How to Play
Roll, score, survive, summon
Roll, score, survive, summon
A king, a warlock, a man who reached too far.
The archangel Michael pressed a ring into your palm and told you it could bind the 72 demons of the Ars Goetia - the 72 named spirits of the old grimoires. Kings, princes, earls, marquises, dukes, presidents and knights of Hell. He said use it wisely. He said "do not grow proud."
You did not listen.
Every run is another descent into the pit. You roll bone dice to summon souls. Souls pay your way through trials - gauntlets of mounting difficulty set by the spirits themselves. Each demon you bind grants a passive and an active, and when you survive long enough to draw the attention of Heaven, an angel descends to remind you whose ring you're wearing.
Solomon is ambitious. The angels are patient. The demons are laughing.
Seven steps. Forever on repeat until you die or Heaven catches up.
You begin with 5 dice, 3 rolls per hand, 3 hands per trial, 3 demon slots and no sigils. Trial 1 needs 30 souls. Every trial after needs 1.5x the last.
Click Roll. Between rolls, click a die to hold it: held dice keep their face while the rest reroll. Some dice hold themselves and some cannot be held at all.
Pick a row on the scorecard. Your dice score, your demons contribute, and the total becomes souls. Each row can be scored once per trial. A hand that scores 0 is a whiff, and it still spends a hand.
Three hands. Clear the target and you pass, with bonus sigils for every 100% you score over it. Fall short and the run ends. No second chances.
A ritual is 17 nodes: nine trials, the Summoner's Shop after most of them, the Shady Dealer, the Shaman, and an angel at the end. Night falls halfway through.
Spend sigils on demons and card packs. Each demon has a passive that is always on and an active that costs 1 AP. They level by being in your legion when a hand scores.
Every ritual ends with an angel. Four rituals, four angels, and the last is Michael. Beat him and the run is won. Keep going into endless for as long as you survive.
Your scorecard works like Yahtzee. These are every category.
Score the sum of all dice showing that number.
| Category | How to Score | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Ones | Sum of all 1s | 1, 1, 3, 4, 5 = 2 |
| Twos | Sum of all 2s | 2, 2, 2, 4, 6 = 6 |
| Threes | Sum of all 3s | 3, 3, 3, 1, 5 = 9 |
| Fours | Sum of all 4s | 4, 4, 1, 2, 3 = 8 |
| Fives | Sum of all 5s | 5, 5, 5, 5, 1 = 20 |
| Sixes | Sum of all 6s | 6, 6, 1, 2, 3 = 12 |
Your upper bonus threshold is half the trial target. Clear it across your upper scores and you multiply your upper sum by 5. This scales as trials get harder.
Match dice patterns to score.
| Category | What You Need | Score |
|---|---|---|
| Three of a Kind | 3+ matching dice | Sum of all dice |
| Four of a Kind | 4+ matching dice | Sum of all dice |
| Full House | 3 of one + 2 of another | 25 |
| Small Straight | 4 in a row (e.g. 1-2-3-4) | 30 |
| Large Straight | 5 in a row (e.g. 2-3-4-5-6) | 40 |
| Occulto | All 5 dice match | 50 (reduces -10 per extra die in pool) |
| Chance | Any combination | Sum of all dice |
Sometimes the dice are kind. Rarely.
Every score has a 2% chance to crit. On a crit your score is doubled. A bell rings, lightning flashes, the screen shakes.
Ways to get more: the Critical Edge card adds 3% chance. A Crit face (the Sharpening Stone card, or every face of Eligos's Crit Die) guarantees the crit and stacks the multiplier. The Sword of Flames item makes your second score of every trial a crit. Haures adds 10% to the crit multiplier every time one lands. Eligos moves the crit to the very end of the resolve, so it doubles the fully built total.
Sigils are the currency. Cards are where the compounding happens.
Every trial you pass pays 5 sigils, plus 1 more for every 100% you score over the target, up to 5. Demons, faces and items add their own. Nothing else pays you.
Two demons for sale each visit, the first shop of a run Lessers only. Lesser 5 sigils, Greater 10, King 15. A reroll costs 5, rising 5 each time within the visit. Sell a demon back for 30% of its price.
Rank odds rise with the ritual: Greaters 20% in ritual 1, 27% in 2, 35% in 3, 40% in 4. Kings 2%, 5%, 10%, 15%. Every 10 Luck adds 1% to each, up to 10%.
Three packs, 6 sigils each, two on offer per shop. Open one, see its cards, keep one. Cards sit in a wallet of 3 and are cast when you choose.
Infernal: five Empowers, permanent mult baked onto a scorecard row or a group of rows. Omen: three face brands, opened by the Sanctum. Covenant: three utility cards, from bonus dice and rolls to cures, wards, XP and summons.
Some cards deal shiny: 5% per card slot, plus 0.5% per point of Luck. The full card list is in the Compendium.
Once per ritual the Shady Dealer shows two items and you take one, free. You hold up to 4. Once per ritual the Shaman sells one remedy: 1 AP to a demon for nothing, a full refill for 5 sigils, or 1 AP to every demon for 10.
A die is four things at once: the faces it rolls, the type it is, the conditions it carries and the marks on it.
Every die rolls six faces. Brands replace one face with something else. Only plain pips count toward patterns and sums; a branded face fires its own effect instead.
Pips1 to 6. Scores by value.
BlankScores nothing. Feeds Shax and Purson.
xMultMultiplies the hand: x1.5, x2, x3 or x4.
+MultAdds to the hand's mult: +5, +10 or +15.
APGrants an AP card when scored.
Sigil+2 sigils when scored.
XPEvery 3 scored mint an Infused Knowledge card.
CritGuarantees the crit and stacks its multiplier.
Souls+20 souls when scored.
LustTwo scored together spawn a random card.
ChaosScores as a random ability face, revealed on the spot.
Luck+2 Luck when scored, permanently.
DieZagan's mint. Every 3 scored make a new die.
FavourPaimon's seal. Every 3 scored mint a Favour card.
WoundedInert. Scores nothing, counts as nothing.
UnusableA parked die's face. Nothing lands on it.A die has one type at a time. Most come from a demon's active. Afflicted types have a downside and can be cured, which lifts the downside and keeps the power.
StandardWhat you start with.
QuarriedZagan's stone-born die. Plays as Standard.
ScryingVassago. Its mult climbs with each unheld roll, to x3.
WhetstoneBotis. +5% crit chance, six wounded faces to repair.
Crit DieEligos. Every face is a Crit face.
Blood VictimBeleth. Banks mult each roll it is held through.
HarvestedA harvested victim. Its multiplier is frozen in forever.
BuriedBune's grave. Inert until it blooms.
RisenThe bloom: six faces drawn at random from the whole game.
TotemFurfur. Parked for good. A windfury source, not a die.
PetrifiedCrocell. Rolls once per hand, +30 souls every score.
UndeadMurmur. Doubles the hand, rots away after 5 hands.
CursedMarbas. Never rolls or scores; every demon contribution +10%.
PoisonedAstaroth's patient zero. Parked; the rot spreads from it.
BanishedSeere. Cast into the void for the run.Conditions are temporary and stack: a die can carry any number at once and none overwrites another.
Wild (Ose, Dantalion) counts as any face. Ablaze and Molten (Amy) spread fire to neighbours and add mult. Rabid (Marchosias) doubles the die and spreads. Rotted (Astaroth's infection) fires the die's face twice. Stilled (Phanuel) parks the die for a fight. Hushed (Hashmal) and Voided (Kasdeja) silence a die or its face for a fight.
BloodmarkedAndras. Hold it through rolls for a chance at permanent mult.
Gold DustCimejes. A chance at sigils when it scores.
HuntedGlasya-Labolas. Counted twice when it scores.
EntwinedVine. Every 6 it scores feeds Vine's growth.
Salt CircleA ward. The next thing that would consume the die breaks the circle instead.The four brands are exclusive: a second one replaces the first, and the game asks before it does. Chains (Vepar, up to 3 dice) and Salt Circle sit alongside anything. What each die will and will not accept is listed in the Compendium.
The 72 demons of the Ars Goetia are the real game.
You hold 3 demons at the start of a run and at most 5. Three ranks: Kings (14, game-warping), Greaters (21, scaling synergy), Lessers (37, the early backbone). In a campaign, Lessers are open from the first run; Greaters and Kings open with the temple's rooms.
The passive is always on. The active costs 1 AP, every demon, every time. Each demon has its own AP, starts a run with 1 or 2 and caps at 5 by default. AP comes back from AP faces, Arcane Renewal cards, the Shaman, Whispered Geas and Watcher's Blood. Active Surge makes the next cast free.
Every demon in your legion earns 10 XP for every hand that scores. Whiffs teach nothing. Level 2 costs 20 XP and each level after costs 10 more, up to level 25. Level scales the demons whose abilities say so. Infused Knowledge, Epiphany, Furcas and Ars Notoria speed it up.
The first half of every ritual is day, the second half night, and every angel fights at night. Some demons change with the light, and Heliotrope and Selenite double your base mult by day or by night. Leraje's Nightfall and Aaron's Rod can call the night early.
Reach the end of a ritual and an angel comes for you.
A boss fight is a trial in a different shape. You and the angel share one scorecard of 13 rows. Each round both of you fill one row, so a fight lasts six rounds. Both sides have 4 hearts. The lower score of the round loses a heart; a tie loses nothing. A coin flip at the start decides who plays first for the whole fight.
When one row is left, whoever leads on hearts wins. If hearts are level, the last row is a showdown worth two hearts. The angel scores from a benchmark built on the trial target, so it hits hard from the first ritual, and every angel has a passive that shapes its scoring and a signature that changes the fight.
Your passives and actives work in a fight. What you own on the shared card when you win is banked as souls.
Ritual 1, one of eight: Sariel, Cassiel, Phanuel, Jeremiel, Kushiel, Hadraniel, Selaphiel, Ambriel.
Ritual 2, one of eight: Uriel, Puriel, Nuriel, Dokiel, Penemue, Hashmal, Dumah, Kasdeja.
Ritual 3: Metatron.
Ritual 4: Michael. Beat him and the run is won.
Every angel's passive, signature and lore is in the Compendium. The Almadel item shows you which one is waiting at the end of the ritual.
What Solomon binds, the temple keeps.
Three campaign slots. Each is its own temple, its own unlocks, its own history. Free Run is the sandbox: every demon, card and pack open from the start, and nothing you do there counts toward anything.
Every angel you defeat pays powerstones: 1 for the first three rituals, 2 for Michael. Five rooms open as you go. The Grand Hall opens Lessers. The Archive opens Greaters after the first angel. The Sanctum opens the Omen pack after the second. The Apothecary opens Kings after the third. The Throne Room opens when Michael falls.
Inside each open room, shrines sell cards for 1 powerstone each. The Throne Room sells Solomon's Rings for 5: eight of them, each a restriction you wear for a whole campaign, each with an achievement for finishing under it.
Achievements are account-wide and live in the compendium's Achievements tab.
A few hard-earned insights.
Hold dice between rolls to build toward a row. Every held die is a step closer to the combo you need. Greed costs rolls, and rolls are finite.
Scoring 0 still spends a hand. A whiff in trial 1 can doom a run before it begins. Unless you are running Phenex or Sitri, who feed on them.
Infernal Empowers put mult onto a row for the rest of the run. Pick the rows you score most, and mind Penemue and Jeremiel, who read what you baked.
The upper bonus threshold is half the trial target. Clear it across your upper rows and your upper sum is multiplied by 5. Often the biggest swing in a trial.
Angels weigh what you carry in: Dokiel your sigils, Penemue your cards, Dumah your AP, Kasdeja your branded faces. Walk in light, or walk in ready.
Demons level by being in the legion when a hand scores, so a slot filled early is a slot that grows. An empty third slot is a level you never earn.