Across the Obelisk Guide

After installing the game and clicking "Play" you will be taken to the new game screen. From here you will be taken to the team selection and choose your party members. For your first run you are restricted to the four starting characters which each fill a role on the team. These roles are;
Typically your tanker front liner who has the ability to generate block. They can also fill the role of damage dealer through stacking bleed stacks or lowering enemy resistances with debuffs so higher damage can be dealt and have a number of healing options which can also support the party.
Typically your poison stacking, stealthy assassination damage output gods, they also have an unusual song build that works on the stanza mechanic which can be a utility god. They can also fill in the tank role with access to a number of block cards as well as evasion and also have access to a number of of healing options which can also support the party.
Typically straight up damage dealers who have access to fire, cold, lightening, dark, mind, as their main forms of damage. They can also fill a utility role with a number of cards designed for energy generation across your team and have options to a few healing cards. The builds vary wildly for mages to be honest.
Typically your support characters who are slow so they go last and heal up any damage the enemy may have caused to your team. They can fill the damage role quite easily and some can be quite tanky. This class is my personal favourite as a healer is required outside of the infinity builds that will hopefully be addressed in due course.
Their are currently 10 characters available in the early access of the game that fall into these roles, the other 6 (outside the starting 4) are found during your play throughs and each have a specific quest that they would like your help with in order to join you and be unlocked for future playthroughs.
The team selection also gives you the option to view your characters stats and traits and starting deck by clicking on the scroll icon next to any character portrait and gives you access to the perk system by clicking on the purple star icon next to any character portrait.
So what are traits and perks?
Traits are the in game reward for earning experience points and levelling up. For each level up the player has the option to choose one of two options that tend to increase that specific characters power spike considerable and can influence your deck build. Some traits are better than others and some fit your builds better than others, trail and error is expected here to find the best upgrade path for you.
Perks on the other hand are gained after your finish a run and contribute to your next run, their are 36 perk points in total so the entire table is unlockable at max level, you can reset the table at any point so redistribute your perks at any point if you want to change your build up whilst you are levelling and again some perks are better than others but they all contribute. Perks fall into a number of categories providing you bonuses to health, speed, damage, gold, energy, resistances and charges (+1 to a charge for example means if you use a card that has a debuff effect such a burn that you will apply 1 extra burn stack with that card).