Beginner's guide
The prologue teaches you to swing a sword and then stops explaining. Here is what it leaves out, in the order you will need it.
The first hour, in order
- 1
Finish the prologue before you wander
Its ten side quests close the moment it ends. That is the largest block of content in the game you can lose without ever seeing it.
- 2
Learn what the clock charges for
Quests, advanced perks and some conversations spend a time segment. Travelling, exploring and ordinary fighting are free.
- 3
Find a shrine, and then another
A shrine is the fast travel network, the only place a Skill Point buys a perk, and the only way to reach your storage.
- 4
Pick a difficulty on purpose
Four presets, plus separate sliders for the role-playing and action halves. The combat indicators matter more than the preset does.
- 5
Set both equipment loadouts
The game keeps a day set and a night set, for abilities and for consumables alike. Set them before a fight, not during one.
- 6
Read a manual before expecting to buy a perk
Swordmastery and Witchcraft perks have to be unlocked by a manual found in the world. Until then no shrine will sell them at any price.
- 7
Feed, unless you mean to give up a third of the trees
Vampiric perks open as Corruption rises, and Corruption rises by drinking blood. A run that never feeds closes its own progression.
- 8
Climb a tower after dark
Scouting towers reveal what is nearby, and they can only be climbed in the vrakhir form because the way up needs Shadowstep and Planeshift.
How saving works
The game keeps four kinds of save, and it labels each one with the day it was made rather than with a timestamp. Before the valley opens they are simply marked Prologue.
The one worth knowing about is the final autosave, which is written separately from the ordinary one. Between that and a manual save before each closing quest, a single run can see more than one of the seven endings.
- Autosave
- Kept as you play
- Final autosave
- Kept separately
- Quicksave
- One slot
- Manual save
- As many as you make
- Each is labelled
- By the day, or Prologue
Where to go from here
The walkthrough lays the main story out in order and gives the level band the game expects in each of the ten regions. The mechanics section holds the game's own explanation of all thirty-five of its systems, in its words rather than ours. And the guides go deeper on the ones worth planning around.