Combat Tips -- Elemental Synergy & Perfect Counters

[Ovan]

Tutorials haven't done much to teach about the sheer devastating power you have at your hands.

Perfect counters with the shield will parry melee attacks, but for ranged enemies it will reflect their projectiles. Aim true, and your reflected projectile will deal huge damage to an enemy.

I haven't yet tried the 2H on if it's viable for perfect counters, or what kinds, yet.

It's not long in that you get your first elemental bow. The damage that fire and ensaring blast has in tandem is impressive.

But the same is true with ice. Heavily armored enemy? Heat up their armor using a flaming arrow or fire magic. Then shock it cold with ice. Then add heavy hits from the ensaring blast, and you shatter armor quick.

There's lots of potential and nuance to the combat mechanics, you just have to be patient and experiment with it.

I know the devs are already planning on more fine tuning in combat mechanics, but so far, I've come to the point of understanding the mechanics enough to see the fun there can be with what already exists.

Anyone else found any neat tips/tricks for ability synergy?

[unsweetened]

Not really a combat mention, but many resources in the wild can be affected by magic. Heating up a steel deposit for instance will give you a stronger version of it.

[CultClassicGamer]

It's clearly a game designed around using magic as often as possible to provide leverage to your melee attacks rather than just banging things over the head, hence why stamina recharges while using magic and vice versa. The problem I think many are facing is that you're pretty limited for the first five or so hours, so the janky combat that is mitigated by the magic system really stands out.

It's not a bad combat system, a little outdated perhaps, but it's really pitiful without more abilities to augment it; which you don't get until later--which few players will ever unlock because they'll get frustrated with the combat early on. Fair complaints. Just having access to fire magic from the get go would've gone a long way. Still, at least the game's trying something different so for that I approve--even with all the jank.

[illustrious.jfunk]

Yeah, I don't really remember the tutorial mentioning the impact of the perfect counters but I just happened across it by expecting it to do something from previous genre experience. At least at the beginning, it trivializes most enemies.

[Daemic9]

Originally posted by unsweetened:

Not really a combat mention, but many resources in the wild can be affected by magic. Heating up a steel deposit for instance will give you a stronger version of it.

To jump onto this, Heating or Cooling actually alters drop rates as well. Either from a later tutorial pop up, or loading screen tip, Heat will actually destroy lower quality woven and leather drops, and cold will destroy the other two. So if you are looking for the purple woven drop from the ice turtle guys, for instance, its best to not actually kill them with fire.

[Ovan]

Originally posted by unsweetened:

Not really a combat mention, but many resources in the wild can be affected by magic. Heating up a steel deposit for instance will give you a stronger version of it.

That's so cool! Very useful info! Thanks for sharing!