Notes for Death by Scrolling.

Gems

The most important thing in the game is gems. You use them to buy permanent (destiny) cards, which buff your characters. So your first priority after learning movement and basic mechanics is grabbing every gem you can get your hands on.

Your second priority is spending those gems on destiny cards. At first the focus is best split between basic quality-of-life cards like health, and on cards that help you get more gems. Don’t get the cards in order, of course, but read through and see what suits you.

While playing through a level, there are a few in-game cards (either action or deck of chance) to grab to help you get gems. There is a blue potion action card, the gem magnet, that you will tend to keep equipped as long as you are gem hunting. The more gems card, from the chance card mechanic (found between levels and also from chests), will add more gems in the levels.

The daily challenges each give five gems, for a total of 15 per day.

Finally, you should play the lava world where you can get sacks of gems, and if you do longer runs you can also find little gem farms in later levels (I’d guess they appear after level 15).

Weapons

As you get more gems, the (random) choice of weapon tends to be less important. Ranged weapons are obviously better, mainly because they have solid chance cards that let you shoot multiple projectiles and they have range to keep the mobs away. But once you unlock the pastor, it becomes apparent that up to a point you don’t really even need a weapon.

Some of the weapons are explicit on the damage they deal. Others are explicit that they don’t need to be explicit—the scythe does a one-hit to any enemy, even the reaper! (It’s the only weapon that kills the reaper.) But unless you’re auditing the game, the exact damage being done is immaterial. If you have a weaker weapon, look for the damage buffs you can add. Purple hourglass action cards, bits of chocolate, and the chance cards, besides the destiny cards, all add up to help.

Also worth noting that shotguns have a neat feature: they disable bombs and spikes and flame traps on the ground. (They don’t disable the fireball traps, as far as I know.) They also hit everything in their cone at once.

Player Characters

Once you progress enough, you unlock later characters. The demon girl is the best, mainly because she flies when sprinting. That mechanic lets her get places other players can’t. The other big benefit of her is that she always starts runs in the lava world, which helps with the achievement to beat 250 levels in lava world.

Quests and Challenges

Quests are given by townspeople in camps between levels. You won’t get a quest in a camp you finish one, so at best you will do a quest every two levels. All they give is gold, but they give a decent amount, especially once you get the destiny card that increases their yield. Also, you can decline a quest you don’t want, but will have to reach the next camp to get a replacement.

It can be worth it to decline or cancel quests. If they require a specific level or a lot of kills (all the kill quests require killing some number of the same enemy), they are more trouble compared to simply finding the item. Just roll your chance card, and see what levels are available. If the one you need isn’t there, go ahead and cancel the quest.

Challenges are three daily tasks that you can do for more gems. Highly worth it. They are mostly doable, though some will be harder in the beginning. Once you have progressed, you may have to sell back some cards (no gem loss, so think of it like changing loadouts) to make some challenges easier. For example, if a challenge requires you to take a certain amount of damage, and you have ‘thick skin’ destiny cards that lower your received damage, it’s worth selling those until you finish the challenge.

At least one challenge never triggered for me (‘Enter camp with one heart or fewer’), but what’s a fun game without a few bugs? There is an achievement for doing 100 challenges, but most days you can get all three, sometimes in a single run.