Ruins



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

- 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.

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

Provisions

 * Antivenom and Bandage less effective here than in other locations due to comparative lack of DOT attacks.
 * Holy Water extremely useful for curio interactions.
 * Skeleton Key being a close second considering the amount of locks usually encountered.
 * Medicinal Herbs have a small utility, like on the Iron Maiden for extra loot

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 regular damage, more susceptible to DOT).

Crusader does really well in the Ruins due to his increased damage to unholy. Grave Robber is fast enough to kill Bone Courtiers before they get a turn.

Strategy
The ruins are the easiest region to explore: skeletons don't have many special attacks, multiple holy curios with positive effect are easy to come by, urns and cabinets provide for some good loot. Bone Captain is weaker than his counterparts from other regions. It's also worth noting that the Ruin's traps only do regular and stress damage, with no DOT or debuff.

The general strategy is to kill stress/damage dealers in the back ranks first, then focus on enemies without PROT, leave Bone Rabble and Bone Defender for last, as they don't hit that hard. Pulling Bone Courtier or Bone Arbalist to the front rows as well as knocking Cultist Brawler back to 3/4 position can be a good idea: they will use weaker attacks to get back to their desired position.

Things to watch out for:

 * Bone Spearman in rank 1/2.
 * Stress dealers such as Bone Courtier, Cultist Acolyte and Madman.
 * Books.