Dandy Ace is an extremely challenging and fast-paced roguelike card game. Its combination of deck-building and roguelike mechanics make for an exhilarating and frantic experience. With plenty of enemies to blast through and a multitude of tricky levels to navigate, Dandy Ace is not an easy ride. Fortunately, having a handful of beginner tips handy will help even the most casual of roguelike players.

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From knowing what cards to upgrade to what to spend your money on, there are a lot of overwhelming decisions to make on the fly during any given run in Dandy Ace. Fortunately, these helpful beginner tips will get you through some of the tougher initial levels and prepare you for the challenges ahead.

9 Some Cards Are Better As Upgrades

Dandy Ace Beginner Tips two pink cards next to each other with a grey section on the second card highlighted and a menu and colourful icons at the bottom of the image

In Dandy Ace, you can only carry a limited amount of cards at any given time. As a result, any that you find after you reach that maximum may not make it into your main abilities. However, this doesn’t mean that they have no use. Every card comes with an additional upgrade ability that, when equipped to another card, imbues it with an additional effect.

From making enemies burn to enhancing a card’s overall strength, these upgrade abilities can be incredibly helpful in seeing a card reach its full potential. But equipping any random card to another is completely futile. You need to be careful in picking which cards go with which. For example, equipping Bubble Trouble to Five of a Kind will make its spammable flurry of attacks that much more frantic. Choose wisely when you upgrade a card and make sure each one you pick suits it perfectly.

8 Always Keep Moving

Dandy Ace Beginner Tips an isometric perspective of Dandy Ace running away from two blasts behind him and silver candle enemies with blue flames to his right with various icons, a health bar and a map along the bottom of the image

It is incredibly easy to get overwhelmed in Dandy Ace, especially during later levels. While certain cards and abilities make Dandy Ace a beginner-friendly roguelike, it can become extremely challenging. This is in big part due to the onslaught of enemies that spawn around every corner. As the majority of them fire some form of projectile, the number of things that can hurt you on screen can quickly multiply. That’s why you should always keep moving.

In the same way that strafing and moving constantly in the Doom games is highly encouraged, ensuring that you never stay still in Dandy Ace can often be crucial for your survival. Staying still for too long can see you be bombarded with a flurry of projectiles and melee attacks that will promptly eat away your health. If you’re not too careful, you’ll get overwhelmed and defeated before you know it.

7 Spend Your Shards Wisely

Dandy Ace Beginner Tips a blue menu displaying the various upgrades that can be bought with shards with a female magicians assistant to the right of it and text reading "can we go home now" coming from her

Shards can be used to purchase permanent upgrades that persist throughout each run. While whenever you die you lose all of your cards, these upgrades will remain with you even when you start the run all over again. You collect shards by beating enemies, however, they’re usually in short supply. While later runs will net you more shards, in the early game shards can be hard to come by and the upgrades tend to be pricey.

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This is why prioritizing which upgrades you sink your shards into is important. You can put any number of shards towards any number of upgrades. For example, you could put three of your six shards into one upgrade and three into another. But diversifying your shards may not always be a good thing as it can delay getting a crucial upgrade. So, spending them wisely and thinking ahead about what upgrade will best benefit you is necessary.

6 Make Sure To Heal & Refill

Dandy Ace Beginner an isometric view of Dandy Ace stood in front of a pot of tea in a circus environment with tents either side and in front of him and a series of icons and a minimap at the bottom of the screen

The primary way you will heal in Dandy Ace is through drinking tea. After you beat the first level in Dandy Ace you’ll be given this highly essential item that can save you from certain death at a moment's notice. However, once used in a run, it can’t be used again until refilled. It can only be refilled during the breaks in between each level, so of course, refilling it is a priority.

However, it isn’t so simple. You see, after each run, your health doesn’t automatically regenerate. You will need to manually heal with a cup of tea first before heading out into the next level. So, healing and then refilling your cups of tea before venturing out into combat is an absolutely necessary task, or else you’ll likely succumb to death and be forced to start all over again.

5 Eat Every Cupcake

Dandy Ace Beginner an isometric view of Dandy Ace stood in front of a small cupcake surrounded by tables and chairs with details of the cupcake's effects just above him and various icons and a map on the bottom of the screen

Another way you can heal in Dandy Ace is through eating cupcakes. Sure, it sounds like an odd and peculiar way to heal, but that’s what makes Dandy Ace so special and one of the best roguelikes available. These cupcakes are dropped by enemies when they’re killed although admittedly very infrequently. Helpfully, the game’s narrator will let you know whenever one appears just in case you missed its bright pink sheen.

Eating these cupcakes, regardless of how little health you’ve lost is essential, as it's rare they’ll appear. As it's likely some of the more inexperienced players, and even veterans of the genre, will lose a lot of health in their first few runs, eating as many of these colorful cupcakes is essential in order to survive.

4 Vary Your Status Effects

Dandy Ace Beginner Tips an isometric view of Dandy Ace stood next to a damaged enemy who has a health bar and two status effect symbols above it with icons and a map at the bottom of the screen

There are multiple status effects present in Dandy Ace and they’re almost always helpful. From burning, poison, and bleeding to binding and stunning, these status effects will greatly assist you in clearing out the many enemies you’re likely to face. However, each card will usually only deal one or two status effects. So, upgrading your cards to deal additional status effects becomes incredibly important.

There is nothing more satisfying than hitting an enemy with Titan Punch equipped with Crescendo Fireworks to not only make the enemy vulnerable and stunned but also burned. There are a number of these kinds of combinations that you can make with the vast array of cards at your disposal. So, varying your status effects within each card can make each blow that much more devastating.

3 Try To Dash Through Enemies

Dandy Ace Beginner Tips an isometric view of Dandy Ace dashing through two damaged enemies with a blue blast of light surrounding him as he does and an ominous enemy tower to the right of them

Dashing is an extremely important technique to master in Dandy Ace. It’ll allow you to keep moving during combat or get you to safety should you need to flee. However, it also deals damage which is something a lot of newcomers may not realize at first. By dashing directly through a series of enemies, you can deal a significant amount of damage all while remaining entirely invulnerable.

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It can be quite difficult to get the hang of, especially as aiming precisely where you want to go can be a little tricky when you’re in a hurry. However, it is definitely something worth getting your head around and will become invaluable the more you play. As Time Warp is one of the default cards, this is, fortunately, something that you’ll be able to practice repeatedly from the outset.

2 Practice, Practice, Practice

Dandy Ace Beginner Tips a game over screen for Dandy Ace with Dandy Ace in the centre lying down defeated against a warped pink and purple chequered background and text above him reading Game Over

Dandy Ace is a challenging but rewarding roguelike card game that requires a lot of time and patience from the player. Like with most roguelikes, the first couple of runs are the hardest. They’re best used to get to grips with the game’s core mechanics and understand enemy attack patterns and weaknesses.

Taking the first few hours of Dandy Ace to practice your abilities and strategies is incredibly important, even if you feel like you’ve mastered it already. The later levels get increasingly difficult and as a result, the more unprepared players are likely to get overwhelmed and defeated quite quickly. Practicing and keeping prepared is essential if you want to survive Dandy Ace’s challenging levels and get out in one piece.

1 Buying Cards Is Pointless

Dandy Ace Beginner Tips an isometric view of Dandy Ace stood next to a wooden wagon selling cards with one of the cards descriptions appearing on the right of the screen with a brightly lit teleporter on the bottom left of the screen and a dimly lit machine on the bottom right

During each run, you’ll likely come across a card shop. It’ll sell a variety of cards all of which range in tier and damage. Some of them may be cards you haven’t seen before, while others may be better versions of the ones you already have. However, no matter which ones you come across, don’t bother buying any of them. Buying cards is pointless.

As you naturally come across a range of cards throughout each run, buying them isn’t really necessary. While the ones you can purchase may be a little stronger, holding on to your money can actually be more worthwhile, especially if you have the Goldmancer Ring Trinket equipped. Before buying a card, make sure you’ve scoured every corner of the map you can just in case you find it out in the wild.

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