Ruins



"The fiends must be driven back. And what better place to begin than the seat of our noble line? Narration_ruins_cleanse.wav"

- The Ancestor

The Ruins is the first dungeon that can be explored. The former halls and seat of the Ancestor's power, the Ruins are now a black, shifting maze of corridors firmly under the control of the Necromancers and their continuously expanding undead army.

After the Ancestor's short-sighted revival of the powerful Necromancers, they moved into the Ruins that once housed your family’s lineage. There they desecrated the graves of soldiers and nobles alike, bringing them back as a mindless skeletal horde.

Ruins Music
The music that plays while exploring the Ruins is Exploring the Ruins, and during combat it is Combat in the Ruins.

Provisions

 * Holy Water is extremely useful, as there are five different curios found in the Ruins that can benefit from the application of Holy Water.
 * Skeleton Keys are a close second, considering the abundance of locked curios encountered in the Ruins.
 * Medicinal Herbs can be used on the Iron Maiden and Alchemy Table. However, due to the lack of debuff attacks and traps, Medicinal Herbs are usually not needed in large quantities.
 * Antivenom and Bandages are less important here than in other locations due to the comparative lack of damage-over-time attacks and near-complete absence of curio applications. (The one exception is the Antivenom variant of the Heirloom Chest, but even then, Antivenom yields less treasure than a Skeleton Key.)
 * As usual, Shovels are necessary for clearing Rubble. They can also be substituted for Skeleton Keys on most locked Curios, although Shovels yield less treasure.
 * Consider bringing more Food than normal, as there aren't any food-oriented curios in the Ruins.
 * Consider bringing more Torches for Shambler's Altars.

Party Composition
Characters reliant on doing Bleed damage are much less effective in Ruins than in other locations due to the presence of skeletons (which cannot bleed). Conversely, characters proficient with Blight attacks become extremely useful here, as most enemies have very low blight resistance, and there are a few enemies with high PROT (less susceptible to direct damage, while remaining susceptible to Damage-Over-Time effects).

The Crusader does very well in the Ruins due to the increased damage he deals to Unholy enemies, which are prevalent in this area. The Grave Robber is fast enough to kill Bone Courtiers before they get a turn, preventing them from using their Stress-inducing attacks.

Strategy
The Ruins is the easiest region to explore; skeletons don't have many special attacks, holy curios with positive effects are easy to come by, and urns, chests, and cabinets can provide some good loot. The Bone Captain is weaker than his counterparts from other regions. It's also worth noting that traps in the Ruins only cause physical damage and stress, with no bleed, blight, or debuff.

The general strategy is to kill stress/damage dealers in the back ranks first, then focus on enemies without PROT, leave the Bone Rabble and Bone Defender for last, as they don't hit that hard. Pulling Bone Courtiers or Bone Arbalists to the front rows and knocking Cultist Brawlers into the back rows can be helpful, as they will use weaker attacks to get back to their desired position. Alternatively, if your party has enough damage, speed, and stun abilities, enemy groups with two Bone Courtiers and/or Bone Arbalists can be great opportunities for recuperation — by killing the two front-line enemies first (and removing their corpses) so that the Courtiers / Arbalists move into the first two rows, you can reduce the enemy force to two monsters that are stuck in rows where they deal very little melee damage and no stress damage outside of an infrequent critical hit, allowing you to stun or simply tank the negligible damage while restoring lost health and stress.

Things to watch out for

 * The Bone Bearer should be killed ASAP.
 * Bone Spearmen in the front ranks.
 * Stress dealers such as Bone Courtiers, Cultist Acolytes, and Madmen.
 * Books (never burn them!).