Getting Started: Fighting Against Shields

Having trouble beating enemies with shields? This is the guide for you.

The problem

Many people have trouble killing enemies with shields in Exanima. This is especially pronounced in arena mode because more enemies use them and they use much larger shields than you usually find in story mode.

Of course an enemy with a shield should be harder to kill than one without. That's part of the purpose of a shield historically and it's part of its purpose in Exanima as well, but it's a bigger problem in Exanima. Consider the following image.



Just by having the shield anything that comes in through the red zone is almost guaranteed to get blocked, especially if its at the same vertical level as the shield. Your opponent will naturally move the shield to intercept as well, so the red zone will magnify if he's not occupied in an attack animation (or otherwise) to begin with.

If your default swing is a hip level forehand shot, which is exactly what you get by just left clicking, you're almost wasting your time.

The solution

The easiest thing to do is to attack where the shield is not.



Exanima allows for many ways to do this. If you're fighting smaller shields you'll find that just timing is often enough, catching them with a forehand while they attempt a backhand swing, for example, because the motion of the backhand will bring their shield off to the left far enough that your forehand swing connects almost on their back. The bigger the sheild the less of these sorts of openings there are though and instead you'll want to find a much more direct way to attack through the green areas.

The following techniques are mostly in order of easist to learn. The first one, however, I believe is also the most effective and you should at least try it before moving on to something else.

The Backhand

By default your character will do a forehand swing. If you want to start with a backhand swing all you need to do is wave your mouse in that direction before clicking. Note, however, that just holding your cursor off center will not work, this will just cause your character to face that way and still try to do forehands. You need to swing the cursor off the center to the side you wish to initiate an attack from -- the game looks for a difference between where your character is facing and where you've moved the cursor.

In addition if you are defending a backhand swing from an opponent your weapon will be drifting toward your right and this may interfere with you starting a backhand swing. Make sure you have enough range so your character is not tempted to defend his right side against an incoming attack. This means that if you're hopping back and forth to land blows the hops you make for backhands will be slightly larger than those for forehands.

Learning how to reliably throw backhands is an incredibly useful skill in Exanima. Not only is it a great cure for shield problems, it also lets you strike opponents after their forehand swings much more easily, especially against fast weapons like swords. After a forehand swing an opponents weapon will be on the same side of the body that your forehand swing would land on, making for an easier weapon defense. If instead you can wind up a backhand he will have to pull his weapon all the way back across his body to defend it. Reliably being able to throw backhands means reliable damage, no matter how big the shield or how fast the weapon.

The Overhand

To execute an overhand attack you double-click-hold instead of just click hold. The issue is that the overhand will go where you're aiming the cursor and that makes it a lot easier to miss. Overhands are incredibly powerful however and they go after the generally least armored part of your foe, the head. Trying to hit with an overhand vs an opponent just standing there won't work, especially when they have a shield, however if they're in the middle of a swing the shield is going to be flailing off to one side or the other and your overhand will often land cleanly.

To add some power to an overhand you can crouch just before it hits. This will sometimes cause your character to stumble however, so practice is needed. If you find a backhand hard to do maybe try to learn the overhand first.

The Thrust

To execute a thrust you hold down the alternate attack button before and while clicking. By default this is Alt but I highly reccomend changing it to Space. The computer is quite bad at blocking thrusts in general and in addition to this if your cursor is on the feet your character will thrust down and if it's on their head he will thrust upward, making this by far the easiest attack to control the height of.

Landing a thrust against a shield is best done just as your opponent is finishing a forehand swing, which will naturally move his shield away from his front. This is a very natural time to attack anyway so it's an easy transition.

To get confidence with your thrusts I suggest buying a pitchfork and exclusively using it to stab in arena matches. The pitchfork is a aspirant level weapon (second rank) and its three tines mean you don't have to be nearly as accurate with your thrusts as with single point weapons.

Thrusts also penetrate armor very well and if you like swords in Exanima it's abusrd to not be able to thrust with them -- the good one handed swords have spear level range when stabbing with them and excellent power.

After you've got the timing and range down try to learn how to thrust at the face. You don't always want to aim for the face (especially against shields that are often held quite high) but the face is unarmored until Master level matches in the arena plus headshots often knock foes down so if you can hit them in the head that's often enough to set up a finishing blow that does enough damage (combined with the inital face thrust) to end the match outright.

The Leg Chopper

Opponents have trouble covering attacks to their ankles or feet, even if they have a shield. You can learn to control swing height through the interaction of your body and movement and the cursor but obviously that's complicated and tricky. The most reliable method to attack low is to do a simple forehand swing and about halfway through your swing press the crouch button (by default Ctrl, but I highly suggest changing this to Shift so you can easily reach it while working WASD).

This is especially effective with longer weapons like the polehammer or voluge. If your timing is wrong your character will just bang his weapon into the floor or even fall over on his face so it takes practice. Once you get used to it it's an indespensible tool against shields, however the occassional kite shield will cover the feet fairly well so it's not as dependent or versatile as the previous methods, plus it hits the lower leg which is one of the most heavily protected parts of the body throughout the arena.

I've even seen videos on Youtube where people have made short characters specifically to make the legs of opponents more accessible but I don't think it's good to rely on this so much, especially with more updates coming.

Hitting the Head or the Back

Because there is no key to press to make your character swing higher going for the head means using positioning and movement to force your character to swing that way. After a certain number of hours in the game you'll be able to do it semi-reliably but trying to intentionally learn how to do it early doesn't work very well.

Hitting the back is a matter of timing and unusual motion. The easiest way to do it is probably to move foreward and to the left while just missing a forehand attack, and then step to the right and rotate around with a remise. Often this will catch your opponent in the back while he is recovering from a forehand himself. Obviously this can be tricky as the timing of all the weapons differs and opponents move around differntly while fighting, but it is an option.

Brute Force Method

Really the worst option but if you're new to the game and you're fighting someone with a kite shield and a quick sword covering their other side it may be all you can muster. If you batter a shield enough your opponent will run out of shield stamina. When this happens they block worse and seem to take some damage from being hit on the shield itself. There's no visual indication and if you decide to go this route you have to beat on the shield as often as you can or else the stamina bar will just fill back up on you. Heavier weapons seem to do a better job of depleting shield stamina. Any other method is faster once learned, but this can be a fall back.

Liked the guide?

Rating the guide moves it up the list so other people will see it more often. Let me know if you have any other suggestions for beating shield using opponents in the comments.

[Nexodus]

Quick tip about over-hand

Since you can control the swing of the over-hand, you can start the attack slightly left of the enemy and swing it inwards for a cheap shot to the hip/legs, most of the time it stuns them,
opening a chance to attack again, depending on your weapon.

[Cat]

iirc, the devs have gone on record saying that the AI doesn't know how to defend against any technique that involves crouching, being that its a relatively new mechanic and is not quite factored in yet. So I tend to try and avoid crouching as it feels like using it takes away from my victory a bit

[iraeni]

Use a flail. A normal forehand attack with the right distance would cause it to swing around the shield to the enemy's back.

[Hobart hillbilly]

just run into them pushing them over or into a wall then beat the hell outa them

[LittleFlame]

Yeah if they got a shield and I got a heavy weapon I just like to berserker swing into the shield repeatedly

Your force gets stopped by the shield so you don't overswing and fall over and one heavy hit will kill almost all of their shield stamina, do this a few times over without giving them the time to recover and eventually they'll die off a lovetap

[The Seed]

if they got a shield I always go for the legs, or over head swing whilst turning the character into my opponent from left to right. those are the easiest methods i could find.

[Big Biam]

oh, you can crouch?

[Cosy]

I usually face right, side step left, swing a 2h and move my mouse to their left. That way I've got a huge 200 degree arc (at least) and they go flying.

[Leo]

i'm with Dee, just yeet them away with your two-hand mace.

[Hi, I'm Ari.]

Brute Force Method 2: Just use a sledgehammer/maul to yeet them across the room