The guide will start from the very basics and introduce even the most advanced mechanics along the way while focusing on one build that I made in case you need a 'walkthrough' of sort.. an example of what a neat build can do.

I will start this guide with the basics/game start:

When you start the game - there is not much reason not to select the season mode. There is also 0 penalty to starting out on hardcore, actually I highly recommend it, will unlock some achieves even for a little progression which is eventually more inventory slots.

Another important thing - this guide is originally based on Sea dungeon season - this means not all information might be 100% accurate in current season you play at.. And since it would be complex having to rewrite/edit the whole thing - I instead covered that by inserting all the important information about new season in a separate section - Wonder Season is the season after the Sea one. Hence you need to read this one to make sure you don't miss some important new info that's not mentioned anywhere in core guide! I am not certain for how many seasons I will support this guide, but at the moment I post this message - it is up to date with Eastern Season being last one. Future season will also get same treatment(a section dedicated fully to them and their most impactful changes) provided I have enough time


Hardcore mode attempt is IMO viable from get go with the help of the guide, but speedrun is recommended for later attempts.
Game starts with you on the main screen being able to go into dungeon, there is nothing else to do yet.

I will presume you are doing hardcore build now and hence recommend the more careful start for it.
Every 10 floors of the dungeon = boss, which is big spike of difficulty.

Hardcore = more achievement = more inventory slots = easier QoL + longer overnight autoplay periods available.

First of all you need to set dungeon to floors 1-9, those can be done 99% of the time, only extreme unlucky spree will kill you on those.

Be aware that retreating does NOT count as losing battle, but it makes you lose all loot gained during this try... still if you are serious about hardcore and things seem to go astray - just retreat, that will help in the long run

Make sure to set combat speed to maximum unless you want to check numbers, eventually dungeons start lasting very long.

Your main goal is currently to get good equipment to start pushing the dungeons, here is how I rate equipments during early game:

1) Weapon - pretty much anything that is not related to spells is fine, flat values are much better early on.. so +x attack and such... % values will mostly give nothing if you don't have flat ones!

2) 'Shield' slot - nothing particularly important here, just put something you like, this slot will mostly need mixing. You can just take whichever damage resist you feel like or even some unique item.

3) 'Armor' slot - shield + flat HP go a long way, especially shield early on... shield is an HP bar which refreshes every wave.. this means random mobs will likely not damage you much if at all.

4) 'Accessory' slots - there are some exp on kill passives to be had from those to boost early game and I recommend to stack those since we are playing it safe.
Once those start dropping off - the drop related passives are most important and there are great unique accessory skills for that.

Most importantly though:
A lvl 150-250 equip might drop even near the start.. yes, there is chance you can get an equipment piece which is instantly 'completed' ultra high level with crazy bonuses but you can't mix it... getting lucky with those is a requirement for some achievement runs but for us it's just a neat bonus if those happened.

Usually one such equip piece means pushing 10-20 floors more.

An important tip regarding equipment is to not ignore the shop! Not only this shows you what kind of equip exists but you can also fill something up early on and might even get lucky with a great unique equip piece!
To access shop go to Store > Create god's articles

Overall 'best' strategy for early hardcore is IMO:
Heavy HP/HP% stacking + a bit shield value + a bit on kill HP regen, rest is flat atks/additional magic dmg or pursuit to actually deal damage.
Basically HP stacking means you won't just randomly die - you will see death coming hence being able to just retreat. Another viable strat is using completed huge level gears if you get lucky with them... but that is RNG. Do not rely on this too long though - carefully mixed gear with build in mind surpasses huge level stuff.
A great unique accessory is the bandit gloves - those drastically increase quality of gear dropped. This is super worth as this means more gear to mix, hence farming lower stuff will improve you more than pushing a bit further.

Also it's very comfortable to check stat descriptions in this game - simply click the stat you have questions about and it will tell what it does and if it has a limit - it will tell what limit is that(like exp/junk on kill limited to 99)

Make sure once you start reaching the point where you start selling good gear - send some good early gear into warehouse - if you fail a hardcore run by mistake - this will give you a big headstart, since warehouse you use during hardcore remains hardcore.
You will not be able to enter into rankings though, so be aware.. but in reality it does not matter since rankings are taken by the cheaters anyway... without inheriting equipment you can't reach 1k floors in 100 tries(without some crazy luck), which will be the way we will speedrun eventually.

Mixing Information:
THIS SECTION IS VERY IMPORTANT, MAKE SURE TO UNDERSTAND MIXING, IT IS CORE OF THE GAME!

I will start with skill slot explanations:
Every equipment has 8 slots... some of those slots might be taken up by 'unique' skills.
Unique skills can't be leveled up and transferred, but they often include hard to get skills... and they also don't prohibit normal stat with same effect.. say for example you can have HP as both unique and non unique stat at same time.

Any other non unique slots can be freely transferred with some limitations, here are most important tips regarding mixing:

1)ANY equipment piece can be mixed with any. - this is the most important tip...
Stack those HP/Shield/Flat atk/on kill exp or junk and some drop rates and you will reach pretty far fast without even a dedicated build.

2) Filling empty slot with new stat allows you to put full value into it - anything past that will give summary of value *0.75 - this means it will eventually be impossible to add anything at all to the item.
You can somewhat bypass it by first mixing another item to mix it into your current one, but that means a lot more levels on equipment.

Think of equip lvl not as power level but as your limiter and the star is approximate rating of item at that level. Try not to mix low star items into your items later on as that means you are accepting less 'total value'

Max equip lvl is 1000, but every increase in level = more junk to mix... which means you don't want to just add useless stats for the sake of it, you need a plan!

Conclusion of this/general mix strategy is as follows:
Start your mixing with deciding unique item you want based on unique effect.. this ideally needs to have many stars as that means your equip is having good values for it's level.

Once you decided on that - you most likely want to focus on exactly same stats(or mostly same) on absolutely every equip piece... if your core is basic attack build like the one I use below - you want attack amount %/flat atk value/attack %, some HP leech is a must(but berserk has it), a bit HP pool increase so you dont die in 1 random crit and ailment resist is also neat as that's what usually ruins the run for this build otherwise...

If you are mage with not as reliable HP recovery - you probably want to stack shield to absorb most waves... basically the strategies will depend on the build you plan to make.

Early jobs + late tips:
The way I do it is not the way you must do it, but I personally like this start for hardcore grinding, hence here we go:
Hunter 9 - goal is + 20 exp/kill passive, this can be reached quite early and will speedrush you quite a lot of levels. You also get blind/true shot skills which are technically usable/good... extra attack 20% is not bad too. Hunter has neat permanents for build I make, but if you want to make mage - make sure to start removing the skill points from hunter as you get skill reset mats once 20 exp/kill becomes mostly useless.(which is in around level 50-60 approx when fully powered builds slowly become a thing and you can push pretty far)
Be aware that permanent skills always work, but both active and passive skills need to be inserted... Actives are spammed by cooldown.
Traveler 3 - requirement for merchant.
Merchant 10 - this will fill you with the remaining passives/permanents for looting, letting you select those whenever you simply repeat grind instead of rushing new floors.

Jobs after that are up to you.. I recommend checking the tier 3 jobs and seeing which ones you like then progress towards them...I personally found berserker/sword saint/samurai combo my way to go... Both are about increasing basic attacks/leeching HP while not using active skills...

No matter the way you go though - you probably want some form of healing, so consider that, unless you want to be fully dependent on gear.

Moving on with what you need to know once you are around floor 70+, which is where you stop being able to rush the game without understanding of what you are doing, since even completed gears of lvl 300-500 are not guaranteed to carry you unless they synergize with each other.

The things I did not mention before:
Every item can be gotten with red, green star and purple/pink'ish star on it.
Red star = some default stats on it are entirely removed.
Green star = +50% default stats
Purple/pink'ish = +125% default stats

Those start on SAME LEVEL of gear, making those an amazing way to level your gear.

But this is something I would still call intermediate level, now let us move onto advanced, the 'materials' you can use for mixing:
Forged steel - CAN ONLY BE USED BEFORE MIXING THE ITEM WITH SOMETHING ELSE.Doubles level of item and gives effect similar to green star(+50% value on default non unique item stats)
Also forged steel can't be used on items with green or pink'ish star and the completed gear... this means it's mostly for improving effects you want to extract or improving item you want all your stats on.

Orichalcum - the pink'ish star version of forged steel, gives 125% stats and 4x level of item.

Blank Essence - extracts upper non unique stat.of an item into a special item with that amount of stat on it. The level you extract depends on level of item + amount of non unique stats on it.
Let's say you have a level 150 item with 3 stats on it - extracting the stat will give you 150/3 = 50 essence.
This opens up a trick, where you can add more low level stats(some crappy lvl 2-3 items, just make sure stats are unique) to get a cheap essence of big value stat
Say you add 5 more stats and 18 more levels to the item above and extract it's stat it will be 168/8 = level 21 essence with SAME STAT AT SAME VALUE, but 29 levels less!

Abrasive Stone - removes the upper non unique stat of an item(unique effects can't be removed) AND LOWERS ITEM LEVEL ACCORDINGLY.
This pretty much allows you to create an 'empty item' of level 0.
Those are relatively rare and a must for late game min maxing - think twice before using them!

Evil essence - 'completes' item under 2 star, this type of competion is not RNG, even restarting game gives same preset completion.
This essence becomes pretty useless pretty fast so make sure to use it on something that might improve you at all. I personally consider completed bandit glove pretty decent beginner gear.

Evil Remnant - completes any star item... not much more useful than essence, since completed items fall off pretty fast in comparison to custom made ones, but some 4-5 star items do turn into something usable.

The evil distiller - rerolls the stats on completed equipments. The item remains approximately same level... if you get this early - you can check super high level completed gear and see how they reroll - might get something good to temporarily use. Nothing too impressive.

Denatured scroll - create same star but different item. The item you get is fixed based on item you use this on... so just memorize what you want and what transforms into it or keep checking.
Interesting item to use this on is blessing of the earth accessory.. this transforms into steel shackles, lvl 50 item with unique of triple exp, but no junk gain, normal stats being exp gain +30% and exp gain on killing +10... even if you don't want to abuse triple exp unique effect - combine this with steel for 45% exp gain you can extract, amazing!
This is great for when you simply grind gear.

Crafting hammer - same as denatured scroll but gives + 1 star, also fixed what you get. If used on 5 star item - sometimes gives different fixed item compared to scroll but still 5 star.
The most important item to use this on is probably 'plague scales' unique item from the bright wing(floor 70 eternal cave, also present in other dungeons) This gives you phoenix accessory, the important part of which is extractable skill of autorevival... probably best passive in the game for 1 slot, gives you up to 9 revives, but does not restore shield, so better for HP tank strategy.

Purification Crystal - resets the item to it's default pre synthesize state. Only good if you screwed up a good equip piece basically and want to rework it.

Ghost eater bug - remove all abilities from item aside of unique one. Great for when you want to fully customize some unique skill item.

Chaosstone - reverse order the stats on item. Can be useful in many situations.. in worst case scenario it can at least save you an abrasive stone... in best case scenario it saves more than 1.

Reification scroll - create a material of same rarity as equipment, fixed... useful for getting either orichalcum or black steel from some 5 star equips.

Black steel - finish an item. This gives 1.2x multiplier to the stats you have on item but makes it unmixable. Obviously a must for items you get to level 1000 after min maxing them. This is the same bonus that 'completed' items get, which is why they have higher stats.

Rotten grip/string/clothes/shield - those are in this order for tinkering with denatured scroll/crafting hammer. Forgotten hammer upgrades in this order and scroll upgrades in reverse.
Those are for combining with god jewels to create unique equipment.
Grip = weapon, string = accessory, cloth = armor, shield = shield slot

God jewels - combine with the above to create unique lvl 100 equipment with pretty neat stats for lvl 100.
For the possible combinations - check the chinese guide here in steam, it has english screenshots.
Be aware that chinese guide does not have frozen and sea jewel info, hence here are the combos for it:
Frozen: Blessing - need 3 equips, 100% chance to hit if enemy has ailment.
Grip: 31% dealing damage, 155 freeze, 155 attack damage
Shield: 15% global, 46 HP recovery on dodge, 155 ailment resistance
Armor: Max Shield +150, Global defense +15%, HP recovery when hit +15
String: Finding 77%, Ailment Resist 155, Exp gain 47%

Sea:
Blessing: need 3 equips, you will ignore opponent's skills with 50% chance
Grip: 155 dealing dmg/seal 155/Parry 32%
Shield: 32 energy on kill/16% HP/32% ailment resist
Clothes: 400 HP/32% parry/avoid critical 160
String: Global defence 10%/Finding 100%

Level up(decay/pearl/sushi)- increase/decrease level of gear a bit. What this does not say though is that it 'balances' the stats for that level, so if some stats are falling behind - they will get more value(pretty neat for revival passive).. in case of scroll of decay though - you can also LOSE stats if you overkilled them via smart use of mixing.
This opens up great strategies for late game min maxing!

Runes - insert 2 runes into 2 equipment pieces then combine those equipment pieces to create extra effects(unique effect + 2 common effects) to get an extra effect which does not increase level of equip and can be extracted... if you had 2+ unique affixes on same equipment type(not accessory) that you wanted to use - this is how you might be able to do it.
Rune extraction is pretty much extracting rune effect from gear.
For the possible combinations - check the chinese guide here in steam, it has english screenshots.
One warning regarding chinese rune section - bud rune was previous season and is now pretty rare, so when you see it inside equipment - extract it out if you want somet bud rune combo!
This season also has new wave combo, which is not written in chinese guide, hence I will write it here.
To get Wave rune you need to abstract scroll a gear piece exclusive to season dungeon.
Here are the possible Wave Rune combinations:
Wave + Demonic = Mana Explosion(+100% spell dmg for each ailment on enemy), ignore energy cost 5%, Scavenger 10%
Wave + Dragon = Heat Blades(deal no attack damage, but more additional magic damage), global defence 3%, finding 20%.
Wave + Heaven = Overlapping Illusions(when ignore cooldown is activated use that skill +1 and grants yourself a seal), number of attacks 5%, additional magic damage 10%
Wave + Holy = Compelling Atonement(when enemy takes poison damage - deal more additional damage depending on amount of damage he has taken), Parry 10%, Additional magic damage 10%
Wave + Power = Blood Activation(consumes 25% max HP each turn but guarantees a crit), elite slayer 10%, junk gain 5%
Wave + Star = Foamy Structures(when you have both seal + shield - you won't be damaged beyond shield), Drop Rarity +15%, Finding +20%
This one sounds broken paired with ice shield restoring shield every hit you take and overlapping illusions giving you seal by the way.... this might be full immortality we talk about, but I did not test it.
Wave + Stone = Wide Area Survey(Gain +25%/5 turns of rarity each time you take damage), 10% pursuit, 10% scavenger
I assume this means rarity drop but not sure.
Wave + Wicked = Sonicwaves(add 25% of your spell damage to your reflect), elite slayer, reflect damage.
Wave + Bud = Healthy living(when you take accumulated value of ailment - you gain ailment resistance equal to 25% of the ailment taken for the duration of the dungeon)


The trick to using runes is using them on 2 level 2 bucklers(or if you don't want to min max then pretty much any 2 low level items with 1 stat), mixing those 2 items to get a very low level item with an unique effect + 2 stats.. unique effect comes first
The reason this is useful is it allows you to create nearly any stat at lvl 4 item.

Abstract Scroll - create rune from an item... do this on random 1-2 star items to get runes you want basically.

Arcane Scroll - extracts already inserted rune in form of lvl 0 essence you can insert anywhere after(be aware that since it's essence - it will cost ♥♥♥♥ tonn to insert it into a high level item)
Extremely important not to waste this - bud and wave runes can only be found inside random equipment.. wave ones suck for our build but the bud runes are needed for some key skills!

Recycle Box - if you have level 200+ equip - you can recycle it via this.. it's not hard to get equip to 200, so if you have cash in excess - you can get this in hopes of getting material.

Fruits of heaven - reward for floor 1000 of eternal cave, I don't think you can get more than 1...
This is a CONSUMABLE(I screwed up for your sake, so you better listen)
Basically this allows you to double mix ANY item that is not completed... what I recommend is:
Decide on 1 permanent item piece to be extremely overpowered... insert ALL 8 SLOTS WITH INFINITE VALUE STATS(HP, ATK, ATK %, ACCURACY, CRIT DMG %, ELITE DMG%, SHIELD.. LAST SLOT IS HP%)
I recommend using 8 or 16 jeweled equips of each stat for this equipment piece.
Basically once you got all the stats into gear piece(make sure gear is level 499 or lower, keep using extracting trick to lower the essences)
What this does is this DOUBLES those stats... yup, you got that right.... I don't think you need me to mention how much longer it would take to make a similar quality gear piece.
Once that is done - finalize it with black steel.

Vial of Bath - reward for floor 1000 north dungeon.
Consume 1 non mixed item and get it's non unique stats permanently.
This is actually 'infinite' item - you can replace effect any time.
IMO whatever you absorb usually won't give you much value, so we save up 1 slot + 7 job levels with this by taking the dark god dagger(dark jewel + grip). This allows you to have only 3 in thief job level since it increases your max attacks to 9 no matter what... and actually enables reaching 9 attacks.

Celestial motion device - create a weather not too far away from current try which gives some effect to both you and enemy at same time.. I personally did not bother too much with this, but here are the combinations I found with cheap items from shop if you are interested, I won't explain the crappy text ones though, can't be bothered to actually check what those do:
I will also underline interesting ones for us:
1) Heavy Snow - therapeutic effect of the condition increases their remaining turns instead.
Items: Buckler, Cloak, Underground Map, Traveler Boots, Giant Hammer
2) Meteor Rain - 1% chance of taking heavy damage when using skills (this sounds outright positive for us, since we dont use them.. but not sure what this 'heavy damage' is and if it scales from something)
Items: Dagger, Horrible Skull
3) Dry - crit rate increases according to hit rate...nice when you are 'frozen', hence disabling your 100% chance crit rate... but also dangerous.. so IMO not too worth.
Items: Robe, Lucky coin, Breastplate
4) Sand Dust - magic attacks deal physical dmg
Items: Herbs, Silver Ring, Rapier, Holy Cross, Saber
5) Thunderclouds - physical attacks deal magical dmg
Items: Wood Staff, Training Clothes
6) Heavy Rain - temporary effects no longer given.
Items: Leather Boots, Chainmail, Priest's Robe, Brand Coat, Dispensing Mortar
7) Sunlight - healing effect gives shield instead.
Items: Leather Gloves, Leather Armor, Antidote Herbs, Fire Liquor
8) Blizzard - 5 times more resistant to ailments.. technically interesting if you take ailment resist instead of thawing.. but I don't want to bother with weather this much.
Items: Spider Tonic, Small Wand, Silver Foil
9) Fog - when you get a shield, get revival count instead(up to 1).. THIS ONE IS INTERESTING... I think as long as you have at least 1 shield on your items - you keep getting revival on each new wave(only up to 1 but still a god mode for us essentially)
If anyone else can explain how this works if I am wrong - I would appreciate it. All my save files are hardcore for now , so I don't want to risk death.
Items: Clothes, Kite Shield, Hunting Horn

As I mentioned above - my build was samurai + berserk, for those interested in it - I will describe what I did beyond merchant 10 and recommend gear for it later on.

For the more late game it becomes more of a berserk + sword saint though

Once you are merchant 10 - start working towards samurai, which needs knight + gladiator lvl 3.
On samurai your goal is passive + 1 min attacks, which drastically increases your damage if you are relying on attack damage stat + physical penetration + a bit accuracy.

Then work towards berserker:... around the point where you unlock samurai passive is when the +20 exp/kill is likely becoming pretty small impact and pushing 10 more floors safely might be better.(using combat passive)

Berserker key passive is on lvl 1... double atk dmg by not using active skills.
+2 max attacks on berserk 10 are nice once you start getting more attack % values...(samurai 10 gives 10%)

The other way to get more max attacks is thief job(tier 2 job)

The other 3 skills I used when early grinding: founding, item rarity, item quantity in approx this priority.
You can probably drop quantity/rarity pretty fast as those are not too hard to max out... finding gives pretty small value so it's also better to get via equipment.

Those can easily be replaced with offensive berserker ones - strong arm(20% phys penetrate) is pretty big value... absorb 10% is small value, better get it on equip, but in a pinch you can use this. Unstoppable and desperado are both okay depending on your items.

The key passive though is Precise Sword line.
Once you get to 100% max attacks - that pretty much nearly guarantees every attack of yours to critical hit.

What your end build wants:
Late game the core of the build is:
1) Changeable slot which depends on some factors:
Many ways to use it:
Berserk before you get it via rune
Moment of blow(read below)
Whenever you grind - alchemist double material passive
2) Precise Sword - the core passive of our build
This one is disabled by permanent freeze and disable of critical damage jinxes, which is the reason we need fatal blow as alternative on dungeons with this jinx... obviously change this passive to something else on those dungeons.
Those 2 are must haves...
3) First strike - passive of the sniper, making you always attack first.. not only nice but also saves you time.. our build one shots everything that is not boss and most bosses too, so it helps not giving enemy animation time.
It's useless in labyrinth though, as enemy always moves first there, feel free to replace it with anything else..
This one is also IMO must have for saving time, but power wise it's not much.
4-5) Blessed light of saint class + dance macabre of the dancer - this is a beast combo for our build... we attack > get loads of buffs > increase our recovery massively > deal massively increased damage + take much less dmg!

Another 3 passives worth mentioning:
Supreme Supremacy of general - more defense as you progress in dungeon, neat...
The problem with this one is the fact that I am not even sure if enemies can pierce defense and if they do - how much.
The defenses cap out at 95%.. that brings up the question if there is any point to bring that even higher.
Certainly pretty neat for the survival during speedrun, but depends on how enemies work after that.

Moment of blow - sword saint passive which doubles fatal blow effect when you critical(on every strike basically) and raises it's cap to 95%.. this means you deal 5% damage to enemy and it's dead and you only need 48% fatal blow to reach that.

Monarch will of steel - nigh immunity to ailments while at full HP.. sounds nice but needs some ailment resist value to do something.

Recommended jobs, the ones you need to rush are underlined:
Tier 1:
Warrior 10
Hunter 8 or 9 - 9 only while you need exp gain, refund after that
Mage 6
Monk 3
Traveler 3
Tier 2:
Gladiator 10 or 100 - 7th mastery priority
Magic Swordsman 10
Knight 10 or 100 - 4th mastery priority
Thief 3 or 10 - in the long run you only need 3 because you get max attacks via bath.
Priest 10
Merchant 3 or 10 - 10 helps early, can eventually refund to 3
Alchemist 10 or 100 - 6th mastery priority
Mercenary 10
Tier 3:
Samurai 76 - 1st priority
Berserk 84 - 2nd priority
Sword Saint 10 or 94 - 5th priority in mastery
Sniper 1 or 6 or 100 - 9th priority in mastery
Dancer 3
Saint 3
General ? - 3rd priority, I recommend getting this to 95% phys + mag def.. then the strategy varies but I prefer leaving it this way and using supreme supremacy instead to counter jinxes, you can cap it out though.
Ninja 10
Paladin 10
Dark Swordsman 10 or 100 - 10th priority in mastery
Assassin 8 or 100 - ultra low priority to master
Great Priest 8
Martial Artist 6
Monarch 3 - for passive
Poet/Great Mage/Summoner/Scholar/Sage 0

Masteries(invest job points, starting with job 10, caps at job 100), underlined are recommended ones for our build, this section is mostly for those who want to try something else/don't trust my choices:

Check the section above for my personal level recommendations.
Tier 1:
Warrior - Physical def +1%
Hunter - Dodge +1%
Mage - Magical Defense +1%
Monk - HP recovery Rate +1%
Traveler - Ignore Energy Cost +1%
Tier 2:
Gladiator - Atk dmg +1%
Magic Swordsman - absorb on attack +1%, ONLY IF YOU THINK 10% YOU HAVE BY DEFAULT IS NOT ENOUGH... 10% SHOULD BE ENOUGH IN REALITY...
Knight - Max HP +1%, this seems by far the best 100 pointer in terms of value you get... only after the phys pen/number of attacks are done though.
Thief - Junk gain +1%
Shaman - Spell Damage +1%
Priest - Ailment Resistance +1%
Merchant - Finding +1%
Alchemist - Max Shield +1%
Mercenary - Item Rarity +1%
Tier 3:
Samurai - Number of Attacks +1%, a must, check above how much you need.
Berserk - Physical Penetration +1%, a must, check above how much you need.
General - Global Defence +1%, global = physical + magical, so 2% for 1 point, amazing value.. I know that defences cap out at 95%, BUT I DO NOT KNOW IF ENEMIES HAVE PHYS/MAG PENETRATION OR NOT, HENCE I DON'T KNOW IF YOU EVER NEED MORE THAN THAT. Make sure to reach 95% no matter what though. I stopped on phys/mag def 95% and continued onto HP%. Some jinxes reduce phys/mag def though, which makes it okay to reach 195% though.
Sword Saint - Parry +1% - extremely good, but not high priority.
Ninja - Additional Magical Damage +1%
Paladin - Reflect Damage +1%
Dark Swordsman - Elite Dmg +1%
Assassin - Critical Damage +1%
Great Priest - Heart Protection +1%
Monarch - Exp Gain +1%
Saint - Revenge +1%
Sniper - Accuracy +1%
Martial Artist - Ignore Cooldown +1%
Dancer - Influence +1%
Poet - Influence +1%
Great Mage - Magic Penetration +1%
Summoner - Pursuit +1%
Scholar - Max Energy +1%
Sage - Energy Recovery Rate +1%

Tips in this section are for early to mid game, for 'final' builds check the floor 10000 section!
This is the gear that I found most useful for my builds early game/pre full customization.

Bandit Gauntlet - 2 star item for item rarity/quantity.. if you get it early this drastically improves gear you get. Eventually outclassed by better star items due to relatively low value of unique.

Happy clover - 2 star item with +8 unique exp gain/kill and +4 simple one.. pretty neat early item for lvling up.

Wizard robe - 2 star shield item, neat for extracting some early shield values.

Gale of Hairclip - 3 star item, unique effect is where this shines giving +20% max attacks... this is HUGE value compared to how hard it is to get this much normally early on. Remove the other effects via abrasive stone if you want to customize this into a very strong equip for samurai/berserker build.

Full plate mail - 20% HP, +300 HP unique 3 star item... this armor alone will cover majority of your HP needs... pretty good values, hard to make better than that early on.

Royal ankh - endless curse unique(curse is permanent), curse + item rarity + item quantity on it. A 4 star item. Shield slot.
Very good for both using it as shield(curse is pretty neat condition and pairs well with our multi hit strategy) and using the effect
Transformed from missed holy grail using same rarity transform.

Truthful Loupe - a 5 star item with double unique drop passive + even better values for item quantity/rarity.
Drops in Basin Cave.

Burning Feather - 5 star, revival +1 is extractable from it. Unique, drops from bright wing, lvl 70 eternal cave for example.

Flesh Eating Axe - pretty perfect weapon for early samurai/berserk/sword saint build. It drops from corpse eater boss as unique drop(floor 40 eternal cave for example)
You can technically make something along the lines with any weapon, this simply includes things you want anyway at good values.
For early boost you can try to evil remnant this axe and then reroll it via the evil distiller item, which might end it up an amazing early game item.

Optional grinding item:
Steel shackles - 5 star, unique passive triple exp gain but no junk gain.. 1st slot = +30% exp gain(can easily be made to 45% via steel bar enhance), 2 of those pretty much max out the exp gain %...
Drops in large labyrinth which is pretty annoying/slow to farm, but not too hard and the profit you get is worth it.


That's about it as far as gearing goes - beyond that is mostly customizing your gear.

For my berserk/sword saint build the stats/uniques you want are as follows early on:
Max HP + HP% - very important, this is what needs to save you from a few hits of enemy so you can lifesteal it all back.
Having it on every equipment is nice, but might be overkill... just plan around the amount of HP you want.
HP absorb % - very important, your key of survival/recovery.. you don't need a lot though as you will deal absurd amount of damage. 1 slot is enough as long as it ends up on big value.
Revival - revives you back to full HP, this stacks up to 9 times, giving you up to 9 autorevivals.. you don't need a lot though, if you are dying actively - simply means you are not strong enough yet. But having this on 1 item is neat enough to save you from some RNG, esp on hardcore. I just have this using up 1 slot.
Flat attack damage + Attack% + Critical Damage % + elite damage % - main way you deal damage, the faster you kill the faster you farm the less chance enemy gets.
That's 3 slots ideally on every piece of gear.
Accuracy/accuracy %- main way your build fails is if you keep missing - you need some accuracy to actually hit enemies..the way I handle accuracy is 2x flat + 1x% accuracy + minds eye unique(for when you are guaranteed to be blind)

So we spend almost 5 slots on each gear on offence(attack/attack%/crit dmg %/accuracy/elite damage %) (+optional early - 2 individual slots on HP absorb/physical penetration) ~2 slots on defence(HP/HP%) according to that plan... but that's a bit too few left for our other needs.

Later on:
You can ultimately skip 3-4 HP%, and 2-3 crit dmg%(when crit you hit dmg limit anyway) and soem elite damage if you need to fill it with something else(stacking finding for grinding uniques for example + getting the item rarity + quantity drop rates.. each can be capped in 1 slot)
You certainly want 1 slot on floor start X(start super high)
1 more slot on final blow.

Uniques you want to have:
Must have rune available uniques:
1) Overheal - dragon + stone rune.. this essentially doubles your max HP from whatever you end up on... you can heal to that limit and you WILL heal with the amount of attack we have. Amazing value for 1 slot.
2) Guardian - heaven + wicked. This disables crit damage at max HP.. might as well, crits are usually what would remove you from max HP.
3) Long Distance - heaven + stone. Disables enemy reflect damage.. getting damage back is not always fun, using up 1 slot for this sounds ok.
Most of those have equipment piece alternative as well if you want to do it that way.
4) Power Drain - stone + demonic. Steal enemy reinforcements. Stealing the gimmick of the boss or even some elite enemies is A MUST!
IF enemy also has power drain then neither of your power drains work.
5) Berserk - bud + power. Frees up 1 skill slot.

Optional:
Healthy Living - bud + wave. Gain ailment resistance equal to 25% of the accumulated ailment value taken for the duration of the dungeon. This pretty much scales up your resistance skyhigh pretty fast assuming enemy has chance to hit you across the dungeon.
OR
Thawing - bud + stone. When you recover HP, cure one ailment. Does not remove jinx ones.


Must have ones only available on equip:
Gleipnir weapon(god slayer) - double critical damage on bosses/elites. This is more of a 'might as well take it' type, it's not exactly absolute must as usually damage is not a problem.

Avatar Cloak armor - unique 5 star armor(ctrl+F how to get it) which has chance to disable enemy actions with 30% chance. Main purpose of this is IF enemy has avatar ability as well then it disable both of your avatar abilities. Kinda removes the RNG that can punish you pretty hard.

Third eye - 5 star accessory slot minds eye passive(100% accuracy when blind) is another neat one, there are jinx's which leave you blind all the time, this pretty much removes the need for accuracy on those. Overall you are mostly only missing when you are blind anyway.

Optional:
Truthful Loupe - a 5 star accessory slot with a great unique for grinding uniques from bosses.

I was not fully sure how I would handle new season information, so I decided to make this(and any future seasons I am not lazy to update to) as their own sections instead.
Basically my original guide is based on the beach season, which is the season before wonder...

The things I expect from each of the season updates: new jobs, new dungeon, maybe some new mechanic, new rune and jewel combinations.
Hence this is the info you will find here.

Be aware that new seasons may invalidate some core guide information, if I noticed something or if you tell me something is wrong - I will edit it out, but I won't go out of my way to find everything that changed!

New mechanics:

Seasonal runes can now drop directly in their respective dungeons. Bud in north one, Wave in the beach one and Wonder season Root in the forest one. Meaning you are less reliant on the rune extraction now.

Damage/Healing cap is now 99.9m instead of 9.9m.. not a big deal for most of you though. But it's not as super easy to reach the damage cap now.

New settings:
Extreme Mode - this is pretty taxing on your PC but it speeds up combat dramatically - you will clear 100 floors in a little over 30 seconds with first strike.
Just be careful when you are pushing new floors if you feel like you might be in danger since this will likely not give you time to retreat.
I would say this option is a must for 'active play' but less critical at leaving overnight since you will likely be flooded by items anyway.

Reduce the time to automatic entry - last option in the utility menu of the settings. This heavily speeds up the auto progress bar to another 'try', a nice little time winner.

New Items
According to the list of items there are LOADS of new items in the game - from what I figured most of those are in fact simply the countless beasts you can capture...
Also the new dungeons obviously include some new items, I will include them if I find any good ones for our build but most seem to be related to capture system.


New item drop type - Used
It's basically another item that you get at super high level, except it's not 'finished' unlike completed items, hence you can still mix it. I would say it's MOSTLY useless, BUT sometimes you can get a pretty good value stat to extract via it.
Other than that - it's always weaker than a finished item.

New mixing items:
Unobserved box - creates random item of same rarity. Random as everything in this game is not entirely item it's random based on the item you select on, hence specific items will always lead to specific result.
Nothing too special, just another alternative to the usual hammer/denature scroll with less predictable result(unless someone makes a list for every item)

Enchant scroll - gives extra stat to base version of item.. pretty useless.

Domination Choker - allows you to convert your captured monster into causative(active), capable of doing special dungeon with unique monster drops.
You will get it as reward for floor 100 of living woods dungeon. It's an infinite use item, reusing it will replace your pet, works kinda similar to the water from the winter dungeon.

Good Bait - allows you to create captured monster out of items. Each monster gets rarity based on rarity of item and a 'special ability', which works until floor X and powers up monster in some way, more capture information in the capture section below.

Molded Meat - not exactly mix item, but it's purpose is to raise the breed; tamed on the pet so you can farm higher level dungeons.
Be aware that you can do usual extraction trick with the meat, the only thing you need to keep in mind is that it's always the last stat after mixing with other item. To make it first stat you will want to mix it with another meat to make it on top or use lots of abrasives.

Meat Machine
Infinite use item. Turn pet into molded meat... sounds cruel, but yup, such is life. The meat will be of the same level pet was(and hence give same amount of floors)
Nothing except level of pet matters from what I figured.

Capture system
Capture is pretty huge new mechanic.
First of all as you may have noticed - there are loads of new items now, those are mostly pets.
Pets can be gained in 3 ways:
1) Put 'capture' condition on the enemy and get lucky to capture it as a monster. Capture condition works as any other one and profits from influence just as other conditions.
2) Mix good bait and any item.
3) Technically not a way to get pet but you can transform any pet into another one with the items that give another item(hammer, denature scroll and the new unobserved box)

To actually use pet:
You need to mix captured pet with domination choker. It works just like water from winter dungeon 1000F, except you can modify pet in any way you want before setting it as your 'slot'.
Once pet is set - the only way to set new one is to overwrite the previous one. You can't get pet you consumed back.

How pet works:
Passively by itself pet does nothing.
Pet can be mixed in any way with ANY item like all usual items can. You can remove his breeding skills fully with abrasive for example and use it fully as your skill support
Be aware that if you black steel the pet - you won't be able to use it since you can't mix it with choker and the only thing you would be able to do with it is sell it for junk.
IF you set logistics skill as one of your skills then you can use the stats which are NOT his breeding stats(basically any stat be it unique skill from run or stuff like atk/hp/etc will give you it's effect.. so it's an easy way to get 8 rune skills at the cost of 1 skill slot.. that's enough to get essentially all of the good rune skills at same time aside of grind ones, leaving all your equip slots open for stats)

Pet itself only fights in the 'ferocious dungeon'.
To fight in this dungeon beyond level 1 you can either:
1) Use Breeding: Tamed which is kinda what unlocks pet usage until X floor.
2) Use item slots on Holly to give you floor skip.. yep, this actually works and you can start from floor 10k if you want to by using 10k floor skip item on holly.
Quite sure this is not intended and it might get fixed.. but well, there is that option.

If pet dies in pet dungeon - you lose 1 heart. If pet die in dungeon and you have no hearts - you lose the pet.

Pet power:
Pet only gets stats from his levels - NOTHING else matters except the type of pet itself(typical bigger level and higher rarity pet = better). If you add stats like HP and such - they will only work on Holly and only if she has logistics skill equipped.
The only way to power him up further is by giving him breed skills: X which work until certain floor and give him certain advantage like drastically less damage taken or penetrating physical/magical defence or ignoring cooldowns.

Basically to beat floor 10k on pet dungeon you will likely want pet with certain breeding skills which work up until 10k, use the holly skip floor trick to start at floor 10k and likely having a pretty overpowered pet(I assume boss pets are very strong if they exist and at least one of the pets should be able to kill the floor 10k when he is lvl 1000, if anyone can tell with which pet he beat the floor 10k and with which breeding skills(if any are required at all) - I would add it in the guide but I have not done it myself.
My theory is some pet might have invulnerable or something and you might be able to pair with agility breeding skill to ignore it's cooldown to cheese it, but that's just theory.

Capturing pet:
Partly described above, but I will add some info:
Capturing does not only require capture condition on enemy but also getting lucky. Capture chance can go until +100%(this is the cap for it) but the actual drop rate of pet is pretty low, so don't expect them to drop often even with +100%.

New classes:
Tier 2:
Spirit Medium - seems like a class reliant on shielding with spells + reflecting damage.
As far as bonuses go - useless to our autoattack build.
Mastery: Shield +1%
Tier 3:
Prophet - seems like an advanced version of spirit medium, further improving into that build.
Bonuses are again pretty useless for our build.
Mastery: Shield gain rate +1%

Tamer - the class that revolves around entirely new mechanic of capture.
Mastery: Capture +1%
Capture is a condition you inflict on enemy which if applied allows you to capture monster you fight.

Lvl 8 of tamer grants a total of +8% parry which is something you would spend anyway as 5th priority mastery in my mastery list, hence this allows you to simply take 8 less jobs into sword saint, making those levels 'free' at that point.

This is a relatively overpowered class, since it allows you to essentially take +1 more item at a small cost of 1 skill slot by taking skill called Logistics Support.

What I recommend doing is first creating 'strong pet' who can farm floors in the pet dungeon*(assuming you want to farm it to begin with). For that you need to stack breed skills on a 5 star pet.
Be aware that breed: tamed is only needed for farming the floors, you can simply use your holly item slots to floor skip and actually set a 'record floor' run.

Then once you are satisfied and done farming pet dungeon - transforming your pet into 'rune skill slave' who carries only skill unique effects or easy to max skills like revival count +9. The reason for that being - you can't 'finish' the pet or you won't be able to set him since it requires mixing, hence your potential stats on it are 1.2x lower with same effort due to no use of black steel.

More explanation of how pet works is in the capture mini section above.

New rune combos - I will only mention rune skill since stats from runes are pretty useless at this point anyway:
Root + Stone - Cushioning material(reduce physical damage by amount of reflect damage)
Root + Holy - Mirror Surface(bounces magic damage to enemies - 12%)
Root + Wicked - Ancient Magic(spell damage ignores enemy magic defence if enemy is sealed)
Root + Demonic - Appraiser(captured monsters are always high quality)
Root + Star - Miscellaneous imitation(if there is no skill that can be used - randomly select one from enemy possession)
Root + Power - Lifeline(almost certainly prevent death ailment)
Root + Dragon - Binding Blow(each time you deal enemy a condition, an additional seal is added)
Root + Heaven - Siege Net(x2 to ailment accumulation of enemies with 'captured')
Root + Bud - Burst Heal(HP recovery can critical)
Root + Wave - Oxygen Supply(almost certainly prevent sealed state)

New God Jewel combos:
Each item has Blessing of Forest god +1 - if you get a total of +3 then:
x2 the cooldown energy cost instead of using all available skills each turn at once.
What this does in reality is: Use all skills at same time but at twice the energy cost.

Forest Jewel + Rotten Grip - Forest God Rod, weapon slot. Spell Dmg + 156, Add Capture +155, Ignore Energy Cost +31%
Forest Jewel + Rotten Shield - Forest God Shield, shield slot. Global Defense +8%, Ignore Cooldown +31%, Improved Capture +32%
Forest Jewel + Rotten Clothes - Forest God Armor, chest slot. Max shield +155, Shield Gain Rate +16%, Scavenger +16%
Forest Jewel + Rotten String = Forest God Necklace, accessory slot. Shield Gain Rate +16%, Ailment resistance +31%, Improved capture +16%

Build Changes:
With those changes in mind what changed for our build?

Well, the fact that the pet can serve as essentially extra item means you need to take tamer skill called 'Logistics Support' instead of whichever skill you think is least useful for the content you are currently doing.
With pet you can essentially put all the rune skills you have ever wanted on him(there aren't that many good ones for our build) and still have all slots left on all equipment to use as you wish for infinite value stats.Allowing you to reach even crazier survival values easier.

That is pretty much the only change I did for my build - none of the new items I found have been worth using on my build.

Although Astrology Skill of the new Prophet class is somewhat nice if you are fine wasting points on it by using floor 10k start trick to complete 10k floors in the dungeons.
It guarantees critical on the floor you are targeting. When you are targeting floor 10k - that's essentially always critical for free.

So I missed 2 seasons which change quite a lot, so I will make a short summary of all new things I noticed that might make errors in the rest of the guide.
On top of usual changes - those change some of the 'grind strategies' into becoming even better than what I described and adding some new options to those.

New mechanics:
1) Floor system:
Instead of 10k floors you now have 1k floors and 5 difficulties - Normal, Hard, Master, Extreme, Mythic.
With 1000 'floor skip' you can now do floor 100/200 and every 100 until 1000 after which you can do floors 1000 on each difficulty 1 time.

Ultimately it's a system which makes it more comfortable for you to grind harder content without resorting to floor skip items, making them less mandatory.

2) 'Expedition' function which sacrifices your 'hearts' in favor of grind skipping the dungeon you select.
Mostly just a neat small passive gain of items assuming you are not losing hearts normally as you play.
You only get items this way, no junk/exp.

3) Command in Holly skill menu - allows you to control the skills she uses better.. not useful for our build but it finally makes active skill builds much more efficient.

4) New craft mechanic.
Allows you to craft in 4 different sections with usually limited currencies you mostly get from quests.
I will describe it below.

New mixing items/craft menu section:
1) Craft menu: 'crystal scraps'.
Crystal scraps are reward of main quest you can only get if you start new data(can't get them on existing one if you have an old one)
What's noteworthy in those is that you can purchase 'infinite use' of some old mix item for 50 scraps.
You can't get them all so you should get ones you use the most for infinite combinations.

What is also impressive is new crafting item called Vessels of souls, which you can only get in limited amounts and is like black steel but with x1.3 final multiplier instead of x1.2.
Perfect for combining with what I call 'perfect apple item' in my strategies. And great for those who don't have patience to keep doing stat increases infinitely.

2) Monster extraction shop
Use captured monsters to create some old unique gear.. kinda eh.

3) Oath of humanity
Another new limited currency you get one per game data and only on new game data.
Allows you to pick one of the 'item abilities' with unique effects you can't get anywhere else.
The only one worth mentioning for our build is Road of Humanity: Strength which gives +50% atk damage and +50% accuracy whenever attack hits for 2 turns... this is very strong for our build.

4) Vault key exchange.
Vault dungeon, unlike other dungeons mostly drops keys you can exchange for it's items/runes/jewel.
There is an infinite mix 'craft item' which allows you to up the rarity of items.
There is also Sharp Steel crafting item, which kinda works like 'abrasive stone' but removes LAST ability.
I will describe runes/jewel of gods later.
There is also 'sacred treasures' which combine into chest pieces with pretty powerful effects(like all other chest pieces, jeez with all of them being overpowered) and very high stats.

New mixing items aside of that from eastern dungeon:
Grinding stones - +10% offensive(red color) stats of BASE(non modified) item without changing it's level.
THIS IS COMPLETELY BROKEN.
You simply find an item with very high useful combination of red color stats that you want to use and keep using this item over and over and over on it(good example is some god jewel items), allowing you to reach insane values without any junk expending/combination tricks.

Blunt Liquid - remove all abilities ASIDE of last. With new 'sharp steel' this is not too important IMO, but it's a new mixing item alright.

New dungeons:
Vault - drops almost nothing new except for 'Vault Key', which is used to get all new stuff including Heart runes/Jewel of Earth god/sacred treasure special items which work like jewel+rotten items when combined with each other for very strong items.
Vault drops more junk and less exp than other dungeons, making it perfect junk grind placei if you are using my old junk build.
More importantly - there is a new item with 'Insurance Money' passive that is the new ultimate junk farm build, I have added details regarding it in ultimate grind build section.
I also added ultimate key grinding strategy there.

Noteworthy items are prestige which makes you immune to pursuit, mining which improves junk build and 'perfection' chest which gives good passive for our build... sadly on chest piece, which has the most overpowered abilities.

Eastern Hills - a new dungeon with new jewel of god(Tao) and Runes(wisdom) as usual. Equipment mostly revolves around new condition called 'old' which increases cooldown time x3 so nothing for our build.

Fractal Layer - allows you to use 'codes' which you or other players can create which saves your entire loadout, allowing you to essentially test your own build against yourself or let some other people test your power.

New classes
Dragoon - revolves around 'additional magic damage' mostly. Has Dodge/Additional magic damage passives and 'Mastery' gives dodge +1%
Meh class for us.

Spirit Caller - revolves around HP recovery/pursuit.. Mastery is HP Recovery 1%
While you could include pursuit in our build this way, I think it would take too many skill slots and not be efficient.
Meh class for us.

Hero - the passives include ignore cooldown/energy cost which sucks for us.. exp gain which you likely max in exp build anyway.. Surprisingly mastery is 'Elite damage', which is certainly pretty solid.
The most noteworthy passive of this class is 'ignore enemy ininvcibility', which is IMO mandatory to make certain dungeons trivial.

Engineer - class heavily revolving around energy recovery/immunity. The mastery is suprisingly junk gain which is useless since you will max it with good junk set anyway.
Useless class for us.

New Rune combos:
Vault:
The rune is called 'heart' when in rune form but 'Mind' when inside item.
Some items have active skills upon certain condition. I won't write what they do since it's too much text and you can just check the info inside the craft menu shop for vault keys.

Mind + Stone - Sword Drawing('Iai' skill upon parry)
Mind + Holy - Infinite Proliferation(max HP becomes 1/4 and restore current HP each turn)
Mind + Wicked- Parasite(lose 8% HP, gain 8% energy per turn)
Mind + Demonic - Trainer('breeding::tamed' of causative monster +300)
Mind + Star - Prestige(won't take damage from pursuit)
Mind + Power - Mental Stability(each time you evade magic - do detox which cures 1 ailment)
Mind + Dragon - Screaming(when consuming energy do fixed damage according to consumed amount)
Mind + Heaven - Mining(gain earning junk based on starting floor, 50% max on floor 500)
Mind + Bud - Frostbite(when enemy frozen ignore his phys def)
Mind + Wave - Regeneration(when taking damage restore HP equal to restored HP when defeating enemy)
Mind + Root - Kidnapping(double amount of ailment given by attack)

Eastern:
Wisdom Rune

Wisdom + Stone - Upper-Level Stance(when you deal ailment activate detecting eye skill which grants some parry)
Wisdom + Holy - - Reward of Conscience(when taking ailment 'Old' increase HP/Energy restore by 5 times)
Wisdom + Wicked - Death Hunch(when you take ailment actvate death profession skill which increases your damage reflect based on spell power)
Wisdom + Demonic - Learn a skill Spell Bullet(a nuke with 100 power based on spell damage and includes your number of attacks)
Wisdom + Star - Precaution(when you take ailment get 1 immunity)
Wisdom + Power - Oni Killer(when a boss appears do active skill full swing with 500 power based on your atk)
Wisdom + Dragon - Learn a skill Red Hot(grants reflect damage based on your current HP)
Wisdom + Heaven - Spirit of the Jounin(when Great Ninjutsu skill is used activate Lightning Run skill which is too long to describe)
Wisdom + Bud - Defensive Formation(when skipping floors protection skill is granted, which increases phys def)
Wisdom + Wave - Learn skill Blood Letter(damage to enemy:400 power/150% accuracy based on ATK, self damage power:10)
Wisdom + Root - Plague Wind(double influence power)
Wisdom + Mind - Bushido(when enemy has 0 ailments get +2 min attacks)

New Jewel of God combos:
Jewel of Earth God(Vault key exchange)
Blessing of Earth God +1 makes all your skills activate twice if at +3.

Earth Jewel + Rotten Grip - attack +155, crit dmg +77%, polution ailment +155
Earth Jewel + Rotten Shield - max shield +155, shield gain +32%, avoid spell +32%
Earth Jewel + Rotten Clothes - max shield +155, ailment resist +32%, energy recovery when hit +32
Earth Jewel + Rotten String - Spell Damage +155, Energy recovery per turn +15, Boss Skip +16

The only noteworthy additions on this one are entirely new effects like polution ailment, avoid spell and boss skip(which allows you to skip boss floors with up to 95% chance unless it's every 100 floor one)

Jewel of Tao God from Eastern Dungeon
Blessing of Tao God +1 - dramatically increases rarity of drop items when +3.. sounds nice for grind builds.

Tao Jewel + Rotten Grip - Spell damage +155, Add Sealed +155, Add Old +155
Tao Jewel + Rotten Shield - Max Energy +77, Global Defense +7%, Influence +77
Tao Jewel + Rotten Clothes - Max Shield +155, Immunity +1, Shield Gain Rate +32%
Tao Jewel + Rotten String - Aesthetics +16%, Max Energy +16%, Boss skip +16%

Most noteworthy for once is the set, which can be useful for grinding. Aesthetics % increases chance of items having 'superior' or 'highest' quality, which is useful when farming items to transfer via warehouse to other character.

Sacred Treasures Combinations:
Those can be exchanged for 1000 vault keys each and a combination of them gives very high flat stats and powerful passive effects.
Sadly all of them seem to be chest pieces, hence usefulness of passives becomes very limited due to chest pieces generally having best effects.

NE+SE: Armor of Soryu - completely ignore magic damage
NE+NW: Armor of Genbu - completely ignore physical damage
SE+SW: Armor of Suzaku - when reviving 50% not to consume revive stock
SW+NW: Armor of Byakko - every turn shield restored to maximum value

All of those armors can be swapped with 'hammers' which change rarity of item.

All stats of those are: HP +875, Shield +350, Heart Protect +100%
Heart protect is capped at 95% though.

My overall opinion - game has too many top tier chest pieces so despite those skills sounding broken they really aren't, since there are just so many amazing alternatives.
Regarding stats - currently my opinion is that grinding those would take too long compared to grinding jewel items, but I am not certain.

The speedrunning achieves are by far the hardest, the 100 floor in 100 tries is doable from get go with some luck but 1000 floor in 100 tries is downright impossible without using warehouse and even with using it - it's still pretty hard.

The build I used for speedrunning differs from what I did for hardcore.

First of all I will explain warehouse. You can only transfer untampered gear, meaning the biggest bonus you can have is pretty much pink star equipment.
You sadly cant even transfer the god jewel items... what this means is that you want green/pink stars of + expensive items you can sell for some early junk.
You can only use hardcore warehouse on hardcore and simple warehouse without hardcore.

IMO the way to go is rushing job levels.. 2x steel shackles is a must, ideally both have pink star or at least 1 green + 1 pink, but it should be doable with less.

Other interesting gear you might want:
Burning feather - revival, enough said.

Flesh eating axe - unique weapon of choice to minimize grind... ideally a few of those with pink star... this has most of the stats for core of your build.

Full plate mail - 3 star item, big HP bonuses to actually have the pool to survive some attacks while you progress.

Pink star wizard robes and fool shields.. gives some beginner shield values to transfer into other gear.

Pink star royal ankh - you still want some gear find, since it also affects chances of materials.

There are many more items, but I think you got the drift - get items ideally with green/pink stars that have useful stat you can extract easily.

If you are doing hardcore speedrunning(there is one achieve for that to reach any floor 1000 in 100 tries on hardcore) - make sure you are careful not to die because speedrunning on hardcore is dangerous and regrinding everything for another attempt can be a pain.

No matter the way you do it - I recommend equipping the exp accessories + a good weapon + shield + armor and rush to get absurd amount of levels.

Your first goal is hunter 9 for +20 exp per kill... yes, it's needed, it's amplified by your other passives and it's unlikely that you can reach 100 of it.
The reason hunter is not a waste is because even after 20 exp/kill is useless for you - you still need the number of attacks to reach 100% and hunter helps a lot.

Highest priority after that = berserker 10.
After that is thief 8 + samurai 10 + sword saint 10

This gives you 7 max attacks + (8%+8%+8%+10% = 34% extra attacks chance)..
The hunter passive is another +20% for a total of 54%
Your immediate goal is trying to raise this to 100%
My favorite way to bring this up is combining this with + 2x gale hairclips(3 star item, 20% extra attacks unique, I remove other options with abrasive stones because they suck.. well, dodge does, but it's hard to remove it without removing attack % sadly)
that's +40% for a total of 94%... add 6 more job levels into samurai job mastery and it becomes 100%, neat!
Now you can slot in the sword saint passive for crits!

this much is enough to push you towards floor 300 or so provided you combine decent HP pool to survive a few attacks + get accuracy on every equip piece not to miss + get some good attack damage+attack %+crit dmg %s...
and HP absorb to actually heal up from all this damage.
Basically if something does not one shot you - there is a 99% probability you will heal up to full right after.

Assuming you are rushing on hardcore - past floor 300 you want to make sure one of your accessories has mind's eye unique to turn blind into advantage - this allows you to push floors without much accuracy.

To actually reach floor 1000 you want to finalize your build via dancer macabre + saint recovery passives, those drastically reduce survivability needed.

Now the hard part is... Eternal Depths floor 1000 in 100 tries - another dungeon you unlock... at 10000F of any other dungeon...
The way to do this is by beating the submerged dungeon floor 10000 - it's actually a complete joke against our even semi completed build.
A very basic gear with correct stats/passives + skills of: first strike(a must), precise sword(a must), dancer + saint macabre combo, supreme supremacy(allows skipping the need for phys/mag def entirely)
Tears right through 9k floors... floor 9k > 10k is skipped directly to 10k. You could technically skip all the way but I recommend getting more exp to improve your eternal depths chances, even 1000F is not pushover there.
On eternal depths I recommend floor 1000 start + revival item and just taking the achieve the cheese way.

0 job level 1000F is yet another achieve you can do...
There is also the hardcore version.

Again - it's best done via another save file.

Since exp does not matter at all - we might as well focus on junk/item drops.

Since we can't get a lot of important passives - the build needs to be fully reliant on whatever you can craft via runes + gear.

Mostly follow the usual strategy but without skills and with critical rate as one of the stats and probably don't bother too much with elite dmg as that's more of a min maxing stat.

Use the infinite curse shield, max attacks +9 via jewel of god combination, 2x unique 20% attack amount early on to boost you to max attacks before min maxing

So basically HP/HP%/ATK/ATK%/(Physical Penetration and HP absorb - great via wild god jewel weapon)/Critical Rate/Critcal damage/Very slight accuracy(we will use third eye accessory to bypass need of accuracy)/some curse value.

Rune passives - mosty same as speedrunning:
Berserk, Overheal, Guardian being the core...

1000F does not need much min maxing even with 0 job levels it's at most about patience to get a mish mash build...
A simple double quad mix of jewel of god stats should be enough to carry you fully...


No shop can be completed along with no mix... the thing is - when your warehouse gear is top tier pink star - it's just a matter of grinding some job levels to reach the max attacks % and then push the perfect build. There is 0 real reason to grind anything..
The disadvantage of no mix is pretty obvious - nothing beyond the gear that can drop... how to handle it? Well.. if you needed to push farther than 1000F then it would be problematic... but as is - get stronger via jobs, use the 3 star pink armor with HP%+HP not to die too easily...
This is yet another 'patience' test.. you can level up infinitely and 2x green or pink steel shackles will level you up massively.
The final skill build is IMO:
1) Supreme supremacy of general.. this will improve your phys/mag def to 95%, start from floor 1 and before things start getting dangerous you are already maxed out on that front... This allows you to push no problem even with relatively low HP pool, which likely will mostly consists of HP from 3 star armor.
2) Sword saint usual crit passive
3+4) Dancing Macabre + Saint recovery passive, the standard powerhouse combo.
5) Berserk - you can't add it via rune now, so might as well.

Nice starter equipment:
Steel Shackles(during grind), HP/HP% 3 star armor pink star, any decent weapon with pink star...phoenix or king shield or fool shield(whichever has better star), royal ankh 4 star shield but only eventually, once you get some survival...

The key strategy to improving yourself massively is RNG'ing it out with good completed equipment, scavenger passive on mercenary helps a lot with that.

Now we have learned all the mechanics game has to offer but how to actually abuse them?

Well, look no further, here is how to mix the equipment most efficiently while wasting minimum amount of junk.
First of all I must warn you that for absolute min maxing you would want to get a tonn of pink star gear - this is overkill IMO that I will skip, but it is an option for those who want to absolutely overkill it.

Start by thinking of stats you want in every slot.

I offered the stats I used in my build above for example.
Now it is time to prepare everything for it...
You should have enough runes to mix up the unique effects you need, if you don't - you probably have scrolls to turn items into runes instead.

So we have prepared the easy part - unique effects, now onto the hard part, actual stats:
When you have decided stats - look where you can get highest level equip focusing on one of them and max it...
For my build - one of the items I used was jewel of wild god + rotten grip, giving atk dmg+physical penetration+absorb on atk - all 3 stats are something you want, NEAT. I quadrupled two of those and mixed them together.
I also quad mixed two frozen eyes for extracting 'founding', so the gear set is semi grind, can actually make it stronger.

Our first 'cheap beginner late game gear' strategy is to overkill mix ~2-4 stats per item(spend ~900-950 levels on those stats just enough that you can add all other skills) and for other stats only taking the low/no level cost ones...
The reason for that is because after item is just a tiny bit under 1000 - we are taking an item level increase item, which will balance the other stats into average of what lvl 1000 item should have!
This means we got 2-4 stats with crazy stat values and the other stats are still doing fine!

Now from start to finish step by step to make sure you do not mess anything up:
1) Prepare the unique skills from runes - mix low level equip with 1 slot filled - abrasive that stat after mixing rune to extract the unique skill on it.
2) Calculate the exact amount of levels you will need - make sure that the level up material(there are multiple like pearl and sushi giving different level amounts. If needed - force the level ups.
3) Always start building the item by combining the low level stat stuff together in one bundle to reduce the costs. Then add it immediately to main bundle you will start leveling.
4) Usual goal is to quadruple mix the main stats of equipment piece with stat you want via orichalcum material, then combining it with exactly same quadrupled mixed equip... repeat as required.
If it's the only stat you want - extract it via extraction + abrasive stones + maybe chaosstones if you want to save some abrasive and have those.
Don't forget the trick of extracting at lower level if you want to min max - add low level stats to an item before extracting the main stat to divide levels between all stats.
5) Once item is ready and you made sure to mix all low level stuff, provided you calculated levels correctly you should be ~lvl 980-995, ready to use the corresponding material to level item(pearl gives + 10 levels for example) to 1000 and balance out the low value stats.
6) Once you are 'done' with the item and it's lvl 1000 - use black steel to finalize the item with another x1.2 boost.
Congratulations, assuming everything went correctly you now have a pretty strong equipment piece without grinding too much materials/junk.

There is also one more trick which can help you that I did not mention yet - when you insert same stat into an item - it goes to the top..
Using this trick can save you from some abrasive usages(usually at a cost of needing to spend a bit more junk)!

Now you also know the process/details in case you want to try something else.

Absolute min maxing - where to get the stats:
Essentially every stat you want to get is either a passive from runes OR a stat from jewel + rotten item combination, here is where to get them:

Atk + Phys penetration + absorb % - jewel of wild god + grip..
I like to quad mix this combination via orichalcum for my initial gear piece, but eventually you won't need phys pen/absorb since you get them via the job levels.

Atk - jewel of wild god OR dragon god OR holy god + grip = 155 atk lvl 100 weap(quad mix then insert all slots with garbage and extract it out)
Atk % - jewel of wild god + string 32% atk.. same story
Max HP/HP% - jewel of wild god + clothes 390/15% HP.. probem with this one - you need 2 stats so you either do those one by one OR insert those last into prepared item OR chaos scroll + abrasive stone(but this is not min max since this will be huge level loss, saves a lot of time though)
HP/HP% separately - dragon of sea jewel gives a bit more value with 400 HP(clothes slot 1)+ and 16%(+shield slot 2)
NB: I don't recommend slotting more than 1 HP% later on because all your excess job points will go into HP% due to gear having value this low.
Max atks - you only need 2 more, so essentially any source that you slightly boost will do.
Elite damage % - jewel of dark god + grip and 1 abrasive stone, 47%
Crit damage % - jewel of wild god + rotten string OR rotten shield and 2 abrasive stones or chaos stone, 77%

Finding (if you want to grind uniques instead) - jewel of sea god + string gives 100% on slot 2.

Some extra stats for ultimate exp/junk builds:
Exp on kill - the jewel of light + grip has +15, biggest value you can get... that's the only purpose of jewel of light aside of junk on kill for our build, so might as well use it here..
Exp gain % - just quadruple the steel shackles and mix with another one and you are done
Junk on kill - jewel of light + string is +15.. the second use of jewel of light.
Junk gain % - honestly the economic token 4 star is more than enough if you quad mix double it.


The above strategy is for 'fast and relatively cheap' item though..
If you want to fully min max - you need to use the extraction trick on every stat individually, which is quite a lot of resources...
Basically you extract out a big stat(let's say it orichalcum'd jewel stat at lvl 400) - it is level ~133 this way mix it into a cheap item with 7 slots filled up and then extract it out again.
You need a junk grind build before you even consider this!

An example of 'middle pre perfect' gear costs:
Every stat(aside of passives) wants 4 jeweled gear per stat orichalcum'ed to be 125% it's initial value.
A cost of such equip will be approximately 20-30 million during 50% discount event using all tricks.
If you want to slightly improve it - increase it to 8 jeweled gear per stat and cost increases even further and will be closer to 50-60 million.

A 'nigh perfect' gear pieces are something that I consider to be at 32+ jeweled gear per stat combo and mostly showoff/not needed.. you will stop seeing noticeable difference past ~32 jeweled gear... since the costs start being pretty massive for relatively low gains.

Be aware that maximum cost of mixing is 10 milllion(5 million during discount)

NB: obviously before doing expensive mixes - wait for half mixing cost event(check the schedule and skip stages if required)

Vault Key/Exp/Junk builds.

Vault Key grind:
Key item/skills:
Tao God Jewel set +3 - increase rarity of dropped items
Seventh Fragment - 1000F unique drop in Submerged Islands, get materials instead of equip based on finding%
Optional - Abyss Pupil 1000F unique Eternal Cave, increases item drop

Stats:
~100% finding(don't take more than that, that's all you need and more is mostly bad)
+100% drop item quantity/rarity.

Farm:
Auto ~120-130 ideally mythic difficulty floors of vault, only keys should drop thanks to seventh fragment and you will get A LOT.

Exp Build:
Key items:
Steel shackles - accessory, brainwashing unique(triple exp, no junk)

Satan Staff - weapon, Ambition unique(if you start at higher floor - get more exp, Caps at floor 300)

What stats/other uniques you need:
Uniques:
Thorn road - heaven + holy rune(double exp under ailment)
Much learning - stone + wicked rune(double exp from boss)

If you get bud rune then:
No rest march - bud + star(+1 floor skip on floor skip trigger)

Stats:
Exp gain 100%, Exp on Kill 100 - get those stats to 100, among 2 items if needed(exp on kill is the hard one, while you CAN get it to 100 with 1 slot - it takes quite a bit effort)
For exp on kill/exp gain - check the ultimate mixing section.

Floor Skip 100% - exp build gives more exp on bosses so floor skip is neat.

Floor 300+ start for ambition activation.

When doing floor start, don't forget to multiply the end result by 1.2x if you plan to use black steel in the end.

Obviously grinding is done on dungeon with debuff jinx.


Junk Build:

There are 2 builds, this new one I will mention right now involves 'Insurance Money' passive and is the new optimal one starting with Vault Season allowing you to reach maximum money game allows you to have in 1 battle, highly simplifying the infinite ultimate combine processes. Needless to say this is extremely broken and pure cheese.

Key Item/Skills:
Insurance Money passive(when you take damage gain 20% of its junk) is on a shield slot item from Vault dungeon called Save Crystal.

Hemostasis passive(when you lose HP with shield remaining consume the entire shield and revive yourself) from Frozen Eyes accessory in the Far North Peaks.

Shield penetration passive - this is on a weapon called 'Volcanic' from Underground Volcano dungeon and ignores shield when attacking.

Bud + Wicked Rune - Wall of Ice(whenever taking damage gain 8% shield)

Stats:
1000 floor skip - can be on any piece.

Our build works just fine, just ensure you have at least some shield.
Optionally add revenge as well, but it's not mandatory since our usual build should be dealing massive damage already.
The more damage you can deal the more junk you will gain basically.


Farm location + strategy:
Old Battlefields 1000F - this floor has a Doppelganger boss who copies your loadout,

What happens is you keep hitting each other and neither of you can die since you ignore shield and directly kill/revive each other while gaining insane amounts of junk until turn limit reaches the end. Our build does massive damage with good items so you should be good on that front.
Just ensure you don't have some 'annoyances' in your kit that could counter your own build in some other way.
If you have another build - it doesn't really matter which one.. the only thing that matters is for you to take a lot of damage and ensuring your shield stays.


Below is an old build that we used before 'Insurance Money', it's not as effective now., just here for the sake of history

Key Item:
Spiked Bat - weapon, more junk with more ailments(!)

Unique via rune:
Greed - dragon + holy runes (triple junk, no exp)

Stats:
All ailments + influence stat at good values.
Junk gain % + Junk gain on kill 100

For junk on kill/junk gain - check the ultimate mixing section...
Junk gain % is super easy - by taking the class levels I took you already got 15%... equips give A LOT.... finalizing equip via black steel is x1.2 aas well.
If you find it too hard to get junk on kill ~80(which you later turn close to 100 via black steel.

Influence is got via dark god jewel + rotten shield(77 slot 1) or if you can swap the order/don't mind wasting 2 abrasives then curse god + rotten shield(77 slot 3)

All ailments:
Option 0) Seven branched 5 star item Fear + Curse + Bleed + paralysis from old battlefield dungeon...
This repaces options 2+3, 4 and 8...
Actually an extremely good idea to just get this before you min max each stat super high. Paralyze + bleed are very annoying to make one by one too, so that's a bonus.
Extremely good if you can actually get some green/pink star ones to combine with each other, but simple quadruple is okay as well, level 200 is not too bad for 4 stats out of 8.

1) Poison - ogrekilling mushroom 5 star, plague bottle 4 star, poison dagger 3 star have it on slot 1, easy.
2+3) Fear + bleed - I used eldritch bottle 3 star item for those 2 stats at same time to not bother much and do those via item that only has those 2 stats.. it's the combo that will increase the level a bit - but not by much. Bleed is hard to get in other ways that are not too wasteful IMO.
4) Curse - skull of monkey or royal ankhs 4 stars are my favorite ways for that, slot 1...
5) Freeze - permafrost liquid 5 star or gracial edge 4 star slot 1s.. this is exclusive to north dungeon.
6) Seal - Explorer whip 4 star or gemini 5 star.. both need 1 abrasive stone. Exclusive to sea dungeon.
7) Blind - aaron 5 star or star saber 5 star(better)... both need an abrasive stone.
8) Paralyze - spider tonic(1 star but low value) and heat blade(3 star) are easiest sources but het blade needs abrasive
Put 6 of those + influence into spiked bat item(so you can easily min max better values of those when you feel like farming higher floors) and 7/8th on second item where you have influence/junk gain %/junk gain/greed passive as those are 'more important' and you likely want to more or less min max that item for a longer period of use... the other slots of 2nd item can hold a bit HP/HP%/ATK/ATK % or whatever else you might want combat/passive wise.. you can also insert higher floor start if you are certain you can put conditions in 1 hit on floor X.
When doing floor start, don't forget to multiply the end result by 1.2x if you plan to use black steel in the end.

I try not to account for unique drops here, since junk build is needed earlier than you get a decent rate of uniques.

This means you likely want some of your weaker 2nd item repurposed for this as well.

While you are grinding in those builds - the other 3 equip pieces are the ones that carry you in terms of combat abilities.
Ideally some of these 3 items also have quantity/rarity maxed + finding(loupe is great candidate for that)...

A beginner version of the build after the black steel finish(x1.2 stats) should be approximately:
~200 each ailment, ~400-500 total influence, ~85% junk gain, ~100 junk per kill(this is hardest to reach, so it's fine if it's a bit lower for the first build), ~300 floor skip..
Obviously with spiked bat passive + rune greed passive.
This will net almost 2k junk per floor average, most of the 300-500 floor bosses will get ailments with the above stats.
Meaning each short 300-500 floor run will net a little under 400k for you, superb!
Boss resistances raise pretty fast, so farming too high is not viable until you get massive influence values(it's much easier not to bother much with base values of ailments, instead min maxing influence as it boosts them all at same time)

I overall don't recommend farming junk on too high floors - bosses get too high resistances that you can't reach easy enough... and that tanks the overall gains... that's also the reason we don't use floor skip, only high floor start - bosses suck for junk build.

There are 2 uniques in each dungeon that are hardest to get by far, they are the ones you are likely missing in each dungeon:
Boss on every 300 floors and boss on every 1000 floors...

The way to farm those is start ~floor 900(for every 300 floor boss) and end on ~1000(for floor 1000 boss) with 1000% finding, loupe and ideally also clairvoyance accessory(abyss pupil)

Here are the items, first one is always the every 300 floor one, second one is floor 1000 underlined are good ones for our build:
Eternal Cave:
Abyss Key - accessory, increase elite encounter rate, this is good for exp farm.
Abyss Pupil - accessory, increase items gained by 1, a must for when you grind uniques or materials

Tower of Moon:
Shell Shield - take less damage as HP becomes short, meh.
Nine tails - accessory, if you die with 3 ailments - revive and restore from them, a must for certain jinx's

Underground Volcano:
Smithhammer - both parties ignore phys def
Golden Bracelet - accessory, gain same shield as HP lost by poison, neat for certain jinx, but not a must

Basin Cave:
Turquoise Shield - when curing ailment HP fully restored.. meh
Idol of Evil Gods - double finish blow vs enemy in fear.. meh

Spirit Tree Hollow
Saint Cane - when restoring HP give accumulated paralyze to enemy, so so, technically not too terrible, but not worth a slot
Sacred Tree Staff - when damaging poisoned enemy with spell - do extra poison dmg.. meh.

Old Battlefields
Lightning Mail - do crit dmg after dodging, meh
Avatar Cloak - armor, best in slot. Inactivate enemy actions with 30% chance...

Large Labyrinth
Yggdrasil - energy not restored, HP restore doubles, meh...
Binding Malice- enemy over 80% HP with paralyze becomes immovable 100%, meh

Temple of the Sun:
Dragon Meat Pie - restore HP equal to 50% of floor number, meh
Royal Cane - if enemy is cursed then 100% critical, meh

Far North Peaks
Cold Hand - freeze becomes -3 attacks, meh
Lord of Nether - 8% to instantly kill with magic, meh.

Submerged Island
Boss floor 1000 drops nothing at all on this one according to item list(?)
All drops from this dungeon suck for us.

Eternal Depths
This has same drops as eternal cave.

Farming is a bit awkward in this one - no matter how many floors you beat you are limited in how many drops you can get from a run.
What the floor depth increases though is rarity of drops...(and some monsters start appearing on certain floors)

I will tell you outright that I don't know EXACTLY how game works in that department, but from my analysis the amount of drops caps out after you beat ~100-200 floors... beating anymore will just spread them slower... there MIGHT be no limit, but if there is none then the rate of getting more is drastically nerfed at least.

Alright, with that out of the way - farming:
My recommendation is farming at most ~300 floors when you are playing actively with floor skip.. Maybe ~400 floors if you are also using the unique skip 1 more floor.
If you are not using floor skip then limit yourself to ~150-200 floors.
Depending on which items you want to save up - if you plan to leave the game on overnight - it's probably better to do it over longer floor periods.

Important note is large labyrinth dungeon - I overall avoid farming it, but when I do(sometimes I do need dark god jewels), I usually only farm 50-75% of floors I usually do...
Permanent paralysis + not being able to first strike is extending dungeon way too much.

Now what is important though is 'floor start':
If you start at floor 1 - you will be drastically reduced in the rates of the 'good stuff'...
That being said - beyond floor ~700-1000 I did not notice much difference with much higher floor range as far as drops go...
So insert one that is comfortable for you and with what you can beat another ~300-400 floors in every dungeon you want to farm.
The final unique monster of each dungeon is the boss on floor 1000.

I personally inserted my floor related stuff in one of the items which I need for junk/exp build(they both need a weapon unique)
This way no matter the type of currency I farm - I can always have build at floors I want.

I will list which materials each dungeon drops + some equip I find interesting for my builds.
I won't mention unique boss items since those depend on boss and overlap between dungeons since a lot of bosses repeat.

Also the way dungeon floors work is:
Each dungeon(aside of a few 'special ones') start limited to floor 100... they increase limit individually by 100 floors each time you beat them.. BUT IF YOU BEAT ANY DUNGEON FLOOR 1000 - ALL DUNGEONS INSTANTLY GET ACCESS TO FLOOR 1000! This helps a lot for those doing speedrunning. This also means that with floor jump you can instantly start on boss of floor 1000.

Eternal cave
Materials: Abstract scrolls(for rune creating out of gear pieces), Rotten Clothes/Strings(for combining with god jewels), dragon/power/stone/demon runes.
Interesting equip: Royal ankh(4 star beginner shield for rarity/item find)
Behemoth - armor we main early on.
Either eternal cave or tower of moon must be farmed for rotten X materials which combine with jewels.
Which of the 2 you farm does not matter too much.. if you got third eye - probably eternal cave, if not - tower

Tower of the Moon
Evil Remnant(mosty useless), Rotten Grip/Shield, heaven/power/holy/wicked runes.
Equip: Wild club/Battle axe(both a 2 star weap, neat source of atk +crit dmg at same time when you don't care about their values and plan to balance them out via item level up material)

Underground Volcano
One of the most important places to farm for materials, try to combine with alchemist double material passive.
Materials: Orichalcum - a must material for quad mixing same thing, Jewel of Wild god - combine this with grip for a weapon you want to orichalcum mix until lvl 800(will cover all your penetration/absorb on attack needs, with this you will never ever be not on full HP after attacking.. also has highest flat attack value on slot 1 - nice for extracting), dragon/star/holy/demonic runes
Equip: Molten Armor(4 star HP/HP% at same time but sadly last slot is pursuit, so you need to add this only when 2 slots are left if you want to use this)

Basin cave
Materials: Arcane Scroll(pretty important for extracting more rare bud/wave runes if you see those inside random equips), Dragon god jewel(useful for us), heaven/star/wicked/demonic rune.
Seemingly better level up material rate(might be RNG)
Equip: Truthful loupe(top tier item quantity/rarity item with great unique passive for grinding), Princess crown(can transform into third eye, which we also want for it's passive as 2nd accessory)

Spirit Tree Hollow
Materials: Ghost Eater bug(remove all slots from equip, nice for equip pieces with good uniques you want to full customize to save abrasive stones which have more uses), Jewel of curse god(the only use for this is literally junk build influence... but it's on slot 3 here so need 2 abrasive), Heaven/Stone/Star/Demonic runes.
Equip: nothing special.

Old Battlefields:
Basically ultimately useless dungeon for us.
Materials: Mithril(a level up material, not too much point to use it over pearl or sushi even though it gives more levels), Jewel of Holy god(usable but can live without it), Heaven/Stone/Holy/Wicked runes
Equip: Seven Branched - 5 star weapon with 4 ailments, very neat for lazy/non min max version of the junk build.

Large Labyrinth:
I prefer not to farm this unless absolutely required, since first strike not working = much slower, since monsters always attacks first and you need to wait their animation.
Materials: Reification Scroll, Jewel of Dark God(it's useful for elite dmg, but I only take elite dmg on 1 or 2 slots myself depending on build.. also max attacks +*, but you can get it via other items more easily since you only need 2) , dragon/power/star/holy runes
Equip: Steel Shackles - ultimate exp grind build req.

Temple Of The Sun:
This dungeon gimmick makes it a bit hard for our build if you overkill the HP absorb... if you want to finish - you will need to tune down your HP% absorb(the 10% from mystic swordsman is ideal)
Materials: Black Steel(you need those whenever you finish mixing an item to x1.2 the final stats on it), Jewel of Light God(only useful for junk/exp builds), Dragon/Power/Stone/Wicked rune.
Equip: Third Eye - you need one for passive(using it as accessory after deleting all stats and recustomizing)
Fullface - 3 star item with only 2 stats: max HP/HP% - this is good if you want to balance those out early on high lvl non min maxed item.

Far North Peaks
Materials: Chaosstone(reverses the order of stat, neat but rarely critical),
Equip: nothing too special.

Submerged Island
Broken items appear more often here.
Materials: Evil Distiller(pretty useless), Jewel of the Sea God(extremely good for absolute min maxing), Treasure Beacon.
Equip: nothing special for us.

Treasure beacon needs a bit explanation..
Treasure beacon + handmade compass
The properties of dungeon are selected by the treasure beacon and it gives seemingly random condition on it...
Basically treasure beacon increases chance of certain item slots appearing(weapon/sub/armor/accessory) and certain 'archetype'
You need to mix treasure beacon with compass to create a dungeon...

With this you create Treasure Hiding Map - this is a 50 floor dungeon with achievement up to 10000F for it.. to get it - use floor 10000 start item.

Paradise lost - PVP, unlocked at 1000 F...
My build absolutely stomped everyone I got in my 100 fights... I am quite sure that you 100% first strike here if you got first strike equipped... and dealing up to 9.9m damage 9 times is not something anything can survive.
That being said I am not sure if you lose hardcore mode by losing PVP.. so be careful.
It's also a neat way to skip turns 'meaningfully'.. for example the way I did my fights is by skipping the completed item event before sleeping.
Serves literally 0 purpose besides the 100 fights achievement.

Eternal Depths - unlocked by beating any other 10000F
This dungeon starts with 10 jinx and gets 10 more until floor 3000, after which no more jinx.
Otherwise has same bosses as Eternal Cave.
Basically just a 'final challenge'.

This will explain how to handle the 10k floor jinx with our build.. the actual jinx + how to handle them is in next section, this section is general purpose preparation, here is what you need to know first:

1) The damage limit is 9.99m(so is limit for everything else, but I doubt you will reach it) - this is the number you will reach super easily when you crit even subpar gear and only the gleipnir weapon double crit damage passive + 1 crit dmg% slot. What this means is you need to focus more on reaching your atk high enough WITHOUT crit or some alternatives for floor 10000 runs.

2) The means to survival are different in each dungeon - our huge HP pool works amazing in a lot of places, but sometimes you will need alternative due to certain jinx.

3) The way I completed those is by dedicating 1 slot(the extra slot) to being a 'specific dungeon beater', adding the things I need to beat it reliably.

Masteries:
Same as the ones in advanced jobbing section... I would say most dungeons can be completed by around 5th mastery priority completion, which is not too long with exp build, a night or 2 at most.

Gear:
Bath permanent bonus: Dark god jewel + rotten grip dagger for max attacks

First of all your 4 general purpose equipment you use everywhere:
Gleipnir weapon, Any Shield(with nothing) - I RECOMMEND SHIELD BECOMING THE 'ULTIMATE APPLE ITEM'(CHECK WHAT I MEAN IN THE ADVANCED MIXING 2 SECTION ABOUT FRUIT OF DESIRE), Avatar Cloak(check the hard unique farm section) Armor, Accessory(third eye recommended)

Key rune passives(I already mentioned them before, so just ctrl+f look their recipe up) - those go into all items equally aside of shield if you use apple strategy on shield:
1) Overheal - essentially double your max HP past starter round, a must everywhere
2) Power Drain - steal enemy reinforcement... a lot of enemies will get annoying reinforcements, this is a must.
3) Long Distance - disable enemy reflect dmg.. I am not certain WHO can reflect, but I certainly know that you do not want to find that out with us dealing 9.99m damage most of the time.
4) Guardian - disable enemy critical when at max HP.. only crit strikes are dangerous to begin with, so this is neat. This works when your HP is beyond your ORIGINAL max HP, so overheal makes you nigh invulnerable to crits.
5) Berserk - double attack, neat.
6) Iron Body - Bud + Holy disable damage higher than your max HP with high chance... you heal up to full after each round, so surviving no matter what sounds neat.
7) Healthy Living - bud + wave. Gain ailment resistance equal to 25% of the accumulated ailment value taken for the duration of the dungeon. This pretty much scales up your resistance skyhigh pretty fast assuming enemy has chance to hit you across the dungeon.
OR
Thawing - recover ailment upon healing effect.. neat, but does not remove permanent debuffs

Let us summarize now:
So far we have:
1) Shield slot is completed via apple trick and covers majority of your stat needs.
2) Weapon is Gleipnir, Armor is Avatar Cloak, Accessory is Third Eye, each has 2 passives in it(one has 3 because thawing or healthy living)
This means you have 5 slots in each left aside of one, the way we use them:
Atk + Atk % + HP - everything scales from those values on every item that's 2 slots left in each except the one with thawing
Accuracy %x1 + revival+9 + 2x flat shield + 1x shield % = 5 remaining slots

Reason for shield - we won't always be able to rely solely on HP due to jinx, so we start building it up here to survive at least a bit.

With this we are fully done with the 4 general purpose items... next up is seeing the jinx section, where I will write details for final item in each dungeon.

Jinx is a special penalty in every dungeon...
For most dungeons there are 10 of them every 300 floors 300-3000 then 1 more on 6000F then 1 more on 9000F

The final dungeon starts with 10 jinx and gets 10 more 300-3000
I will underline dangerous ones for our build and explain them.

Eternal Cave:
No special.
300 - Jinx of Darkness - Always Blind. (Accuracy Ratio -50%)
600 - Jinx of Thunder - Receive Critical Damage more Frequently
900 - Jinx of Beast - Increase appearance ratio of elite monsters (best EXP)
1200 - Jinx of Daybreak - Whenever you encounter a boss, you will lose all temporary effects
1500 - Jinx of Blood - Always Bleed. (HP Restoration -50%)
1800 - Jinx of Wedge - Whenever you defeat a boss, your hp will be reduced to 1 after battle.
2100 - Jinx of Soughing- Elite monsters that appear will have "First strike"
2400 - Jinx of Void - Whenever you defeat a boss, your energy becomes 0
2700 - Jinx of Spine - If you receive 3+ ailments, you will die instantly.
3000 - Jinx of Edge - Unable to do critical damage
6000 - Jinx of Bam - Whenever you get a jinx, your maximum HP will be reduced by half.
9000 - Jinx of Crimson - Whenever you receive a critical hit, the accumulation value of "Death" will increase significantly.

Since we have third eye - we get 100% accuracy rate by default.
This is probably one of the hardest dungeons for us.

Extra item to use: The nine souls accessory(hard to farm uniques) feels like it was specifically made for this dungeon - this counters 3+ ailment death with revival.

Stats: add ailment resistance + ailment resist % + shield + shield % + final blow + atk + floor start X(whatever you are comfortable with, but give yourself some room to profit from supreme supremacy)

Skills:
First Strike, Supreme Supremacy, Dancer + Saint macabre combo, Monarch will of steel passive

Tower of Moon:
Special - No Energy Cost consumption
300 - Jinx of Insects - Always Fear (Do attack damage -35%)
600 - Jinx of Wing - Enemies lose their skills of "Cooldown"
900 - Jinx of Sky - When dodging an attack all enemies will gain temporary "Invincible" 2 turns
1200 - Jinx of Tree - Always Poison. (Lessens HP every second ignoring shield)
1500 - Jinx of Edge - Unable to do critical damage
1800 - Jinx of Wedge - Whenever you defeat a boss, your hp will be reduced to 1 after battle.
2100 - Jinx of Hades - Boss characters gain the number of revivals+1 with their appearance
2400 - Jinx of Vision - Boss characters gain Invincible with their appearance
2700 - Jinx of Dawn - When finishing a turn, the abilities will not be activated (e.g. HP natural restoration)
3000 - Jinx of Sound - Elite monsters gain ''Power Drain'' with their appearance
6000 - Jinx of Azure - Whenever you take damage, you will lose 10% of your energy.
9000 - Jinx of Violet - Elite monsters gain Beastskin and Dragonscale

Easier than the eternal cave with same hardships - can use the same equip piece you used for eternal cave.
Same skills too.


Underground Volcano:
Special - Double Crit Dmg
300 - Jinx of Black - Always Curse (Receive attack damage +50%)
600 - Jinx of Fire - Alll enemies can attack 9 times at maximum.
900 - Jinx of Mountain - Ailment lasts over longer turns
1200 - Jinx of Leaf - All enemies restore their energy quickly and automatically
1500 - Jinx of Void - Whenever you defeat a boss, your energy becomes 0
1800 - Jinx of Water - Double energy consumption
2100 - Jinx of Wreckage - Accumulate "Death" ailment every turn
2400 - Jinx of Wing - Enemies lose their skills of "Cooldown"
2700 - Jinx of Thunder - Receive Critical Damage more Frequently
3000 - Jinx of Thorns - Decrease dodge by half
6000 - Jinx of Vermillion - Elites gain "Molten Iron"
9000 - Jinx of Bam - Whenever you get a jinx, your maximum HP will be reduced by half.

Pretty easy with our build - the same strat works as prev item. Can add precise sword skill instead of will of steel if you want to 100% one shot anything though. Can be completed even with default 4 items.

Basin Cave:
Special - Recover from Ailment faster
300 - Jinx of Water - Double Energy Consumption
600 - Jinx of Mist - When defeating, the abilities will not be activated. (e.g. HP natural restoration when defeating)
900 - Jinx of Vision - Boss characters gain Invincible with their appearance
1200 - Jinx of Darkness - Always Blind. (Accuracy Ratio -50%)
1500 - Jinx of Soughing- Elite monsters that appear will have "First strike"
1800 - Jinx of Daybreak - Whenever you encounter a boss, you will lose all temporary effects
2100 - Jinx of Mirror - Become unable to do damage on enemies turn (e.g. Poison, Reflect, Revenge)
2400 - Jinx of Calm - The accumulation value of ailments inflicted on enemies will reset to 0 every turn.
2700 - Jinx of Rainbow - Magical defense -100%
3000 - Jinx of Wedge - Whenever you defeat a boss, your hp will be reduced to 1 after battle.
6000 - Jinx of Bianca - If an Ailment expires naturally over time (turns), receive "Instant Death"
9000 - Jinx of Emerald - Whenever you encounter a boss, you will be disabled for 2 turns (Immobilized)

This is actually a bit hard, particularly the 9000 floor jinx..
But we should be tanky enough for this one, so don't worry

The macabre + saint combo is not too great here since you are going to lose it via jinx... but there is not much better you can take...
Bianca is not dangerous thanks to thawing, so it's literally a matter of surviving and our HP + shield pool should be fine enough.

Another strategy is skipping directly to floor 10000 - we got 9 revivals, which is 100% enough to survive boss turns and kill boss after immovable expires

Spirit Tree Hollow
Special - Not affected by Cooldown
300 - Jinx of Tree - Always Poison (Lessens HP every second and ignoring Shield )
600 - Jinx of Thorns - Decrease dodge by Half
900 - Jinx of Leaf - All enemies restore their energy quickly and automatically
1200 - Jinx of Star - When gaining ''Curse'', a skill will be forbidden at random
1500 - Jinx of Spine - If you receive 3+ Ailments, you will die instantly.
1800 - Jinx of Light - Earning Shield will be decreased by half.
2100 - Jinx of Shadow - Boss characters gain "Revenge" with their appearance
2400 - Jinx of Wreckage - Accumulate "Death" ailment every turn
2700 - Jinx of Mountain - Ailment lasts over longer turns
3000 - Jinx of Earth - When your energy falls below 25%, Holly will be forced to retreat
6000 - Jinx of Emerald - Whenever you encounter a boss, you will be disabled for 2 turns (Immobilized)
9000 - Jinx of Crimson - Whenever you receive a critical hit, the accumulation value of "Death" will increase significantly.

For this one you need the nine souls accessory we already prepared again...

Yet again there is the immobilize thing.. yet again it's possible to just cheese skip directly to floor 10000.

Old Battlefields
Special - Receive double dmg on your own turn.
300 - Jinx of Blood - Always Bleed. (HP Restoration -50%)
600 - Jinx of Steel - All enemies get "Toughness"
900 - Jinx of Dust - When Reviving the number of revivals will be reset.
1200 - Jinx of Wind - Double "Cooldown"
1500 - Jinx of Mist - When defeating, the abilities will not be activated. (e.g. HP natural restoration when defeating)
1800 - Jinx of Ocean - Double energy restoration
2100 - Jinx of Wreckage - Accumulate "Death" ailment every turn
2400 - Jinx of Thorns - Decrease dodge by Half
2700 - Jinx of Wedge - Whenever you defeat a boss, your hp will be reduced to 1 after battle.
3000 - Jinx of Void - Whenever you defeat a boss, your energy becomes 0
6000 - Jinx of Crimson - Whenever you receive a critical hit, the accumulation value of "Death" will increase significantly.
9000 - Jinx of Bianca - If an Ailment expires naturally over time (turns), receive "Instant Death"

I am not certain how to fully cancel the death accumulation, but will of steel + ailment resistant(the usual 5th item we used so far) should do just fine.

Pretty easy if you just floor skip this too, no crit immunity = 1 hit kills with precise sword guaranteed.


Large Labyrinth
Special - Enemy attacks first, you receive half dmg.
300 - Jinx of Ice - Always Paralysis (Make Immovable with 35% probability)
600 - Jinx of Earth - When Energy falls below 25%. Holly will be broken down.
900 - Jinx of Rainbow - Magical Defense -100%
1200 - Jinx of Blood - Always Bleed. (HP Restoration -50%)
1500 - Jinx of Vision - Boss characters gain Invincible with their appearance
1800 - Jinx of Wing - Enemies lose their skills of "Cooldown"
2100 - Jinx of Daybreak - Whenever you encounter a boss, you will lose all temporary effects
2400 - Jinx of Dawn - When finishing a turn. the abilities will not be activated (e.g. HP Natural restoration)
2700 - Jinx of Spine - If you receive 3+ ailments, you will die instantly.
3000 - Jinx of Star - When gaining ''Curse'', a skill will be forbidden at random
6000 - Jinx of Violet - Elite monsters gain Beastskin and Dragonscale
9000 - Jinx of White - Bosses gain "Avatar"

An annoyance fest + enemies move first... floor jump is the way to go.
First strike skill is useless here, feel free to replace that one with precise sword. Otherwise the usual combo works fine.

Temple of the Sun
Special - when you restore HP, enemy restores HP and vice versa.
300 - Jinx of Light - Earning Shield will be decreased by half.
600 - Jinx of Dawn - When finishing a turn. the abilities will not be activated (e.g. HP Natural restoration)
900 - Jinx of Hades - Boss characters gain the number of revivals +1 with their appearance.
1200 - Jinx of Wedge - Whenever you defeat a boss, your hp will be reduced to 1 after battle.
1500 - Jinx of Fire - Enemies can attack 9 times.
1800 - Jinx of Soughing- Elite monsters that appear will have "First strike"
2100 - Jinx of Beast - Increase appearance ratio of elite monsters (best EXP)
2400 - Jinx of Cloud - Physical defense -100%
2700 - Jinx of Wind - Double "Cooldown"
3000 - Jinx of Hero - Enemies levels are increased
6000 - Jinx of White - Bosses gain "Avatar"
9000 - Jinx of Vermillion - Elites gain "Molten Iron"

Besides the avatar - enemies have no means of stopping you from one shotting them instantly.


Far North Peaks
Special - Ailments will not be decayed and amplified.
300 - Jinx of Mountain - Double Ailment duration (20 Turns)
600 - Jinx of Ice - Always Paralysis. (Make Immovable with 35% probability)
900 - Jinx of Frost - Elites have Frostbite (+1 Attack to Frozen targets)
1200 - Jinx of Wing - Enemies lose their skills of "Cooldown"
1500 - Jinx of Snow - Always Freeze
1800 - Jinx of Vision - Bosses gain Invincible with their appearance
2100 - Jinx of Sky - When dodging an attack all enemies will gain temporary "Invincible" 2 turns
2400 - Jinx of Shadow - Boss characters gain "Revenge" with their appearance
2700 - Jinx of Mist - When defeating, the abilities will not be activated. (e.g. HP natural restoration when defeating)
3000 - Jinx of Dawn - When finishing a turn. the abilities will not be activated (e.g. HP Natural restoration)
6000 - Jinx of Emerald - on Boss Floor become disabled for 2 turns (immobilize)
9000 - Jinx of Azure - Lose 10% energy when hit

Freeze means precise sword is useless, other than that - nothing too special.
The disabled for 2 turns jinx is the main annoyance as usual + paralyze too...

Annoying, but nothing you can't defeat, if needed - floor jump.

Submerged Islands
300 - Jinx of Silence - Always Sealed(Skills can no longer be used while in effect)
600 - Jinx of Beast - Increase appearance ratio of elite monsters
900 - Jinx of Water - Double Energy Consumption
1200 - Jinx of Insects - Always Fear(Do attack damage -35%)
1500 - Jinx of Raven - Elite monsters ignore Magic Defense when you have seal.
1800 - Jinx of Wreckage - Accumulate "Death" ailment every turn
2100 - Jinx of Roar - Boss monsters have Parry +25%
2400 - Jinx of Leaf - All enemies restore energy quickly and automatically.
2700 - Jinx of Calm - The accumulation value of ailments inflicted on enemies will return to 0 every turn.
3000 - Jinx of Gold - Skill energy consumption will increase +10% per 100F
6000 - Jinx of Azure - Lose 10% energy when hit
9000 - Jinx of Earth - When Energy falls below 25%. Holly will be broken down

This is by far the best dungeon for our build, none of the jinx's do much against us, a barebones precise sword build + saint/dancer macabre + first strike will beat it, even with minimum mixing... you can probably defeat it with shield piece alone.

Pair that with floor jumping and you are golden - bosses are not dangerous at all, but RNG can screw you up in the very long runs.

Floor 9000+ in particular is what you want to skip.

I guess that's the advantage our build gets from getting 0 good gear out of this dungeon, heh.

Eternal Depths
Start:
Jinx of Cloud - Physical defense -100%
Jinx of Water - Double Energy Consumption
Jinx of Wind - Double "Cooldown"
Jinx of Thunder - Receive Critical Damage more Frequently
Jinx of Vision - Bosses gain Invincible with their appearance
Jinx of Hades - Boss characters gain the number of revivals +1 with their appearance.
Jinx of Rainbow - Magical Defense -100%
Jinx of Beast - Increase appearance ratio of elite monsters
Jinx of Sound - Elite monsters gain ''Power Drain'' with their appearance
Jinx of Shadow - Boss characters gain "Revenge" with their appearance

300 - Jinx of Wedge - Whenever you defeat a boss, your HP will be reduced to 1
600 - Jinx of Bianca - If an Ailment expires naturally over time (turns), receive "Instant Death"
900 - Jinx of Vermillion - Elite monsters gain "Molten Iron"
1200 - Jinx of Emerald - on Boss Floor become disabled for 2 turns (immobilize)
1500 - Jinx of White - Bosses gain Avatar
1800 - Jinx of Bam - Whenever you gain a Jinx reduce HP by 1/2
2100 - Jinx of Crimson - Gain Death on Critical damage taken
2400 - Jinx of Azure - Lose 10% energy when hit
2700 - Jinx of Violet - Elites gain Beastskin and Dragonscales
3000 - Jinx of Void - When you defeat a boss, your energy is set to zero.

On the positive note - despite being hardest dungeon, it's easy for our build.

The main difficulty comes from being disabled + avatar + not relying on HP too much, nothing we didn't face before.

Skills:
First strike, Dance + Saint macabre combo, Precise sword, Supreme Supremacy...

And as usual - floor jumping when in doubt.

Steam achieves are pretty simple, easiest to miss one if you never lose - lose equipment one.. This one needs you to lose all hearts and then lose 1 more time, causing all your equipped items to go to shop.

The other ones are pretty simple - attempt a dungeon 100 times.

Every dungeon floor 100.

Achieve item of level 1000+ - you likely will get it done on your way to 10000F, although it's not really a requirement since if you min max - you can get ultra powerful equip without getting it high.

Job level 10.

And floors up to 10000F.

Pretty much straightforward no tricks - the 10000F will take by far the longest time but my build and equips will carry you no problem.

That is it - there is nothing left to teach you - you should know everything you need to know about the game...

If you want to try something else, based on what I have seen there are plenty of potential options:
Pursuit damage build, pacifist revenge build(dealing no damage, only reflecting), shield based survival, magic caster are the most obvious.