Curious Expedition is a challenging roguelike best suited for those who like the genre. The game’s mechanics are pretty complex and may seem difficult to learn, at first.
If you’re struggling with Curious Expedition and need some tips and tricks, check out our guide.
Curious Expedition Tips and Tricks
At the start of each expedition, you are offered an optional side quest for a bit of extra money upon completion. These are always generally a good idea to take on, as you never know who or what, you may run into on any given adventure.
This is especially true of the first expedition, as it sets you to find a village straightaway – then a shrine. If you are unsuccessful with the optional side quest, the penalties seem to be minimal, if anything at all.
After your first (successful) expedition, you will have gained popularity. Now you’ll have a multitude of prospective adventurers to join your next expedition. Who should you pick?
Focus on someone who can help you manage your resources. That may be from bonuses to managing food or other common situations you may come across. A translator is a good addition because it opens up any villages as a safe place to stay.
Try to keep your expedition group as balanced as possible in terms of the dice they carry.
It’s important to have defense and utility dice available for those situations. When purchasing equipment, always prioritize food first. Take as much as you can afford to take, but leave yourself a little extra money for other essentials.
Stock up on rope and torches – they stack high and have a decent trade-in value.
They’re great to sell if you find yourself short on relics to peddle with the locals. Climbing gear and machetes are useful, but less so compared to rope and torches. Jungle tiles require machetes to complete making them necessary in that tile, though.
Other optional extras for a good start include:
- Dynamite – It offers powerful attack dice in combat if your team is weak there.
- First Aid Kits – These are indispensable to heal nasty wounds, but there are other ways to heal them.
- Camping Tent – Can be a lifesaver if you run out of sanity with no way to recuperate it.
Try starting expeditions with a mix of these items in your kit to see what works for you. There is no reason to leave any money in the pot for the next expedition. There might not even be another expedition after this one.
Start of the Expedition
Now that you’ve set out, what should you do? Try to find the closest hill to get a good vantage point to survey your surroundings. It should be one of the few times you have to climb a hill on any expedition.
It is important to discover as many points of interest as you can. Just don’t risk the party.
The more things you find, the quicker you earn region points. Region points are spent on upgrading your trek members’ experience. This grants them an extra die to their arsenal at certain levels.
Combat can be avoided and you should avoid obvious danger as much as possible. Going the long way around a mountain range is preferable to facing some dangers.
Curious Expedition Tips – General Advice
Curious Expedition is mostly about mitigating disasters as best as you can. Looting temples will result in curses and the locals getting angry.
You should prepare your team as best as you can with these Curious Expedition tips.
- When volcanoes erupt, any jungles caught in the eruption will go up in smoke. All tiles will be set alight. It should burn out in a couple of days.
- If a swamp area has a geyser within it – the whole area will flood. Be very careful not to be cut off from where you are heading. The water will recede within a few days.
- Avoid infested areas unless you have no other choice. If a trek member gets bitten and infected and you cannot render medical treatment – they will die.
- You can anger the natives to the point that they will hunt you down and kill you. If it happens, they will send war parties to hunt you down. If you aren’t prepared for the combat every few turns, you will soon die. Try to keep the natives on your side as long as possible.
- All animals have an aggro chance and you won’t know how many creatures in the group until you engage it. Remember – you can always run! If the group is too big, it’s safer to run than to face combat.
- Play defensively.
- Be careful when entering shrines, but make sure you are on the right side of the shrine to the direction you want to take. There will always be a curse that befalls you and it always starts on the shrine itself.
- When starting off in the desert, you can fill up with as much water as you can carry from your ship. Do so, as you won’t know if you can easily pick up more. You can always throw away any excess water.
Ending Your Expedition
Finding the Golden Pyramid is the end goal of every expedition. Those who are survived are welcomed back to civilization with great fanfare. At the end, you can choose one of three medals that grant a boon.
These bonuses influence your future expeditions and may help manage sanity. The Ruffian perk gives you access to a combat die, which is incredibly handy. You need six expedition wins to become the most revered explorer in history.
Love playing roguelikes on Switch? Check out some of the best games released on the platform. The Switch is in the unique position of having a large number of rogue-lite/roguelike games to play.
