In this guide, I’ll share the most useful information for Drunken Rogue, including the playable characters, important skills, item interactions, general progression tips, Infinite Maze, Hell Mode, and several achievement requirements.
The game still has a lot of mechanics that are not immediately obvious, so some of the best strategies come from understanding how different systems interact. I’ll focus on the practical information you can use while playing rather than simply listing every mechanic.
Drunken Rogue Beginner Guide – Characters, Skills
Drunken Rogue currently has two playable characters: Rita and Endo.
Rita is available from the beginning, while Endo is unlocked after clearing the Drunken Cave.
The two characters are much more different than they initially appear. They have different stats, item pools, dialogue, and progression systems.
One particularly important difference is their relationship with songs. Endo has access to 15 sobering songs, while Rita only has the Frozen Air song.
Rita
Rita is the starting character, but don’t assume that means she is simply the beginner character.
Her system gives you more freedom to create different builds because she gains panel allocation points as she levels and receives talent points every few levels.
This makes Rita more flexible, but it also means you need to understand her mechanics properly to get the most out of her.
Compared with Endo, Rita has more ways to manipulate her drunkenness through talent allocation.
The problem is that controlling drunkenness effectively becomes increasingly important at higher difficulties.
Rita’s Panel and Talent System
Rita receives panel allocation points whenever she levels up.
She also receives a skill or talent point every 1 + 2×n levels.
In long battles, this can give Rita more available points than Endo.
However, Endo’s Cursed Seal system can provide stronger scaling in many situations.
After the update, Rita does have a stronger permanent panel advantage in later stages of regular dungeons, so she shouldn’t be dismissed simply because Endo has more straightforward scaling.
Half-Drunken Swordsman
Half-Drunken Swordsman is one of Rita’s important talent paths.
Its main purpose is to help Rita deal with dangerous situations while also giving her more control over intoxication and hallucination-related mechanics.
This path eventually leads to some extremely powerful abilities.
Stealth Evasion Technique
Stealth Evasion Technique is unlocked through the Half-Drunken Swordsman path.
This is one of Rita’s most powerful defensive abilities.
When its requirements are met, it can automatically avoid fatal instant-death effects and other lethal damage.
What makes it particularly interesting is that it can work against more situations than the description initially suggests.
It can potentially save Rita from fatal damage caused by things such as monster meat or poison damage.
Because of this, Stealth Evasion isn’t simply an instant-death counter. It can function as a powerful general-purpose survival mechanic.
Dual Wielding
Dual Wielding is unlocked through:
Half-Drunken Swordsman → Stealth Evasion Technique → Dual Wielding
As the name suggests, it allows Rita to equip and benefit from two weapons simultaneously.
You receive the stat bonuses from both weapons, and relevant weapon effects can also contribute at the same time.
It requires a significant investment in prerequisite points, but it can be one of the strongest and most enjoyable upgrades available to Rita.
If you’re building specifically around weapons, Dual Wielding is definitely worth considering.
Big Wine Sac
Big Wine Sac is one of the drunkenness-related talents that looks more useful on paper than it feels in actual gameplay.
Its hallucination-related mechanics can become problematic because the hallucination rate can exceed 100%, even though the interface only displays up to 100%.
Increasing the drunkenness cap by delaying alcohol rewards can also create complicated situations.
At higher difficulties, relying on Big Wine Sac as a core strategy can therefore become unreliable.
Drink or Die
Drink or Die is another Rita ability that involves gambling with alcohol.
In theory, it sounds like a way to turn a dangerous situation into an advantage.
In practice, I wouldn’t rely on it as the foundation of a high-difficulty build.
Your alcohol supply is limited by progression and resource trade-offs, so depending on this ability too heavily can leave you struggling later in the dungeon.
Weapon Exchange Ticket
After acquiring the relevant skill, you receive a Weapon Exchange Ticket.
Using the ticket randomly gives you a weapon from Rita’s weapon pool, with the available pool influenced by your current floor.
It can be useful, but it’s not always something you should immediately spend.
On lower floors, you may be better off waiting for a weapon to appear naturally as a reward.
On higher floors, the random nature can produce an underwhelming weapon.
I would consider saving it for situations where you have very few weapon options, especially if you’re trying to establish a dual-wielding build.
Odor Survey
Odor Survey provides a significant boost to Sensing.
Its main benefit becomes more noticeable in dark environments, where improved sensing can help you deal with hidden dangers.
The downside is that removing the darkness-related reward comes at the cost of some information.
I would treat this as more of an emergency or utility investment rather than a mandatory early upgrade.
Scent Survey
Scent Survey provides additional Sensing and can automatically warn you about the specific name of the next trap.
This can be useful because you can combine the information with the encyclopedia and potentially determine how many points or resources you’ll need.
However, simply knowing which trap is coming doesn’t necessarily mean you can avoid it.
For that reason, Scent Survey is more valuable for players who otherwise invest very little into Sensing and want a way to prepare for dangerous traps.
Treasure Hunter
Treasure Hunter is one of the more powerful Rita talents.
Its reward-level bonuses scale as follows:
- Level 1: +30%
- Level 2: +60% total
- Level 3: +100% total
- Level 4: an additional 50% over the previous levels
The important part is that the effect applies whenever you see a reward.
Because of the game’s delay system, the reward-level increase can affect the eventual delayed result as well.
This makes Treasure Hunter considerably more useful than its basic percentage description might suggest.
Combining it with items such as Four-Leaf Clover can make the reward system scale quickly.
Hallucination Dialogue
This talent adds dialogue to the hallucinations you encounter.
Each hallucination can have several lines of dialogue.
At first, this might seem like a purely cosmetic ability, but it can occasionally provide useful information.
For example, if the hallucination is Ultimate Fine Wine, one of its dialogue lines can reveal which actual crisis it corresponds to.
It isn’t a major combat mechanic, but it can still help you identify what you’re dealing with.
Endo
Endo is unlocked by clearing the Drunken Cave.
Although Endo initially looks like the more flashy character, the character is actually very straightforward and powerful.
If you’re struggling with an EX chapter, switching to Endo can make the experience considerably easier.
Endo’s progression revolves around Cursed Seals rather than Rita’s talent allocation system.
Endo’s Seal System
Endo starts with two free slots and two Rita’s Aid slots.
Instead of receiving normal stat points from leveling, Endo receives Seal allocation points.
The basic Seals provide stat bonuses.
Using a Seal gives Endo a small permanent increase to the associated stat while also providing a much larger temporary boost to the current floor’s stats.
This makes Endo particularly good at burst progression and adapting to the requirements of individual floors.
How Endo Uses Powerful Seals
Endo can acquire additional Seal-type items.
When a higher-level Seal becomes available, it can replace a lower-level Seal in the system.
The stronger Seal can then be used repeatedly by spending the required points.
This creates an important strategy around delaying powerful Seal rewards.
Instead of immediately taking every reward, you can delay certain items and use them later when their value is much higher.
Delayed Seal Rewards
Delayed rewards are especially important for Endo.
Even when a Seal reward is delayed and moved into another reward tier, the Seal can upgrade based on the new tier.
This means you can strategically delay powerful Seals and claim them when you need a stronger version.
One particularly useful source is the highest-level Lamp Demon.
Its reward pool contains high-level Seals, allowing Endo to select a Seal from the appropriate pool.
Strengthening Endo’s Seal Pool
Even when Endo cannot immediately use a newly acquired Cursed Seal directly, obtaining the Seal can still strengthen the corresponding Seal in Endo’s existing pool according to its star rating.
This is an important progression mechanic because acquiring a stronger Seal can improve future uses even if you don’t immediately equip it.
Important Item Effect Interactions
Some item descriptions in Drunken Rogue can be misleading if you interpret them too literally.
For example, an item that says it makes you immune to a particular type of damage does not necessarily make you immune to instant death.
This distinction matters for effects such as petrification, curses, and other status-related dangers.
True Invulnerability Items
Items such as the Ring of Immortality provide forced invulnerability.
These effects can prevent instant death and display a message indicating that you aren’t going to die yet.
The Invincible Ring works similarly.
Rita’s Stealth Evasion can also provide a comparable effect when its conditions are satisfied.
So, when building a defensive setup, don’t confuse normal damage immunity with true invulnerability.
Multi-Copy Machine
The Multi-Copy Machine can become extremely powerful in longer dungeons.
It allows you to duplicate a large number of items and can significantly accelerate your development in the Infinite Maze.
However, there is an important interaction to remember.
The item duplicated by the machine is the Break Reward.
If you use the Magic Hand to steal the reward instead, you won’t receive the duplication bonus.
What Can the Multi-Copy Machine Duplicate?
The duplication effect can apply to a surprisingly broad range of rewards.
This includes equipment dropped by merchants and rewards obtained from destroying Fallen Demons.
Because of this, the machine can become one of the central tools for long Infinite Maze runs.
Merchant Interactions
The Merchant is technically a creature card, meaning certain forced-destruction effects can destroy it.
Doing so can provide access to a large number of items and potentially cursed items depending on the star level.
Merchant rewards can also benefit from the duplication bonus provided by the Multi-Copy Machine.
Because of these interactions, merchants can become an important source of items during longer runs.
Be Careful With Artifact Merchants
I would be extremely careful before destroying an Artifact Merchant.
Doing so can cause curses to be applied to all items and may result in an instant-death ambush on the following floor.
The resulting danger can require extremely high Sensing and leave you with very little room for error.
Unless you know exactly what you’re doing, I wouldn’t destroy the Artifact Merchant simply for additional rewards.
Ambush and Instant Trap Priority
There is an important priority rule involving trap effects.
The attribute that says always triggers Ambush or Instant Trap has a higher priority than an attribute saying the effect doesn’t trigger.
So, if you’re combining multiple items that modify trap behavior, you need to account for this priority rather than assuming the immunity effect will always win.
Removing Negative Effects
When you reach certain progression points such as a level shift or resurrection, the game removes non-permanent negative effects.
This can include:
- Hallucinations
- Poison
- Charm
- Curses
- Other temporary debuffs
Because of this, you can sometimes afford to take more risks when you’re close to a rest or resurrection point.
Rest Stops and Debuff Removal
Rest stops are especially valuable because reaching them immediately removes non-permanent debuffs.
If you’re close to a rest point, it can sometimes be worth pushing through a dangerous situation rather than spending valuable resources to remove every temporary effect immediately.
Experience and Crisis Rewards
Experience gained from resolving a crisis is based on its danger level.
This means delaying certain crises can potentially increase the amount of experience you gain, assuming you are confident that you’ll still be able to defeat or resolve them.
There is an important exception involving alien monster challenge cards.
These can provide experience based on the floor level minus one, and multiple cards can refresh at once.
If your build is strong enough, these challenges can therefore be a great source of experience in high-level Infinite Maze floors.
Minecart Warning
Be careful when forcibly destroying a minecart.
The game considers this an action similar to riding the minecart.
On high-risk floors, that can trigger dangerous consequences and potentially result in instant death.
I would avoid destroying minecarts unless you understand exactly what the action will trigger.
Alcohol Restoration
If your alcohol limit is unlimited, using a Restore All Alcohol item can increase your alcohol by 1,000.
This means you can potentially stack thousands of alcohol for scoring purposes.
This is mainly relevant to specific scoring or achievement strategies rather than normal progression.
Choosing Your Dungeon Item Pool
The dungeon selection screen allows you to enable or disable certain newly unlocked items.
This is useful because you don’t always want every unlocked item contaminating your item pool.
After completing certain chapters, including the Cheese Dungeon and Great Sin Chapter, it can be worth reviewing these settings again.
For Infinite Dungeon runs, you can customize the pool depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
Sensing Is Extremely Important
Sensing is one of the most valuable stats to understand.
Items and mechanics involving things such as pots, masks, and Lamp Magic can have a major influence on your ability to handle dangerous crises.
In higher-level dungeons, simply having more combat power isn’t enough.
You also need enough Sensing to understand and survive the threats appearing on each floor.
The Sinful Wine Chapter EX Mode
The EX section introduces an item appraisal system.
This changes how unidentified consumables work.
If a consumable item is cursed, using it doesn’t necessarily consume it. Instead, it can help identify the item.
This creates an interesting risk-and-reward system where you need to decide when to identify items and when to save your identification resources.
Endo and Appraisal
For Endo, an unidentified item containing an Endo Curse Mark needs to be used or identified before it can be added to Endo’s Cursed Seal pool.
This makes item identification particularly important when you’re trying to improve Endo’s Seal system.
Appraisal Strategy
My recommended approach is to avoid spending your only identification resource too early.
Saving it until around floors 5–6 can allow you to accumulate several unidentified items first.
You can then identify more items together and make better use of the information.
Of course, if an unidentified item is immediately necessary for survival, use it rather than blindly saving the identification resource.
Infinite Maze
After clearing the EX chapter, you unlock the Infinite Dungeon.
Despite its name, the initial Infinite Dungeon objective is to clear 30 floors.
After reaching the end, there is a short story scene.
Once you’ve cleared those 30 floors, you can continue into the actual True Infinite Mode.
How the Infinite Maze Works
The Infinite Dungeon doesn’t have a traditional boss.
Instead, it uses repeating floor cycles:
- Floors 1–10
- Floors 11–20
- Floors 21–30
- And so on
The star level of crises and rewards changes throughout these cycles.
For example, the crisis level resets at certain points and then begins increasing again.
The difficulty rises sharply from around floor 11 onward.
By floor 21, some checkpoint requirements can already exceed 100.
Infinite Maze Development Strategy
One of the most important strategies is to make good use of delayed acquisition.
Instead of immediately taking every powerful item, consider delaying important rewards until they can appear at a higher tier.
High-star pots can be especially valuable because of their passive food-stat bonuses.
Hats that increase Intelligence are also important.
At their highest levels, they can become masks providing a large Intelligence increase.
When combined with magic book-type weapons, these items can improve both combat capability and Intelligence-related progression.
The X8 to X0 Floors
Pay special attention to floors ending in 8, 9, or 0.
These floors can contain much more dangerous crises than you normally encounter in the main game.
Some can effectively function as very high-star crises.
Certain cards can only be resolved through specific items.
The True Eye Petrify Lizard, for example, can represent an instant-death threat if its requirements aren’t met.
Before entering these floors, I recommend preparing items that can forcibly resolve dangerous crises.
Useful examples include:
- Bombs
- Teleportation items
- Transformation effects
- Other emergency crisis-resolution items
Multi-Copy Machines in Infinite Runs
As the Infinite Maze progresses, item requirements increase quickly.
Because of that, multiple Multi-Copy Machines can become extremely valuable.
A large part of high-floor progression revolves around repeatedly duplicating powerful items and using them to keep pace with the increasingly difficult crises.
Hell Mode
Hell Mode unlocks after clearing the Infinite Labyrinth.
The checkpoint requirements become dramatically higher, and many monsters become extremely difficult or impossible to defeat normally.
The mode has a snowball effect.
If you lose too many encounters, you receive less experience.
Lower experience means lower levels, which means weaker stats, making subsequent encounters even harder.
Hell Mode Invincibility Charms
Hell Mode initially gives you five invincibility charms.
These can help you survive dangerous crises during your first attempts.
However, clearing any Hell Mode stage unlocks a charm-free Hell Mode variant.
The charm-free version is required for the relevant achievements, so eventually you’ll need to complete the mode without relying on those starting charms.
Hell Mode Development
The Hell Mode invincibility charm is a high-star item.
Although its name makes it sound like true invulnerability, it doesn’t function exactly like the Ring of Immortality.
It behaves more like a universal attack/support effect and does not protect you from every possible source of damage.
One interesting strategy is to recycle the charm during the early-to-mid game to gamble for a stronger item.
This can accelerate development, although it obviously comes with risk.
Drunken Rogue Achievement Tips
Several achievements require very specific interactions.
One example involves the Giant Hamster.
It appears when the Rat enemy is upgraded to the highest star level, with the relevant crisis requiring very high Combat Agility.
There may also be branching outcomes where a high-star Rat becomes a Rogue Rat instead.
Giant Transformation and Possession
A well-developed Endo can potentially obtain important high-level effects more reliably in Endless Mode.
If you can’t find Possession or Giant Transformation Seals naturally, you can work toward upgrading the Wind Spirit enemy Sylph to the highest Lamp Demon level.
Its reward can provide an item from the corresponding star-level pool.
Rita has a more reliable path toward Giant Transformation by increasing drunkenness enough to obtain Giant Brew.
However, obtaining Possession is much more difficult for Rita and appears to depend heavily on Possession Seals.
Zero-Drunkenness Boss Achievement
An achievement involving entering the Boss tier with zero drunkenness may require the Cursed Ring’s effect that prevents drunkenness from increasing.
If you’re specifically trying to complete this achievement, don’t simply focus on reducing your drunkenness.
You need to consider items that prevent the stat from increasing in the first place.
All Sinful Wine Statuses
Another achievement requires being affected by the abnormal states of all sinful wines simultaneously.
This can be easier in advanced Infinite Mode because you can manipulate the item pool and obtain the necessary effects more directly.
One important warning: don’t drink Lust first.
Using Charm can randomly ban items, potentially preventing you from obtaining or consuming the other wines required for the achievement.
General Strategy for New Players
If you’re just starting Drunken Rogue, I wouldn’t worry about mastering every interaction immediately.
First, learn how your character’s progression system works.
If you’re using Rita, focus on understanding talent allocation, drunkenness, Sensing, and the strongest paths toward your preferred build.
If you’re using Endo, learn how Cursed Seals work and start paying attention to delayed rewards.
Then, as you move into EX and Infinite Maze content, start paying much more attention to item interactions.
Use the Encyclopedia
The encyclopedia is one of the most useful tools available.
When you reach a difficult floor, use the available information to understand the current crisis and what kind of requirements it has.
This becomes increasingly important in Infinite Maze and Hell Mode.
Instead of blindly walking into every crisis, prepare for the threats that are most likely to appear.
Drunken Rogue becomes much more complicated once you move beyond the relatively forgiving main game.
Rita gives you a flexible talent-based progression system and powerful options such as Stealth Evasion and Dual Wielding, while Endo’s Cursed Seal system gives her a more direct and adaptable way to scale stats and respond to difficult floors.
Once you reach the EX chapter and Infinite Maze, delayed rewards, item duplication, Sensing, high-star equipment, and crisis-specific items become much more important.
Hell Mode takes everything even further by dramatically increasing checkpoint requirements and punishing mistakes through its experience and stat snowball.
If you’re still learning the game, focus on understanding the interaction between characters, items, Sensing, delayed rewards, and crisis mechanics first. Once those systems click, the harder modes become much easier to approach strategically.