Valley of Decay – How to Play

Wondering how the hell you play this game? This’ll teach you how to kill things and how the menus work!

Introduction

So, you’ve downloaded this game, but have no idea how to play? This guide will go through that in a pretty crappy, but probably teaching way so get ready for this to be really, really crap. This game just released at the time of writing, no guides were up, and I just figured this out myself.

Character

Once you start and (obviously) make an account you’ll want to make a character. The notable thing here is really the Birthsign. Your looks may actually matter, but I haven’t seen it matter due to the armor and crap all over me and other players. The Birthsign probably does something, but sadly I haven’t gone far enough to figure this out. If anyone knows, feel free to dm me or something.

Playing The Actual Game

Assuming you’ve made a character finally, you’ll want to actually play the game. You’ll want to load your character, and press enter on them. This’ll pull up a menu on the scroll in the center column of the screen. You may want to check public games if you want to play a game with others. If you prefer single player you should make yourself a game and password it to play solo. In the public game tab you should most likely avoid The Grid for now as it’s of no use to you as a new character.

If you decide to make a game, the game name and password is obviously up to you. The level is essentially a level of difficulty. I recommend keeping this to level 1 to start, but if you’re crazy feel free to give level 2 or higher for the crazier ones a shot.

If you instead decide to play a public game make sure the level isn’t super high (indicated by the number in the brackets) so you don’t get instantly destroyed and have equipment you can actually use.

Gameplay

Being in the actual game might look weird depending on the tileset/area type you get. You can get cavern/cave, islands, stuff like that.

At this point, I would recommend pressing F1, then typing -help. Once you’ve read through it, press F1 again, then press M to get out of that menu and stop typing into chat.

Arrow keys will move your character around.

Spacebar will attack and additionally interact with basically everything in the game. Spacebar in front of signs will display their text, in front of a chest will open it, etc.

The keys Q,W,E,and R will activate your abilities. These abilities can be changed by pressing A. This menu will be further explained in the next section.

S will open up your Stat Point menu. These stats are actually completely unknown to me, but most likely Brutality is physical dmg, Wisdom magic dmg (and possibly focus, the mana of this game), Vigor health, and Trust left to a mystery.

T will open your God Power menu as the help menu said. No clue what this is yet, DM me if you know and would like to tell me.

Finally, I will open up your inventory. Within your inventory you can obviously get rid of collected items, equip them, extract them (will be explained later in the guide), infuse (also explained later), and stash them. Stashing items will get rid of them from your personal inventory and brought to your stash. The stash is available in The Grid (covered later) and retrieved later from there.

Ability Menu

This is the ability menu. This menu allows you to change what ability you have, but seemingly by luck.

Pressing enter will move the line keeping to a (probably) predictable pattern changing the ability. Pressing delete (or del on your keyboard) will completely randomize the colors give you a random ability.

Pressing right will show you your ability’s and their effects, cooldowns, focus costs, etc.

Extraction, Essence, And Imbuing

This system is probably the lifeblood of this game as you get gear you want, and gear that’s probably way better than everything else due to the fact it’s what you want.

To use this system, you must first get an item, and extract it. This will take a random stat from it (excluding level requirement and attack speed) and convert it into an essence. The item extracted from will also be permanently lost. You can then sell the essence in the Auction House (explained in the next section), or infuse it into an item. Only items with no stats other than level requirement (or weapon speed) can be infused. This will open up a menu to allow you to select essences and put those stats onto the weapon. Use the left and right arrow keys to select an essence, and imbue to apply your essences onto the item permanently.

The Grid

Assuming you’ve gotten bored and want to do a bit more, head over to The Grid which is always listed as the first server in the Public Servers menu. The grid includes 3 interactables which have menus accessible by pressing space while facing them. Assuming you’ve spawned by them, you should see them immediately. For some reason, if you haven’t spawned by the NPC’s, head to the middle of the map as dictated by the minimap in the bottom-left corner.

The Highscore Table shows you your standing compared to literally everyone else and what character. Don’t access the highscore table unless you want to freeze your game. (If you do this, Alt+F4 or do a similar method.)

The Auction House will allow you to sell your essences and buy other peoples essences also.

The Stash will allow you to view and take your stashed items. (Press escape to exit this menu.)

These menus are simple enough to where they will not be explained further.