New and Improved Beginner's Guide to Dawncaster

Dawncaster has a lot of choice and depth, making it easy to get overwhelmed. The goal of this guide is to provide a framework for exploring the game and finding your groove. I’ve had three invaluable resources as I began my journey – long-term players who were willing to help (which you can access through the Dawncaster Discord), crunchy data (blightbane.io), and more easily searchable data (dawn-dash.com).

A good way to think of Dawnshards initially is as experience points which you can spend to unlock more weapons and incremental boosts for your characters. They are also the in-game currency to purchase re-rolls at the Merchant, runs in the Sunforge, and Cosmetics.

You will receive Dawnshards after every completed run. A typical winning run on Normal difficulty produces around 50 shards. Your first run each day produces double-shards. You can also complete up to three quests (bounties) per day which offer up to 250 shards (50-100 is typical). The quests can be seen from the main menu by clicking the die on the left hand side, and you can re-roll one per day. You can also see them during a run by clicking on your character picture and checking the tab.

Recently added, you can also gain shards by completing achievements. Achievements are found from one of the left side icons on the main menu by changing the tab on the bottom.

It costs around 150 shards to unlock a full new set of Basic Attack/Weapon/Starting Card (I will refer to this as a “kit” later on) and the class boosts around them. It costs 10 shards for a Sunforge run. It costs 1 shard to re-roll the Merchant. It costs 125 shards to buy a Cosmetic. If you are primarily interested in playing with all the different sets of items, I find that your shard gain will tend exceed the speed at which you have successful runs with each new Basic Attack so you always have shards on hand to buy the next combo you want to try.

There are three ways I can see to explore the content and get a handle on what you might like and how you might like to play:

Full Shannanigans (FS): If this is you, you have very little interest in playing the game on Normal difficulty and squeaking by with a win using some basics and a few power boosters. Nope, you’re here to break the game. FS is where you’re going to feel the Shard pinch, because it will cost a lot of Shards to unlock everything you need to try out all the crazy combos you want.

Go ahead and read the rest of this guide, you probably want to start with the PEO route below, paying attention to your bounties and achievements until you have enough Shards to start brewing. You will also benefit enormously from the Discord which has, among other things, builds designed to get a lot of Dawnshards very quickly (once you can build them). Starting a little slow has the added benefit of giving a feel for the ebb and flow of the game.

Play Each Expansion In Order (PEO): If this is you, you want to get the core experience before you add the expansion cards. You want to experience each expansion on it’s merits before trying the next one. This is a slow and steady approach to the game and the one I am favoring now after previously pursuing a single class.

You will always be playing with Core and Core Expanded enabled. I recommend always adding Metaprogress to ensure you aren’t missing something which would otherwise be enabled. The other expansions are Metamorphosis, Infinitum, Catalyst, Eclypse, and Synthesis.

The unlock progression is different for the first three than for the most recent two. Each of the six classes has a unlock tree for the first three. The final two unlock trees are for the expansion itself and contain unlocks for all the classes within the tab for that expansion.

Roughly speaking, the kit each Class begins the game with and the first kit unlocked on either side of the tree are supported by Core and Core Expanded cards. Following PEO, you would complete eighteen total runs with only Core and Core Expanded, three for each class, unlocking all the non-cosmetics down to the second Basic Attack on each tree. The next two kits for each class (one on each side of the tree) are supported by the Metamorphosis expansion. The next two kits for each class (one on each side of the tree) are supported by the Infinitum expansion. The rest are supported by the Catalyst Expansion. Now you’re ready to explore Eclypse and then Synthesis.

A personal note here. This will take hundreds of hours. If you stop having fun exploring the game this way, mix it up a bit. Try some Sunforge runs. Try different combos of Attacks, Weapons, and Starting Cards. Add some Malignancies. It’s not a job, just a fun way to approach the game.

Pick A Class (PAC): If this is you, one of the Classes is just more appealing than the others. You may want to try a run with each of the six classes first using their basic configurations. This will introduce you to the various cards in each color and help you get a feel for what playstyle best suits you. It will also help you accumulate Dawnshards for exploring your favorite.

Dawncaster has three basic types of energy, Might(Red), Dexterity(Green), and Intellect(Blue). The six classes are a combination of two energies as follows:

Arcanist (Blue/Blue)
A classic magic user. Your first kit wants to Chain attacks together to make the Chain more powerful as it continues unbroken. Later builds wield Fire, Ice, Healing, and more.

Knight (Blue/Red)
A holy warrior. Knights have the easiest access to a fourth type of energy, Divine. They have a number of ways to both armor up and gain benefits from accessing Divine cards and effects.

Seeker (Blue/Green)
A zen monk. Seeker builds are about doing unusual things by interacting with stuff like how much energy a card costs, which turn it is, or whether life totals are odd or even. Also the primary shapeshifter class if you want to play with beastforms.

Warrior (Red/Red)
A berserker first and foremost. As with all the classes, there are many different styles, but the most basic Warrior abilities are designed around taking damage to do more damage. Also the primary bombardier class if you like blowing things up.

Hunter (Red/Green)
An advantage generator. Hunter cards are less about power and more about using them from the correct hand position or at the right time to get maximum value from them.

Rogue (Green/Green)
A classic rogue. Attacking from ambush, performing, charming, arrows, the well-known and loved set of characteristics.

One fun thing about the PAC style of game progression is how interesting it can be to mix and match different Basic Attacks, Weapons, and Starting Cards to have more powerful runs. See what works for you, it’s YOUR character. You can see which expansions to enable for a new kit looking at PEO above for guidance.

Whichever path you choose, at some point you will be selecting New Game and choosing your Class and Kit after which you will be on a screen that allows you to choose where you will go during your run, which expansions you want available during your run, and what difficulty you want. The getting started tip is to pick the picture of the forest for where to start and to pick the Core “Canto” (area) each time. This is the starting experience. Other Cantos have different stories, rewards, and options, but tend to be more difficult initially.

On Normal difficulty there are nine Cantos to explore during your journey. You can expect your first successful run to take over two hours (mine was almost three). As you gain experience this will creep down to 60-90 minutes per run on average. When I’m engaging with new material (a newly unlocked attack for example) my runs are around 2 hours.

A reminder for expansions (discussed in more detail above), I recommend starting with Metaprogession on and everything else (that isn’t core) off. Metaprogression doesn’t add many cards and it’s needed to support a lot of later class unlocks. For the rest, I recommend adding them as you come to kits which are supported by them. Other than Metaprogression, I do not recommend having multiple additional expansions turned on simultaneously unless there is a specific card combination you are looking for. Experienced players do not typically play with all the expansions on, rather they choose the ones with the cards they want for their current run and leave the rest off.

Difficulty on Normal with no Malignancies is a good way to begin. Adding difficulty and/or malignancies will increase your score which adds to how many Dawnshards are earned in a run. Eventually you will want them, for now not so much.

You can think of each Canto as a deck of story elements, enemies, allies, shrines, campfires, and opportunities. It will offer you three cards from the deck and you choose which one to engage with next. Anything you don’t choose EXCEPT FOR OPPORTUNITIES, gets reshuffled into the deck after you choose. If you do not choose an Opportunity when it is presented, it is lost forever. A little more detail:

Story elements. These progress the storyline through the Canto and can have different outcomes based on your decisions (though they often don’t). Cards are added to the Canto deck after each story element. Completing a Canto’s story elements will make the Boss for the Canto available.

Enemies. Your primary source for experience and new cards. Defeating enemies is how your character gains strength. Enemies are optional. While you always have to pick one of the three cards available you are never required to fight any specific enemy (with the exception of the Canto Boss). Enemies with something glowing over their head are producing an aura that will affect whichever enemy you choose to fight so it is a good idea to prioritize fighting them to end their aura effect.

All cards have a colored banner below the card which is easy to miss. Ater defeating an enemy you will be offered a choice of three cards which can be added to your deck. You will only be offered cards whose banner matches one of your energy colors. Some cards banners are a combination, such as purple for Red/Blue. These cards require BOTH colors. It is possible to add an additional color later in the game when trying for a particular card. There are also a few ways to get offered cards outside of your character’s color scheme.

You will often probably want to pass on selecting a card. Choose things which build your plan and let everything else slide. A few additional considerations: It is often worth taking an Uncommon (glows green) or Rare (glows blue) card in order to use allies and shrines to turn that card into another card of the same or higher rarity. It can be worth hauling around a Legendary (glows orange) card on the chance you meet the Collector ally who provides rewards for giving him cards. It may be worth holding on to Enchantments where you like the effect but not the cost because there is another ally (the Enchanter) who can make those Enchantments permanent by imbuing them.

Allies. As you progress through the game, you will gain allies who will have their cards added to the Canto’s deck and can provide you their services. You will not unlock every ally in every run, and you will not necessarily get every unlocked ally offered in every Canto. One “hidden” ally effect is that visiting the Blacksmith will refresh your Weapon whether or not you purchase anything.

Shrines. There is a list of shrines and their effects on the discord and I highly recommend using it. In general, shrines allow you to alter or upgrade your cards.

Campfires. Their basic functions are healing or card removal. You may want to save them for use after the final Boss of the Canto to heal up before beginning the next one. There can be other functions. Of note, the fifth core Canto (Noxlight) sees you become progressively more poisoned as you face enemies. This counter resets when you visit a campfire.

Opportunities. These can be good and these can be bad. The good tends to outweigh the bad. Remember that any opportunity you don’t select will be lost forever. Who you are and what you have matters, and the game doesn’t give away its secrets (no grayed out options that aren’t currently available but tell you what you would need to get them). Your choices also matter. Make sure you try different things with different characters and don’t assume you know what is possible for an opportunity just because you’ve done it previously with another character.

Most enemies get stronger the longer you leave them alive. It is often (though not always) better to pile on more damage than to do other things. You will typically lose more health in a long battle with a Corrupted Tuskboar where you use Block whenever available than in a shorter fight just piling up as much damage as possible.

Basic Weapons are often very good. Unlike in many other deckbuilders, your basic weapon is often what you want to build your deck around. Among other things, the Blacksmith very efficiently upgrades ALL of them for 50 gold. They also tend to provide a gameplay loop they want you to achieve and that is effective once you do so.

On the flip side of that, Block is not good. Toss ‘em at a campfire, transmute ‘em at a Shrine or Alchemist. Take advantage of a storm. Just get ‘em out of your deck unless you have a very specific plan for them. NOTE: There is a talent which trades all your Blocks for two Tower Shields. You do not need to have any Blocks to take the talent and get the Tower Shields.

Pick a Keyword (words in bold, like Armor, Chain, or Flanking) and abuse it. Pretty much any Keyword can be turned into a game winner if you focus on it (yes, even Focus). Focusing on a Keyword doesn’t necessarily mean more cards. It can also mean improving and refining the ones you have, along with imbuing enchantments and choosing talents that support it.

You will run into two additional relatively common types of energy in your runs, Divine and Blood. Divine energy (Gold) is tied to Divine cards which can be made available through weapon choice or talent selection. It usually needs to be generated through the use of cards in your deck as opposed to being generated at the start of a turn. Blood energy (Dark Red) uses your HP instead of taking a sphere from your energy bar. (There is yet another type of energy, but by the time you’re dealing with it you’ll be way beyond needing anything in this guide).

You will ALWAYS get offered another energy at level 4. A good time to double down on your neediest energy cost or to add a new type of energy to try to take advantage of an updated reward card pool. Be aware that the game is paying more attention to your energy than it feels like. There are talents which can become available and event results which can change based on not only which types of energy you have, but also by how much of that type of energy you have.

As you build your character/deck you need to consider how you will maintain your health. It doesn’t need to be health gain, it might be armor, or evasion, or simply killing everything before it ever gets to take a swing, but it is something that needs some thought put into it or you may find yourself running out of gas in the late game.

A few hints for the eighth Canto:

There are three enemies with Auras and the Auras are universal until they are defeated. One of these Auras will bury the top card of your deck. If you only have one Memorized card, that’s the one that will get buried. A buried card is removed from your deck until after the combat unless you have another effect which changes that. So if there is one critical card to your deck, a) try to copy it, and b) you may not want to memorize it.

Another aura adds Blood(HP) cost to every card. Be careful if your deck requires playing a lot of cards for it to work that you don’t accidentally tap yourself out.

You get a very small selection of allies so you can not count on having a specific one offered.

You will (usually) need to beat the Dreadlord twice for him to actually die. Your weapon countdown does not advance after the first combat.

The Balor has a time limit for defeating him that will end the combat with no reward (and no weapon countdown advancement) if you fail to kill him before it expires. Also, he has the ability to convert one of your blessings to a random curse which has the potential to immediately end your run if, for example, your stack of 150 Barrier just got converted to Charm while your life total is at a comfy 120.

Everything above is just scratching the surface. Hopefully it gives you enough of a foundation to get to where you can forge the path you want to take, whether it’s crazy mix and match options of a single class, slowly trying out all of them, or running full speed into the expansions and the Sunforge.