It Lurks Below: Tips for Beginners

1. Mechanics:

• Trees in ILB can be dug out with a pickaxe to retrieve a sapling and they do not reproduce, neither do they disappear when cut down with an axe (this just resets their maturity).
• Starting off there’s a limited amount of trees, but additional saplings can be acquired as drops.
• Trees occupy a 13 (height) x 9 (width) space. They can overlap with other trees, however tiles in the area will stunt their growth.
• Wood can be converted into blank scrolls which can be sold to the vendor for a tiny sum, but it’s not worth the time investment.
• Damage to trees is affected by player stats, so boosting the damage output via gear, crystals or Ancient Items will reduce the amount of hits they take.

2. Strategy:

• Early in the game it’s very convenient to collect and relocate all trees to a single tree farm close to the player’s base and it doesn’t take much effort at all.
• Besides getting wood, a tree farm is a very good source of large bursts of Survival XP and can help out indirectly with hunger management through boosting the Survival rank.
• Regularly cutting down a tree farm will generate massive surplus of wood. As inventory & storage space is highly limited keeping a single stack of wood and trashing additional stacks seems like the best way of handling the surplus.

1. Mechanics:

• Invasions happen periodically – spawning a variety of monsters in the corruption area which then proceed to go towards the player.
• The monsters are at the player’s level
• Ogres explode on death causing tiles around them to get damaged or break (corrupted tiles are unaffected)
• Platforms are also unaffected by the explosions and can be useful for containment.
• Ditches can be used to collect ground enemies, but need maintenance if made out of regular tiles.
• While the invading monsters are alive vendors are disabled.
• The bank can be accessed for a limited time by placing a quick vault during an invasion.
• Dealing with invasions without any special measures can be extremely time consuming due to having to walk long distances and chase enemies; as well as their common occurrence and periodic nature.
• Doors can be used to block the floating eyes, but ground enemies will open doors if they can reach them (4 tiles high wall + large door on top blocks both).
• The floating eyes can float upwards and over small walls, which can affect their elevation.
• 8 tiles are enough to block floating eyes as long as they don’t have higher elevation from floating over smaller walls.
• Having several tiles of ground and several tiles of wall thickness is a good idea to avoid spillage, unless the containment is entirely made out of corrupted blocks.
• Enemies will spawn on the highest tiles, so building additional corrupted blocks vertically will reposition spawning points
• Corruption can spread upwards to any dirt tile, regardless if there’s a connection or not.
• Unsure how horizontal tiles affect spawning, I believe it may have a hard limit on width – possible around a screen size (default zoom).

2. Strategy:

• A good way to handle invasions is to seal off the corrupted area (approximately a screen size – even distance from corruption on each end) with walls – 8 tiles high from the highest tile within the contained area
• It may be possible to seal off the corruption with dirt early and let it get corrupted to achieve an indestructible containment early on, but this is harder than it sounds as corruption spreads in a weird pattern – furthermore dealing with highly stacked up enemies in the early game may be deadly.
• After crafting the Divine pickaxe which allows mining corrupted blocks, it may be a good idea to transition to a containment entirely out of corruption to eliminate maintenance. (manual extermination remains necessary)

1. Brief

• Not all nodes in the survival skill tree are immediately useful – some are gated with progress and unlocking them isn’t going to grant any immediate advantage
• Best ways to get a lot of survival XP are mining , having a tree farm (even when wood is no longer useful) and farming. Once the Hoe is crafted in Nightmare+ a large farm can skyrocket Survival XP and quickly max out all the Survival Skills.
• Here I’ll try to propose a suggested path that lines up with the progression and generally try to judge on their priority.

2. Quick priority list:

• Extra Planter Box
• Two Coops
• Energentic and Expert Miner (except Ore Magnet)
• (Expert Lumberjack) – at own discretion if using a Ton of wood for aesthetics early on ( but try wood farm first)
• Copper pickaxe (as soon as Copper is acquired)
• Mithril pickaxe (as soon as Mithril is acquired)
• Extra Harvest & Squirrel Away + all nodes slowly (however do jump to next points on the list if the requirements are met)
• Composter nodes except Golden Trees (as soon as a lot of surplus food and more than 4 crystals)
• Beehives – as soon as enough compost and crystal shards
• Barn (1st node) – as soon as enough compost and crystal shards
• Refrigerator – storage issues (needs ice) – 8 extra storage slots (shared inventory)
• Large mug & fresh pot – storage issues & a lot of coffee
• Barista (needs barn)
• Healthy dose – at own discretion if using a lot of potions
• Spring recipes – at own discretion, if growing a lot of berries/wheat
• Golden Trees – RNG, wait for Golden Compost
• Mushroom station & Greenhouse – RNG or Nightmare +
• Remaining Pickaxes – Nightmare + (after appropriate ores are acquired)
• Hoe – Nightmare + – as soon as Verdant and Russet ore are acquired
• Cooking recipes + all nodes – Nightmare +
• Fine mining – severe storage & can’t let go issues
• …
• Fill out Remaining nodes
• …
• Neatly stacked papers + all nodes
• Nightmare healing + all nodes
• Ore Magnet (broken?)

3. Page by page:

3.1. Mining

Copper Pickaxe nodes

• Copper Pickaxe is craftable from the 2nd area below (1st in the dungeon proper) and is very useful as soon as the player obtains copper
• Mithril Pickaxe is craftable from the 3rd area below (2nd in the dungeon) – similarly very useful as soon as mithril is obtained
• Remaining nodes are for Nightmare+ – best to wait until obtaining the material required before unlocking

Energetic mining nodes

• Entire tree is useful immediately and highly recommended

Fine Mining nodes

• Not a highly useful tree. Can be of benefit if the player likes keeping large amounts of ore and is running out of storage – though this can be easily avoided by selling the ores.

Expert Miner nodes

• Entire tree with the exception of ore magnet is useful and almost immediately so.
• Unsure if ore magnet actually changes anything

3.2. Farming and Cooking

Spring, Summer & Autumn recipes nodes

• Spring recipes can be useful to make better use of wheat and berries if the player doesn’t like sticking to bowl of cooked veggies.
• The rest are probably best left alone until Nightmare, as the starting crops are insufficient and this tree requires a massive point investment.

Composter nodes

• The first three nodes are good as soon as the player gets more than 4 crystals and starts producing enough surplus food to be able to make compost as it then allows the farming of crystals.
• Golden Trees is highly RNG based – not useful without already having Golden Fertilizer

Extra Planter Box nodes

• Extra Planter Box is get immediately tier (or at least the sooner the better). Not only more food, but also more Survival XP through farming which means more unlocking more nodes. Win more.
• Refrigerator is good once the player starts running out of storage space as it provides 8 extra slots (no more no less). Requires Ice from the 3rd area.
• Mushroom station is great but it requires 2 Night Mushroom Feast and 4 Royal Mushroom Meal – it’s RNG don’t get it before you have them (unless you want Greenhouse)
• Greenhouse is also great but also RNG -requires Sand which is only available behind portals – may need to reset the map on Normal to find one (or get to Nightmare for a guaranteed one) – depth is also random

3.3. Crops, Seeds and Foraging

Extra Harvest & Squirrel Away nodes

• Good and useful immediately but requires a large point investment – lower priority.

Expert Lumberjack nodes

• Expert Lumberjack is only useful if the player absolutely must build a base out of wood (offers no advantage). Recommend collecting all the trees and relocating them close to the base instead.
• Hoe is absolutely amazing in Nightmare +. Infinite food. And potential for massive Survival XP when used to make a big farm.
• Last two nodes are meh. Unsure if faster tilling actually does anything.

Meat Entrees nodes

• Meh tree. Meat is rather scarce early on, becomes plentiful when food stops being a big issue. Invest when no better options.

Mushroom dishes nodes

• Meh tree. Similar issue as meat entrees. Invest when no better options.

3.4. Alchemy and scrolls

Healing potions nodes

• Left side is pretty much last on the priority list, almost completely useless. (unless the player gets lucky with the golden fertilizers and wants to make invulnerability potions instead of getting the cash). Better off farming potions from monster drops (resetting the dungeon if necessary) than crafting them.
• Right side can be useful rather quickly especially with high potion usage but it requires multiple points invested to get to the Healing Reload node. Invest at personal leisure (perhaps after the most important nodes are done)

Neatly Stacked papers nodes

• Second last on the priority list. Combat buff scrolls are too abundant to invest in it. Food/energy scrolls last too little to get a lot of value from the increased duration.

Large mug nodes

• First two nodes are useful after starting to run low on storage and accumulating stacks of coffee.
• Third node requires milk, and it’s a good idea to obtain after Barn (I prefer converting my Milk to Latte than to Cheese as latte kills 3 birds with one stone)
• Forth one is meh. Invest when no better options.

3.5. Livestock

Chicken coop

• Get the first three nodes almost immediately (for two coops). Not as good as the extra planter box as coops don’t give Survival XP, but a great source of quick food that also works during the winter.
• Fourth node is meh. Invest when no better options tier.

Barn

• Building a barn requires a large amount of compost (32) and crystal shards (500) as well as 10 wheat. Get it as soon as you can afford it (after Beehive) as it’s a decent source of food that also works during winter.
• The last 3 nodes are much lesser priority than getting the milk production. Can let the milk stockpile on the floor for a quite a while (or use it to make latte) before turning it into cheese.

Beehive

• Each one requires 8 compost and 100 crystal shards to make. Get it as soon as you can afford it as it’s a decent source of food that also works during winter.
• Getting the other 3 nodes to build a second Behive is also a high priority

• If struggling with a boss hover over him to check his level. If the difference in levels is more than 5 levels the boss will have 5% damage reduction (stacking) for each additional level past 5, up to 95% – this will also be displayed in the tooltip as a buff. (same rule also applies to regular monsters)
• If struggling to reach a boss or retrieve items after death and Twister Tree retriaval is too costly – consider building inside the boss room. Either to get to the boss, to cage him for easier hits or to have a protected outpost within the boss room.
• Bosses and adds will destroy blocks – that doesn’t make building useless, but it is something to keep in mind.
• Platforms don’t block the boss but also can’t be destroyed. They also require background blocks to place which may not be available (in Hell+ if I remember correct)
• Corrupted dirt once available to use in Nightmare+ cannot be destroyed by bosses or their adds and can therefore be quite advantageous.
• Don’t be afraid to reset the map via the books from the Wizard and get more (or better) stuff from the same difficulty (or from the next difficulty).
• Killing bosses isn’t really required (except in Normal as they drop basic blueprints).

Written by KucheKlizma