Combat

Attacks come in four directions, and choosing between them is the core of a fight rather than a flourish on top of one. Parry, dodge and lock-on round it out.

The game also gives you omniblock and omniattack, its own words for guarding and striking without committing to a single direction. Use them when a fight stops being a duel and starts being a crowd.

By day Coen is a man: weaker in a straight fight, but able to walk into a village and use Witchcraft. Hexes are cut into his skin as runes and paid for in health, and they hold activation charges rather than drawing on a mana bar.

By night he is a vrakhir: faster, stronger, and able to climb what the day form has to walk around. Those abilities unlock as Corruption rises, which ties the strongest tree in the game to the meter that threatens you.

Swordmastery is the only tree that works in both, which is why nearly every build leans on it no matter how the rest is split.

The game splits its quickslots in two: one set for active abilities and one for consumables, toggled while you fight. Four positions in each, at left, top, right and bottom.

Both sets keep a day loadout and a night loadout, so what Coen can reach in a fight changes with the form he is in. The ability sets are arranged in the abilities panel, the consumable sets in the inventory. A consumable slot also caps how many times you may draw from it in one encounter.

Each tree has a single perk that adds ability slots, and each of the three reads the same way: three ranks, giving two, then three, then four slots for that tree.