Entering the darkness in Below is a terrifying experience. If you want to survive, you’ll need to prepare yourself — and some items are much, much better than others. Here, I’m going to try and explain what it takes to survive in Below, and what gear you’ll want to get. You need to keep moving in the dark. Crystals only provide a temporary respite, and you won’t find any food or water in the dark.
Mostly, you’ll need to enter the darkness to recover your body. There are some rare powerful items in the darkness too — you can grab a deadly sword on Floor 17, for example — but otherwise, the area is mostly barren. You’re not going to find helpful items, so you’ll want to stock up and have plenty of gear available in your hideout before delving too deep.
More Below guides on Gameranx:
- Below: What Ingredients You Need To Craft Every Recipe | Recipes Guide
- Below: How To Create Checkpoints & Shortcuts | Progress Guide
How To Survive In The Deep Darkness | Tips & Tricks
To stay alive in the darkness areas, you’ll need to rush from crystal-to-crystal, and use your lantern wisely to fight back against the encroaching dark. The area is incredibly dangerous, but there are a few things you can do to make the experience much more manageable.
- Put away your Spear / Hammer in the Hideout. They’re useful for earlier floors, so you don’t want to lose them if you die. You won’t need them for the dark.
- As long as you have the Spear, you can easily farm for more crystals. Just go on a quick run down to Floor 3 in the Depths and load up on crystals for your lantern.
- Bring Plenty of Supplies. Crystals are used to keep you safe. You’ll want to bring Stew — there is no water or food in the dark, so bring 3-5 Stews. You’ll need 150+ Crystals just to keep your Lantern strong.
- Keep extra crystals / food / water available in your Hideout. If you’re running low on supplies, you’ll want to have all that available when you reach a campfire.
- Don’t Sit Still. Always point your lantern forward and dodge-roll. Don’t bother walking — keep dodging to move faster and keep your lantern focused.
- If you need to check your map, loot your body, and do anything else while in the dark — drop a gem to create a small safe area. It won’t last long, but it should give you enough time.
- Bring Bomb Arrows Instead. Don’t bring regular bombs — there’s a short animation required to place them. You can move much faster, and have a stack of 4 Bomb Arrows to quickly blast through barriers.
- Bring a Blue Elixir to slow your hunger — drinking it will pause your hunger meter for a few minutes, so you’ll need less food on your journey.
- Dark Armor / Helmet Will Make Life Much Easier. The Dark Armor makes you very, very resistant to enemies and tentacles in the dark. You won’t get killed instantly — you’ll only take a small amount of bleed damage. Dark enemies even take damage when attacking you with the Dark gear equipped.
- The Dark gear is available from the vendor on Level 6.
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