Recommended ability route
Pre-release footage shows player abilities including Rain of Arrows, Lightning Strike, tornado-style effects and a War Horn-type combat boost as the tree expands.For progression, prioritize abilities that solve the room you are farming:
- Area damage: best when skeleton density is high.
- Burst strike: useful against tougher enemies that survive cursor sweeps.
- Combat buff: strongest when several heroes are already contributing meaningful damage.
- Cooldown support: scales with every ability you have unlocked.
Manual or auto-cast?
Manual cast wins when you can wait half a second for a big group. Auto-cast wins when the skill’s cooldown is short, the room is constantly dense, or you are grinding many repetitive sessions.
A good compromise is to manually test a new skill first. Once you understand its target pattern and timing, switch on auto-cast if the automation is not wasting casts into empty space.
Idle Auto-Play toggles
The September 9 Idle Auto-Play update adds two gameplay toggles (bottom-left):
- Auto Move Cursor — keeps the cursor over the attack area.
- Auto Use Abilities — automatically activates abilities. Enable both for fully idle play.
With Auto Move Cursor on, the game automatically hits Play Again 2 seconds after a session ends, so a run can keep going in the background.
Why it works
Ability value scales with targets hit. A mediocre-looking area skill can become excellent after skeleton-limit and spawn upgrades create dense packs. This is why ability and spawn branches should be evaluated together.Cooldown resets and “cast again” effects also scale multiplicatively: they are weak when your base skills are weak, but powerful after skill damage/area and room density improve.
Ability and Talisman balance changes (September 12)
The Hero Blessings Update also rebalanced several hero abilities and Talismans. These are live numbers, so older videos showing the previous figures are no longer accurate:| Hero | Ability / Talisman | Old | Now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crusader | Royal Guard | 15% chance, 5s | 20% chance, 6s |
| Pyromancer | Flamekeeper | 78 kills required | 72 kills required (then cut to 36 on Sept 26 — see below) |
| Barbarian | Talisman of Rage | 6s interval | 5s interval |
| Shaman | Spirit Chain | 35% chance | 40% chance |
| Shaman | Grave Pact | 2 skeletons | 4 skeletons |
| Pyromancer | Scorching Aura | — | +20% damage |
Two of these change how a build plays rather than just its numbers. Shaman’s Grave Pact now summons twice as many skeletons per trigger, which matters most in rooms where you are already near the skeleton cap. Crusader’s Royal Guard is up 5 percentage points on chance and a full second longer, so it covers more of a dense wave than it used to.
The same update added 12 new Blessings — see the Heroes guide for the per-hero list — and raised Blessing Reset chances.
Ability balance changes (September 26, v1.1.3)
The v1.1.3 update touched three hero abilities. Two of them cut the kill threshold, so both now proc noticeably more often in an ordinary looting session:| Hero | Ability | Old | Now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Barbarian | Scaled Sword | blessing did not apply at all | +2.5% damage per kill, max +75% |
| Ranger | Treasure Instinct | 36 kills per hidden chest | 24 kills |
| Pyromancer | Flamekeeper | 72 kills per duration extension | 36 kills |
Scaled Sword was bugged: the blessing was not working, so the +2.5%-per-kill damage is new behaviour rather than a numbers tweak. Ranger and Pyromancer each need roughly a third less work to trigger, and Flamekeeper now extends on half the kills it asked for on September 12 — if you read the table above and planned a Pyromancer run around 72 kills, that figure is out of date.
The same update also added Steam Deck-specific layouts for the Room Info popup, a larger Codex popup, a resized Expedition Hero Info popup, and layout tweaks to the Expedition, Room Selection and Upgrade screens. Nothing there changes how a run plays on desktop.
Common mistakes
Judging a skill in an empty early room. Test it again after spawn upgrades.Auto-casting immediately. Watch one or two manual uses first so you know whether timing matters.
Buying skill duration/damage before the skill itself contributes. Fix the core build first.