Welcome back, Lightbringers!
Here we are one more week! We’ve been listening to your feedback and it seems that new players as well as a few more experienced players sometimes struggle with the game controls. This issue has been addressed by further improving the starting tutorial of the game by making changes that better explain how basic controls work, the different types of melee attacks, attack direction switching, and more details about staff combat. Furthermore, the build-mode has been simplified and made a lot more user-friendly, with a new option being added to the general tab to switch between full controls and the simplified ones.
In this dev blog, we would like to refresh some of the useful game controls and give you a few tips that will come in handy, especially for combat. Here we go!
SOME BASIC CONTROLS
- Hold down SHIFT while moving to run. Physical activities such as jumping, dodging, or running use stamina. When you run out of it, you’ll be slowed down, so be careful. The quick footed ability lets you run using less stamina, which is useful to flee from battles.
- With melee weapons, hold down the left mouse button to perform a power attack. The directional indicator will follow the direction you are looking to show which direction your next swing will occur in.
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- With wands and staves, use the left mouse button to fire, middle button to recharge. While fully loaded, your magic weapons will build up charges over time, for greater area of effect and damage.
- Press Q on keyboard or right stick down on the gamepad to zoom in and see further.
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- Get a better view of the minimap using default E on the keyboard or left stick down on the gamepad.
- Enable detailed health bars in options to view friendly and/or enemy stamina (yellow) and poise (green).
- Press ALT to dodge. This can be used with any weapon. Dodging depends on stamina; however, you can still dodge even without having sufficient stamina, but not as far. Increasing athleticism makes it cheaper to dodge.
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GET A GOOD REST
- Recover mana quickly without sprinting, attacking, or taking damage for a few seconds.
THE POWER OF ARROWS
- When using the bow, try shooting the head, leg, or arm. These shots apply greater damage, knockdown, or weapon drop effects respectively on enemies if enough damage was done to one those limbs.
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- If you wait until the reticle changes color your shot will do additional damage. Shooting when the reticle changes colour invokes a power attack for additional damage.
- Pierce damage will not do much harm to skeletons.
PROBLEMS WITH A MISSION?
- If you are having trouble with an army battle, try leveling up peasants with easier fights. You can leave behind stronger units in your garrison, undergoing training, where they gain experience automatically while upkeep costs are reduced.
- Alchemy gives expensive but powerful enchantments. Try it out if you are having trouble with a particular mission.
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OUTNUMBERED?
- Be sure to bring crowd control spells, especially if you are not carrying a melee weapon.
- Enemies aggro to those who damaged them, so if you have trouble with foes ganging up on you, just limit your damage to one of them at a time or wait until that enemy is engaged.
- A retreat in time is a victory, run away if you are going to lose a battle. You can always come back and fight later, avoiding the penalties associated with being defeated.
MASTER OF THE WEAPONS
- Research the passive ability Weapon Master to carry multiple weapons into battle. Press TAB to switch weapons. Also, the finesse ability lets you change weapons faster.
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- When using a melee weapon, block at the last moment to perform a perfect block. This will cause the enemy to recoil longer, and not reduce your poise.
SIMPLIFIED BUILD MODE
- The build mode tutorial will now prompt between simplified and full controls, and a new option has been added to the general tab of the options screen to switch between those modes. The simplified build mode allows placing buildings with a single click, so if you are not really into city decoration, it’s worth checking it out. It can be accessed through the options screen in the general tab.
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WHERE TO GET RESOURCES
Most resources used in construction can be found by destroying items and buildings you will find in cities, villages and dungeons, and can appear as random loot. You can also get both raw and refined materials trading in the market or buying them from other villages.
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- Stone: Necessary to fortify higher level walls and stronger buildings. It is also used as ammunition for the catapult.
- Wood/Timber: Raw wood. Build a sawmill and use it to produce lumber.
- Lumber: Used in construction. Sawmills produce lumber from timber.
- Ore: Can be refined into steel at a blacksmith.
- Steel: It is used to recruit and maintain units. You can obtain it from a blacksmith using steel ore.
- Spellbooks: Used to research higher level buildings and units. You can get them by exploring dungeons and building libraries.
Keep these tips in mind and put them into practice! It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing :)
Our next step will be adding a more interactive commander mode to help players control their units and show them all the possibilities of this powerful feature.
A little reminder: your feedback is really important to shape Empire of Ember! Help us to improve the game by leaving a review on Steam, updating your old review if you haven’t played for some time, and rating other reviews you think players will find helpful! ːsteamthumbsupː
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Have an amazing week!