Our beginner’s guide to Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty provides you with all sorts of important information and useful tricks for the combat. You’ll need them to survive in this merciless action role-playing game from the Soulslikes subgenre.
Wo Long’s combat system is complex: Before you can give powerful demons and legendary warriors a run for their money in Long: Fallen Dynasty, you’ll need to know the action role-playing game’s rather complicated combat system. This comes with a few rules of its own, in which, for example, maintaining the spirit meter or increasing the morale value play a bigger role.
However, it’s unfortunate that the mostly very powerful enemies of Soulslike hardly give you the opportunity to get to know the many conditions and nuances of the combat system. That’s why we’ll take the liberty here to intervene and teach you the most important things for successful battles.
More about Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty:
What You Should Know About Fighting in Wo Long
1. Your tools
In Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty you’ll beat up opponents with the relatively familiar arsenal of melee and ranged weapons. You’ll also have a supply belt that will be filled with healing potions and auxiliary items. Perhaps the most interesting thing about your killing tools is that ranged weapons are much simpler to use than melee weapons. This is also due to the fact that only with the latter particularly violent “special moves”, so-called Martial Arts, are possible. These knock back entire groups of opponents or even reach opponents standing at a distance.
Mostly, however, you attack in close range with normal physical or mind-based attacks. While the former only cause minor damage, they have the advantage of being able to be expanded into long combos. In addition, this type of attack is very fast, while spirit attacks do more damage, but are quite ponderous and can only be expanded into short combos.
This is one of the reasons why the most useful defense technique in Wo Long is called “Deflect”, because it parries the opponent’s attacks and makes him stagger for a short time, leaving him vulnerable to a counterattack. The problem with this technique is that the time windows for deflecting attacks are very short. Without a little practice, there’s not much you can do here, but once you get the hang of it, you’re guaranteed to be a real pain in the butt to your opponents.
2. The Balance of The Mind
But what exactly is the aforementioned spirit bar all about? This double bar below your life bar allows you to make special moves and block attacks. Normal attacks and blocks generate positive spirit (the bar fills up in the red area), while special attacks and hits generate negative spirit. Think of this bar like tug-of-war.
When the spirit meter is completely filled with negative spirit, your character stands stunned for a few seconds. After that, of course, you should make sure you’re in a “good mood” or wait for the gauge to automatically reset to the neutral position, though that’s not always recommended. Nevertheless, and this is important, a large amount of positive spirit is not necessarily bad. In fact, some martial arts techniques improve when performed with an increased positive spirit.
The real highlight of this system is that many of your enemies also have a spirit indicator. So you can (and should) use this fact to your advantage, also because your opponent’s positive spirit power strengthens attacks and makes blocks more difficult. On the other hand, if your opponent’s mind is brimming with negativity, you can even break through his defenses and possibly stun him. You can do a lot of damage to stunned attackers, even more if you have a lot of positive spirit at the time.
3. Magic is Elementary
In terms of magic and spells, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty isn’t quite as spectacular. The spells that are available serve the usual purposes, so to speak, and so there are ranged attacks or strengthening spells that increase your status values or heal your wounds, respectively. Also not entirely new is the division of spells into five elements: Wood, Fire, Water, Earth, and Metal. What’s next, well, you probably already guessed it, one element can cancel another:
- Wood spell against earth spell
- Fire spell against metal spell
- Water spell against fire spell
- Earth spell against water spell
- Metal spell against wood spell
- Water Spell against Fire Spell
According to this principle, all spells can be stopped, including buffs and debuffs. However, because you can only equip up to four magic spells, you’ll have to consider which spells might be most effective with the situation in mind. Switching magic is only possible at war flags (read: save points). Always keep an eye on which element is used by which enemy in battle. For example, with the extremely bad-tempered boss enemy Lu Bu, it’s fire.
4. The Dear Morality
The HUD of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty still includes the morale indicator above your life bar. Morale affects both your strength and that of your opponents. So, if your morale rank increases, you’ll deal more damage accordingly – and suffer less damage from enemy attacks. In addition, some spells can only be cast when you have the required morale level.
Okay, but how exactly do you increase your morale? This is done in three ways, the first of which is simply killing enemies. Furthermore, you can “sacrifice” pots of dragon healing at grave flags, or you can set battle flags and grave flags. What degrades your morale are critical hits from attackers as well as your temporary death. Especially mean: your kill increases the enemy’s morale value, which means they’ll be stronger the next time you meet.
Note that you also physically lose morale when you die, which means you can and should collect it back at the place of your death. However, if your character dies again before then, the morale points of your old self are lost. This system is known in a modified form from Elden Ring, for example. To prevent your morale from plummeting, you can counter this with your valor rank. You can increase your bravery, as well as your morale, by setting up battle and marker flags.
5. Additional Swords
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, just like its From Software predecessors, is a role-playing game where NPC brothers and sisters in arms make a big difference. Some of them accompany you during certain missions and can also be summoned under certain conditions.
To do this, you’ll race a war flag and use an item called Tiger Seal. The advantage of additional weapon arms should be known, and in Wo Long, fellow combatants are also suitable for distracting enemies from you or eliminating annoying long-range fighters like archers.
This feature becomes really interesting when allies can be ordered to attack the currently targeted opponent via a spirit display. Even the command to use a special technique is possible, as well as a command to buff your character. As with yourself, the “morale system” applies conditionally to NPC comrades-in-arms. Thus, if you place the flags mentioned earlier, it will increase the companion morale, making your companions stronger.
Also of some importance is the oath level of allies, which increases when you spend time with them. The more the better. These guys and gals are big on friendship, and when you reach Oath level 10, they’ll give you their weapons and armor sets as a token of their loyalty. Often, these are sets whose bonuses are not found in standard armor. We therefore hold fast: Companions are super.
By the way, this also applies to Divine Beasts, animal-like demigods that you can summon once you reach a certain story progress. If you happen to be familiar with Sega’s Yakuza series (especially the 7th installment), you can compare Beasts to Poundmates. So they come around to perform a devastating attack, but sometimes also boost your status stats for battle. Filling up the corresponding gauge will allow you to perform such summons; this is done simply by attacking enemies.
With this knowledge, you should be ready for the world (and especially, of course, for the battles) of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. If you have some personal tips, feel free to share them with us in the comments section.
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