I’ve seen a bunch of posts from people asking for help building their temple. I’ve also seen a bunch of comments from people on those posts that aren’t true. Nothing against the commenters because the game doesn’t explain any of the mechanics for building and a lot of the build guide videos only have bits and pieces of the full picture. I rolled a blood mage and I’m now building my third temple, so I wanted to compile a list of the most important tips I’ve gathered from my own experience and the many videos and posts I’ve seen about it.

1. Medallions for + medallion slots and + crystals

After you kill the architect a single time, the medallions that he drops for + medallion slots and + crystal count can drop from other rooms in the temple. You don’t have to keep killing the architect until you’re maxed out on both of these. In my first temple i wasted a ton of time killing the architect repeatedly because he only dropped one of those medallions about 50% of the time. I didn’t find out other rooms could drop them until i was already maxed out on both (I actually saw them drop from other rooms on a stream, this is not a guess) . You really only need to kill him until he moves to the right spot.

2. Moving the architect the right way

You can make the architect move exactly where you want. Pic included for illustration purposes. The architect can only move to cells within the yellow outline. He won’t move to a cell that will connect to a room or road that you’ve placed down (in my experience, he also doesn’t move to a cell where the corners would be touching).

If you’re trying to build the layout with the architect in the middle like the picture, build roads exactly as I’ve shown leaving the 3x3 square of empty cells in the middle. You can also use common rooms that connect to each other once you get closer to the architect, but i would definitely use roads as much as possible so you’re not limited by the RNG of which rooms it gives you each run. If you kill the architect with this setup, he’s pretty much guaranteed to move to the correct spot on the first try. Unless the stars align and he deletes 3 connecting roads right next to each other and then moves there. In my 2nd and 3rd temple build, I used this exact strategy and he moved to the right spot on the first try.

If you’re trying to move him to a different location, use the same blocking logic so that the spot you want him to go to is the only spot he could go and not be within 1 cell of what you have placed down

You can go ahead and start on your chain while you’re working on placing the architect, but don’t go far enough for your chain to connect to the middle roads until he’s placed and the roads are destabilized out of your way.

PRIORITIZE ARCHITECT PLACEMENT BEFORE YOUR CHAIN. Save yourself the headache of trying to get the architect in the right spot after you’re 20-30 rooms deep in your chain.

3. Bait rooms

Until you hit about 20 rooms, only 1 room is destabilized on close. If you’re trying to do a spymaster garrison tech chain or any tech chain, the more bait rooms you have, the less likely it is that a tech room that you need to be deleted will be deleted (the garrison out in the second row for spymaster garrison chain). This slows down your progress because you can’t continue your chain until that room is deleted (you can, but then you’re gambling with your spymaster being deleted). I’ve been seeing people with 15+ bait rooms in the middle which is throwing. Keep around 5-6 bait rooms tops. Add a room or two once you get to the point of 2 rooms being destabilized.

You should also really try to only place bait rooms that would connect to 1 or more rooms in your main chain or rooms that will drop room/reroll/lock medallions. The game semi-prioritizes giving you at least one room that can connect to what you have. Fill in empty spaces next to roads with things like treasure vaults that don’t connect to anything else but will block an empty cell next to a road that any room could be placed in (therefore lowering the chances of rooms you don’t want being provided).

Place a sac chamber down every time it pops up to help delete the rooms you need deleted to progress your chain.

Once you’re far enough in your build that you have a steady supply of at least 1 lock medallion per run, let your bait rooms die completely or only place down a couple that would connect to what you need in your chain

4. Use the online tool for testing while building!!!

When it comes to room placement and tech, testing it out in the online tool before placing rooms in game is invaluable. Seems like there’s at least one person every day that posts about looping their temple because the game didn’t show them a room they placed next to their chain would connect to their chain. Using the tool to test out placements will show you those loops and let you avoid the pain of looping and having to start over. The game doesn’t show you that a room will connect to another one if it couldn’t be placed directly into your chain (this is the whole concept behind room placement Russian tech)

Hope this helps at least one person save time and avoid looping