Battlerite guide for Absolute Beginners and people wanting to buy the game

This guide is an comprehensive introduciton for people who are not familiar with Smash games to bring them up to speed with Battlerite fast and easy. I explain how to move, shoot and look, what champions are and how skills typically work as well as the matchmaking till people are ranked.

Afterwards have a look at specific guides for heroes and individual gameplay mechanics.


This guide was created by Pereckles under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0) you can find the license somewehere there: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

If you wish to use stuff from it please attribute me, I don't care if you sell it either :)

Battlerite

In Battleright you control a unit called hero or champion. You determine its movements (keyboard WASD), vision & aim (mouse) and skills (keyboard and mouse buttons) in an arena to achieve victory in a fast paced tactical smash styled duel game. You either play alone, with a friend or someone random 1 vs 1, 2 vs 2 or 3 vs 3 matches versus either humans or AI's. Most common is the 2 vs 2 matchup which takes around 15-20 minutes from start to finish per match (including matchmaking and loading).

Movement

You move your champions at a shared slow pace with WASD and use mobility abilities which often lets you pace forward (commonly on E), jump somewhere (commonly on SPACE) or get behind/away from the enemy by countering their abilities (commonly on Q).

Some champions have abilities which make you move a bit faster +10% to +40%, the enemy slower, freeze either of you in place or remove you from the map for a short duration to appear somewhere else again (more commonly as ultimates).

Some heroes like Shifu have the ability to drag themselves to walls but can't jump over them, Jade on the other hand can jump over them but has a higher cooldown on that spell, others can roll a bit forward or jump back independent on proximity to walls. The results of that differences is that how you position yourself on the map well varies according to your enemies, allies and their cooldowns.

There are also pets you can ride while not taking damage and abstaining from skills which increase your movement speed by +15% (Y or Z depending on your keyboard layout). However mounting them takes some time.

Vision and Aim

Your champion looks directly onto your mousecursor and skills are typically send out to its current position, often in a straight line. This means your cursor's position determines your Line of Fire, where you look and where you fire is therefore mostly identically.

The part of the map you see shifts around your champion dependently on your cursors position but is bound to your champion - you are not able to scroll to their spawn and your vision range isn't infinite either. Things too far away or vision blocked by walls are in the Fog of War. You won't see what happens in it even if your ally does since the vision between allies is not shared. For good measure be aware of your surroundings and the position of your ally.

Some skills do take your movement into account or block your movements (petrify/root etc.), turning around does take a little bit of time, too and it is called turntime.

Skills

Each champion got several skills which are activated by pressing their related hotkey.

Once a skill is activated it gets cast during its cast time after which its effect occurs and the skill's cooldown begins. The cast time ranges from instantly, over short 0.15 seconds to medium 0.35 seconds to long over 0.7 seconds. During the cast time your spells can be interrupted or canceled which leaves them nonetheless on cooldown and without the energy you spent to activate them. A skill is called "off cooldown" once its cooldown is over and thus can be used again.

Normal skills can be used at any time they are off cooldown, there are however skills which additionally need energy. With most skills or attacks you hit you gain a bit energy (around 5% to 10%) and for every 25% you get a new energy bar. Non-ultimate energy requiring skills typically need 1 energy bar, while ultimates need 4 bars or 100% energy.

Each champion got 9 skills, two of them are called EX abilities which you can use with their hotkeys on 1-4 or by rebinding them on your mousebuttons 4 and 5 (recommended).

The most used skills are on LMB and RMB which are mostly the common attack or common heals. They do often have little damage but might get charges with succesfull LMB attacks which might make RMB skills stronger.

Then there often are counter or shield spells commonly found on Q (e.g. take no damage at next enemies regular attack), mobility control spells on E (push yourself and the enemy to the next wall) and mobility, safety or jump spells on SPACE (dive into the ground resurface where your cursor was during the cast).

Your R key often has control abilities, interrupts or shields for yourself or your ally or other interesting mechanics.

The ultimate on F requires 4 energy bars and is often able to unleash a lot of damage, has a big area of effect or strong control abilities. Ultimates with a very high amount of damage (4 times 35 dmg or 120 damage) often got a high cast time or can be interrupted while the ultimate is active.

There are also the two EX skills which change the behavior of two non ultimate skills. Shifu, the Spear, got as E skill Javelin a spell which makes him throw a spear a fair amount and pull himself to either the enemy or wall he hits dealing a bit of damage on the target. His EX skill to that Javelin is Harpoon (Shift+E or 2) which required one energy and drags a hit enemy to ones position instantly leaving him snared with 0 movement speed for half a second instead.

It is of utmost importance to be aware of the distance your spells work, the effective distance in which you hit your spells well, how long it takes to cast them (which also means you know if they can be interrupted) and how to escape. Running away, repositioning yourself and having your cooldowns and that of the enemy in mind is one of the foundational skills of a succesful Battlerite player.

Training

The training map is great to test out heroes and abilities there are moving and still standing training dummies, some which attack you and options to activate limitless energy or set cooldowns to 0 seconds. It is a good place to prepare for AI matches and games against human players.

The Arena and Orbs

You begin the game in a pit to the left of the map there you will pick a battlerite (which enhances one of your skills a bit till the end of the match) and enter the arena after a minute.

The arena's have some walls which block sight and introduce chokepoints, however the middle is often an open place in which lot of the skirmishes will happen.

Around 20 seconds into the game an orb (with ~40 hp) will spawn in the center of the arena which grants the champion delivering the killing blow a large amount of energy. Hitting the orb gives weapon charges and is a nice boost, too. It respawns every 25 seconds or so and is an important objective to get.

Additionally to the big orb there are small orbs which spawn near the middle, yellow ones which will grant around 10-15 energy per piece and green ones which grant around 14 HP. They do respawn every 25 seconds are quite important to the result of a match between equal players.

It is a good idea to control the area of the orbs around the time they respawn and time your skills so that you can spoil the enemies' attempts to grab those powerups. If your ally dies he will drop his current energy for you to take, too.

Matches

A match is won if one team gets 3 won rounds, at the beginning of every round you will get a battlerite which enhances one of your skills. Do plan with your ally how you want to play the match to prepare accordingly.

Since it is very hard to win a match alone against two hurt enemies if you are also roughed up it is smart to deal with one of them with the powerspike your ally gives you with his orb.

Ranking

After you have reached Grade 6 playing against humans you will acquire a ranking reaching from grade 6 at around 750 ranking points to the ultimate rank around 5000 points. Remember that it is good to focus on the things which went right and the rounds you've won instead of the ranking. By improving in single rounds you improve the amount of matches which will increase your rank.

The maps

There are a few maps some which are more open and some with a ruin and jungle dungeon feeling. Which one you play in is random if you aren't hosting a private match.

Heroes

Shifu


[LMB] Spear Slash
Normal attack, 8 dmg, 5% energy per hit
~ 3 attacks per seconds -> 24 dps
You gain 1 weapon charge per hit (max 3)

[RMB] Impale
10 damage in cone in front of you plus 6 per weapon charge, 6% energy per hit
.3 seconds cast time, 2 sec CD

[SPACE] Fleetfoot
1.4 seconds immaterial (you take no damage), +1/3 ms
14 seconds CD

[Shift+SPACE] Tempest Rush
1.7 seconds immaterial +1/2 ms, -1/2 dmg, 14 heal per hit

[Q] Kunju
Counterattack, if enemy projectile or normal attack his you are behind him immaterial with bonus dmg
8 seconds CD

[E] Javelin
10 damage, you pull yourself to the hit enemy or wall
10 seconds CD

[Shift+E] Harpoon (1 energy)
14 dmg, you pull yourself to the hit wall or the hit enemy to you

[R] Tendon Swing (1 energy)
12 damage in a cone, hit enemies are incapacitated (can't do anything for 3secs or till damaged)
15 seconds CD

[F] Whirlwind (5 energy)
112 damage over 3 seconds to nearby enemies, +1/5 ms, shield 30
CD 1

License

This guide was created by Pereckles under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC BY 4.0) you can find the license somewehere there: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

If you wish to use stuff from it please attribute me, I don't care if you sell it either :)

[OnlyFullSend]

Nice Guide!

[Hooty]

Good guide
Learned a lot
Worth the read