Monster Train – Dante’s Inferno: How to Beat All Bosses Before their Combat Phases

This is a guide for easily earning the achievements to defeat each of the five bosses before their respective combat phases:

• Dead-alus
• Ta-ta Talos
• Li-Fel-less
• Archpocalypse
• Sans Seraph

The Setup

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For this run, you will want the following mutators:

• Dante’s Comedy
• Highly Reactive
• Fast Draw

The primary clan will be Umbra, with Primordium as champion. My recommended allied clan is Awoken, with Rootseeds.

Covenant Rank 2 is recommended.

How It Works

Dante is the key to this run, with the goal of maximizing his multistrike by increasing his damage.

Highly Reactive causes all triggered abilities on units to trigger a second time. In particular, this affects the following:

• Dante’s Multistrike – Dante now receives 2x Multistrike for each blight card. As you start with 3 Dante’s Candle and 1 Deadweight (for Covenant Rank 2), this adds up to 8x Multistrike for 9 total attacks.
• Eaten – All units (including Primordium) are eaten twice, for double the effects.

Due to Dante’s Intrinsic ability, he will always be in your starting hand, along with Primordium. They should be played in the bottom row together, with no units in front of Dante, ensuring he benefits from the eaten bonus.

Early Strategy

The Aggressive Edible track is the best upgrade option for Primordium, followed by Superfood. With only the first Aggressive Edible upgrade, Dante can deal a total of 207 damage in the second round. Due to Fast Draw, this will take out almost any second round wave before they can eliminate your glass cannon.

The biggest challenge is getting through that first round. Dante’s starting damage of 27 (plus 3 or 10 from Primordius) will get through some initial waves, but not all. As long as they do not have the damage to kill Dante, you should be okay. Otherwise you will need to try another option to keep him alive until round 2:

• Use a Train Steward as a blocker. This should ONLY be done if it will take enough damage to die, as you do not want it to receive the eaten benefits in place of Dante. Alternatively, you may be able to play the Train Steward behind Dante if it adds enough damage to kill an enemy.
• KIll enemies with direct damage. Your starting Plinks are the most likely option here, but depending on the random cards you received, you may have other options.
• Boosting damage. Again the starting Rootseeds are the best bet, but you may have some additional options from your random cards. While it’s normally preferable to apply the boosts to Primordius, you may need to apply directly to Dante the first turn.
• Deploy Primordius and Dante to the middle row. If you are facing units with haste, this will need to be the top row.

Your early game priorities should be routing toward a Merchant of Steel to upgrade Dante. Ideally you will find a +10 damage upgrade, with which you should be set. Only apply a defensive upgrade (+HP or Damage Shield) to him if you truly need it, and be sure to save at least one slot for the damage upgrade. The expensive upgrades are likely not worth it. He is already Quick, Endless will only come into play if you’ve made a mistake, and an additional multistrike is not nearly as good as the damage boost at this point.

Only draft cards if they will be helpful, as you are better off keeping the deck small. You will only want 1-2 other units, as the plan is to duplicate Dante. Morselmaker is one of your best options, as it will create a total of 4 morsels per round, for a total increase of +24 Damage/HP each round for Dante. Morsels created can exceed the floor limit, up to a maximum of 7 units. Morselmaster is another good selection, particularly if you have a fair amount of morsel generating spells.

Spells drafted should either provide a stat boost or morsels. Utility cards such as Space Prism or Engine Upgrade can also be helpful.

Challenges

Once you have successfully upgraded Dante with +10 (or +20) Damage, and duplicated him at least once, you should easily roll through Hell. The only real challenges at this point come in two forms: Spikes and Stealth.

As this build is not dependent upon getting extensive upgrades or particular artifacts, there is little need to take on any trials. Spikes should be avoided at all costs, as should the trial that adds armor, particularly in earlier levels. Trials that add damage or attacks are fairly easy to beat, as is the one that fills all floors on turn one (you will need to deploy a Dante to the top level, however).

For the most part, spikes can be handled similarly to the early survival techniques. In particular, deploying Dante/Primordium to higher levels of the train will allow him the opportunity to gain strength before taking on enemies with spikes. Pursuing the Superfood upgrade path with Primordium will also greatly alleviate this issue. Discretionary use of direct damage spells will also limit spikes damage, as will boosting Dante with Morsel Jewelers.

Many of these same strategies can be used to deal with stealth, particularly deploying at higher levels in the train to allow enemy stealth to wear off. For the boss with 8 levels of stealth, it is highly recommended to either use multiple Dantes, with the expectation that the first one will die as the boss uses up its stealth. Be sure that the attack for the higher one has been boosted through either Primordium or morsels. Alternatively, you can succeed with a single Dante by relying on damage shields through a Superfood Primordium or Morsel Jewelers.

Bear in mind that should you fail to anticipate either of these challenges, your pyre may still be capable of eliminating the threat on its own.

General Guidelines

As stated, this build is fairly robust, and succeeds reliably without dependence upon specific upgrades, cards, or artifacts. After you have upgraded and duplicated Dante, here are some additional tips to consider:

• I recommend upgrading floor size first. The second upgrade can either be another floor size upgrade, or an ember upgrade. Draw increase is not particularly helpful, as your only critical cards (Dante & Primordium) will be in your initial hand.
• Remove your train stewards and non-upgraded starting cards as you can.
• Focus on spells that are easily played (i.e. low cost). Razorsharp Edge is good, but Steel Enhancer is better. Packed Morsels and Making of a Morsel are also solid spell choices. Holdover is great on Steel Enhancer, but also on Rootseeds or Making of a Morsel if they have been dropped to 0 cost.
• Apply stat upgrades to Primordium rather than Dante in order to maximize the boost.
• Upgrade your Plinks with increased magic power (even if it adds consume).
• Healing and Regen should not be needed.
• You only need 2-3 Dantes. Any additional duplications would be better used on Deadweight (+2 Multistrike for all Dantes) or Morselmaker.
• Useful artifacts include Hammered Chestplates, Pyrestone Housing, and Commemorative Spike.
• If you have to reserve a Dante’s Candle, it is not the end of the world. The damage is minimal, and you are unlikely to have any enemies reach your pyre floor.

No particular strategy is needed to defeat the bosses before their combat phases. With the boosts to Dante, he should have a damage output of several thousand per round.

Variations

While I believe the version presented above is the strongest, other variations can also succeed quite easily. In particular, the allied clan can be flexible, with the Melting Remnant providing a strong alternative. In this way, the build can also be useful for quickly reaching level 10 on any clans you are still working with.

Additionally, if you want to explore different mutators, the “Fast Draw” choice could be swapped out, with the intention of applying the Quick upgrade to Dante through a Merchant of Steel. This is a riskier play, but could allow for some fun alternatives.

I hope you found this guide helpful!