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Realm of Ink’sroguelike gameplay can get hectic quickly once you leave the tutorial. The game relies on you recognising certain mechanics from having played similar games and some people will struggle to understand things as a result. Thankfully, once you get over the initial learning hurdles, the game becomes much more intuitive.
To see through Red’s adventure of killing her own narrator, you’ll want to blend together the different aspects of the melee and magic combat along with navigating the in-game upgrade systems, pet evolutions and economy. It’s a lot to keep track of and this guide aims to streamline the basics.
Realm of Ink is currently available in Early Access and so some content may be subject to change. We’ll update this guide as needed in the future.
Your Elemental Pets Can Become Powerhouses
Your pet can grow shockingly powerful if fed the right inks. If youunlock its special ability with a pair of epic gems,it’ll often be strong enough to solo standard encounter rooms.
Your pet’s special skill requires both gems to have an average rarity of epic. If youprioritise upgrading one of your gems, you can more easilyswap out the other as needed. Upgrading both evenly will often mean needing to weaken your pet if you make any changes to your build.
The game’s type chart follows the five elements (Wuxing) of Chinese philosophy, rather than the four Greek Elements that appear more commonly in games.
This means you won’t find any Air element, as the Wuxing Elemental chart includes: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth, and Metal.
Each pair of elements gives your pet a different form, including two of the same element. How the different pet forms function in combat can be hard to tell from looking at them, but you cancheck the pause menu to see what your pet’s form iscurrently and what passive or active abilities it can unleash.
You Can Safely Ignore Some Visual Indicators
Visually, there can be a lot going on at any one time, and not all of it is dangerous to you. Training yourself toignore the visual effects tied to your own attacksmakes it easier to avoid those of your enemies.
A helpful option if you are struggling with this can be found under the video settings, letting youincrease the transparency of your own abilities,so there is less visual clutter when dodging.
Some builds rely on you seeing your own effects, such as magic circles. While perks can typically be left at maximum transparency, don’t be afraid to change the visibility of your ink gems as you equip new ones.
Depending on the inks you have, your familiar can take a form that looks dangerous to you: This is especially true for projectile and area attacks it uses, such as fire and ash forms.
Pick Gems That Complement Your Perks And Elixirs
The game’s tutorial places a much bigger emphasis on the two ink gems you can carry than on other available upgrades. Ink Gems are the more flexible upgrade in that you canswap them out as better ones appear.
Perks are persistent andcannot be changed out the same way, and there is no limit to the number you’re able to carry. If you’re given a choice of rooms to progress through,perk rooms are often a good choice.
It’s better to pick ink gems that favour your currently available perks than the reverse.You’ll find a lot of chances to find different gems over a loop, but will want to commit to a specific group of perks before you reach the first boss fight.
Not All Attacks Should Be Used On Cooldown
Some gems areworth holding for their passive or pet abilitiesrather than their active skills.Read the abilities carefullyto know whether the passive or active part of a gem is more important.
Burning Ink is great for any build that focuses on damage over time effects. Its passive lets you stack up burning effects but its active skill removes all stacks of the effect.
The same extends to the basic abilities of some unlockable skins. Red is able to hold down the attack button to reuse the same combo, whileA’kuan benefits from weaving their abilities in with dodgesfor extra power and General Gor has to pick up their blade after each throw.
Keep Ranged Attackers In Sight
Ranged attacks aredodgeable only when you’re able to see them coming. Enemies with a ranged attack bigger than your field of vision can easily hit you from offscreen if you don’t keep the fight near to them.
Keeping the fight near the ranged enemies also makes it easier to deal with them, as you’ll naturally whittle them down with area effects and spells intended for other enemies.
This is harder to achieve with some boss fights, like the Emperor Puppet and Peony Demon. Here you’ll want tolearn if there are blind spots in the arenawhere you can fight summoned minions and not worry about gigantic death lasers.
Dash While Holding A Charged Attack To Lunge
Heavy attacks deal a lot of damage but can be hard to position right on most characters. Dashing doesn’t cancel your charged attack but insteaddelays it to the end of your movement, letting you dive into a group of enemies rather than waiting for them to step forward. This is animportant part of Red’s toolkitin the early stages of the game.
This also lets you use charged strikes against enemies with longer-ranged attacks, or tododge out of an attack animation that would end with you being hit.
On some skins, this can lead to interesting results. A’kuan doesn’t need the extra range on her heavy attack, but repositioning during its channel can adjust the direction it strikes it.
Use Your Money Wisely
It’s easy to carry forward assumptions about in-game economies and get blindsided by the cost of a healing potion or overspend on an upgrade that you could find in regular loot.
Learning how much different types of items are worth will help your runs to go longer, and teach you thevalue of perks and upgrades that give stackable discounts.Spending200 silver on an elixir is often not worth the expenseunless you have synergies that grow off of the money you spend or the food you eat.
This also applies to the NPC events that will appear across runs.Selling your hit points for items is normally a worthwhile tradeas you’re able to always heal before boss fights.
Selling maximum HP is harder to justify, butcan pay off with the right build.
Always Take Challenge Rooms
Some roguelikes will train you to carefully weigh up the merits of taking a more challenging route. In a game like Slay The Spire or Hades, taking on a stronger fighter means potentially being short on hit points when you fight the area’s boss, or being wiped out by a miniboss you’re unprepared for.
Realm of Ink’s challenge rooms have stronger enemies than usual, but therewards are double to triple that of a normal encounter room.The special challenge rooms such as defending NPCs will stillgive you partial rewards if you fail them,on par with a normal encounter room. This means there israrely a cause for avoiding the challengesunless they pose a serious risk of killing you.
Find The Gameplay That Suits You
Like a lot of games that feature both spellcasting and martial combat, the two offer different levels of challenge depending on how you apply both disciplines.Most encounters can be defeated without taking a hit if you stay at maximum range, use a ranged ink gem and let Momo intercept any melee attackers.
At the same time, some people will enjoy playing a pure melee game as a greater challenge, even if it doesn’t offer extra rewards. This extends tothe outfit system, which changes your attack style:
Violetta’s Knives
Have a short range that relies on defensive inks or good knowledge of enemy attack patterns.
A’kuan’s Staff
Lets you poke at a greater distance and damage enemies with your dodges.
Grace’s Toolkit
Is almost entirely reliant on having good inks, but can make long ranged attacks while moving for a strong defensive playstyle.
