I’m embarrassed to say I’ve died in the first encounter so many times from that stupid shield zombie and jumping one. I can’t get the parry right. They do this stupid grunt then I parry then they jump. And if I wait for the “!” they do this weird timing if I hit them. Still getting used to it.

The shield bearer is the perfect enemy to initially practice your parry and roll with imo, at some point you will start to intuitively time it right and the shield bearer becomes almost harmless. I recommend using the training room for that.

Probably you already noticed that the “!” is only an indicator for the begin of the attack animation and that you have to factor in the distance between you and the enemy too, to time the parry right. Also keep in mind that only a tap results in a parry, while keeping the button pressed even for very short results just in a block / messed up parry.

But I got rickety wrekt by death in the castle map. I thought I was doing so effing good, got him down to phase 2 (about 1/3 health down) and with 1.4k health he killed me in a 3 hit combo, first hit taking half my life down and I got so blown away that I just missed wtf happened next. Game is very unforgiving.

How are you distributing your scrolls? You should decide at the start of a run if it is going to be a Brutality, Tactics or Survival run, based on what kind of weapons you want to use during the run. That defines your main colour and your two off colours for the run. The best practice is to take a scroll of your main colour whenever you can for max damage and distribute the two off colours 1:1 for max hp.

Game is very unforgiving.

Yes, indeed!

I haven’t tried any of the enhancements or crutches. Which I’m a father of 3 kids, one a new born and I’m not good like I used to be. I might check out some cheats to make things a little smoother for me.

Congratulations! In that situation I think I would experiment with custom mode a lot, it has many detailed options to tailor the game experience individually. If you find that you miss something in custom mode you should also check out accessibility mode as well.

Good luck, have fun!