Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon is quite the deceptively difficult puzzler game from both Yacht Club Games and Rise Studios. While the original Shovel Knight and all its subsequent character campaigns in the Treasure Trove had their own fair share of difficulty, Pocket Dungeon is much more immediately punishing.
A huge part of the initial learning process that makes the game more approachable involves figuring out the Relics players can obtain in Chester’s Shop mid-run. So, let’s go over some of the best potential options players can choose from, and why.
10 Meal Ticket & Premium Meal Ticket
The first lesson (of many) a lot of beginner players have to learn in Pocket Dungeon is to always pay attention to enemy damage and their own HP. Every attack against an enemy, unless it's a Fatal Blow, causes the player to take some damage back. The most common way for players to die is that they don't do the quick math and attack an enemy one too many times, leading to their demise.
Therefore, some of the best relics in the game are the default and Premium Meal Tickets. These items add more HP, which allows players to both attack more often and kill enemies faster. Anything that adds even a bit of extra HP can make all the difference in that treacherous climb out of this Pocket Dungeon.
9 Toad Totem
Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon players should remember not to get pulled in by the pace of the music and Gem Meter, and instead take things slow. Keeping the Gem Meter topped off is great for earning money and increasing score, but it doesn’t matter when it comes to actually “beating” each level. Plus, rushing too quickly is a perfect way to throw a run in an instant, which can be a positive or negative aspect of the game.
Sometimes, it’s better to wait around for a second or two for the enemies and items in the stage to position themselves better. The Toad Totem Relic is perfect for anyone who has learned this mantra. With the Toad Totem, every character turns into a watered-down Plague Knight since they'll now poison their enemies with every hit. Against bosses, this Relic is even more worthwhile, since it lets players focus on dodging boss attacks while the boss itself takes passive poison damage.
8 Chronos Glass
The Chronos Glass is probably the Relic with the most deceptive utility compared to its description. When reading what it does, it sounds like the Chronos Glass will only serve a purpose once, maybe twice per level. But, if used correctly, or on infinite stock mode, this thing is a game-changer.
When the board is almost full, or when re-entering the stage from Chester's Shop or a Portal, time is briefly frozen.While time is frozen, the player can attack enemies with no repercussions. There's no cooldown or limit for this, meaning players can just keep going in and out of Chester's shop to cheese each stage. Additionally, the only way players can "lose" a run on infinite stock mode is when a level is completely filled, but with this Relic, that situation almost never occurs.
7 Bomb Seed Bag
The stage items in Pocket Dungeon are incredibly strong compared to anything else in the game. Things like Fire, Ice, and even default Bombs can easily turn the tide of a level that the player was about to lose.
With the Bomb Seed Bag, the player character now has resistance to the widespread explosion that these bombs cause, and more Bombs will appear from the stages spawns and chests in general. It's a huge help for some of the later stages in a run, and is even better with the few characters that can move items and enemies around.
6 Potion Napkin
The Potion Napkin doesn’t seem like an incredibly overpowered Pocket Dungeon Relic at first, but all players have to do is buy it once, and it becomes immediately clear how useful it is. Because the core gameplay loop revolves around players micromanaging the damage they’re forced to take with every hit, it's important to keep track of how many potions are on the map. There are a lot of times when a player simply needs one potion's worth of healing instead of multiple.
It’s even more important to try and keep the Potions from touching each other as much as possible, so as not to waste them with a Chain. But with the Potion Napkin, they won’t Chain anymore. This allows the player to fill more of the screen with beneficial tiles as well as giving them more control over their healing in a stage.
5 Desperation Talon
This Relic is tantamount for Pocket Dungeon players who are constantly KO’ing themselves by mistake. The Desperation Talon sort of turns every character into a pseudo-Specter Knight, much like the Toad Totem does with Plague Knight.
With it, players now heal two HP for every Fatal Blow. This basically turns the easier, low-HP stage enemies into potential healing sources, and allows players to work their way out of a scenario in which they are surrounded much more easily.
4 Mentor Manual
To clear each stage in Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon, players need to defeat a certain number of foes until a door spawns, and then escape through this door using a key. Thus, a Relic that causes this exit door to spawn earlier goes a long way toward making the Pocket Dungeon campaign more beatable.
As an added bonus, this Relic also (usually) makes it a tad easier to get the “full clear” bonus before exiting, since the enemy spawns are a bit less scaled up. It's a passive Relic that players don't have to really think about after buying, which is another reason it's so useful.
3 Gold Leaf Clover
Almost every item found within a chest in Pocket Dungeon is great. Even the Wooden Blade, which only adds plus one to all attacks, is amazing.
But with the Gold Leaf Clover Relic, the truly overpowered items such as the Hero Blade, Chronos Coin, and Zap Wand all show up more often. It's another one of those Relics whose benefit is not immediately noticeable, but over the course of a run, it more than pays for the gems the player used to buy it.
2 The Single Glove
Here’s another Relic that sort of takes the “gimmick” of one of the playable characters and applies it in a more simplistic fashion. Similar to the Desperation Talon and the Toad Totem, the Single Glove is a Relic that emulates Propeller Knight's Gimmick.
Propeller Knight's play style is all about going for lone enemies and building up bonus damage, rather than Chaining enemies, and it takes a bit of getting used to. With the Single Glove, players no longer have to worry as much about that lone Skeleton blocking the Treasure Chest, since it’ll get KO’d in one less hit.
1 Fizzle Wand
The Fizzle Wand rewards players for thinking ahead in terms of their movement. Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon is a game that never fully stops (unless one of its many accessibility options are changed). Sure, it slows to a crawl when the player isn’t moving, but it doesn't freeze. Items are always falling down, new opponents are always spawning, and time keeps moving forward.
With the Fizzle Wand, the player character now leaves a fire trail behind them that damages enemies that walk (or descend) through it. Not only is this incredible for passively clearing enemies within a stage, but it’s useful for beating the boss fights without taking a single pip of damage.
Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon is available now, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PC and Mac.
