Son of a Witch: The Unofficial Equipment Guide

[Jubal]

Son of a Witch: The Unofficial Equipment Guide

This is the third part of the unofficial manual, along with Son of a Witch as a Roguelike and the Unofficial Monster Manual.

CONTENTS

1. Melee Weapons
2. Staffs
3. Bows & Arrows
4. Potions
5. Other Items
6. Pets & Mounts



Part 1: Close Combat Weapons


SWORDS

Swords all have a quick attack that hits fast with good reach, and a slow attack that hits slower & harder (usually roughly double damage but varies) with the same strength. They all have the same rage attack, the "sweep attack", which lets the user move fast in a sweep across the room and hit with the higher damage, knocking down enemies and doing extra damage to bosses. The statlines below have the quick attack damage first, then the slow attack, then the sweep attack.

Goblin Sword
Stats: 8/19/21
A pretty useful weapon, dealing a chunky 8 damage at base though not with very good range. Usually dropped by the goblin warriors. I often use this as the early game weapon for an archer or mage - using a sword rather than a club or axe is just an easier fighting job, making it easier to hold enemies off at some distance with lots of quick attacks keeping them stunned.

Long Sword
Stats: 6/16/18 Reach: 74
Good reach, though only 6 damage, making this one of the weaker swords in the game (understandably for a starting weapon). Knights are best advised to avoid using any runestones on this one - wait until level 2 and get a guard captain's sword at the very least. These occasionally are found in rocks, in which case they can be decent early weapons for non-melee classes too.

Guard Captain's Sword
Stats: 8/20/22 Reach: 73
With good reach and a pretty nice 8 damage, these are the best easily available general purpose sword weapon as they're often dropped by guard captains. There are better options and you'll usually find one, but there's no shame in these as a general purpose weapon for a melee character, especially if upgraded. That said, I use these a little less than I used to: my tendency now is where possible to opt for a hammer-type with a special ability where possible, and then maybe switch to a retaliator or Viole(n)t sword for the end of the dungeon onwards if I can find either of them.

Viole(n)t Sword
Stats: 10/22/24 Reach: 104
Big and powerful (a hefty 10 damage), with massive reach, and triggering full rage with every kill, the Viole(n)t sword is well worth it if you really like using your sweep attacks (and are good at aiming them accurately enough to take down enemies fast. It's not terribly special beyond the heightened sweep ability, but it's definitely a cut above the Guard Captain's sword for the extra reach and boosted special.

Firestarter
Stats: 8/18/20 Reach: 77
With good reach and good damage, the firestarter's very obvious selling point is in the name, starting fires with each hit. The firestarter is a decent sword and I do sometimes use it as a main weapon quite happily, though it's worth noting that some enemies (dragon, for example) are fire immune and there may be better options for truly general-purpose weaponry.

Frostblade
Stats: 7/17/19 Reach: 63
The frostblade has middling damage, rather short range for a sword, and the chance of freezing enemies. I very rarely use the frostblade - I find that the freezing thing when doing quick attacks at short range can disrupt my rhythm and too often I get enemies unfreezing at just the wrong time so they get a hit in on me. It may be worth using if you're prepared to pick up icicles and do a frost-heavy character build of some kind, though.

Venomous Blade
Stats: 7/18/20 Reach: 46
Mediocre damage (for something you pick up non-upgraded on fourth level at the earliest) and short range make this blade quite hard to use effectively as a main weapon for any class. It's the favoured weapon of (and often dropped by) the assassins in the dungeon for a good reason though: as the name implies, this blade poisons enemies. As such, it has its uses, but they're not as a main weapon. My most common use for this is to take it into the boss battle with full rage at battle start (regardless of which of the six classes I'm playing) and use the sweep attack as my opening gambit before switching to my actual favoured weapon. The rage attack sorts the issue of reach, and after that there's no need to keep using it: having a decent poison working its way on the boss makes the fight that much easier.

Undead Warrior's Blade
Stats: 8/20/22 Reach: 61
Basically a version of the Venomous Blade but with better damage and reach, and the "tetanus infection" both poisons and gives the hiccup effect to an enemy. Unfortunately, the undead are immune to these effects, and this blade mostly appears on the fifth level which is full of undead. That said - if you're a melee character with a free inventory slot going into the ice mountain level, then do carry one of these - a sweep attack from it at the start of a battle can poison all your enemies quickly, which will make the rest of a battle that much easier. Also, these do appear sometimes in blue chests. They're an excellent early game weapon for archers and mages especially, as so long as you're not terrible at playing melee characters they can make you pretty competitive in melee. Your low actual melee skill is less of an issue, as long as you can get the initial hits in and then dodge until they're weak enough for a killing blow.

Thunderstriker
Stats: 9/20/Lightning Reach: 80
The Thunderstriker ought to be a good sword, though I rarely use it. It has very good basic damage, and if you get a rod or two then those lightning attacks can pack a real punch. I've never been a huge fan of lightning and in general I always advocate boosting base damage rather than relying on elemental effects for most characters, but I really can't complain about the base damage here because it's actually really good - and I suspect if I learned how to use lightning better I'd consider it more. I think it's actually the look of the sword that puts me off - rather than the elegance you get with the knight captain's sword, the huge goofy spikiness of the violent sword, or the firiness of the firestarter, the Thunderstriker looks kind of fat, blocky, and awkward by comparison, with a massive guard, sharp angles rather than curves, and a really fat blade compared to the hilt. This is a terrible reason for not using it, but I may as well be honest about this one.

Stoneheart Sword
Stats: 8/19/- Reach: 64
This short, fat sword is mostly found on the desert level. It's probably one of the deadliest options in the game: it has a deadly black glow that, upon hitting an enemy, causes them to become petrified and turn to stone over the next few seconds. Its rage attack is to "refuel" the stoneheart effect. It's probably not a sword you'll use much, because it's not got very high general damage considering that it comes so late in the game and petrification robs you of any drops from killing enemies, but it's fun to play with sometimes nonetheless.

Vampiric Tooth
Stats: 8/18/20 Reach: 85
Presumably this is the tooth of some kind of vampiric dragon or mammoth, because 85 is a BIG reach. Every kill with this sword heals you magically, making it an especially good weapon for the undead archer if you can find one. It's got good damage, too. I tend not to use it much, because in most games I find that I have enough healing potions etc to stay pretty on top of things health-wise and other options are better if you're usually on good health anyway - but it's a fairly solid choice.

Dual Bloodblade
Stats: 1/8/10 Reach: 74
So in theory the DBB should be a great weapon, the tool of Vampiresses - its stats boost (within the battle) with every hit, so you'll be using the quick attack mostly to boost that up. This can be fairly useful in some boss battles where if you keep plugging away you find yourself doing a lot of damage even on quick hits. Personally, I think for most battles this isn't worth it and for melee characters I'd rather have a weapon that can reliably take out or knock down enemies right from the start, especially when it comes to trying to take down wizards before they start spellcasting seriously. The DBB is, however, useful for big, slow fights, especially for non-melee characters as it's one of the melee weapons where its ability doesn't rely on the character's melee skill. If you're going in to kill the dragon, or are facing Felgin the Ringleader, or other fights that tend to be fairly slow and protracted, the bloodblade is a fairly useful choice. I don't use it often, but there are certainly situations where it's worth a look.

Fake Excalibur
Stats: 8/18/20 Reach: 73
This is a decent weapon, not top end of the range but it can sometimes be found on the first level buried in a rock, at which point it can be worth taking and upgrading it. All its attacks ignore shields, which is very useful for taking on the Goblin Warriors, Guard Captains, and Brigands throughout the game. I generally don't feel that's always enough of a bonus to take it if I have a weapon that will gain me more stuff or pump out better damage, and the bomb needed to get it out the rock on first level may be better used elsewhere, but if you can spare the bomb and want a decent melee weapon with a nice special ability this is certainly a fine one to use..

Cutlass
Stats: 7/17/17 Reach: 73
The cutlass is definitely one of my favoured weapons if I manage to find it (and not just because I like feeling like a pirate!) It gives you +1 melee skill for each kill you do (excluding spawned enemies in boss fights, so you can't "farm" it). This is one of my favourite weapons in the game - I like building my statline over time, and those +1s really do add up if you get the cutlass on an early level. It's not got the highest stats, but if you can get a blacksmith's runestone onto it then it can be serviceable in its own right, as well as steadily pumping up your own damage dealing abilities. Even if you won't use it on later levels in favour of a more beefy option, if you find a cutlass at low levels then as a melee (or perhaps even non-melee) character it can be worth using it for a bit to get those stats in better shape for the mid and late game.

Sword of the Damned
Stats: 40/50/50 Reach: 91
Basically the highest damage weapon in the game (yay!). It's also cursed and leeches your health - 5hp per quick attack, 10 per strong attack (so the maths nerds among you will have realised pretty fast from that that using the strong attack isn't really worth it other than for rage specials or if you're happy having no health ever). It's one of quite a few items (Barebones Amulet being another one) that pushes you hard towards a fast moving, low health playstyle and rewards it with super high damage - there are situations where you can keep your health restored with the SoD (healing staff + BB amulet + mana canteen, say), but in general it's likely that keeping using this sword will mean you having very little health most of the time. Personally, I find this too risky a playstyle, but being able to one-shot a lot of opponents with this thing definitely has something to be said for it.

Batting Sword
Stats: 8/18/20 Reach: 81
A nice high reach sword with decent damage, and a rather odd special - that you can use it to bat back projectile weapons at the enemy. In practice it's really pretty hard to get the timing right for this, and I've never really used this ability in battle, but if you have the skill for it, great stuff. It's usually found in a room in the forest where you can bat back some axes as a challenge to gain reward items. For the most part, though, I'd ignore the special ability - this is a decent sword even without it.

Retaliator
Stats: 7/17/19 Reach: 80
One of the best swords in the game for boss fights. Its regular stats etc are nothing special, 7 damage although with pretty good reach. What is special is that every hit done to the player gives you +10 damage until the end of your next battle. This, if you can stack up the healing potions etc to pay for it, gives you a pretty solid strategy for dealing with bosses: simply walk into traps repeatedly, heal up when possible, and then walk in and kill the boss in a single sweep attack. This takes some prep to ensure the traps don't kill you, of course.

On the first two levels this plan is not really worth it (though I did do it on level 1 using two beer mugs and a rolling ball trap in order to get the Goliath achievement once). On the castle level, a freezing shooter is ideal, or fire or poison shooters if you have a relevant immunity: they do lower damage, so you can get hit more times (and it's the number of hits that matters, not the amount of health lost) before healing up. In the dungeon, use the poison spike traps if you have poison immunity, the non-poison ones if you don't (though be careful with those). I don't think there are such good options for this strategy in the catacombs, unfortunately, though in regular dungeon battles taking some light hits from the skeleton mage's orbs can then let you carve through other enemies easily.

HAMMERS

Hammer-type weapons usually are much slower than sword-type weapons, though with heavier damage, on their main attack. For their other attacks, the usual secondary attack is a particularly slow, boosted-damage hit, and the usual rage attack doubles/triples the size of the weapon and smashes it down, knocking down enemies and doing much higher damage.

Goblin Club
Stats: 18/27/54 Reach: 38
The goblin club does fairly heavy damage, slowly, at very short range; it's often dropped by goblin grunts. Its base damage is a decent 18 for the quick attack, 27 for the slow attack, and 54 for the rage attack. The weapon being so short ranged and slow to use makes it quite a poor choice when facing most enemies, though.

Bandit Mace
Stats: 30/44/90 Reach: 61
The bandit mace is a much larger, more powerful variant on the goblin club, with a base hit of a massive 30 (thus extremely high damage dealt) and good reach. It's a very solid weapon, especially in the rare cases you find one in the forest level (which can happen very rarely as an end of room reward). It's a bit slow, and in general I prefer to use weapons that either boost my character over time (Enchanters' Warbreaker & Gilded Predator) or use a sword for the better damage and reach. This is definitely a pretty good weapon, though, and if you upgrade it a bit you can easily get to the point as a knight where you're taking down almost all enemies in two hits or one rage attack, tops.

Enchanter's Warbreaker
Stats: 18/12/54 Reach: 50
The Enchanter's Warbreaker is an extremely useful weapon. Its special attack, rather than the typical slow/heavy attack, knocks down enemies, so it's a good one to use if you want to use stomp damage. Conversely, if you deal the final killing blow with the Warbreaker itself (but NOT with stomp), you get +1 mana for each kill. This makes the EWB a very powerful weapon indeed if you have good mana-using items. At the time of writing, unlike the Gilded Predator, the Warbreaker also works on spawned enemies in boss battles, meaning that if you had the EWB and magic chest, say, you could "farm" a suitable boss battle for mana and thus gold (I am expecting that this will be changed at some point, and given the lowish reach of the Warbreaker it's not a *great* strategy, but right now it's do-able).

Gilded Predator
Stats: 23/37/69 Reach: 48
The Gilded Predator's special ability is to "seed" an extra coin on an enemy when you hit them. This, especially if you get the GP early in the game, significantly increases your coin intake (and this is especially useful in daily challenges for the extra points). In general I marginally prefer the Warbreaker in most games, as I'm quite good at robbing shops and mana has more versatile uses a lot of the time, but if your aim is to get rich, the Gilded Predator is a great way to go. The Predator and Warbreaker are often my mid-game weapons of choice regardless of the class I'm playing nowadays - which can lead to slow battles if my melee is poor, but in the long run is worth it for building my character up faster as long as I can actually survive the battles. If you do have really bad melee, the Gilded Predator can be the better option, as you only need to hit once (subsequent hits don't repeat the effect) to seed the bonus coin - you can then switch to a more comfortable weapon to actually make the kills.

Celestial Smasher
Stats: 27/43/200 Reach: 47
The celestial smasher's first two attacks are those of a normal hammer: its rage attack, however, is rather different. The deities of the world of Son of a Witch seem to have promised to help its wielder, and so when summoned a large weight comes briefly crashing down from the heavens, dealing a whopping 200 damage. Bear in mind that the weight takes a second or two to appear after being summoned, though, so whilst monstrous in terms of damage (especially early in the game) the CS' attack is a hard one to aim accurately. I rarely use the CS for this reason.

Glacier
Stats: 25/36/* Reach:63
The Glacier is a very powerful hammer mostly for its rage attack, which does no damage but freezes literally everything on the screen that isn't freeze-immune temporarily. It also has a 40% chance of freezing anything it hits. When combined with the ritual icicle this can be particularly powerful. Its high damage and good freezing abilities make this a better weapon for an ice-character build than the frostblade, if the choice is available.

THROWING

Throwing weapons are defined by all having an attack - usually the secondary attack - that throws the weapon, usually with a range reaching right across the room (strangely, throwing weapons generally have better early game range than all the other ranged weapon types). The rage attack is usually a more powerful version of the regular thrown attack with high damage + knockdown. The damage from both the throwing & close ranged attacks scales according to melee skill. The ranged secondary on throwing weapons generally doesn't build range up: you need to use the close melee attack to build rage if you want to use the rage ability (or have the bull pet, which combines well with some of these weapons).

Goblin Axe
Stats: 16/16/20 Reach: 51
The goblin axe, dropped by goblin berserkers, is a very easy weapon to obtain, usually one or two will be dropped even on the first level. It's a decent throwing weapon which builds rage fast with its close combat hits and has a decent ranged rage attack. The relatively low speed of the attack and better power of the throwing knife if you really want a throwing-based character make it the weakest option in the throwing section, though.

Throwing Knife
Stats: 20/30/30 Reach: 34
The throwing knife is dropped by thieves on the dungeon level, though they also appear in boxes/barrels at lower levels sometimes. It has a decent thrown attack and a fairly strong thrown rage attack, like the goblin axe. Its massive +40 bonus to backstab damage is really useful if you're fighting with a team, as well - this is definitely a weapon for a flanker not a solo player. Its close combat attack is a slow knockdown hit, though, which means that for massed close combat it can sometimes have dangerously low reach and speed, and as such I'd almost never use it in single player mode.

Throwing Knife
Stats: 20/30/30 Reach: 34
The throwing knife is dropped by thieves on the dungeon level, though they also appear in boxes/barrels at lower levels sometimes. It has a decent thrown attack and a fairly strong thrown rage attack, like the goblin axe. Its massive +40 bonus to backstab damage is really useful if you're fighting with a team, as well - this is definitely a weapon for a flanker not a solo player. Its close combat attack is a slow knockdown hit, though, which means that for massed close combat it can sometimes have dangerously low reach and speed, and as such I'd almost never use it in single player mode.

Trickster's Axe
Stats: 20/20/50
So far as I know this is only dropped by the Trickster, one of the dungeon level bosses. Its main advantage is that it can be thrown through obstacles with one of its attack options. I generally tend to find that throwing through obstacles isn't *that* useful, but this item may turn out to have its uses.

Mjolnir
Stats: 25/25/37 Reach: 48
The Mjolnir, legendary hammer of Thor, is one of the game's best hand weapons, full stop. Its stats are good (if less so than the Ringleader's Hammer), but more importantly, its ranged attack and rage attack both bounce, meaning you can run away, keep hurling it against the wall, and be hitting enemies behind you - or, if you're in a crowd, throw it forwards, and hit the enemies behind you as well as the ones in front, giving you a far better chance of escape. The rage attack's bounceback and high damage to bosses makes this do an awful lot of direct damage to bosses too, bouncing back to do double what you might initially calculate. It's the only weapon with which I usually actually run a throwing-heavy character build - it's an awesomely powerful piece of kit, and good fun to play with.

AXES & MISC

These weapons all combine or deviate from the above main sections significantly enough that I decided to list them separately.

Battle Axe
Stats: 9/18/23 Reach: 69
The Battle Axe functions mostly like a sword on its quick and slow attacks, with a throwing-type rage attack. With decent reach and good damage, it's actually a fairly worthwhile weapon and one I should probably use more often. With a couple of runestone upgrades this can actually be a really powerful and worthwhile weapon - perhaps understated compared to some things with fancier special effects, and the reach is lower than most swords which can be a disadvantage for massed combat, but the faster killing power may make that worthwhile for some players who really like trying to steamroll into a big bunch of enemies.

War Axe
Stats: 12/24/36 Reach: 68
I'm not a huge fan of the War Axe, but it does have very impressive stats - a quick attack as fast as most swords, decent reach, and a whopping 12 quick attack damage make it a very powerful hand weapon (its rage attack is a double-size with boosted damage, similar to hammers). The downside? -1 speed while you're using it. As you may find from other notes here, I think speed is one of the most valuable attributes in Son of a Witch, and even for this big a hike in killing power I'm loath to sacrifice that generally. If you've found good speed boosts elsewhere, though (or perhaps if you have lots of health + damage reduction thanks to toughness potions), and don't need the movement so much, this would make an excellent weapon, especially if upgraded.

Great Blood Axe
Stats: 20/30/30 Reach: 96
Along with the Sword of the Damned, this is a "kill lots of stuff super easily, but also you have no health ever" playstyle weapon - it knocks a whopping 50 health off you every time you enter a new room. Good luck finding enough beer to deal with that one - in practice, it means you're usually fighting with low to no health. It gains +1 damage per completed battle though, so if you get it early then by late game this thing can be packing more damage than just about any other weapon. Combos well with unicorn horn (you're going to have no health anyway), bare bones amulet (you may as well be using mana items cheap if you're already on 0 health), and dwarven spinner (for super high melee damage, letting you one-shot most stuff).

Rogue Sword
Stats: 7/17/100 Reach: 79
The Rogue Sword is an interesting one. It's a fairly bog-standard sword for the most part with middling damage - its special ability, though, is to temporarily hide the player from enemies (which is why it's not categorised as a "sword" here - it doesn't have the usual sweep attack). The character is revealed when they take certain actions (mostly attacking, though I think using a bomb/equipment item also removes the effect). When the player is revealed, they get a temporary +100 damage bonus, which on a sword's quick attack is pretty powerful. I never find this an ideal "rogue" weapon, though - it's near impossible to actually take down bushidoes with it as their attacks are so fast, and being revealed when you use a bomb or ranged attack stops any kind of real nifty sneak-move stuff going on. Also, be careful when you use it - I've killed my own characters before by taking down a shaman in one hit and then hitting a voodoo doll with +100 damage on the next...

[Jubal]

Part 2: Staffs


ORB STAFFS

Poison Staff
6 Damage
The poison staff is the base weapon for the druid. It's only found by being the druid, or in rocks. The 3 mana ability - quite low cost so can be used regularly - is poison, which is a useful element/effect that saps enemies' health - it's particularly useful on bosses, and least useful on enemies that attack more at low health (like the shamans). The really nice thing about the poison ability, though, is that you can use it to buff other weapons. This ironically sometimes means that the staff is best used where possible by other character classes, for whom it makes a useful buff - for the wizard, other staff types with higher base damage are often better to switch to, as 6 is very low.

Strawberry Staff
6 Damage
The Strawberry Staff, the chanter's starting weapon, producesa decent heap of food for 3 mana. This is immensely useful! If you find a boar, it lets you keep the boar alive much more easily, and of course it means you rarely struggle for healing etc. When combined with appetite potions it can be particularly powerful, and/or it works well with use of the retaliator sword, which becomes a useful weapon even for a non-melee character if you can afford to take a hit now and again.

Fireball Staff
6 Damage
The fireball staff's ability, costing 3 mana, is, well, fire. Fireballs are pretty good for dealing lots of damage fast: the only thing immune to them in the game, as far as I know, is the dragon, for probably-obvious reasons. The mana cost of course means you can't use it in every battle, so be careful. If you go for being a fire wizard, it's best to double down on this - the lizard pet is a good choice for being able to use fire more regularly, and getting as many kindling units as possible can really help in boss battles. Fireball staffs are found either by being the pyromancer, or occasionally in shops/chests.

Healing Staff
6 Damage
This is fundamentally a support staff, much like the strawberry staff. It commonly appears on the first level as the potion shop owner carries one (it's also sometimes in potion shops as a sold item, in 4th level general shops or, appears as a boss drop). Its ability is 4 mana for healing 20 health and curing poison which sorts you out for poison immunity. Whilst it's not a massively high powered combat option, do consider the healing staff as an extra inventory item if you've got space for it regardless of your character class - the poison healing function is often too useful to miss out on, unless you happen to otherwise have poison immunity.

Clockwork Staff
6 Damage
Don't be dissuaded by the low damage - the clockwork staff has a trick up its sleeve - it will use up one of your coins for each orb fired, giving a massive +15dmg to each as long as you still have coins. Even later in the game, that's an acceptable attack boost, and early in the game it's really pretty powerful. The downside of course is that you need coins to keep firing the gold orbs, and unless you have, say, a portable foundry, that can be a bit tough. Works well with things like avarice, of course. The special ability of the clockwork staff is to turn off all traps in a room for 5 mana - especially useful for robbing shops in the dungeon level, though there are locked rooms in the ice and catacomb levels for which this can be pretty handy too.

Twilight Staff
7 Damage
The twilight staff has a 3 mana ability to create darkness in one room, darkening the room and boosting your stats. This is especially useful if you have the mana canteen and can use the effect 2-3 times in a boss battle. If you have the mana canteen and you're not a wizard, I'd say this was a good character support staff: if you don't, perhaps a little less so.

Staff of the Dead
7 Damage
This shoots dark orbs and raises the dead. The latter ability is the interesting one. It can raise any of the following from the dead:

• Vampire Lord
• Undead King Salamis
• Undead Boar
• Vampiress
• Skeleton Mage
• Skeleton Archer
• Skeleton

It costs quite a bit of mana to do so (5), but you can always re-raise them after they get killed as long as you still have sufficient mana. As such, look to try and build and maintain a small undead army, focussing on Vampiresses and Bosses: possibly one skeleton mage is useful for the curse ability, but don't take regular skeletons, it's not worth it.

Pogonip Staff
7 Damage
The pogonip staff shoots ice orbs. Its ability to freeze enemies in place is really effective, as long as the enemies aren't ice immune (which all the enemies on the ice level are, so this is less effective against them). Wizards can do shop robberies with this pretty effectively, even at low levels, especially if they've used a ritual icicle. The special ability is to summon a pogonip - an icy fog that slows down all enemies. This is reasonably useful, though I rarely use it as the pogonip also partly obscures my vision which I don't like so much.

Shepherd Staff
8 Damage
The Shepherd Staff turns a single enemy into a sheep, for 1 mana. In a large battle, it may not seem much, but it has one brilliant use - shop robberies (on levels 1-3 at least). It's a good combat staff given the 8 damage as well, though I tend to prefer turret and teleport of the high-damage options if I can get them. Don't do this on bosses - it turns them into a super death-sheep that shoots spikes (if you really want tips on summoning and then beating the war sheep, check out the unofficial monster manual).

Evergreen Oak Branch
8 Damage
Dropped by the trickster among others, this has a 2 mana ability where it creates temporary barriers that look like barrels. I don't think this is super useful for barrier construction most of the time, and most levels have some indirect-attack enemies who'll mess you up if you try to play defensively. The barrels can be used for regenerating rage if you've got the "bear in a barrel" powerup though. 8 orb damage certainly isn't bad, though.

Turret Staff
8 Damage
The Turret Staff is my favourite of the high-damage staffs, though unfortunately I rarely use it since the Healing Staff is currently simply a better option. The turret staff's special is to create turret-style copies of itself that pump out magic orbs (these will have the same magic damage as you did when you planted them, though effects like poison won't transfer to the turret). Turrets have all kinds of interesting uses, especially in boss battles and for robbing shops, where if you have a few small mana potions you can get a very nice multiplier effect on your damage, allowing you to concentrate better on all-important matters of running and dodging.

Life Staff
8 Damage
The life staff is kind of fun, with a high-mana power that allows you to redistribute health between creatures alive on the screen - so it allows you to steal health from bosses and resurrect fallen allies and mounts. I think its uses are mostly in multiplayer though - I can't see many reasons why you'd take the Life Staff over the Healing Staff in single player, given the option. Its good damage can nonetheless make it a decent option even if you never intend to use the special effect.

Demonic Staff
8 Damage
I think the demonic staff is both one of the better offensive staffs and one of the best support staffs for non-wizards in the game. Its ability is to randomly curse every enemy present - for one mana. In other words, you can curse every enemy in every battle. Some of these curses will be things like hunger which aren't super useful, but often you can throw out a lot of freezing, burning, and poison effects into a mass room of enemies immediately upon turning up, which is very good value indeed.

Teleport Staff
9 Damage
The Teleport Staff's ability, for just 2 mana, is to teleport the user. This is usually to the other side of the room, but can also be to hard-to-access locations - the game has plenty of chests and so on behind fences. It also, however, boasts monstrously high damage as of recent updates, making this an excellent choice as a general offensive staff item. As well as being found in chests and shops occasionally, it's the weapon used (and often dropped) by the Crystal Wizard boss.

HAIL STAFFS

Meteor Staff
30 Damage
The meteor staff is the weapon wielded (and dropped by) Goblin shamans - I've also seen it appear in catacomb-level shops. It summons, on a small delay, a meteor which knocks down enemies and does 30 damage. The meteor is usually targeted on the nearest enemy. The mana-based spell attack is to summon a much bigger meteor for just 2 mana - it's a fairly cheap special and worth using regularly.

Stormbringer
30 Damage
The stormbringer is always used, and frequently dropped by, the sky wizards in the castle. It's sort of a fan-shaped wand that will summon hailstones (same damage & system as meteors) onto the enemy. Its mana spell, for 4 mana, is to give a speed boost to yourself and all allies. Whilst this is mostly a good idea for team games where you can have a support caster, it can make this a decent choice as a support item to use your mana on if you're a knight/archer and you don't have a more pressing need for mana points. I rarely do this, as in most games I'm saving mana for using the healing staff, retort, or magic chest, and 4 mana is quite large investment for a one-battle effect, but it's not a bad option.

COMBAT STAFFS

Earthquake Staff
Stats: 15+15/20 Reach: 55
The earthquake staff is a really useful piece of kit - using both melee and magic skill combined to work out base damage, it's the only item in the game that will accept both the purple and grey runestone types, as it's very much a magician's close combat weapon. The special attack, for 3 mana knocks all enemies down (which is not very useful) and breaks a number of rocks depending on your magic skill (which is INCREDIBLY useful). It can be a slightly unwieldy weapon in combat, it's not *that* fast so you need a pretty mobile character to make good use of it, and you may still want to take a ranged staff as primary weapon if you can afford the inventory space. It can get to do some very powerful hits indeed though, and the rock-breaking ability can be great for helping you find useful potions and runestones faster.

Imperial Sceptre
Stats: 12/8 Reach: 55
The Imperial Sceptre is wielded by, and only dropped by, the King. Its primary attack is a fairly fast club hit for 12 damage: its secondary does lower damage at just 8 but knocks down enemies. Nonetheless, it's a poor close combat weapon to be carting around by the end of level 3: if you keep this, it'll be for the special ability, 1 mana to summon a guard. This has some uses, though it needs the mana canteen to be really useful, and even then it takes a LOT of guards to really be worth having in a boss battle or similar. The main trouble is that guards often get poisoned on the dungeon and catacomb levels, and have no way to remove poison or heal. Note also that the Imperial sceptre is a quest item for the "Evil Princess" quest room.

[Jubal]

Part 3: Bows & Arrows


BOWS

Short Bow
Damage: 50
The basic bow, dealing 50 bow damage. Very worth having - you start with it as the archer, I often carry one as a knight too if I can find one because the access to special-effect arrows of various sorts is so worth having. These can be found in blue chests and barrels, if you don't start with one.

Deadwood Bow
Damage: 55
The Deadwood Bow is, I think, probably the best in the game at the moment - Son of a Witch is so based on speed that its ability, slowing down enemies, is invaluable, and it's got pretty good damage, too. It's especially useful in boss battles, where removing the boss's ability to get to you often very much restricts the ways in which they can attack.

Ethereal Bow
Damage: 55
The ethereal bow shoots past obstacles like fences and rocks that usually block arrows. This is a pretty useful ability in some ways, as in theory it allows you to do a lot of hiding from ranged attacks whilst still being able to fight effectively yourself. It's a bit less good than it initially seems in practice for two reasons - firstly, a lot of rooms just don't have enough hiding places, and secondly, when playing single player, unless you have the tortoise or some allies somehow it's likely that your enemies will be trying to move out and round to get to you, rarely staying in the zone where you could actually be protected from them. Nonetheless, it's a decent strength bow - it's provided free in the hornet minigame in the forest, or can be found in shops and chests, so it's probably one of the easier "advanced" bows to obtain.

If you're using an ethereal bow, the teleport staff is a useful combination item, as there'll be a number of rooms where you can then teleport into a hidden or closed off area and pick off the enemies from a place of safety.

Brimstone Bow
Damage: 50
The brimstone bow is pretty simple - it sets targets on fire. This of course makes it a generally more powerful bow, especially if you can find some kindling to boost the fire damage, and it's one of the better bows in the game. In some ways this is an especially nice side-weapon for the knights - if you're using, say, slow arrows as an opening gambit in boss battles, then setting the boss on fire as well can help make your job easier.

Golden Bow
Damage: 60
The Golden Bow doubles arrow damage. That generally makes it the most high-damage bow option in the game, and the easiest one to get to the stage where you can one-shot enemies (except for the bone bow). It's clearly specifically designed for use with gold arrows, with which it can do awesomely high damage. I'll very often use one of these as the archer if I can find one, they're very much the friend of specialists who can carry around a decent block of specialist arrows with them.

Bone Bow
Damage: 35
The bone bow's ability is interesting - its damage increases by 1 for every bone arrow the user is carrying. Thus unlike the golden bow, which is designed to shoot golden arrows, the ideal thing with the bone bow is not to shoot bone arrows but rather to carry a stack of them around to boost your damage (whilst shooting wooden or other arrows). The main way to get this bow is to be the skeleton archer - other than that, they're fairly commonly dropped by skeleton archers in the catacombs level, but by that point you may well have another well-upgraded bow that you want to stick to.

Ice Bow
Damage: 35
The ice bow has a freeze chance on hit - it's dropped by the archers on the ice level, and occasionally appears earlier on in shops or chests. It's potentially useful, though in general I prefer bows that have a better chance of one-shotting enemies - ice attacks I find are mostly useful if I can reliably pin an enemy in place with them, and for that ice arrows are a better bet than the ice bow.

Notched Bow
Damage: 50
The notched bow has a 30% chance of giving you a 3x arrow shot (which still only uses up one arrow). This is quite nice in crowd situations, but also of course unreliable, so this isn't my favourite bow on the list.

ARROWS

Wooden Arrow
Damage: 5
The basic arrow in the game - very commonly found in boxes, barrels, and rocks all over the place.

Snailbite Arrow
Damage: 20
Snailbite arrows slow enemies down. They're relatively common and can be found in boxes. They're also extremely useful, especially for slowing bosses down and for robbing shops - even if you're not an archer, carrying a bow and some snailbite arrows into a boss fight is often very worth it.

Poison Arrow
Damage: 20
These poison enemies on hit, as long as they're not poison immune. They can be found in chests, and via nature altars.

Ice Arrow
Damage: 20
As you'd expect, these freeze things on hit according to whatever freeze duration your character has (which can be increased with ritual icicles). They can be found in chests, in shops, and via ice altars.

Medusa Arrow
Damage: 10
These petrify enemies. They're found in shops and chests. They're in some ways the game's most powerful arrows, since one can petrify an entire boss - the effect takes a little while to turn them into stone but it's fairly impressive and as far as I know nothing in the game is immune to it. However, petrified enemies don't drop anything, so beware of that (and I very rarely use medusa arrows any more for this reason - it's not worth the possibility of missing important item drops to use them on bosses, and there's no other advantage to petrification over other means of taking an enemy down). I occasionally use them on Bushidos when robbing shops - the slowing effect is a pretty useful/reliable way of taking them down.

Gold Arrow
Damage: 50
These are high-damage arrows - no special effect beyond that, but the extra damage is worth having (and extremely powerful when combined with a Golden Bow, which doubles the arrow damage).

Bone Arrow
Damage: 30
Bone arrows are fairly high damage, and also boost the power of bone bows. If you're using a bone bow, you just want to carry a stack of these and use wooden arrows as your main shooting arrows in order to maximise your damage. Skeletons often drop bone arrows - if you're playing as the skeleton archer, lots of other enemy types do as well.

[Jubal]

Part 4: Potions


RANDOMISED POTIONS

There are always 8 potion types in any iteration of Son of a Witch, which are unidentified at game start. The colours are indigo, cyan, yellow, orange, black, white, pink and purple - each of these colours will be randomly assigned one of the effects below, which you can discover using an ID scroll or by drinking the potion. Effects below are roughly listed from worst to best outcome.

Distraction
Status Effect: Negative
This is a status effect that makes all staffs etc cost +1 mana for all spells (and it stacks, more distractions = higher cost). It's pretty much a toss-up between distraction and extravagance which is the worst effect in the game, but I'm going to go with distraction marginally - it's worst when coming randomly from the staffs of the undead wizards, who can cast it as a curse quite often. For a wizard, this can leave your most important abilities out of reach just when you can least afford it, and you won't always reliably be able to find dragonfire potions, the only way of removing it.

Extravagance
Status Effect: Negative
Extravagance is a status effect that loses you coins every time you go through a door. Literally, every time. It starts with five coins per door, and if you drink more extravagance potions the effect gets worse by 5 coins each time. There is no positive counter-benefit - you just end up splashing money around like there's no tomorrow. Basically, get rid of this effect (using a dragon-fire potion, which is the only way to do so) as fast as you can.The one soft spot I have for this potion is that I named it - in earlier versions it was called Generosity, until I pointed out that this has too many positive connotations in English for a potion that's just there to bite you in the posterior.

Hiccup
Status Effect: Negative
A 3-battle effect where your character occasionally, at random, "hiccups" and get stunned momentarily. This has no redeeming side-effects and is generally pretty terrible in a movement-based game like Son of a Witch - it can expose you to unexpected attacks, makes fast-paced close combat more difficult, means that carefully set up bow shots can suddenly go wrong mid-draw, and so on. I'd say this is worst for the knight, where even a moment's pause can let a hail of attacks at you: it's fairly bad for archers too as shots take so long to set up so losing one to a hiccup is grim. It's a bit less bad for wizards as you're more likely to be further from the enemy to start with and you can re-start firing magic orbs fairly fast afterwards, though it's still one to avoid.

Hypochondria
Status Effect: Negative
Hypochondria doesn't actually harm your character per se, it just makes planning harder - it adds a status effect that makes your health bar unreliable, meaning it's harder for you to keep an eye on how much health you have left. Drinking multiple potions has no additional effect. I usually try and get rid of the effect where possible, but in the early game it's not a major problem (and by the dungeon level you should usually have all, or almost all, potions identified).

Tracker Delusion
Status Effect: Negative
Tracker delusion is a status effect that stops you seeing the map for 10 battles: extra potions just refill it back to 10, it will never go above that. I don't think tracker delusion is that bad, but I have a fairly good sense of direction: if you're happy playing slowly you can always grab some paper and draw a map out while you're playing to help cope with the effect.

Iron Flesh
Iron Flesh seems like it should be a good potion, and it's the first one on this list that there are sometimes legitimate gameplay reasons to drink in a normal game - it boosts your health by 20, and your stomp damage by 10, and drops your speed by 1. The trouble is that Son of a Witch is basically a game that's about movement and dodging ability most of the time, and Iron Flesh makes the most important part of the game just that much harder. As such, unless you're counterbalancing by drinking Iron Flesh and Super Weight Loss alternately (which together just cancel out to give +10 stomp damage and no other effect), or if you've been lucky in finding quick battle scrolls and rabbit amulets, Iron Flesh is often really quite a nasty potion for you.

Avarice
Status Effect: Mixed
Avarice used to be the nastiest potion on this list - its main effect is to lock your inventory and stop you dropping items, which particularly with my playstyle (which relies a lot on weapon switching) and the fact that inventory management is usually pretty important in SoaW can create death traps by stopping you picking up items you desperately need or forcing you to waste useful ones to free up space. However, Avarice also makes every coin drop worth +5, so it can be really useful for accumulating money fast. One tactic can be to avoid picking up money for a whole level, if you have a stack of avarice potions and a dragon fire potion, then drink all the avarice potions, grab all the multiplied money, then get rid of the effect again straight afterwards. There are definitely uses for this now, in any case.

Berserker
Berserker and Life is Magic have basically variants on the same effect - get a +20% stat bonus in exchange for losing 20 health. Berserker gives +20% melee in exchange for 20 health. If you're a melee character and your health is over 100 this may well be a good exchange: if you're not, it probably isn't, and getting one of these potions early as a wizard or similar can be pretty annoying.

Life Is Magic
Life is magic gives +20% to magic in exchange for losing 20 health. I probably use this a bit more often than Berserker, because a low health, high damage wizard is a bit easier to play when you can keep at range from your enemies.

Sharpshooter
The only archery-specific potion, sharpshooter boosts your archery range, an effect especially intended for non-archer characters who start with lower bow ranges. I rarely find I have range problems with a bow regardless: this potion is fine, but probably has the least useful or negative effect of any in the game at present.

Magic Split
If you're not a wizard, magic split basically has no effect: it increases your orb/meteor count by one, and decreases your magic skill by 20%. This is sometimes a worthwhile thing to do, as it does generally increase/improve your damage and gives you wider effect area for massed combat, but also risks making your orbs too small to do enough damage if you take too many such potions without counterbalancing them somehow.

Attunement
Attunement increases your magic range - useful if you're a wizard and have heavy magic potions that you need to counteract, doesn't have a lot of point otherwise and there are other ways to boost magic range (runestones on the staff, and magic bubblegum).

Power Brew
Power brew increases knockback, the amount enemies are knocked backwards by your attacks. I only really find this helpful as wizards, where being able to push enemies back with orbs might mean I get a few more out before a melee enemy gets to me - but I guess it's a nice-to-have regardless.

Telepathy
Status Effect: 1 Battle - Positive
Telepathy give you the ability to see enemies past doors. This can be extremely useful - drink telepathy at times when you have several doors available and you want to find the path of least resistance, and avoid drinking it when you only have one door you can go through anyway as then the effect isn't so useful. If you get the scout ring, Telepathy potions cease to be useful (except in combination with the blood mixer as health boosters).

Super Weight Loss
Super Weight Loss loses 20 of your health to gain +1 speed, making it roughly equivalent to Life is Magic and Berserker. I've ranked it a lot higher, though, because all character types find speed useful, and even for melee/magic characters I'd strongly consider using this over one of the stat-increase potions.

Furious
Status Effect: 1 Battle - Positive
Furious gives you two things. Firstly, doubled rage generation for one battle, kind of useful but not generally a huge benefit most of the time unless you're really able to pick where to use it for a fight that's likely to be very long (like Felgin the Ringleader). More important is that it tops up your rage meter when you drink it, so taking a bunch of these into a boss battle to ensure you can use your rage attack in a tight spot can be very worth doing.

Clairvoyance
Clairvoyance reveals the map for your current level (and therefore counteracts/removes the Tracker Delusion status effect). Being able to see the map is obviously useful in all sorts of ways, so this is a nice-to-have potion - in general it doesn't help you survive, though, and so it's not at the top end of the list. It's most useful for quests where you need to find quick routes through a level, or in the old catacombs if you want to find a path toward the boss fight.

Appetite
Status Effect: Positive
Appetite gives an extra +3 health for every piece of food you eat, and stacks with multiple potions for +6, +9, etc. This can be pretty powerful, especially if your character has the strawberry staff which summons food: being able to use small food items as effectively as actual potions is a pretty good deal all round.

Bomberman
Status Effect: Positive
Releases multiple bombs, +1 per potion, stacking. This is... fine I guess? It can certainly be useful for bomb-mining along long rows of rocks. I don't personally find that this has much good combat potential, because I find bombs too unwieldy and dangerous to me to use them in combat and prefer to use them for mining purposes. It is a useful assist when trying to blow more rocks up though, certainly.

Bloodlust
Status Effect: Positive
Bloodlust lets you build up rage faster. I think this is a fairly useful one, as it stacks and is permanent (making it in my mind more useful than Furious, which has a larger improvement to buildup but only lasts one battle). For archers and knights, it's a pretty good potion to use.

Heavy Bones
This boosts your stomp damage by 10. It's definitely positive, and if you get a bunch of them then your stomp can be a really useful part of your arsenal. Having a lot of these as a melee (or semi-melee) character works well alongside the Violet Sword, because you can do a sweep attack, finish one enemy off at the end of the queue with a stomp attack, then turn round and repeat again. You can also use this with weapons that have knockdown-based attacks, like the Warbreaker hammer, though I do this less often as it's harder to ensure I'm clear of other enemies before making the stomp attack happen. I'm often quite cautious about using my stomp as it's easy to get caught in one place for a moment too long doing it, but it can be a pretty powerful attack.

Apprentizer
Status Effect: Positive
Gives you +1% magic every time you use a mana ability. Multiple potions stack for a higher percentage boost each time. This isn't a bad potion - it's very class dependent as to how useful it is - very much for mages, a little less so for the others - which is partly why it's ranked a little lower than things like Focus Pocus. If you want to maximise this as a mage, look for low-mana items to use. The Broken Bone amulet of course works well here; other than that, the shepherd staff and the sceptre are the main one-mana items that can help you build your magic stat faster this way.

Focus Pocus
Status Effect: Positive
Focus Pocus improves your chance of doing critical hits (attacks at double damage) by 5%, stacking with every extra potion. This is a great status effect, especially if you can build them up over time and especially if you can combo these with the rhino pet. Relying on FP or any other potion as a major part of your arsenal isn't ideal as you may end up having to lose the status effect to get rid of curses at some point, but it's certainly a really useful thing to have - if you have the inventory space, it can sometimes even be worth carting around FP potions to ensure you can have the effect when a boss battle happens without worrying about losing it beforehand.

Toughness
Status Effect: Positive
One of the best status effects in the game, toughness gives you the ability to take the next 5 hits at half damage. This can be an absolute lifesaver, especially if you mess up and get hit by a boss - the difference between being hit for 60 damage and being hit for 30 is BIG in a game where you often have 100 health tops. Knights start with their first few hits under this effect. Multiple potions of this stack, as well, which is very helpful. It's also ignored by dragon fire potions, which is a nice plus.

Money Is Power
Status Effect: Positive
Gives you a 1% stat boost per 100 gold coins carried. May be stacked for a 2%, 3%, etc, per 100 coins. This varies in its use, and of course may need to be ditched via dragonfire potion. However, it's so high on the list because it can be REALLY powerful as a combo item - in games where Money Is Power is a common potion, you can pretty much run a game strategy around combining it with a gold-producing game plan (avarice, gilded predator, magic chest, etc). This requires you to get the right item combination, and can be a fragile plan since it relies on you not getting any curses that need removing, but it's great if you can do it. In one extreme case, I used a broken bone amulet and then stat-buffed constantly with a magic chest until by the end of my run I had over a thousand percent bonus from this potion. "Aurum potestas est" indeed!

Blur
Status Effect: 1 Battle - Positive
Blur gives you a BIG one-battle speed boost (and stacks with multiple potions). This can be extremely useful in all sorts of situations, making you far more nimble than bosses or bushidos, and giving you the speed you need for the jumping competition as well.

Mega Boost
Status Effect: 1 Battle - Positive
Mega boost gives +50% to all stats for one battle, and can be stacked with multiple potions. The usual use for these is to drink a bunch immediately before a boss battle, getting you through it that much faster as your damage dealt will be significantly increased.

Every Hit's A Crit
Status Effect: 1 Battle - Positive
Gives you a 100% chance of double damage on all attacks, for one battle. Very useful indeed in boss fights. Drinking multiple potions makes the effect last for more battles.

Heavy Magic
Heavy Magic (which increases your magic skill, and decreases your magic orb range) is to the wizard what Barbarian's Friend is to the knight - the potion that just gives your main combat stat a good healthy boost, whilst sacrificing something you need rather less. That said, losing range is a problem after a while, and if the iteration of the game doesn't have attunement potions then you might need to be careful to avoid it getting too low (or use one of the hail-staff options or the earthquake staff, for which range is less important).

Barbarian's Friend
Barbarian's Friend - if you're a non-magic class - is probably the most no-brainer potion in the game, and as a melee character it's a very good thing to find. Basically, it bumps up your melee whilst decreasing your magic - aka, unless you're trying to be a magic, it boosts a stat you need whilst reducing one you probably don't care about (except perhaps for reading scrolls, but you can do that with identify scrolls generally).


STANDARD POTIONS

Every game has these basic potions in.

Small Health Potion
One of the most common potions in the game, can be a battle-end drop or found in shops, rocks, or blue chests. A small red vial that gives +20 health.

Big Health Potion
A fairly common red potion that can be found in locked chests or potion shops, or occasionally as a battle-end drop in shops. Gives +60 health.

Small Mana Potion
One of the most common potions in the game, can be a battle-end drop or found in shops, rocks, or blue chests. A small blue vial that gives +2 mana.

Big Mana Potion
A fairly common blue potion that can be found in locked chests or potion shops, or occasionally as a battle-end drop in shops. Gives +6 mana.

Antidote
Status Effect: Positive
A somewhat uncommon dark green potion that can be found in locked chests or potion shops, or occasionally via life altars. Cures poison & protects against it for 5 battles.

Dragonfire Potion
A somewhat uncommon bright orange potion that can be found in locked chests or potion shops, as battle-end drops in shops, or occasionally via fire altars. Removes all status effects, good or bad. Dragonfire can save your character - removing poison and hunger effects, and hiccup/tetanus problems, getting rid of hypochondria or distraction, etc. There's a price, though, which is losing all the good status effects you might have gained (bloodlust, appetite, toughness, and focus pocus being the most common ones that you won't want to lose but may need to sacrifice). As such, dragonfires are useful and may well be necessary, but to the extend that you can amend your playstyle to avoid having to use them, do so.

Beer
A beer! Gives full health, reverses your movement direction for one battle, and removes the hiccup/spasm and hunger status effects if you have either of them. The movement reversal is a status effect (so you can get rid of it with a dragonfire potion, or alternatively drinking a second beer will reverse your movement again, removing the effect and turning it back to normal.

[Jubal]

Part 5: Other Items


SCROLLS

Toxic Cloud
Toxic cloud is the game's least useful scroll - it does what you'd imagine and fills the room with toxic gas. Use this if you're poison immune already and are OK with fighting with low visibility, otherwise don't. It can apparently be useful alongside the rogue sword, as your hiding period gives more time for the poison to affect all the enemies.

Random Teleport
Random teleport is a get-out-of-jail (or maybe into it) free scroll that just teleports you to another room on the level. This is sometimes useful as a last-ditch resort if you're surrounded and in a particularly bad room, but isn't often super useful other than that.

Gamble
Gamble changes your enemies into different enemies. This can be an improvement, or not, depending on what they turn into. I think the best uses of gamble tend to be on higher levels, when a room of goblins or literally any other enemy type feels a much nicer idea all of a sudden. At lower levels, they're useful for:

• Shop robberies. There are a couple of possible bad results here, like a Vampiress, but even a vampiress is rather easier to tackle than a bushido
• Dual bosses like the Violet Knights - the gambled-up bosses may well start fighting each other, which is helpful.
• The lower catacombs, where basically anything that won't fire lots of curses at you is good and there's usually plenty of scenery to hide behind from the ensuing mass melee.

Lazy Enemies
This slows all your enemies down pretty considerably. Use this in boss battles or against bushidos mostly: it's most important when you've got really fast enemies that you need to slow down.

Quick Battle
This speeds everyone in the room up, permanently - including you but also including all your enemies. Use this when you've only got one enemy left in a room: you get to keep the boost, and you're in minimal danger from your one newly sped-up foe.

Sunset
Sunset makes the whole level slightly darker, whilst giving you a stat boost on the whole level. It's a pretty nice scroll: letting one off on a level gives you a healthy boost without really giving any visibility issues (though it depends a bit how bright your screen is).

Confusion
Confusion makes all enemies in the room fight one another indiscriminately. They can and will still fight you as well, so you're in a bit more danger than if you'd used "peace", but this is a pretty useful scroll all the same. This won't affect enemies spawned after it's used, so in boss battles it's only worth using after some minions have been spawned (it could be quite useful against Felgin in particular).

Peace
Peace stops all enemies except bosses from attacking you - it's useless in boss battles, as newly spawned enemies don't get the effect, so as soon as the previous boss-guards die new ones will spawn. The exception to this is the Catacombs boss fight, where the undead are resurrected rather than spawned, and retain the peace effect after resurrection. This scroll is most useful for robbing shops, though can also be a "get out of jail free" for difficult fights or used for clearing hard rooms in the lower catacombs. Once you use the peace scroll, the battle will end and the battle-ending reward will drop: if you want the coins etc from any remaining enemies you have to kill them as normal (and they won't fight back - they will just keep following you around whenever you're in the room). Note that if you use "gamble" on peaced-up enemies, the new replacements will NOT retain the peace effect.

Barrel Roll
Barrel roll turns all your enemies in the room into barrels: it has very similar uses to the peace scroll. If used on a boss, it turns them into a bomb barrel which bulges for a second before spewing bombs across the whole room - there are some gaps in the bombs that you can duck into, but you need to be quick & ready for it. I've put this above "Peace" as it can clear boss battles, but it's worth remembering the risk to that.

Replication
This is the best scroll in the game. It does what it says on the tin and duplicates whatever item it gets used on. This is ideally used for increasing/improving stat boosts. Items I often use it on include:

• For all: Wheel, Quick Battle Scroll, Rabbit Amulet
• For melee: Blacksmith's Runestone, Barbarian's Friend potion
• For archer: Ranger Runestone, Crossbow, Fletcher's Emblem, Full Metal Jacket
• For magic: Warlock Runestone, Magic Pearl

RUNESTONES

Blacksmith's Runestone
This gives +3 base damage to a melee weapon. It's possibly the single most important item in the game for melee characters, and the more of them you can get and stack onto your chosen weapon, absolutely the better.

Blood Runestone
This gives +20 max health. It's a very useful runestone indeed - it's not generally necessary in SoaW to have much more than 100 health, but it's nice to have, and more importantly you can often exchange those HP for bonus speed or melee/magic skill via potions.

Ranger Runestone
This gives boosted base damage to a bow. It's probably the single most important item in the game for archers, and the more of them you can get and stack onto your chosen bow, absolutely the better.

Carpenter's Runestone
This gives boosted range to a bow. It holds the dubious title of being the game's least useful runestone, since it's quite rare to have range problems as an archer and there are currently no effects that decrease archery range. By all means add these to your bows, but there's no need to go out of your way to find more of them.

Warlock Runestone
This gives boosted base damage to a magic staff (including the melee-linked earthquake staff). It's a really useful piece of kit for a magic user - as soon as you find a high-damage staff you're happy with, just keep stacking these on whenever you can.

Sorceror's Runestone
This gives boosted range to a staff. This is significantly more useful than the carpenter's runestone, its equivalent, as it can counteract the effects of heavy magic potions.

AMULETS & UPGRADES

"Upgrades" are a category of items that you can't pick up - if you go up to them and hit the W to pick them up they automatically disappear and take their effect. This means you need to be careful around them, especially if you don't want to pick one up yet (because you want to replicate it with a scroll, for example). Their effects are basically always positive.

STAT & DAMAGE UPGRADES

Warrior's Emblem
Boosts your melee skill by +40%.

Bear in a Barrel
Gives you full rage whenever you or someone else breaks a barrel. Pretty useful in larger battles, especially for melee characters. Combos well with the bear pet, which keeps refilling your rage for you, or with the evergreen oak branch which creates barrels for you to smash.

Dwarven Spinner
Triples melee damage for axes and hammers, and makes thrown weapons throw three instead of one. A really powerful item that makes axes/hammers a much better late-game option if you find one - their low hit speed can now be counterbalanced by the much higher damage dealt.

Carpenter's Emblem
Duplicates thrown weapons so they throw behind you as well as in front. Very neat when combined with the ringleader's hammer. Works very well indeed alongside the Dwarven Spinner!

Battle Horn
Increases projectile speed. Usefully counteracts Full Metal Jacket, and also works on throwing weapons and magic orbs. Duplicates increase the effect which can lead to super-fast projectiles.

Crossbow
Boosts your archery skill by +30%.

Fletcher's Emblem
Boosts your archery skill.

Ranger's Quiver
Boosts the speed of your shooting animation. This is extremely useful, especially for shop robberies where getting the snailbite arrows fired faster can be life or death.

Full Metal Jacket
Boosts your archery skill but makes your arrows fly slower so enemies can dodge them easier. Usually worth getting nonetheless!

Rainbow Horn
Gives you a damage boost when at very low health. I tend to want to never be at low enough health for this to kick in, so I wouldn't say this was a useful item most of the time, but it can probably be helpful occasionally in a tight spot. I don't think the effect stacks at all in any case, so just grab this if you see it.

Dark Orb
Gives you a +40% chance of your orbs being "dark orbs" which appear black and stun enemies momentarily, slowing them down and making it much easier for you to pick them off before melee enemies get to you (especially if they're not shielded). It's quite a neat effect, but doesn't help much against shielded enemies and most bosses so it's not super vital.

Magic Pearl
Gives you +1 magic projectile/orb. An extremely useful one for wizards as it can effectively double your attack output without the sacrifice of magic skill you get from using magic split potions. Highly recommended to use replicator scrolls on these if your main weapon is an orb-based magic staff.

Magic Bubblegum
Doubles magic projectile range and makes your projectiles bounce. This is pretty useful - bounce is especially good for fighting shielded enemies as it can let you hit them from behind. I wouldn't generally replicate these unless I'd tanked up with a LOT of heavy magic potions, as there's not that much point giving your orbs a range considerably longer than the screen most of the time.

Fission Orbs
Makes your magic orbs explode into smaller orbs on impact. Very worthwhile, especially when fighting massed and shielded enemies. Effect doesn't stack at all so far as I know, but if you're fighting with an orb-based staff this is a nice thing to pick up.

MOVEMENT & PROTECTION

These items are all one-use buffs that protect from specific attacks, add damage reductions, or have movement related functions.

Wooden Shield
Like drinking two Toughness potions at once - gives you +10 50% damage-reduced hits. Duplicates stack.

Miner's Shield
10 damage-reduced hits (duplicates stack) and the permanent one-time effect that you drop bombs when hit (one initially, can be increased with the double bomb item and bomberman potions). I usually avoid using this shield, as I find I run into the bombs too much - bear this in mind when you consider whether to take it. It can very much change your playstyle as you will need to account for the fact that dangerous explosions will happen around you a lot more. This can also be a serious problem in some missions, where the bombs have a high chance of killing quest NPCs or, for example, the Good Princess in the castle.

Elven Shield
+20 immunities to ranged attacks, duplicates stack. This is a really nice item, and can give you a lot of help with dealing with castle guards, thieves, and archers. It also protects you a bit from things like rolling balls, but bear in mind that they run the immunity down VERY fast if they run into you.

Pillow
Makes you invulnerable during special animations - spellcasting, rage attacks, etc. This can make getting past some traps easier, and makes breaking out of a pile-up of enemies with a rage attack a much easier job. There's no reason not to get this if you see one, it's useful for all character classes. Duplicates have no further effect.

Steel Boots
These give -1 speed, but immunity to floor traps. Really only an item for around the dungeon level, where it's usually found (I've seen it once as a boss drop in the castle level too). Very worth having if you've got enough speed to cope with the loss, as it make robbing the dungeon shops extremely easy. Avoid these if you're on 6 speed or lower.

Green Slimeball
Sometimes found in rocks in the dungeon level. The slime of the Slime King has the same effect. Slows you down by 1pt of speed, but makes you immune to slipping on ice. Very worth having if you've got enough speed to cope with the loss. Avoid these if you're on 6 speed or lower. You could also avoid them if you have a mount, but mounts can die so if you've got the speed, get this anyway.

Wheel
Gives you +1 speed, cumulative. In a game this based on speed, a speed boost is a pretty good thing to have: this is one of the items I'm more likely to use the replicator scrolls on, if I find them.

AMULETS

Really subsection of the previous category, the amulets mostly grant some form of protection.

Mammoth Amulet
A blue amulet. Makes you immune to freezing effects. No further effect for multiple amulets. The Mammoth Amulet is probably the most important of the elemental protections, as without it you're often at high risk of being caught out by the ice mages on the ice-mountain level.

Dragon Amulet
A red amulet. Makes you immune to fire effects. No further effect for multiple amulets.

Poison Amulet
A green amulet. Makes you immune to poison. No further effect for multiple amulets.

Rabbit Amulet
A yellow amulet. Gives you immunity to slowdown effects, like the slime king's slime trails, the heavy boots, or the pogonip fogs. Duplicates have no effect.

Medusa Amulet
A purple amulet. Makes you immune to petrification. No further effect for multiple amulets. This is extremely useful on the final (desert) level, which includes the stoneheart assassins and medusa boss that have one-hit-kills petrification attacks.

Bare Bones Amulet
A bone amulet. Reduces your health to 1 and your max health to 20, and reduces all item mana costs to 1. This is obviously a MASSIVE playstyle change, best undertaken only if you a) have a bunch of blood runestones or b) you really like running around with no health. It does allow you to easily use mana powers on every room after you use it, so if you like playing a low health, high damage character like a pyromancer then this is a must-have. Combines well with apprentizer potions, or with a magic chest + money is power potions, to allow you to buff stats very easily. Of course, also good along with a mana canteen. Effect doesn't stack as far as I know.

ELEMENTAL UPGRADES

Ritual Icicle
Gives you a longer freeze time in exchange for -20 health. I would almost never do this exchange unless you're very specifically creating an ice-based strategy in your game and already have the weaponry to do so: losing that much health generally just isn't worth it.

Ice Bomb
Gives all your bombs a freezing effect - basically, this makes them far more useful against bosses, as if you hit them with one they'll then be frozen still to be hit with a couple more.

Kindling
Boosts your fire damage.

Rotten Cheese
Gives you +5 poison damage.

Rotten Cheese Wheel
Poisons enemies when they hit you (I think only in melee, though I'm not sure). This is a "you may as well grab it if you get it" special item like the rainbow horn, kind of fine with no downsides but not terribly useful - given that most enemies in Son of a Witch tend to be not too tough but hit very hard, poisoning them back isn't really much consolation for taking a big hit of damage. You may occasionally want to get a boss to hit you once in order to poison them, but for the most part I tend to try and ensure I have a poisoned weapon if I want to use poison in boss fights.

INVENTORY UPGRADES

Carriel
Gives +1 inventory space.

Rucksack
Gives +2 inventory spaces.

RINGS

Rings generally give you extra "sight" abilities of some sort.

Alchemist's Ring
Lets you ID any potion just by walking up to it. Very useful if you get it on lvl 1 or 2: after that you should have almost all potions IDed anyway so it becomes considerably less good.

Dwarf Ring
The best of the rings in my view (though scout is good as well), the Dwarf Ring lets you see items inside rocks, which in turn allows you to use bombs much more effectively, find runestones and good potions and build your character's abilities up that much faster.

Rogue's Ring
Lets you see inside locked/shut chests. Given it's very rare that I fail to open all the chests I find anyway, this is probably the ring I find least useful, but it has its moments.

Scout Ring
Shows you enemies before you walk through a door to face them. This is a REALLY useful ring strategically, allowing you to go for easier rooms if you need to search for emergency healing or gain mana, and also letting you know what boss you'll be facing which can be really useful for preparation purposes.

BOOKS

Books are an especially powerful set of upgrade items. They are only available as starting bonuses or from altars.

Book of Death
Poisons all enemies in every room you go into.

Book of Fire
Burns all enemies in every room you go into.

Book of Ice
Freezes all enemies in every room you go into.

Book of Chores
-1 speed to every enemy in the room. Only usually found at the end of the catacombs after you've completed the Eye of Ramana quest, or as a game start item before you defeat the executioner. Not sure if this effect stacks.

Book of Life
Gives you +100 health. This is the only one of the books that it would be worth replicating; the effects of the others won't stack.

OTHER

Double Bomb
This works exactly like the bomberman potion, giving +1 to the number of bombs you release when you use a bomb.

Goldsmith's Magnet
Makes all the coins in the room fly towards you. I guess vaguely useful for getting occasional coins from hard to reach places, especially if you created them with the portable foundry, but this isn't exactly going to make you a millionaire anytime fast.

Chain Reactor
This is an exceptionally dangerous item albeit an extremely fun idea; it's one I tend not to use, causing enemies to release two bombs when they die. On the plus side, it can be fun to watch big crowds of enemies slaughtering themselves with a chain reaction of bombs. On the minus side, there are bombs everywhere, you have to avoid the damn things too, and it makes NPC quests pretty difficult. I think to make the most of this one would want some duplicated elven shields and a powerful bow, allowing you to start the chain reaction at a safe distance and keep the enemies in line with the bombs. This seems more effort than it's worth though, generally. Duplications of this have no further effect.

Blood Mixer
Makes all potions of any kind heal +10hp for you. Not sure/clear if this effect stacks.

Mana Canteen
Means that instead of losing all your mana when you cast a spell, you only lose the spell's cost. This is one of the most useful items in the game, and can be really game-changing in terms of the strategies it allows you to use, letting you store up mana and cast multiple spells in a boss battle, or keep casting whilst ensuring you have a reserve left for emergency healing, and so on.

MAGIC ITEMS

These items have an ability, mostly using mana, but aren't actual weapons.

Voodoo Doll
Voodoo dolls use 1 mana to lock onto another creature/unit, and attacks on the doll then apply to that unit as well. They're mostly used by goblin shamans, and if locked onto the player can be extremely dangerous - keeping spare inventory slots to pick dolls up is pretty important in the forest level. If you want to take one with you and use it, they're extremely versatile for deflecting boss attacks back onto themselves, killing enemies from positions of cover, etc. That said, I personally usually prefer to do other things with my mana.

Bottomless Bag of Bombs
Bombs are fun, and pretty useful (see below). That said, there are often other bombs around, and so I tend not to use it very much or very often unless I happen to find it at a time when I otherwise need bombs and there's a shortage. This item combines well with the Dwarf Ring - if you get the ring, then the Bag becomes a much more useful item to keep using as you can better target your bombs to improve your character much faster. If you're well practiced at using bombs in combat this may also be more useful to help kill bosses, especially in combination with the ice bomb item - not my gameplay style but it's definitely a valid strategy.

Magic chest
The magic chest converts 3 mana into 100 gold, which is a very good rate (especially if you happen to be using the warbreaker, have used a bare bones amulet or have the lizard pet). It's most useful for archers/melee characters who don't need mana for combat purposes. I often use it on the first three levels to speed up my gold generation, and then ditch it after the dungeon, though it can be useful later too if you've got a gold-heavy strategy (using Money Is Power potions, or the Clockwork Staff).

Magic map
The magic map reveals the map for 3 mana. How useful this is may be rather playstyle-dependent: I often feel there's better uses for my mana, but it can help make your strategy and planning more efficient on each level if you have the inventory space to carry it. It's most useful for quests where you need to find quick routes through a level, or in the old catacombs if you want to find a path toward the boss fight.

Retort
The retort creates random potions. This varies in usefulness depending on how good the spread of potions are. If you're a melee character and barbarian's friend potions are being produced, you want to keep using the retort at all possible opportunities: ditto if you're magic based and it produces heavy magic, with the caveat that this can leave you with super-low range if you don't have another way to get it up. You can build some very good characters with retort + status effect boosts, but the skeleton wizards can really mess this plan up by using curses that force you to take dragonfire potions - as such, I tend to avoid building a character too heavily around status effects.

Silver Coin
Lets you teleport to a shop - no mana required. Given by the shopkeeper only when you buy all 4 items in a shop. Useful in NPC-escort quests to skip battles, and as a general get-out-of-jail-free card if a battle's really going wrong for you.

Portable Foundry
No mana cost, converts all items in a room to gold coins (so 5 gold per item, regardless of the item's type or size). This is SUPER useful, especially if you've got a lot of arrows lying around since a 10 wooden arrow stack - often useless if you're a melee or magic character - is suddenly 50 gold in your pocket. I pretty much always get this whenever I can and keep it throughout the game - it basically always pays for itself, whatever level I find it on. The only thing to be careful of is to check you've picked up everything you need - it's easy to convert a useful item to gold, and you have no way to turn it back again. Obviously, works well with any strategies that rely on you having lots of gold.

In general I use the retort more often in daily challenges than regular games, because most of what it produces will be fine and will get me points, but if I'm not playing for points that mana may be better spent via a support staff like the twilight or demonic staffs.

MISC OTHER

These items don't fit into any other categories!

Bomb
Bombs are an extremely important part of SoaW. They have three main uses: blowing through doors, blowing up rocks, and in battle. In general, I don't advise using bombs in battle - they can be used against bosses to significantly reduce their health and that's fine and all, but I think they're more effective when used to hunt for runestones and other character-building items. If you have a lot of bombs and the ice bomb effect, though, battle-bombing can be a better strategy and can finish off bosses fairly efficiently.

As far as blowing through doors - I will do this if I'm short on keys and want to get into a treasure room, or for the rock door that appears in the forest sometimes that won't accept keys. Other than that, I wouldn't generally use it mid-game, though you can use bombs to e.g. blow through and allow yourself to use a magic staff boost in multiple rooms by not quite finishing one, blowing through a door and starting on the next.

That leaves the most important function, blowing up rocks to "mine" and find items. If you've got the dwarf ring, this is easy: firstly blow into any rocks that have bombs hidden in themselves (as this is essentially a cost-neutral action on the number of bombs you have) and can gain you whatever items are next to the bombs. Then, go for whatever you most need (runestones and high-value potions generally taking priority, and also blowing into areas with blue chests in). If you don't have the dwarf ring (as is more normal, start by blowing up areas that will get you to chests and barrels, for higher return, and work out areas that will let you maximise the number of rocks blown up (generally you should be aiming for three as a minimum, especially in the forest). The corners of square sections, for example, will sometimes let you blow up five rocks by getting the bomb right in the corner, which maximises your chance of finding something useful.

Gold Key
Gold keys are used/needed throughout the game for opening locked chests and doors. They can be found in blue chests, dropped as battle-end rewards, bought in shops and blown out of rocks.

Mushroom
These are found solely on floors in the forest, where you pick them. They heal to full health, but also poison you for two battles - as such, they can be useful if you're fighting fast and really lack health otherwise, or if you're poison immune in which case they become an excellent healing choice. In general, unless I have the actual poison immunity amulet from the forest, I don't use these - there are better uses for the inventory space usually - but they can be helpful and I used to use them a lot more.

[Jubal]

Part 6: Pets and Mounts


PETS

Pets are a major feature of SoaW. These mini-animals follow you around and do helpful things!

Note that all advice below assumes that you have to select one pet to follow you at any one time. This isn't always the case: see the Wolf entry for advice on having multiple pets.

Bat Battista
The bat does occasional attacks on enemies, dealing 15 damage per hit. This is an alright ability, quite useful on the early levels but 15 is a slightly low-ball hit for the later game given that it doesn't make the attack very often.

Bear Berry
The bear breaks barrels and boxes open. This is probably my least favourite pet - very occasionally, if I get the bear and dog together, they can break open boxes I can't get to and bring me useful stuff as a combo team, but in general I'm perfectly capable of opening them myself (and you will be, too!).

Beaver Ben
The beaver gnaws away at shooting traps, disabling them. I sometimes take this if I'm playing a low-health wizard or archer, as it can make it less likely that I'll run into poison shooters etc, but not terribly often.

Bird Britney
The bird boosts your archery skill. This is a pretty good one to have as the archer - I often take the rhino in preference because critical hits are really useful for one-shot killing enemies, but the bird is the next in line after that.

Blowfish Bob
The blowfish bulges and occasionally "blows up" near enemies, doing them a small amount of damage and also knocking them down. This is a decent ability, but there are better ones out there I think.

Bull Billy
Refills your rage at the end of each battle. Basically, to state the obvious, really useful if you need to regularly use a slow-buildup rage attack of some sort. Can be pretty good for archers, as opening a battle by lining enemies up a bit and then plugging a rage shot in can do a lot of the work very fast. Also works very well indeed in combo with the thunderstriker (lightning sword), for exactly the same reason.

Chicken Charles
The chicken goes and sits near the door with fewest enemies behind it. One of my least used pets, as number of enemies doesn't correlate well with danger of enemies.

Dog Dylan
The dog picks up items and brings them to you. This is sometimes really useful, especially if powerful items are hidden behind fences etc, and is vital for retrieving runestones from the hornet game in the forest. It's also the only real way to rob shops (other than pet shops) in the dungeon level, as it will cross spikes that you can't get past. Despite all this, I don't like the dog much, because when I'm not using it it really messes up my game. I like making "stash rooms" to carefully store all my stuff on a certain level, and Dylan completely messes those up. It can also sometimes bring you locked-on voodoo dolls, which is really not fun if you need to get away from them.

Fox Fiona
The fox unlocks chests if you get her to touch the chest. This is a useful ability, and if you take her for a walk on the level you find her on then swap her for another pet then it can help save keys for later. If you have the wolf, put Fiona next in the chain if you can - the further she is from you, the harder it is to get her to unlock things.

Giraffe George
The healing pet, giving +10hp at the end of each battle. This is a pretty weak offer for most characters, who have potions and food to do the job faster. However, there's one exception to this - the skeleton archer, who can't drink potions or eat food. If you're the skeleton archer and you see a giraffe in a shop, get it ASAP; it's a no-brainer, pretty much regardless of what other pets are on offer.

Hedgehog Harry
The hedgehog stops rolling spiky balls. I use this slightly less than the beaver, which is to say very rarely indeed - dodging spiky rolling balls is in most cases easier than dodging shooters, or they can be got around with bombs etc.

Hippopotamus Hector
The hippo breaks one rock in any room that has rocks in, always selecting the one most central in the room. Usually (assuming that, as usual, I robbed the shop) I'll take the hippo for a walk round the level I found it on, then leave it - you don't usually. The hippo is probably most useful in the forest where there are numerous partitions and central rocks it's worth breaking (not least the sword-in-the-stone room).

Horse Horace
The horse triples your stomp damage. I don't usually use the horse unless there aren't better options - the super-stomp is nice, mainly if combined with a massive pile of bloodlust potions or a violet sword so you can keep sweep + stomping all the enemies in the room, but I'd prefer to boost a regular combat stat usually.

Lizard Lui
The lizard gives you +1 mana at the end of each battle. One of my more frequently used pets, especially in the earlier part of the game and especially if I have a mana canteen.

Lion Leon
The lion gives you +30% melee skill. My default pet of choice as a melee character - it's a good solid boost that's well worth having right through the game.

Parrot Paco
The parrot gives you +30% magic skill. One of my default pet choices as a wizard character, though the lizard and rhino are also good options there.

Penguin Peter
The penguin occasionally freezes enemies for you. I don't use it terribly often, but it's pretty useful against bosses.

Pig Pablo
The pig "poops" three coins at the end of each battle. One of my default pets, especially earlier in the game, regardless of character: over time, getting +15 gold per room becomes very worthwhile. Also worth noting that this can be an exception to the "do the rest of the level, then rob shops" rule I tend to go by - the sooner you can start Pablo generating money, the better.

Rabbit Rick
Gives you a +2 speed boost. Massively worthwhile, and one of my most commonly used pets, especially if I'm any kind of ranged character. If I've got decent speed (8+) anyway I might give the rabbit a miss in favour of a combat pet, but if I've got a speed of 6 or less then the rabbit is often a lifesaver.

Ram Ramon
The ram charges enemies, knocking them down and dealing a small amount of damage. It's an alright combat helper, especially when you're being mobbed by enemies, though I prefer stat-boost or income based pets in general.

Reindeer Ron
The reindeer jumps near rocks that have keys hidden in them. If I'm short on keys and get the reindeer on the first level I may take it for a walk to find some before swapping for another pet - I've almost never used this as my sole pet.

Rhino Ray
The Rhino gives you a +30% chance of doing critical hits (double damage attacks). It's a very solid option indeed, no matter what character you're using. I especially like it as an archer, because critical hits with a bow are reliably one-hit kills for most enemies in most of the game, and once you've upgraded a bit then crits can one-hit orcs etc as well. It's good for basically any character type though.

Snail Simon
The snail applies a slowing effect to one enemy in the room. I find it a bit meh most of the time - it can help slow down bosses/bushidos which is useful, but often doesn't do so until it's followed them around a bit, by which time you might be dead if you were relying on the snail.

Snake Samantha
The snake will apply a poison effect to one enemy in the room. It's not a bad effect, but it's not a fantastic one either - there are lots of other ways to poison more enemies more quickly in the game.

Squirrel Sylvia
The squirrel will jump near rocks that have runestones in them. Like the reindeer, I won't usually use Sylvia as a main pet, but especially if I robbed the shop she was in then it's worth taking her for a walk to find runestones, which are some of the most useful items in the game.

Tiger Tony
Seeking danger, the tiger will go to the door with the most enemies behind it. One of the least useful pets in my view as danger and number of enemies aren't well correlated in Son of a Witch.

Turtle Tom
The turtle acts as a "decoy" that enemies will attack instead of the player. This is a decent pet, and particularly useful in boss battles where it can distract minions: I'd probably take it above most of the other combat-related pets like the ram or blowfish, but below any stat or attack boosters like the rhino, parrot, or lion.

Wolf Walt
The "Pack Leader", the Wolf allows you to have multiple pets following you. Obviously, this stops you having to make a lot of the agonising decisions detailed above. In general the order of pets in the chain following you doesn't matter, except that if you have the fox you want it as near you as possible as getting her to touch chests is based on your movement (if she's more than 6 or 7 pets down the chain she's near useless). If I have the Wolf I generally take as many pets as I can with me everywhere, with the occasional exception of the dog (see its entry) - bear in mind that if a pet has an effect you dislike or that annoys you then if it's following the wolf you can never get rid of it again.

MOUNTS

Mounts are, as you'd expect, creatures you can ride on. They tend to provide a variety of bonuses, and can be revived in various ways if killed, but are often a bit tricky to keep alive in general. All mounts provide immunity to the skid/slip effect on the ice level, and are particularly valuable for that alone.

Boar
Boars were the first mount introduced to the game, and are found on the forest level. You tame them by damaging them in some way (ideally as little as possible, so use a staff for this in general). They have around 100hp, boost your speed by +1, and take joint damage with you (so you take 50% less damage, the boar takes the other half). Boars also share food with you, so having a strawberry staff is useful to feed them. If the boar dies you can resurrect it with a life staff.

Baby Dragon
The baby dragon can be found on the battlements level sometimes. It provides fire immunity, immunity to floor traps, eats food like the boar, and breathes fireballs, making it an extremely powerful mount. If you can keep it alive until the dungeon level it's really useful for robbing the shops there thanks to the floor trap immunity.

Undead Boar
Often found in the catacombs, the undead boar is particularly useful on the ice level as that comes immediately afterwards. It can't eat, making it a bit more vulnerable than the boar or dragon. You can resurrect it with the Staff of the Dead if it gets killed, though.