Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault — Hands-On Review After Two Hours

Dungeon crawling, shopkeeping and one very important lesson: know when to leave with the loot.

Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault mixes two very different ideas together: action-heavy dungeon runs and running your own shop. You head into dangerous dimensions looking for relics, materials and valuables, then bring whatever you survive with back home and try to sell it for a profit. It sounds simple. It really isn’t.

After a little over two hours, I still hadn’t completed a full dungeon run — but I had already learned one of the game’s most important lessons: Greed can get expensive. Disclosure: A review key for Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault was provided through Terminals.io. This did not influence the opinions expressed in this article.

A Merchant Who Still Wants To Be An Adventurer

The opening quickly establishes Will as a merchant with a habit of throwing himself into dangerous dungeons in search of relics. Those relics are the heart of the whole game. You collect them during runs and eventually bring them back to the Moonlighter shop, where they become the products you sell to customers.

Each relic has a quality level that affects its value, and it doesn’t take long before the game starts layering additional systems on top of that basic idea.

The story also gives you a reason to care about the wider progression. Will and the people around him have lost their old home, and the mysterious Endless Vault eventually appears with a promise: complete its trials, earn enough money and perhaps get what your heart truly desires.

That gives all of the dungeon crawling and shopkeeping a proper narrative purpose rather than making it feel like two disconnected game modes.

Combat Is Easy To Pick Up — Surviving Is The Hard Part

The combat immediately felt good on the controller. Rolling is responsive, attacks feel tight and ranged attacks slot naturally into the flow of combat.

You initially start with a broom, but you quickly gain access to four proper weapon types:

• Sword

• Great Sword

• Spear

• Gauntlets

Each has its own mechanics rather than simply being a different damage number.

The sword rewards combo timing with a stronger fourth hit and finisher. The great sword uses a sharpness system where heavy attacks reduce sharpness and special attacks can restore it. The spear creates spearheads during attacks, which can then be pulled back through enemies for additional damage.

The gauntlets build toward a temporary Berserk state that increases attack speed and impact. I gravitated toward the spear during my session because its reach and multi-hit mechanics felt particularly useful.

There is also a clever use for Will’s backpack. Some enemies enter a rupture state after losing enough health. At that point you can hit them with the backpack and launch them away, potentially using the environment against them.

Later, I started knocking enemies into holes and traps, and that was the point where I realised the combat had more environmental strategy than I initially expected.

The Dungeons Are Built Around Risk

The dungeon map gives you choices. Different routes can take you toward normal encounters, treasure chests, perks, elite enemies, blacksmith upgrades and bosses. Elite fights are harder but can provide better rewards, while bosses can unlock even more valuable opportunities depending on the perks you’ve picked up.

During one run, I met Silver, who offered several choices, including a perk that granted an additional chest after defeating a boss. That kind of decision-making runs throughout the game.

Do you take the safer route? Do you fight the elite? Do you push toward a boss? Or do you get out while you’re still alive? That last question caused most of my problems.

Learning When To Warp Out

The single biggest lesson from my first two hours was learning when to leave.

Several times I had good loot, decent relics and a reasonable run going. And several times I convinced myself I could manage one more encounter. I couldn’t. One of the game’s most important mechanics is the ability to warp back out of a dungeon and keep what you’ve collected.

The problem was that I didn’t immediately understand when the warp opportunity appeared. During one early run I accidentally missed the chance entirely, only realising afterward that I could have escaped with my loot.

Later I made exactly the opposite decision. I reached a boss while already running dangerously low on health, considered leaving, stayed anyway — and died. My reaction afterwards summed it up pretty well: I knew I should have warped out. I just got greedy.

Eventually I learned. During a later Exhibition Wing run, once my health was gone and things started looking bad, I immediately warped out rather than risk losing everything again. Progress.

Relics Are Their Own Puzzle

This was probably the system I understood least during my first session, but it also looks like one of the most interesting.

Some relics are cursed. Rather than simply collecting them, their position inside your backpack can affect other relics. One might increase the quality of adjacent items. Another might improve relics in the same column. Others can burn nearby relics, add armour or gain additional value depending on how you arrange everything.

That effectively turns your backpack into a small inventory puzzle where good placement can increase the eventual value of what you’re carrying. I was very much learning this system as I played. Sometimes I clearly improved things. Other times I had absolutely no idea whether I had just made a brilliant merchant decision or completely ruined my inventory.

The second dungeon dimension, the Exhibition Wing, adds yet another variation. There, relics can be shocked, increasing quality but also putting them into an overcharged state. Shocking an already overcharged relic can destroy it, while certain battery-type relics can remove that state. There’s clearly a lot more depth here than I managed to uncover in two hours.

The Shop Is An Actual Game, Not Just A Menu

Getting home safely is only half the job. Then you have to sell everything. And this is probably where Moonlighter becomes most distinctive. You decide what each relic should cost. Customers then react to your price. If they think it’s cheap, you probably could have charged more. If they think it’s fair, you’re getting close to the ideal price.

If it’s too expensive, they might still reluctantly buy it. Push it too far, and they can simply walk away. The game records previous sales in the relic codex, gradually helping you learn what individual items are worth.

That creates a surprisingly satisfying little loop. Set a price. Watch the customer. Realise you’ve massively overcharged them. Drop it. Try again. Eventually you start learning the market.

Perfect and cheap sales also contribute toward shop perks, which give you additional bonuses during a selling session. And there’s more. You eventually gain Keeper, a shop assistant who can store relics, unlock shop upgrades and help you decorate the store.

Furniture isn’t purely cosmetic either. Certain pieces can provide bonuses — for example, increasing the value of relics sold from a particular display case. So even decorating your shop feeds back into the money-making side of the game.

Money drives everything, and you need a lot of it.

Potions cost money. Shop upgrades cost money. Progression through the Endless Vault requires money. Initially, the Vault challenges you to earn 7,000 coins. I eventually managed it and unlocked the first major reward: a merchant grimoire. That felt like progress.

Then the Vault immediately told me the next target was 50,000 coins. Thanks. The Grimoire itself opens another progression system where new materials can help decipher its contents and unlock merchant-related improvements. And that’s when it became obvious how much of the game I hadn’t even seen yet.

There is a surprising amount going on.

The longer I played, the more systems started appearing. NPCs gave me additional quests. The blacksmith offered new weapons and mid-run upgrades. A merchant offered backpack expansions. The Grimoire introduced additional progression.

The Endless Vault opened new dimensions. I even discovered Bobblets, little creatures you can rescue during dungeon runs and eventually adopt, with each offering unique effects that can help in your shop. And just when I thought I understood the overall structure, a warp went wrong and introduced Mlock, who very much looked like someone I’m probably going to have problems with later.

After two hours, I genuinely felt like I had only scratched the surface.

Difficulty Comes From Limited Resources

The basic combat isn’t particularly difficult once you get comfortable with it. The real difficulty comes from resource management. Health is precious. Potions are limited. And dungeon runs can be long.

During several attempts, I was fighting well but simply ran out of healing before reaching the end. The game does occasionally hide useful resources inside breakable objects, but you can’t rely on them always giving you what you need. That made every mistake feel important. Even after the combat started feeling easier, surviving deep enough into the dungeon was another matter entirely. I still hadn’t completed a full Day Realm run after more than two hours.

And I actually liked that. The game was clearly teaching me: Get better. Upgrade. Learn the systems. Know when to leave. Then try again.

Presentation And Performance

Visually, Moonlighter 2 looks excellent. The environments are colourful and detailed without making combat difficult to read, and both the town and dungeon areas have plenty of personality. The music was another highlight. During quieter moments it has a very calm, almost tranquil quality.

Then combat begins and the soundtrack ramps up alongside the action. That shift works really well because the game itself is constantly moving between those two moods: relaxing merchant life and frantic dungeon survival. The controller experience was similarly strong. Movement, rolling, melee attacks and ranged combat all felt responsive throughout the session.

By the second or third run, I was already noticeably more confident with the combat.

What I Still Need To Learn

There were several systems I hadn’t properly mastered after two hours. The biggest one is the relic curse/quality system. I understand the basic idea now — positioning and effects can increase the quality and eventual sale value of relics — but I’m nowhere near confident enough yet to say I understand how to optimise it.

The Exhibition Wing’s shock and overcharge mechanics added even more complexity. And I’m sure I was leaving plenty of money on the table in the shop by misjudging prices. But I actually see that as a positive. The game kept introducing mechanics that made me want to understand it better rather than making me feel like I’d already seen everything.

Is Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault Worth Playing?

Based on my first two hours, yes. I came away genuinely wanting another run. The combat is responsive. The shopkeeping has actual depth. The dungeon routes give you meaningful choices. The relic system looks much deeper than I initially expected. And the constant decision between “push further” and “get out while you still can” gives every run tension. I didn’t finish a dungeon.

I misunderstood several mechanics. I died because I got greedy. More than once. 7 But none of that made me want to stop. Quite the opposite.

Final Impressions

Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault takes dungeon crawling, roguelite progression and shop management and turns them into one interconnected loop. You fight because you need relics. You need relics because you need money.

You need money because you need upgrades. And you need upgrades because you keep dying in the dungeon because you refused to warp out when you should have. At least, that was my experience. After around two hours, I had unlocked multiple weapons, improved my shop, gained Keeper, opened the first Endless Vault reward, received the Merchant Grimoire, entered a second dimension, discovered Bobblets, met new NPCs and still felt like the game had barely begun.

That’s a very good sign. At the time I played, the game was listed at around £24.99, and based on what I experienced, there already appears to be a substantial amount of replayability here. The transcript also notes that a Steam demo was available at the time of the stream for anyone wanting to try it first.

If you enjoy action roguelites but want something that gives you more to do between runs than simply choosing another upgrade, Moonlighter 2: The Endless Vault is absolutely worth keeping an eye on.

Played: Approximately 2 hours 20 minutes

Platform: PC — Steam

Genre: Action Roguelite / Dungeon Crawler / Shop management Review

Copy: Provided via Terminals.io

Score: The Pixel Hangout does not use numerical review scores.