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Son of a Witch as a Roguelike: A Players' Guide

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Jubal:
Achievement Hunting

A fair number of the achievements are straightforward to complete - those that require simply playing a number of games, or defeating certain bosses for the first time (covered in the Monster Manual), and so on. In this section, we'll look at some of the more specific ones that aren't so simple, like side-quests or just difficult feats to achieve. There are also several that require playing through whole variant modes of the game, and the "other game modes" section will help with those.

The following achievements I'm either classing as "easy" (or at least, likely to be completed within a normal winning run of a certain character type), or are covered elsewhere in these guides: Prologue, Who's The Boss Now, Lost Pet, Dragon Slayer, Bandit, I'll Be Back, Archer's Quest, Healer, Execution, Persistent, Undertaker, Exterminator, Bodyguard, Double Back, King Arthur, Connoisseur, Happy New Year, Succession (See Monster Manual Pt 1: The King), Player, Veterinary Physician, Expert Swordsman, Victory, Sharpshooter, It's Hammer Time, Sorceress, Knight, Pyromancer, Druid, Shepherd (see Monster Manual Pt 2: War Sheep), Archer, Skeleton, Barbarian.

Here are notes for the others, presented in a rough difficulty order (determined by looking at the Steam stats of which ones players have completed more):

Safety Escort
A fairly hard escort mission through the battlements and much of the castle, to unlock the Pyromancer. Your escortee is slow moving and vulnerable - use scrolls and bombs to skip as many battles as you can, opting to fight only the easier ones. Don't pick up your escortee until the end of level one, to minimise the number of battles you're taking her through. Be prepared to take more hits than usual - jumping in front of a throwing spear now and again may be helpful. The magic map is very useful here, as it allows you to ensure you don't go through more rooms than you need to. Once you reach the castle level, the Pyromancer (and thus end of the quest) is always in a shop, so if you get a silver coin somewhere on levels one or two then you can sometimes teleport there directly which makes life easier.

Eye of Ramana
Again, an extremely tough escort mission, though at least if you get the undeath staff you can resurrect your charge. Similar things apply as with Safety Escort, except you're doing it in the lower catacombs. Finishing battles fast and knowing the map well are vital here - a very overpowered wizard is usually a good character to do this with, and an undead army to soak up the damage is helpful too. Until you complete this mission, the drop rate for the Staff of the Dead is 100%, so it's worth completing the catacomb boss fight first and always having some undead with you. It may also be worth trying the other necromancy missions (Necromancer, Dracula, and Undead Friend) before you complete Eye of Ramana, as once you've completed this achievement the drop rate for the Staff of the Dead drops to much lower (you can however test for it by hitting f1 at the start of a game: a readout will tell you whether the Dracula achievement is possible, that is whether the lower catacombs and staff drop are both present).

Suicide
Pretty easy, just wander around the first level as a knight until you get pinned by a shaman, kill the non-shaman goblins, and then stomp yourself to death when the shaman drops the doll. Easier to do if you've got potions that boost stomp damage. It's pretty easy to end up getting killed by the meteors instead of your own attacks though, so beware of that.

Devastator
Getting the chain reactor item early is important for this one; running around and enemies lined up right so once you kill one, their on-death released bombs kill each other, is also useful. This may be best done in the Master Blaster challenge, where the bombs won't hurt you.

Tomb Raider
There are various ways to clear out the Old/Lower Catacombs; they're mostly covered in the section above on that area. High powered magic or undead armies are the most standard ways. Archers will find this the most difficult, I think, as it's tricky to kill the enemies fast enough.

General
This is quite a hard one - I suspect it's easier to do on the I Am The King barbarian challenge than in a regular game, as you can then take your soldiers around the forest and protect them better from goblins, whereas in a normal game they'll be harder to save, especially from the dungeon level floor traps. An alternative possibility is to have trap-stopping pets plus the clockwork staff so you can at least protect them from the floor traps.

Pyroman
Play through a full game as the pyromancer and you should get this one fine.

Burglar
Quite easy to achievement-hunt, though rare to get in a regular game. Just restart until you get the bag of bombs, use all your bombs to blast doors, and you should have this complete by the castle level.

Green Flame
This one's quite straightforward, just keep restarting as either druid or pyromancer until you find whichever the other staff is, then find some mana potions so you can invoke the fire special, drink 2 small manas (or 1 big), then invoke the poison special *whilst the fire staff is in your hand* - that is, you want to poison-buff the fire staff, NOT the poison staff (and the fire staff can't buff anything other than itself). You should then be able to fire green poisonous fireballs.

Lord of Thunder
This is quite an easy one as long as you find the thunderstriker sword reasonably early on. Like with Marksman below, the real trick is to get a group of enemies bunched up enough for this to work: the catacomb level shop battles may be a good option for this as the bats come in large numbers, or if you have a peace scroll then the throne room on level 3 (let the king summon a load of guards THEN peace-scroll them all and you should have plenty to use for the achievement).

Merchant of Death
This (killing a bushido with a stolen melee weapon) is fairly tough. I think my advice would be to use a wizard or a fast-moving archer with poison arrows, and do things to speed yourself up: the aim should basically be to get the bushido down to 1hp at range and then just do one well-timed hit with your newly stolen weapon.

Takeover
This needs a mana canteen and life staff in the final boss battle, which you can then use to revive the dragon master's dragon after you knock the dragon master off it. Fortunately the Life Staff isn't that uncommon and is a pretty beefy (8dmg) weapon, so any mage should be fine for hunting this achievement.

Goldsmith
See "Gold Rush" below: this is just a weaker version of that.

Orb Rain
Basically for this you need a wizard and a run with plentiful "magic split" potions. You'll also need to get a fair way through the run to get seven or eight such potions, so you'll either need to have some magic buffing combos or be prepared to fight a full game in melee or archery. Use replication scrolls on magic pearls or magic split potions when you find them to speed the process up.

Bomberman
Do-able but takes a few tries, since killing any enemies with a bomb is a bit tricky. Slowing some enemies down and getting them bunched up by running round them is the key here. Also, doing it in a room with a lot of enemies, as some will usually split off so the "main cluster" still has to have 5+ enemies in it. If you have a peace scroll then consider using throne room on level 3 (let the king summon a load of guards, then use the scroll, and you should have plenty to use for the achievement).

Shaman
Easy, just takes a while. Keep walking into rooms, tagging someone, killing them via the doll, rinse & repeat for ten rooms.

Locksmith
You need to play through most of the game to get this achievement, but it's quite easily done in many/most normal games - each of the seven levels has one locked door, and an average of about three locked chests (boosted by eg the dungeon which will usually have 5-7), so 20 through the game is quite do-able. The reindeer pet might be useful here to avoid you running out of keys/letting you find them in rocks (or the dwarven ring of course).

Buffed
One way to get this is with Money Is Power potions, which if you follow a money-heavy strategy can get you that high by late game (though remember it's a status effect, so be careful of getting curses that you can't remove for fear of losing your buffs). You can also trigger it by using the mana canteen and twilight staff (or bare bones amulet, stack of small mana potions, and staff) and repeatedly using the staff's ability on one room. With a mana canteen you'll need around 50 mana stored up to get to the 1000% mark.

Mana Man
Take a melee character and be prepared to not use any mana abilities, drink any mana potions you find immediately, and take the lizard as soon as you find it, and this one's perfectly possible.

Marksman
This is mostly a skill test - it's not that uncommon to be able to one-shot enemies as an archer, and you just need to get enough of them lined up to put an arrow through them all. If you're quick enough for it, the vampiress bat swarms in the dungeon level shops or the level 3 throne room (plus a peace scroll or it gets too dangerous) offer a reliable source of large numbers of enemies that you can plug an arrow through. The overdrive barbarian challenge offers fuller rooms that may have more possibilities for completing this quest, too.

Gold Rush
Avarice is your friend for completing this one: other than that, just take every gold-gathering option you have: the pig pet, the magic chest, the gilded predator hammer, the portable foundry. Don't use an archer for this - a melee character is ideal, as you won't be losing combat power by using the magic chest if you find that, and you can use the Gilded Predator as your main weapon if you find that. If you have Money Is Power potions, that's ideal as it will mean your gold quest actually builds your character up effectively. Another tactic, if you find a bare bones amulet early or can carry some blood runestones until you do, is to use one of those and then keep pumping out gold with a then 1-mana magic chest. This coupled with avarice can make huge amounts of money (also nb using the chest makes the Lizard a better pet than the Pig if you're doing it efficiently: pig produces 15 gold/battle, Lizard produces 100/3 = 33 gold/battle as long as you're using that mana on the chest).

In A Rush
One of the really, really tricky achievements to get, reaching the dungeon in 5 mins - I'd recommend using the pyromancer or skeleton archer (probably the latter) for very fast battles, use any scrolls you find to skip boss battles as those take up far too much time. Your starting item really matters here - the three that really work for this are unicorn horn if you're happy fighting with low HP, as that lets you one-hit everything pretty fast, the magic map as that means you can be sure you're heading directly for the boss fight, and the bag of bombs as that means you can skip some rooms. Expect to take at least ten or so attempts at this one, though, it's one you really need to hunt for and practice on.

Mongoose
Poison immunity stock-up - basically there are two ways to get numbered poison immunities, antidotes are the best (+5/potion), and can be replicated, the other is the healing staff which gives +1 per use, meaning that if you've got a mana canteen you can stock up most of what you need that way (especially with a bare bones amulet in the mix). This one might be best to do opportunistically - if you find 2-3 poison bottles and the healing staff early in a run, carry them forward just in case.

Zoo Director
Any successful run where you get the wolf on the first level should be fine for this. If achievement hunting, just re-load until you get a wolf in the lvl1 shop then play as normal.

Athlete
A run with blur potions should get you this one - you might need two blur potions for the achievement, but they're the key to it, regardless. Alternatively, if you have a mana canteen you can use the stormbringer wand/staff item from the castle which the wizards there carry - its ability is to speed up, so you can repeatedly use that to give yourself a boost. Blur + replication scroll can also help if you're really hunting for this achievement. As the long jump often appears on Level 1, doing lots of reloads until you get a good combo of stuff is fine here, though you'll sometimes find you have a super quick character on the ice level one in a normal game, especially if you carry a stormbringer with you.

Goliath
Kill a boss in one hit - this means, ideally, using the retaliator sword on one of the lower level bosses and charging it up a lot by getting yourself hit. See the section on the retaliator sword in the equipment guide for more on this one. You can also do this if you have the mana canteen and Twilight Staff in the mid-late game, by boosting your stats to well over 1000% and using a powerful weapon (like, say, an upgraded bow).

Petrification
Fight some enemies with the stoneheart sword, charge it up regularly, and this isn't hard at all (except the "get yourself to the last level and survive there" bit, that's fairly tough). Best done with a melee hero, so you can build up rage better - if you want to play it safe, leave it to near the end of a battle when you've only got an enemy or two left, then petrify one of them, switching back to your more powerful main weapon to build up the rage you need to recharge the sword's ability. Medusa arrows of course also contribute to this but it's rare to find enough of them to actually finish the achievement as an archer.

Friends Till The End
This is a fairly tough one - you'll want a non-mage character, a boar, and a life staff, OR a chanter and a boar and to keep using the strawberry staff to heal your mount. My successful run on this was using the latter, though I've also done the former - either way, ranged characters are probably the way to go as you want to be taking as few hits as possible yourself - the boar can die surprisingly quickly, especially if you get knocked off it during a boss battle. If you have an Escape or Gamble for the ice level boss battle, definitely use that; you only need to get to the start of the desert level to use the achievement.

Gonzales
This is one of the really, really tough ones - completing the whole game in 30 mins. A shortcut run (that is, using the Vampire's Shortcut in the forest level) is almost certainly the best way to do this, and I'd recommend the Pyromancer as your hero because the fire ability finishes battles that much faster, especially given the importance of the catacombs as your second level (where poison won't work). Fast battles are 100% necessary here, so the fire attack is well worth having. One thing you can do which I'd very much recommend is, once you've found a setup that has the shortcut, to save and reload the seed for a particular level (use the chat feature and /seed with the seed you want, on character creation screen) ; this allows you to do fewer reloads (because you can rely on the shortcut being there) and to keep doing the same run to learn the level layout as you go. Remember to use scrolls for boss battles to speed those up, too.

Necromancer
This is one of three achievements which essentially involve going and clearing out the lower catacombs using the necromancy staff. This one requires you to use its casting ability fifty times, which is a LOT, so you'll need to have the mana canteen & probably the lizard pet. Of course arguably this might become easier if you have a bare bones amulet, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you've also got a lot of blood runestones and shielding related kit - going into the lower catacombs without the ability to take a hit or two is generally a pretty bad plan!

Foxy
Not a terribly difficult one, but you need to reload until you get the fox in the level 1 pet shop if you want to go for this one. Make sure you drop all keys before going near chests or treasure room fights if you really want the achievement: accidentally using a key when you need to be using the fox is very annoying. Don't take any pets other than the fox, even if you find the wolf - unless the fox is right next to you there will be a lot of chests you can't get it to reach.

Dracula
This is fairly tough as it requires you to effectively clear out the catacombs (with an "undead army") and have plenty of mana while doing so so you can keep resurrecting lots of vampiresses until you get ten. You'll need the mana canteen as well as the staff to have a good chance - and even then of course the catacombs are tricky. The Lizard is a good pet for this as it just gives you that much extra mana. Remember that you can hit f1 at the start of the game to get a readout on whether a given level has both catacombs and the staff of the dead in it.

Challenger
This has to be done via the Daily Challenge. It requires you to essentially clear out the lower catacombs on a run where they exist and then win the game, so it's rare and, as you can't reload, will take some persistence to get. Unless you have the lower catacombs present then I don't think this is possible: my scores tend to max out in the mid-80,000s otherwise.

Undead Friend
This should be pretty easy as long as you get the undeath staff and the mana canteen. Paying attention to which member of your shambling horde you need to keep resurrecting is probably the hard bit - the obvious ones like the resurrectable bosses are, unfortunately, going to die less often, possibly not often enough to get you the achievement.

Comeback
Oh look, another "clear the catacombs" type achievement. For this one, the map is especially useful, so you can go directly where you need to be headed. As you'll be doing it with an archer, albeit presumably a high powered one, it's probably more important than usual to have a chunky undead army wandering around with you.

Surgeon
Quite tricky, though of course the *really* hard bit is getting the character unlocked for it to start with! You need to be fighting bosses to get up a 30 combo on the barbarian axe, you can clear a whole full room of goblins and only get to the mid-20s (though one alternative way to do this which I've not tried would be to do it in a 2-player run, get the barbarian to drop the axe and let a chantress use it - with lower starting melee skill the combo could last longer without getting too strong and wiping the enemies too fast). Anyway, the obvious/best way to do this is a boss fight, and the ideal is almost certainly the Violet Knights - just get them both in the same place and keep chopping away at them, they've got enough health, will stay stunned, and while the axe combo is activated the guards won't be able to hurt you at range. Starting with the Head Start challenge can be a quick way of doing this that gets you into that boss fight faster without having to fight through three levels first.

Shortcut
Most of what I said for Gonzales applies here, but this one is actually slightly easier as pace doesn't matter. It's still very tricky, of course, and you'll need a good run on the forest level to have a reasonable shot at it. Learning a particular shortcut seeded level is a sensible way to do this. Letting yourself get avarice-cursed a lot in the dungeon, if coupled with money is power potions, can be a good way to rapidly buff your character for this sort of game, too.

Other Game Modes

This section will provide tips for playing the game in Hard Mode, Easy Mode, the twelve Barbarian Challenges which give you specific and unusual handicaps on how you play the game. These correlate to the following achievements, presented in a rough difficulty order (determined by looking at the Steam stats of which ones players have completed more): Piece of Cake (Easy Mode), One Shot (BC XII), Compendium (BC II), Trolling (BC IX), Poisoned (BC X), Cursed (BC VII), Drink All Potions (BC V), Master Blaster (BC III), Overdrive (BC VIII), I am the King (BC IV), Head Start (BC I), Survival (BC XI), Magic Casters (BC VI), Master of Melee (Hard Mode: Knight or Barbarian), Master of Magic (Hard Mode: Sorceress, Pyromancer or Druid), and Master of Archery (Hard Mode: Skeleton Ranger or Archer).

Easy Mode
Not much to say about easy mode - it's quite a different game style, with no inventory or potions, just stat upgrades via runestones. Avoiding poison may oddly be more important than in the regular game as it's less likely you'll have healing equipment for it on hand, so be mindful of that. Instead of silver shillings for buying everything in a shop you get a blood runestone which is fairly neat. Also remember that the light blue chests, which normally have some fairly OK but not spectacular things in, often have at least one stat upgrade runestone in easy mode, and you have way, way more health, so sacrificing some health to get to one is a much better deal than in the regular game.

Hard Mode
There are a variety of tweaks in hard mode, and three achievements for completing it as different character types. Guarding against poison is more important in this mode as it lasts longer, so the healing staff is a fairly important item. A few more powerful items and potions won't show up, so you're more likely to be using less high-powered characters, too. Finally, remember that shop robberies are trickier in this one - once you've robbed one shop, all shops have hostile guards immediately, so carrying around e.g. a bow and some slowing arrows can be hugely important (and of course not forgetting that the bushidos will be there and getting caught off guard in what's normally a safe room!)

The Challenges:
Head Start (BC I)
Win from starting in the castle - not too bad as these challenges go, though not easy either. Getting rapid power-ups is important here, OR finding some weapon powerful enough that you don't need them. A lightning sword + lightning rod, especially if you can duplicate the latter, would stand any character type in good stead: if Money Is Power potions are present, letting your character get a couple of avarice curses from the skele wizards wouldn't hurt either. The retaliator sword can be very good for the boss fights, too. Maps might be useful, especially if you have any scrolls or quick ways to finish the boss fights, they'll allow you to avoid battles you don't need to fight on the Ice & Desert levels.

Compendium (BC II)
Compendium is one of the most unusual variants among the challenges - the game plays in a straight line, you get bonus inventory slots, and you have to take on every boss in order. I beat this with a melee hero, but you'll likely need some tactic switches to win - carrying a bow with ice and slow arrows is easy since you've got lots of inventory space, and probably vital to take on some of the bosses. Try to buy everything from shops when possible to get some Silver Coins, which you can use to skip rooms and even bosses in later levels.

Master Blaster (BC III)
You pretty much need bomberman potions to have an easy run of this, though it's probably possible without if you're really good with bomb timings. The bomb stick is a really annoying weapon, you produce a decent number of bombs of course and you're immune to bomb explosions but the combat damage being so low is a pain (unless you have bomberman potions and are chucking a whole ring of the things). If you have Ice Bomb, get the Icicle too - it applies to your little thrown bombs too, and freezing everyone can be really useful. You can also poison-buff the bomb stick as the shaman which is a decent tactic. The weapon's strong attack knocks down enemies, and you can use that to make them still before dropping bombs on them.

I am the King (BC IV)
Well, you're going to have a whole bunch of troops, so that's nice. On the other hand, you have a pretty useless main weapon. Good strategies here include playing as shaman and poison-buffing it, or as knight and just trying to upgrade it into a decent combat weapon. The clockwork staff is also potentially very useful for stopping your troops getting killed needlessly by floor traps (dungeon level especially). Since you can knockdown with the scepter, high stomp damage is useful here. You can also use eg a flaming sword in the secondary slot and do flaming sweep attacks on your enemies which can work well. The weapon's strong attack knocks down enemies, so another viable strategy is to get a stomp pet (Horse) and stomp damage potions (Heavy Bones, Iron Flesh) to be able to kill enemies in two hits (knock down + stomp).

Drink All Potions (BC V)
What the range of potions is is pretty important here. If Iron Flesh is common in the mix for example, you'll probably die of being unable to dodge anything pretty quickly. I'd probably go for an archer for this one, as there aren't many potions that will seriously hamper your fighting ability. Remember that you can occasionally carry potions into an already unlocked/bomb-blasted room to stop them being an issue. Consider carrying healing and life staffs, as you won't be able to cart antidotes and dragon fire potions around with you.

Magic Casters (BC VI)
A hard one that's best done, beautifully enough, with a caster, I think: the key thing in Magic Casters is to kill your enemies fast before they get off an absolute ton of area-type spells. Be prepared to do a lot of dodging behind obstacles as well, especially when facing necromancers or crystal wizards (as you will in the catacombs and castle, respectively). In those levels, the ethereal bow and the indirect-fire staffs (meteor and stormbringer) are particularly useful as you can fire at the enemies from in cover. I used the pyromancer on my successful run of this, and relied on mowing down the shamans on lvl 1 rapidly (I also found an early bare bones amulet which allowed me to use fire all the time, but a sufficiently powerful regular-type wizard wouldn't necessarily need that). By the final level, which includes EVERY wizard type, you need to be clearing rooms very fast indeed to stand much of a chance. Being able to deal wide-ranging damage is important, which is why I'd particularly recommend a powerful wizard here - the risk of, say, concentrating on taking down a skeleton mage and then ending up killing yourself by hitting a dropped voodoo doll is pretty high.

No Backtracking (BC VII)
This isn't too bad. You do however either have to a) not mind playing with a ton of curses OR b) have cunning strategies to avoid going back through doors. We'll of course focus on b here. A run with the fox pet early is hugely helpful on this challenge, as it means you can get normal upgrades with far fewer cursed keys. The other extremely useful item is the bottomless bomb bag, as you can use bombs to blast back through doors. Carefully selecting which doors you go through is very important, too - remember that doors only lock from the side you came through them in this scenario, so if you're careful you can often set up one-way system loops that allow you to traverse areas of the map fairly normally, using bombs to open

Overdrive (BC VIII)
The first level of overdrive is perhaps especially tricky as you're likely to get very full rooms dealing with multiple shamans - this does, however, potentially mean that your character can advance pretty quickly if you have the right set of potions etc available. Getting good at judging when the Shamans are going to drop dolls, or using bombs and ending other battles to get yourself un-tagged from the dolls in a different room, can be important on the forest level here.

Survival (BC XI)
This is probably one of the toughest of the 12 challenges - get hunger and thirst in every battle. Finishing battles fast is important, and thirst is the worse of the two so getting a retort early and using it often is usually a very good/important part of surviving here. High stacks of gold diet potions can also be very helpful, and remember that beer removes both hunger and thirst simultaneously.

Mushrooms (BC X)
This one is really tough: boosting your max health is really important as mushrooms and beers top you up to whatever the max is, so if you find blood runestones then use any replication scrolls you find on those. Other than that, get used to fighting with no health - if you're low on health restoratives, fight the normal battles without and use health for the boss battles.

Trolling (BC IX)
Trolling is mainly about speed - you need to be able to easily outrun bushidos by the later game, when there are lots of them in the desert as well as the jackal-gorillas. Use a ranged character - a high powered archer who can one-shot the bushidos by endgame, or a powered up mage, are the ways to go. Most of the enemies in this don't have much ranged power, but some of them are pretty quick, so just make sure you can outrun them. The trolls in the forest level are most easily beaten with an archer.

One Shot (BC XII)
This is, oddly enough, actually easier than the base game and is probably the easiest of the 12 challenges. You start with 1hp and a max hp of 20, so finding runestones on the first level is vital. If you do that though, you're no worse off, and most of the enemies are down at 1hp so it makes most of the levels pretty easy. I'd advise playing with the pyromancer as it's already designed as a low-health character. It's very easy to clear the catacombs out in One Shot because of the 1hp thing, so this mode might also be good for getting some of the other necro-related achievements.

Jubal:
~Placeholder~

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