Do you have general combat tips to share?

[zespi]

Hello All,

I've been playing the game on the normal difficulty and I'm at the beginning of level 3 now. I'm starting to suspect that I'm "doing it wrong", since certain battles that I won (after a lot of retries) was borderline on loosing.

In particular, there is a battle on level 2 where you get locked up with three skeleton warriors. I was able to successful win the encounter, when I figured that I can equip a spear (with reach) to the second row party member, and this is what made the difference. But this was a *really* close call.

Another battle on level 2 is where you first meet 4-skeleton warriors squad. At first I thought that it was impossible to win, since they would kill my front row just in a few hits and the second row follows soon.

I beat them by sheer accident, because the last time they caught up on me was next to a closable gate. So this gave me the idea of fight until I'm low on health close the gate, rest and then rinse and repeat. This worked. Is this how this battle was intended to play out?

I'm asking, because there are really not many options in terms of the party equipment (to say the least) and it's normal difficulty. How is it even possible to beat it on anything harder than that?

So the question is, do you have any combat tips to share, so that your party do not suck? Mine were:
- Use reach weapon so that the second row can do melee attack
- Use closable gate mid-fight to rest

[blackwoodforest]

Use the gate to close it in front of the enemy. Then open it, hit the enemy with 2-3 strikes and close the gate immediately . Repeat this and shouldn´t get hit often and win the fight.

but in general - MOVE! try walking around your enemy facing the sides and strike!

[Empyrean]

Other than playing with doors, the most important thing is to keep moving. If you have a 2x2 room with a squad of four skeleton legionnaires in it, you should be able to kill all of them without taking a single hit. Position yourself diagonally from them, attack the square as they start to move into it, then quickly move so you're diagonal from them again. If you do it right, they'll never even get a chance to swing at you. Repeat the process until they're dead.

[Mythago]

Moving is indeed an important part of combat. Don't let the enemies get free hits, use your own attacks and move/strafe while waiting for the cooldowns. Things also depend a lot on the enemy type and on the surroundings. If you have a lot of room, keep strafing around the enemy. If there's a corridor and the enemy doesn't shoot / cast, keep hitting and walking backwards. If the enemy has ranged abilities, dodge them by strafing and close in if there's room, or try to hit them with some ranged attack and go behind a corner to lure them in melee range. Sometimes you can use buttons or switches to let only a few enemies past some point, and close a door/wall behind them.

Make sure your back row members have something they can use to hit each enemy (to get full exp share). Rogues can get a reach ability for melee attacks from Assassination, mages can of course use spells but might need to use a spear / throwing weapons especially in the early game when they have a small mana pool. Mage spells and thrown bombs will hit each enemy in those 2-4 monster groups, which is good for either killing them fast, or just making sure you get the experience for each of them. Arrows and crossbow bolts will 'stick' to their target and fall to the ground when the enemy dies, so you can get them all back fast and keep shooting, which is nice when you don't have too many arrows yet.

In surprise situations with several enemies, keep moving and avoid getting cornered / stuck. Focus on one enemy at a time and try to kill anything weak first so you have more room to maneuver. Strong but slow enemies usually won't keep up if you move around killing the weaker ones, so leaving them last lets you fight them one-on-one. Ice bolt / freeze bombs can also help a lot if you do get surrounded. Freeze one enemy so you can turn your side/back at him (never get surrounded on all sides, use walls but don't get stuck on corners), then face another enemy and try to kill him fast to be able to move freely again. Also, if you die and reload, take a look at the surroundings and find a good place to fight before triggering the ambush again. Sometimes you can even avoid getting stuck in a trap by throwing/placing a stone on a pressure plate from outside the room, then opening the door again from the outside and fighting one enemy at a time in the doorway.

[Mychaelh]

About the Level 2 Skeleton-Room:

SpoilerShow

The is a warning inscription outside on the wall....
The trick is to trigger the trap without getting locked in the room...

[tanelorn]

I have to say, even though I've played tons of these block-style dungeon crawl games, it has always (and still does) felt like cheating to do the move and strike their side thing. Backpedaling and using ranged weapons on a slow enemy is one thing, but the tactics described above really feels like you are taking advantage of a game mechanic rather than playing properly. If you can fight and win against a 4x skeleton team without getting hit once, that rings of exploit more than anything.

Of course, I realize that this is how the games were made and it's part of how you play these games. Still, it feels wrong...

[Saice]

Simple General Combat tips.

Learn to circle 2x2 a huge number of fights can be done in such a way as you can advoid all damage with this.

Gates. As pointed out above you can open them click all your attacks close it want wait for them to cycle. But also in a lot of places you can also just sit down and rest mid fight. The mob will not heal and most of the time will no even wonder off.

Don't worry about the no EXP from cheap kills it will not impact you that much.

With that in mind Pits and Teleporters can be used to insta kill mobs. You can drag then to a portal then jump thorugh wait a moment and jump back out again killing the mob. They usely will still drop loot if they do form this.

[Zorglub]

When your characters get quick enough, and if you play with mages and need to constantly "dial" spells, a nice trick is to have all your attack actions in the "middle square" so you can access them more quickly.

Lets say (front row 2 fighters, back row two mages):

Shield|Sword Axe|Shield
Torch|Wand Orb|Compass

You may find the few second you'll gain going between weapons and spells very precious in some situations.

[saethkept]

I tended to scout ahead a bit...where possible, specifically on the lower levels. Knowing which kind of monster lurked a few turns away enabled a bit of prep time i.e. casting various magical protections, etc.

Have potions made and handed out. Nothing like mixing them under the blade.

Build a party that suits your favored style of play.

Use the environment. Avoid backing into alcoves, stay a step ahead of the enemy once engaged.

But all of the above sounds too much like work; find any way you can to enjoy the game!

[rakenan]

I have to say, even though I've played tons of these block-style dungeon crawl games, it has always (and still does) felt like cheating to do the move and strike their side thing. Backpedaling and using ranged weapons on a slow enemy is one thing, but the tactics described above really feels like you are taking advantage of a game mechanic rather than playing properly. If you can fight and win against a 4x skeleton team without getting hit once, that rings of exploit more than anything.

Of course, I realize that this is how the games were made and it's part of how you play these games. Still, it feels wrong...

When they make it possible to spec a character as a "tank" and have him actually take the beatings, I'll care whether my tactics are cheap. Since they instead made it so the only way to win combat is to not let enemies actually attack you, I play the game by the rules they give me. Dancing around your foes to avoid getting attacked is the way the game is meant to be played. It's like complaining that it feels wrong in chess to capture a pawn from all the way across the board with your rook, when the pawn only gets to move one square straight ahead.