Merris is only one of 5 currently playable characters in theVampire Survivors-esqueEarly Access game that itDeath Must Die. This game is a wonderful blend of a lot of the mechanics that makeVampire Survivorsso addictive (outside of Adventure Mode) while also integrating some aspects of the Diablo games as well on top of having a very clear and unique identity.
Of the playable cast, Merris is the only real magic user, as all the others follow the standard class setup of Paladin, Assassin, Barbarian, and Fighter. Because of this, her general gameplay loop feels a bit different than the rest of the cast’s, and her achievements can be a bit of a struggle to unlock. So, let’s go over Merris as a character inDeath Must Die, all of her unlockable Aspects through her Achievements, and the best methods to unlock each one.
High Damage, Long-Range, & High AoE Damage
Movement Speed, Armor, Max Health, Evasion
First, let’s go over a bit of who exactly Merris is as a character inDeath Must Die, and why her Achievements might feel more difficult to unlock for some players. Well, to start, Merris is very slow at 260 move speed base and 146 move speed while attacking.
So,players will likely need to pay attentionto when and how they use their projectiles. Additionally, Merris doesn’t have a lot of base health or armor (45 Life and 0 Armor by default) which can make things very dicey very quickly. However, in exchange, Merris has an absurd range to her attacks, some of the highest damage potential of any playable character, and isjust an adorable little airheaded pixel art characterall around.
Recommended Strategy
Sign of Fire
You gain +8 percent Spell Damage every 3 Levels (Max +80 percent).
Just keep doing runs as Merris.
Going in order of the Achievements from left to right in-game, first up is theSign of Fire. This Achievement is a bit odd to include first, as it’s the one you really can’t actively work toward since it’d be impossible to keep track of Merris' current total damage output.
To get this Sign unlocked as quickly as possible, just play Merris a lot, attempt to get as far as possible (or at least to both the green and blue Slime spawn times), and grab any Blessings that are offense-focused. It should take a couple of runs to get this unlocked, and once you do it’s a lot easier to get a run going with Merris.
Sign of the Helper
Your missiles now automatically aim toward enemies. You also start with +66 percent Attack Damage
Start a new run, kill the chatty Skeleton around 1:40, then End Run in the Escape menu and restart this process until Achievement unlocks.
The second Sign the game tries to tell you to unlock as Merris is by far the most tedious Achievement unlock in the game, theSign of the Helper. By ‘chatty skeleton’, the developers mean the ‘elite’ skeleton (the one with the Star over its head) that spawns around 1 minute and 30 seconds into any run. This skeleton almost always gets 1 or 2 text responses off before the player kills them, so they absolutely earn the ‘chatty’ moniker. In any case, 33 times does not mean 33 runs, thankfully enough, but it does meanthat there are two ways for players to go about unlocking this Sign quickly:
Sign of Timespace
You now have infinite pull range but also -1 Dash and -30 percent Dash Cooldown.
Make it to 14 minutes in and beat the Necromancer.
Surprisingly, Merris has a pretty unique of easy-to-unlock Achievements and tedious Achievements, with theSign of Timespacebeing one of the easiest Achievements in the game. It’s pretty cut and dry,to unlock this Sign, you’ll just have to beat the Necromancer, the boss enemy that spawns in at the 14th-minute mark every single run.
At first, this might prove difficult, but once players have even a mediocre loadout of gear equipped to Merris, youmight as well be invinciblewhile fighting him. Just remember to look out for when the Necromancer raises his arm, as this is the indicator that he’s about the launch a flurry of fireballs.
Sign of the Hydra
You gain +2 Spell Projectile count.
Pick any Autocast-labeled Blessings you see. One of your three Gods must be Time, and you will want to use the Alteration Ritual Blessing.
This right here is probably the Achievement unlock that most readers were looking for in the first place. One might assume that getting 8 Autocast Blessings in one run for theSign of the Hydra, given that you can only select 3 Gods per run, would need some pretty specific choices to be made. But actually, like most thingsin games likeVampire Survivors, it’s not all that complicated. The only thingyou’ll want to make sure of is that one of the Gods you choose is Time, as the Alteration Ritual Blessing is an incredibly easy way to unlock this Achievement(and is just overpowered as a Blessing in general).
When selected, this Blessing gives the player a random buff on every Level Up for a pretty long duration by default (about a minute). So, as long as players are grabbing Autocast Blessings whenever they see one and leveling up a decent amount within about a minute between each one, they’ll eventually come across enough Autocast buffs to trigger this unlock.
Sign of the Summoner
You gain +22 percent Summon Damage every 3 levels (Max +220 percent).
Choose Death as one of your Gods & look out for the Necromancy and Ravens Blessings.
And for Merris' last Achievement, it’s theSign of the Summoner.There are a couple of different ways to go about this, butthe quickest and easiest method by far is just to use any Alterations you have to re-roll for Mort and grab her Necromancy and Ravens Blessings.Level these up enough and trigger them enough with kills in a short span of time, and you should unlock the Achievement before you even realize it.
