Inscryption guide: The best cards, Deathcards, and sigils

Inscryption has a plethora of cards for you to collect. Most of them have decent functions, though a select few can truly turn the tide of battle. You’ll definitely want to maximize the capabilities of your creatures by boosting them further. Here’s our Inscryption guide to help you with the best cards, Deathcards, and sigil combinations for Act 1.

Note: For more information, check out our Inscryption guides and features hub.

Inscryption guide – The best cards, Deathcards, and sigils (Act 1)

Starter deck

As a rule of thumb, each death you have in Inscryption leads to two things: you’ll restart your run from the first area, and you’ll get to design your own Deathcard (I’ll discuss this later). Now, since this is a rogue-lite, you’ll have a starter deck with low-tier cards. But, you’ll still retain some important ones, such as the Stoat, Stinkbug, and Stunted Wolf.

The Stoat is handed to you early in the campaign. The other two, meanwhile, are found by solving the Cabin’s puzzles. These aren’t particularly powerful, but they’ll help you get by early on.

The Squirrel card upgrades

The other mechanic that’s always in play is the Squirrel card. Yes, it can be transformed into a Bee card by solving puzzles, too. Another way you can boost it is related to the Woodcarver NPC which we discussed in our beginner’s guide. If you obtain the Squirrel head totem from the Movable Blocks puzzle in the Cabin, try to visit the Woodcarver when you can. If she has the Worthy Sacrifice sigil, this will make the Squirrel a lot more valuable as sacrificing it gives you +3 blood. You could practically plop down one Squirrel and sacrifice it on the same turn to summon a Grizzly.

Another alternative is if you see the Unkillable sigil on a body totem. Squirrel cards with the Unkillable perk allow you to reuse it multiple times in the same turn. Essentially, you’ll have unlimited Squirrels, so you can summon better/more expensive options with ease.

The best support cards and sigils for infusion/sacrifice in Inscryption

Now, there are also other cards in Inscryption that aren’t that strong in terms of stats. But, they more than make up for it thanks to amazing sigils. Ideally, you’ll use some of these as fodder when you visit Sigil Altars to boost your DPS cards. Here are some examples:

• Unkillable (i.e., Cockroach and Ouroboros) – When a card bearing this sigil perishes, a copy of it is created in your hand. The Ouroboros is decent, so you probably won’t want to turn it into fodder. It does become a great card to boost in Act 2.
• Many Lives (i.e., Cat and Child 13) – When a card with this sigil is sacrificed, it does not perish. It’s great when combined with Squirrel sacrifices.
• Touch of Death (i.e., Adder) – Instantly kills a target that it hits regardless of its HP.
• Airborne (i.e., Bees, Sparrow, Turkey Vulture, Raven) – Airborne causes creatures to directly attack your opponent even if there’s another card arrayed against them. This is especially useful when you’re fighting a boss like the Angler.
• Airborne + Waterborne (i.e., Kingfisher) – This is another great card to use as fodder, since most cards will only have either Airborne or Waterborne, but not both. This sigil allows the creature to attack your opponent directly (Airborne), and it can’t get hit when it’s your opponent’s turn (Waterborne).
• Sharp Quills (i.e., Porcupine) – When attacked, the enemy takes +1 damage as well.
• Hoarder (i.e., Magpie) – It’s unlikely that you’ll infuse the Magpie into something else, but this sigil lets you choose a specific card in your deck whenever you draw. It’s an amazing perk.
• Pack Rat (uh, the Pack Rat) – If you have three items with you and you visit the item vendor (backpack icon), you’ll get the Pack Rat card. Its sigil lets you obtain a consumable item as long as you haven’t reached the limit yet.
• Bifurcated Strike and Trifurcated Strike (i.e., Mantis and Mantis God respectively) – These sigils allow the card to attack multiple opposing spaces. These are your area-of-effect (AoE) blasts.

The best cards to use those sigils on

• Airborne, Airborne + Waterborne, Bifurcated Strike, and Trifurcated Strike – These should go to cards that have decent or high ATK by default, or those that can transform into upgraded variants. Examples include the Amalgam (3/3), Grizzly (4/6), and Urayuli (7/7).
• Touch of Death – Can go to monsters with low ATK but have Bifurcated/Trifurcated Strike by default (i.e., Mantis).
• Sharp Quills, Unkillable, Burrower, Mighty Leap, or Guardian – These sigils are good for mitigation, survivability, or preventing you from taking damage. You can give infuse these on monsters with low ATK and high HP like the Mole Man (0/6), River Snapper (1/6), and Moosbuck (3/7).

Designing your Deathcard

The same concepts also apply when we create a Deathcard. It’s a fairly short process where Leshy tosses three cards each time and you can only pick one:

• First choice – This is the summoning cost of the card; choose the lowest cost. If a pelt pops up, take it because it means your Deathcard is absolutely free with no summoning costs.
• Second choice – This is the card’s stat; pick the highest ATK and HP values.
• Third choice – This is for the sigil; grab the best option among the choices that are available.

Inscryption is available on Steam. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.