Version 1.0 1/21/2024 - Initial Upload.
Version 1.1 1/22/2024 - Added Long Term Build Planning section.
Version 1.2 1/25/2024 - Added Map Progression tips and a collection of spoiler solutions separated into Early, Mid, and Late game. This should help you get unstuck or access new maps.

Next Update: The Captial B Boss Fights of this game deserve their own section, because this game hard pivots into a very different kind of encounter than the largely symmetrical warfare done between parties of characters with access to the same or similar skills.

It is not that this shift is not telegraphed in optional fights, but if this is your first Rad Codex game, I want to make you aware of that the nature of mandatory encounters will change, right at the end.


This game is early enough in its release that I firmly believe it was worth posting in its current state. Even if this guide is largely limited to information you can use within the scope of the first zone of the game: The Commoner's Grounds.

I've been keeping an eye on the steam discussions on a daily basis now. Enough that is has affected what I talk about here. Please, ask questions. I will happily load up one of my three playthroughs and do some testing.

I want this to be a lasting resource that helps people enjoy and complete this game that I adore.

I kinda fell in love with talking about how much I think about this game? Expect it to turn into a full, if somewhat hands-off walkthrough that focuses on what you are going to encounter, what becomes available, and how you can think about expanding what your party is capable of.

The more direct and specific advice that people ask me to put in here, the more I will add.

To establish my experience with the game, I beat Kingsvein once, on Titan Difficulty and Thoughtful AI during my 3rd day of playing the game. I felt pretty thorough in some of the zones I found and optional content I completed.

I also have over 100 hours in Horizon's Gate, but someone else has already made a wonderful guide of changes between that game and this one. Go read it if that is what you are looking for!

There were definitely some points where I think the average newcomer could use a guide or some more direction than they might have found within the game.

I won't spoil them now, but I do think if you follow most, if not all the advice in this guide, you shouldn't run into any encounter that feels unwinnable.


I am working on writing up an extensive amount of thoughts and considerations into building your characters. Skill and equipment combos, access to certain skills that will address the tougher encounters in the game, higher difficulty considerations for dealing with bloated health pools and dealing with the incredible amount of damage they deal. Added on 1/22/2024

I am currently doing a RUIN difficulty playthrough. While it is probably beyond the scope of this guide, some principles that apply are valid advice for dealing with this game's hardest encounters even on normal difficulties.

The other section I am working on and willing to leave out of this guide's initial state are the specific obstacles I faced that left me feeling a little directionless a few times. Added on 1/25/2024

Someone else put up a VERY HEAVILY SPOILERED Secrets and Puzzles Hints that gives you hints and outright answers to most of the exploration bits that stumped me for a while. (It even taught me a couple ways I didn't know I could use some class skills.) But, that guide exists.

This one is meant to supplement understanding the game and thinking on its terms.

This guide is intended to offer advice and considerations largely as they become apparent from the beginning of your journey to its conclusion.

There is so much room for discovery in this game that I do not want to rob anyone of it entirely. But there are some moments I can foresee players struggling to grapple with. This game pulled the rug out from under me on my first time through.

I want there to be a resource for those who are not sure how to overcome what is in store for them.

It is worth noting that progression in this game in all of its forms is largely non-linear. As such, I will attempt to sign post, spoiler tag, and maintain a very healthy table of contents. Keep in mind that I cannot account for what everyone may consider a spoiler.

The deeper into this guide we get, the more I am likely to need to be specific about what kind of problems this game is going to throw at you.

If nothing else, I think a thorough discussion on how to even go about building and progressing a party will be invaluable to first time players. There is no respec option, but there is effectively unlimited experience out there in the form of some random encounter maps.

Do not hesitate to adjust the difficulty to your taste. I intend to offer tiers of advice as we go.

Let's start at the very beginning.

You are presented with a trio of buffs for the Wisp Slayer that get you started.

Kingsvein does not inform you that the base HP and MP values are greatly diminished from previous games. The base values for a Diecast are 10 HP, and 10 MP.

Right away, extra HP or MP values mean a lot more than previous games.

Initially, it costs 3 Upgrade Stars to raise your HP or MP by +1. This requires you to remain in a class that offers the respective permanent stat increase for a total of 900 experience points. After you raise HP or MP 5 times, this cost will increase.

The HP and MP offered for yourself and your allies by your starting options are not counted towards the +5 benchmark where the cost of increasing the stat increases.

I won't comment overly much on the Wisp Slayer, Wisp Stalker, or Dark Augur. But I do think you should choose based on whichever passive it provides that most appeals to you. Anyone who is built to deal damage can make regular use of Slayer or Stalker.

Your starting class considerations.

Wisp Slayer: +4 HP for the Slayer is a 40% increase on your starting health. Getting an extra turn is valuable on literally every turn you can secure a kill with them.

Wisp Stalker: The +1 Move for the Stalker is a big deal. This is a game where everyone has 3 Movement by default, which can feel restricting for some players. I don't think I need to state the value of free invisibility on a kill.

Dark Augur: Dark Augur takes some investment in MP to really see a lot of benefit. But even if you just want to build a front line warrior and feed every +1 Max MP item you find to them, you'll see a lot of value in your ability to take a hit in the endgame.

Your Wyvern and the two characters you get to create will be with you from partway through the tutorial until the very end of your journey. The game will get more companions, but these are the ones you have a say in their creation.

Let's go over some insights into why you would choose each type of Diecast.

Junkstone deserves a call out. That 20% more EXP feels like it should be an attractive option.

For me, the End of Game stats listed a range of 11,000 too 12,000 experience gained by my party members. I went out of my way to explore as much of the map as I could and fight every encounter I came across.

Assuming you don't grind, (I did about 8 random encounter maps) you can expect Junkstone to hand you somewhere around or above 2,000 extra EXP over the course of the game.

The +2 HP and +1 MP of Corpryst is worth 1,800 free XP in Passive stats.
The +4 MP of Voltraced is worth 2,700 free XP in Passive stats.
What you're getting with Junkstone is a faster accumulation of XP used to purchase skills and classes. You'll eventually make those HP/MP stars back, but it might take some grinding.

You could also feed your Junkstone party member all of the XP granting items for extra value.

Even if you make your two party members Voltraced and don't enjoy the magic classes in this game, that +4 MP still helps you use more abilities and not have to worry about cross classing your physical characters into mage classes to get more MP.

None of these are wrong choices. They just offer a different early game experience.

If you just want to pick based on aesthetics, your companions can eventually become anything you want them to once given the proper gear and time spent in classes to build up passive stats.

Hunk of ore in hand, you are now fresh on the trail of a Wisp or fresh from your first exchange with the game's tutorial.

The game has a very efficient explanation on how to play the game. At this point, you are under no obligation to have internalized every little thing.

You are very much permitted to explore and experiment.

Kingsvein has set an expectation of walking through doors, interacting with objects, and occasionally turning your weapons on the environment.

So much more of this game will be taught to you by using the LOOK command on everything that catches your eye.

I won't be rehashing everything the game teaches you, but it is worth stating some of it in case you clicked through dialog too quickly. Most dialog is one time only.


Don't forget to take a look at this little slate in the tower after the full extent of the on-rails tutorial is done and you have assembled your full party of 5 + wyvern steed.

Let's go over some lessons that the game has silently been trying to teach you without text. (A lot of this game's early encounters are actually good about slowly introducing new mechanics or situations.)

In your very first fight, you can end it instantly by using the Bash skill to send the Ogre plummeting off the edge.

This works in reverse. Enemies shoving your units 1-2 tiles away is rather common.

Be mindful of placing your units closer than 3 tiles away from water or a ledge of any kind.

Actually, it is worth talking about push mechanics.

The Bash skill can be upgraded to deal 70% of your weapon attack's damage.

Pushing a unit 1 Tile away does just that. Same for 2 tiles away.

But what if there are no tiles to push a unit?

If they are up against a wall, they will take damage equal to the push value.

If they are however pressed up against another character, both units take the excess push value.

By excess, I mean if you use Bash on a unit to push them 1 square away, but the second square runs into another character, both of them will take 1 damage.

It can be a value judgement of whether or not damaging your own units is worth inflicting some splash damage. But if that extra damage takes a unit off the board while still leaving your friendly unit healthy? Or someone is available to heal them this turn? It could be worth it.

You can also push enemies into spikes, fire, or positioning for somewhere else a friendly unit might not otherwise be able to reach them.

Maybe your Arc spell can't catch units on every tiles until you damage enemies and shove them around a little.

Pushing can be a very strong source of extra damage.

New means of pushing and pulling objects can also give you new options for exploring the world.

Hopefully this gives you something to consider before writing off push skills.



Once you are joined by some party members, you get a taste of other Weapons and Delayed Attacks.

Flails can attack diagonally, but do 1 less damage than a sword.

Spears can attack two tiles away. Despite also being 1 less damage, you may have seen your enemy stab two of your characters standing next to each other.

You will run into a lot of abilities that specifically targets lines and a cross of 5 tiles, 1 target and every square adjacent to it.

Be mindful of your positioning to deliver as much damage as you can while receiving as little damage as possible.

It is also worth noting that you can deliver the effects of skills to squares that your weapons can reach. Diagonally for flails, two spaces away for spears. (Do note that you don't get to duplicate the effects of skills on both squares that a spear can hit. It is one or the other.)

Speaking of positioning, both your Wyvern and one of your newest companions, Remir, have a movement stat of 4. Your stat upgrades and Remir's (+Zavarde and the Wisp Slayer's) special traits are visible are in a little row of diamond shaped boxes at the bottom of their stat sheets.

Zavarde's bonus to Delayed Attacks is much harder to set up and take advantage of. As you need to completely surround or otherwise immobilize an enemy to take full advantage of Delayed Attacks.

The AI is fairly good at avoiding them. I have the most luck inflicting Blind on enemies, which reduces their movement and attack range to 1.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using Delayed Attacks to target the edge of an enemy's movement in order to dissuade the enemy from moving close enough to hit someone. Giving the rest of your party time to heal, revive, or reposition can be a valuable use of a turn.

It is okay if you struggle to finding a use for Delayed Attacks. Outside of surrounding and isolating an enemy against terrain, they can be hard to set up in the early game. If an enemy can reposition you, they will happily shove you out of the way and flee the Delayed Attack.

I almost didn't use them at all until I could cast end game magic and had three party members armed with the Blind skill that they safely inflict from two spaces away using spears.

It is time to start making decisions.

Fresh out of the tutorial, everyone should have about enough experience to buy 1 Skill in their starting class, with the exception of your Wyvern.

Your Wyvern will get its own section. But for now, just accept that a lot of your early game is going to come down to skills and equipment. Since your Wyvern lacks equipment and gets delayed skill progression, I am going to save them for later.

Even if you don't like a character's starting class, consider that you can equip two classes at a time. This is a free skill and progress towards a Stat Upgrade that comes at every 300 XP gained while in a class.

Spell Casters can still appreciate HP. Fighters can still appreciate MP. You will notice that each class only gets HP, MP, or +1 to a % chance to evade an attack entirely.

Every 1 or 2 fights, your entire party should gain access to a new skill. So don't sweat these early choices too much.

Within about 300-500 XP, your class options will increase dramatically. (Almost the entirety of the top two rows of classes.)


If you want details, you can check out a guide that have already covered the classes in detail.

My goal here is to give you an idea of what to expect and get you to think about why you might want various skills.

I would encourage you to look at these classes through the lens of what do you want out of them? You can equip two and there is nothing wrong with just grabbing a skill or two as a stepping stone to another class or to provide some synergy that another class or the rest of the group needs.

Knight and Vanguard give you HP and eventually let you save up EXP to increase the damage you do with a preferred weapon. These are your tough classes. (Knight tends to be more aggressive, while Vanguard is more support oriented.)

Chisel, Marksmen, and Fanger give you Dodge chance measured in +1% at a time. This sounds weak at first, but completely negating attacks once you have a lot of equipment and accessories that give it causes enemies to waste their turns on you. (Chisel is your premier debuffer and one of my favorite early game classes. Marksmen is for when you get a bow and want to dabble in making a ranged attacker. While Fanger really leans into the traps and shenanigans aspect of these roguish archetypes.)

Mystic, Melder, and Ashen give you MP and are your magic classes. (Melder is your healer. Mystic is a generalist, and Ashen gives you an idea of what the rest of the more focused elemental classes will look like.)

It is also worth noting that Rad Codex's games have exploration benefits from a lot of these skills.

Shoving is the earliest one you will see. If you don't have a skill that pushes, you can try running into the object or smacking it with a shield. Do note that this may just break some objects or knock a fire brazier over, spreading flames.

Each element tends to have a very clear role in environmental exploration. I haven't found one for Bloodspike and Ruin skilils, but it is worth picking up Flame, Arc, Burst, and an Ice Spell at some point if nothing else than for their utility.

I have found valuable weapons and armor from exploration, so there are incentives to engage with this for non-magical characters.


You have Two Hand slots.
An Armor Slot.
Three accessory slots.
Three "belt" slots that can hold backup weapons or consumable. (You cannot access the full inventory in the middle of combat. If you have items you want to use in a fight, these are the slots for them.)


Armor gives you a mix of HP, and MP. Anyone can wear whatever you think you need most.

The Weapon Types recognized by the game are categorized into Swords, Spears, Flails, Archery and eventually Fists from the Titan class.

The Magic Types are Blaze Adept (Fire and Lightning!) Geo Adept, and Ruin Adept (Ice and Ruin!)

Due to how expensive it is to raise these skills, I would recommend specializing in 1 per character.

If it is too much to decide what weapon or magic type you want to stick with, there is nothing wrong with starting by spending your first 5 Upgrade Stars on HP or MP.

Fully equipping your party in accessories and weapons will be a fairly noticeable spike in your party's power all on its own. Enough to carry you for quite a few fights. At least on the lower to normal difficulties.

On higher difficulties, my current advice is that you are really going to want to pick your battles and get your hands on as much gear as possible before deciding on which ones you can take.


There are passive skills hidden in the Dragoon class and Gatekeeper class that give you +1 Strength or +1 Magic for the lowest weapon skill rank you have, allowing you to Buy 1 Skill in each to get an effective 2. But this costs you one of your three passive slots, is not accessible until the mid to late game. And even after acquiring it is prohibitively expensive to raise all your weapon ranks to 2.

(I did roll credits on Titan difficulty with none of my party members above weapon rank 2. I would have liked to be able to deal more damage, but it is definitely doable.)

Let's get you through your first few fights.

You might notice that the monsters at the base of the tower have a Strength Value of 4. Which sounds scary, but they aren't armed with weapons like you are.


Treat the Lotch and Groach as if they are your characters armed with Swords and you should do fine.

Your two allies that you created at the start should have the capacity to learn spells. Even a cursory Look at the water your enemies are swimming in... suggests lightning might be effective, but any ranged damage done while the enemy cannot reach you will make the melee engagement easier.


You always have the option of sidestepping this and many future encounters. But you can't run away from encounters that have begun without reloading a save. So save often if you want to do some exploring to try and gear up before engaging in further combat.

Upon exiting the tower, your companions should give you some basic advice on your options, but for now I will limit myself to what you are most immediately likely to encounter.


This Ogre is a taste of a single enemy with a high Strength score. Unless you are playing on Squire difficulty, expect to see a lot of more enemies with scary high strength values as you progress.

If you are playing on Titan or higher, pay attention to how much damage you can take. There is no shame in putting a squishy character in armor if it helps them avoid being one-shot.

This is a game where you can fairly reasonably calculate how much damage it can take to both down a target and how many hits your party can take after you get a handle for the skills and math involved.

In general: Strength or Magic + Weapon Skill or Magic Skill + The values of the weapon + the effects of any skill you are using.

If you're getting dramatically lower numbers than that, you are probably running into the effects of Fortifications, (Which can be removed with fire) an enemy has debuffed your Strength/Magic stat, or the enemy is using a defensive skill.


The Possessed are enemies that you should consider taking down as fast as you can. They gain increased Strength and Magic after 3 turns.

Otherwise, the Possessed fight a lot like you do. You should be able to recognize their equipped class symbols and have an idea of what skills they will try to use against you. Their weapon choice will also be visible by being held in their hands.

Upon killing a Possessed unit, a 1HP Wisp Node will spawn that will attempt to reanimate a nearby corpse at the earliest opportunity. This skill comes at a delay though, so don't worry overly much about killing them until they have queued up a skill use.

I find that late enough into a fight, there is enough blood around the battlefield that I can just clean up most of the surviving Wisps w/ the splash damage from electrifying connected blood surfaces. You may not encounter this if you're running a caster focused team, but by that point you should have an abundance of ranged spells.

Worst case scenario, they're great to throw rocks at if you can't quite reach them. You can also delegate your Wyvern to this role

Seeing as your Wyvern can't equip anything and has incredibly expensive skills, consider them a support unit for now.

The Wyvern's trait, Resilient, prevents them from losing Max HP when KO'd. That is pretty good utility all on its own.

Let the Wyvern take hits by physically getting in the way or serving as a mount!

A reminder that everyone gets full XP even if they are KO'd.

As a mount, your Wyvern is a floating HP bar that can rescue other units by putting its HP in front of theirs. They can be a great emergency source of HP for if someone critical to your party is about to go down.

A fun note is that healing effects to a mounted party member effect both them and the Wyvern.

And the rider can always hop off if the Wyvern needs to escape for whatever reason.

Shoving and pulling is always a useful bit of utility if you accidentally end a character's turn in a bad place. You can also use this aggressively to line up an enemy where you want them without sacrificing another character's turn.

The Wyvern can also gain access to the two starting classes. Knight and Mystic. This is expensive, both to buy into and purchase skills afterwards.

While your Wyvern cannot use weapons, bash or brave can be strong physical sources of damage for the Wyvern.

The Wyvern can also become an adept of the basic spell types if you're particularly attached to any single spell usable by that class. My preferred options here would be Arc, Burst, or Bloodspike.

Absorb can also be considered a free cleansing of status effects and terrain effects that give the Wyvern back MP. I'd value this skill higher on the Wyvern than anyone else, as the Wyvern cannot equip armor or accessories to raise its Max HP or MP to comparable levels of the rest of your party without donating precious and rare HP/MP increasing consumables to your Wyvern.

I suppose you could also feed your Wyvern exp granting items, but the Wyvern's ability to leverage bloated stats is limited by its skill selection.

Flame is not a spell I am super impressed by, but the Wyvern's high speed and range on the spell could make it a very safe source of kiting enemies around the map without fear of many catching up to you.

A Spellcaster riding a Wyvern is how I kept my non-Dark Archon early game spellcaster alive.

Byron is happy to sell you the basics.

If you don't have a healer, you can get an unlimited number of bandages from Byron for cheap.

But it shouldn't take long to find others willing to sell you things you need to finish equipping your party.


You can also just wander around and see what free loot there is to be had lying around.

Eventually you are going to mass an abundance of chits or things worth monetary value. Beyond taking up space, a healthy inventory will give you options.

Chits on the other hand are worth nothing beyond what you can exchange them for.

At some point, Byron will expand their list of wares. And suddenly I could turn the stockpile of Ores I had melted down for potential coin into +1 Damage chances on my weapons or +3% dodge chances in every slot of my armors.

It's time to talk about crafting. The barb recipe is something you are almost guaranteed to have access to because it shows up in the shop of your safe haven.

It might not look like much at first, but even an abundance of small effects spread across five characters can be the difference in downing enemies in fewer turns and dodging enemy attacks more often.

Let's break down the different forms of crafting in the order that they become available to really be used by you.


At the most basic level, crafting is clicking on one item, hovering over another, and clicking on it to merge the two.

Shears literally have the description of being used to cut cloth into bandages. Click your shears, click some cloth you think you can cut.

Voila! All the cloth items you don't have a use for are now Bandages!

Keep an eye out for objects with weird names. They will often give you hints about how they can be used or what it can be mixed with to get more consumables.


After a while, you're going to get too much ore equipment than you know what to do with.

At least in the early game, I still think it is worth filling your inventory with. Yes, even if they don't stack.

You know what does stack? Melted down ore.

Better yet, when you attempt to sell ore or any other stackable item, you get a slider for how many
you would like to sell.

No more confirmation boxes for each and every single ore weapon/armor you wish to sell!

Just click and drag all the unwanted gear made out of metal into the furnace and enjoy your stack of ore that only takes up one inventory slot.

Be careful that you don't melt down Plate Armor that you wish to keep! The recipe for it only becomes available much later in the game and it only has a slightly different sprite from normal armor.


But what if you have a shortage of some kind? You've been fighting nothing but monsters and half your party are still wearing a gambeson or there aren't enough weapons that you like to go around?

Combining ore with a crafting kit, (it looks like a blueprint with the white silhouette of an item) and you can produce as many of that item as you want.

This is especially useful for when the game starts handing you weapons you don't like made out of a material you don't have yet. Chuck them into a furnace and recraft them into something you have a blueprint for!


Last, but certainly not least, you will eventually find items that mention having an effect when placed in a weapon or armor.

For this, you will need to track down an anvil and place the weapon or armor you wish to customize onto the anvil.

This will open up a small window showing slots for you to place those items in.

The first item you will likely gain in abundance are barbs.

Even my end of game party has 2 to 3 slotted barbs per character. It's free damage or evasion chance.

Let's start with a pair of one time dialog asking some friendly faces about advice and the surrounding area. A part of me wish I had taken a screenshot or note about these when I was first going through this game, because I forgot what was in the other directions.

I'm just going to share them now for you, in case you missed or would like to reference them again.




I'm going to start with clearing the way to the South.

The encounter between you and the Southern exit of the Commoner's Grounds has a very similar encounter to the one at the base of the tower. (You can also easily bypass this encounter by walking around it, even if it is not that difficult.)

Lotch and Groach are nothing you haven't seen already.

There is a new piece of environmental terrain. Worth looking at to understand how it works and using it if it is advantageous for you to do so.

You can always approach an encounter from a different direction!



Exiting the South of the Commoner's Grounds places you on a map screen that allows you to fast travel to some of the zones available to you.

The Tower is used for quickly getting to a campsite to rest or offload spare loot you're not sure what to do with or unwilling to part with.

The new area that opened up is special in that it is a one screen map that will generate a new enemy encounter every time you visit.

Clearing The Pauper Mounds will unlock more random encounter maps. These will get higher and higher difficulty. I did the first 4 or so a time or two just because I was short an ability or upgrade I wanted before a pivotal encounter.

It is worth noting that there is a cooldown period of some kind, but I have noticed these maps seem to become available after I rest another time or two from adventuring the other zones I have access to.

This is a potentially bottomless source of EXP for you to expand your party's options and strength.

If you want to use these maps, make sure you backtrack to this map screen regularly after resting to see if there is more EXP on offer. There is no shame in using these as there is no capacity to respec in this game. You just keep earning experience until you get the skills you want or need to progress elsewhere.

So you have unlocked a number of classes or looked at a guide.

What's your plan?

You are going to need 1,500 EXP divided into five increments of 300 EXP to get your first 5 points of Max HP, MP, and Dodge chance.

If you want two of the above to hit +5, that's 3,000 EXP. (A fourth of the EXP I earned over an entire playthrough.)

After that, each additional point will cost double for a while. We're now talking 600 EXP per stat up.

Your Weapons and Magic damage buffs start out costing three stars. That's 900 more EXP you have to sit in a class that makes the weapon available to you. The next upgrade for the same type will cost you five stars. Another 1,500. A third tier of a weapon skill or magic adept is 2,100 EXP.

If you want to specialize characters, the earlier you commit to raising the damage, the better off you will be. You're looking at 4,500 EXP to hit tier three in a single weapon/magic type.

Not everyone NEEDS to specialize, mind you.

But if you're using spears, ranged weapons, or spells that target a number of enemies, you're getting a LOT of value out of that 4,500 EXP, as that +3 Damage is applying to each target.

Clubs are a fun exception to this. Benefiting extra from your Strength stat, you just need someone willing to max out the Brave skill and grant it to your Club users. (If you entrust this job to your Wyvern, your Club users don't even have to worry about self-buffing. It sill might eventually be worth them being able to provide their own buff when your build feels complete and you're not sure where to spend EXP down the road.)

After you unlock the skills, you'll very quickly see skill upgrades balloon in cost to very similar values. Mastering a class will get you a lot of passives, but if you want to hop around, it is worth thinking about how much time you wanna spend in each class before swapping.

Chisel is a very strong early game class that is worth dipping into for anyone in the party not using ranged weapons. Until I got my damage stat upgrades, being able to inflict Poison + Bleed in a single turn let me hit way above my weight class. And Blind is a strong debuff even if you don't use it to setup Delay Attacks.

Now that you're thinking about your EXP budget and planning, allow me to present to you a list of considerations.

Try not to feel too intimidated by it? It is okay to say no to some of these before having your mind changed by an encounter.

Just remind yourself that a lot of these questions can be answered with better weapons, consumables, accessories, or enchanting your gear! There are a lot of surprise items to find out in the game's world.


How are you mitigating or healing damage?
Do you have answers to being hit with status effects?
Who in the party can revive fallen party members?
How many weapon attackers?
How many magic users?
Are there environmental objects you cannot interact with through your equipment or skills?
What is the most value you can get with feeding someone an EXP item?
Or is someone multi-classing and needs more EXP than everyone else?
How situational is this skill, stat, or passive you are spending EXP on?
Who needs the consumable +1 HP/MP items the most?
How many turns before each member runs out of MP?
How can your party recover MP?
Can you fight effectively without MP? (How reliant on expensive skills is a character?)


Where are your party synergies?
Who enables interactions?
Who capitalizes on them?
How many turns does it take to set up and exploit these synergies?

My favorite example for this is, how many of your party members can create blood with weapon attacks? How many of them rely on blood for extra damage out of their lightning, Bloodspike, or Desecrate spells?


How will this party deal with being outnumbered?
How will this party deal with a single enemy that has a lot of health?
If both of the above are present, which is the priority?
Do you have ways to debuff, shove, or manage high threat enemies you can't kill this turn?

Can this party function when spread out to avoid AoEs?
Or do certain characters need to stick together?


What is your strategy for dealing with enemies that have...
5HP?
10?
15?
20?
30?
50?
70?
100?
200?
300 HP? (If you have a party that can comfortably handle this, you're probably fine.)

I don't know what difficulty you are playing on. How much will 10, 20, 30% more or less of those health values change whether your party can handle something?

Can your characters survive being hit for...
10 damage?
15?
20?

Because difficulty modifiers for these numbers are much wider. + or - 60% being the extreme ends.

(For the above, I am not counting Ruin difficulty. I have yet to wrap my head around it.)

And lastly, do you have redundancy in healers, status cleanses, and revives?
Just in case the worse happens.

You are usually going to run into only a handful of kinds of roadblocks.

• A Puzzle
  
• A Combat Encounter
  
• An Exploration Obstacle
  
• A Locked Door
  
• An Unsatisfied Objective

Use the arrow keys to look beyond the borders of your screen. Do you see a solution, a path to progression, or enemies you can click on to assess their strength?

Use the Look command at something. Really mull over whether there is a suggested course of action or if another item description satisfies some criteria.

Look for other paths. Sometimes roadblocks are just that, and the solution to your puzzle is down an entirely different path. It's also entirely okay to revisit a combat encounter later.

But lockpicks wherever they are offered if you want new items. They're cheap and I cannot think of a single usage that was not at least a net gain in resources or wealth.

Explore. Open your map, explore all the blank or grayed out space of buildings/rooms you haven't entered. You've got 4 Wisps to hunt down, but Zavarde does mention killing more might be better! The game has implied that there are more than 4 Wisps for you to find.

Exits to new maps tend to be on the map boarders. The primary exception to this are staircases. When found, the map will tell you whether they go up or down.


Are you surrounded?

Can you make them come to you while you buff? Or would it make more sense to push with your entire team in one direction, forcing the other half of the encounter to spend another turn or two catching up to you while you solve half of the encounter?

Is there any terrain you can take advantage of? Do enemies need to be pushed out of their fortifications or had their defenses set ablaze?

There was an early encounter where only one enemy stood by an explosive barrel. Not able to finish anyone off, I found that blowing up that barrel caused 2 units to just stand and watch from the far side of the flames as my team mopped up the rest of the encounter.

Sometimes you get more than you expect from a piece of terrain, don't underestimate their effects!

(I also made a choice to turn someone into a fire specialization mage right then and there.)


I'm just going to spoil this, because I'm going to just tell you outright what I needed to get all my exploration done.

Early Game: The ability to push and pull things from afar, using magic or a throwable chain solved a lot of the earliest map exploration puzzles. Even if these skills have no place in your build, you will get EXP items to effectively refund the purchase. Throwing rocks is a free way to reach out of reach buttons. I think you need to be in person to interact with levers. The ability to freeze water let me explore beyond what the "boat" could fit. There are also flammable objects and walls that can open shortcuts or new paths.

Mid Game: I did not run into many instances of needing to use the Element Lightning for exploration largely until this point of the game. Escaping the Early Game required me to learn how to break 1 block wide walls. The free solution that the game provides you is a hammer found in one of the earliest maps. (The only advice I will give you here is that tackling the tower is something I did at the very end of the Mid Game, don't be afraid to save that for later.)

End Game: The game will give you an item that increases your jump distance. But I found that it was incredibly helpful to gain access to the Gate: Anchor and the tablet the game handed me to reach all the areas I could not otherwise find my way into gaining access to. Leveling up Gate: Anchor enough will trivialize an abundance of exploration roadblocks. An Ability Crest is a great use for maintaining Gate:Anchor on a character. It's a fairly strong escape tool in combat by not costing you a turn to dictate where you will end up. The Gatekeeper's Gate hand also lets you manipulate objects (like levers) you can't reach.

So you've killed 4 wisps.

Here is my spoiler free advice to you.

Drop what you are doing.

Retrace your steps to where that army in the prologue blocked the way.

You will face two very different encounters.

I think it is useful to know what the game expects out of you in order to beat the game.

The first is a a more AoE oriented challenge that demands you to out-damage the enemy party or be able to weather a lot of damage in retaliation

The second asks that you bring a capacity to deal an incredible amount of damage into a single target and be able to sustain your party throughout the encounter while fending off minions.

If you have been relying on crippling an enemy with status effects up until now and you're not sure why that is suddenly not working for you anymore, click this spoiler: The second fight introduces you to the mechanics of reducing the duration of those status effects AND becoming temporarily immune to them afterwards.

All of your EXP and Build decisions from this point onward should go into beating these two encounters.

If you can manage that, you're ready.