Jobmania Pathing

Introduction
Love thy enemy
Choosing Your Route
Fixed Floors
Xmas Passive
General Starting Defence
Non-Combat Floors
Rules
Pathing Strategy
Closing Statements

Introduction
This game is a roguelike dungeon game, and random chance is abundant. But you have more
control than you think.

This guide is for people aiming for floor 1500+ (Normal Mode), where some attacks will start to kill
you in 1 hit! But the basics should be applicable at all levels to reduce the chance of premature
death. I’ve reached 3000f+ twice using Chris P. Bakon, and 2000f+ regularly using Time Travel
builds, and thought I would put this guide together as I figured a lot of this out through my own trial
and error.

There is a lot to take in here, so expect to take several runs before mastering it all.

I hope it helps your runs!

Love thy enemy
Normal fights in this game alternate between you and the enemy attacking first. This means that you
will have to fight and take attacks from enemies. A key part of survival is making sure you aren’t in a
position where an enemy is going to kill you, and the main part of high level play is controlling
when the enemy has First Strike (FS).

At high floors, you want to avoid coming up against enemies with FS when you don’t have enough
hp. Unknowns and traps will inevitably reduce your hp, putting you in kill range.

However, if you have FS, the situation is reversed. With a proper build, enemies are an opportunity
to heal. To get to higher floors, you can’t afford to be afraid of too many enemies on your path. Deck
building is a topic for another time but in a nutshell, the gold standard is for you to be able to kill as
many kinds of enemies as possible on your route consistently in a way that allows you to heal back
to full.

Choosing Your Route

Check the reddit guide: https://www.reddit.com/r/jobmania/comments/kohw9d/route_guide/

You will need at least two routes, or you may be forced onto the Odin route by default, and very few
builds actually prefer fighting him.

Note, Magical Library has slightly higher librarian unknown event chance. You may need the
librarian event for your build.

Fixed Floors
Certain floors have a fixed choice available, which will help with your pathing. Note, these are all I’m
aware of, and there may be more.

Floor number (10 Floor number (20 Floor number (30 Encounters
floor chap) floor chap) floor chap)

xx1f xx1f xx1f 3x Chapter enemies

xx4f xx9f xx14f Merchant + 2x others

xx5f x10f x15f Mini-boss, and retreat (if

available), unknown if not 3
bosses. *

xx9f x19f x29f Rest + 2x others

x10f x20f x30f Boss fight

*fewer options if narrow way is in effect.

Xmas Passive
The most powerful survival tool is the so-called Xmas Invulnerable passive, namely, the passive that
gives invulnerable when going second as long as hp is full. Note, it's worth pairing this with some
starting MHP buffs (e.g. from relic passive), as this adds insulation between fights.

Most Xmas heroes have this passive, though the gold standard now is probably Mad Doctor Jeff,
who comes with mhp buffs too. The Voidoll family and a couple other heroes also have the Xmas
passive, but the starting Restrain adds the need for a bit more healing between fights.

Of course, in between fights, there are a lot of ways the game knocks your hp off from max (traps
and unknowns). MHP debuffs will also prevent you from healing to full unless cured. In particular,
Thanatos can leave you crippled and unprepared for the fight you have coming up.

Also watch for ways to increase your max hp in a way that doesn’t heal you back to full, such as
picking up Relics, and job changes (particularly deadly under both Realistic and Forced Job
Change).

Note also that invulnerable only gives a number of invulnerable stacks equal to the hero level.
Phantom Blade QWER and some enemies can pierce through that anyway, especially with multiple
protect pierced - which is possible under the Realistic and/ or Protect Pierced rule.

Of course if you don’t have a hero with this passive, or aren’t high enough level, you’ll need:

General Starting Defence

To increase survivability against enemies with FS, you will need to use the following to increase your
defensiveness:
● relics
● job passives
● hero passives
● secondary hero start combat passives
● first strike ability.

Look for the following abilities:

● High raw MHP stat
● MHP buffs and boosts
● Damage Reduction, 20% or 30% (this means it takes 25% and 43% more direct damage to
kill you respectively.)
● Starting protect
● Starting injury
● Starting paralysis/ blind/ slack inflicted
● Guard and stack guard, with guard master too

Your overall job, hero, and relic level, and (up to) 5 gemmed main job, all increase your raw MHP
stat as well, so invest or farm accordingly.
Note that Half Damage applies to enemies now (it didn’t always!) so if you get that rule, it’ll greatly
help your survival.

Non-Combat Floors
Traps are your friends on later floors! There's a notable chance of receiving damage, but at least it's
not going to kill you or mess up your deck.

Chests can give you a curse or Mimic Demon. Be wary of taking one when your hp is too low or
you’re unprepared to take one on.

Unknowns must be taken in order to get stronger (and sometimes there is no choice). Especially
early on, you will want to hunt the Librarian, the Twins, Ability Engineer, and even Bakon to refine
your random relic abilities (for the rare chance of, say, stat mastery on an epic relic).

The chance of being killed outright from an unknown is low (due to a deadly fight or flight, or getting
a chest and Mimic Demon). However you must be prepared for a fight, a curse, Voidoll, or to take
some damage/ Insane/ Venom stacks.

Fight or Flights should be considered carefully since if you attack proactively, you switch the FS for
the next enemy, but if you try to flee, they can attack first and kill you.

Mad Cockatrice is one dangerous fight. He goes first, inflicting damage and venom. He is also
harder than some enemies to kill in 1 turn or beat and recover back to full hp. Don't be afraid to take
the curse if the fight may kill you. The curse can be fed to Voidoll, as it's a unique ability.

Dylan has a small end of turn damage which can become dangerous for Time Travel builds at much
later floors.

White portals are good for climbing to higher floors. You get the FS on the boss, and cut out a
number of floors that could have otherwise killed you. Just make sure that you haven't taken a
deadly boss earlier in the run (e.g. Odin). You can click the portal to verify who you will fight.

Orange portals are good but bear in mind who has FS.
Rules
If you're aiming for 3k (and start from 301f), you are going to have to play under 27 rules, including at
least 7 red rules. It’s this that stops most infinite builds from easily reaching the highest floors.

Some rules are pretty nasty for almost any build, and you must plan for playing under them, not just
in isolation, but in combination with each other.

Note that if your build is only hurt by 3 red rules individually (of which Wormhole and Realistic are
likely to be included) then you will be able to dodge those 3 rules for a number of floors. If you are
hurt by 4+, the likelihood of a premature end from rules starts to increase.

Realistic: this one is truly a game changer. You will need to be able to heal off problematic debuffs,
such as paralysis, VRI, even Protect Pierced. Sudden Death in particular is very difficult to get rid of
once picked up, and this can be a blessing or a curse. The lack of healing can truly mess up Xmas
Invulnerable, especially with the next rule.

Forced Job Change: I recommend setting up a generic 1, 2, and 3 star job loadout for this, picking
jobs which at least offer healing or non-detrimental passive effects. Your 4 and 5 star loadouts
should be filled with jobs that are as useful as possible for the specific build. When combined with
Realistic, you will want to get bosses to have FS as much as possible, so that the follow up enemy in
the next chapter will not have FS and you can safely heal any missing HP as a result of changing
job.

Secondary Job Cost Up: factor this in if you depend on job switches.

Costly Actions: this neuters any overdependence on Insanity Draw, Quickdraw, etc. You will need to
balance this

Retaliation: some enemies only need 1 action to kill you. Therefore, you need to be able to kill
enemies within 12 actions or be able to throw up invulnerability in that time.

Half Damage/Half Sustain/Perseverance: Ultimately, all builds will need to do double the damage
they do at lower floors at some point. This can mean the limit from Retaliation is more likely to kick in
at least once. However! Half damage now applies to both parties, greatly improving any survivability
plans that don’t depend on

Wormhole: At higher floors, the pink discord and purple Thanatos portals can really run you straight
into some difficult enemies. The discord group has many enemies with end of turn and counter
passives that tend to be impossible for most builds at higher floors.
Numbers
Various rules give the enemies a lot more bulk and hp. If your build relies on direct damage, and you
don’t want to avoid the half damage rule, you'll need to deal 6x the damage in total. Since at 3000f,
enemies have 3x the stats they do at 1000f, you'll have to plan to deal 18x the base damage you
deal at 1000f, without your stats getting much higher! You'll also have to bypass starting guard and
stack guard from Well Prepared.

Enemies deal more damage to you as well. Obviously enemy stats are up to 3x the stats at 1000,
and Half Power will reduce this figure, but Well Prepared and the other boosts mean enemies could
deal 2-5x more damage! Certain enemies can easily kill you this way if not invulnerable, and some
enemies will start to kill you even through max invulnerable stacks.
Pathing Strategy
Here we go, perhaps the most important advice for surviving on high floors.

The general pathing rhythm is as follows:

1. Take unknowns, traps, merchants, chests, and rests until you lose too much hp or are forced
into a fight.*
2. Fight an enemy and recover to full hp again**
3. Fight the enemy now that they have FS as soon as possible.***
4. Repeat.

*There is a small danger that you run into a dangerous unknown fight or flight while not at full hp. But
the chance of getting such a fight or flight, it being an enemy you can’t proactively take on, and the
subsequent chance of being forced to fight it by rolling a 1 or 2, is low.

** You could delay this if you know (due to the fixed floors) that a boss or mini boss or rest is coming
up in the next floor(s). The key is to not put yourself in a position where you’re going into a fight
without enough hp (or invulnerable).

***you might be tempted to delay fighting the enemy at this time, due to laziness or preference for a
chest. The big risk is that you lose hp, and then go into the next fight getting killed before you can do
anything.

Some other notes: Pay attention to which enemies actually attack on their first turn and which just
use status/healing moves (such as Goblin Champion). These can offer a lifeline in case you do run
into hp trouble or bad luck.
Pathing examples

Example 1

In this instance, we are in step 3 of the rhythm. Therefore we should take on the enemy with FS.
Even though the Power Chest or green unknown would likely be safe in this case, we can’t
guarantee that the next floor won’t force us to take on a trap/ unknown and cost us HP before next
fighting an enemy.
Example 2

We can see we’re one floor away from the next boss (Lonely Queen). The Rest is of course safest.
The Power Chest could be taken (considering the risk of the Mimic Chest Demon or curse) if there’s
an ability or job to hunt down. The trap could be taken if we have FS, as there’s a risk of losing HP
but the chance of gaining gold/ gems. It should definitely be avoided if the enemy has FS, since
Lonely Queen opens with attacking moves, and losing HP on the trap would break invulnerable.
Example 3

Here, as per Step 1 of the rhythm, we should avoid the enemy fight, and take the unknown or chest.
If we take the fight on, then we increase the risk of running into a forced trap/unknown, followed by
an enemy acting first.
Example 4

More coming soon if requested.

Closing Statements
I hope this guide was insightful. It may be a lot to take in, but definitely as you practise (and die,
painfully, at higher floors!) you will learn accordingly.

Luck is generally involved in getting good rules to come up,, and for e.g. good random abilities on
jobs in some builds. Several runs using the same strategy can vary wildly. So my recommendation is
to try and treat a run like a farming run initially, e.g. for relic fragments, and only push further when
you can see the run is going well.

Also vital is to go a little slower in your pushing runs. 1 mistake or misclick can cost hours of
progress. Maybe limit the amount of progress you make on it per day, or only play when fully
focusing. Use your other save slots for more brainless runs. e.g. for daily farming.

Good luck!