Tombwater Beginner Guide (Top Tips and Tricks)

Tombwater is a 2D Western Souls-like blended with retro action adventure that’s heavily inspired by games like The Legend of Zelda and Bloodborne. As you’d expect, it does not hold your hand, guide you or explicitly tell you what to do. Here are the Top 15 Tips and Tricks I wish I knew before playing Tombwater.

Tombwater Beginner Guide

PICKING THE RIGHT CLASS - There are seven class in Tombwater that all take different approaches to gunslinging, melee and the occult. The most important thing you can do is to pick the class that suits your play style the most, but if you aren’t already committed, there are two classes that seem better than the rest: The Tinkerer and The Occultist. All classes start with a firearm and a blade, but the Occultist comes equipped with the Rune Knife, which lowers madness with each successful melee attack. In addition, The Occulist is one of the few classes that begins with a spell, which in this case is the smoke bolt. The Tinkerer is a pretty balanced class but has more effective craftables like explosives and potions, but also begins the game with a stick of dynamite and a tincture to make you more effective. This starts of you off on the right foot as these two items are fairly expensive in terms of ingredients and will take you a while to find.

SMASH AND DASH - The dash in Tombwater feels extremely satisfying and reminiscent to the movement in Hyper Light Drifter. It’s crisp, responsive and smooth. It can also smash through boxes and barrels that are littered all over the world of Tombwater. Not only is it gratifying to smash through boxes, but often times you will find something like a trinket or a small chest hanging out behind.

EXPLOSIVE BARRELS - There are also a fair amount of explosive barrels lying around the world too. You can use them to your advantage by shooting them when an enemy is near them, but you can also dash through them which will dismantle them safely. Choose accordingly.

LANTERN - When you pull into the Tombwater station, there will be an NPC, a campsite and a shop. You obviously can’t afford anything because you just arrived with empty pockets, but one of the things he has for sale is a lantern for $85, which you should absolutely prioritize as your first purchase in Tombwater. There will be loads of caves, sewers and other dark areas that you wont be able to explore without. As a bonus tip, vendors will evolve their stocks over the course of the game, so whenever you pass one, check out their latest offerings.

SWIPE WALLS - The world design of Tombwater is heavily influenced by the Metroidvania genre, which means that there are a lot of hidden paths. Swipe at any wall that you think looks peculiar. If you make a long trek to get into a room and it’s empty, there is a good chance, there is a false wall in the room. Also look for small indents on the room design, which will often lead to a hidden hallway.

DASH INTO WALLS - More of a continuation of the last tip, but often times when exploring the great outdoors, you might not realize that there is an entrance to a building because there is no indication and the world is overflowing with detail. As a result, try dashing into areas that are hard to see like the back or sides of a building.

BLACK BELL POSTS - You will notice these black bell posts located all around the world. There isn’t a prompt when you get near it, but push the action button when you are close by to interact with it. I won’t say what it is and you will need to find a special item for it to be useful, but you’ll be happy that you interacted with them. Some are free and some are a few dollars, which will be worth it later.

DON’T BUY WEAPONS - This might be hard to resist, but don’t buy weapons from the vendor, unless you feel the absolute need because you will find so many weapons in treasure chests around the world from exploring or from defeating bosses and mini bosses. In the back half of Tombwater, you’ll find some vendors with some pretty special weapons that have nice effects, but by that time you’ll have plenty of money and the decision will be obvious, but for the large majority of your time, you’re much better off saving your hard earned coins.

CRAFTING - Tombwater features crafting where you can build equipment and potions. Each item requires a crafting flask as well as a few rare resources that you will find around the world. You might think it’s a better idea to save your resources for a healing potion, but until you have the right resources craft whatever you can because it will be more helpful until you find the ingredients you need. Tombwater allows you to dismantle a crafted item and get 100% of the ingredients back, which means that when you finally find the right item, you can dismantle what you were using in the interim.

QUICKSILVER - Just like Hollow Knight, Tombwater uses the charm system and if you can find it, buy and equip the quicksilver charm. It’s one of the charms you will find early or from one of the first vendors you meet and it allows you to dash once and then hold for unlimited sprint. Tombwater embraces stamina from the souls-likes it was inspired by and using this charm will keep your stamina near full. You will also be doing a fair amount of exploring and being able to backtrack faster is always nice. It also only uses one charm slot, which is too good to pass up.

COAL - One of the items that you start the game with is a piece of homeward coal. It’s a very rare resource, so use it wisely, but using it can teleport you back to the last campfire that you saved at. This could be useful if it has been a while since your last campfire, you have a lot of money and you are running low on health flasks. This isn’t a limited use item, so feel free to use it when the time is right.

GHOST SEEDS - Another rare resource that you start with is a ghost seed. Tombwater is a souls-like, which means that you will need to do a corpse run to collect what you dropped upon death. You probably want to hold onto these until a little later in the game, but using a ghost seed can grab your spirit wraith without having to do the corpse run. You can find ghost seeds or purchase from certain vendors for around $30.

EXPLOSIVES - Just like Bloodborne, your arsenal will mostly consist of your gun and your blade, but don’t underestimate the power of a good explosive. There are lots of choices to craft from your standard bomb to a pack of dynamite. Make sure to craft some explosives because they are extremely handy during boss fights as they have the power to interrupt some of their powerful moves. Explosives and potions will fill up when you die or when you rest at a campsite, so don’t be shy to use them.

MINE CARTS - Later on in the game you will notice mine carts around. Things like trinkets you can find on the ground or campfires will have a button prompt show up on screen, however certain things that are very important and require the player to experiment with the world don’t have button prompts. You can hop in an empty mine craft, which can get you to places that you couldn’t access without.

FIRST UPGRADE - Tombwater is a heavily inspired by retro action adventurers and Fromsoftware titles, which means that it wants you to explore, get lost and follow your intuition. The map is also quite vague and if you find yourself stuck early on, your first upgrade will be in the Canyon Floor, which is located below the Canyon Settlement, just below the carnival. This should give you enough direction should you find yourself stuck early on.