Characters / Shattered Pixel Dungeon

Shattered Pixel Dungeon has expanded on both the gameplay and the story of the vanila Pixel Dungeon, introducing new characters, mechanics, and playable classes.

The Adventurers

In general

• Combat Pragmatist: As expected from a roguelike, almost every class (sans the Warrior) needs to utilize their strengths to survive past the early game — strike from a distance, hide in tall grass, turn invisible and skip the fight entirely...
• Fighter, Mage, Thief: Predictably, the Warrior's a Fighter with his focus on taking hits and direct melee combat, the Rogue's a Thief with his focus on stealth and ring and artifact usage, and the Mage's... well, a Mage, playing around magic wands and scrolls. The Huntress' focus on long-range attacks and utilizing plants to her advantage make her a different shade of Thief by default, but certain Warden talents allow her to take more damage without dying, pushing her into a Fighter role in a pinch. The Duelist's a different flavour of Fighter, with a stronger focus on weapons to contrast with Warrior's focus on armor.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The splash art shows them wearing their respective endgame armours alongside their starting melee weapons — out of all classes, only Mage and Duelist would stick with their starting melee for reasons beyond a invoked Self-Imposed Challenge (and only Battlemage would use it as his primary melee weapon).
• Item Caddy: All classes have innate abilities or talents allowing them to get more mileage out of specific categories of items.
• One-Man Army: The city sent guards to clear the sewers and failed. The dwarves sent an army to fight Yog-Dzewa and its demonic host, and could only seal him up. By killing Yog at the end of the game, you would have done what an entire army failed to accomplish.
• The Smurfette Principle: Before 2.0, the Huntress was the only female PC.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Already present by implication in Vanilla PD, but Shattered's manual spells it out: there's no time to practice, so the heroes quaff potions of strength to be able to use the encountered weapons with any sort of effectiveness.

Warrior - Gladiator & Berserker

• A Handful for an Eye: One of his Tier 2 talents allows him to throw anything that isn't a ranged weapon at an enemy to blind them for a few turns.
• Always Accurate Attack: Gladiator's Combo finishers can't miss.
• The Berserker: One of the subclass options; rage is built by taking damage (with a caveat that damage blocked by armor still counts) and boosts attack power for up to 50%. Rage fades with time, inversely proportionally to current health.
• Boring, but Practical: A no-frills, simple class - wear a strong weapon and armor, and smack the enemy in the face. The talents and subclasses are all designed to let you smack enemies in the face harder and tank more physical attacks from enemies.
• Item Caddy: With the right talents, he can identify weapons and armor faster, and the broken seal allows him to get more mileage out of armor, by carrying over a single point of upgrade and possibly armor enchantments.
• Male Might, Female Finesse: Male Might to the Duelist's Female Finesse - the Warrior's starting item and a large chunk of his talents are focused on tanking more damage. One of his Tier 3 talents is even a Strength boost.
• Manly Facial Hair: The most straightforwardly strong class comes with a bushy unkempt beard.

Mage - Battlemage & Warlock

• Disc-One Nuke: You start the game with a Wand of Magic Missile imbued to your staff. It's mediocre in damage, but comes with a very important feature: it boosts your next wand shot to your staff level, so you can focus your Scroll of Upgrades on your staff, and all your other wands will experience the same benefit. It also synergizes well with both Mage subclasses.
• Early Game Hell: Inverted, Mage has the easiest early game compared to other classes as every Mage worth their salt would upgrade their starting weapon (specifically, the Staff), giving them an edge in early combat. No other class would upgrade their starting weapon, and even then, it's common for Mages to upgrade their Staff to +7, again giving them an edge in combat.
• Item Caddy: Mages have several Talents that boost Wand effectiveness. Battlemages can potentially recharge Artifacts faster by striking enemies with their staff.
• Kung-Fu Wizard: Mages are still expected to have high enough Strength to wear the proper equipment and survive the lower levels. Battlemages gain bonuses by thumping enemies with their staff, and Warlocks need to deal melee damage to drain their enemies.
• Magic Staff: Mages start with a unique one, initially imbued with Wand of Magic Missile. Depending on your build, it may be the only weapon you will need through the game.
• Noodle Incident: The old wandmaker claims that Mage is somehow at odds with the local wizarding school, and since 2.1.0, the prison shopkeep claims to have seen a "Wanted!" Poster of him.
• Vampiric Draining: Being a Warlock grants you more than mere Life Drain; it heals you for 40% of physical damage dealt, grants you satiety, and can revive the victim as a Wraith enthralled to you.

Rogue - Assassin & Freerunner

• Back Stab: The class's bread and butter, thanks to the Cloak of Shadows. His starting Dagger and Throwing Knives all deal close-to-max damage when attacking unaware enemies, and Assassin's damage bonuses when combined with properly-upgraded endgame weapons can end up one-shotting most mooks and dealing with bosses in a few clean hits.
• Flash Step: Assassins can blink next to their target to perform their Back Stab.
• Invisibility Cloak: Rogues start with a Cloak of Shadow artifact that can turn them invisible. Perfect to disengage and set up a surprise attack.
• Item Caddy: Talents allow him to identify rings quicker and boost them on artifact use (his Cloak of Shadows is an artifact and it triggers the talent in question). He can also get some artifact recharging on eating food.
• Ninja: He's focused on stealth and moving around unnoticed quickly, his endgame armour is essentially a ninja garb, and one of the talents for its Smoke Bomb ability can spawn a Ninja Log to distract the enemies.

Huntress - Sniper & Warden

• Energy Bow: Her class-specific item is a self-upgrading "spirit bow".
• Fertile Feet: One of her Tier 2 talents allows her to regrow trampled or burned grass.
• Item Caddy: Warden gets more mileage out of seeds and tipped darts than any other (sub)class, a Tier 2 talent gives her more ranged weapon durability, and a Tier 1 talents allows her to identify all items faster.
• Long-Range Fighter: Her Spirit Bow has infinite arrows, allowing her to rely on it most of the time. Her talents and the Sniper subclass allow her to get more mileage out of ranged weapons.
• Nature Hero: A large chunk of the class's abilities and talents center around creative use of the dungeon's plants. The Warden subclass in particular leans hard into this.

Duelist - Champion & Monk

• Dual Wielding: The Champion subclass allows her to equip a secondary melee weapon - she can switch between them instantly, and use its special attacks with no cooldown.
• Item Caddy: She can identify the weapons and armor faster, and has special attacks depending on what weapon she has equipped.
• Magic Knight: Elemental Strike, one of the endgame armor abilities allows her to fire an AOE effect while attacking, depending on her weapon's enchantment.
• Male Might, Female Finesse: Female Finesse to Warrior's Male Might - the Duelist's main class mechanic is special attacks depending on the weapon equipped.
• Original Generation: As the fifth hero, the Duelist is not based on any of the base Pixel Dungeon heroes, being completely original to Shattered.
• Purple Is Powerful: Her endgame armor comes with a purple cloak, and any character that lives long enough to get their endgame armor is powerful indeed.

Non-player characters

Shopkeepers

Present on floors 6, 11 and 16, they offer an assortment of items and can buy whatever you have on yourself.

• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The deeper you go, the higher their prices go.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Will teleport out of the dungeon with their wares at the first sight of danger.
• We Buy Anything: Though with an added wrinkle that they'll buy it for chump change in comparison to what you'd pay for it.

Sad ghost

A ghost haunting the sewers, looking for someone to kill the monster that slayed them to pass on... unless you find an artifact to make them stick around and help you.

• Ambiguously Gay: While the Ghost themself is described with gender-neutral writing, the lover is explicitly referred to as a "him".
• Ambiguous Gender: Described with gender-neutral writing.
• Connected All Along: Met Sonya (see Backstory Characters) when exploring the Sewers and ended up sharing some supplies to save one of her gravely wounded teammates.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Sticks around waiting to be avenged, and is also bound to a rose gifted to them by their lover.

Old wandmaker

A wandmaker that had ventured to Prison in search of a rare ingredient.

• Noodle Incident: Alludes to one when greeting Mage.

Troll blacksmith

A blacksmith minding his own business in the Caves. But hey, since you're around, you might do him a small favour...

• 20 Bear Asses: His quest asks you to go down into a dangerous sub-area to get him 40 pieces of dark gold ore.
• Everyone Has Standards: He's an abrasive jerk, but the Caves log describes him warning the expedition that a) there are dangerous machines ahead and b) the "gold" they found is actually dark gold, and it'll rapidly melt in sunlight.
• Jerkass: Abrasive in his dialogue, and tolerates the PC only as long as they are useful to him.
• Merging Machine: One of the potential rewards for his quest is him reforging two identical items into a single one, with the upgrade points of the stronger item plus one.

Ambitious imp

An imp looking for a business opportunity in the Dwarven Metropolis.

• 20 Bear Asses: His quest: kill a set amount of golems/monks and bring their Dwarven IDs back as proof.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Once he opens his shop, he overcharges for his wares even more than the shopkeepers before him.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Bails if you return back with the Amulet in your hands, giving you one last chance to trade with him.

Backstory characters

1.4.0 added documents found on each level by characters that braved the dungeon before the player.

Sonya

A city guard assigned to a secret operation to clear out the monsters in the sewers in 375.

• Apocalyptic Log: Subverted - the second-to-last page seems to be a set-up to her encountering Goo and perishing, but a colleague takes the bullet for her, while she survives and leaves the sewers.
• Creature of Habit: Even though she's not allowed to send them anymore, she continues writing letters to her mom and dad.
• Connected All Along: Encountered the adventurer that'd later become the sad ghost on one of her patrols.
• Fling a Light into the Future: The last log entry she left behind drops the 'unsent letters' framing device and is instead a warning to whoever might head downwards.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: How her logs end — she quits her guard job and moves out of the city with her mom and dad.

Kiana Smith

A warden of the prison that decided to start keeping a journal in 362.

• Agent Mulder: Dismisses reports of dwarven magic leaking from lower layers and doesn't believe the rumors about supernatural happenings spread out by guards.

Archibald Drummond, PhD

A leader of an expedition sent to the caves in 308.

• Badass Bookworm: An archmage representing a wizarding institute that, judging by his notes, is capable of defending himself if need be.

Thymor Zahir

A member of the former Dwarven King's court, who managed to escape the ritual that forced the rest of the court to submit to his former colleague in 264.

• Ambiguous Situation: Between his accounts and the King's, it's not quite clear if he willingly surrendered, deeming the King the lesser evil, or if his will was broken like the others'.
• Foregone Conclusion: The very first entry found has him proclaim that he'll start a resistance against the new Dwarven King. Considering the King is the final boss of the area, it's safe to assume Zahir ultimately failed. Sure enough, the third entry (out of six) describes the resistance's fall.
• La Résistance: Tries to establish one to take down the King. Predictably, it fails.
• Resistance as Planned: Later journal entries reveal that the King was fully aware he was going to set up a resistance and decided to wait for him to strike, so that he could turn everyone against him.
• Sole Survivor: The only member of the Dwarven King's inner circle that didn't get brainwashed by the King. By the time of the third log, he's probably the last dwarf in the whole Metropolis that avoided brainwashing.

R.

A dwarven mage whose forbidden research shaped the current state of the dungeon. For the tropes about him, see the Dwarven King in the Bosses folder below.

Common enemies

In general

• Elite Mooks: Almost all of the aforementioned mooks have a special variant that comes with a gimmick making them more difficult to fight, but dropping guaranteed loot in return.
• Impossible Item Drop: Swarms of flies, bats and demon spawners inexplicably drop health potions, scorpios drop random potions, elementals drop potions or scrolls related to their element, golems drop weapons and evil eyes drop seeds and dewdrops.
• Organ Drops: Many monsters across the levels drop interchangeable mystery meat.

Special cases - mimics, piranhas, wraiths

• Chest Monster: In three flavours:
  • "Normal" mimics; no gimmick and drop two items on death instead of one,
  • Gold mimics; tougher and stronger than normal ones, but drop two uncursed items,
  • Crystal mimics, spawning in place of a crystal chest in a room; can eat your items and displace the player character, but don't require a key, so a well-prepared player can get both rewards from crystal chests.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Wraiths die to any attack that connects, but they have such ridiculous evasion that anything not guaranteed to hit (sneak attacks or wands) is a waste of time.
• Logical Weakness: Piranhas die immediately when out of water.
• Piranha Problem: The piranhas you encounter were apparently specially bred to protect treasures, which would explain the voraciousness. You're encouraged to bypass them altogether rather than fight them.

Sewers - rats, gnoll scouts, great crabs, swarms of flies

• The Goomba: Marsupial Rats have no gimmick whatsoever and are there only as an early-game enemy to fight.
• Kung Fu-Proof Mook: Sewer Snakes are very evasive for such an early enemy, but they are there to teach you about surprise attacks and how they never miss.
• Lightning Bruiser: Fast, tough and painful, Sewer Crabs are deadly for unprepared adventurers.
• Unique Enemy: The monster that killed what's now the Sad Ghost can be only encountered once.

Prison - bandits, guards, necromancers, DM-100

• Action Bomb: Skeletons explode into bone shards when defeated, damaging both friend and foe. This can actually set a chain reaction if you are surrounded by more than one.
• Ambiguously Human: All nominally human enemies (Guards, Thieves, Necromancers of all stripes) are considered "demonic or undead" by the wands of Transfusion and Prismatic Light.
• Bandit Mook: Crazy thieves and crazy bandits are able to grab one of your items and run away — and if you lose track of them, the item's gone forever.
• Mecha-Mooks: DM-100s, the robots gifted by the Dwarfs to the prison, unleashed in a desperate attempt to constrain the riots.
• The Minion Master: Necromancers summon skeletons or wraiths to do their bidding.
• Necromancer: The Necromancers can be found in lower levels of the Prison, and are capable of summoning and healing a single skeleton to fight you. The special variant, the Spectral Necromancer, can summon multiple wraiths.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Guards are capable of dragging you next to them, in addition to Crippling you. It can be a problem if they drag you from chasing Thieves, or out of DM-100's melee range and they start using their long-range attacks.

Mines - gnolls shamans and brutes, bats, cave spiders, DM-200

• Bloodsucking Bats: Vampire Bats will heal themselves as they hit you. They have a chance to drop Healing Potions, so it's good idea to farm a few.
• Giant Mook: DM-200, a larger "defensive machine" that's too big to enter one-tile corridors.
• Giant Spider: Cave Spinners are big green spiders that are more annoying than dangerous.
• Heavily Armored Mook: Armored [gnoll] brutes - they are more resistant to damage, can rage for longer than their base conuterparts, and drop armor on death.
• Life Drain: The vampire bats can heal by dealing damage.
• Mecha-Mooks: [DM-200] again.
• Turns Red: Gnoll Brutes become Enraged when first killed, granting them Last Chance Hit Point and increased damage. Notably, even getting Assassinated will trigger this, so they can't truly be oneshotted.

Dwarven Metropolis - dwarves, elementals, golems

• Achilles' Heel: Shurikens are perfect to trigger the Monks' parry, as they can be thrown without using up any turn after moving.
• Ambiguously Human: Ambiguously Dwarven - Dwarf Monks and Necromancers are considered "demonic or undead" by the wands of Transfusion and Prismatic Light.
• Gemini Destruction Law: Dwarven Ghouls always come in pairs, and as long there's another in its view, it will rise back up a few turns after killed. This can be a problem when there's more than 1 pack in a room, and especially during the King of Dwarves fight.
• No-Sell: Dwarven Monks will gain Focused and parry the next physical attack, no matter what.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Played straight in the past — the Dwarves lived underground, mining for resources and constructing machines — but averted in the present, with the Dwarven society's pivot towards the forbidden magic.

Demon Halls - succubi, ripper demons, demon spawners, evil eyes, scorpios

• Body Horror: The ripper demons and demon spawners are made out of flesh of dead dwarves.
  Rippers are emaciated ghoulish creatures that resemble dwarves, but with broken bodies and long sharp claws made of bone.
• Metal Slime: Acidic scorpios fulfil all three criteria. Rare spawns? Check, they're the Elite Mook variant of regular scorpios. Unique rewards? Check, they're guaranteed to drop potions of experience. Reasonable way of ending combat without killing the player? Check, it runs away and cripples the player like a normal scorpio, and applies caustic ooze on attack and when attacked itself, forcing the player to wash it off or lose a large chunk of their health.
• Oculothorax: Evil Eyes are massive floating eye creatures with Eye Beam attacks that take off a large chunk of health.
• Scary Scorpions: Scorpios are positively massive, fire crippling spikes, and unlike most other enemies with ranged attacks, retreat when you get close enough to them.
• Succubi and Incubi: The succubi; they can charm enemies and drain HP from already charmed ones.

Bosses

Goo

• Blob Monster: Theorized to be filth and sewage given life by leaking dark magic.
• Charged Attack: Every once in a while it "pumps itself up" for a more powerful attack, forcing the player to move out of the way.
• Heal It with Water: It regenerates 1 health per turn if it stands in water. Inversely, it's recommended to stand in water while fighting it to wash off its corrosive ooze.
• King Mook: It's a massive (caustic) slime.
• Warm-Up Boss: As a straightforward boss with one special gimmick - a telegraphed charged attack - Goo is easy to deal with, especially in comparison to what follows.

Tengu

• Combat Pragmatist: He traps his room and jumps around while throwing shurikens and bombs to make sure it's a slog to get close to him.
• Cool Mask: Which you can grab off his corpse, and allows you to choose a subclass.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: He jumps around the room to keep away from you. If you rely on melee with no way to close the distance, you might have a problem.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The poison dart traps he spawns during the first phase of his boss fight don't operate on the same rules as the dart traps found elsewhere - they can't be detected with a normal search and don't target him.
• Trap Master: His first phase takes place in a room filled with special traps that can't be detected without magic and don't target Tengu.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: Goo is easy to kite and kill on your own terms, even with the Badder Bosses challenge. Tengu forces you to fight on his terms, and is the one doing the kiting this time around.

DM-300

• Collapsing Ceiling Boss: Causing rockfalls is one of its abilities.
• Drill Tank: Can destroy walls when supercharged.
• King Mook: The most powerful of the dwarven defensive machines, essentially a scaled up version of DM-200s.
• Humongous Mecha: A massive machine built to defend the dwarven city.
• Super Mode: Twice during its bossfight, it supercharges, rendering it invulnerable, faster than the PC, and capable of drilling through walls to get through narrow passages.

King of Dwarves

• All for Nothing: What his war with Yog-Dzewa amounted to — his own troops were killed and turned to ripper demons, so his plan to win by attrition was going to fail sooner or later, and he was unable to stop its power from leaking into the upper levels of the dungeon.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: To Yog-Dzewa; he's a villain that turned the whole Dwarven City into his personal slaves, but was content at stopping there, whereas Yog wants to influence the world beyond it.
• Big Bad Wannabe: To Yog, whose power exceeds what he was able to achieve with the Amulet.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: His third phase. He begins to spawn absurd quantities of Mooks and all damage dealt to him gets deterred... but he has a measly 100 HP in that phase, and once that deterred damage gets to him, all the mooks die, which means you need to smack him a few times and then dodge the cannon fodder for a few turns - and at that point you probably have a spare potion of invisibility in your bandolier.
• Cool Crown: Instead of an Armor Kit you'd get in Vanilla, you get his crown, which upgrades your armor and gives you the Tier-4 Talents.
• Evil Laugh: The fourth Demon Halls log opens with "I AM KING, AHAHAHAHAAA!".
• Evil Versus Evil: He opposed Yog-Dzewa's attempt at a takeover for his own selfish reasons.
• Exposition of Immortality: The notes added in 1.4.0 claim he took over the throne in the year 264, and the notes found in the Sewers are dated 375 and later, making him a century old at the very least.
• Flunky Boss: Spawns huge quantities of undead dwarves to fight alongside him.
• Necessarily Evil: At the end Zahir saw him as this, in comparison to Yog-Dzewa.
• Sorcerous Overlord: A dwarven court wizard who corrupted the other dwarves and usurped the throne.
• Walking Spoiler: Not as the boss at the bottom of the city, but as the author of the Demon Halls logs.
• We Have Reserves: His approach towards his army of undead in the fight against Yog-Dzewa.
• Zerg Rush: His final phase summons a legion of Mooks to rush you while all damage you deal to him become deferred. You need to survive, hide or drive away the onslaught of Mooks while he ticks away to die.

Yog-Dzewa

• All Your Powers Combined: Its Fists are manifestation of its power, comprising Soiled, Burning, Rotting, Rusting, Light and Dark.
• Big Bad: Directly or indirectly responsible for the Dungeon being as dangerous as it is.
• Clipped-Wing Angel: After you kill off 3 (all 6 with Badder Bosses) of its Fists, it will shoot and spawn larvas more often, but if you're strong enough to reach that point, you're strong enough to deal with the larva rush and finish the god off.
• Evil Versus Evil: Between him and the Dwarven King.
• Eye Beam: It fires a disintegration ray every so often at the adventurer, up to 3 rays at once.
• Flunky Boss: Yog is immobile and only fires a ray every so often while spawning a larva that dies in 1-2 hits. The real boss fight is dealing with its Fists.
• Hope Crusher: One of its few dialogue lines paints it in such a light.
  YOUR. HOPE. IS. AN. ILLUSION!