6 things to know before starting Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

About 20 minutes later Wo Long: fallen dynasty, you face your first boss fight. And it’s brutal.

Aside from driving home how masocore Wo Long: fallen dynasty it also serves as a crash course a lot of of the game systems. They’re just not explained very well. And that will, frankly, be a lot of your experience in the beginning Wo long — overwhelming systems that you don’t understand. Yet.

Us Wo long Beginner’s guide will help you figure out what’s going on, based on our roughly 20 hours of experience with the game (a shocking number of which failed over and over again at the same boss fights). We’ll help you understand the game’s Battle and Marker Flags, where and how to travel, how gear works and how much it slows you down, and how to think about your Spirit gauge.

Think of Wo Long as a linear soul like

Unlike other soul style games, there isn’t much looping and grind in it Wo Long: fallen dynasty (Unless you want it). We described it as more of a long walk punctuated by intermittent ass kicks. The story takes place in a series of areas, called Battlefields, which are quite large, but your path through them is mostly linear. (There are branching paths and you will be rewarded with loot if you explore them.)

That linear path takes you through a series of boss fights – those intermittent ass kicks we mentioned. Learn to love them.

As you travel through a battlefield – and usually right before each boss fight – you’ll find Battle Flags and Marker Flags.

• Fight flags are where you will start again if you die (repeatedly). This is where you level up and learn new spells, as well as where you equip to refill your Dragon’s Cure Pot (health bottle)
• Flag flags look similar, but work differently. They replenish your health, but not your Dragon’s Cure Pot. More importantly, they elevate you Fortitude what is if moralbut otherwise.

Let’s talk morale.

Understand how Morale and Fortitude work

To make it too simple, Wo longA player’s morale is a measure of how many bad guys you’ve killed without dying. It’s more nuanced, of course, but that’s the gist of it.

A character’s morale (both yours and your enemies) determines how powerful that character is – higher morale equates to a harder fight. If you kill enough bad guys, your morale goes up. If a bad guy kills you, your morale and theirs goes up – making the next time you encounter them a bit more difficult.

Image: Team Ninja/Koei ​​Tecmo via Polygon

If you are killed, you will also lose half of yours Real Qi (your leveling currency, kind of like souls in Dark Souls games) to whoever or whatever killed you. That villain will get a flame icon around their morale (the number above their heads). To reclaim your Qi and your moral points, you must face them again and get your points Revenge.

The way to avoid losing too much Morale is to increase your Fortitude. Fortitude is the lower limit of your morale – your morale will never drop below your fortitude, and if you raise your fortitude above your morale, your morale will go up.

Your fortitude increases every time you raise a marker flag. However, it resets every time you travel to a new battlefield or sub-battlefield. Speaking of which…

Sub Battlefields are side missions

With a Battle Flag (not a Marker Flag) you have the option to travel. This is how you replay previous parts of the game, find a replayable tutorial and play side missions.

Image: Team Ninja/Koei ​​Tecmo via Polygon

These Sub Battlefields are smaller, shorter battles compared to the main Battlefields. However, they are good to tackle, as they reward you with new equipment and new upgrade materials.

We broke down Wo longIt’s a confusing equipment system here, but let’s talk about the weight of the equipment.

The weight of equipment and gear is more important than you might think

There are no lessons in it Wo longso you’re free to create your own based on how you level up – determined by the Five Phases Virtues you put points into when you level up – and the gear you decide to equip.

Equipment has a whole system of upgrades and rarity. However, the most important part to understand early on is your Equipment Weight assessment – in fact, the burden of your character. (You can increase your maximum equipment weight by increasing your Earth Virtue when you level up.)

Image: Team Ninja/Koei ​​Tecmo via Polygon

When you pick out armor, you’ll see a small icon just below and to the left of the picture. This is a marker for light, mediumAnd heavy shield. There’s a little gauge below the helmet icon with one, two, or three chunks filled in to indicate that.

An equipment weight is also displayed at the bottom of the equipment card. Confusingly, the percentage shown here is not the percentage of your maximum capacity. Instead, it’s about how much this device contributes to your current load. For the percentage of your maximum capacity, please refer to the Status screen.

The amount you are carrying will turn into a stat that you can find on your character’s Status menu tab. You’ll see the maximum weight of gear you can carry, the percentage of the maximum weight your current armor is, and a letter class. The letter is yours Maneuverability stat — A is about 0-30% of your max, B is about 30-70%, C is about 70-100%, and D is a little over 100%.

Aside from how fast you move, that Agility stat determines how quickly your Spirit drains. And Spirit plays a big role in that Wo long.

Spirit is the most important gauge

In Wo Long: fallen dynasty, think of Spirit as a combination of a stamina meter and a mana meter. Both your character and each enemy have Spirit Gauges.

You lose Spirit when hit or dodged, and you use Spirit to cast spells or perform martial arts. You get Spirit when you make regular melee attacks or when you successfully parry an attack. Getting hit with some attacks decreases the upper and lower limits of a character’s Spirit gauge.

When a Spirit Gauge is depleted to the lower limit, that person (or demon) will be stunned for a few seconds, allowing him or her to be attacked. Your goal is to prevent that from happening to you, and more importantly, make sure it doesn’t happen to your enemy. Those attacks when stunned are invaluable in boss fights.

Manage your Spirit gauge while depleting the energy of your enemies key in Wo long. And the best way to do that is to deflect.

Parrying is just as important as attacking

Wo longThe deflection is much like a deflection in other games. You press the B/circle button just before an enemy’s attack lands and the attack is redirected. This is different from simply protecting against an attack – something you can also do, but it’s less useful.

Image: Team Ninja/Koei ​​Tecmo via Polygon

Unlike guarding, that simply depletes your Spirit gauge, both shrinking and damaging the attacker’s gauge. And that’s how you master combat – that’s why we brought it up so many times in the first boss fight guide.

Other games have (perfect) defense mechanisms that give you an opening to attack. Wo longThe deflection takes that to a whole new level.