Kingsvein: Basic Guide for Skills, Passives, Upgrades, and Synergies

• Currently, this guide lists the most basic elements – skills, passives, and character upgrades provided by each class, as well as your starting choices.
• The next step will be to provide commentary on each skill / passive and general thoughts on the suite of skills provided by a full class. Completed!
• After that, I’ll add the XP cost to unlock each skill / passive, as well as for each rank of each skill.
• Eventually, I’ll add notes on party composition for the default difficulty (Vanguard) and the hardest difficulty (I presume that Ruin is unlocked after you beat the game once, as in previous entries in the series).

• aoe – Area of Effect. An aoe X targets all tiles within X of the center tile. An aoe 1 targets 5 tiles in a cross / plus.
• cone – A cone 1 targets a tile and then the three tiles past it in a T shape. A cone 2 has the same shape as an aoe 1, but the initial target is the nearest corner of the cross / pluss. A cone 3 additionally targets the far corners, for a total of 7 targeted tiles.
• cardinal directions – Some skills, such as basic spear attacks and the Knight’s Charge ability, can only target tiles in straight lines Nort / South / East / West of your character, and cannot target diagonally.
• line of sight – Skills that use line of sight cannot shoot past units or obstacles, such as crossbows and the Mystic’s Flame ability.

• Mancer’s Stone Savant + Ashen’s Bright Spark with a Volskarn weapon (2 augment slots) or the unique Trigger Staff (3 augment slots) augmented with Triggers adds a bunch of damage to all primarily weapon-based attacks (Dragoon’s Spellstrike is the only ability I’m aware of that adds a percentage of your weapon damage but does not trigger your weapon’s augments). The physical attack creates a blood pool. Stone Savant raises each augment’s damage by ½ your Mag + relevant Adept upgrade. Using at least one lightning trigger as an augment electrifies the blood (multiple lightning triggers still only electrifies the blood once), and with Bright Spark that damage is further increased by your full Blaze Adept rank. If there isn’t already blood on the tile, the attack won’t trigger electrified blood.
• There are 3 ways to turn invisible. Wisp Slayer’s become invisible if they get a kill, Chisel’s Low Profile passive, and Eidolith’s Fade skill. These all work well with Stealth Sense to increase you Str and Mag.
• Dark Augurs make great damage sponges, since they can use most of their MP pool to protect their HP and then recover half their MP when they run out. Using a combination of Melder’s Perfect Focus, Ashen’s Burning Focus, and Crysolith’s Cold Focus with a skills that have a wide range of MP costs (and in particular, skills like Gatekeeper’s Gate: Anchor and Dragoon’s Spellstrike that don’t cost an action but do cost MP, or Mancer’s Echo Cast that lets you cast a spell twice) you can modify the MP costs of your skills to allow you to more easily finagle emptying your MP pool once it hits 10.

• Wisp Slayer – +4 HP, +1 MP. Once per turn when you kill an enemy, get an extra action. This does not allow you a second movement.
• Wisp Stalker – +2 HP, +2 MP, +1 Move. Once per turn when you kill an enemy, gain +1 MP and become invisible for 1 turn.
• Dark Augur – +1 HP, +2 MP. Regain 50% of your MP whenever your MP reaches 0. Damage is taken from your MP pool before your HP pool, except for your last 10 MP. (Example: If you currently have 15 MP and take 20 damage, the first 5 will be subtracted from your MP, and the remaining 15 damage will come from your HP)
• (unlocked after beating the game once) Wisp Crusher – +4 HP. All of your push distances are increased by 1. Pushing bodies and objects increases the push distance by 2. Gain +1 Str / Mag for 1 turn when you are pulled or pushed. (Combine with Titan’s Brute passive and all related synergies for massive damage)
• (unlocked after beating the game once) Wisp Lancer – +2 HP, +1 MP. When you end your turn while riding, heal your mount +1 HP and give it an extra turn. Gain +2 Str / Mag for 1 turn when you dismount.

• Wyvern – +2 HP, +3 MP.
• Winged – +1 MP. You can jump over enemies as if they were terrain obstacles.
• Charger – +3 HP. +2 Move in straight lines. -1 Move along diagonals.

• Junkstone – +20% XP gain.
• Corpryst – +2 HP, +1 MP.
• Voltraced – +4 MP.
• (unlocked after beating the game once) Shriverock – -3 HP, +1 Move, +1 Jump. (Extra jump helps with exploration and bypassing terrain hazards during combat)
• (unlocked after beating the game once) Sigil-scarred – -2 HP, -2 MP. Gain +Str equal to 1/2 your Mag. Gain +Mag equal to 1/2 your Str. (Get extra juice out of anything that increases both your Str and Mag, like Teamwork, Stealth Sense, Channeler, etc.)

Zavarde is Corpryst.
Remir is a Scurio, and gets +1 Move if she hasn’t acted yet and takes -25% ice damage.

There are fewer base weapon types in Kingsvein than in the other Rad Codex games. Swords, Spears, Flails, Shields, Bows, Crossbows, Clubs, Gauntlets, and Triggers. There are also fewer tiers of weapons: Rusty / Junkstone, Ore (+1 dmg), and Corpryst (+2 dmg).

• Swords get +1 damage.
• Flails can attack any of the 8 surrounding tiles.
• Spears can attack two tiles in any of the cardinal directions. Basic attacks hit both tiles in range, while most skills require you to target a single tile – which has the benefit of allowing you to hide behind an ally while stabbing your foe. Marshals have the Spear Banner passive which prevents you from ever hurting an ally with a spear and additionally causing your basic spear attacks to heal allies in range.
• Shields do a set amount of damage, increase your maximum HP, and push 1 tile on hit.
• Bows are 2-handed weapons that can target any tile (other than those blocked by walls) between 3 and 4 tiles away.
• Crossbows get +2 damage, and can target any tile between 2 and 3 tiles away (but follow full line of sight restrictions). Additionally, you can’t shoot a crossbow a second time until you have reloaded it. Marksmen have the Reload passive which automatically reloads your crossbow if you either make a melee attack or reload a crossbow in your other hand.
• Clubs get +50% damage from your Str stat (making good use of the Knight’s Brave skill), but can’t have their damage increased by character upgrades.
• Gauntlets have no inherent bonuses, and are usually weak, but come with buffs to Str / Mag (and penalties to MP). Titans can spend stars to upgrade gauntlet damage.
• Triggers do a set amount of damage (if you equip them in your hand directly), although Mancers have a passive that allows you to add some of your Mag and Adept upgrades to damage.

There are a number of unique weapons of each category that have additional attributes, such as the Pneumatic Lance – a 2-handed crossbow without a minimum range that counts as a melee weapon for skills.

The Knight is the basic melee class all your characters start with (except your Wyvern, but they can eventually get access to the Knight and Mystic).

• Bash – 0 MP – Deal 30-70% weapon damage and push the target 2 tiles. Melee weapon only.
• Charge – 0 MP – Move 1-3 tiles in a straight line and then make an attack at 80% weapon damage, ignoring your weapon’s normal range. Melee weapon only.
• Bide – 0 MP – Delayed – Prepare a delayed attack for 250-300% weapon damage. Melee weapon only. The attack is cancelled if you move, teleport, get pushed or pulled, etc. As an exception to the standard rule, this ability will hit all tiles in a spear’s range.
• Ready – 1 MP – Attack the first enemy that enters a tile in melee range for 60-80% weapon dmg. Melee weapon only. The attack is cancelled if you move, teleport, get pushed or pulled, etc.
• Brave – 1 MP – Give yourself or an adjacent ally +1-3 Str for 2 turns.

• Counter – When hit by a melee attack (dodging doesn’t count), retaliate with a 25% weapon damage attack. As an exception to the standard rule, this ability will hit all tiles in a spear’s range. If you are pushed by the attack, you’ll retaliate from your end position (meaning you’ll probably be out of range).
• Opportunist – Weapon attacks you make outside of your normal turn (Counters, delayed attacks, and reacting to Marshal abilities) deal +50% weapon damage.
• Stoic – While preparing a delayed weapon attack, you are immune to pushes and pulls.

• Endurance – Increase maximum HP.
• Sword / Spear / Flail Skill – Increase damage you deal with a particular weapon group.

Bash gives you good utility – pushing enemies lets you deal additional damage (particularly with Titan’s Brute passive) to multiple targets, knock Blind enemies back so they can’t threaten anyone, knock Bleeding enemies around so they have to walk back and take extra damage, knock enemies into pits, etc. If any enemy has Counter, Bash it so they are out of range when they make their counter.

Charge, Ready, and Brave are options for when you would normally be out of range of your melee attacks. Charge has the same range as a spear until you upgrade it at least one rank, and Ready can be hard to get good use out of.

Bide is powerful, but takes a lot of setup to make sure it connects. With the default AI setting, enemies are smart enough to push allies out of range of Delayed attacks, so even if you reduce the target’s movement to 0, you might still whiff the attack.

Bash works well with the Titan’s Brute passive, making pushes deal 3 damage per blocked push to enemies (vs the default 1). If you Bash with a shield, the target will only move back 2 tiles – however, if the target cannot be pushed (adjacent to a unit / wall), you’ll get each push trigger (2 from Bash, 1 from the shield, 1 from Vanguard’s Shield Bash passive, etc.). If you push a target along ice, they’ll slide the entire way across it, meaning you can even further increase the push distance with Gatekeeper’s Gate: Blizzard and all of Crysolith’s spells.

To use Bide, you really want to reduce the target’s Move to 0. There are a number of skills that each reduce the target’s Move by 1 (such as Chisel’s Chain, Vanguard’s Blockade passive, Melder’s Stalagmire, oil from Ashen’s Catalyze, Crysolith’s Deep Frost, War Beast’s Chomp), and each instance of these stack. Blind doesn’t interact with other forms of Movement reduction, so it isn’t helpful for this skill. You can increase Bide’s damage with Opportunist and Fanger’s Trapper passive.

By itself, the damage from Counter is mediocre. Add in the Opportunist passive and weapon augments for much better damage. Anything else that increases the damage of your attacks would also be good here, such as Stone Savant + Bright Spark + Fire/Lightning Triggers.

Opportunist works well with Bide, Ready, Marksman’s Snipe, and Titan’s Meteor Slam, Counter, and an ally using Marshal’s Strike! and Shoot! Skills.

Bash and Brave are going to be helpful in almost every combat even if you don’t particularly build for them, so they’re good choices. If you’re building toward Bide, it might be worth using the full skill suite rather than just using Bide.

Unlocked with 250 XP in Knight. Your Wyvern cannot unlock this class.

• Lacerate – 1 MP – Deal 50% weapon damage and inflict Bleed for 2 – 5 turns. Targets 1 tile in your melee weapon’s range. If a bleeding unit moves, it takes 2 damage per tile moved at the end of its turn.
• Gouge – 1 MP – Deal 50% weapon damage and inflict Blind for 2 – 5 turns. Targets 1 tile in your melee weapon’s range. Blind units have their movement and attack range reduced to 1.
• Sunder – 1 MP – Deal 50% weapon damage and inflict Fragile for 2 – 5 turns. Targets 1 tile in your melee weapon’s range. Fragil targets take +50% damage.
• Chain – 0 MP – Pull a target up to 3 – 4 tiles away (cardinal directions only) to you, and inflicts -1 Move for 1 turn.
• Shatter – 4 MP – Deal 80% weapon damage, plus and additional 30-40% for each negative status effect on the target and each of your allies adjacent to the target. Targets 1 tile in your melee weapon’s range.

• Venom – your weapon attacks inflict Poison for 4 turns. Poisoned targets take 1 damage at the end of their turn. Poison can stack twice.
• Flanker – Weapon attacks deal +25% damage to enemies when an ally is behind them.
• Timed Hits – Deal +30% weapon damage if you press the ‘Use’ button just before damage is dealt.
• Low Profile – Become invisible for 1 turn when you end your turn adjacent to 3 visible allies and no enemies.

• Evasion – +1% dodge chance.
• Sword / Spear / Flail Skill – +1 damage with the relevant weapon group.
• Stealth Sense – Gain +1 Str and Mag per rank while invisible and for 1 turn after. If you have any ranks in this, you can see the vision ranges of enemies within 6 tiles when you press the ‘Highlight All’ button.

Almost all of Chisel’s skills synergize with each other. Lacerate + Gouge let you ignore an enemy while it slowly shambles around, losing HP. Shatter deals extra damage for each status (with extra benefit from Sunder inflicting Fragile). And then you have Chain, which is pretty niche, but you might as well spend the XP to unlock it if you’re going to be using the full Chisel skill set.

Liberal applications of Blind can win most fights for you, especially if your team has powerful Delayed spells with AoEs (like Ashen and Gatekeeper) or pushes to keep foes from threatening your team. If your team has lots of pushes, applying Bleed can rack up damage as the enemy walks back to hit you. If the enemy is standing on a long patch of ice, use a shield with Lacerate / Gouge to knock the enemy straight across the ice, saving you the turn you would otherwise spend using Bash or the like.

All of Chisel’s skills, with the exception of Chain, require a melee weapon. There is a unique crossbow, the Pneumatic Lance, that counts as a melee weapon for skills, letting you debuff enemies in a range of 3. Using the Marksman’s Quick Reload passive, you can reload the Pneumatic Lance with a melee attack. Since the Pneumatic Lance requires two hands (unlike all other crossbows), you’ll either have to settle for an unarmed attack or use a Bandoleer in an accessory slot to juggle a better weapon into your second hand.

Using Gate: Anchor before Lacerate / Gouge can leave the enemy debuffed and leave you safe from the enemy’s retaliation.

The Venom passive works well with control-based Chisel play – if your gameplan already involves applying Bleed + Blind and waiting for the enemy to die without being able to hit you, Venom speeds that process up. It also adds an extra debuff to pump up Shatter damage.

The Flanker passive helps if you and/or your allies have high Move. Marshal’s Move!, Gatekeeper’s Gate: Anchor, and Dragoon’s Launch all help with getting someone behind an enemy. Winged mounts can also just jump over enemies to set this up – and while Charger mounts do have extra movement, the penalty to diagonal movement can make it harder for them to flank enemies. Push / Pull effects are also good for triggering this passive.

I’m not sure if there’s any particular way to synergize with Timed Hits. I’ll (eventually) look into whether the +30% damage dealt is based on the your base weapon damage or the modified skill damage

If it keys off of base damage, Lacerate would deal 50%+30%=80% damage. If it keys off of modified skill damage, Lacerate would deal 50%*1.3=65% base damage. If it’s based on your base damage, then this will work better with things like Dragoon’s Twin Fangs and X-Strike. If it’s off of skill damage, then it’s a great way to further increase Shatter damage.

Low Profile is a little tricky, positioning-wise. You have to have 3 allies already adjacent to a single tile before you end your turn. I’m also not sure if your wyvern counts if you are riding it. Since you’re so close to allies, it is very possible for you to accidentally get caught in AoEs targeting those allies, so I’m not sure how good this passive is at protecting a character. However, it is the easiest way to trigger the Str/Mag buff from Stealth Sense. Eidolith’s Projections count as allies, and can be easy ways to trigger Low Profile’s invisibility or Low Profile can serve as a protective measure for your projections.

Adding Gouge to any character allows for a good dash of battlefield control, and Sunder or Shatter can help dish out the damage, so all three are good choices for a class emblem – but there’s just so much stacking synergy in Chisel’s skills that it’s hard to turn down the full set.

The Mystic is the basic mage class all of your characters start with (except your Wyvern, but they can eventually get access to the Knight and Mystic).

• Flame – 3 MP – 3 fire damage to 1 target in line of sight. Range 3 – 5.
• Arc – 3 MP – 2 lightning damage to 2 – 4 targets. The 1st target has a range of 2, and each following target must be exactly 2 tiles away from a previous target.
• Burst – 3 MP – 3 physical damage to a target in line of sight. Range of 3 – 5, cardinal directions only. Push 1 to all tiles adjacent to the target.
• Bloodspike – 3 MP – Creates spikes on a tile (2 damage). If the tile is currently occupied, deal extra ruin damage (up to 5) based on the amount of blood already on the tile. Range 2 – 4.
• Absorb – 0 MP – Dispel all status effects on the target and terrain effects on the tile, and recover 1 – 3 MP for each effect dispelled. Range 3.

• Draw Power – Deal +1 fire / adjacent flame and +1 ruin / adjacent blood pool (max +2 damage).
• Warmage – Deal +1 fire / lightning / ice / ruin damage to adjacent enemies.
• Leylines – When you end your turn on a Sigil or Fortification, gain its bonus for 2 turns.

• Focus – +1 maximum MP.
• Blaze / Geo / Ruin Adept – +1 damage with fire/lightning, physical, or ice/ruin magic.

Flame and Bloodspike will typically be used to deal direct damage to one enemy, but they can both create a terrain hazard to corral enemy movement if necessary.

Arc is a fairly flexible multi-target damage spell that can, since it deals lightning damage, spread extra damage to lots of targets.

Burst deals damage, but is limited by both line of sight and straight line attacks. To make up for it, it pushes everything adjacent to the target. There are some situations where this can open up shortcuts with pushable boulders, but other skills are better for this.

Absorb is a great skill when you need it, but won’t be needed in every fight. It dispels all buffs, debuffs, and terrain effects on a target and restores your MP based on how much was dispelled. You can use it to remove Blind/Bleed from an ally before they act, or to remove buffs from an enemy, or simply refuel your own MP pool.

Arc, by nature of hitting up to 4 tiles with lightning damage, can trigger multiple effects like Ashen’s Fireburst passive (lightning damage causes Fire tiles to explode for 3 fire damage), Gatekeeper’s Antipode passive (lightning damage can melt ice, and melting ice deals damage to targets on that tile), and the Spellcatcher unique shield (reduce fire/lightning damage by 20% and gain +1 Mag for 1 turn). Ashen’s Bright Spark passive can further increase the damage that Arc deals when electrifying blood pools.

There are a few bosses who, if they end their turn with Fragile (among other conditions), remove the status and become immune to it for 3 turns. If you apply Fragile as the first action of your turn and then clear it with Absorb at the end of your turn, you can potentially still get 4 actions taking advantage of the increased damage without the enemy ever becoming immune to it.

Draw Power works well with spells like Ashen’s Inferno and Gatekeeper’s Gate: Pyre that deal fire damage in a large area, which will leave lots of extra fire tiles behind to give you +2 fire damage on future turns. Another good way to take advantage of this buffed fire damage is with Mancer’s Stone Savant passive and a weapon with multiple fire triggers (volskarn weapons can hold 2, while the unique Trigger Staff can hold 3).

Draw Power also works well with anything that deals physical damage to adjacent enemies (such as normal attacks, Melder’s Stalagmites, or Dragoon’s Spellstrike), which creates blood pools. However, most spells that deal Ruin damage also have a habit of removing that blood (Bloodspike converts it into more damage, Crysolith’s Desecrate freezes it, and Crysolith’s Despair dispels it), so you can’t get a perpetual cycle of blood that way. However, using Mancer’s Stone Savant passive and a weapon with multiple ruin triggers lets you deal physical damage to create a blood pools and blood pools buff your ruin trigger damage [research needed to verify whether the initial blood pool increases that attack’s ruin trigger damage]. Again, volskarn weapons are great, but the Trigger Staff is even better.

Leylines is really nice for the battles that have pre-placed Sigils and Fortifications, but you can also create Fortifications with Vanguard’s Fortify and Marshal’s Hold!, a Power Sigil with Titan’s Sanctify, or a Move Sigil with Dragoon’s Launch. Given that you only keep the benefit of the sigil for 2 turns if you end your turn on the sigil, you are likely best off if an ally uses Launch to create the Move Sigil.

Absorb is a great pick for anyone who doesn’t have a particular need for an 11th skill, as it’s always great to have a dispel in your back pocket for an unexpected situation.

Arc’s multi-target nature can help fill some holes in other spellcaster toolboxes, or serve as a cheap option to neutralize multiple Wisp Nodes at once.

Unlocked with 400 XP in Knight.

• Smite – 0 MP – Deal 50-70% damage to the three tiles in a wide line in front of you, and deal 50% damage. Requires a melee weapon.
• Barge – 0 MP – Deal 60-100% damage to an adjacent tile, push 1 tile, and move into the targeted tile (if possible). Requires a melee weapon.
• Revitalize – 3 MP – Revive an ally (skipping their turn this round) or heal an ally for 4-7 HP. Range 1.
• Cover – 1 MP – Grant an adjacent ally Negate for 2-4 turns and switch places with them. Negate cancels the first instance of damage a target would take. Range 1.
• Fortify – 1-3 MP – Push 1 on the tiles on opposite sides of you, then create Fortifications for 6 turns on each tile. Fortifications reduce physical damage taken by 50%, and are destroyed by any amount of fire damage.

• Counter Push – When hit by a melee weapon, push your attacker 2 tiles.
• Shield Bash – Use your shield to push the primary target of adjacent weapon attacks 1 tile.
• Blockade – When you end your turn, inflict -1 Move on adjacent enemies for 1 turn.

• Endurance – +X max HP.
• Sword / Spear / Flail Skill – +X damage with the relevant weapon group.
• Healer – Heal targets an additional +X HP with abilities, items, passives, etc.
• Defy Death – Lose X less max HP when KO’d and recover +X HP when reviving or being revived. If you have any ranks in this, you get a 20% chance to automatically revive with 1 HP instead of fading out.

Smite can do everything a Knight’s Bash can, but to 3 targets (in exchange for only pushing each of time 1 tile). While Smiting an adjacent Blind enemy leaves you open to them just walking back to you, Smite’s 3-tile wide area lets you push an enemy that’s already 1 space removed from you to get that safety back. Smite probably edges out Bash on the whole, but its definitely arguable which is better.

Barge is Vanguard’s second push ability, but deals more damage than Smite and lets you move after the attack, filling a different niche.

Revitalize lets you heal or revive an ally. A Poultice heals for more unless you fully upgrade this skill, and I had over 60 left at the end of my first playthrough. I also had almost 20 Ulsalts, which are identical to Revitalize for resurrecting allies.

Cover and Fortify are both decent options for protecting allies, but they don’t stand out to me.

Smite and Barge both have a built-in push, so benefit from most of the same things as Knight’s Bash. Because Barge moves you back adjacent to the pushed enemy, you can still get effects that care about adjacent enemies to trigger when you end your turn, like Blockade, Marshal’s Fighting Spirit, and Eidolith’s Absorb Aura.

Shield Bash adds push 1 to your attacks against adjacent enemies if your off-hand weapon is a shield. So if your primary weapon is *also* a shield, then you’ll push the adjacent tile from attacking with your main shield, and then push that same tile again with your Shield Bash passive. If your attack *also* has a push, like Knight’s Bash (or the adjacent tile of Smite), then you’ll get the push from the skill, then push the same tile from your shield, and then again from your Shield Bash passive. You only get the effect of all pushes on the enemy if their movement is blocked (such as by another enemy or a wall). Combined with Titan’s Brute passive, you can dish out a lot of damage this way.

Blockade is a passive way of reducing enemy Move. Add on two more sources of Move reduction, like a weapon with a Sticky Gland augment, and most enemies will be stuck in place, ripe for punishment from Knight’s Bide, Marksman’s Snipe, Titan’s Meteor Slam, Crysolith’s Dark Ice, or any delayed aoe. If you end your turn, the enemy’s Move stays reduced even if you are moved away from the enemy (such as by your mount moving while you’re riding it, or being subjected to any push / pull), which can put some distance between you and the immobilized enemy. You can add Fanger’s Trapper passive to increase all your weapon damage against immobilized enemies by 40% (or Knight’s Opportunist passive to increase you delayed weapon damage).

If you don’t have points in Healer and your ally doesn’t have points in Defy Death, you can let an ally die and then revive them with Revitalize to keep them at 1 HP to trigger certain accessory effects. Given that your ally loses their turn when revived this way, this isn’t the best method, but it’s still an option. If you are going for a 1 HP build, Cover can help you keep that ally alive – and there are accessories to make Negate last longer and not be removed if you wouldn’t have taken 3 or more damage.

Fortify creates Fortifications, and Mystic’s Leylines passive can allow an ally to continue benefiting from the physical damage reduction while maintaining full mobility.

See Knight’s Bash for information on how push stacking works.

Smite is a standout skill here, and a great use of a class emblem. If you’re interested in any of the other skills, you might as well take the whole skill suite so you still have access to Smite.

Unlocked with 300 XP in Knight and 300 XP in Chisel.

• Fang – 3 MP – Create a Fang (destructible terrain hazard) within 1-3 tiles (cardinal directions only) that lasts for 6 turns. If the tile is currently occupied, deal 3 physical damage and push the target 2 tiles. When a Fang is damaged, it deals 3 physical damage to all adjacent tiles and pushes them 2.
• Caltrops – 3 MP – Create spikes in a cone of size 2-4. Spikes are difficult terrain and deal 2 damage. Spikes are removed if stepped on or damaged.
• Razorwire – 3 MP – Target a tile within 2-4 tiles (cardinal directions only). Pull 1 on the closest creature on each side perpendicular to the line within 2-3 tiles, then inflict Bleed for 1 turn on the target tile and the adjacent two tiles.
• Whiplash – Deal 2 physical damage, push all tiles adjacent to the targeted tile 1, then pull the target 1. Range 2-4 (cardinal directions only), requires line of sight.
• Sharpen – Target 1-3 Spike tiles and/or allies. Targeted Spikes become Shar Spikes (deal 2 damage and inflict Bleed for 3 turns). The targeted ally’s first weapon attack within 2 turns inflicts Bleed for 3 turns.

• Impaler – During your turn, add 1/2 your Str to the damage of Fangs and Spikes.
• Sharpener – Your spikes deal half your Geo Adept extra physical damage. Also, creating Spikes on top of Spikes creates Sharp Spikes (deal 2 damage and inflict Bleed for 3 turns).
• Trapper – Your weapon attacks deal +40% damage to enemies that cannot move anywhere.

• Evasion – +X% dodge chance
• Sword / Spear / Flail Skill – +X damage with the relevant weapon group.
• Archery – +X damage with bows and crossbows.
• Geo Adept – +X damage with physical magic.

Fang deals middling damage, has a strong push at range, and creates terrain. It has plenty of uses for a creative combatant, and yet always seemed to disappoint me compared to using simpler strategies like just Bashing adjacent enemies together, or using all of Chisel’s debuffs.

Caltrops can fill the field with Spikes to limit enemy movement and add damage. It looks like an unit with 1 Move can still move onto adjacent Spikes, and units with 2 or more movement can jump over one tile of Spikes (unless they’re standing on ice), so it’s a little harder to lock down enemy movement with this than I would like. There were a few times I was able to use this skill effectively, but I found other things (like Gatekeeper’s Gate: Pyre) to be better at gumming up a huge section of the battlefield for a few turns.

Razorwire is can inflict Bleed on up to 3 enemies at a distance, and pull at unconventional angles, meaning the enemy has to take decent damage to approach you afterward. It seems great, but I found my Chisel/Fanger simply using Lacerate on enemies with her Pneumatic Lance.

Whiplash is good for isolating one unit. The damage is rather puny, which means you can use it to pull an ally away without too much worry about the damage dealt.

Sharpen feels a little bit like a wasted slot since you already have Razorwire to inflict Bleed, and can use the Sharpener passive to make Spikes inflict Bleed.

While the Fang skill creates a terrain hazard that can be pushed, if the Fang takes damage before it is pushed, it looks like the Fang disperses into the wind in between tiles meaning it won’t damage anyone or apply it’s own push. If you use Fang on an enemy that cannot be pushed away from you (like if they are adjacent to another enemy), you’ll apply the initial 3 Fang damage and push damage, but not the secondary damage from the Fang explosion.

A great use of Fang is to create it behind an enemy, and then have someone with the Titan’s Brute passive push the enemy into the Fang with Bash / Smite / a shield (or especially Bash + a shield + Shield Bash for a push 4 resulting in 12 damage plus the initial attack’s damage) – you’ll get the initial damage for pushing into an obstacle, +3 damage for the fang exploding, +6 damage to the enemy for the Fang pushing it back into your Brute (and since Brute only increases push damage dealt to enemies, your ally will only take 2 damage). That damage can be further strengthened if the ally has Impaler and a high Str score (from sources like the Teamwork upgrade, Stealth Sense upgrade, Ore Gauntlet weapon, Knight’s Brave skill, Titan’s Vengeful passive, etc). Do be aware that a few select bosses are immune to push effects, so you can’t rely on this strategy 100% of the time. Merely 95%.

If you really want to slow down enemies while whittling away at their health, have two characters use Caltrops in front of your enemies. If the second character has the Impaler passive, then the Spikes will inflict Bleed, and the enemy will take a decent chunk of damage at the end of their movement. There are a number of fights where enemies approach from two sides, so this is one way of letting you divide and conquer.

All of the Fanger skills seem like they’re just slightly too finnicky for their own good, so I couldn’t get the same oomph out of the full skill suite that I could from a Chisel or Gatekeeper, for instance. In light of that, any of these skills (other than Sharpen, which I often forget exists) are decent options for rounding out any character’s toolkit.

Unlocked with 250 XP in Knight and 400 XP in Chisel.

• Snipe – 0 MP – Delayed – Deal 175% dmg to one tile in range. Uses your ranged weapon range +2-4. The attack is cancelled if you move, teleport, get pushed or pulled, etc.
• Ricochet – 2 MP – Deal 40-70% damage to two targets in your ranged weapon’s range. The second target must be exactly 2 tiles away from the first target.
• Bombard – 3 MP – Attack a target in your ranged weapon’s range +0-2 and push all adjacent tiles 1.
• Recoil Shot – 0 MP – Attack a target in your ranged weapon’s range +0-2, pushing it forward and yourself backward.
• Backscatter – 1 MP – Deal 80-100% damage to one target in your ranged weapon’s range (cardinal directions only), then the same damage to two targets at 45 degree angles back toward you. The backward shots travel 2 tiles.

• Shrapnel – Ranged weapon attacaks deal 1 physical damage to enemies adjacent to the primary target.
• Quick Reload – When you reload or make a melee attack, reload all equipped weapons.
• Artillery – Gain +1 attack range with bows and crossbows at the cost of -1 Move.

• Evasion – +X% dodge chance
• Archery – +X damage with bows and crossbows.
• Ranged Expert – +5*X% weapon damage per tile between you and the target.

Snipe is a good option for triggering combat.

Ricochet is good for finished off weak or wounded enemies, particularly Wisp Nodes, where it competes with Arc.

Bombard deals damage and pushes everything around a target. This is great for moving pushable boulders from the “wrong side” and has some decent battlefield control possibilities.

Recoil Shot is a ranged, damaging push that can help you maintain distance while you wear down an enemy.

Backscatter, like Ricochet, can hit multiple enemies. It trades Ricochet’s ease of use for higher damage.

See discussion of Vanguard’s Blockade passive for ways to take advantage of Snipe during combat. Outside of combat, one point in the Stealth Sense upgrade can help you see where you can stand without triggering combat to guarantee you get that first hit off.

Ricochet + Shrapnel lets you deal some damage to lots of enemies. Stone Savant + Bright Spark can increase the damage to your primary targets while spreading blood around your adjacent targets.

Quick Reload lets you use crossbows without wasting turns reloading if you either A) have a melee weapon in your off-hand to attack with, or B) wear a Bandoleer and keep your melee weapon in your character’s inventory to swap in when you’d need to reload the crossbow. If you use the Pneumatic Lance crossbow, you can use both Marksman Skills and melee-specific skills (of particular note are all of Chisel’s skills and Dragoon’s Storm Assault). You can further pump this damage with Stone Savant + Bright Spark + Lightning Trigger. Additionally, Knight’s Counter + Quick Reload lets you reload your crossbow if you’re attacked during your turn – but be aware that if you have a loaded Pneumatic Lance equipped in your primary hand (determined by which hand you last selected to attack with), you will counter with that and will have to reload it later. Luckily, when you Counter an attack while your crossbow is unloaded, it switches your primary hand away from your crossbow which makes this case come up much less often.

If you’re primarily using ranged weapon attacks, there’s not much incentive to use a class emblem slot to grab one of these skills when you could instead have the whole suite. The obvious exception is if you’re using the Pneumatic Lance with melee skills and just want Ricochet or Backscatter to be able to hit additional targets.

Unlocked with 300 XP in Mystic.

• Mend – 4 MP – Delayed – Revive the target and/or heal it for 8-14 HP and cure all negative effects. Range 3.
• Growth – 4 MP – Create a Growth for 6 turns in an unoccupied tile and heal all adjacent units 2-4 HP. Anyone ending their turn on a Growth heals 5 HP. Range 2.
• Stalagmire – 3 MP – Inflict -1 Move on a target and surround it with spikes. Range 2-4.
• Quake – 4 MP – Delayed – Deal 6 physical damage in a 5×5 square in 2-4 tiles. Doesn’t deal damage to the caster or to units on tiles with blood pools.
• Soilshift – 1 MP – Push 2 on all tiles in a 3-tile wide line than extends up to 3-5 tiles away from you (cardinal directions only).

• Perfect Focus – While at full HP, -1 to all MP costs.
• Meld Clay – The amount your abilities heal is increased by half of your Geo Adept.
• Overgrowth – You and adjacent allies recover 1 MP when you have full HP after you are healed.

• Focus – +X max MP.
• Geo Adept – +X damage with physical magic.
• Healer – Heal targets an additional +X HP with abilities, items, passives, etc.
• Regeneration – Whenever you are healed, you recover an additional +X HP.
• Defy Death – Lose X less max HP when KO’d and recover +X HP when reviving or being revived. If you have any ranks in this, you get a 20% chance to automatically revive with 1 HP instead of fading out.

Mend is a rather powerful heal + dispel, despite being delayed – and the revive lets your ally take a turn immediately, so it loses surprisingly little for being a delayed heal. But still, for general healing purposes, Growth is better because it heals in an AoE and leaves behind a terrain effect that grants continued healing.

Stalagmire can be used to slow down a single enemy by targeting them, or slightly impede a number of enemies (by targeting in front of them so that the spikes block everyone) – assuming, of course, the enemy doesn’t just jump over the spikes.

Quake is a large aoe delayed spell that is surprisingly hard to get to work. Given that it doesn’t deal damage to bloody tiles, you have to make an effort not to deal physical damage to targets in the aoe (so take off Knight’s Counter passive!), and even then the damage is a little lacking.

Soilshift gives you a push 2 in a decent sized area. While it doesn’t deal any damage innately, it can still compete with Knight’s Bash and Vanguard’s Smite.

All healing effects benefit from the Healer and Regeneration upgrades, as well as Overgrowth and the Meditation upgrade. Growth, because it heals in an aoe and then continues healing every turn, works wonders with Overgrowth and Meditation to keep your party’s MP at decent levels if you’re able to keep their HP maxed out. There are also a few pieces of equipment that increase all HP and/or MP recovery received. If an ally is in need of MP, have them stand 2 tiles away from your Melder and cast Growth between them. Then have your Melder stand on top of the Growth tile and end their turn. If both characters have Overgrowth and maximum HP, they’ll recover MP three times. If only your Melder has Overgrowth, then the other character will only recover MP once and the Melder will recover MP twice. If you need more help healing allies and are investing in Geo Adept, Meld Clay can help with that.

Similar to the Growth + Overgrowth combo, constantly healing your characters to maximum HP lets them use Perfect Focus to decrease the MP costs of their skills by 1. As a special note, if your main character is a Dark Augur, they’ll usually have maximum HP even while they’re getting pummeled (I think poison damage is the only thing that bypasses their MP shield before they drop to 10 MP).

Quake doesn’t need as much help as most delayed spells, since it’s a sizable 5×5 square. For an enemy in the center, -1 Move is all it takes normally to keep them in the aoe – assuming they don’t take any physical damage. You can have another character use one of the skills that dispels terrain effects to remove the blood, or use Mystic’s Bloodspike to absorb the blood, or use ice damage to freeze the blood (of special note for this is Crysolith’s Desecrate, which deals ice damage to all contiguous blood and ice tiles). For a party with few sources of physical damage, Quake probably gets much better.

Almost everything that’s true of Knight’s Bash and Vanguard’s Smite is true of Soilshift, so I won’t repeat that here.

Growth (as an efficient HP and MP healing skill) and Soilshift (as a large area push) are both standouts here. It’s worthwhile to take the full class suite to grab both of these, particularly when you also get Mend for when things turn nasty and Stalagmire when you want to enable powerful delay spells.

Unlocked with 500 XP in Mystic.

• Inferno – 4 MP – Delayed – Deal 8 fire damage in an aoe 1 within a range of 3-5.
• Thunderbolt – 4 MP – Deal 4 lightning damage to a target in a range of 2-4. Push 1 on all tiles adjacent to the target.
• Flamelash – 3 MP – Deal 3 fire damage to 2-4 consecutive tiles, starting from an adjacent tile or a Fire tile within 6 tiles of you.
• Extinguish – 4 MP – Deal 1 fire damage + 2 for every Fire tile within 2 tiles of the targeted enemy, OR restore 4 MP for every Fire tile within 2 tiles of the targeted ally. Put out all Fire tiles within 2 tiles of the target.
• Catalyze – 2 MP – Deal 4 lightning damage to a tile, electrifies the blood, and then converts all contiguous blood to Oil. Oil inflicts -1 Move to any unit starting on the tile and deals 4 fire damage when dealt fire damage.

• Burning Focus – gain +2 Mag, but increase MP costs of all skills that cost at least 1 MP by 1.
• Bright Spark – During your turn, Fire hazard and electrified Blood damage to enemies is increased by Blaze Adept.
• Fireburst – During your turn, any flames struck by lightning explode, dealing 3 fire to adjacent tiles.

• Focus – +X max MP.
• Blaze Adept – +X fire/lightning damage.
• Meditation – Gain +X more MP each time you recover MP.

You have Inferno and Flamelash to deal aoe / multitarget fire damage and create fires on empty tiles, which you can then use with Extinguish to either deal good damage or restore a lot of MP to an ally.

Thunderbolt, like Bombard, deals damage and pushes everything around a target. This is great for moving pushable boulders from the “wrong side” and has some decent battlefield control possibilities.

Catalyze is yet another way to deal electrified blood damage, but it also turns blood into Oil for decreasing Move for potentially the entire field.

Anything that spreads fire to a lot of tiles can set up powerful Extinguishes, like Inferno / Flamelash, Gatkeeper’s Gate: Pyre, or dealing fire damage to an oil jar. Alternatively, these skills can be used to create swathes of the battlefield that enemies have trouble moving through, and increases the distance you can use Flamelash from.

Lightning damage, like always, benefits from Bright Spark and Blaze Adept.

[research needed] It’s possible that if you set a swathe of blood on fire and then electrify the blood you’ll trigger Fireburst to explode the flames to adjacent tiles. However, I can’t verify that at this moment.

As with all delayed spells, Inferno can pump your Mag for a while if you have the Channeler upgrade.

Catalyze works well with a team that can deal physical damage to a lot of targets to spread blood initially and leave them slowed by the Oil, which makes it easier to land Inferno, which then ignites all the oil tiles for additional damage.

Burning Focus is one of a small number of ways to increase your Mag, which makes it useful by itself. But if you’re using Trigger Stones with Stone Savant for damage, you don’t even necessarily have to deal with the increased MP cost. You can combine Burning Focus with Melder’s Perfect Focus and/or Crysolith’s Cold Focus to offset the increased MP costs, or use Growths and Meditation to recover your MP.

This is a decent set of skills by itself, but if you’re going Gatekeeper (or are relying on an allied Gatekeeper to toss out Gate: Pyre to gum up everything with fire) you might just want to take Extinguish.

Thunderbolt is another choice to take for your class emblem slot, because it helps push around boulders outside of combat while having decent damage and utility in combat.

Unlocked with 400 XP in Knight and 300 XP in Vanguard.

• Strike! – 5 MP – Command allies to melee the target if possible, dealing 50% damage. Range 2-4.
• Shoot! – 3 MP – Command allies to shoot the target if possible, dealing 90% damage. Range 2-4.
• Rally! – 3 MP – Heal 1 HP to allies in an aoe 1 and cure their negative status effects. Range 2-4.
• Move! – 1 MP – Swap the position of allies and grant them +10-20% dodge for 2 turns. Range 3-4 for the initial target, second target must be within 2 tiles of the initial target.
• Hold! – 3 MP – Create a Fortification for 6 turns. Fortifications reduce physical damage taken by 50%, and are destroyed by any amount of fire damage. Range 3-5.

• Spear Banner – All your spear attacks miss allies, and your basic spear attacks heal allies instead.
• Fighting Spirit – When you end your turn, heal +1 HP per adjacent enemy.
• Strategize – When you end your turn, adjacent allies gain +1 Move for 1 turn.

• Endurance – +X max HP.
• Sword / Spear Skill – +X damage with the relevant weapon group.
• Healer – Heal targets an additional +X HP with abilities, items, passives, etc.
• Teamwork – Gain +X Str and Mag when adjacent to an ally with Teamwork.

Strike! and Shoot! can deal good damage if your party is built for them and properly positioned. And no, I don’t understand why Strike! is more expensive than Shoot! while also dealing less damage. Maybe the wonky attack range of ranged weapons makes it harder to get several shots off?

Rally!’s minor heal can be built up, and the ability to cure negative status effects will occasionally come in handy.

Move! can get one ally out of dodge, or let an ally that hasn’t acted yet take the place of an ally who ended their turn adjacent to an enemy, while also upping their dodge.

Hold! creates a single Fortification tile which typically isn’t as good as Vanguard’s Fortify, but you can place it directly under an ally of your choice which opens up some additional options.

As discussed in Knight’s Opportunist section, Strike! and Shoot! are good ways to take advantage of that passive.

Much like Melder’s Growth, Rally! combines well with Healer / Regeneration upgrades and the Melder’s Overgrowth passive / the Meditation upgrade to do everything you want: heal HP, MP, and cure negative statuses.

If you Move! an ally with Vanguard’s Blockade, you get to inflict -1 Move on the enemy and then potentially get your ally out of retaliation range.

If an ally has a crossbow and Marksman’s Quick Reload, you can use Strike! to let them reload it.

Spear Banner lets you use spears with abandon, no longer worrying about whether its worth hitting your ally with an attack or not. Instead, you start asking yourself if it’s worth healing two allies with one attack (or three, with Dragoon’s Giant’s Reach passive) rather than attacking. Much like other healing skills, Healer / Regeneration / Melder’s Overgrowth passive / Meditation all increase the viability of heals. Spear Banner + Strike! and/or Knight’s Counter passive gives more triggers for potentially healing allies. Additionally, it lets you more easily take advantage of the Teamwork upgrade by standing behind an ally and stabbing them plus the enemy behind them for increased healing / damage.

In general, Marshal’s skills mostly require building around, so only take the whole skill set if you’re building your party to take advantage of at least 2 or 3 of the skills.

Unlocked with 400 XP in Knight, 300 XP in Chisel, and 150 XP in Vanguard.

• Rock Blast – 2 MP – Deal 3 physical damage to a non-adjacent target in range 3-5 (cardinal directions only). You can instead target certain walls (such as junkstone, or, and meldstone walls) that are 1 tile thick with an empty tile behind them to break the wall and target in a cone 2 – 4 that deals 6 physical damage. This is one of 2 ways in the game to break these types of walls.
• Wave Crash – 2 MP – Pull all targets in a straight 4-tile long line 2 tiles, then attack the adjacent tile for 70-90% weapon damage and push 1.
• Meteor Slam – 3 Mp – Delayed – Deal 150-200% weapon damage to a tile in range 2 (cardinal directions only), then 7-9 damage to adjacent tiles, create Spikes, and push adjacent tiles 2. This skill scales with Str and weapon skills for the direct attack, and 1x your Mag and Geo Adept for the damage to adjacent targets.
• Suplex – 2 MP – Swap places with an adjacent target, and deal physical damage equal to 1 + 1-3 per difference between your Str and the target’s.
• Sanctify – 1-3 MP – Push 1 on all adjacent tiles, then create a Power Sigil on your tile for 6 turns. A Power Sigil increases Str by 3 while standing on it.

• Brute – During your turn, push damage to enemies is increased by +2.
• Vengeful – Gain +2 Str while below 50% HP.
• Undying – When you prepare a delayed weapon attack, become unable to go below 1 HP for 1 turn. Cannot be reapplied for 2 turns.

• Endurance – +X max HP.
• Evasion – +X% dodge chance.
• Flail / Fist Skill – +X damage with the relevant weapon group.
• Geo Adept – +X damage with physical magic.
• Defy Death – Lose X less max HP when KO’d and recover +X HP when reviving or being revived. If you have any ranks in this, you get a 20% chance to automatically revive with 1 HP instead of fading out.

Rock Blast gives you a moderately damaging ranged attack that also doubles to open up some out-of-combat traversal options without having to find or equip the unique item that normally allows that.

Wave Crash is a different way of punching things that aren’t (yet) next to you, possibly adding push damage to the equation.

Meteor Slam is a physical aoe delayed attack that keys off of Str and your weapon for the primary tile or Mag and Geo Adept for the adjacent tiles.

Suplex lets you reposition enemies and, if you thoroughly pump your Str, deal significant damage.

Sanctify gives you some breathing room and creates a Power Sigil to pump your Str.

Suplex damage can be increased by wearing Str-boosting gauntlets in your weapon slots, the Vengeful passive, Knight’s Brave skill, the Channeler upgrade, Sanctify + Melder’s Leylines, etc. The Sigil-scarred option for your companions (unlocked after you beat the game once) gets double-benefit from Channeler in terms of boosting your Str. If you don’t have Leylines and you choose to Suplex an enemy while standing on your Power Sigil, make sure you push the enemy off before they get to smack you with +3 Str.

Blinding an enemy can guarantee that they can’t just walk out of Meteor Slam range.

The Brute passive works really well with stacked pushes against adjacent enemies – push them into each other with Bash for 30% weapon damage to your target and 9 push damage to both of them. Then, if you were pushing with a shield, deal both an additional 3 push damage. Add on another 3 push damage if you have the Shield Bash passive. A Lightning trigger plus either Mancer’s Stone Savant or Ashen’s Bright Spark can further increase the damage. Be aware that since Brute only increases push damage during your turn, it won’t increase the push damage of Meteor Slam. On the other hand, Brute only increases push damage dealt to enemies, so you can (somewhat) safely Bash your enemies into your friends (or vice versa).

Having Rock Blast in your back pocket means you don’t have to use the weapon to break walls, which can free up your equipped slots for better equipment.

Suplex and Sanctify work together, so if you want one you’ll probably want to take the whole skill set so you have the other as well.

Unlocked with 400 XP in Knight, 400 XP in Chisel, 500 XP in Mystic, 300 XP in Vanguard, and 300 XP in Marksman, for a minmum of 1900 XP to unlock the Dragoon, making it the most expensive class to unlock.

• Twin Fang – 5 MP – Deal 60-80% of your main-hand weapon’s damage to one tile in your main-hand weapon’s range (cardinal directions only), then move adjacent to that tile and deal 60% of your off-hand melee weapon’s damage to the same tile. Despite the weapon description, you can use a crossbow or the like for the first attack.
• X-Strike – 4 MP – Attack for 55-65% damage with each of your equipped melee weapons in an X shape adjacent to you. The target tile is hit by both weapons.
• Storm Assault – Deal 60-80% weapon damage to all targets your weapon can reach in a 270 degree arc.
• Spellstrike – 2 MP – Using this ability doesn’t cost an action. The next time you cast a non-delayed spell that targets a unit in range of your melee weapon, deal 50-70% of your weapon damage in addition to the spell’s normal effects. This does not trigger any weapon augments, passives, or innate weapon effects (such as trigger stones, Vanguard’s Shield Bash passive, or the push innate to shields). This does add damage for spells in range of a loaded Pneumatic Lance.
• Launch – 2 MP – Leap to a tile in range 3-4, leaving behind a Move Sigil. Move Sigils grant +3 movement.

• Tempest – At the end of your turn, and when you use an ability that moves you, deal 1 physical damage to adjacent enemies.
• Giant’s Reach – Gain +1 attack range with melee weapons at the cost of -1 Str. The increased attack range does not add to diagonal reach – spears can attack all 3 tiles in a line, swords and the like can target one tile in range 2 (cardinal direction only), and flails can attack any tile in a 5×5 cube except for the four corners.
• Weapon Master – Gain +Str equal to your lowest Sword / Spear / Flail Skill.

• Endurance – +X max HP.
• Sword / Spear / Flail Skill – +X damage with the relevant weapon group.
• Archery – +X damage with bows and crossbows.

Twin Fang and X-Strike both let you attack with both of your weapons, triggering the augments of both. Twin Fang gives you more distance (if your primary weapon has range, like a crossbow / javelin / spear), while X-Strike requires two melee weapons and hits 5 tiles in an X shape.

Storm Assault lets you hit multiple enemies at once, but only triggers your weapon augments on the selected tile.

Spellstrike lets you add some of your weapon damage to your spells, but doesn’t trigger weapon augments.

Launch lets you jump to another tile, leaving behind a Move Sigil to help your allies move farther on future turns.

Twin Fang and X-Strike let you potentially trigger 5 weapon augments (Trigger Staff + Volksarn weapon), making even better use of Stone Savant than anything else. While you trigger the augments of both of your weapons, you only trigger passives like Vanguard’s Shield Bash or Crysolith’s Fell Shards on the first attack.

Storm Assault requires a melee weapon. Pneumatic Lance counts as a melee weapon, so you can shoot a wide swathe of tiles with a single action. This will not trigger Marksman’s Shrapnel passive, despite the Pneumatic Lance’s basic attack triggering it.

Spellstrike works with Pneumatic Lance in (almost) the best possible way: it adds a portion of Pneumatic Lance’s damage to every tile targeted by your spell in range of Pneumatic Lance, and it doesn’t *actually* shoot the crossbow, leaving it loaded. However, if the Pneumatic Lance isn’t loaded, then it doesn’t have a range, so it doesn’t get to add any damage to your spells.

Based on the wording of Mystic’s Leylines, using Launch won’t give you +3 Move for several turns unless you walk back to the Move Sigil you created and end your turn on it.

Twin Fang or X-Strike are great damage-focused additions to any character focused on weapon damage. While you do get a little more flexibility if you have both of them, you can typically just choose one and be fine with it. If you’re interested in the flexibility of Storm Assault or Spellstrike even on a Stone Savant + Bright Spark character, then that is worth grabbing the whole skill set to make sure you still get Twin Fang / X-Strike.

Spellstrike is a good addition to anyone who primarily focuses on spell damage and isn’t using the Stone Savant + Bright Spark combo, particularly if you’re not using the Pneumatic Lance for anything else (like Chisel skills or Storm Assault).

Unlocked with 300 XP in Mystic and 400 XP in Melder.

• Judgment – 4 MP – Delayed – Deal 8 lightning + 8 fire damage to one tile in rang 4-6.
• Doom – 5 MP – Target gains the Doom status, which deals 16 Ruin damage after 3 turns. Range 2-4.
• Bless – 3 MP – Target gains the Bless status, which heals 16 HP and cures all negative status ailments after 3 turns.
• Decree – 3 MP – If the target’s HP and MP are within 7-10 of each other, swap them. Range 4.
• Echo Cast – 0 MP – Toggle ability – Your next non-delayed spell is additionally cast as a delayed spell. The delayed spell’s cast costs -1 MP per rank of this skill.

• Stone Savant – Trigger stones wielded in hand have range 3, and trigger stones within weapons are affected by half your Mag and Blaze / Ruin Adept.
• Defiance – While preparing a delayed ability, you take 25% less damage.
• Dark Omen – When you end your turn preparing a delayed ability, inflict -2 Mag to enemies in its area for 1 turn.

• Focus – +X max MP.
• Blaze / Ruin Adept – +X damage with Fire/Lightning or Ice/Ruin magic.
• Healer – Heal targets an additional +X HP with abilities, items, passives, etc.
• Channeler – Gain +X Str and Mag while preparing a delayed ability and for 1 turn after.
• Defy Death – Lose X less max HP when KO’d and recover +X HP when reviving or being revived. If you have any ranks in this, you get a 20% chance to automatically revive with 1 HP instead of fading out.

Judgment is a powerful single-tile delayed spell, making it hard to get good use out of (except for the one or two fights with an immobile enemy, where this skill shines). Doom is also hard to make use of, since you need to get in range of the target and then mostly avoid dealing damage to them for 3 turns – it’s ok on bosses, but you can’t stack casts of Doom so you still need to do something else to the boss for the next three turns.

Bless is slightly easier to make use of, but it’s a stronger / slower Melder’s Mend that doesn’t revive the target if they happen to die first.

Decree can effectively deal a moderate amount of damage to a single target immediately, if they happen to have close enough HP/MP (while still being far enough apart to be worth the action).

Echo Cast lets you cast a non-delay spell a second time after a delay.

If you’re able to set up Knight’s Bide or Marksman’s Snipe, then you can set up Judgment to connect.

While you can Echo Cast any non-delayed spell, you’re looking for things that are better than just directly casting a delayed spell like Judgment or Gatekeeper’s Gate: Lightning. In my investigation, it seems like Echo Cast counts anything that scales off of Mag as a spell (such as Fanger’s Fang and Caltrops), but also includes some other skills, like Mystic’s Absorb while excluding things like Fanger’s Sharpen and all Gatekeeper skills. You can combine Dragoon’s Spellstrike and Echo Cast onto the same spell – the original cast will add a portion of your weapon damage, but the delayed cast won’t. This, combined with Ashen’s Burning Focus passive, allows for Dark Augurs to spend frankly ridiculous amounts of MP in one turn to trigger their MP recovery.

With Defiance, you reduce the damage you take while casting any delayed ability, including Echo Cast spells.

Dark Omen can add more debuffs to enemies to strengthen the damage an ally with Chisel’s Shatter can do.

Interesting choices for Echo Cast include:

• Mystic’s Arc – As a multi-target spell that electrifies blood, you can deal decent damage during your turn (especially with Ashen’s Bright Spark) and then enemies will try to avoid the targeted tiles during their turn, but probably won’t be smart enough to avoid the blood (which will electrify again for base damage).
• Fanger’s Fang – Create a Fang, Bash someone into it, the Fang pops. Enemies will avoid the tile because it’ll deal damage, so you get to create another Fang there before your next turn comes around, letting you trigger it again.
• Fanger’s Caltrops – Especially with Fanger’s Sharpener passive, you can create a swathe of damaging difficult terrain this turn, deal additional damage if any enemies move into it before your next turn, and then inflict Bleed on any enemies who move into it on following turns. Invest in Geo Adept for even more damage.
• Melder’s Soilshift – Combined with Titan’s Brute passive, you can deal up to 6 damage to a large chunk of enemies on the initial cast, and then move them all out of position (and possibly clumping them up) at the end of their turn, which lets you Soilshift them all into each other again. In my initial testing, enemies don’t seem to particularly avoid the area of this delayed spell, probably because it doesn’t deal any “real” damage.
• Melder’s Growth – Your initial cast can only target an unoccupied tile, but the delayed cast will still complete and trigger the aoe heal. You still only have one Growth effect in the tile, though.
• Ashen’s Flamelash – Any enemies you target with the initial cast will try their best to move out of the way, meaning you’ll create fire on the tiles they left behind when you cast it after the delay.
• Marshal’s Rally! – You can double up on all the normal synergies for twice the HP / MP restored.
• Mancer’s Bless – cast Bless on an ally that hasn’t acted (or yourself), move the ally somewhere else, and then move a second ally into the original target tile and you’ll end up affecting two allies per turn.
• Eidolith’s Fade – cast Fade on an ally that hasn’t acted (or yourself), move the ally somewhere else, and then move a second ally into the original target tile and you’ll end up affecting two allies per turn. Combine this with Stealth Sense and you can get some extra Str/Mag buffs out.
• Crysolith’s Deep Frost – As an aoe 1, you can get this to go off twice on a Blind enemy, or someone whose Move has already been lowered. Then, since it inflicts -1 Move, the delayed cast helps set up even delayed effects that only target a single tile. If you were to, for some reason, give everyone in your party Deep Frost and Echo Cast, you could inflict -5 to -10 Move on a small area, completely locking down the enemies there. The only enemies safe from you are a few bosses who become immune to Move reductions for 3 turns if they end their turn with their Move reduced.
• Crysolith’s Desecrate – Since you’re dealing damage in tiles that you’re not directly targeting, the AI won’t avoid the ice tiles, making it easy to get both hits off on a lot of enemies. Just be aware that if the enemies deal physical damage to any of your allies who are adjacent to ice, they’ll take damage from Desecrate, too.
• War Beast’s Saddle – For spells that are cast adjacent to you (like Melder’s Soilshift or Mancer’s Flare), the delayed area moves when you do. If you’re riding your wyvern, then you can cast the spell during your turn and have the wyvern move somewhere else to have the delayed effect go off in a different area.
  Class Emblem vs using the full skill suite

  Unless you want to combo Bless + Echo Cast, there’s not much reason to take skills from this set other than Echo Cast.

Unlocked with 500 XP in Mystic, 300 Xp in Melder, and 300 XP in Ashen.

• Flare – 3-5 MP – Deal 4 fire damage to an adjacent target and inflict Blind in aoe 1 (including you).
• Void Beam – 5 MP – Delayed – Deal 6 fire damage in a line up to 4-6 tiles long. The final tile of the beam blinds for 2 turns. Tiles adjacent to the beam are pushed away from the beam. If you are moved, the beam location moves with you.
• Null Void – 3 MP – Dispel all status effects and terrain effects and inflict -2 Mag for 3 turns in an aoe 1. Range 2 – 4.
• Fade – 3 MP – Make an ally in range 1 – 3 invisible for 1 turn.
• Projection – 7 MP – Create an illusory duplicate of yourself with no armor / accessories, -5 max HP / MP, and -2 Str/Mag that lasts for 3 turns. It doesn’t get to act the turn it was created, and cannot be healed. Range 1-3. If you have enough max MP, your Projection can also cast Projection.

• Counter Fade – When hit by a melee weapon, cast Fade on yourself.
• Inner Eye – Blind lasts 1 turn longer on you. Deal +20% damage while Blind. Deal +20% damage against Blind targets.
• Absorb Aura – At the end of your turn, steal 1 MP from adjacent enemies.

• Focus – +X max MP.
• Blaze / Ruin Adept – +X damage with Fire/Lightning or Ice/Ruin magic.
• Stealth Sense – Gain +1 Str and Mag per rank while invisible and for 1 turn after. If you have any ranks in this, you can see the vision ranges of enemies within 6 tiles when you press the ‘Highlight All’ button.

Flare is another way to apply Blind, if you’re fine getting up into someone’s face and blinding yourself, too.

It’s hard to get damage out of Void Beam (a little easier than single-tile delayed skills, but much harder than true aoes, since enemies can just step to the side to avoid the damage), but since it’s fire damage you also leave behind a trail of fire to gum up the battlefield. Additionally, you can use this to interact with certain semi-secret areas.

Null Void is the only aoe dispel you have access to.

Fade lets you turn a target invisible for a turn. It’s not the best way to protect an ally from damage, since area effects can still target them accidentally, but it’s decent.

Projection creates a weaker copy of yourself without your armor and accessories, but with all of your skills. Meaning that your Projection can create a Projection of itself, and so on, until the weakest Projections don’t have enough max MP to do it again. That degeneracy is limited to an extent by the fact that Projections don’t get to act on their first turn, and the skill itself has a 3 turn cooldown.

Flare inflicts Blind on yourself, so you can either wear an accessory to make you immune to Blind, or lean into it and use the Inner Eye passive and an accessory to increase your Mag while blind to buff your damage.

Normally, when talking about delayed spells, the discussion revolves around how to limit the enemy’s mobility to keep them in the area. With Projections and Void Beam, though, you can instead just focus on filling the entire battlefield with delayed spells, leaving no safe area for enemies to stand and causing complete chaos. [Further research needed] I don’t know what order delayed abilities go off in. Is it in the order that you used the abilities during your turn, or the reverse? If you go with this strategy, it may be helpful to figure that out so that you can try for tricky plays like having both Zavarde and Remir cast Void Beam such that the first cast pushes the second character so that their cast gets moved to target an enemy that thought they were safely standing next to Void Beam’s damaging tiles. This is probably overly complicated, but the complete insanity of a Void Beam party could be fun for a little while.

Absorb Aura + Meditation lets you get more MP back per turn.

Counter Fade is the easiest way to trigger invisibility on yourself to activate the Str / Mag buff from Stealth Sense.

All of the immobilizing strategies discussed before are helpful for landing Void Beam’s main damage.

Null Void is good for removing enemy buffs, and has little negative effect on allies who simply don’t use their Mag score. Additionally, there are accessories that increase your Str while your Mag is lowered.

While your Projections have less Str and Mag, certain forms of damage (like push damage, or Bright Spark) aren’t impacted at all. If you focus on one or more of those, you can create high damage-dealing copies to gum up the battlefield. Additionally, Projections count as allies to help buff the damage of a Chisel’s Shatter skill.

Projection is a great skill for anyone to pick up, basically regardless of what else their kit is, as long as they can afford the MP cost.

If you’re going to be using Void Beam, you might as well also pick up Projection (so that you can have at least twice as many Void Beams per turn), so you’ll want the full skill set for that.

Unlocked with 500 XP in Mystic and 400 XP in Ashen.

• Ice Lance – 4 MP – Deal 3 ice damage and push 1 in a 3×1 wide line adjacent to you or a range 2-4 line.
• Deep Frost – 4 MP – Deal 2 ice damage and inflict -1 Move for 1 turn in an aoe 1. Range 2-4.
• Dark Ice – 5 MP – Delay – Deal 7 ice damage and freeze the tile solid for 3 turns. Range 3-5.
• Desecrate – 3 MP – Deal 4 ice / ruin damage. If the tile already has blood or ice, also deal that damage to all tiles with contiguous blood and ice. Range 1-3.
• Despair – 2 MP – Dispel all status effects and terrain effects on a tile in range 3. Deal 2 ruin + 1-3 ruin damage per dispelled effect.

• Cold Focus – While standing on ice, reduce all MP costs by 1. At the end of your turn, gain +3 MP per frozen creature.
• Fell Shards – If the primary target of your weapon attack is on ice, deal 1 ice damage to adjacent enemies and 1 ruin damage to the target.
• Verglas – At the start of combat, gain Negate for 2 turns, and negate status isn’t removed when you would take only 1 or 2 damage.

• Focus – +X max MP.
• Ruin Adept – +X ice / ruin damage with magic.
• Meditation – Gain +X more MP each time you recover MP.

Ice Lance lets you deal damage, create ice, and push enemies all at the same time. I am unclear about how the game calculates how many tiles of push damage are dealt when enemies pushed along ice collide with an obstacle / character, but it’ll happen a lot when you use the long line.

Deep Frost is a non-delay aoe spell that reduces enemy Move, making it great for just tossing out damage and for setting up delayed spells.

Dark Ice is a single-target delayed spell that deals damage and freezes a target. Frozen targets only take fire / ruin damage, so be prepared for that if you’re interested in hurting the target while its frozen.

Desecrate deals good damage along all contiguous blood / ice, allowing you to hurt a lot of enemies all at once. Probably some allies too, but does it really count as friendly fire if only ice is involved?

Despair is your damaging dispel.

Ice Lance with Titan’s Brute can potentially stack up the damage.

As stated above, Deep Frost + Echo Cast, or even just everyone tossing out Deep Frost, can permanently immobilize enemies in an aoe 1.

Dark Ice needs the same considerations as Knight’s Bide and Marksman’s Snipe to get off, but once you do you can either ignore the target for 3 turns or toss ruin damage at the icicle until it dies. Toss Doom (or poison from Chisel’s Venom passive) on the target you’re putting on ice and they might just die before thawing out without any further attention from you.

Desecrate works well if you can flood the field with blood (such as from a Marksman’s Ricochet + Shrapnel) and/or ice (such as with Ice Lance, Deep Frost, or Gatekeeper’s Gate: Blizzard). You can then keep Desecrating the same patch of ice every turn (even better with Echo Cast) to take down a swarm of enemies.

Much like Mystic’s Absorb, Despair can be used at the end of your turn to remove Fragile from bosses who become immune to it if they end their turn with the status, so that you can keep reapplying Fragile with your first attack each turn.

Ice Lance and Deep Frost are great bread-and-butter skills, with Desecrate and Despair being good conditional skills if you take the whole skill set. If you have a Gatekeeper in the party tossing out Gate: Blizzards, you might want to just grab Desecrate to keep up a steady stream of aoe damage.

In the few cases where you want to use Despair to strip off enemy statuses before their turn starts, that skill is also a good pick for a class emblem slot.

Unlocked with 500 XP in Mystic and 400 XP in Ashen.

• Gate: Anchor – 1 MP – Teleport to the target at the end of your turn. Doesn’t cost an action. Can’t be used after acting. Range 2-4.
• Gate: Stalactites – 5 MP – Deal 2 physical damage in an aoe 1, and create Spikes in the center tile. Range 2-4.
• Gate: Pyre – 6 MP – Create a Pyreclot that deals 1 fire damage to adjacent tiles. After a Delay, deals 9 fire damage in 2 tiles. Range 2-4. Dealing ice damage to a Pyreclot disables its second explosion.
• Gate: Blizzard – 6 MP – Delayed – Deal 7 ice damage in an aoe 2. Range 2-4.
• Gate: Lightning – 5 MP – Delayed – Deal 6 lightning damage in two aoe 1 areas that are adjacent to each other. Deal +6 lightning damage if the target is adjacent to at least 2 tiles in the area of effect. Range 2-4 for the first aoe. The second aoe must be exactly 3 tiles away from the first.

• Massacre – Your magic deals +10% damage per enemy ajdacent to the target.
• Antipode – During your turn, melting Ice deals fire damage equal to your Blaze + Ruin Adept, and you can melt Ice with lightning damage.
• Element Master – Gain +Mag equal to half your lowest Blaze / Geo / Ruin Adept skill rounded up.
• Gate Hand – You can interact with objects far away from you, even during combat.

• Focus – +X max MP.
• Blaze / Geo / Ruin Adept – +X Fire/Lightning, physical, or Ice/Ruin damage with magic.
• Channeler – Gain +X Str and Mag while preparing a delayed ability and for 1 turn after.
• Meditation – Gain +X more MP each time you recover MP.

Gate: Anchor lets you select a tile to teleport back to before moving forward and tossing out a spell (or any other action, really), and is great for staying aggressive while standing completely outside of enemy threat ranges.

Gate: Stalactites deals physical damage in an aoe 1, but its definitely not the main draw of the Gatekeeper. Gate: Stalactites plays the role of non-delayed damage in a tightly controlled area. Gate: Pyre is your other source of non-delayed damage, but it deals more damage after a delay in a wider area – and spread fire over the whole aoe 2 for good measure.

Gate: Blizzard is the easiest to trap enemies in, since it’s an aoe 2 (and doesn’t require an unoccupied space the way Gate: Pyre does), while Gate: Lightning is going to be your big damage dealer since it deals double damage to enemies who aren’t in the exterior tiles of the two aoe 1 templates.

Gate: Anchor is great for everything *except* letting you end your turn by healing on a Melder’s Growth. In my testing, I tossed an anchor on Growth A, then ended my turn on Growth B. Somehow, when my turn ended, I didn’t receive healing from either Growth.

Gate: Pyre is great at flooding an area with flames to let you get off a strong Ashen’s Extinguish on your next turn. With Ashen’s Fireburst passive and a non-delayed lightning spell like Mystic’s Arc, you can also explode a lot of fire tiles for extra damage. If you Arc all 4 tiles surrounding a target, you’ll deal 12 damage (or more if Fireburst scales off of Blaze Adept).

Gate: Blizzard is great for creating a wide swathe of ice for Crysolith’s Desecrate, or so that you can melt the ice with non-delayed fire/lightning for extra damage with Antipode (if all of the ice is also bloody, lightning damage will chain across all the blood and melt the ice to deal a good chunk of damage to lots of targets).

With liberal use of pushes (and ice, to facilitate the pushing) to force enemies together, or terrain hazards to make enemies bunch themselves up, you can get extra damage out of the Massacre passive.

Element Master looks like a good source of damage, but the game isn’t long enough to give you the XP necessary to invest in more than 1 rank of all three of Blaze / Geo / Ruin Adept (that costs 24 stars, when you could instead save yourself a passive and invest all those stars in a single Adept skill for the same damage, or in MP to be able to afford Ashen’s Burning Focus passive).

You could definitely get by with just picking a one of Gate: Pyre / Blizzard / Lightning, but then you lose out on access to Gate: Anchor. And having access to all three of the powerful elemental gates lets you use the right one for each situation. For anyone not focusing on expensive elemental aoe spells, Gate: Anchor is a great pick for a hit and run playstyle.

• Shove – 0 MP – Push 1 on a target in 1-2 tiles, then move forward 1 tile.
• Drag – 0 MP – Pull 1 on a target in 1-2 tiles, moving backwards.
• Saddle – 0 MP – Pick up an adjacent ally, causing them to mount you. If you are already mounted, instead drop the mounted ally in a space adjacent to you.
• Chomp – 3 MP – Deal 75-125% damage and inflict -1 Str / Move for 2 turns. Range 1.
• Dash – 4 MP – Move 1-2 tiles. This doesn’t consume an action.

• Cavalry – While you have a rider, take -25% damage.
• Free Spirit – While you have no rider, gain +1 Str / Mag.
• Combat Supplies – At the end of your turn, recover 1 MP. When you are KO’d, your rider gains half your MP and Negate for 3 turns.
• Treader – Take no damage from walking on Fire or Spikes, and your Move and Jump cannot be reduced.

• Endurance – +X max HP.
• Focus – +X max MP.
• Regeneration – Whenever you are healed, you recover an additional +X HP.
• Clever – Unlocks the Knight and Mystic classes. You do not qualify to unlock any other classes even if you meet the XP requirements. Knight and Mystic skills and passives cost +50% XP.

Shove, Drag, and Saddle all let you maneuver an ally without damaging them. Shove and Drag can also be used to reposition enemies, and the loss of damage isn’t particularly important since, without Free Spirit and Knight’s Brave, your wyvern just won’t deal much damage with attacks in the first place.

Dash can serve to help a wyvern get in position better, particularly if you’re using Chomp to further immobilize and enemy and don’t want to end your turn in threat range.

With Treader, you can safely walk across fire / spikes to open up paths for the rest of your party.

Cavalry makes you a better tank. Since your rider can’t be targeted by enemies, this is really good for keeping a squishy character alive. Additionally, with Combat Supplies you can prepare for a tactical demise for your wyvern to restore the rider’s MP and further protect them from the first damage source they take.

Free Spirit is mediocre, and doesn’t work when you’re tanking for an ally. However, if you combine it with Knight’s Brave or Mystic’s Draw Power / Warmage passives, you might be able to turn your wyvern into a decent damage dealer.

Knight’s Counter / Opportunist / Stoic are weaker on your wyvern than anyone else, given the lack of weapons and limited class choices. Without weapons or augments, Counter deals a grand total of 1 damage (brought up to 2 with Counter + Opportunist + Free Spirit). Brave helps a little here, but not much.

Mystic’s Draw Power / Warmage / Leylines, at least, are as effective at increasing your wyvern’s offense as they are for your bipeds. Leylines has the special mention of letting you keep Fortification longer, which helps you tank better (combined with Cavalry, Fortification reduces the damage you take by about 63%).

Since your wyvern can’t use class emblems and only has access to 3 skill sets, this section is different than for other classes.

War Beast + Knight gives you Shove/Drag/Saddle for repositioning allies, and adds Bash for moving enemies. You also have Brave for buffing your physical damage dealers. Charge, Bide, and Ready are mostly wasted with your wyvern’s low damage output.

War Beast + Mystic gives you Shove/Drag/Saddle for repositioning allies, and adds Burst for some (conditional) enemy repositioning. Bloodspike is probably the highest damage your wyvern will get access to. Arc is helpful for mopping up all the Wisp Nodes you’ll run into. Absorb is great here as support for un-Blinding an ally (or removing that boss’s Fragile to keep them from becoming immune).

Knight + Mystic gives you Bash / Burst for repositioning, and since your damage is low enough already, it shouldn’t hurt your allies too much when you use it on them – however, you lose the usefulness of pulling allies away from enemies. In exchange, you get both Brave and Absorb for full-on utility.