Overcoming the bosses requires a keen sense of strategy, so strengthen your character with purpose or suffer a swift end to your journey.

While it doesn’t reinvent the wheels of its genre, Pugstorm’s Core Keeper emerges confidently out of early access and I’m looking forward to revisiting it over and over again in the coming years.

Boss order and world exploration are theoretically quite flexible, given this is a sandbox game. There is currently only one solid gate to progress: defeating the first 3 bosses. Which separates this guide into two parts.

Standard type character is strongly recommended over hardcore, for all players. It is also recommended that new players start in a normal mode world. Hard mode currently doubles the health and damage of all enemies and bosses, for little to no pay-off.

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Which isn't to say there aren't genuinely spooky areas and scary moments. There are ominous, off-screen sounds when you get close to one of Core Keeper's bosses. Breaking through a wall and suddenly seeing you're at the edge of a massive chasm is alarming, and building a narrow bridge across it doesn't feel comfy at all (even though you can't actually fall in).

Taking to Twitter, Core Keeper developer Pugstorm has announced that the sandbox survival title has surpassed 3 Core Keeper Gameplay million players. In November last year, while the game was still in early access, it was announced that it had sold 2 million copies.

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Excellent game. As you probably know, it's basically a top-down version of Terraria or Minecraft, but in my opinion vastly superior to both. Minecraft has hideous visuals, while Core Keeper is beautiful to look at. Terraria has the infuriating issue of being CONSTANTLY bombarded by enemy attacks, always preventing you from doing what you are trying to do. Core Keeper, conversely, is much more respectful of the player, typically allowing you to engage enemies on your own terms. It's also easier to prevent enemies spawning where you don't want them to be. So you have the freedom to build a house, craft items, farm animals and plants, and cook food without being constantly bothered (unless you set up your base in a spot with a lot of enemy spawn tiles, but you can remove those to "cleanse" it anyway as mentioned above).

Skull of the Corrupted Shaman at his sigil in a throne room arena. This is found in The Forgotten Ruins at a range of 350 tiles from The Core. Malugaz is an extremely tough boss who will probably still be a challenge while using equipment from the outer biomes. Fight strategy guide.

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I chose this role because it looked cute, but the food-related stat bonuses are delightful. A certain type of spicy flower grants faster running, for example, and looks a bit like a burrito when cooked. Eating food is also key for filling up your “hunger” bar and staying alive.

The Crafting Station can be built for x8 Wood in the base menu. This can be opened by pressing the “tab” button on the keyboard.