Here are a few things every new player should know.



1. Use food to level up hero's and heal them during fights. When choosing who to level up, if you mouse over a characters level up button it will show you any new stats and abilities they will get. Sometimes it's better to level up one over another for new abilities they offer. Also, it is very helpful to keep a stockpile of 40+ food or so, just in case you need to hire a new hero, or heal during a big fight.



2. Placing generators early in a floor is the best way to accumulate FIDS. Placing an industry generator near the end of a floor probably won't net you the Industy it costs with few doors left to open.



3. Mobs have a chance to spawn in any room where you lack vision once a door is opened. You can obtain vision by powering a room or by placing a hero in a dark room. Dark rooms with heroes in them will not spawn mobs. Use this to your advantage to prevent mobs from spawning in rooms you don't have defenses near. Try to funnel all possible mob spawns into your defense mods. Keep in mind there is a short delay from when a door is opened and when a monster spawns. Moving a hero into or out of a room too quick can alter your vision of that room prior to the spawn time of mobs.



4. Some hero's have special skills that can help your team. These are found on their character stat pull up. These range from passive abilities like increased science per turn, or food generation from monster kills, to more active ones that require input from you, like operating mods for more output, or fixing damaged mods. They also have unique active abilities with cooldowns that generally help them in a pinch if mobs get too tough. Be sure to learn all of them and check their stats frequently as new ones become active as they level up.



5. Different monsters prioritize different targets, and move at different speeds. You can use this to your advantage, separating big groups into smaller clusters due to speed differences, and prioritizing which rooms to kill them in. For example don't let monsters that attack your generators get go those rooms. Engage them with hero's before if possible.



6. Most Hero stats are fairly clear as to their effect in the game. Wit however is not. Wit is primarily used on Heroes who can operate Large Mods to increase their output of FIDS per door. The higher your wit, the more resources you will accumulate if you have the operate skill and leave your hero in a room with a large mod. You can read more about how much wit you need to boost your production of FIDS {here}



7. Most resources you have left over will carry over to the next floor. Dust is the one exception. Each floor you start with a small amount and have to collect it as you uncover the level. There are a few ways to increase your dust output, which is critical to making a safe path to the exit and managing spawn points for mobs. They are:

a. Opening doors and finding it. Some heroes have skills that increase the amount/chance of finding Dust and should always be used to open new doors

if possible.



b. Killing mobs. Many mobs that die have a chance to drop Dust as loot. It is important to try and fight mobs as often and safely as you can in order

to accumulate enough to make safe paths out of floors later. try and create spawn points that funnel mobs through your defenses as you establish

them on a floor. Also don't forget to search rooms where mobs die to your mods by sending a hero through them. There is sometimes Dust that can be

found if you do.



c. Operating the merchant Shack. If you research this Mod and find the merchant, you can increase your dust by leaving a hero in the room to operate

it. Increasing your heroes wit through items, levels, and Pal mods can increase the rate of Dust received.



d. Building the Emergency Generator. The emergency generator will power a room by itself, yielding the equivalent of 10 Dust you can then use

elsewhere. It can also be operated to increase dust output per turn similarly to the merchant. Be sure not to accidentally place this in a room that

already is powered by a mysterious force (guilty) as it will nullify the advantage of saving 10 dust to power another non-powered room.



e. Selling items. Some floors the merchant on that level will only trade in Dust. In a pinch you can sell an item to this merchant to increase your Dust

output for that floor. This should only be done in dire circumstances, as any Dust you collect will not carry over to the next floor as other resources

would.

More to come as I have time, I will also add other ideas from the community as they are posted here.

It's vital that you have enough dust to power up your way when you about to exit the floor. Good way to collect dust is to loot it from monsters. Heroes with War Profiteer or Pickpocket skills will greatly help. However not every monster will drop dust anyway, so you have to kill a lot of them. Where to find a lot of monsters? In monster-waves! Where to get monster-waves? From unpowered rooms, of course!



So the strategy is simple here. Don't power up every room you can, but always have a couple unpowered so after every opened door you will have a chance to dispatch one or two monster-wave (or even more if your defense allows) and get some dust. This is mostly useful in the beginning of the level, when waves are not very strong. With this strategy you would probably have more breath-space when it's time to escape with the crystal.

Make sure to use the pause button in the higher levels where a lot of waves come from different directions. While in pause you can still give commands to heroes and build stuff.

Added more content to the OP, including points made by others on this and other threads. Keep adding your thoughts and i will continue to improve the post as I have time so new players have a good resource for learning some of the basics.

If you are like me and just jump into the game without reading anything about it, this will help:



1. When you pick up the crystal to get to the exit, all doors on the floor will open and monsters will spawn non-stop in rooms without vision.



2. The hero that picks up the crystal has reduced movement speed (50% less?), cannot attack, monsters focus on killing him. Use your fastest hero to carry the crystal, in case of a tie, use the hero with more defense, in case of another tie, use hero with less attack.



3. Heroes have reduced movement speed when there are monsters in the room.



4. You need to have all your heroes at the exit before you push the elevator button, heroes not present at the exit will be left behind (and the items they had with them are lost).



5. Some characters have special interactions with one another during the elevator scene (yellow chat text), they will play out a story across multiply elevator scenes, once the story is concluded you will get some benefits or disadvantages and the story conclusion is written on the character's bio (the new information persists on new games).



6. Doors opened after picking up the Crystal do not generate FIDS.



7. Monsters randomly drop dust when killed, if you have no heroes in rooms when a monster drops dust, the dust will appear as a yellow globe on the floor and you need to send heroes to pick it up.