Stuff I Wish I Knew As A Newbie (Tips and Tricks)

[KinKin25]

If any of the below is wrong or has a unique exception OR if you want to add your own "dang, wish I knew that when I was new..." item to the list, please do. My game has not been modified so if yours is, your finding might differ to some degree.

I've been playing this game for a few weeks now and this is what I've learned and found out, some to my great surprise:

1. Constructor Minion % Damage stat is useless. Talked about it here. Example are gear that has stats example: 15% to Minion Damage, that doesn't actually count.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/400170/discussions/0/4369129947726550832/

2. % on being hit doesn't seem to come into effect (none or rarely) when there's a shield in the way like Phlogistoneer. If it affects your health directly, then it works.

3. Essence Capacity (Capacitive Essence) is not limited to just +20. It can be as much as 20 + 24 = 44! Considering the max is 50, that is massive! Discussed here between me and OldFartAtPlay (a veteran at the game that's helped me a lot, much thx to him): https://steamcommunity.com/app/400170/discussions/0/4365753686152828387/

I go into it in Post #6 and discuss where exactly to find it as well based on tips by OldFartAtPlay.

4. I JUST found this out and totally forgot it during two full playthroughs. Katarina seems to pick up a lot of consumable potions that I've heard / read is unlocked through finding Hidden Content (clicking on weird stuff or doing odd things throughout the game and a signal comes up that a Hidden Content was unlocked). I opened her tab up and saw it packed full of potions. Seems like we can get a lot more than one type, but you AND Katarina can drink one of each or until it says you can't drink anymore. To have Katarina drink it, have it in her inventory, if you want to drink it, have it in yours. You can put it in your stash for your other toons too! They give you permanent bonuses like 1% to fire damage, little bit of health, mana, or resist etc etc, little helpful bonuses to your toon.

5. Hold Position is pretty useful. You can assign it to any button and it prevents you from moving when you attack. I find this useful to prevent my toon from walking forward and getting too close.

6. Options > Gameplay. Two options that I find neat here. The Respawn Enemy you can check off and on. The pro to that is you can farm and replay old hordes, increase your level though the enemies will match your level. Con is since they match your level, they don't get much easier so if you're going back for hidden content, it'll suck big time especially if you're squishy. The other thing to take note is the Auto Power up you can check. Whatever your powerup setup is, if you have enough rage to fuel it, it'll power it up. You won't see the number 1-3 in the powerup skill like when you press SPACE, etc, but it'll be there.

7. That this game is much more balanced than the individual installments of Van Helsing, but there's still some difficulty spikes (noticed it a little in the Wolf Den in Act 1, Spider Cavern near the end of Act 1, right before arriving in the Secret Lair, beginning of Act 2). So if you notice spikes, you're not alone, just temporarily lower the difficulty for the time being if u want.

8. Inhuman Ordeal difficulty increases your chance to get Epic items as well, just a heads up. It literally says % Epic Item right in the difficulty description. I didn't notice this until I started playing a more overpowering toon and wanted more difficulty.

9. Attack Speed is only useful to half the characters and only those skills that attack single target and affected by Attack Speed proc the skills that say % to Kill on Hit.

10. Artifact forging, for me, is generally not worth it unless: Something is better than nothing, OR you're trying to change Epics, Sets, or Godlike items into something else. Like lets say you have one of those type of items and you definitely are sure u don't care for them, you can put two of the same kind into there and out comes a new gear of the same time. So Epic + Epic = a different Epic, Set + Set = Different Set. Not sure if value of the gear matters, it might. I have noticed some types of gear don't pop up nearly as much. Like you won't always get 2 rings, 2 amulets, 2 chest pieces, 2 weapons...etc. There's def some pieces that come out more rarely IF...it even can come out as I don't know the full possibilities. I know Set item + Set Item, I almost rarely ever get a set CHEST piece, dunno why....whereas the other stuff like rings and gloves I get a bunch.

10A (adding to item forging above). Forging (combining two piece of gear for a new piece of gear) gives you an item of the same rarity (think that's the term) for your level, this applies to normal, magical (blue items), rare (yellow) and epic (brown). So if you got 2x lvl 100 Epic item and combined them at lvl 50, the item that comes out will be another Epic but level 50. However, for Set Items and Godlike, you will get a lvl 100 item even if you are lvl 10 or whatever. On the side: You can input UNIDENTIFIED gear into the forge machine by manually holding and dropping it into position. If you right click, it'll ID the item first before it lets you put it in. I use this method to avoid IDing Epics I know I don't need.



Will add more when I can think of it

[KinKin25]

11. Katrina's Melee weapon bonuses and damage affects her range and vice versa. I know for one, HP on Hit is added for the full sum of both weapons, no penalty.

12. Set items do serve some purpose. When I first started, I thought they were awful. However, as someone said it, set items are incomplete and Godlike / Epics etc are their own individual piece. So unless you wear a couple of them, it's hard to know the true benefits of their stats / skills combined and activated.

13. Enchantment at Saffi (found in the Secret Lair headquarters). There's at least 3 gear (two same epic rings and 1 set boots) that can give you around 45-50%~ discount on enchantments and stat replacement (tab right next to enchantment). This is a MASSIVE discount, saving you millions upon millions in the long run once experience enchanting items (each reattempt at an enchantment costs more and more), you'll see what I mean. The rings are Mandeluzian Ducal Rings (Epic Item but rare even for Epics) and Nephilim Boots (Set Items and again, one of the rarest of the sets, rarely seen and even forging, it rarely pops up). The rings each, from what I read, can max out at 14 reduction each (averaging around 11-13) and the boots will give you 22 or so (I'm thinking they max out at 25 reduction). And since we're talking about enchantment, def take note that you can replace ONE 'line' on your item...like if you see a stat like gold find that you don't care for, you can remove that one line and replace it with something else and keep rolling for that one stat, you can't try another line, just that one stat....but it costs A LOT of gold, much more so than normal enchanting.

14. Enchantment works by giving your item the stats that it could have had but didn't. Like if the boots could've had % to all damage bonus but the boots you rolled got 30% gold find instead, then you can enchant it with that. Though how quick certain stats show up also depends on how sought after the stat is...or you could be very lucky as I have in some circumstances (one hit perfect stat that I want). You can't double it either, like if the boots already have 40% MF on it, you can't enchant it with more MF. 1 enchantment (one extra side stat) per item unless the item literally says it on the gear (example +1 enchantment, means you normally have one so that means a total of two enchantments on the item). Set items also follow the same. Godlikes don't involve enchanting, it involves Augmenting at the NPC right below Saffi in the LAIR. 10 Augments per Godlike and you cannot reroll augments unless you start with a new gear.

15. You can restock all merchants by teleporting to a completely different map and teleporting back, takes seconds.

16. What's in the merchant and what you find is affected by your MF. The higher level you are, the more MF require to find adequate gear for yourself. Had 120 MF till around level 40-50, then drops got quite horrible. I believe the Adventure's Secret LAIR responds better to a higher MF of 600-1500+ . Am unsure if high MF affects enchanting, augmenting (for Godlike), foraging, this is what I've been wondering but I think no or not much.

17. Your local save files are located in: Documents\NeocoreGames\Van Helsing Final Cut\SaveGame\Default .... basically it's located in your Documents area on your PC. It's .SAV . This information is nice in case you want to backup your saves since this game CAN involve a lot of time and effort to building your characters and gathering the loot, it would totally suck to lose it somehow. Remember to copy and paste it and not drag it into location or u will lose the original like I did. You can also change the name of your character by using a hex editor as well (though modify at your own risk).

18. So far, talking to OldFartAtPlay and making some different characters as well, there seems to be no limit of how many characters you can create locally on ur PC. Also side info: The max gold you can have in your shared stash is 2 BILLION but the max gold on each of your character is more (max unknown).

19. The Goo that you can consume in Act 2 in the Rookery area (after you drain the pool or whatever it is, later you can click somewhere in that pool and receive it, it's a hidden secret). It's been talked amongst many of us and the consensus is that it's best to eat that Goo when you're almost fighting the big mecha boss (not the one in the ink gate called the Machine God) at the end of act 2. Not sure if it's true in FC but in the individual Van Helsing 1 game, ppl have gotten penalties from eating that, some dude even said he restarted his toon after eating it. Anyhow, it's supposed to give you a nice 50 Poison resist if done right, the penalty was negative poison resist, like 20? One thing that I just thought up of is if you can save a copy of an old save, eat the goo and if you get a negative effect, replace the save with the older one BEFORE you ate the goo and try again. I've never gotten a penalty though, always 50+ poison resist and I hope it stays that way.

20. After the very first tower defense (after you arrive in the secret base, the LAIR in act 2), the other tower defense levels, each one has a secret portal that opens once you fulfill a requirement. The portal gives you access to a tiny secret area that you can sometimes actually see off in the distance, it has one chest that has a higher chance of giving you an Epic item. The guide is here btw: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=807020974

Anyhow, I would recommend lowering the difficulty or doing whatever it takes to win [TD6] Caverns of Steel and onwards as losing will have you lose out on AP points or Skill points, not just gold and experience which can easily be gotten somewhere else. And as far as I know, I don't see a restart button on these TDs.

Also, the most difficult secret ink gate to open is [TD5] The Inhuman Regiment, I THINK the requirement might be to let the floor traps kill X amount of enemies, don't kill them yourself but I still haven't gotten it yet. I replied to a post here about it, tried quite a lot of things.

EDIT: NVM, found out how, made a post here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/400170/discussions/0/451848855028571272/

[Vipsu]

Originally posted by KinKin25:

If any of the below is wrong or has a unique exception OR if you want to add your own "dang, wish I knew that when I was new..." item to the list, please do. My game has not been modified so if yours is, your finding might differ to some degree.

I've been playing this game for a few weeks now and this is what I've learned and found out, some to my great surprise:

1. Constructor Minion % Damage stat is useless. Talked about it here. Example are gear that has stats example: 15% to Minion Damage, that doesn't actually count.
https://steamcommunity.com/app/400170/discussions/0/4369129947726550832/

Most of the +x% damage type stats in the game are useless at least early game as they do not increase flat damage bonuses (+x damage type) which are the biggest source of damage pretty much throughout the game.

Minion base damage is generally very low even when fully upgraded but most if not all minions do have 1.0 enchantment modifier meaning they'll get 100% of the damage from flat damage bonuses. Minions however cannot deal critical hits which is a bit of a problem for Constructor in late.

So with any class the flat damage bonuses and critical hit chance and damage bonus should have higher priority than percentage based damage bonuses as they only apply to base skill damage.

Unfortunately many of the AOE or multi-hit skills in the game have poor enchantment modifier making them generally inferior damage wise to skills that have high enchantment modifier.

Unless:

• The skill has good crowd control power-up like freeze or slow
  
• The skill is Fire and forget skill like Elyctric discharge, Spool of energy
  
• The skill has very high attack speed or dot and damage like hurricane assault or blazing barrier
  
• The skill is channeled skill with damage boost (up to 90%) power-up like stream of bolts or lead storm. (Bonus lasts for as long as skill is active!)

Some good multi-hit / AOE skills with high (1.0) enchantment modifier:

• Umbralist: Splintering strike
  
• Bountry hunter: Hex shot, Ricochet, Arc shot (Initial hit, Max 3 hits per enemy)
  
• Phlogistoneer: Mines
  
• Constructor: Most minions, Canister shell(?)

Originally posted by KinKin25:

7. That this game is much more balanced than the individual installments of Van Helsing, but there's still some difficulty spikes (noticed it a little in the Wolf Den in Act 1, Spider Cavern near the end of Act 1, right before arriving in the Secret Lair, beginning of Act 2). So if you notice spikes, you're not alone, just temporarily lower the difficulty for the time being if u want.

The difficulty spikes are actually due to how enemy attack values scale with levels and with the enemies scaling to player level each time you enter new area or re-enter old one.
Higher the enemy attack values are the more you need defense to mitigate the damage.

Now since the level scaling gets applied only on level load you can make things a lot easier and faster by trying your best to clear areas in one go. This means that instead of returning to town or hidden lair you'll send Katarina to sell items etc and clear the whole map before exploring any optional / hidden dungeons that you may find.

Main cause for this is the leveling speed on fearless where you gain experience so fast that it becomes really hard to keep up with the gear requirements. This gets balanced out better later on (maybe after level 60-70?) when leveling slows down due to higher experience requirements.

Do your best to upgrade gear before you start clearing new area and try to get as high defense as possible with +% item defense enchants and essences. Try to keep your weapon, rings and necklace on level as well as these can roll flat elemental damage bonuses and increase ones base weapon damage which affects damage done by most if not all skills.

Now there are few enemies with very high Spellpower and these are usually found in the ink areas. So it pays to be careful with magic projectiles when entering new ink themed area in the main campaign.

Originally posted by KinKin25:

8. Inhuman Ordeal difficulty increases your chance to get Epic items as well, just a heads up. It literally says % Epic Item right in the difficulty description. I didn't notice this until I started playing a more overpowering toon and wanted more difficulty.

Honestly the inhuman ordeal difficulties are only for extra challenge in the endgame when you've reached max level, completed the story and are playing in adventure mode. At that point you're not really bothering with epics but instead trying to get set and godlike items that you can only obtain from Gold treasure chests and Pigasus from adventure mode lair.

For epics you're better off running normal-fearless with items that increase drop rates and maxing out adventure mode spoils of triumph. Since you'll be killing things a lot faster than in inhuman ordeal you'll end up with a lot more loot.

If you don't mind using exploits[van-helsing.fandom.com] you can farm epics from crystal bastion at far greater speed than through any normal means.

Originally posted by KinKin25:

10. Artifact forging, for me, is generally not worth it unless: ...

Artifact forging is great for rare items, especially trophies which will end up getting a lot more enchantments than any other types of items. So much so that you might end up crashing the game when forging artifacts.

Artifact forging also scales the resulting item to your level and keeping items close to your level is pretty important so it can make sense to try to "upgrade" lower level rare items. Generally you can just save up rare items with flat damage bonuses, critical hit enchants, defense bonuses etc and try to combine them in artifact forge later for some amazing rares.

Some enchants can only be rolled to certain types of rare items through item forging so while it can be difficult to find e.g armor with flat damage bonus or critical hit bonus you can try to use artifact forge to transfer said enchant from rings to the target item. (It might also be that some enchants are just a lot more rare for specific item types)

Originally posted by KinKin25:

12. Set items do serve some purpose. When I first started, I thought they were awful. However, as someone said it, set items are incomplete and Godlike / Epics etc are their own individual piece. So unless you wear a couple of them, it's hard to know the true benefits of their stats / skills combined and activated.

Set items have higher rolls on enchants than epic items making them better if you can find one with good enchants. Some of them have great stats even without other items from the set.