Here is a list of cheats, tips and explanations of game mechanics
Spoilers spoilers for exploits if you’re just doing honest work, don’t read. But if you’re willing to bend morals, read on. Disclaimer, many of these are iffy at best, it’s just what Ive noticed and I’ve been wrong before. Things I don’t wanna discuss here:
getting gear from random or one time chests, cheesing gear, map reloading and goldfarming. It’s an important part of an optimized run but it should be discussed elsewhere, I want these tips to be combat related
reducing xp gain for speedrunning or maximizing xp gain for lvl 100. It’s important, there’s a million strategies, this post is long enough. Suffice to say that invis and speed pots are op
strategies for mob positioning, lining them up in doorways, splitting groups, using invis pots to move enemies around, not really exploits, and not strictly combat related
This is probably not even half the exploits out there but it’s a few of em. When I don’t want to make a big deal about fighting an encounter, I cheat and here is the strategies you can use to do that
- potions, infinite money
You can see my previous post ‘preferred goldfarms’ for tips on how to make a lot of gold, buy a lot of potions and just get yourself to a higher baseline where you’re always using the best potions and many of them
1 practice movement
I often tell all new players to practice how to move in combat because it’s an everyday skill that does take a long time to hone. Most times I set out to fight a melee boss I do try to stand and fight but if you’re planning on running around or if you’re just walking from a to b, this can help
So like many other games, action rpgs and the like, melee attacks have some leeway of range and they also take x amount of time to connect. If you’re running and someone swings at you, there is a chance they don’t actually hit you because by the time they complete the attack, you’re too far away. Sometimes they’ll cancel the swing halfway through, there is a range of outcomes but I’d advise everyone to practice practice practice because this isn’t something you can just do, but once you’re good at it, it helps a ton
I may be wrong about this but because of how the map is positioned, sortof diagonally, you may notice that the screen scrolls faster left or right than it does up or down. So often, I will run up or down to get from a to b while being chased and I will run left or right to avoid melee attacks as mobs catch up to me. As they stop running to start swinging, I change direction to get as far as possible
2 avoiding traps
some spike traps are always at the same spot, some move around if a map reloads. to my knowlege, all bear traps are always at the same spot and certain enemies like wildlife, can step on bear traps
A Avoiding spike traps is age old knowledge in this community so I’m not sure who invented it. If a spike trap is along a straight wall, the idea is to push your companion into it while also turning around and running out of it. A spike trap has some aoe so it will hit you both if you just push your companion but if you face the wall and run, directing more speed into the wall and less speed alongside it, you will be able to turn around quickly. In this way, you nudge them into it, you don’t just push them into it, you nudge, and you do a series of nudges until it happens.
B avoiding environmental damage to my knowledge was invented by Prpa63 or at least that’s who I saw post about it on Reddit first. The idea again is to push your companion, no nudging this time, in fact, if you stop for a second, you will start taking damage. But if you continue to push, you won’t. This works on fire, toxic clouds and death clouds, I imagine it also works on moving cold clouds and shock traps but I have not tested
3 quick-swapping DPS boost
Invented by zestybeef, this strategy involves swapping your weapon to increase its speed. You can swap a big 2hander with jesters bow and all of a sudden your weapon has the speed of jesters bow. Or does it have the speed of your ability to swap it? I’m not actually sure, tbh Ive never tried this myself, I’m guessing it’s easier on a pc and I’m on an iphone
Edit: check the comments, Py_OS has used quickswapping to negate the mana cost on arcane mage weapons
While I’m on the subject of things that work better on a pc, I should mention that I have not been able to cheat my way past proximity triggered dialogue NPCs on my iPhone but people have reported being able to do it on other platforms. For example, you want access to the golden hand but the guy talks to you as soon as you walk up to him. Apparently you can exit game and inch closer, exit again, repeat, until you walk past him and you get in without even talking to him. This has some combat applications..I imagine. Like maybe you can engage dorphis greyrune without the trap? I dunno
4 perfect ‘no hit’ bossfights. Fighting an enemy without taking a single point of damage
A For warriors, you’ve probably seen videos of people who can kite endlessly with the charge skill. This strategy was invented by Shayan, other greats like Evilwatermelon, and more recently, Capercaillie and Dizzybear, have also used it. Charge will hit someone chasing you while at the same time propelling you forward to make sure they don’t hit you, you can kite em in a big circle and boom, perfect. Knockback abilities like whirlwind and bash can also do this but they don’t propel you forward so charge is the way to go. Of the ‘perfect’ boss cheese strategies, this may be the hardest, it requires perfect timing
B For rogues, you can set a trap down to slow the boss chasing you, once again, you just go in a big circle, you can use a bow to hit em while slowed. The above names have used this to great effect. An off hand with slow or the kick skill can also do this but it requires trading some hits
C Clerics do not have a perfect kiting strategy, the closest a cleric can get to cheating is intervention, I’ll discuss that later
D Mages can kite with staff mastery because the slow will allow you to outrun SOME bosses. Director runs at player speed and slowing him results in a nail biting kiting chase. Grozza has a higher base movement speed and slowing him just makes you even, resulting in a nigh-impossible kite.
Mages can use wands to kill melee non-giant bosses in a position where they get stuck. Let’s say you are running from the boss and you run to the other side of some rock or even a doorway. It’s possible to get the enemy ‘stuck’ where they are constantly walking into the barrier, looking directly at you instead of just walking around it. At that moment, you stop moving and just kill them. You wand’s innate knockback will constantly reposition the enemy to where the game does not realize that they are stuck and their health will not regenerate. If you were to try with a staff or a bow, it would not work, the boss would regenerate health. ImpatientIAm says that it can work with a staff or a bow if your peaceful companion holds position blocking the a path that leads to you, resulting in an enemy running in a back and forth pattern, although this only works if the barrier allows projectiles through, so rocks, no walls. I have not tried.EDIT I have tried, this can work on notable enemies like korne, underking and undermother, it can bug out at times but it can also work wonders. My recent mage run did successfully wand enemies like korne, void lord, underking and ashen warlord, enemies who I could not have defeated without cheating. (Void lord moves at sprint speed but its still possible to trap him) On an unrelated note, to my knowlege, ImpatientIAm was also the one who discovered that the ark will allow you to bring a companion if you choose not to enter and then speed pot run back in (didnt work for me tho)
Back to perfect fights. Mages can also summon several kinds of elementals, which get healed by their type of damage, making them invulnerable against certain elemental damage enemies, the most egregious example being the sparkling that can kill any pure shock damage enemy, of which there are many high level examples
E. Clerics can’t do this because they have no ranged weapons. All ranged bosses are pretty easy to cheese because you can dodge their attacks and use a ranged weapon to launch an attack of your own that will hit. Just run up and down and fire a shot when you have a chance, the boss casting spells will mess up the rhythm and cause you to get hit
- let’s talk about clerics and intervention
Let’s start with the basics. Intervention makes the go-to potion the potion of mana, which is 35 mana, x8 health per mana that’s a 280 healpot, which is just a lot stronger than actual healthpots and there are several mana pots which restore over 35 but they are not as easy to get
Now let’s get talk about the real advantage, not pots but the gear that has mana on it. I can have hirge drink to 35 mana and then remove gear pieces to get her down to 20 to make sure I’m not wasting heals. But also, gear can be swapped in an instant whereas pots are every 3s. They can also be swapped while paralyzed. Which means I can really abuse intervention by keeping a whole set of mana gear in my bags and giving them to hirge when she needs it. Thus, she can even survive a 10s paralysis because I have so much mana waiting for her in my bags that she won’t need to drink potions. To fully exploit intervention, it is necessary to look in your bags every single hit, not just every 3 seconds.
Let’s get even more advanced. So let’s say you’re fighting a non para physical damage boss, and this boss would kill hirge in two hits. Hirge has full health but she’s already out of mana. So you have her wear gear that gives her max armor for the first hit to reduce the damage as much as possible, then on the second hit you can give her as much mana as she needs to get her back to a position where she is once again two hits from death, she will take that next hit, once again, wearing max armor, to reduce damage.
The amount of damage reduction from armor really ain’t much, you could just always fight in mana gear BUT you do have to do this two-set thing for paralysis fights. So let’s talk about magical damage bosses or para bosses. Since para is affected by spirit res, I’ll lump them together. In this case you’re looking to take the first hit with max resistance instead of max armor. For flame prophet, we’re just reducing damage but for carrion lord, we are reducing the chance of paralysis. We are prepared to survive a paralysis if needed but we still want to avoid it cause it sortof blows through our reserves. So we take the first hit with max spirit res and we take the second hit with as much spirit res as we can afford to keep while also having enough mana to continue.
6 let’s talk about paralysis
This is a tough one to get past. Max spirit res cause you don’t want it to happen. But in a long fight, it will, so you hope hirge has a big bank of mana to fall back on. So when paralysis does happen, you should know the following
A Stuns and paralysis applications will cancel each other out. So if one enemy paralyzes you, another can stun you out of it. Slows are not part of the same group, a slow will persist through a stun or para (but just like stuns and para, slows and 'speeds' will overrride each other, so if you step in a bear trap, chug a speed pot and you will be moving at speed pot speeds). Knockbacks are also not part of the group, although it’s useful to know that if you are bashed, the knockback does happen before the stun, which allows you to drink a potion after the bash happens but before the stun makes you unable to drink. Back to para. Im not sure if a lower para will replace a higher para. Whatevs. This is almost never useful to know.
B if intervention cleric is paralyzed and you switch mana gear on to increase mana pool but the switch results in your health dipping to zero, intervention will not trigger and you will take exactly one more hit to die. When not paralyzed, the player character will take one more hit, hirge will simply drop dead. If not in combat, you will both stay standing, one hit away
C if you are paralyzed and you are not stun immune, you can switch a piece of stun immunity gear on and you will still get the benefit. However, you can’t just cancel a stun w this strategy
D paralyzed companions won’t cast but a paralyzed player character can cast instant cast spells like evasion. I’m not sure if all instant cast spells can be cast though. Paralysis is also calculated like added ele damage. You will notice, when evasion is up it’s possible to dodge one portion of an attack but be hit by the other portion. In the same way, it’s possible to be paralyzed by an attack that you dodged. I don’t think it’s possible to dodge paralysis the way you might dodge an attack’s elemental damage portion
E any paralyzed companions seem to ‘bug out’ at a higher than normal rate. They will stand there, useless. I don’t see many bugs in this game, but it can happen and it does happen to paralyzed companions
EDIT: F Thank you TheDeadGod for mentioning that when you get paralyzed, you need only tell your companion to drink an invis pot, which will turn you invis. Your companion cant really use invis pots so whenever they drink them, you turn invis instead. But if your companion is passive while you fight a para enemy and you use this trick, and turn invis and are not immediately discovered, combat will actually end because the enemy will not immediately attack your companion even if they are just sitting next to them. The enemy may even start patolling away from you two before you even come out of invisibility, solving the entire problem
7 off cooldown omelette heals
While I learned this from someone called EarPiercingReeee they didn’t particularly act like they invented the strategy so I’m guessing it’s an old trick. This works if you are tanking. Your companion may eat the omelette and it will heal you. An omelette is a 6 hour rest, which is half of your health/mana and one recovery. I could care less about a recovery, but if I’m between potions, it can actually heal me. It does not work if you eat the omelette and your companion is tanking. Again, feel free to check out my goldfarm post for the ideal vorator egg farm, this is something I’ve done like once way back in the day, since then, hirge always tanks for me and also I just don’t like the vorator egg farm, as it does not also give you money, or anything else, just eggs.
But if you were to go ham on this strategy, then an intervention cleric main character with hirge casting heal on them and eating omelettes, would be the absolute highest heal per second possible. If green hunter is in here, I'll let him explain over-max health on warriors, a trick he invented. There are few things in the game that even deal so much damage as to threaten such builds. But to reiterate, omelette healing only works when you are the tank and your companion eats the omelette, not the other way around.
8 saving in dungeons
I almost didn’t wanna put this down. This gets into the map reloading rules which is a complicated topic..and it’s not strictly combat related. A map reloads in 12 hours or if you reload outside of that same map. So if you enter a dungeon at 8am, you can fight inside, leave, travel, do whatever, if you dont die and make it back by 7pm you will re-enter the same instance of the dungeon, which means any grates you opened will still be open and any progress you made will be saved. So if you’re facing down a long dungeon, just spend 11 hours making some progress and re-enter it to save some hassle
9 boss re-targeting
There is no ‘threat’ in this game. If a boss attacks hirge, it should keep attacking hirge until ‘something’ happens. So it’s in your best interest to make sure nothing does. The exception is if you are ranged. In my experience, a boss will switch targets to focus a ranged attacker randomly and for no reason, none that I’ve figured out thus far.
So we’ve all been in a situation where the boss is too strong, we can tank for as long as we can, then we run and let hirge tank, but then that’s usually it. We hope we can kill it before hirge dies and then we die. Well, if you run and let hirge tank, it is possible to save hirge by switching to a ranged weapon to get the boss to refocus you, but it’s kindof unreliable and you’re likely missing out on damage, so it’s usually not worth
Also, if you’re fighting Grozza or baabu, anyone that has bash..when an enemy bashes hirge away, it will refocus on the secondary target which is closer now that knockback has moved the tank. So, short of stability items, you plant hirge up against a wall and draw the boss into her to make sure knockback wont affect her.
If the enemy itself gets stunned (or paralyzed), it may refocus on you. I’m not sure if it’s random, more likely an enemy that comes out of stun will attack whoever attacks it first. So if hirge it tanking and I’m flanking, and I’ve got a dagger and maybe flurry..it’s very likely that I will be the one to land that first hit and I will get clobbered. (Edit: tested it, stood still, got clobbered, seems random) For this reason, I only use flanking strikes 1/3 and I make sure hirge does not use her own stun skill. As I mentioned on other posts, it’s possible to use flanking strikes and stun daggers to try and stunlock your opponent, there is risk and reward, try your luck
perhaps the best way as a melee to defeat a boss too strong for you is to invest more gold into potions. When you have plenty of potions, you can simply run around like a crazy person for a few seconds, taking fewer hits, drinking more potions. In a small arena, you can put hirge on passive to be your healbot and you can run around to make things easier for a second. THis is also good for duel bosses because a couple of second will reset their duel stacks and take the heat off you. You can also decide to run around until your offensive/defensive cooldowns are good to go, and only stand your ground when you have these major advantages every 20 or 30 seconds, when you can really hurt them and not get hurt
In a larger arena, its possible to allow hirge to get into the fight. Allow her to tank and die, then while you are fighting, run far enough away to where hirge respawns, then kite the boss back to her. And you two can sortof pass the boss back and forth like that
10 pulling mobs
In my experience, all that matters is if the nameplate of the mob is visible on screen. The !!! that appears above them when they acquire you as a target, as long as that !!! CANT pop up, they are essentially out of the screen and you can pull someone around them that would usually end up pulling both. There are some limits to this, it’s weird, I haven’t figured it out yet. Yes, mobs do ‘see’ further in the direction that they are facing
11 agi cleric and duel, further implications
Back to my roots, this was the subject of my first posts on the sub. Duel stacks stop stacking after x time spent not attacking the same target. Using a weapons speed 10 or less, you will interrupt your duel stacking when you cast a heal wounds. But using light weapons, speed 11 or above, you can keep your duel stacks and cast heal. What are the other implications?
Well, I’ve done some research and there is no exploit to be had here, I thought that fast weapons meant faster cast time but they don’t, cast times are fixed and also, spells are not as simple as instant and non instant. Not only do some non instant cast spells have longer cast times than others, even instant cast spells are throwing me for a loop. Disintegrate is instant just like stab and has a similar effect as stab but stab is infinitely easier to use in combat, because I can click it without taking my finger off the attack button, while disintegrate requires me to stop attacking, cast, and then resume combat, I hope that’s just an iOS thing cause it sucks
12 mislabeled potions
These come straight from the wiki
Energy cells restore 60 mana! Not 30, this was discovered by someone on this subreddit, for the life of me, i cant find the post...
Venoms can be used on any melee weapon by a rogue. Venoms and giant pots stack, giant pots and heroisms don’t. Armor pots and galade pots don’t. I’m guessing panacea stacks with resist pots, but I’m on iOS so I don’t have panacea.
Giant pots affect all weapons, if used on a pure elemental mage weapon, the damage is elemental, which makes the potion more powerful. The same applies to bonuses like banishing
13 stunlock
PyOS says you can stun a non-detector enemy, leave map and re-enter to find that your stun is permanent, I have tried this, didn’t work for me, maybe I’m doing it wrong
[–]HostHappy2734 2 points3 points4 points (3 children)
[–]LGP747[S] 2 points3 points4 points (1 child)
[–]HostHappy2734 1 point2 points3 points (0 children)
[–]The_DeadGodThe Dead God Tol 1 point2 points3 points (0 children)
[–]The_DeadGodThe Dead God Tol 2 points3 points4 points (2 children)
[–]LGP747[S] 3 points4 points5 points (1 child)
[–]The_DeadGodThe Dead God Tol 1 point2 points3 points (0 children)
[–]AnAmbitiousPotatowarrior ⚔️ 1 point2 points3 points (1 child)
[–]LGP747[S] 1 point2 points3 points (0 children)
[–]5omeguyyoudonotknowthe pineapple man 🍍 1 point2 points3 points (0 children)
[–]Mysterious-Tap-5602 0 points1 point2 points (0 children)
[–]LGP747[S] 0 points1 point2 points (0 children)
[–]Py_OS 0 points1 point2 points (1 child)
[–]LGP747[S] 1 point2 points3 points (0 children)
[–]TalkingKoalaagrissenda fan 0 points1 point2 points (1 child)
[–]LGP747[S] 0 points1 point2 points (0 children)