By Thomas Wilde, Contributor

20 Minutes Till Dawn is a roguelike shoot-’em-up, of the sort that’s sometimes called “bullet heaven.” You begin each run by selecting a character and equipping her with a weapon. You must then survive a constant onslaught of monsters for the next 20 minutes, while adding to your arsenal and abilities on the fly.

Your first few runs through 20 Minutes Till Dawn are intense, even on the default difficulty, but the real game doesn’t start until you reach Darkness 15. The first time you survive a round of 20 Minutes Till Dawn on a new Darkness level, you unlock a new one. Darkness levels range from 0 (no particular modifiers) to 15 (all the modifiers at once). You can consider 20 Minutes Till Dawn “finished” once you’ve managed to complete a run on Darkness 15 with every survivor and every weapon. This is tracked in both the character and weapon select screens.

If you’re looking for strategies on how to take on the hardest challenges in 20 Minutes Till Dawn, this guide is the right place to start.

Here’s what you’re in for:

The good news (if you can call it that) is that you’ll be used to most of this. You have to clear each successive level of Darkness to reach 15, so you can gradually adjust your strategies accordingly. There’s no real way to throw yourself into 20 Minutes Till Dawn’s deep end.

That being said, Darkness 15 does require you to crack into 20 Minutes Till Dawn’s mechanics to a greater extent, looking for synergies between your character, her weapon, her unique abilities, and the Runes system. The latter in particular is easy to “set and forget” for the first few Darkness levels, but once you hit 15, it’s time to put more thought into it.
 

Basic tips

In theory, any character can clear Darkness 15 with any weapon, but 20 Minutes Till Dawn is already difficult enough. There’s no reason to hamstring yourself with substandard builds—like Scarlett and Crossbow or Raven and SMGs—unless you really want the extra challenge.

Ideally, you should match a character with a weapon that pairs well with her unique abilities. For example, Katana summons an ally whenever she reloads, so you want to equip her with weapons such as the Shotgun, Crossbow, or Revolver which require frequent reloading.

Your single most effective defensive option for most characters is to stack the Dodge and Move Speed stats. Dodge gives you a percentage chance to avoid all damage from a single hit, while Move Speed makes your character run faster.

Each run through 20 Minutes Till Dawn, whether you succeed or fail, earns a currency called Souls, which you can invest in Runes at the character or weapon selection screens. Runes provide a number of useful passive benefits (occasionally with associated drawbacks) that you should mix and match depending on your character.

With maxed Agility and Premonition Runes, for instance, you begin runs with an initial Dodge rating of 10% and a cap of 75%. It’s usually easy to hit 50% Dodge or higher by the halfway point of most runs, if not sooner.

You can go full-offense on early Darkness levels and keep yourself safe by massacring everything that gets near, perhaps using Freeze status and Frostbite/Splinter/Shatter. But on Darkness 15, enemies usually have too much HP for you to get away with that until late in a run. Dodge is there as a fallback option.

The most important thing, however, is simple persistence. There is no “one weird trick” to consistently clearing Darkness 15. Sometimes your upgrade choices are all terrible, or you make one serious mistake early on and never recover from it. These tips will give you a place to start evolving your strategy, but the execution is still up to you. Don’t give up.
 

Characters

Shana

Your first character, Shana, is a dedicated all-rounder who’s perfect for learning 20 Minutes Till Dawn’s ropes. With Specialize and her unique ability to reroll your ability choices (although rerolls are reportedly coming to all characters in the next major content patch), Shana gives you unmatched character build flexibility. Quick Learner also more than compensates for the EXP hit you take from Darkness 11. As such, you can make any weapon or build work for Shana.

If you pick up Ascension off the first elite, this unlocks Shana’s Halo as an upgrade option. You have to collect three pieces, at which point it spawns on the floor at Shana’s feet. When complete, the Halo provides you with Fire Rate +50%, Reload Rate +50%, and Vision Range +75%. The latter can be devastating if you pair it with the Glare upgrade tree and an assortment of on-hit effects like Curse or Freeze.

At this point, anything that enters the arena against Shana will take significant damage and be hit with several debuffs simply for having the temerity to get near her.

If you get Ascension any later on in a run, though, it’s arguably not worth the effort to put this all together.

 

Diamond

The peculiar contradiction of Diamond is that she’s built to take risks. Her high starting health pool gives her unmatched resilience, but her unique upgrades all give her actual benefits from getting hit. Ideally, you want to stay at half health or lower, which is a solid use case for the Glass Cannon and Tenacity Runes.

That in turn means that Diamond is the one character who shouldn’t stack Dodge. If you get Berserk or Bulk Up early, she gets serious benefits from micromanaging her own health pool. As Diamond, grab anything that restores health, even minor stuff like Soothing Flame or the Healing Rune, and don’t be afraid to take damage on purpose.

Diamond should also grab Magic Spear and Holy Arts at the first opportunity. Magic Spear is an excellent all-purpose summon—a blanket term in 20 Minutes Till Dawn for any ability that brings an ally onto the battlefield with you. This includes basic abilities like the Magic Spear or Ghost Friend, as well as character-specific options such as Hastur’s Tentacles (discussed below). Speed and attack power for summons are typically modified by your Summon Damage and Summon Attack Speed stats.

Holy Arts meanwhile leverages Diamond’s high health pool to deal immense damage. Likewise, you can upgrade Holy Arts with Holy Might in order to Smite nearby enemies whenever Diamond reloads. When paired with low-ammunition weapons like the Shotgun, Crossbow, or Magic Bow, Holy Might can destroy all nearby enemies every second or two.

It’s worth noting that in 20 Minutes Till Dawn, your total HP caps at 11. Any items you pick up that would raise your health past the cap are entirely or partially wasted, including Soul Hearts. It’s still worth boosting Diamond’s HP, but keep the cap in mind, especially if the Tome of Might drops.

 

Scarlett

A lot of 20 Minutes Till Dawn players overlook or underrate Scarlett because she’s built around inflicting Burn. What the game doesn’t tell you is that Burn stacks with itself, so it’s well worth having multiple ways to set enemies on fire. Once you pick up a few extra abilities that increase Burn’s base damage—like Tomes of Elements, the Pyro Mage skill tree, the Elemental Barrage Rune, and Scarlett’s own Pyro Affinity—then Burn really gets some work done.

As such, I double down on Burn by giving Scarlett the Flame Cannon. Ideally, you’ll get Pyro Affinity or Pyromaniac off the first elite enemy. The latter ability in particular turns the Flame Cannon into a horde eraser, and almost totally cancels out the downside from the Flame Cannon’s Meteor evolution. The combination of Scarlett’s built-in fire wave ability and Fire Starter work to give this build a lot of piercing and range. The downside is that it doesn’t have much burst.

An alternative is to equip Scarlett with the Dual SMGs. These do low damage per shot and have the highest base Reload Rate in the game, but you don’t fire the SMGs to do damage with bullets. They’re vehicles for your on-hit effects. With an SMG-equipped Scarlett, take Pyro Mage and every ability you find that lets you put more bullets on the screen, ensuring that nothing can approach you without acquiring at least 3 stacks of Burn.

 

Hina

Hina was a much weaker character in the Early Access version of 20 Minutes Till Dawn. She’s the only survivor in the game who has a dash, which gives her mobility that no one else can match. Unfortunately that dash used to leave Hina fully vulnerable during its animation until you picked up her unique Hidden Blade upgrade—but in 20 Minutes Till Dawn version 1.0, the dash grants invincibility frames right from the start.

Dashing also spawns a Shadow Clone of Hina, which lasts six seconds and attacks in a short radius around itself for 300% of your current bullet damage. If you stand still when you dash, Hina stays in the same place but still conjures the Clone, which can be handy if you’re surrounded. The Clone directly benefits from your Summon Damage and Summon Attack Speed.

Hina has one more thing going for her. When she’s equipped with the Salvo Knives, she can acquire targets for it during her dash, which lets her take full advantage of the Knives’ unique gimmick. I’d go so far as to say that Hina is the only character who has any business using the Salvo Knives at all.

 

Spark

Every time Spark shoots an enemy, she has a 50% chance of striking it with Lightning. As such, her high Darkness level runs are either very good or very bad. If you get Electro Mage in the first five minutes, you’re in good shape. If you don’t, you aren’t.

Ideally, you want to obtain Electro Mastery as early as you can get it, as it’s Spark’s single most powerful upgrade option. She also benefits from the Pyro Mage tree via the Overload Synergy, which is unlocked once you have both Electro Mastery and Fire Starter.

This all makes the Dual SMGs a strong but finicky option for Spark. Since they fire twice with every shot, you’re virtually guaranteed at least one Lightning hit, and their high rate of fire is good for conjuring up more Lightning strikes from Electro Mage. The Flash Mag evolution at level 20 plays even further into Spark’s niche, and lets her sweep the area clear of enemies with every tenth bullet she fires. The SMGs’ long reload time does present issues that you’ll either have to work with or around, however.

 

Lilith

Lilith was the first character in 20 Minutes Till Dawn who really made sense to me. Two out of three of Lilith’s unique abilities boost Summon Damage, and whenever she kills something, it spawns a Spirit that attacks a nearby target. That Spirit’s damage scales with all abilities that buff Summons.

That ends up giving Lilith incredible synergy with the Batgun. While you can’t aim the Batgun at specific targets—which makes the first minute or so of a fresh run difficult—it double-dips on benefits from both Bullet Damage and Summon Damage effects.

When you pair that with Power Shot and Splinter, every enemy you kill explodes into three smaller bats and a Spirit. While those smaller bats do scratch damage at best, they virtually guarantee that anything that appears onscreen suffers from most or all of Lilith’s available on-hit effects.

 

Abby

Abby’s core gimmick is accuracy by volume. You can right-click to fire off all her remaining ammunition at once in random directions. While she’s doing so, Abby can still move at her full running speed and has a heightened rate of fire.

My first successful Darkness 15 run with Abby, like Lilith, was with the Batgun. You can’t really aim with the Batgun anyway, so why not let Abby constantly burn the entire clip? She’s also great with the Cyclone Sword, or a heavily modified Shotgun. As long as it hits everything in the local area code, Abby can work with it.

 

Yuki

Every sixth shot Yuki fires, whether it hits an enemy or not, spawns a randomly targeted Frost Butterfly that freezes anything it touches. Anything that’s already Frozen takes your full current Bullet Damage. As such, an ideal weapon for Yuki is one that has at least a starting Max Ammo of 6 as well as respectable base Bullet Damage. That makes the Cyclone Sword a strong overall pick.

Any weapon with a starting Max Ammo of 6 or higher can do the job for Yuki, but once you’ve maxed out the Frost Mage upgrades, it’s really useful to let enemies cluster up around her. The Cyclone Sword’s whirlwind attack on reload can clear a space around Yuki, while the Butterflies, Frostbite, and Shatter set up combinations of wrecked enemies.

Under these circumstances, Yuki’s Achilles’ heel can be enemy projectiles, so it might be worth investing in the Wind Shield Rune.

 

Luna

Whenever Luna reloads, she conjures a Black Hole in a random location nearby. Initially, this draws in normal and elite enemies and keeps them in one place for a couple of seconds. Her unique upgrades all revolve around the Black Hole, but both Cosmic Burst and Implosion run off Luna’s Bullet Damage.

Like Yuki, it’s important that Luna start with something that has some kick to it in order to get as much as possible out of her upgraded Black Holes. The Crossbow can be really fun to use, as Luna’s Black Holes can suck in entire waves of enemies and enable you to off them with one charged shot.

The only risk is that if you conjure a second Black Hole before the first expires, the first simply disappears, so you’ll want to avoid mashing your fire button if Luna’s got the Crossbow. With that in mind, the Revolver might be a slightly more balanced pick, at least for your first few attempts.

 

Dasher

She may not look impressive at first glance, but Dasher is quietly one of the most powerful characters in 20 Minutes Till Dawn. Every 10 seconds, Dasher automatically turns into a deer, which is invincible and damages any enemies it touches. This starts at 100 and scales rapidly with Summon Damage and Move Speed. The only real downside to Dasher in deer form is that bosses tend to bounce away when struck, so despite Dasher’s high damage output, you can’t simply run them over like everything else.

Even so, Dasher is only vulnerable for 10 seconds out of every 20, and pushes enemies away from herself whenever she changes out of deer form. You only have to worry about keeping Dasher alive half the time, which makes her actual weapon nearly irrelevant. Just stack on appropriate bonuses, give her a few tricks like Evasive or Holy Shield for when she’s not a deer, and plow through everything you see.

If there’s a weapon you simply can’t get the hang of, such as the Watering Gun, try using Dasher to brute-force the situation.

Katana

Like Luna, Katana’s game plan is built around regular reloading. Each time she does so, she summons a Magic Sword that attacks enemies in her general vicinity.

The Magic Sword is quietly the best summoned ally in 20 Minutes Till Dawn. Out of the gate, it does respectable damage and flies in a broader arc than the Magic Spear. With Katana’s unique ability Sword Mastery, it directly benefits from your Bullet Damage as well as your Summon Damage. That in turn sets up a crazy synergy with the Fresh Clip passive, which gives you a full 50% Bullet Damage for 1 second every time you reload. At that point, it’s not weird to see a Sword hit for ~400 damage (see above screenshot), and Katana can have 3 of them on the screen at once.

With all that in mind, Katana needs a fast reload to maximize her damage output. My first successful Darkness 15 run with her was with the Cyclone Sword, but a properly-built Shotgun is Katana’s real best friend. Keep your Reload Rate high and Max Ammo low.

 

Hastur

Hastur—unlocked by surviving a run through the Temple in Standard Mode on any Darkness level—is a strange character. Every five seconds she conjures a Tentacle that lasts 15 seconds and attacks nearby enemies. Hastur’s Tentacles benefit from her Summon Damage and Summon Attack Speed stats, and all of Hastur’s unique abilities directly affect her Tentacles without any additional stat boosts. By default, you can have three Tentacles active at once, but her Call of the Abyss upgrade raises that to six.

As such, Hastur is essentially a blank slate. There’s nothing in her kit that directly benefits or hinders any particular build or strategy. That being said, once she’s got her Smash upgrade, Hastur’s Tentacles hit like a freight train. If any character in 20 Minutes Till Dawn is suited towards a pure summoner build, it’s Hastur, which makes the Batgun a natural pick for her.

Hastur gets some extra mileage out of the Freeze tree and Tomes of Elements, which can force enemies to hold still for long enough that her Tentacles can clobber them. Another helpful trick is to pick up the Pulsing Summons ability, which turns your Tentacles into a sort of anti-enemy electric fence once per second.

 

Raven

The Curse debuff is one of your most powerful offensive options in 20 Minutes Till Dawn, but no other character relies on it like Raven (unlocked by surviving a run through the Pumpkin Patch on Standard Mode). Curse afflicts enemies with a special status effect that lasts two seconds. When it expires, the enemy takes a hit, equal to 200% of your current Bullet Damage.

Right from the start of a Raven run, her crow buddy floats around the screen randomly Cursing opponents. This makes it key for Raven—like Yuki and Luna—to start with some firepower in order to get the most out of her Curses.

That makes the Grenade Launcher a surprisingly good pick for Raven, as it has the highest base damage of any weapon in the game. Its level 20 evolution Blast Shield immunizes its user from explosions, at which point you can take Splinter to surround yourself with an improvised minefield.

Without any abilities, Raven with a Grenade Launcher can see Curses tick for ~300 damage. With upgrades like Doom, Shadowblade, and Raven’s unique Shadow Affinity, it’s not weird to see a Curse hit for 800 damage or more. Raw damage output will never be Raven’s problem. My best runs on Darkness 15 with Raven have all come from stacking Move Speed and Dodge to keep her alive, then letting the crow do most of the work.

When you’re ready to start putting these builds into action, you’ll find 20 Minutes Till Dawn on the Epic Games Store.