Lords of the Fallen: 8 Combat Tips from the Developers – IGN First

Lords of the Fallen is not designed to be a walk in the park. This is a game meant to teach you lessons the hard way: by killing you repeatedly until you learn how to best deal with the obstacle that’s being put in your way. Fortunately, the developers at Hexworks didn’t want to leave people completely in the dark, and thus were kind enough to share these eight combat tips to help you survive the realms of Axiom and Umbral.

1. Make Sure You Lock On

This may seem like a fairly basic tip to any soulslike veteran, but it’s absolutely vital to utilize your lock on, not just to keep track of enemies, but also to make sure that things like your magic attacks, soul flays, and ranged bow and arrow attacks will hit.

2. Use Your Unique Attacks

You have several unique attacks at your disposal in Lords of the Fallen beyond just your standard light and heavy slashes. One of these is an attack used directly out of dodge, which is a fantastic way to punish an enemy after a successful roll. The utility of this attack is different for every weapon class and each stance as well. Dual wielding two swords, for example, is great against groups of enemies, while two-handing a longsword is much better suited for single-target damage.

Another one you’ll want to add to your repertoire is the sprinting attack, which you can use to close the distance on an enemy and initiate a fight with a powerful attack that maintains your momentum. Both of these attacks are fairly committal, so you don’t want to get too crazy with using them all the time, but find the right spots to use them, and you’ll do big damage.

3. Use the Environment To Your Advantage

Enemies in Lords of the Fallen are all too eager to shove you off of a ledge, so you should always be on the lookout to do the same. By pressing both shoulder buttons at the same time, you can use a powerful kick that will send enemies reeling back. You can use this to instantly kill tough enemies hanging around cliffsides. This only works on smaller enemies, but for the larger bodies, you can use your Soul Flay technique to grab their soul and direct it off the ledge for an easy kill.

4. Multi-Hit Attacks

If you find yourself in a position where you are surrounded by a whole group of enemies, or you just dodged an enemy’s biggest attack and have a ton of time to do some big damage, rather than just mashing on the attack button, consider using your multi-hit attack. Like the sprint and dodge attack, these change depending on what stance you’re in, but they’re almost always the most powerful attack you can unleash.

5. Breaking Enemy Posture

There’s a posture system at play in Lords of the Fallen, and when an enemy’s posture is broken, they’re open to a highly damaging visceral attack. The best ways to reduce an enemy posture are by hitting them with a charged heavy attack, parrying one of their own attacks, or if they’re just on the verge of having their posture broken, you can use your kick to do a bit of posture damage as well.

6. Don’t Be Afraid to Parry

Going along with the previous tip, parrying in Lords of the Fallen is far less committal than in some other soulslikes, and thus much safer to go for. All you have to do is press the block button just before an enemy attack lands. So even if you’re too early, you’ll still just block the attack. The timing window is also relatively generous, and especially if you’re wielding a shield.

7. Be Sure to Peer Into Umbral

Umbral is a scary place, no doubt, but it also hides very rewarding secrets for the adventurous explorer. Keep an eye out for blue lights while you’re in Axiom, and use your lamp to illuminate them whenever you see them. These are the telltale signs that there’s something in Umbral that the developers are trying to pull your attention towards.

8. Use Your Lamp to Recover Withered Health

Your lamp can siphon umbral energy and restore your charges of Soul Flay, but one other very useful function of it is to recover your white health, known as withered health. This white health bar will build as you block attacks, and if you take a clean hit, you’ll lose it all at once. So use your Soul Siphon to suck the energy out of enemies to restore your withered health before it all turns into actual damage.