Monster Slayers Tips & Tricks

Monster Slayers debuted on the Nintendo eShop this week as a pretty competent roguelike deck-building game. The game has been around longer than Slay the Spire on Kongregate, but parallels between the two are very obvious. If you’re having trouble mastering the game, check out these Monster Slayers tips & tricks to get started.

The class-based gameplay of Monster Slayers makes decks feel different from the start, which I found refreshing when playing. The game is best described as a deck-building coffee-break roguelike, which comes with good and bad points.

Most of your early runs in Monster Slayers will be met with defeat. That’s not a bad thing if you use it to your advantage. Check out these tips and tricks to help you get further in your runs.

Get Ready to Farm

In Monster Slayers, any equipment you have at the time of your death is preserved for future characters. Therefore, one of the best ways to succeed early is to find or buy +gold accessories while doing the first two dungeons. The large gold pool will help you buy items that are beneficial to future characters and help with clearing the third dungeon. Equipment is very useful in tackling dungeons, but not always necessary. Check out this video where a veteran player of the PC version finishes the game with a Barbarian wearing nothing.

Monster Slayers Tips: Combat

If you are struggling with the card-based combat aspect of Monster Slayers, here are a few quick tips. These tips & tricks will help you make it to the third dungeon and beat the final boss.

• Deck Management: Delete level 1 attack cards as soon as possible at healers. Improvise is a good early card, but can be safely deleted too. Keep your deck as thin as possible so your strongest cards are always in frequent rotation.
• Companions: Magic classes will find the most use in sage and mage companions. Crit-based users will prefer the thief and monk. The bard companion’s buffs are invaluable to every class. If you’re struggling to survive encounters, the warrior, paladin, and druid companions are invaluable. Druid is especially good for classes that take damage over time like Barbarian and Cleric.
• Captains: Upgrade your cards at captains in the first two dungeons. Use captains on the third dungeon for the large +3 AP bonus.
• Campfires: Health and mana bonuses from campfires have limited use. Focus on getting AP or alcohol to remove bad cards from your deck.

Class Tips

Struggling to understand the goal behind each class in Monster Slayers? Check out these tips for playing each of the eleven classes in the game.

The Rogue and Wizard classes are godlike tier and very easy to master. Ranger is well-balanced and easy to cement wins. Knight is okay, but have some issues with generating enough damage. The mage companion for its damage and the monk companion for its enemy ability cancellation are good companions for the Knight. Cleric, Assassin, and Barbarian all require knowledgeable play and farmed runs with talents unlocked to be regular winners.

Monster Slayers Tips: The Classes

• Wizard: Always pick a staff with +1 card draw on mana charge effect. It helps the wizard class clear the whole hand in one go. It also makes it easy to kill enemies with no counter-play. Time bubble can also buy extra turns on difficult enemies.
• Ranger: Focus on getting +critical damage modifiers for the final fight. With enough crit, you can burst the Harbinger in one turn with a monk in your party. Killing Aura and Arrow Storm are also great late-game cards. Mighty Hit also becomes a nuke card with AP stacking.
• Knight: Knights can stack block and item effects to punish enemies for hitting them. Thorns and Immolation are two good cards for the Knight’s deck. Stack health and block as much as possible to get as far as you can.
• Cleric: Clerics are harder to win with because they take forever to kill things. Many spells put Penance cards in your hand, which do nothing but clog up your card queue. Find magic support cards and build health to outlive everything you fight.
• Assassin: The Assassin can hit harder than the rogue, but it has fewer chances for direct damages. Instead, the assassin relies on traps and hook shots, which are bad against armor and high dodge opponents. A crit-build is your best bet because dueling ability is very poor due to lack of defense.
• Barbarian: Similar to Brute and focuses on crit and stacking health. It’s hard to speed clear with a Barbarian because most of his abilities do damage to himself. The druid and warrior companions are particularly helpful to keep the Barbarian up.

General Tips

• Losing is good, even if it sucks. You gain fame that can be contributed toward new talents before picking your new starting class.
• The game has two expansion packs available on PC, but no indication if they will be coming to Nintendo Switch.
• Get the increased chance of campfire appearing as quickly as possible. It will help you be on top of your HP when you confront the final boss of a level.
• Some classes are better against certain bosses than others. Take that into consideration when choosing which areas to go to for each character you play.
• Monster Slayers tips will appear above each monster before you fight it. Pay close attention here to enemy abilities and resistances to better plan your attacks.