Welcome to the ultimate Deepwoken beginners guide! Deepwoken is a challenging and immersive game that offers a unique experience for players willing to invest the time and effort to learn its mechanics. This guide covers everything you need to know to get started, from character creation to combat mechanics, leveling, and talents. By the end, you’ll have a solid foundation to build upon and start your journey in the world of Deepwoken.
Character Creation | Deepwoken Beginners Guide
Starting Weapon
Your starting weapon is one of the most critical decisions you will make in the character creation screen. The choice of weapon will significantly impact your early gameplay experience, influencing how you engage in combat and handle various enemies.
- Sword: A balanced all-around weapon, ideal for beginners. It offers a good mix of attack speed, damage, and range, making it versatile for various combat situations.
- Heavy Weapon: Using a heavy weapon can make fighting AI slightly easier at times due to its higher damage output. However, heavy weapons are slower, requiring more precise timing and positioning.
- Stiletto/Knife: Not recommended for beginners due to their lower damage and shorter range. These weapons are better suited for players with more experience and skill in the game.
Attunement
Attunement is the magical energy that flows through your body, determining which mantras you can use. Choosing the right Attunement is crucial for your character’s development and combat effectiveness.
- Fire Attunement: Offers powerful offensive mantras with high damage output. Ideal for players who prefer an aggressive playstyle.
- Water Attunement: Provides defensive and utility mantras, including healing and crowd control abilities. Suitable for players who favor a supportive role.
- Earth Attunement: Focuses on defensive mantras and enhancing physical attacks. Great for players who enjoy a balanced playstyle with strong survivability.
- Air Attunement: Grants mantras that emphasize speed and mobility, allowing for swift attacks and evasive maneuvers. Perfect for players who prefer hit-and-run tactics.
Each Attunement has its strengths and weaknesses, so pick the one that looks coolest to you. You can always unlock other Attunements later in the game as you progress.
Starting Stats
Your starting stats are essential for shaping your character’s initial abilities and playstyle. Allocating points wisely can give you a significant advantage in your early adventures.
- Strength: Increases physical damage and allows you to wield heavier weapons. A solid choice for players who prefer melee combat.
- Willpower: Enhances your ability to resist mental attacks and improves your mana pool. Useful for characters relying on mantras.
- Agility: Boosts your movement speed and evasion, making it easier to dodge attacks and navigate the environment.
- Fortitude: Increases your health and stamina, enhancing your overall survivability in combat.
For a balanced start, I recommend allocating five points to strength and five points to willpower. This setup allows you to start attempting to get Carnivore right from your first talent hand. The remaining points can be distributed between agility and fortitude to round out your character’s capabilities.
Boons and Flaws
Boons and Flaws add another layer of customization to your character, providing unique advantages and disadvantages. Not all Boons and Flaws are created equal, so choose wisely to optimize your character’s potential.
- Boons:
- Steadfast: Increases your resistance to being knocked down, helping you stay on your feet in combat.
- Pac Mule: Enhances your carrying capacity, allowing you to gather more resources and equipment.
- Survivalist: Improves your ability to survive in harsh environments, reducing damage from environmental hazards.
- Scrapper: Boosts your effectiveness in hand-to-hand combat, making you a formidable fighter even without weapons.
- Flaws:
- Simple: Lowers your intelligence, reducing your effectiveness with complex mantras and strategies.
- Squeamish: Causes you to lose more health when taking damage, making you more vulnerable in combat.
- Hemophilia: Increases the bleeding effect from wounds, causing you to lose health over time if not treated.
If you’re planning to use Carnivore, Squeamish effectively offsets this, so it’s usually my go-to Flaw.
Echoes
Echoes are buffs you can apply to your character, gained after your character wipes depending on their achievements. They provide valuable enhancements that can significantly improve your character’s performance.
- Echo of Resilience: Increases your health and resistance to damage, enhancing your survivability in combat.
- Echo of Power: Boosts your attack damage and critical hit chance, making you more lethal in battle.
- Echo of Wisdom: Enhances your mana regeneration and reduces the cooldown of mantras, allowing for more frequent use of abilities.
- Echo of Speed: Increases your movement speed and attack speed, improving your mobility and combat effectiveness.
You can also activate modifiers that make the game harder but give you better rewards, providing additional challenges for seasoned players.
Combat Mechanics
Deepwoken’s combat system is intricate and requires mastery of various mechanics to succeed. Understanding and utilizing these mechanics effectively can give you a significant edge in battles.
Core Mechanics
- Posture: Your posture bar, located at the top of the screen, represents your block stamina. Blocking attacks increases your posture, and if it fills up completely, you’ll be block broken and stunned for a short duration. To avoid this, try to parry enemy attacks, which decreases your posture and leaves your opponent vulnerable.
- Health: Your health bar, below the posture bar, represents your character’s overall vitality. If it hits zero, you’ll be knocked out and risk being executed by enemies. Maintaining high health is crucial for survival.
- Armor Durability: The teal bar under your health bar indicates your armor’s durability. When your armor runs out of durability, it becomes useless, and its protective effects are nullified. Regularly repair or replace your armor to stay protected.
- Ether Bar: The ether bar, located under the armor bar, represents your mana, used for casting mantras. It regenerates over time, with the regeneration speed influenced by your Tempo bar.
- Tempo Bar: Positioned under the ether bar, the Tempo bar starts full at the beginning of a fight and drains over time. Landing M1 attacks on enemies increases your Tempo, boosting your ether regeneration. Managing your Tempo effectively ensures you have enough mana for crucial moments.
- Vent: You can expend a large portion of your Tempo to use a vent by pressing the G key. A vent knocks back all nearby enemies and can be used anytime, even when stunned, as a combo escape or to create space during intense fights.
Combat Controls
Mastering Deepwoken’s combat controls can make a significant difference in your gameplay experience. Here are some of the most important controls to learn:
- Roll Cancelling: If you right-click during a roll, you’ll cancel it mid-roll, allowing you to skip the end lag completely and roll a second time straight away. This technique can help you evade attacks more effectively and reposition quickly in combat.
- Ragdoll Cancelling: Right-click while you’re in a ragdoll state to get up much earlier, which can be a lifesaver in situations where you’re vulnerable to follow-up attacks.
- Critical Attacks: Pressing R allows you to perform a critical attack, which often has a higher wind-up time but deals significantly more damage. Use critical attacks strategically to capitalize on openings in your opponent’s defenses.
- Fainting: You can faint your normal attacks by making it look like you’re going to hit the enemy but then canceling the attack. This technique can throw off your opponent and make it harder for them to parry your attacks.
- Mantra Fainting: Faint a mantra by pressing both right and left click during the wind-up of a mantra. This will consume the ether you’d normally use for the mantra but will not trigger its cooldown, allowing you to use it immediately again. Mantra fainting can create opportunities to surprise and overwhelm your opponents.
Advanced Combat Strategies
To excel in Deepwoken’s combat, you must develop advanced strategies and adapt to different situations. Here are some tips to enhance your combat skills:
- Mix Up Your Attacks: Vary your attack patterns and use a combination of normal attacks, critical attacks, and feints to keep your opponents guessing. Predictable attack patterns are easier to counter.
- Manage Distance: Maintain an optimal distance from your opponent to maximize the effectiveness of your attacks while minimizing the risk of being hit. Use your agility to control the spacing and reposition as needed.
- Utilize Environment: Leverage the environment to your advantage by using obstacles and terrain features to create cover, block line of sight, or gain a height advantage. Environmental awareness can provide crucial tactical benefits.
- Adapt to Opponents: Pay attention to your opponent’s behavior and adapt your strategy accordingly. Recognize their strengths and weaknesses, and exploit any patterns or vulnerabilities you observe.
Leveling and Talents
Leveling up in Deepwoken involves investing points into different attributes and selecting talents that enhance your character’s abilities. Understanding the leveling system and making informed choices can significantly impact your progression.
Leveling Up
To level up, you need to invest 15 available points into your different attributes. Each attribute has a specific training item that increases it by one point. You can find these training items in various towns. However, leveling attributes is not free; you’ll need both General XP and Attribute XP.
- General XP: Gained from completing quests, killing monsters, or crafting items. General XP is necessary for leveling up your character and unlocking new abilities.
- Attribute XP: Gained by performing actions specific to each attribute. Some attributes, like Strength, Light, Medium, and Heavy Weapons, and Attunement, require Attribute XP and will lock you out of leveling them until you gain the required XP. These attributes also lose all XP when you level up. Other attributes, like Intelligence, Charisma, and Willpower, can be trained solely by using their respective training items without any other prerequisites.
Talents
Talents are awarded after every level up and provide unique abilities and enhancements to your character. While learning some talents may help you later, my general advice is to pick the talents that look the most interesting to you. However, there are some universally recommended talents that can provide significant benefits:
- Conditioned Runner: Increases your stamina regeneration, allowing you to sprint and perform actions more frequently without getting exhausted.
- Ghost: Reduces the noise you make when moving, making it easier to sneak up on enemies and avoid detection.
- Carnivore: Allows you to consume meat to regain health, providing a reliable source of healing during your adventures.
These talents require several talents from their respective talent trees, so keep that in mind when planning your character’s progression.
Trait Selection
During your talent hands, you’ll occasionally be prompted to pick a trait. As a new player, I recommend choosing traits that provide the most universally helpful benefits:
- Vitality: Increases your health, enhancing your overall survivability in combat. This trait is especially valuable for new players who are still learning the game’s mechanics.
- Proficiency: Enhances your effectiveness with weapons, improving your damage output and combat performance.
Conclusion
Deepwoken is a complex game with many mechanics to learn. This guide should help you get started and give you a solid foundation to build upon. Remember to take your time, explore the game, and have fun! With the right mindset and a willingness to learn, you’ll find yourself mastering the intricacies of Deepwoken and enjoying the rich, immersive experience it offers. Happy gaming!
