Here is a guide about life and death in Into the Pit.
Into the Pit Life and Death Guide
In this section, we’ll take a closer look at the gameplay loop and the choices the player makes during each run.
The Ritual Altar
Before the player can enter the pit, they must first select a set of modifiers for the run. This includes one or more keys, which determine the environment, and one or more runes, upgrades with which the player will start the run. The Ritual Alter requires at least one key, but everything else is optional.
Choosing Your Ritual Runes
The most important factor to consider at the Ritual Altar is which environment you’d like to go to. The reason for this is each environment has three stranded villagers. Once they’ve been liberated, you cannot get any more villagers in town until you go to a new environment. Furthermore, each environment has unique monsters which may inflict and resist certain status effects. This is important to consider for your starting build and the upgrades you choose during the run.
Once you’ve unlocked multiple keys, you may notice that you can choose more than one for the Ritual. When you combine the keys for two different environments at the altar, you unlock a new environment which 1. mixes aspects of the two selections and 2. contains three additional stranded villagers.
So, for example, once you rescue all of the villagers from the Fungal Forest and the Corrupted Docks, you can combine their keys at the ritual altar for another run in the Fungal Docks. You’ll get the opportunity to rescue more villagers, but must also keep in mind that you’ll face a mixture of poison- and bleeding-adept monsters.
Making Your First Choices
When you enter Depth 1 of The Pit, you’ll have to make a few choices before cracking skulls. You must choose one offensive spell for each hand (more on this in the spells section) as well as one defensive rune. These choices, along with any others you unlock, will stay with you for the duration of the run but will be reset once you leave The Pit.
Next, you’ll have to make your first choice of Chamber to clear, which will unlock the first altar. More on chambers in their own section, but you’ll want to select these based on your desired resources. Each time you unlock an altar, you’ll be presented with a choice between three random runes which, once unlocked, will stay with you until you leave The Pit. Note: some upgrades are incompatible. For example, you cannot upgrade your left hand spell to deal both poison and bleeding damage. Choose wisely.
You begin each run in The Pit with a pool of health which must last you the duration of the run. There are no standard healing items in the game, so you’ll need to keep a close eye on your health and take whatever opportunities you get to replenish it. If you die, you’ll lose everything collected in your run.
Chamber of Healing
The most straightforward way to replenish your health is in the Chamber of Healing. This chamber contains one pool which will restore some of your health (default: 50? points) and one keystone. I don’t suggest relying on this method for healing. You never know when (or if?) you’ll come across this chamber, and using one might mean giving up a chamber with something useful inside.
Healing Runes
As you progress through the game, you’ll have the opportunity to unlock healing runes which you can use at the ritual altar to gain an edge during your run. These include runes which will grant health when destroying keystones or picking up motes, or even granting extra health in a Chamber of Healing. You also begin the game with a rune which increases your maximum health by 25, and that can be upgraded.
During your run, you may also have the opportunity to choose upgrades with additional healing capabilities. One example is Grim Reward, which has a chance of replenishing some of your health when you kill an enemy.
Cheat Death
Cheat Death is an interesting mechanic which allows you to resurrect if you have enough blood motes when you die. The number of motes required increases each time Cheat Death is activated, starting at a base of 10. You will not be resurrected with full health, but that extra little bit may be just what you need. (Resurrect with 50%? 60 points?)
There are three ways to leave the pit once you’ve started a run.
- Defeat the boss at Depth 5. Once defeated, you will be rewarded with a treasure chest of insight, a villager (if not previously saved), and a story note. You exit the pit with all of the items you collected in the run.
- Exit through the central portal. The same portal you use to descend to the next Depth may also bring you back to town early. If you do this, you will keep the items you’ve collected in the run.
- Die. If you are not able to Cheat Death, you will instead return to town having lost all of the items collected on your run.
By dvader19
