Introduction

This will serve as a guide for anyone new, or anyone struggling to survive in the 7DRL version of Dimlit. The game is different than most and its goals may not be so clear, especially in the beginning. Something I hope to change in future releases.

I'm going to walk through playing a game and share my thoughts along the way. I'm playing on "Sun" difficulty, which means the world has had thousands of turns pass already. Since the entire game scales on turns passing, this increases the initial difficulty. In higher difficulties your turn count still starts from zero, but there is a hidden addition in the background.

Starting the Game

You start off in the game with a single structure providing light (the Y), and a visible cluster of crystals (the asterisk).  You can walk into the structure and it gives you the structure's status and a brief intro.

The goal of the game is to survive as long as possible. In order to do that you need to build a larger base and spread out. There is a grace period in the beginning, but after that, grues and the darkness will challenge what you've built by attacking or hampering your structures.

You cannot survive long with a single structure or small base.

First Objective — Expansion

This is something I like to do, but you may discover other ways. Expanding helps with a couple things. First, it helps with collecting more crystals. This is because your glowsuit runs out of power in the darkness, effectively tethering you to light. When you expand your light, you expand your leash which helps collect crystals. Secondly, expanding out gives you a second place to fall back to if you first base is falling.

I decided to expand westward after collecting a decent amount of crystals in the north.

Unlocking More Structures

After collecting more crystals in the east, I still need more crystal production, ideally somewhere close I don't have to run off to. There's a tech structure that helps me achieve this: "gather tech." I usually like to go this option, but it isn't the only way.

Most tech structures in the beginning require power. One of the first structures you can build is a Power Structure. It costs 8 crystals and provides one power to a single tower. The tower must be one square away horizontally or vertically. You can change the link by bumping into the power structure and selecting the link option in the menu. There you can unlink or change links.

Power structures autolink to a random structure they're next to when they're place. But they don't autolink if you place a new structure next to them—you have to manually link to that new structure.

This is right after building the gather tech and looking at the info. The structure says it needs two 1 power so I built a power structure. The 'T's are Power Structures, and the dollar sign is the Harvester.

The Harvester increases the frequency of crystals spawning in a radius. Ideally, the less light around the structure, the better. But I'm playing conservative and outlier structures get hit the hardest.

Continuing to Expand and Build

After this short beginning I have a lot of ways I can go. I decided to go more defensive and picked up the "guard tech" and "intermediate tech." The screenshot below is right after picking those both up. The 'I' and the 'G' are the intermediate and guard tech structures respectively.

I hear growls.

At this point I know I'm going to be attacked. The '#'s are walls.

Yep.

You can repair broken structures. If you don't, a grue can attack it again and destroy it. The attack didn't last long and I decided to build a second base to ensure I had a backup.

I decided to build in the west.

Right after building my second base a storm rolled in and knocked out all of the structures. My only choice was to run back to my other base.

The 'X' is an Area Light Structures, the 'A' is an Advanced Tech Structure, and the zero is a Storage Structure.

The End

I'll go over how I lost briefly but want to avoid spoiling too much. The end came shortly after that, and more from a mistake on my own. I made it back to the main base and it was under attack.

Here you can see quite a mess. The starting structure ('Y') is down, so it has created quite an interesting shape of lights. Other structures are down too. It's easy to tell because structures have a black background when they're not running for some reason.

I managed to survive past this and repair all the structures. Then I decided to go east to collect more crystals, waiting for the Harvester to do its thing

I forgot to charge my glowsuit.

At this point I'm screwed. There is a grue right there and he's aggressive because he can withstand the light, and one hit from him will kill me.

I try my luck.

Nope. I avoided the one in the light, but there was another one that poked me from the outside of the light. Game over.

Conclusion

Well, there's a taste of the gameplay. It's limited, and there are some kinks, but that's pretty normal for a 7DRL. However, the idea has a ton of potential, and I'm definitely going to explore this much further.

Goodluck!