Beginner Tips And Tricks For Dome Keeper

2022-10-26 10:32:00 By : Ms. Mary Zheng

Dome Keeper isn't an easy game and doesn't make a lot of its important mechanics very clear. To help we put together some important tips.

Dome Keeper is an indie tower defense roguelike where you split your time between mining for materials and fighting off waves of aliens, with some base management vis-à-vis improving your defenses and mining capabilities.

Related: The Best Tower Defense Games, Ranked

Though the game is simple to pick up, start, and even get engrossed in - to the point that hours might pass without you noticing, the game doesn’t go very deep into explaining its mechanics. For the most part, this is fine, since the game flows well. However, it doesn't exactly spell out the mechanics for you. So if you want to be a master miner or at least avoid some pitfalls that might just result in your Dome being reduced to shards of glass, here are some things you should know before starting Dome Keeper.

One of the first upgrades you should buy is the Hostile Proximity Meter because if you don’t, the only warning you'll have of approaching enemies is a blinky enemy icon when they are already attacking. The upgrade allows you to plan your delves much better and make the most of your time before returning home to defend.

With that being said, you shouldn’t wait until the meter empties and the enemy icon starts blinking to go home, especially if you’re more than a few blocks deep. When that meter starts getting low, head home and wait in battle mode until the wave comes. It’s better to lose a little time mining if it means you don’t take free hits because chances to heal are limited and precious.

While it might be tempting to go whole-hog into buffing your Keeper or your mining devices, keep in mind that your weapon is your main defense against the enemy hordes and staying alive.

While you’ll want to keep a good balance between the mining and defense aspects of the game, it’s essential in the early to mid-game to increase the movement speed and power of the Laser and the Slice, while also upgrading the Stab abilities on the Sword to the second level quickly. If you invest in these upgrades, you can coast on them for a while, while boosting your mining abilities and then go back and finish upgrading your weapons later.

The Cobalt mineral, which for some reason is magenta instead of the expected blue, is a rare mineral and one of the few reliable methods of healing in the game. Cobalt is also used for getting defensive upgrades for the Dome, either damage mitigation or emergency health regen for the Laser and Sword Dome, respectively.

Related: The Strangest Ways To Heal In Video Games

However, outside those two uses, Cobalt doesn't actually figure into any other upgrades or functions (unless you’re in Prestige Mode). So once you have both levels of the defensive upgrades, feel free to use Cobalt to heal to full health, since you won’t have any other uses for it otherwise.

The best offense is a good defense, a maxim that holds especially true for the Sword Dome. You might think your primary means of dispatching ranged enemies is the ranged Stab ability, but quickly you’ll find that unless you maxed Stab, or you use it in tandem with the debilitating fog ability of the Repellant, it’s not quite adequate for fending off a ranged assault.

However, even just one level of the Reflection upgrade will allow you to bounce back most ranged attacks like lethal tennis balls, with a high chance to kill whoever shot them. Just keep in mind that it won’t reflect flesh globs or lightning strikes produced by certain enemies.

When you want to hit enemies in melee range with the Sword, you do it by moving the sword around the dome to strike them. The distance the sword travels affects the amount of damage it inflicts when it makes contact with an enemy, gaining more damage the further it travels.

That’s the basics, but if you want a more accurate gauge of how hard you’re about to hit, look at the sword. As it moves and gains power, it will glow white, reaching max power when opaque. This is especially useful when you have a few upgrades on the sword, since you’ll find you actually need to move less to reach max power, and you can better figure out the minimum movement needed for maximum damage.

It’s not clearly laid out for you, but those nifty Gadgets you find in the mines - Drillbert, Stun Laser, Lift, etc. - are not only super useful, but also you can upgrade them to be more effective.

Related: Game Gadgets We Wish We Could Try Out, Ranked

Just scroll down past the basics to the upgrade menu to power up your Gadgets, usually with a combination of Water and Iron, and make them go from good to great.

Given that even at the lowest difficulty and map size Dome Keeper is no pushover, you won’t find this out for a while but: the larger the map, the more switches are required to unlock the artifact before you can take it home.

So, if the artifact is inaccessible after two switches, you need to find more. There’s usually an extra switch per map size above the first one.

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A Bachelor of Science in Journalism and lover of all games, Chris originally got into games journalism as part of the longest and least thought out scheme to get into E3 and has since developed a love for journalism and the written word. Never got those E3 tickets, though.