Happykill's Helpful Guides

Contents

- Before you play
- Reference cheatsheet
- Starting tips
- Classes
- General tips
- Suggestions & advice
- Farming guide
- Additional information from discord guide

Before You Play For The First Time

Welcome to It Lurks Below! Before you start playing for the first time, you will have to make two choices: Your character class and your game mode.

Character Class

The game has 8 different RPG classes, each with unique abilities playing style. Level up to unlock the full potential of your class! There are ranged and melee classes in the game. Most players agree that ranged classes are easier to start with if you are new. Don't be afraid to make a new character to try a class out, or check out the intro to classes below.

Game Style

Pay attention to the game style descriptions, as you will to start a new character if you want to change game style. This guide is written for Survival, but applies to all game styles - if you are playing another style you can just ignore the survival parts.

The Game Screen

Useful Tips You Want To Know

Just some helpful tips that are not immediately intuitive or just easy to forget:

• Place seeds on your toolbar and use them to plant them.
• Remember to extract seeds from crops and manage your food supply. Hit E to extract seeds. Don't run out of things to plant or to eat!
• Hunger slows down when you are near your homestone. Look for the status icon.
• Higher survival rank makes your food more powerful. Level up!
• Check your crafting panel for useful things you can craft. Check again as you learn new recipes.
• Hold Shift to dig or place blocks in the background layer. Hold Ctrl for the second background layer.
• Armor reduces damage. Resistances reduce the chance for status effects.
• You can move your Ancient Items to a different slot while your inventory is open.
• Winter is coming. Make sure you have enough food to survive!

What Class Should I Pick?

Here is a brief description of each class to help you choose. All classes have a unique passive ability and five skills which they get from their ancient items. They get the final ancient item at level 20. Skills can be active or passive and have multiple upgrade levels.

Class Gameplay Reference

This describes how classes play, it is NOT a good/bad rating.

Bard - the relaxed

Bards walk around playing songs of damage, healing, and self buffing. All bard skills are passive auras! Bard is a melee class, but their songs can damage enemies in a large area.

Cleric - the unstoppable

Clerics are all about armoring, buffing, curing, and healing themselves to become almost unstoppable. They kill their enemies with either ranged or melee weapons and reward killing streaks.

Enchanter - the mindbreaker

Enchanters are a ranged class that can stun and debuff their enemies while also doing area damage and buffing their own weapons. They can turn into a flying wisp to avoid enemies and heal themselves.

Necromancer - the supernatural horror

Necromancers gain a series of increasingly powerful buffs as they grow in power. They use powers of cold and poison, they can summon skulls, see enemies in the dark, drain life to heal themselves, turn into powerful liches, and even fly.

Wizard - the elemental

Wizards wield the power of flame and thunder in addition to their wands. They can also shield themselves and teleport. Their trusty familiar provides additional offense.

Rogue - the stealth stabber

Rogues are melee stealth assassins that can walk past enemies and gain bonuses from striking from the snadows. They alternate between hiding and doing huge amounts of burst damage. Rogues are a challenging class that requires awareness and using multiple active skills.

Warrior - the juggernaut

Warriors are melee fighters that can use sword and shield or dual swords. They charge their enemies and have a mix of offensive and defensive skills. Warriors can switch between stances to massively buff their offense or defense.

Paladin - the holy warrior

Paladins use two-handed melee weapons. They can dash, consecrate the ground around them and pull enemies to them. Fighting on holy ground gives paladins various buffs and healing.

General Game Tips For Every Occasion

• When you extract seeds from crops, there is a chance to extract two seeds.
• You can only drink 5 bottles of coffee before having to rest.
• Scroll duration stacks.
• Torches can be placed at a long range. Use them to explore and find new caves and rooms.
• Hold shift to mine/build on the background layer. Hold Ctrl for the third layer.
• Trees regrow when cut. Tree saplings can be moved.
• Bonuses to weapon damage increase mining power!
• Sleep in a bed for faster recovery.
• Remember to check that your ancient items are active. Especially clerics!
• You can build ladder-step platforms for easy climbing.
• The general store sometimes stocks seeds.
• You can reset your world with world books sold by the Wizard of Space and Time. The surface and the dirt layer are unaffected. Reset at the same or lower difficulty for easy loot, gold, and materials.
• New difficulty books unlock at levels 25, 55, and 80. But you should level up and bring your best gear - they are hard!
• Spend gold to level up your ancient items. You can sell gear, ores, crystals and other things you don't need for gold.
• You can also reset your ancient items and attribute points at the Wizard.
• Monster level scales by depth. Careful how deep you go.
• Kill all the monsters in a dungeon for a bonus chest. Watch out for escaping slimes!
• Crouch to hold still when shooting or to double your block chance if you are holding a shield. You can't crouch on platforms.
• Vendors reset every in-game day at midnight. Some upgrades only appear at refresh.
• Plants grow every day at noon.
• Hold RMB and walk to harvest your crops easily!
• Sand can be found inside portal rooms.

Suggestions And Gameplay Advice

Follow these or play your own way, up to you! These are some things I do.

• Do the surface quests early, they help a lot.
• Immediately at the start of the a new game make a round trip of the surface, pick up everything, and cut down all the trees. Dig up the saplings and place them near your base for easy access.
• Plan ahead and make your seeds for the next sowing ahead of time. This helps you stay organized and keep track of your supplies.
• Iron, cobblestone, berry bushes are all nice to have near your town, but try to not build it too close to the corruption.
• If you find a Scroll of Blessing while killing the starting surface monsters, use it to help kill Commander Vile.
• Craft Scrolls of Identification early. Use your first few crystals to get the shards you need. Good weapons will be more help than most crystals.
• As you find new ores, craft the new armors. Big upgrade to your defense. But balance it with old armor and crystal bonuses.
• Don't forget about defense! Damage crystals are nice but you need to survive.
• If things get too hard, emphasize horizontal exploration instead of vertical in order to get more loot and xp.
• Hellevators! A hole going straight down is always convenient for traveling. Just make sure you fall safely. This gets very easy once you can dig 3x3 blocks.
• Be tactical. If a room full of monsters looks too dangerous, try and enter it from another side.
• Use a Scroll of Death to clear an area and retrieve your items. (thanks Wuthow!)
• Teleport back to town before you enter a boss room. That way you can teleport straight back at the door if you die.
• Use W for your movement skill. It will help if you find yourself hitting W a lot while jumping. This way you will get used to it faster.
• Find out which skills combo well with others and cast them in the right order for massive damage!
• Light radius from items or skills is nice, but you will still need torches.

Farming And Early Game Survival

• You need food to eat. You need seeds to plant. You need to balance those two.
• Avoid eating raw vegetables, they feed you for much more if you cook them.
• At the start of the game you can find carrots, cabbages, and wheat on the surface. Any of them can be cooked for a basic meal. They can be farmed throughout Spring, Summer, and Autumn, so these alone are enough to keep you alive. Carrots, cabbages, or wheat are enough to sustain you if you plant and harvest often.
• There is more food in the game: wheat and berries that respawn on the surface, meat from killing monsters, mushrooms found underground, livestock products, and many other seeds to find and plant.
• Whenever you extract seeds from crops, you have a chance to get two seeds from one. So if you farm regularly, your seed and food supply will increase without much effort.
• Get the second planter box talent early, keep both planters full, and harvest often. This way you will produce more food than what you need to eat, and always have enough to make more seeds.
• Get the talent and craft the chicken coop early. It is easy to make and provides free food.
• Raise your survival rank by farming, cooking, chopping trees, and digging. This will be easy if you farm regularly. Higher survival rank gives you more food value from meals.
• As you gain survival rank, get all the crops and seeds talents. They help a lot.
• The mining talents also help you get more survival XP and progress faster.
• The food recipe talents are useful later in the game more than they are at the start.
• The Beehives, Mushroom Station, Barn, and Greenhouse can be made later in the game and are very useful.
• The General Store vendor sometimes sells seeds. If you see a new kind of seed, get it!
• Store food for Winter!
• When you are producing and storing more food, it is time to start making some compost.
• When you enter Nightmare difficulty, get the hoe and create huge farms for food, compost, and crystals!

Additional Information From Discord Guide

Portal Locations

This is what portals look like on the minimap. This portal, and some of the area around it, has been revealed using a Scroll of Portal Location.

General Food Buff Setup

General purpose food buff setup to help you supercharge your adventures. This is intended for Nightmare difficulty and higher, when it is possible to create big farms and - with some planning - have a large supply of all vegetables.

Suggested crop rotation to generate enough crops for the buff setup above.