Caves (Roguelike) Ancient Ruins Tips

Caves (Roguelike) Ancient Ruins Tips

Here are Caves Roguelike tips to make your journey into the Ancient Ruins easier and fruitful.

Preparation

Before you leave your home base, be sure to purchase 1-4 Teleporters from the Vending Machine. Its purpose is to allow you to teleport from deep within the ruins to the entrance or a faraway door you haven't explored.

Once you've teleported to the cave, you are to proceed in this order:
  - Explore the cave,
  - Enter, Explore & Exit the Ancient ruins, and
  - Exit the cave via the portal.

While exploring the cave at the beginning, be sure pick everything up and drop them where necessary.

After awhile, you don't pick up certain items; especially weapons if they'll be of no use to you either as ineffective weapon or a s food for the Recycler.

READ MY INVENTORY GUIDE FOR DETAILS.

When its time to enter the Ancient Ruins, stop at the entrance of the building its in and drop all unnecessary items there.

This is to make room for the stuff you'll be collecting from within the ruins.

I recommend you leave behind any and all weapons, artifacts and other items you won't be using in there.

And once you do go in, be generous with how you use your items; especially the ones that are few in number in order to make additional room in your inventory.

Once you have descended into the ruins, the real fun starts.

Door Tips

While approaching a door, keep an eye on your Enemy Detector. If it shows that there's one behind the door you should approach with caution in one of the following ways:

Toss explosives at the door to damage mobs at or around it.

Summon a skeleton, spider or anything of the like on the door. Doing this will grant you view into what's on the other side of the door, and shield you from attacks.

Use the Destruction Scroll to deal large scale damage on the other side of the door by itself as well as by igniting explosive barrels and releasing mobs imprisoned in capsules which will then attack other mobs.

Use the Invisibility Scroll to walk in undetected.

Use either the Protection Scrolls or Magic Barrier Scrolls before walking through the door to protect yourself from harm.

Exploration Tips

I recommend traversing the ruins in a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion.

This is just a neat approach which makes it easier to search for unexplored paths on the map as well as reduce the average distance you have to backtrack.

Be sure to empty a room of all its contents before you leave it. Chances are you'll forget about it or never pass through it again.

Once you've reach a dead end you are to backtrack using 1-2 means of 3 depending on the situation.
  - If the closest unexplored paths is pretty close, you can simply walk over.
  - If the closest unexplored paths is pretty far, or you've completed you're exploration of the ruin, you can either use an Dash Scroll to speed things up or the Teleporter to go there in an instant.

Third Party Mobs Tips

Occasionally you will encounter spiders, slimes or their respective nests behind brittle walls as well as demons that will emerge from portals that open on random.

They can serve as a useful distraction. Just lure them to a mob or vice versa, let them fight each other while you attack the mob until its defeated. Rinse, repeat.

Be sure to have a means of slipping out from between them such as:
  - Teleportation bottle,
  - The Energy Sword 'Ghost' that allows you to slip past mobs, and
  - Armor with teleport ability.
Otherwise you run the risk of suffering a pincer attack in a narrow corridor or elsewhere.

Finally, when you've arrived at the last dead end and done with your exploration, use the Teleporter to blink to where the stairs are and exit the ruins.

Now all is left is to:
  - Sort out your items at the door,
  - Make your way to the portal,
  - beat the Guardian,
  - and be on your merry way.