Let’s get one thing straight: Into the Depths does not care about your grand architectural vision. If you want your underground colony to survive SmelJey’s brutal new roguelite city builder, you need to know the best cards Into the Depths has to offer. In a game where rations are infinitely more valuable than gold and a single bad hex placement means mass starvation, your draft strategy is your only lifeline.
Every run is a ticking clock. You start with a handful of settlers, a basic Castle, and a desperate need to dig deeper. But unlike traditional city builders, your expansion is dictated by the luck of the draw and the synergies you deliberately build into your deck. This guide breaks down the ultimate tier list to help you conquer the Humid Caves, survive the Magma Caverns, and colonize the Abyss.
The Core Mechanics of Underground Survival
Before diving into the tiers, you must understand the brutal math of the underworld. You are presented with three random tiles at the bottom of your screen each turn. You place these tiles on a hex grid surrounding your Castle.
Every single turn, your settlers eat food. If the food runs out, the run ends immediately. There is no grace period, no loan from a neighboring kingdom, and no magical rescue. To advance to the next level, you must gather enough Gold, forcing a constant, agonizing choice between drafting cards that keep your people alive (Rations) and cards that allow you to progress (Gold).
Comic Grid: Progression from the Upper Levels down to the Abyss.
Every run begins in the barren Upper Levels on Day 1, where your primary concern is simply finding enough food. As you descend into the Humid Caves, you can stockpile Rations: 50 or more if you play your cards right. Plunging further into the Magma Caverns allows you to amass Gold: 100 and beyond, funding your ultimate descent into the unforgiving Abyss. If you survive, you can truly say the Depths are ours.
S-Tier: The Best Cards Into the Depths for Early Survival
When drafting your S-Tier Settlement Cards, your primary goal is Surviving the Humid Caves and Magma Caverns. These are the non-negotiable draft picks that should dictate your entire early-game strategy.
Analysis Report Poster: Tier list breakdown of the best settlement cards.
The Fort The Fort is universally agreed upon as the best card because it Creates new outposts. In earlier builds of the game, the Fort simply expanded your Castle's radius. Now, it acts as a secondary hub, allowing you to place tiles in entirely new, disconnected areas of the map. Without The Fort, you cannot reach the high-yield resource nodes at the edges of the generated hex grid.
Fungal Harvester Food is life, and the Fungal Harvester provides massive Humid Caves synergy. When placed adjacent to the giant mushrooms naturally spawning in the Humid biome, its base ration output is doubled. Drafting this early guarantees your settlement won't starve during the critical mid-game transition.
Ration Silo While it doesn't produce food itself, the Ration Silo simply Prevents early starvation by increasing your maximum food storage. When you hit a streak of bad card draws—and you will—the buffer provided by a fully stocked silo is the only thing that will keep your colony breathing.
Deep Mine & Ruins Scholar For economy, the Deep Mine offers unmatched Gold generation when placed on rocky terrain. Meanwhile, the Ruins Scholar delivers a crucial Tech upgrade boost when placed near ancient ruins, allowing you to unlock permanent deck upgrades faster. A balanced deck typically runs a ratio of Rations 65% / Gold 35% to ensure you never starve before you can spend your wealth.
A-Tier: The Best Cards Into the Depths for Economy
Once your food supply is stabilized, you need to transition into a gold-generating powerhouse. The best cards Into the Depths for mid-game economy revolve around exploiting the dangerous Magma Caverns.
Magma Siphon The Magma Caverns are notoriously difficult to build in due to random geyser eruptions that destroy adjacent tiles. However, the Magma Siphon turns this hazard into an asset, generating massive amounts of Gold every turn it sits next to an active geyser. It is a high-risk, high-reward play that can single-handedly fund your descent to the next level.
Subterranean Market This card allows you to trade excess Rations for Gold. If you drafted heavily into Fungal Harvesters and find yourself capped on food but broke, the Subterranean Market acts as the perfect pressure valve to correct your economy.
Hex-Bridge Sometimes the map generation is outright hostile, spawning a crucial Ruins biome across an unbuildable chasm. The Hex-Bridge allows you to connect distant landmasses, effectively saving a run that would otherwise be geographically soft-locked.
Deckbuilding Strategies: Balancing Food and Tech
Understanding the Rations vs Gold Economy is the key to mastering this roguelite city builder. Your central Castle and every subsequent Fort Outpost you build Requires 10 Rations per turn to keep your settlers alive.
Infographic: Balancing the rations vs gold economy in Into the Depths.
Expanding into the Humid Caves helps offset this, while tapping the Magma Caverns Generates +5 Gold per turn. If you can route your expansion through the Ruins biome tech boost, you achieve optimal settlement survival.
Consider the two dominant deck archetypes currently dominating the meta:
| Deck Archetype | Core Strategy | Draft Priority | Weakness |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mycelium Rush | Over-draft Fungal Harvesters and Subterranean Markets. Convert massive food surpluses into gold. | Humid Caves tiles, Food storage | Struggles if Humid Caves spawn far from the Castle. |
| Deep Tech | Rush Ruins biomes to unlock high-tier economy cards early, ignoring basic food production. | Ruins Scholar, Forts | Highly susceptible to bad RNG leading to early starvation. |
Expanding Your Outpost: Best Cards Into the Depths for the Late Game
As you reach the Abyss, the mechanics become significantly less forgiving. The map sizes increase, and the distance between safe zones stretches your logistics to the breaking point.
Annotated Diagram: Optimal hex placement for outposts and fungal harvesters.
When expanding your hex grid, remember that The Castle serves as your primary hub. You cannot reach the edges of the map without Placing a Fort creates a new expansion outpost. Be strategic with your biome specific cards: Fungal Harvesters must be placed on Humid Caves hexes to function, and you must absolutely Avoid placing residential zones near Magma Caverns geysers unless you want your settlers incinerated.
Late-game survival relies entirely on card synergies. Placing a Deep Mine next to a standard residential tile is inefficient; placing it next to a fully upgraded Forge tile doubles its output. You must stop thinking of cards as individual buildings and start seeing them as cogs in a larger, interconnected engine.
FAQ: Mastering Your Settlement Deck
What happens when you run out of food in Into the Depths? The game ends immediately. There is no debt system or grace period for starvation. Managing your Rations counter is the single most important mechanic in the game.
How do you unlock new cards? Between runs, you use the knowledge and resources gathered from previous expeditions to unlock permanent upgrades and new cards. Investing in technologies during a run also adds powerful new cards to your current deck.
What is the best biome to expand into first? The Humid Caves should always be your first target. The giant mushrooms located there provide crucial multipliers for your food-generating cards, securing your early-game survival.
How does the Fort card work? The Fort does not simply expand your existing borders. It creates an entirely new outpost on the hex grid, allowing you to place tiles around it just as you would your main Castle. It is essential for reaching distant biomes.