Shroom and Gloom Beginner Guide

The dungeon is a card table you walk through

Rooms are 3D spaces with hand-drawn foes. You still move, look, and interact like a first-person game. The difference is that opening a locked thing, lighting a torch, digging, or modifying a card is usually an Explore play, while hacking, roasting, and eating is a Combat play. If you treat every card as a combat swing, you stall in cold, locked rooms with a fat attack pile and no way through.

Win condition for session one

A good first run reaches a named fight or a quest checkpoint, dies with a grown starter, and tells you which pile starved. That is enough. Full card lists belong on cards. Named bosses belong on bosses. The next section is the split that actually fails if you ignore it.

Combat is a kitchen, not a shield wall

Attacks matter, but the store pitch is “less blocking, more eating.” A Combat Deck that only deals anonymous damage and never cooks leaves you with no food when the next room hits. Season, skewer, and roast are combat verbs that create the heal. Soup in a pot is the run-changer when several foes can go in together. Exact damage numbers stay off this page — we do not publish fake DPS.

Explore is how the dungeon becomes a build

Maps, lockpicks, campfires, shovels, screwdrivers, and similar tools live here. Explore plays open the next room, warm the path, dig for treasure, and rewrite cards you already own. A Combat-only beginner walks into a lock with a roast in hand and nothing that unlocks. Feed the Explore pile even when the last fight felt close — the next door is often an Explore problem.

The two-pile split in more depth, including how they starve each other: dual decks. Once you can name which pile you are holding, the next failure is healing like a traditional deckbuilder.

Fatal cooks better than leftover scraps

Public card language ties Roast to Fatal / food: a kill can create Toasty, which you store and eat later for Headpoints. That means the last hit is part of the heal economy, not just a cleanup animation. If you chip a mushroom down with random swings and never roast, you spent a combat without restocking the kitchen.

Headpoints are the real HP

The UI talks in Headpoints and max Headpoints, not a generic “life bar you block forever.” Food, eating, and some character kits grow or refill that pool. If a card says it heals, ask whether it is an eat, a camp rest, or a Foresight drip — they are not the same timing. Recipes, pots, and why roast beats panic blocking: eat & soup.

With a heal verb in mind, the next choice is which kit you are even holding.

Do not start on an unlock you have not earned

If the select screen only lights Paperboy, that is the tutorial. Community databases sometimes list extra class rows (Researcher, The Slob, and similar). Those names stay TBA on this beginner page until they are the five EA kits you can actually queue. Playable roster and unlock hooks: characters.

One Foresight per kit, not a third deck

Every class brings a distinct Foresight. Treat it as a run-long passive, not extra cards to mash. Paperboy’s job is still two decks plus one passive. If you grab three Foresight names and ignore Explore, you will still die in a locked cold room.

Warmth and Foresight are the two systems that look optional until a later room bills you for them.

Warm the path before the fight you want

If the next rooms look gloomsome, spend Explore on light and camp before you greed another combat card. Warmth is not a damage stat. It is permission to walk. Camp spots, torches, and why Explore owns this meter belong with the dual-deck page and the paths writeup once you leave the starter wing.

Slot Foresight like a relic, then stop shopping

A second Foresight that duplicates a job you already do is clutter. Feed-draw is for cooks. Start-of-explore Keen Eye is for people who actually Explore. After-combat heal is for messy fighters. Full trigger list: Foresight.

Run one still needs a fork when two good habits fight for the same play. That is the next section.

One habit that fixes most wipes

Before you play a Combat card in a new room, ask whether the room is even open, warm, and worth fighting. If the answer is no, that is an Explore question. If the answer is yes, the Combat question is “what food does this fight create?” not “how big is the number.”

Death is not a wipe of the account. The next section is what the death is for.

Quests are the unlock tree

Public quest names include pack goals (discover explore or combat cards, fill a campsite, beat Lekker Limbs, feed slop, rage damage) and bigger gates (reach the Gloom for a new path, clear Forgotten Path tunnels or beat Megashroom for a new character). Treat those as versioned EA goals, not a spoiler map. Track them on quests. Do not invent a skill tree to sit next to them — there isn’t one.

Two paths, not a world map

Pick one pathway and learn its pool. Forgotten Path vs Facility is a later decision once Paperboy can finish a dual-deck loop. Unique enemies and card pools are why swapping paths mid-beginner advice fails. Details: paths.

Where live patch talk lives

This wiki keeps durable rules. Today’s crash, a rotated invite, or an EA balance swing belongs on Discord (https://discord.gg/ZZspguu7Vu). After this page: dual decks then eat & soup. Hubs: guides · wiki.