I want to love this game but my suckiness at it really gets in the way. I often find myself doing the dumbest shit and dying quickly. I'm past 50 characters at this point and have only beaten the first boss thus far. I've fought the forest boss but after several minutes of attacking it, its health was only down by a fifth. My runs aren't exactly going great either. My last 5 runs all went rather poorly as I didn't even make it past the first area and only managed to make between 250 - 350 in gold.

@mrcraggle: At a certain point (by which I mean as early as possible), I recommend equipping like 3 Bounty runes, and also fully upgrading the thing in the castle that eventually gives you +50% gold. Then you start just ripping through stat increases at a much better rate, even on runs where you die kinda early. Seriously, once you do this, it will seem inconceivable that you could ever have a run where you only make 250-350 gold.

As far as being terrible at the game, hey man, practice practice practice. You'll get there.

Also, for the forest boss, if you use your non-Bounty rune slots on Vampirism runes, you'll gain back health every time you kill his summons, provided you can kill them quickly enough (1-2 hits) that they don't overwhelm you (that is sort of required for forest boss). Once you can do that, his attack is probably the easiest to avoid of all the bosses, since it's always just a regular cross, and as long as you're on a different elevation than him and not directly under him, you'll always be fine.

But then, I'm sure lots of people think my Bounty/Vampirism rune build is super boring (it is), but it works pretty well at least until you get to New Game Plus. And while we're talking super boring: until you invest heavily in Intelligence and MP (which most new players don't), you're probably not having a fun time with any of the spellcasting classes since they only really work when you have a bigger mana pool to rely on and your spells do good damage. So if you've invested more in the Strength HP side of the skill tree, try to favour Shinobi/Hokage on your next couple runs, at least to help you just murder everything in the castle (and potentially the forest). Hokage gradually becomes less appealing as the game goes on because you upgrade your crit chance significantly (which counts for nothing on Hokage), but +Strength +move speed is a pretty good bonus, as long as you don't turn it into a crutch.

@mrcraggle: Stick with it duder/dudette. it is meant to be a more progressive experience than just a simple one and done. rogue legacy reminds me of super house of dead ninjas where it is all about multiple small victories.

I am awful as well, but I can't bring myself to get angry with the game. It's just too damn charming.

@bisonhero: Thanks so much for the tips duder, you went above and beyond. Too bad there is no rep system here but +alltherep to you anyway.

Just thought I'd revive this thread as I've just started this game (thanks PS Plus) and I just feel like I'm making zero headway and getting completely destroyed by it. I must have gone through about 30 characters and can still barely make my way through the castle.

If you aren't sure what else to do, make sure you get double jump, dash, and upgrade damage and health. Paladins are a simple class that can learn to block early on. Doesn't matter how often you die as long as you make enough coins to rank up. Once you can kill enemies with one swipe in the first area it gets a bit easier to explore the others. It's fun as hell, I got to New game +++ before I moved on to play Spelunky.

This completely natural since the game is quite different than most 2D platforming games .

First, You need Vampirism armors/Vampire rune which will provide to your character health upon each kill you make. This will help you a lot in treasure hunting through the castel.

Then, You need to choose the right upgrades for your castel that will help you in defeating your enemies and staying alive like attack increase , magic damage increase and health increase .

Finally, Make sure to lock the castel when you try to defeat a boss and only unlock the class that is suitable to your playstyle .

note : the game can be taken in many directions and this is just my way of playing the game, so if my way it didn't work then a magic build might be more suitable for you .