Grave March: Player's Guide

Play Grave March · Leaderboard · UnDeAd Legion

Rise, Marcher. The crypt is hungry, and it is your turn to feed it.

Grave March is a top-down dungeon crawl. Pick a class and a race, write your name on the roll of the dead, and fight down through floor after floor of crypt, graveyard, forest and desert. On the way you grab gold and gear, shop in town, and take on orc war camps and floor bosses. When the run ends, your score goes on the shared leaderboard. It all runs right in your web browser, and you can play alone or with up to 5 Marchers on the same map.

Contents

1. Starting a run
2. Your name and the leaderboard
3. Controls
4. Classes
5. Races
6. Promotions and rank powers
7. Floors, biomes and exits
8. Town and the shop
9. Gold, loot and gear
10. Monsters
11. How floors get harder
12. Carcasses
13. Multiplayer
14. Leaderboard categories
15. Tips from the grave

Starting a run

Go to https://undeadlegion.pro/grave-march/ on a computer or phone and wait for it to load. You don't need to install anything or make an account. Play with the keyboard and mouse, or with the on-screen controls (see Controls).

Every run goes like this

1. Choose a class: Up/Down or click, then Enter.
2. Choose a race: same controls. Esc goes back.
3. Enter your name (see below), then press Start.
4. March. Each time you take the stairs, you pick a stat and drop to the next floor.
5. When you die (or end the run from the pause menu), you see a summary. Enter starts a new run.

Your name and the leaderboard

• You must enter a name before every run, right after picking your class and race.
• Names can be up to 20 characters. A name that's blank once cleaned up, or the name "Anonymous", is refused.
• Your last name is filled in for you, but you still have to confirm it with Start (or Enter).
• Click or tap the name box to type. On a phone, the keyboard pops up.
• That same name shows on the shared leaderboard and over your head in multiplayer.

The leaderboard is covered in Leaderboard categories.

Controls

Keyboard and mouse

When the floor is clear, choose your stat with 1 / 2 / 3 or by clicking.

Phone and touch controls

The game draws these on screen. They work with a finger or a mouse, and you can use several fingers at once:

You can also tap your way through the menus: class and race lists, Join multiplayer, the name box with Start / Back, and the stat buttons between floors.

Some actions have no on-screen button and need a keyboard: switching wizard elements, rogue stealth and stealing, a manual werewolf surge (it still triggers by itself at low health), the Legionnaire shield and trench, the character sheet, and pausing. You don't lose out on gear without a keyboard, though: new gear goes straight on if that slot is empty.

Classes

Legionnaire

• Shield (hold H): cuts damage from hits in front of you by half.
• Trench (X): after a short dig (0.7 s), a trench 3 tiles long appears that enemies can't cross. Floor bosses walk around it. A trench is only one tile wide, so a monster on the far edge can still reach across and hit you if you stand right on the near edge: step back from it.

Wizard

• Three elements:
  • Fire: 15 damage, burns.
  • Ice: 12 damage, slows.
  • Lightning: 18 damage, the shock jumps.
• Tornado (T): lasts 10 s and pulls enemies in. 30 s cooldown.

Necromancer

• Fires dark (necrotic) bolts.
• Raising: a monster you kill rises as your minion if its max health is lower than your current health. It comes back with half its health. You can have up to 4 minions.
• Orders (G):
  • Frenzy: minions hunt anything you can see.
  • Guard: minions only fight up close.
• Forge (V): with exactly 4 living minions, fuse them into one minion of the next rank: Raised → Stitched → Horror → Abomination.
• Recall (B): if your Abomination dies, spend two living minions to bring it back.

Rogue

• Stealth (F): lasts 2.4 s with an 8 s cooldown. Enemies don't go after you while you're stealthed, and your first strike out of stealth hits twice.
• Steal (S): only while the town shop is open. It's a 50/50 chance:
  • Success: you get a random shop item for free.
  • Caught: you lose half your gold. If you have no gold, you lose half your health.

Races

Werewolf feasting

• Stand next to a carcass and press E (or tap EAT).
• You spend 1 second as a wolf eating, and heal 10% of your class's base health (for example, 13 for a Legionnaire).
• At full health, nothing is eaten and the carcass stays put.

Promotions and rank powers

Each floor has a boss. Land the killing blow on it and you get promoted. A promotion gives you five stat points and a rank power you use with P (or its button):

Rank powers last 20 s and then have a 60 s cooldown.

Floors, biomes and exits

• Each floor is one large map (150 × 140 tiles) with three biomes:
  • a crypt maze (or a graveyard, see below),
  • a forest beside it,
  • a desert along the south edge.
• Walk through the open gaps between them to change biome.
• Desert scorpions sting with poison.
• Graveyard floors: on floors 2, 5, 8, 11 and every third floor after that, the crypt half becomes a graveyard: dark grass and grave dirt, rows of tombstones and crosses, mossy crypt walls and iron fences. Ghosts, ghouls and wraiths live there and nowhere else (see Monsters). Tombstones block you like walls, but there's always a way around them.
• Each floor has three exits:
  • the town stairs,
  • a crypt stair (a graveyard stair on graveyard floors),
  • a desert stair.
• Take any of them and the game pauses so you can pick one stat point: Damage +1, Health +1 or Speed +1. Then a harder floor is built.
• Every floor also has 4 healing potions lying around.
• Later floors have more monsters: 66 on floor 1, then about 20 more on each floor after that (86 on floor 2, 106 on floor 3, 146 on floor 5, 245 on floor 10). Floor bosses, Orc Chiefs and war camp waves come on top. In multiplayer, extra players add more (see Multiplayer).
• Your run's seed is shown on screen.

Town and the shop

Town is a clearing in the forest.

The shop

• When you walk into town, the shop opens with 7 items: potions, weapons, armor from several bases, a trinket, and sometimes a wand.
• The stock changes each time you walk back into town.
• To buy, press 1–7, click, or tap.
• Shops never sell Legendary gear.
• A Heal Potion costs 20 gold and you drink it on the spot.

Selling

• Press N or tap Sell while in town to sell everything in your bag that you aren't wearing.
• Equipped gear and your equipped wand are never sold.
• The town buys for less than it sells, so buying something just to resell it loses gold.

Gold, loot and gear

Drops

Every monster you kill leaves something:

• About 90% of the time it's gold. Floor 1 drops 4–16 gold, and the amount grows each floor. Bosses drop 3× as much.
• About 10% of the time it's gear. Ranged monsters (casters) can drop wands instead.

Walk over a drop to pick it up.

Potions

• Potions heal 28 health or a third of your max health, whichever is more.
• You drink a potion the moment you touch it. If you're already at full health, it's wasted.

Gear slots

You have three gear slots: weapon, armor and trinket. A wizard or necromancer can also carry a wand.

• Gear you pick up goes into your bag.
• If that slot is empty, the new piece is equipped automatically.
• Press C to open the character sheet. It shows your class, race, health, damage, speed, defense, money, bag, and what you're wearing. Click any bag item to equip it. The piece you take off stays in your bag.

Armor bases

Defense is taken off every hit you take, but a hit always does at least 1 damage.

Enchantment tiers

Higher tiers make the speed penalty on heavy armor smaller and smaller.

Wands

Necrotic (lingering damage), Ice (slow), Lightning (jumps) and Wind (knockback). A wand adds damage and its effect to your shots, but only for a wizard or necromancer.

Monsters

Regular monsters

Some monsters only start showing up on later floors.

Melee reach: every melee monster (Orc Chiefs, trolls, ghouls and floor bosses included) strikes one tile further than it walks up to you. That's enough to hit you across a one-tile trench from the far edge. Walls still block every hit.

Graveyard monsters

These three only appear in the graveyard (floors 2, 5, 8 …). They grow with the floor like every other monster and leave carcasses when they die.

Orcs and trolls

War camps and the Orc Chief

• Every floor hides an orc war camp with a campfire. From floor 4 on, there are two camps.
• The Orc Chief guards each camp. He has 3× an orc's health and 1.5× its damage.
• The camps hunt you from the start of the floor: you don't have to find them first. War drums sound when you arrive, and after a short grace (6 seconds) the first war party of 6 orcs and 1 troll marches out. Another follows every 30–45 seconds.
• The Orc Chief stays at his fire. You have to go to him.
• Kill the Orc Chief and the camp goes cold for good: no more war parties from that camp (in multiplayer too, whoever lands the killing blow).

Hunting war parties

War-party orcs and trolls hunt the nearest living player across the whole map. Running away only buys you time.

Floor bosses

• The floor boss isn't there at the start. After 45 kills on a floor, it appears right beside you and hunts you down.
• Each boss is one class mixed with one race, using that kit. It walks around walls and trenches.
• A necromancer boss raises a skeleton every 1.5 seconds while it's fighting, up to 8 of them at once. Kill the boss quickly, or the skeletons keep coming.
• Bosses drop triple gold and are the only source of Legendary gear.
• If you land the killing blow, you get a promotion.
• The on-screen counter "Boss in …" shows how many kills are left.

How floors get harder

Every monster grows with the floor in two steps:

1. Base growth: health goes up 22% per floor and damage 12% per floor.
2. On top of that: - Health: +10% for every floor number. - Damage: +1 for every floor number.

The bonuses stack, so by floor 100 monsters have 11× health and +100 damage on top of base growth. Some examples straight from the game:

Carcasses

• Every kill by a player leaves a carcass. That includes melee, spells, burns and other damage over time, and minion kills.
• A carcass lasts 30 seconds and fades out over its last 6.
• At most 24 carcasses stay on the map. When a new one drops, the oldest goes first.
• Only werewolves eat carcasses (see Races). For everyone else they're just grim decoration.

Multiplayer

Basics

• Multiplayer happens on the Legion's server. Just tap Join multiplayer: there's nothing to type or set up.
• Up to 5 players per map. A sixth player is turned away ("session full").

How to join

1. Open https://undeadlegion.pro/grave-march/.
2. On the class menu, press J or tap Join multiplayer. You'll see Joining the Legion's server...
3. Pick your class and race, enter your name, and press Start.
4. If you see The multiplayer server is offline right now, the server isn't running. Play solo and try again later.

What's shared

• Players see each other, their names, health and attacks. You all fight the same monsters and see the same carcasses. All the damage you deal counts on the server: your level-ups, gear, rogue openers, werewolf surges, spells, burns and poison, and your minions. Monsters you kill are dead for everyone, and an Orc Chief you kill shuts his camp down for everyone.
• When you join, you land on the floor everyone is on right now, at that floor's start. When someone takes the stairs, the map moves down a floor for everyone.
• Monsters hit everyone the same way they hit you solo: armor, shields, dodging, stealth and race rules all count. If you die, your run ends and goes to the leaderboard like a solo run.
• More players, more monsters: each extra player on the map adds 25% more monsters (2 players +25%, 3 players +50% … 5 players +100%). If someone joins partway through a floor, the extra monsters appear far away from everyone, not on top of you.
• If the connection to the server drops, your run carries on as a solo run (the monsters around you keep fighting). Go back to the menu and press J to join again; you can rejoin with the same name.
• Gold, loot and the shop are still each player's own.
• A necromancer's minions show only on their owner's screen, but the damage they do counts for everyone.
• A slow or busy connection only delays your updates; it doesn't drop you. While your tab is in the background, monsters leave your character alone, and you catch up when you come back (after about 90 seconds away, your seat is freed). Rejoining with the same name takes your old seat back right away.

Leaderboard categories

The shared board on the site tracks four things for each run:

• Mobiles killed: monsters slain (graveyard ghosts, ghouls and wraiths count too)
• Gold: gold picked up
• Levels completed: floors cleared through the stairs
• Bosses killed

The board has tabs for each category, plus Overall and Recent runs. You can open it from the site home page or the Leaderboard page.

When your run is sent

• A run is submitted once, when it ends: when you die, or when you pause (Esc) and press Q to end it.
• Runs with nothing scored (no kills, gold, floors or bosses) are skipped.
• Runs played on the site go to the shared leaderboard.

Tips from the grave

• Watch the "Boss in …" counter. The boss spawns right next to you at 45 kills, so be ready before you get there.
• Don't touch potions at full health. You drink them on contact, so walk around them and come back when you're hurt.
• Find the Orc Chief fast. The first war party comes for you a few seconds into the floor, and every 30–45 seconds you let the camp burn, another 6 orcs and a troll follow.
• Undead shrug off cultists, wraiths and ghosts: poison and necrotic damage do nothing to them.
• Ghosts slip through mist and trenches. A trench won't hold them back, and your sword does less to them, so use spells or fire.
• Necromancers: raising only works on monsters whose max health is below your current health, so stay healthy to raise the big ones.
• Werewolves: fight near fresh kills. Carcasses last 30 s, and each bite heals 10% of your base health.
• Ghosts: Scream before you get surrounded, so the pack freezes while you slip away.
• Legionnaires: a trench across a corridor lets you fight on your own terms. Bosses walk around trenches, though, so they won't stop one. Monsters can reach across a trench, so step back from the edge (or fight from range).
• Rogues: start fights from stealth to get the double first strike. Steal only when you can afford to lose half your gold.
• Sell in town. Unworn bag gear is just dead weight; turn it into potions and upgrades.
• Heavy armor: Plate slows you a lot at base tier, but enchanted tiers ease the penalty.
• Pick your stat: Damage +1, Health +1 or Speed +1. Choose for your class.