The Tool Desk
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This guide follows the systems described in the version 1.03 beginner guide. A Steam Community update summary says later patches added rooms, creatures, missions, story content, navigation changes and Nightmare Mode, so exact priorities can change after a major update.
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What Deck of Haunts is and what you are trying to do
Deck of Haunts is a deckbuilding roguelite and haunted-house base-building game developed by Mantis and published by DANGEN Entertainment. The PC version released on Steam on May 7, 2025. You play the house itself: rooms form your defensive structure, haunt cards manipulate humans and rooms, and successful encounters produce essence for further growth.
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The official description summarizes the core fantasy as becoming “a malevolent Haunted House.” In practical terms, every run asks you to solve four connected problems:
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- Design a route that keeps people away from the Heart room.
- Use cards and room effects at the moments that create the most fear or damage.
- Kill visitors or drive them insane before they reach the Heart.
- Convert the resulting essence into a stronger, more coherent house and deck.
The Heart room is the core of your power. If intruders reach it, your defensive plan has failed regardless of how much damage you dealt elsewhere. Think of the Heart as the finish line visitors must never cross, not as another room to trade away for a short-term benefit.
The version 1.03 beginner guide describes 28 nights in a run. That number is version-specific, but it gives you a useful rhythm: early nights teach you how movement works, middle nights test whether your route and deck scale, and later nights punish layouts that leave a direct path to the Heart.
How a run is organized
Visitation phase
Humans enter the mansion and move through the rooms you have placed. Your job is to shape their path and intervene with haunt cards or room effects. A visitor must be killed or driven insane before reaching the Heart room. Watch the route rather than reacting only to the room currently occupied: a card that delays a visitor one room earlier may protect the Heart more effectively than a larger effect played at the final door.
Construction phase
After the visitation, you spend essence on adding or upgrading rooms and on deck or room selections. Construction is where you turn one successful defense into a better next night. Do not treat every available purchase as equally valuable. A room that extends the route, a card that supplies reliable early damage, or an upgrade that improves a recurring effect usually contributes more than an unrelated option that cannot support your current layout.
The loop that matters
- Observe: note where visitors enter, which branches they prefer and how close they get to the Heart.
- Control: place rooms and effects so that the safest-looking route for you is also the most dangerous route for them.
- Spend: use haunt cards where fear, damage or redirection has the largest effect on the whole route.
- Rebuild: use essence to reinforce the plan that actually worked, not the plan you hoped to draw.
Build the first layout around the Heart
Start with distance, not decoration
On your first construction decisions, make visitors pass through several rooms before they can approach the Heart. The official game description specifically presents room placement, mazes, traps, scares and special rooms as tools for protecting the core. A long route gives you more opportunities to draw and play cards, and it makes each delay or redirection more valuable.
Do not assume that adding rooms automatically creates safety. A large house with a straight corridor can be weaker than a compact house with turns and controlled branches. Before confirming a placement, trace the shortest plausible route from an entrance to the Heart. If you can describe that route in a single sentence, look for a way to add a turn, a detour or a room effect without creating an even easier alternative.
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Use branches deliberately
A branch is useful when both options cost visitors time or expose them to effects. It is dangerous when one branch is a harmless shortcut. Place your strongest control effect where visitors are likely to converge, and reserve a fallback room or card for the branch you cannot reliably cover. You are not trying to make a mathematically perfect maze; you are trying to create predictable decision points that you can exploit during visitation.
Keep the Heart behind a final layer
Leave at least one meaningful defensive layer between the main route and the Heart whenever your available rooms permit it. That layer can be physical distance, a special room, a trap, a scare effect or a card you can consistently hold for emergencies. If your layout requires every card to be spent just to survive the opening rooms, it has no reserve for the final approach.
Adapt to the rooms you draw
The beginner guide notes that room and card draws can change the best arrangement. Treat the starting layout as a framework, not a permanent blueprint. A run that offers strong direct damage may reward a shorter route with repeated attack opportunities; a run that offers control or sanity pressure may benefit from more rooms and longer exposure. Rebuild around the options you actually have rather than forcing an imagined build.
Choose a first strategy you can execute
New players generally have an easier time with straightforward early damage because it produces a clear feedback loop: place visitors in range, play damage cards, and remove threats before they accumulate near the Heart. That does not make sanity pressure or elaborate control inferior. It means those plans demand more awareness of timing, route length and card sequencing.
| Build focus | What it does well | What to watch for | Best beginner test |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct damage | Ends encounters quickly and is easy to evaluate. | Can struggle if visitors are numerous or your damage cards do not appear together. | Can you remove the leading threat before it reaches the final rooms? |
| Sanity pressure | Drives visitors insane while they travel, rewarding a longer route. | May require more setup and careful timing than a new player expects. | Does extending the route consistently increase the number of visitors you can break? |
| Control and delay | Redirects, slows or traps visitors so other effects have time to work. | Control without enough damage or sanity pressure can merely postpone defeat. | Can every detour lead to a room or card that converts time into a real result? |
| Mixed plan | Combines a dependable damage tool with a small amount of control or sanity pressure. | Spreading purchases too widely can leave every component weak. | Do your first few upgrades reinforce one route and one way of finishing visitors? |
These comparisons are strategic guidance rather than fixed balance rules. Updates can alter room strength, card priorities and visitor navigation. Re-evaluate after a major patch instead of assuming an old favorite remains optimal.
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What to do on the first nights
Night 1: learn movement before chasing perfection
Use the opening visitation to see where humans enter and which route they choose. Note whether they prefer a particular branch, bypass a room or bunch together. Spend your early cards to prevent a dangerous approach, but avoid exhausting every option immediately if a later visitor could use the same corridor. The objective is information plus survival.
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Night 2: remove the easiest shortcut
During construction, fix the shortest route you observed. Add a room, move a special effect or change the order of rooms so visitors spend more time exposed to your plan. If one room consistently receives traffic, make it a deliberate damage or sanity checkpoint instead of leaving its effect unused.
Night 3: commit to a damage or sanity plan
By this point, choose the outcome you are most reliably producing. If direct attacks are finishing visitors, prioritize cards and rooms that improve that pattern. If visitors are surviving but accumulating fear, extend the route and invest in effects that turn that pressure into insanity. Avoid buying one isolated option from every category; a coherent small deck is easier to pilot than a large collection of unrelated effects.
Night 4: create a reserve for the Heart approach
Look at the final rooms, not only the entrance. If a visitor can reach the Heart while your hand is empty, add a defensive reserve: a card you can hold, a room effect that triggers late in the route or a second route that buys time. Your goal is not to prevent every scratch of damage; it is to ensure one unlucky draw cannot produce an immediate loss.
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As the run advances, favor upgrades that improve several future encounters. A room that repeatedly controls a high-traffic point or a card that remains useful against different visitors usually has more value than a narrow option that works only in one unusual arrangement. Continue to inspect the route after each night because new rooms, creatures and navigation behavior can invalidate an earlier assumption.
Use haunt cards at the right time
Play for route impact, not the largest number
The strongest-looking card is not always the best play. Judge a card by how many future decisions it changes. A delay or redirection at a junction can protect multiple rooms; a damage card on a visitor already near death may waste value if another threat is about to enter. Before playing a card, ask which visitor is closest to the Heart, which room will receive the next wave and whether the effect creates a safer route or merely changes the current screen.
Separate emergency cards from routine cards
Use routine effects early when they improve the whole route, but keep at least one answer for a visitor that breaks through. If every card is spent on the first target, the second target may arrive at the Heart with no resistance. This reserve is especially important in a control-oriented build, where delaying an enemy is useful only if you eventually have a way to finish it.
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Match cards to rooms
Rooms and cards should perform complementary jobs. A room that concentrates visitors is more valuable when your deck has an effect that rewards grouping. A route-extension room is more valuable when your deck benefits from repeated exposure. When construction offers a choice, prefer the option that turns an existing strength into a repeatable interaction instead of adding a mechanic your layout cannot consistently trigger.
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Spend essence without stalling your run
Prioritize survival before variety
Essence is both a reward and a planning constraint. Early purchases should make the next visitation safer: extend the route, strengthen your primary damage or sanity tool, or improve a room that visitors already cross. Variety becomes more useful after your core plan is reliable.
Use a simple purchase test
- Frequency: will this room or card affect most visitations, or only a rare situation?
- Position: can you place it where visitors actually travel?
- Conversion: does it turn time or fear into damage, insanity or another concrete advantage?
- Compatibility: does it support your current route and deck, or force an expensive rebuild?
- Recovery: if the next draw is poor, does this purchase still leave you a way to defend the Heart?
If an option fails several of these tests, save essence for a more dependable improvement when the construction choices refresh.
Protecting the Heart room
Build a layered defense
A layered defense has an outer layer that slows or redirects, a middle layer that deals damage or applies sanity pressure, and an inner layer that finishes a visitor or buys one last turn. You may not have a separate room for each layer in every run, so think in functions rather than labels. One room can provide delay while a card supplies the finishing effect.
Watch the closest threat, not the loudest effect
Visual activity in an outer room can be distracting. The priority target is the visitor whose next movement would put them beyond your reliable control. If two visitors are close, prefer the play that affects both or changes the route for the one that would otherwise bypass your strongest room.
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An impressive opening room has little value if it creates a direct line to the Heart. When choosing between an entrance upgrade and a final-room safeguard, favor the safeguard until the house can survive a breakthrough. You can improve the entrance later; recovering a lost Heart is not a normal mid-run repair.
Recheck after navigation changes
The Steam Community hub reports navigation changes in post-launch updates. If visitors begin choosing a different branch after an update, redraw the shortest-route map before your next spending decision. A room that was once a choke point may no longer receive enough traffic, while a previously harmless corridor may become the main threat.
Troubleshooting common first-run failures
Visitors reach the Heart too quickly
- Trace the shortest path and remove any harmless shortcut.
- Add distance or a turn before buying another damage effect.
- Place your most reliable control at the junction that feeds the final approach.
- Keep one emergency card for the last room instead of spending the entire hand at the entrance.
Visitors survive every attack
- Concentrate purchases on one finishing method instead of splitting between weak damage and weak sanity pressure.
- Use rooms to keep visitors in range longer.
- Play damage on the threat that is closest to escape, not automatically on the first visitor to appear.
- Check whether your route gives effects enough time to trigger before shortening it further.
The house earns essence but never improves
- Stop buying options that do not appear in most visitations.
- Upgrade a high-traffic room or your most dependable card interaction first.
- Compare the next purchase with the route you actually defend, not the theoretical layout you planned at the start.
A new update makes an old layout unreliable
Relearn movement for one visitation instead of immediately discarding the whole run. Identify the new preferred route, then move your control effect to the new junction and rebuild purchases around the traffic you observe. The game has received content and navigation changes, so version-specific advice should be treated as a starting point rather than a permanent tier list.
Release platforms and version notes
Steam lists the PC release date as May 7, 2025. Official Nintendo and PlayStation listings show October 8, 2026 console release information. Store availability, pricing and edition details can change by region and should be checked on the relevant platform listing at the time you buy.
The 28-night figure and the detailed beginner sequence above come from a guide labeled version 1.03. Later update notes mention additional rooms, creatures, missions, story content, navigation changes and Nightmare Mode. If your interface or room pool differs, follow the current in-game descriptions and adapt the route-first principles rather than copying an older placement exactly.
A repeatable checklist for every construction phase
- Identify the shortest route from each entrance to the Heart.
- Remove or weaken any branch that offers a safe shortcut.
- Choose one primary finishing method: direct damage or sanity pressure.
- Place control where routes converge, then assign damage or sanity effects to the rooms visitors actually cross.
- Reserve one card, room effect or final-room option for a breakthrough.
- Spend essence on repeatable value before adding variety.
- After visitation, record which room received traffic and which visitor reached the farthest point.
- Rebuild only the part of the house that caused the failure; preserve components that consistently worked.
The most reliable first house is therefore a controlled experiment: long enough to create opportunities, focused enough to finish visitors, and layered enough to protect the Heart when a draw or route goes badly. Learn movement on the early nights, let your available cards determine the exact shape, and use essence to make the successful parts repeat.
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