20 Hours In - Let's Talk About Focus (And Stamina, But Really, Focus)

[Frumpis]

Note: I realize this post is super long. I put a TL;DR at the end if you want to skip the details. If you're a new player, I might make a short guide compressing this information in the future, but you can skip to the bottom for some practical tips for using dashes to make the most out of your gameplay.

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I'm over 20 hours into this gem of a game now, with nearly everything completed (minus the shield-bearer calamity event) and it feels prudent to share some of my thoughts on the the current forum discourse around the stamina/focus systems.

The Stamina Discussion

I've been reading most of the forum posts over the past week, and I am noticing that a lot of posts express issues with the stamina system. I empathize with these complaints. Currently, there are weapons in the game that consume stamina without telling you; there are enemy attacks that will drain your stamina; the consequences of being at various points of stamina depletion are somewhat unclear; stamina costs across the board are unclear. In terms of stamina, the tutorial describes the ability to get "Tired" and "Exhausted/Weak," but it is unclear what being Tired actually does. Being exhausted/weak does seem pretty clear - you can't run at full speed, you can't double jump, and your dash is shortened. But Tired? Unclear.

However, there is a much bigger issue I am seeing with players complaining about stamina, and that is the Focus system.

Focus: The Core Mechanic

There is one part of this game that matters more than every other part of the game. If you are not leveraging this mechanic, you will struggle to complete even a single extraction. That mechanic is called "Focus," and it is something that players across the board, myself included, seem to have a difficult time understanding. It makes sense why it's hard to understand: the tutorial goes over Focus briefly, but it fails to underscore the significance of Focus in gameplay and leaves a lot of the specifics up to the imagination. So, first, let's get on the same page and define Focus in the context of Witchfire.

What's Focus?

Focus is a gameplay state for the Preyer that is loosely tied to the stamina bar (more on that in a minute) - when your stamina bar is yellow, you're "in Focus," and when it's white, you're "out of Focus." When in Focus, you gain some extra maximum stamina and the ability to generate soul sigils. If you don't play the tutorial, you'll first hear about Focus from the writing in the lower-left corner of the screen during gameplay, or perhaps in a tooltip on a loading screen. But both of these sources of information are a bit lacking in the current game state, by my estimation.

The tutorial tells us that you enter Focus when your stamina is full (max) and is denoted by a yellow stamina bar. This description is a bit misleading - being full on stamina will not put you in Focus. The "max stamina" part of the description for Focus refers to the extra bit of stamina you get on top of your "base" stamina bar - being in Focus gives increased max stamina. So, if you deplete that extra bit of max stamina, is that where the "Tired" mechanic comes into play? Unclear. This is something that I think the tutorial could be a bit more clear on.

The tutorial also tells you that Focus allows you to dash and expose an enemy's soul sigil, and that taking damage resets/turns off Focus. It further says that the way to get Focus back is by killing enemies. After some testing, I have found that killing any two enemies in a row without taking damage will restore Focus. if you take damage from any source after getting one kill, your progress towards restoring Focus will be reset and you will need to get two more kills. This would be incredibly helpful information to be told in the tutorial, but more on that later.

So, no amount of waiting around will get Focus back: you're going to have to kill two enemies without taking damage. And that's great, because killing enemies is the crux of the core gameplay loop.

Speaking of gameplay, let's talk gameplay - why do we want Focus at all?

Soul Sigils: Destroy or Be Destroyed

To my knowledge, there are two benefits to being in Focus: one is extra max stamina and two is being able to generate soul sigils. While in Focus, the Preyer can generate a soul sigil on an enemy by dashing while looking at any enemy. A soul sigil is a little black orb with a red outline and will last ~2 seconds before dissapearing. Weaker enemies will only have one soul sigil, while stronger enemies and bosses will have multiple soul sigils. Shooting an enemy's soul sigil, or all its soul sigils (which requires multiple dashes), will stun that enemy, opening the enemy up to big damage from all sources and, more importantly, preventing that enemy from acting for a few seconds. This is incredibly strong. Let me explain.

In the early-game, breaking soul sigil(s) is your biggest source of (1) damage and (2) damage prevention, since stunning an enemy by breaking their soul sigil(s) stops them from acting and gives all your damage a big bump. Later in the game, like in the castle, you start to see a lot of enemies with very dangerous attacks that will chain damage onto you if you don't stun them quickly. Enemies that can frost you might take you from full HP to dead if they frost you in the middle of a crowd and I guarantee you that this will happen to you at least once. This leaves you on a razor's edge, constantly trying to anticipate attacks with dashes while being careful to have every dash open up a soul sigil, because running out of stamina without managing stuns and enemy density can leave you quickly overrun.

To be clear, I think this dynamic is super fun. The risk of messing up gets greater as you get deeper into the game, but your skill rises in equal measure. You are much less likely to make mistakes as you get better at the game, so you will go on long streaks of maintaining Focus for most, if not all of a map, utterly demolishing everything in front of you without suffering so much as a scratch...but, at least for me, that's after nearly 20 hours of gameplay and a lot of mastery and experience gained.

To sum up: the core of this game's combat loop asks the player to dodge enemy attacks with dashes while looking at an enemy so that the dash simultaneously avoids damage and opens up an enemy to being stunned. This is why stamina is limited, and why some weapons use stamina: stamina is almost like your "super" meter, essentially giving you the ability to stun enemies at will while being impervious to damage. You can definitely kill enemies without soul sigils, but once you break a soul sigil and instakill an enemy with a headshot for the first time, you're not going to want to go back to doing it any other way.

...But I Got Hit...?

Yeah, so Focus is super cool and very strong, but you do lose it the moment you get hit. And you're going to get hit. A lot. In fact, the newer you are to the game, the more you're going to get hit. And since you lose Focus if you take any damage from any source, you will lose Focus constantly, especially while you're learning the game and whenever you increase your Gnosis level. Since increasing your Gnosis level adds new enemies, traps, and witch defenses, you will see things you've never seen before with each increase in Gnosis level. That means each increase will see you needing to learn about new ways the witch can hurt you, and while you're learning, you're going to get hurt. In practice, this means that you will lose focus constantly while you learn the game.

Now, remember, the only way to get back in Focus is to kill enemies. But since you took damage from tasting that mushroom on the ground and you are not in Focus, you're going to have to go get yourself into a fight to get your Focus back. But remember I said earlier that it's unclear how many kills you need in order to restore Focus? That's a problem, because once you're in a fight, you might get some kills and restore Focus, but not realize it before you get hit again...and then you're in the same boat as before. And then you're dead.

You'll be getting into situations like that over and over again, especially earlier in your playtime. That can be really frustrating, because it will feel like the game is out of your control. The game will throw countless homing projectiles and fast-moving and teleporting enemies at you all at once and you won't have any way to stem the tide...except that you do have a tool to stem the tide, a really strong one, but it's constantly slipping through your fingers and/or you didn't realize you had that tool in the first place.

There is another big issue with losing Focus when you get hit: many items in the game, as well as some Arcana, are tied to taking damage. This is good in theory - Focus is a superpower, so when you lose it, you would like to be stronger so you can quickly get it back, and when you have it, you don't need the extra bonuses from your gear and Arcana.

In practice, I have not yet found a way to use gear that wants me to get hurt in a way that overcomes playing without Focus. Scourge, Braid, Book of Serpents...these relics want you to get hit. You could build around them, pumping health and healing, using stamina draining weapons like Echo and Hailstorm, and plan to never have Focus...

Or you can keep your superpower.

What Do We Do About Focus?

Focus is super important to the core gameplay loop. It can be very punishing, especially in the early to mid-game for players that did not play the tutorial. So, what can be done about it? I have two suggestions.

One, I think it is going to be super important to have an in-game description of Focus that tells you specifically how it works. This is the core of the combat system. We need to know exactly what it is, how you lose it (damage), and how to get it back after you've lost it. Tell us how many kills we need, or how much witchfire we need to absorb, specifically. Tell us whether or not taking damage while out of Focus resets the kill/witchfire counter (it does, but we need to know that). And perhaps most importantly, emphasize to the player that success is going to be very difficult without using Focus. I think having a Preyer's Guide/Handbook/Manual in-game, perhaps in the Hermitorium, would be completely reasonable, very lore-friendly, and would alleviate this issue entirely. The second suggestion might not even be necessary.

...but I do think it might be prudent to introduce one (or more) other way(s) to regain focus besides killing enemies. I think there's room in the gameplay sandbox for other ways to regain Focus and/or manipulate Soul Sigils, especially with all the gear and Arcana that incentivize taking damage in a fight. What if there was a ring that allowed you to generate soul sigils with dashes while out of Focus, for example? Perhaps a world event that gives you Focus (feel like those obelisks on the first island could give you Focus alongside the heal...?). What if using an elixir at full HP gave you focus back?

TL;DR

Focus is a core component of the Witchfire gameplay loop that many players seem not to understand. By my estimation, this mechanic could use a greater amount of in-game emphasis and explanation so that players have stronger early and mid-game performances.

Tips On Using Soul Sigils

Basics: if you are in Focus and you dash (it's a keybind) while looking at an enemy (scoped or with ADS/zoom/scoped), you will generate a soul sigil on that enemy. Shoot the sigil and you'll stun the enemy, opening them up to big damage and preventing them from acting for a short time. Do this all the time. It's unbelievably strong. Some further tips below:

-You do not have use dash to dodge an attack to generate a soul sigil, so many times it is smart to proactively dash to generate a soul sigil before an enemy can attack you. Try this: initiate combat with a dash forward towards an enemy. Shoot that enemy's soul sigil, then shooting that enemy (preferably in the head). You will immediately notice you are doing far more damage. You will also notice that the enemy slumps over for a few seconds, buying you time to do damage and/or deal with other enemies.

-You can dash to avoid damage from one enemy while looking at a different enemy and a soul sigil will appear for the enemy you are looking at, not for the enemy you dodged. Final note here is that you can stun enemies without breaking their soul sigils by just shooting them, but this takes much longer and is not nearly as reliable. There are also spells that can stun enemies, but that is similarly unreliable since spells have cooldowns and major enemies are usually immune to those stunning effects.