careful harvesting mushrooms as Treemen can spawn which are basically a monster class enemy with Poison Aura. They are good to farm for gear and charms but you need to have decent gear to kill them reliably. The chance of them spawning is based on your + crit chance.

Slowly start to take down the mini bosses and major bosses before taking on the king. I might make a guide for the bosses in the future.

In the late game you can round out your heritages and get a lot of them done in one run. So most of the hard work is done once you reach this point.

My main tip for late game is to knock out as many heritages as possible and some challenges if you can.
Another tip is to try out different Rings and Amulets here (although never be without Shock immunity as any shock enemy can and will stun lock you from 100 to 0% at lvl 20)

Finally once you are ready to start a new character… Defeat the king.

Healing

I wanted to add this as I see many questions about how to heal in the discussion forums.

There are several ways to heal:
1 Resting
Most common is the rest button. I rebound mine as its default is on the numpad which my keyboard doesn´t have.
This method of healing doesnt always succeed so you should just spam it until you heal to full outside of combat.
Never use it in combat you will die.
If you are not satiated on both food and water you will not heal so be satiated on both before resting.
(technically you can rest with just one satiated but its even slower so just have both satiated)

2 Spells
There are several spells in Celestial magic that heal and can be used in combat too if you can get some space between you and the enemy.

3 Rings
The Ring of Regeneration heals very rapidly and can be used in combat however you take double damage from fire so don´t wear it all the time, if there is a human mage behind the door he will one-shot you.
The Ring of Shielding doesn´t exactly heal, but it lets you use energy as a shield, and energy regenerates a lot quicker through resting than health does, so it actually works sort of like healing and makes you very tanky. I personally find the ring of shielding to be insanely strong early game but late game I prefer to replace it with something else because late game you have enough health and you can use the energy better doing DMG and monsters will take all the energy shield away quickly. That is just my preference.
The Bloodlust Ring heals a surprisingly good amount of health in combat and makes you extremely tanky however you need enough health to not get oneshot to use this ring effectively, making it better in the mid/late game than early. However it is very good mid/late game I have used it multiple times to kill several end game boss fights with great success I think it is sleeper OP.

4 Shapeshifting
Once you have unlocked some heritages for shapeshifting you will get renewing touch cast on you when you crit and when you shapeshift, making shapeshifting alone almost as reliable as Celestial magic for healing.

5 Potions and draining enchant.
The potions and life drain enchant are the worst form of healing. They do work especially when you don´t have any other means of healing, but they are very unreliable and you should look for any of the other methods only using potions as a last ditch effort to survive.

Potions, Wands and Scrolls

Here I will give some tips how to identify potions wands and scrolls without loosing money on it.

Potions:
I found it easiest to identify potions by hoarding them early until I find a ring of immunity and something that makes me fire immune.
Once you have these two things drink all the potions you have hoarded. you will be immune to the adverse effects of poison disease from the ring of immunity and you need the fire immunity for the burning potion.
Drinking the potions will give you the knowledge of that potion so when you find a second one you will know what it is.
Once you have all the potions and unlock potion knowledge heritage then in future runs you will know the potion effects and can use them accordingly without needing to drink them first.

Once identified in this way the poisons will enchant your weapons when drinking them, but the burning potion and the sickness potion will still just kill you, so you can throw those two at your enemies instead of drinking them. (default key F) Or sell them.

Scrolls:
The ring of scholars will identify all scrolls and books when you pick them up (you might need to drop the ones in your inventory and pick them up again).
If it is a blessed ring of scholars will also identify potions and wands.
The books are always worth identifying without the ring of scholars but with the scrolls it is better to hoard them until you find a ring of scholars rather than identifying them one by one.

There are a few cursed scrolls and potions that have useful effects, so don´t be afraid to experiment with cursed scrolls and potions… Just do it when no enemies are around.
Some will just blind you temporarily. Some will reset one talent point so you can respec your talents. Some will take you directly to the king fight… Lots of fun things can happen when you experiment.
You can also Curse many types of items yourself using the Bestow Curse infernal spell.

Wands:
Wands are always worth identifying whether your going to use or sell them. They will be one of your main sources of income. However I do recommend keeping a few wands instead of selling them.
Just to name some wands off the top of my head:

Wand of shifting, (can teleport you away from danger and out of traps)

At least 1 wand that shoots a enlarged orb (any element will do) at the enemy for killing difficult enemies. Just don´t shoot it right next to you it has splash damage.

Wand of wishes, always use it for money first, more wishes second, and love last. the fourth wand of wishing will unlock runes, or get you a loot hoarder if you have already unlocked runes.

Wand of excavation, this wand you can keep in your boxes until you face the major boss, Dread lord Nabon. This wand can instantly kill the tombstones in the Nabon fight making the fight a lot easier.

Wand of scripting (especially a masters wand of scripting), will copy any scroll and there is a infinite scrolls loop with masters wand of scripting and masters scroll of recharging.

Lastly I would like to say that the potions and scrolls that give Talents temporarily have special uses. For example the wolf potion will give you the shapeshift wolf talent temporarily, but you can use this to get the bear talent off the totems and the beastial wrath talent as well. If you have slain a bear recently or if you have the “Spiritual Guidance” heritage complete.
So using these talent giving scrolls and potions you can skip some talents that normally would be prerequisites.

Gold

Gold,

Making gold is actually pretty simple. There are more advanced ways to earn money but this will simply be some basics.

I will make two lists, always worth at charisma 7 or higher and not always worth at charisma 7 or higher. When you have max charisma for selling of 12, you might be able to sell more items than listed here. You can experiment accordingly.

Always worth Identifying and selling at charisma 7 or higher is:
Spell books,
Wands,
Studded Leather armor,
Chain helm and armor,
Plate helm and armor,
Hammers,
Two handed melee weapons (at 7 usually break even, but higher than 7 earns a little gold),
Repeater crossbows (breaks even at 7 but higher than 7 earns gold).
Food and water supplies with max 4/4 stacks left.

Don´t identify,
Scrolls (use the ring of scholars instead of paying money for it),
Potions,
any lower armor type than studded leather armor.
Any one handed weapons other than hammers
The caps, (not full helmets).
Any bracers/gloves/spaulders/boots.
Any junk / food items except for the maxed 4/4 stacks.

Here are some tricks I like to use to make money:

Buy all potions of charisma from the shop.

Buy potion of insight and wait using it till you gather a pile of loot at the stairs up to town then identify it all at once with the potion.

If you find a cheap bracers/gloves/boots/spaulders for sale in the shop with +1 Charisma on it you can buy it and leave it in the boxes using it only for trading.

If you happen to find a blessed ring of Control, this gives you +1 charisma and on top of that you can enchant it to have +1 charisma, so for 1 ring you will get 2 charisma.
if you get two rings like this, you can go from 7 charisma to 11 and if you get just 1 more charisma from either a potion or a different gear piece youll be at 12 which is the cap for selling items to vendors.

If you have a high enough charisma you can enchant the gear before selling it and it will increase the value more than the cost to enchant it. This is best done on blessed armors – double enchanting the armor and if you have runes unlocked even triple enchanting the armor before selling it.

Charms and Card Game Dust (DLC) Usage

Charms are extremely powerful items that normally are very rare. However with “the hoard” DLC they become more usable as you can buy them with dust you earn from the card game. Don´t worry there are no micro transactions here its all in game currency 🙂

Although all Charms are really good I wanted to note a couple here.

Manuscript of knowledge, identifies all items picked up saving a ton of gold.

Lucky number 7, as long as your not a mage will give tons of gold for just hitting stuff. However it does break after a while so its not infinite.

The Book of Fading Memories. This charm will make you forget random knowledges everytime you rest which is terrible if your still unlocking the knowledge heritages. However you can still use this after you have unlocked the heritages to respec your talents completely. There are more efficient ways to do this using cursed scrolls but I wanted to add it because it isn´t a useless charm you can use it to respec. Just do it after having completed the knowledge heritages.

the hoard DLC charms:
Scribe´s Tools that make you able to copy scrolls onto blank scrolls
Infinite Potion, makes you copy potions into empty potion bottles. Making it possible to have infinite blessed Charisma potions, or infinite wolf potions effectively adding a extra talent making you have 8 talents instead of 7. Or making infinite Awareness potions giving you Keen Eye for free making it possible to have 9 Talents instead of 7. And many more amazing options.

and finally the big one.
Third leg of the Imp.
This charm is why I wrote this section.

You can bind a blessed ring onto the third leg of the imp and you will have another ring active without its enchantments though.
This is already crazy strong.
Binding a blessed ring of elements frees you up a third ring of your choice.
or binding a blessed ring of the underdog makes you extremely tanky.
or binding a blessed ring of haste so you don´t need to use amulet of free action for haste effect.

But there are some hidden ring effects with the third leg of the imp.
(SPOILERS BELOW)
…………………………………………….
If you bind a blessed ring of familiar, all drakes that try to attack you will become your friend permanently until attacked by you. You can have a whole army of drakes following you.

If you bind a blessed ring of outcast, a loot hoarder will spawn every time you reset the dungeon, basically giving you tons and tons of runes, charms and enchanted gear to use/sell.
…………………………………………….

Dust from the card game added with “the hoard” DLC:

I would recommend using the dust in this order:
1 to unlock all the cards first.
2 to unlock the Bag second.
3 to unlock recipes and only use it to buy the Manuscript of Knowledge Charm.
4 after all these are unlocked buy Charms here and there but generally speaking try to earn dust faster than you spend it in case a new update to the game comes out and you need a lot of dust.

Blessing Items

Most items you can bless using scroll of blessings.
But some items like Rings and Amulets cannot be blessed by the scrolls.

However you can bless them using one of these two methods.
Using a blessed scroll of enchanting on them.
Or using a Blessed Amulet of Divination has a 1 in 6 chance (I believe) to bless the item it is identifying.

You can also get some blessed items from using the golden key charm that you can not normally get with scrolls. But it is random items so it is not reliable 100% of the time.

The rest of this section is SPOILERS:
…………………………………………………
These three methods are the only ways to get a blessed ring of the outcast which is used to make the ring of power or used to bind to the third leg of the imp for a hidden bonus which I discussed in the charms section earlier.

There are also some challenges and crafting recipes that rely on blessed wands or scrolls in order to complete.
For example blessed scrolls of animation is used in several challenges and they are extremely rare. So the easiest way is to find a bunch of scrolls of animation and identify them with a Blessed Amulet of Divination.
………………………………………………….

Lvling up, Stats and Stat Cap

LVL UP!
Every third level (lvls 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18) you will get a new talent point that can be used at any training post.
Except the shapeshifting totem where you need to be spiritually attuned (killed a bear) until you have completed the Spiritual Guidance heritage, then the totem is just like any other training post and can be used as soon as you have a talent point available.
We will look at the talents themselves in the builds section.

You will have 6 talents in total, and will have 7 talents total once you complete “The Seventh Talent” heritage.

STATS
You will get a new stat point every third level starting at level 2, (2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20)
I recommend focusing on whatever stat is your main damage stat first and STA second.
So STR or AGI first then STA second.
The exception is at lvl 20 take STA because this is the last chance to increase health via lvling up.

This changes if your a mage as your damage is determined by your STA so you just wanna max that first unless your playing a hybrid build of some kind. Getting 11 STA as quickly as you can is best for mages.

For example,
STR builds at level 1 will usually look like this:
STR 8, AGI 6, STA 8, CHA 6

and at lvl 20:
STR 10, AGI 7, STA 11, CHA 7

AGI builds at lvl 1 will usually look like this:
STR 6, AGI 8, STA 8, CHA 6

and at lvl 20:
STR 7, AGI 10, STA 11, CHA 7

Since mages have STA as their main DMG stat so you can really take whatever you want to go with STA, like more AGI to use a bow early game while your spells are weak.
Or more CHA for better buffs healing and charm spells as well as selling prices. Or better STR if you wanna hit some dudes with your staff or a spear.
A pure mage build (traditionally speaking) would probably go Charisma after Stamina because many of the buff spells healing spells and charm spells rely on Charisma. So for a pure mage Charisma is really good.

And for hybrid builds and shapeshifting builds it can change a little bit. As long as you have 11 STA by lvl 20 through leveling (not through enchanting) you will have a strong build. And for the leveling phase itself I find focusing on DMG stats is more consistent than focusing on being tanky stat wise.

STAT CAPS
There is a cap to stats when you are doing enchanting.

vendor prices cap at 12 charisma so getting any higher CHA doesn´t change the prices.

Spell modifiers are also capped at 12 but can be raised to 13 if you have the appropriate Charms for that school of magic.
This means there is no extra benefit to go above 13 STA or CHA for spell modifiers.

DMG actually can go above 12 or 13 with talents such as crushing blow or aimed shot. But it usually isnt worth going higher than 15 STR or 15 AGI in my opinion.

AGI Builds

Agility Archer is arguably the easiest character to play and unlock heritages with.

There are several ways to build Agility characters but I will cover 2 here. I will assume you have unlocked the seventh talent otherwise just remove one of the less important talents until you unlock the seventh talent.

Archer:
The archer build is the most flexible and you can add other talents to make it a archer/shapeshifter, archer/mage, archer/melee AGI, archer with stealth and many more.

Start using bows because you will find more arrows than bolts.
When you have enough money to buy bolts here and there start using repeater crossbows.

I have used archers to unlock most heritages by just taking Aimed shot and then using the rest of the talents on what was needed in the heritages. Keen eye is boarderline a must as well but you can get it through a potion of awareness using the DLC Charm “infinite potion” to copy potions into empty potion bottles, or use a blessed ring of searching just for the run where you need that extra talent point.

STR 7 AGI 10 STA 11 CHA 7

Gear set:
Padded or Winter (DLC)
or the Dragonhide (DLC) armor set for Slow and Steady builds.

Talents:

7th Talent (literacy common, makes you be able to use wands and scrolls)

Keen Eye (makes you auto find traps, get it as early as possible)

Aimed Shot (this is your main DMG talent get it as early as possible)

Dark Vision ( this is one of the less important talents but it does help, rerolls all attacks that would miss making you practically never miss a shot and gives you +1 light)

Literacy Celestial (gives you heal spells and buffs, and will unlock the Celestial Mastery heritage once you have all the Celestial spells)

You have 2 more talents that can be used for anything you wish. Like another spell school + focus cast to make you a mage.
or wolf + beastial wrath to make you a shapeshifter. or dingbat (DLC) + anything. Or silent move + anything and so on and so on.

You can also play around with the DLC Slow and Steady talent which will combine aimed shot with steady shot while using slow crossbows. Meaning you use silent move, then fire from stealth dealing massive DMG usually one shotting most enemies then reload the crossbow and reenter stealth.
You will not need the aimed shot talent if your planning on using slow and steady.

…………….

Dual Wielding Melee AGI

Harder to play but very rewarding and fun character. I will make a stealth version here but you can also opt not to go for stealth and go full heavy armor + parrying melee AGI.

Gear Set:
Leather or Dragonhide (DLC) for sneaking
Studded Leather or Blood Rage (DLC) for more DMG
Plate or Ebonheart (DLC) For more resistance (don´t take the silent move talent with plate)

Talents,

7th Talent (literacy common, makes you be able to use wands and scrolls)

Keen Eye (makes you auto find traps, get it as early as possible)

Blade Flurry (makes you hit multiple times depending on your AGI stat, this is your main DMG)

Silent Move (makes you stealth and using the Seven Keys amulet you can move freely without spamming silent move, makes you deal double (triple with DLC armor) DMG if you use silent move and move into the enemies. You do need high AGI to successfully stealth)

Dual Wield (Makes you get max parry easier and increases DMG of off hand attacks this is fine to take earlier than blade flurry if you cannot find the training dummy for Blade flurry as it increases your DMG by a ton)

Heroic Charge (this might seem odd, but once your out of stealth you can charge around or you could reenter stealth with smoke bombs/invisibility scrolls. I will discuss the use of Heroic Charge in the STR build section in more detail).

The last talent you can use for what you wish like Literacy Celestial for heals, aimed shot for bows, Dingbat (DLC).
You can also remove heroic charge and change the build to a hybrid AGI/Mage build if you get another literacy school + focused cast.

Mage Builds

The strongest in the game.
But they are hard to get going early game and especially hard without heritages to help them through the early game.
But once they hit the late game Mages are without a doubt the strongest characters in the game.

You can build many types of mages but I will just do a pure mage build here.

Pure Mage:

As I said in the Stat Cap section spells use STA and CHA to determine how much damage or how strong their effects are. So leveling STA becomes you priority as a pure mage.

STR 7 AGI 7 STA 11 CHA 10

Gear Set:
Any school of magic that you like to use the most. The gear will give you more clear casting when you have the silent cast talent.

You can also go Plate/Ebonheart (DLC), for more resistances but you will need to use a Battlemage amulet to still do good DMG wearing this heavier armor.

The weapon enchanting.
This is different for pure mages because they don´t hit stuff obviously.
You can use wizard Staves for the conduit weapon feature which you can read on your own in the game index.
Or what most people prefer you can dual wield weapons (claws are best for adding some parry to the mage if you have high AGT).
You will need to enchant your dual wielded weapons or your staff with + spell damage.
You can also enchant them with + health.
Or stat increases like + STA, + CHA or + Crit.
I usually dual wield claws with + spell damage, + health and + crit on both of them. (remember once you have unlocked runes you can triple enchant your gear).

Talents:

7th Talent (literacy common, makes you be able to use wands and scrolls)

Keen Eye (makes you auto find traps, get it as early as possible)

Focused Cast (your main DMG dealing talent depending on how much STA you have and lets you cast spells at range)

Silent Cast (gives you immunity to silence and you can still cast spells while polymorphed so saves you two enchanting slots. But it also gives you Clear Casting where you wont use energy casting spells from time to time which is absolutely insanely good).

Literacy Celestial (lets you learn Celestial Spells and gives you a higher modifier while wearing armor – for all you paladins and clerics out there)

Literacy Draconic (lets you learn Draconic spells)

Literacy Infernal (lets you learn infernal spells)

In order to survive the early game as a pure mage you will need Woof, the Wizards Staff heritage, and all the spell mastery heritages. And the usual, good rings amulets ect.

In order to unlock the Wizards staff heritage I would recommend the archer build.
Just do aimed shot instead of silent cast and go AGI instead of CHA and simply be a archer in the leveling phase.

How does one increase DMG early and mid game becomes the main thing to worry about for a pure mage:

Dual wielding weapons and enchanting them with + spell damage helps.
+ STA enchants on any gear pieces helps.
The buffs from Literacy Draconic:
Amplify Magic
Enlarge Orb (watch out for aoe damage – don´t shoot right next to you)

STR Builds

Arguably the hardest builds in the game.

STR is difficult to make work even after getting all the heritages.
The reason in that it is almost exclusively melee and early game and even in some of the mid game, most things can kill you in two hits meaning if you miss an attack your dead.

I would not recommend trying to make STR characters for your first couple of tries.

Now with that said STR builds can be very fun and can work well if you play well.

STR builds in the early game are all about killing the enemy before they get a chance to hit you. And in the late game STR builds are so tanky they can just plow through everything that is not a Boss or mini Boss.

STR 10, AGI 7, STA 11, CHA 7

Gear Set:
Chain/Blackthorn (DLC) for 2 handed builds.
Plate/Ebonheart (DLC) for sword and shield builds.

For shield builds In the early game you will want to two hand your weapons (even the medium 1 handed weapon type) and wait using shields as you need the extra damage you will get from two handing the weapon.
You can use shields early if you put it on against archers/mages and take it off again after they are dealt with.
In the mid and late game you can keep your shield on at all times as you will have enough DMG through enchanting and Stats at that point to make it worth having the shield on for extra block chance.

Talents:

7th Talent (literacy common, makes you be able to use wands and scrolls)

Keen Eye (makes you auto find traps, get it as early as possible)

Heroic Charge (Charge the enemy dealing 1 extra damage)
Heroic Charge is your most important talent to learn to use correctly for making STR builds work in the early and mid game.
When I first started I did not use this correctly at all I only really used it to charge archers and mages and thought it was pretty bad only giving 1 extra damage.
Basically how you wanna use it is not for the extra 1 damage like I did.

But you want to use it to strike any enemy first before they charge you. This way you will get one hit in bringing the enemy to below half health and then using crushing blow to kill them.
This leaves the enemy with only one hit against you and with a few tank rings you will be able to survive 1 hit from all enemies early and mid game.
However you will need fire immunity, instant death immunity and confuse immunity ASAP because getting hit in melee by enemies that cause burning, instant death or if any enemy crits you will make you confused, and thus you will die if you don´t have these three enchants as early as possible.

Crushing Blow (hit super hard based on your STR stat)
This is what you use after heroic charge.

Shield Bash (for shield builds can stun, knockback and with the DLC ebonheart armor set do tons of DMG) This is better in the late game, not so good early game.

Sweeping strikes (for two handed builds gives block and parry for two handed weapons which is super good and with the new bloodlines DLC Whirlwind can deal tons of damage)

For the final talent I recommend “Slow and Steady” OR “Deadly Throw”
These two talents give the STR character some much needed range.
I would recommend getting one of these ranged talents around lvl 6 or 9 as enemies become really dangerous in melee at that point. So your first three talents in any order should be Keen eye, Heroic charge and Slow and Steady/deadly throw.

Deadly throw is annoying to use in my experience.
You need another gear piece enchanted which is expensive early game. It uses up precious inventory space.
And if you miss and your weapon hits the wall it will be destroyed.
However if you do hit, you can bring an enemy to half health and heroic charge them to finish them off. So it is good its just annoying to use.

Slow and Steady, (Hoard DLC), is however excellent for STR characters.
Using slow crossbows you have to reload after each shot with the rest key

Using a crossbow off hand while the enemy is super far away and then switching to your main hand and heroic charging in will kill most enemies. It becomes a one two punch strategy that will make you a lot safer against those pesky orcs. Once they are dead switch back and reload the crossbow.
Another cool thing is you can use it almost as effectively as a normal archer build if you have haste.

And another cool thing is if you have smoke bombs or invisibility scrolls you will deal a absolutely crazy amount of damage with slow and steady. This is because it adds the aimed shot effect (using your STR stat if its higher than AGI making it useful for STR builds), together with the Steady shot talent which deals double damage while in stealth. You can easily deal 40 or more damage with this.

Shapeshifting

Shapeshifting is unlocked by doing a run where you kill three bears and get all three non DLC shapeshifting talents:
Shapeshift wolf, bear and beastial wrath.
Drinking a potion of the wolf does not count (I tried). You need to actually take all three talents to unlock the heritage.
Bears can spawn after lvl 10 in the dungeon or be hunted via the monster hunt in the inn when resetting the inn for 50 gold and then 100 gold to go on the monster hunt.

Once you have all three talents in one run you complete the Spiritual Guidance heritage and you no longer need to kill bears in order to use the totem to learn the talents. This means at lvl 3 you can take shapeshift wolf if you want.

My suggestion for unlocking these is doing a Archer build:
7th talent
Keen eye,
Aimed shot,
Shapeshift wolf,
Shapeshift bear,
Beastial wrath,
Any talent you would like. for example Dingbat (DLC)

Shape shifting really only needs 2 talents per character.
So you can do any build you want and add wolf + beastial wrath, or add bear + beastial wrath.

Each form will replace your talents for the duration you are shapeshifted.

The Wolf is basically a silent move AGI character with tons of healing.

and the Bear is basically a STR character with tons of healing, fear aura and a chance to instant kill on all attacks.
In order to get the Shapeshift bear talent you just need to drink a potion of the wolf before going to the totem, then you dont need to waste a talent point on wolf to get the bear talent.

The Dingbat (the hoard DLC) is basically a Pure mage with disease aura, summons that heal you, curses that simultaneously gives enlarged orb, poison and disease orb spells.
Dingbat does not really need the beastial wrath talent.

They all have Keen eye.
All of them are immune to Polymorph while shapeshifted.
All of them are naturally hasted.

This means you can for 2 talents (or only 1 talent for dingbat) unlock a whole character build with free haste and free healing.
Therefore shapeshifting builds are totally open for you to experiment you can use any talent you would like when you are outside of shapeshifted form.
Shapeshifting is really perfect for trying out new talents that you wouldn´t normally use.

I would still suggest your stats to be AGI for the wolf and STR for the Bear as this fits better with their talents you get while shapeshifted.
I would also suggest to still have Keen eye or drink awareness potions using the DLC “infinite potion” Charm. Because when your out of shapeshifted form you still need to be wary of traps.

Another important thing to know is that the weapon enchants work differently while shapeshifted. basically stat increases work such as STR, AGI, health or +Crit. But damage and status effect enchants don´t work while shapeshifted such as fire damage, physical damage or things like chance to sleep.

Lastly the Wolf form has a slightly annoying feature that is different from the Bear and Dingbat. It can get permanently stuck in traps, spider webs, rivers and lava.
This is basically because the shapeshifted forms are considered large instead of normal size so they need more STR to get out of traps and so on. And the wolf typically wont have alot of STR in its build. Once you are stuck in a trap or river you cannot shapeshift out of wolf form again and you cannot use spells or wands to get out.
This means that you are usually stuck until you die.
The Bear will have enough STR to get out no problem and the Dingbat has the teleport spell “plane shift” so they don´t need to worry about this.

Now there are some workarounds for the wolf luckily.
You can wear a Blessed Amulet of Ghost Form at all times which make you immune to all the traps that you can get stuck in.
And you can learn the levitate spell from the beastial magic school to get out of rivers and lava. And yes you can use this spell while shapeshifted into wolf form.
The levitate spell will not get you out of spider webs which is why the amulet is still needed.

The amulet of ghost form is really good on the wolf. So as long as you use a Blessed one you wont be vulnerable to magic. So it actually fits the wolf builds just fine. But it is an annoying feature in my opinion that limits the wolf to one amulet more or less in my experience. However the Wolf is still awesome to play with as long as you have the blessed amulet of ghost form.

Hybrid Builds are not what they use to be

I wanted to make a Hybrid Builds section but with the new change to scrolls of knowledge most hybrid builds are just not as fun anymore. At least as of the time of making this guide.

It used to be the case that scrolls of knowledge (once you have all the knowledge heritages) would unlock spells even without you having the Literacy celestial, draconic, infernal.
This meant you could make a build with all kinds of talents and just add focused cast (and if you wanted to silent cast) and you would have a perfect mage build as well as many non mage talents.

However, now they don´t give spells. You would have to take the Literacy talents… Then get the spells… Then respec your character using cursed scrolls… Then find the training dummies for your actual build… finally hybrid build achieved.
So its just a lot more difficult now than before and you dont get the feeling of being a hybrid until you respec meaning you´ll just be lvling as a mage.

Now with that said once you´ve done this process hybrid builds are still super fun to play.

Here is an example of two of my favorite builds.

The Man Bear Mage
STR 10 AGI 7 STA 11 CHA 7

Have a Hammer + Shield on one
and Dual Claws with +spell damage on switch

Use blessed potions of Charisma + DLC charm to copy potions to get 13 Charisma at all times.
Use potion of the wolf to get Shapeshift bear without the wolf prerequisite.

Talents:
7th Talent

Keen Eye

Focused Cast

Silent Cast

Shapeshift Bear

Beastial Wrath

Shield Bash

………….

The Man Stealth Mage

STR 7, AGI 10, STA 11, CHA 7

Use blessed potions of Charisma + DLC charm to copy potions to get 13 Charisma at all times.
Use Potion of the Wolf + DLC charm to copy potions to get wolf talent for free.

Talents:

7th Talent

Keen Eye

Focused Cast

Silent Cast

Silent Move

Dual Wield

Blade Flurry

Conclusion and Thanks

Thank you for reading my guide.

I want to thank the developer for making such an amazing game that I have had literally hundreds of hours of fun playing.
Also thanks to the developer for continually updating the game and making DLCs.
I have enjoyed every update since the alpha and am looking forward to any content you would like to add at any time.

I also want to again thank the community for answering all my many questions in the discussion forum and especially Pear has answered so many of my questions.

I will try to expand on the guide here and there and answer questions.

Enjoy!

Here we come to an end for Rogue’s Tale Tips and Tricks (Updated for The Hoard DLC) 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!