Roguecraft DX Beginner Tips: Learn to Wait, Learn Your Potions, Free the Badger

There is a specific kind of roguelike that has kept me up past midnight since the first time I played Shiren the Wanderer. It is the one where you walk into a monster to hit it, every step costs a turn, and one careless move ends a run you spent forty minutes building.

Roguecraft DX is that kind of game, dressed up in gorgeous isometric Amiga pixel art and a Lovecraftian dungeon full of tentacled horrors and murderous chickens. It started life as a Commodore Amiga release from Norway’s Badger Punch Games, got expanded into the DX version, and landed on Steam on September 10, 2026.

The good news is that a full run only takes 30 to 40 minutes. The bad news is that you will probably lose most of them for a while, so here is everything I wish somebody had told me before my first descent.

Know the shape of a run before you start

A classic run is 15 procedurally generated levels deep, beginning with an above-ground opening area called The Wilderness that DX added to the original game. Every level works the same way: find the key, find the exit, and go down.

There is no mid-run save and no second chance unless you are carrying a specific rare item (more on that later). Gold you collect only feeds your score, because there is no shop to spend it in.

That matters more than it sounds. You are not saving up for anything, so treasure is only worth grabbing when it does not cost you health.

Start as the Warrior, no matter how boring that sounds

The three classes are really three difficulty settings wearing costumes. The Warrior has the highest maximum health and strength in the game and no special tricks at all, which makes him the one you should learn on.

The Rogue sits in the middle with a teleport that DX improved considerably. It now drops you near a door, does not cost you a turn, and sets up a backstab that grants maximum class damage and a very high hit chance for four turns.

The Wizard is the hard mode. He throws magic missiles at range, which is genuinely lovely until something closes the distance and removes half your health bar in two hits.

Let the monsters come to you

Combat is bump attack. You walk into a creature, you swing, and there is no block button to bail you out.

Because everything is turn based, the player who moves second usually wins. Stand still, use the wait command, and let the enemy step into your range so you get the first swing instead of eating one.

This one habit changed my win rate more than anything else on the list. If you learn nothing else from this guide, learn to wait.

Fight one thing at a time

When enemies are nearby, you are limited to moving a single space per turn, which is exactly how people get surrounded and die. Clear rooms let you move freely again, so pay attention to when that restriction kicks in.

Take the closest or weakest enemy first rather than charging the scariest thing in the room. Back into a doorway or put a pillar at your shoulder so only one creature can reach you at a time.

Relearn your potions every single run

Green potions always restore your health to full. That one is a constant, and it is the only constant.

The red and blue potions get their effects reshuffled every run, which is the oldest trick in the roguelike book and still an effective one. Possible results include turning nearby enemies into chickens, a strength boost that comes with a drunken stagger, invisibility, regeneration, and Confuse Monsters.

So identify them early. Drink an unknown potion on level two when you are healthy and the room is empty, not on level thirteen when you are one hit from death and praying it is a heal.

One more thing worth committing to memory: any potion cures poison, which shows up as a skull icon on your character in the later levels.

Gems are your experience points in disguise

There is no visible XP bar here. The game quietly counts your kills in the background, and when you cross a threshold it drops a gem, which now blinks when it spawns so you actually notice it.

Red gems raise your maximum health by a heart and refill you completely. Blue gems raise your strength, which improves both your damage and your chance to land a hit.

Since a red gem heals you, there is no rush to grab one the moment it appears. Leave it sitting there, finish the floor, and come back for it when you are actually hurt.

Free the badger

Somewhere in the dungeon you will find a caged badger, and yes, you should absolutely let it out. Once freed, it goes into your inventory like an item and can be summoned when you need it.

The badger fights beside you and picks up potions you would otherwise have to walk over yourself, then vanishes after a while. Save it for a room that has gone wrong rather than burning it on a couple of bats.

Treat every chest like it might bite

Most chests are full of gold. Some of them are mimics, and a mimic hits hard enough to end a promising run on the spot.

The simple rule is to only open chests when your health is in decent shape. A pile of score is not worth a restart.

Traps are hazards until you make them weapons

Spikes, acid pools, and flame traps are scattered through the dungeon, and they get much denser as you descend. In the deeper levels, stop and scan the room before you take a step, because a trap you spotted is a trap that cannot kill you.

Then flip the idea around. When you are low on health and something is chasing you, lead it across a trap and let the dungeon do the work.

Go looking for secret rooms

Hidden rooms are tucked away behind cracked bricks and odd-looking slabs, usually at the outer edges of a level. DX added extra visual cues to make them findable rather than pure guesswork.

They are worth the detour in the early floors while enemies are still soft. Later on, your time and health are better spent moving toward the exit.

Play a run in three phases

This is the mental framework that finally got me to the bottom. Levels 1 through 7 are your greedy phase, so kill everything and take everything, because those kills become gems and those gems become your late game.

Levels 8 through 11 are where you get picky and skip fights that cost more than they pay. Levels 12 through 15 are pure survival, so walk past whatever you can and arrive at the boss with a bag full of potions.

Guard your Divine Intervention

Divine Intervention is a rare pickup that works as an extra life, reviving you the moment you would have died. It is the single most valuable thing in the dungeon.

If you are holding one, it changes what you can afford to risk. If you are not, play like every fight is the one that ends you, because it might be.

Beating the thing at the bottom

The final encounter is a tentacled horror that spends the fight throwing chickens at you, which is either terrifying or hilarious depending on how much health you have left. Kill the chickens as they arrive and do not let them pin you into a corner.

The boss itself goes down in roughly four or five hits, but you cannot stand there and trade. Step in, swing, step back out, and repeat until it stops moving.

What to do after your first clear

Once the Warrior has made it out, the Rogue and the Wizard are waiting, and they change the game more than a difficulty slider would. The Wizard run in particular feels like a different genre.

Beyond that there is Endless Dungeon for high score chasing and Chicken Run, where you start as a chicken with two hit points and hunt golden eggs to become the eldritch poultry god Chicklathotep. There is also an achievement list and a top five high score table to keep you honest.

Roguecraft DX is not a hundred-hour meta-progression machine, and if you need permanent unlocks to stay hooked, it probably will not hold you for months. What it has is a tight, tense little dungeon crawl that respects your evening, and at twelve dollars that is a trade I will take.

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Images in this article are from the Roguecraft DX page on Steam and used under Fair Use.