unarmed combat guide + ranged dps tips and tricks

[Neo007]

This is a pretty cool game for rpg lovers especially those who love old school "retro" rpgs. The english version is no longer available for purchase online (it used to be on steam) but you can order an original dvd for the english version and there is a fan-made patch available that solves an endgame bug that made the english version unbeatable at the end.


Short combat guide on how to outright dominate the game.

*minor mechanical spoilers ahead - obviously

This game can be pretty hard on the highest difficulty setting but there are several hidden mechanics that can make combat easier or just increase build variety for a game already with many deep and varied build options.


THE WAY OF THE FIST

Though it says this absolutely nowhere, unarmed is a viable and powerful build in this game. I love playing unarmed melee or "exotic" weapons in games - with few exceptions I tend to avoid playing boring sword or sword and board like the plague.

There are many games with powerful hidden unarmed mechanics, one constant trope especially in games that don't advertise an unarmed skill tree is to make unarmed weaker technically but give you a faster attack or multiple attacks - similar to
flurry of blows for those familiar with the old Dungeons and Dragons monk.

This game follows that trope, nothing in the manual or within game gives you this hint and even I (an admitted unarmed knutt) initially avoided using unarmed only to find out it is probably the single highest dps melee option in the game.

It is stronger than your starter dagger (dps wise) and once you keep pumping enough strength and adding + physical damage items you will soon out dps many of your other options.

The reason for this is not just attack speed (which you can raise easily enough with daggers) but also the attack animation time. The attack animation never speeds up no matter how fast your weapon "recharges" by pumping agility or investing passives. You see there is skill cool down which most gamers would be familiar with and there is also the time it takes for the attack animation to play out before a hit (or miss) is counted.

Some weapon types have almost arbitrary animations times..but unarmed has very minimal animation time. The dagger's wind up animation time is comparable to the greatsword which makes no sense I even think the greatsword animation is quicker.
However, the unarmed animation is just a quick punch so it executes very quickly.

This coupled with high strength and agility build + damage increase items and buffs means you will be clobbering things faster than using any other single melee weapon type....however there is another way to dish out even more damage....


MULTIPLE RANGED WEAPONS "TRICK"

Ok, so you get that animation times and skill cooldown time matter for dps... but what the game doesn't tell you is that melee weapons share a global cooldown (using one melee weapon puts all other basic melee attacks on cooldown) while ranged weapons of different "type" do not share a global cooldown.

This means that you can use ranged weapons as individual skills by placing each weapon type on your hotbar greatly increasing your dps output similar to skill rotations on mmos like WOW.

Each type of ranged weapon has its own cooldown. pistols are different from rifles and machine guns and flamethrowers for example and regular bows are different from crossbows.

The fastest ranged combo seems to be crossbow >>> rifle>>> pistol/revolver in any order. This negates any downtime and they all seem to have very quick animations so you can constantly have these on rotation with the occasional skill use. Flamethrowers and machines guns are already rapid fire so there's no extra benefit to include them in a rotation plus they eat up ammo.

What's more is the damage to skill investment ratio and abundance of ammo means this is the most efficient way to get through the game.

BOTH using a strength/agility unarmed build and multiple ranged weapons save big time on the use of mana (which takes time to recharge or can become potion dependent) but using the ranged weapons trick in particular means you will only need to use skills for the occasional buff or burst damage skill you should have plenty of mana for buffs/ burst damage skills with minimal or no investment in intellect.

You can even add in melee like a two handed weapon and fire off your other weapons while your melee recharges....there is a skill that doubles damage and increase cooldown time for basic two handed melee attacks so....enjoy.