Welcome to Into Indie Games’ beginner tips for Dive or Die – Children of Rain.
This game puts you in charge of a Lovecraftian settlement that’s ravaged by the flood. Every day is a fight for survival as you dive into the depths of the Abyssal Pool in search of Food, Eldritch Idols, and Mementos to keep your population’s morale up.
In this guide, we’ll lay out ten handy tips and tricks to make the plunge easier.
This article is part of our complete Dive or Die – Children of Rain Guides Hub.
For more information about the game, check out their official website here.
Table of contents
Complete all Buildings and Man Them
When the game opens up after a few dives, you’ll gain the ability to craft new buildings in the Settlement. During the early hours, your priority should be to complete all the crafting objectives. This will give you access to new features such as healing, worship, tributes, and more.
Each new building adds a new layer to what you can do in Dive or Die. Don’t worry about upgrading them to the next tier just yet. Instead, once you’ve completed all the buildings, focus on manning each of them with a Survivor of your choice. Manning a building allows you to use the features that come with it. On top of unlocking new features, Survivors assigned to buildings also gain Experience passively as each day passes.
For example, if you man the Fishing Deck, you’ll passively generate some Nutrition and Morale. Manning the Lighthouse, on the other hand, allows you to send Survivors out on Expeditions so they can bring in resources and even higher tier Surviviors with them when they are done.
Specialize Your Survivors
As the game progresses, you’ll eventually have enough Survivors to man every building in your Settlement. However, when assigning a Survivor to a building, make sure their stat matches what the building they are assigned to requires. For example, if the Survivor manning the Memorial has the Ritual Practice trait, each time you burn a Tribute you’ll gain some bonus Nutrition and Morale for your Settlement. When your Survivor levels up, make sure you choose a trait that matches their responsibilities.
Some new arrivals come with unique Passion traits that give them bonus Experience when assigned to specific buildings. Passion: Lituargy trait grants the Survivor +100% Experience when manning the Altar. For Workshop, the same trait is called Passion: Machines. If you want to maximize Experience Gains, try to bring in Survivors that have these traits.
Keep an Eye on Your Upkeep
Two primary resources account for your upkeep in Dive or Die: Nutrition and Morale. Nutrition comes from Food Cans or Crates, while Morale comes from Small Mementos, Heirlooms, or other treasures. You can check the total upkeep by either looking at the Camp Status box in the Lighthouse or by hovering over the resource at the top-right corner of the screen while in the Settlement.
By having a surplus of Nutrition and Morale, you’ll gain additional benefits such as a bonus to your maximum Health and Sanity. On the other hand, if your people are Starving, their maximum Health decreases, and if they are Demoralized, their Sanity will take a hit.
You will get a report of how your Survivors are feeling at the start of each day after you complete a dive or pass a day. If you’re running low on resources, consider burning a tribute for a specific resource and sending out a Diver to stock up on Nutrition or Morale.
Assign Two Dedicated Divers
Divers are your most important settlers in Dive or Die, and you need to treat them as such. While you can dive the depths of the Abyssal Pool with any of your people, even the ones manning a building, it’s best to have two dedicated Survivors whose only job is to dive and look for resources. That way, if one of them is injured, you can send them to the Infirmary to recover while you dive with the second one.
When you’re using a Survivor specifically for diving, you’ll want to get diving-specific traits that overcome their weaknesses. For example, if they have low carry weight in their base stats, go with Raw Strength to increase their maximum weight capacity. If their oxygen is low, then Apnea can be a good upgrade to get.
You’ll also want to get some weapon-handling traits so that they can fight off the monsters you face during a dive. Since divers get the most Experience, you’ll be able to round them out with a nice set of traits in no time.
There are also some unique traits that you’ll want to watch out for if you don’t have a Diver yet. My personal favorite is the Unnatural Regeneration that heals you back to full after each dive, but you also have 50% less base health. Remember, if a Diver dies while diving, they are lost forever. But you can recollect the resources they gathered before dying by swimming back to where they died with a new Diver.
Maps & Blueprints are a Priority
You’ll naturally do a lot of diving as you progress through the game, but it’s important to prioritize. Remember, even if the monsters aren’t a problem for you, your oxygen reserve and weight capacity are limited. So you need to make sure you’re getting the most out of each dive.
In terms of priority, Maps and Blueprints are the most important things you can find, as they will help you progress through the game. Maps will reveal new areas that you can check from the Library while Blueprints unlock new craftable items at the Workshop. Blueprints are hidden inside crates.
Once you find one, you need to hold a button to open it. So make sure you’re not getting chased by a Stalker or Rain-Touched if you find them. Use your Blueprints as a guideline to progress through the story of Dive or Die.
Know the Enemies
There isn’t a huge variety of monsters in Dive or Die, but they are all very unique, requiring a different approach when you face them. The first type of enemy you’ll face in the game is Killer Algae. These are stationary plants that cling to surfaces, and as you get close to them, they lash out with their tentacles. Use a Knife to cut off the tentacles at close range.
Soon after your first dive, you’ll start encountering the Rain-Touched. These are people touched by the black rain, and they will lounge at you from a distance. These are very difficult early on, and you’ll want to use your Nailgun to take them out before they get close.
As you access new areas, you’ll find new monsters with their own unique quirks. Some of them can be fought, while for some, running away is the only option. Once you encounter a monster, you can find additional information on them in your Beastiary accessed via the Library. Make sure you check the Beastiary each time you encounter a new monster to figure out the best approach.
Keep Tabs On the Countdown
You only have a handful of days to collect Eldritch Idols in Dive or Die. Each time you go on a dive, a day passes. If the counter reaches zero, the game ends and the Rainmaker floods the land. However, there are two ways you can extend the countdown.
The first, and the simplest way to extend the countdown is to make offerings at the Altar in your Settlement. Once you build the Altar, you can offer Nutrition, Morale, or even Sacrifice a Survivor of your choosing to gain some Worship. Once the meter goes up to 100%, a day gets added to the countdown.
The second method is to find the Altars in different biomes when you go on a dive. Once you find one, you can sacrifice the Diver to extend the countdown by a day. However, doing so also blesses the specific biome, increasing its difficulty. You’ll also be able to find blessed items once you make an offering this way.
Use the Events to Your Advantage
As the days count down in your settlement, different events can occur. These events will affect your next dive and typically pass after a day. If you’ve got enough Worship level, you can make an offering to cancel the event. However, if you’ve got a strong diver, you can gain unique bonuses during these events. Here’s a quick look at some of the events you’ll encounter in the game.
- Chanting Moon:
Maddening Rain Psalmists chant in the pool today. Kill them to obtain random permanent stat boosts.
- Gazing Moon:
The Abyssal Pool will be Moongazed on the next dive. Powerful Moonbeams tear through the waters, killing friend and foe alike, and blessing resources.
- Black Moon:
The Abyssal Pool will be Starless on the next dive. The ghastly Sunless roam the pool, guarding precious Black Boxes.
- Red Moon:
The Abyssal Pool will be Bloody on the next dive. You take double damage, but killing enough enemies will grant you a blessing.
These events, while they come with a difficulty spike, allow you to earn permanent stat boosts, unique blessings, or even blessed items for free. For example, looting the Black Boxes during Black Moon gives you unique Blueprints that you will not find elsewhere. So make sure you’re taking full advantage of these events.
Don’t Overpopulate the Settlement
While bringing in new Survivors means more people to send out on dives and Expeditions, you should never overpopulate your camp. More people means a higher upkeep, and unless you’re bringing in tons of Food and Treasures daily, you want to keep your population as low as you can.
Having more people in your Settlement doesn’t provide any additional benefits. If a Survivor is sitting idle at the camp, they gain very minimal Experience. Ideally, you should only bring in a new Survivor if:
- You need to man a building.
- You have a free Expedition slot.
- You need a secondary Diver.
- You want to make a Sacrifice.
- They have unique traits that you need.
If the above conditions aren’t met, it’s better to let the Survivor go to keep your upkeep under control.
Save Scumming is an Option
Unless you’re using the Madman Mode when starting a new game, Dive or Die lets you save-scum your way out of any diver deaths. As you’re about to die, if you quit back to the main menu or simply Alt+F4 out to the desktop, you can safely reload the game before the dive begins.
However, in Madman Mode, any failed dive means your diver dies and a day will pass. We only suggest using this as a last resort, as this doesn’t seem to be the intended way to experience the game.
This concludes our beginner’s guide for Dive or Die – Children of Rain. For more interesting articles related to indie games, check out the links below:
- Into Indie Games Homepage
- Moonlight Peaks Walkthrough Hub
- Treasure Beach – Complete Walkthrough Hub
- Desktop Explorer Walkthrough Hub
- Lumina Veil Walkthrough Hub
Muhit Rahman lives off two things: gaming marathons and endless cups of tea. He writes guides, reviews, and occasionally forgets that real life doesn’t come with checkpoints. His favorite genres are Soulslike and Metroidvania, with Dark Souls III, Hollow Knight, and Dota 2 forever holding top spots on his all-time list.
