Things we wish we knew before starting Realm Of Ink

The kingdom of ink the roguelike gameplay can quickly become stressful once you leave the tutorial. The game relies on you getting to know certain mechanics from playing similar games, and as a result some people will have a hard time understanding things. Fortunately, once you get over the initial learning curve, the game becomes much more intuitive.

To see Red's adventure to kill his own narrator, you'll want to mix the various aspects of hand-to-hand combat and magic along with navigating the in-game upgrade, pet evolution, and saving systems. There's a lot to keep track of, and this guide aims to streamline the basics.

Realm of Ink is currently in early access, so some content is subject to change. We will update this guide as needed in the future.

Your elemental pets can become powerful

Your pet can grow shockingly strong if fed the right ink. If you unlock his special abilities with a pair of epic gems, it is often strong enough to individual standard meeting rooms.

Your pet's special skills require both gems to be of medium epic rarity. If you prioritize upgrading one of your gemsyou can easier change the other one as needed. Upgrading both evenly will often mean having to weaken your pet if you make any changes to your build.

The game type diagram follows the Five Elements (Wuxing) of Chinese philosophy, rather than the four Greek elements more commonly found in games.

This means that you won't find any Air elements, as the Wuxing elemental chart includes: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal.

Each pair of items gives your pet a different shape, including two of the same item. Looking at them, it's hard to tell how the different pet forms function in battle, but you can check the pause menu to see what form your pet is in currently and what passive or active abilities it can unleash.

You can safely ignore some visual indicators

There can be a lot going on visually at the same time, and not all of it is dangerous for you. Teaching yourself ignore the visuals associated with your own attacks makes it easier to avoid enemies.

A useful option if you struggle with this can be found in the video settings, allowing you to
increase transparency of own abilities,
so there are fewer visual obstacles when dodging.

Some builds depend on you seeing your own effects, like magic circles. While perks can usually be left as transparent as possible, don't be afraid to change the visibility of your ink gems as you equip new ones.

Depending on the ink you have, your familiar can take a form that seems dangerous to you: this is especially true for the projectiles and AoE attacks it uses, such as fire and ash forms.

Choose gems to complement your power-ups and elixirs

The game's tutorial puts a lot more emphasis on the two ink gems you can carry around than the other available upgrades. Ink Gems are a more flexible upgrade you can make change them as better ones come along.

The benefits are persistent and cannot be changed in the same way and there is no limit to the number you can carry. When you are given a choice of rooms to walk through, bonus rooms are often a good choice.

It's better to choose ink gems that contribute to your available perks than the other way around.
You'll have plenty of chances to find different gems in the loop, but you'll want to take advantage of a certain group of power-ups before you reach the first boss fight.

Not all attacks need to be used while reloading

Some gems are there
should be held for their passive or house abilities
rather than their active skills.
Read the abilities carefully
to know whether the passive or active part of the gem is more important.

Burning Ink is great for any build that focuses on damage over time effects. His passive skill allows you to stack burning effects, but his active skill removes all stacks of effects.

• U short fights you want to use the active skill oftenconverting your slower burning damage into rapid bursts of lethality.
• In the majority longer fights that you want to avoid by using an active skill and allow passives to deal damage by increasing burn stacks.

The same applies to the basic abilities of some unlockable skins. Red can hold down the attack button to re-use the same combo A'quan benefits from having their abilities combined with evasions for extra power, and General Gore must raise his blade after each throw.

Keep ranged attackers in sight

Ranged attacks you can only dodge when you see them coming. Enemies with a ranged attack greater than your line of sight can easily hit you from behind the screen if you don't fight close to them.

Fighting close to ranged enemies also makes it easier to deal with them, as you'll naturally whittle them down with area effects and spells aimed at other enemies.

This is harder to achieve in some boss fights, such as the Puppet Emperor and the Peony Demon. Here you want find out if there are blind spots in the arena where you can fight summoned minions and not worry about giant death lasers.

Dash while holding a charged attack to lunge

Heavy attacks do a lot of damage, but can be difficult to place correctly on most characters. Dashing does not cancel your charged attack, but instead delays it until the end of your movementallowing you to dive into a group of enemies rather than waiting for them to come forward. This is an an important part of the Red toolkit in the early stages of the game.

It also allows you to make charged hits against enemies with a longer attack or ka
dodge an attack animation that will end with you getting hit.

On some skins, this can lead to interesting results. A'quan doesn't need the extra range on his strong attack, but changing position during his channel can adjust the direction in which he strikes.

Use your money wisely

It's easy to make assumptions about in-game savings and get confused by the cost of healing potions or the exorbitant costs of upgrades found in common loot.

Learning how much different types of items cost will help you run longer and teach you how to do it the value of the benefits and improvements that cumulative discounts provide. Wasting 200 silver per elixir is often not worth the cost unless you have a synergy that grows from the money you spend or the food you eat.

This also applies to NPC events that will appear in the series.
Selling your hit points for items is usually a worthwhile trade
since you can always heal before fighting.

Selling max HP is harder to justify, but
can pay off with the right assembly
.

Always take trial numbers

Some roguelikes will teach you to carefully weigh the merits of a more difficult route. In games like Slay The Spire or Hades, fighting a stronger fighter means potentially running low on health when you're fighting an area boss, or getting wiped out by a mini-boss you're not ready for.

Trial rooms in Realm of Ink have stronger enemies than usual, but the rewards are two to three times more than a regular meeting room. Special challenge rooms such as NPC defense will remain give you partial rewards if you don't fulfill them, on the common meeting room level. It means there is rarely a reason to avoid problems unless they pose a serious risk of killing you.

Find the gameplay that suits you

As with many games that involve both sorcery and combat, these two games offer varying levels of challenge depending on how you apply both disciplines. Most encounters can be won without getting hit as long as you keep your distance as much as possibleuse the ranged inkstone and let momo intercept all melee attackers.

At the same time, some people will enjoy a pure melee game as a bigger challenge, even if it offers no additional rewards. This applies to an equipment system that changes the attack style: