Lords of the Fallen

Alright, let's talk about magic in Lords of the Fallen! You've got three distinct schools to play with: Brawler, Deception, and Solace. Each one totally changes how you'll approach combat, and even your basic starting spell, Prayer, does something a little different depending on which school you pick.

Think of it this way: Brawler is all about hitting hard and fast, Deception is about tricking your enemies and striking from the shadows, and Solace is your go-to for staying alive and controlling the battlefield.

Here's the lowdown on each school, straight from the game itself:

Brawling

This is your brute force magic. You're looking to overwhelm your enemies with sheer power and some seriously hefty spells. It's all about getting in their faces and dishing out pain.

• Prayer: This spell summons a clone that distracts enemies, giving you breathing room. Plus, it'll slowly heal you up over time.
• Rage: Cast this to get a buff that boosts your damage, attack power, and removes those annoying energy restrictions for a bit.
• Quake: Your big hitter! This spell calls down a giant hammer to smash your enemies. It's pure chaos and destruction.
• Ram: A powerful charging attack that not only damages enemies but can also stagger them or even knock them right down.

Deception

If you're more into outsmarting your opponents and landing devastating blows when they least expect it, Deception is your jam. It's all about misdirection and critical hits.

• Prayer: Like the Brawler's Prayer, this summons a distracting clone, but it also speeds up your energy recovery.
• Shift: This spell lets you dip into a shadow dimension. While you're in there, your attacks are super powerful, but you'll pop back out into view after you strike.
• Stab: A supernatural assassin spell that targets an enemy and rushes them down for some serious damage, or even a swift kill.
• Mimic: This one follows you around, copying your moves. Whatever damage you deal, it repeats, essentially doubling your offensive output for a short time.

Solace

Solace magic is all about defense and control. If you prefer to stay safe, heal up, and debuff your enemies, this is the school for you. It's taught by scholars and focuses on keeping you protected.

• Prayer: This version of Prayer summons a clone to draw aggro and boosts your magic recovery.
• Shelter: Cast this for a powerful defensive shell that massively increases all your defenses and even reflects incoming damage back at attackers.
• Daze: A potent spell that inflicts fear on enemies, slowing them down and weakening their defenses. Great for crowd control.
• Punishment: This is a reactive spell. Enemy attacks against you will be avenged by stunning the attacker. It's a real 'eye for an eye' kind of deal.

When you initially create your character in Lords of the Fallen, you select one of three classes. This choice impacts your starting gear and base attributes, offering a hint towards a preferred playstyle. However, after about an hour of gameplay, you can spend experience points (XP) to develop your character into any class you desire. All three starting armor sets are obtainable before exiting the tutorial area, allowing you to switch your intended class early on.

Cleric

The Cleric class begins with bonuses to Vitality and Faith. Their focus is on gauntlets, magic abilities, and magic-imbued melee attacks using socketed runes. Specializing in the Solace Tree grants abilities like Shelter, which offers significant protection and reflects damage, ideal for a caster. Clerics are relatively easy to use, and their gauntlet can become very powerful when Faith is leveled high. This is considered a medium difficulty class.

There are three types of Cleric, based on the magic school selected:

• Executioner = Cleric + Deception Magic
• Cleric = Cleric + Solace Magic
• Brawler = Cleric + Brawling Magic

Rogue

Rogues focus on Endurance and Agility. This class utilizes light armor, dual-wielding smaller weapons, and hit-and-run tactics with combo attacks for high damage in short bursts. Their lighter armor allows for quick movement, but they take more damage from enemy attacks. Rogues are tricky to play and the most difficult class to master due to their lower armor rating, requiring players to rely on skill-based dodging.

There are three types of Rogue, based on the magic school selected:

• Rogue = Rogue + Deception Magic
• Ranger = Rogue + Solace Magic
• Outlaw = Rogue + Brawling Magic

Warrior

Warriors prioritize Strength and Vitality. The Strength attribute boosts melee damage and allows for heavier armor loads. With a focus on damage-dealing melee attacks and heavy armor, they function as walking tanks. This is the easiest playstyle in Lords of the Fallen and is recommended for beginners.

There are three types of Warrior, based on the magic school selected:

• Raider = Warrior + Deception Magic
• Paladin = Warrior + Solace Magic
• Warrior = Warrior + Brawling Magic

Attributes

There are six key attributes you can invest points into while leveling Harkyn, each with its own benefits. Investing in the right attributes significantly increases your chances of survival and complements your chosen class.

• Strength - Increases physical damage with Strength-based weapons and slightly increases the amount of gear you can carry. Favored by warriors.
• Vitality - Increases Harkyn's base health and slightly improves the effectiveness of healing potions.
• Faith - Increases damage with Faith-based weapons, and increases Harkyn's mana pool for more magical and gauntlet abilities before needing to recharge. Favored by Clerics, but also good for ranged damage.
• Endurance - Increases Harkyn's Stamina, allowing for more attacks before needing a break. Also increases the amount of gear you can carry.
• Agility - Increases damage with Agility-based weapons and slightly increases Harkyn's Stamina pool for more attacks before recharging. Used almost exclusively by Rogues.
• Luck - Increases the chance of equipment dropping from enemies and the chance of unlocking higher-level items when unlocking sealed runes at Crafter Anvils.

Starting Attributes

Each class and sub-class has unique starting attributes, varying numbers of potions, and different extra consumables. Any sub-class with a Solace Magic specialization starts with the Prayer spell unlocked.

Here is a table detailing every class, its combination, starting attributes, and starting extras:

• Raider (Warrior + Deception Magic): STR 10, VIT 12, FTH 8, END 9, AGI 9, LCK 1, 3 Potions, Ghost Merge Shard
• Paladin (Warrior + Solace Magic): STR 10, VIT 13, FTH 10, END 8, AGI 8, LCK 0, 2 Potions, Ghost Merge Shard, Prayer Spell Unlocked
• Warrior (Warrior + Brawling Magic): STR 11, VIT 14, FTH 8, END 8, AGI 8, LCK 0, 2 Potions, Ghost Merge Shard
• Executioner (Cleric + Deception Magic): STR 8, VIT 10, FTH 12, END 9, AGI 9, LCK 1, 4 Potions, Magic Energy Shard
• Cleric (Cleric + Solace Magic): STR 8, VIT 11, FTH 14, END 8, AGI 8, LCK 0, 3 Potions, Magic Energy Shard, Prayer Spell Unlocked
• Brawler (Cleric + Brawling Magic): STR 9, VIT 12, FTH 12, END 8, AGI 8, LCK 0, 3 Potions, Magic Energy Shard
• Rogue (Rogue + Deception Magic): STR 8, VIT 8, FTH 8, END 11, AGI 11, LCK 3, 5 Potions, Energy Shard
• Ranger (Rogue + Solace Magic): STR 8, VIT 8, FTH 8, END 10, AGI 12, LCK 2, 4 Potions, Energy Shard, Prayer Spell Unlocked

Alright, let's talk about getting stronger in Lords of the Fallen. Like most RPGs, you'll be earning experience points, or XP, which you can then spend to boost Harkyn's stats and even unlock new magic spells. You'll gain XP in a few ways: by taking down enemies, pushing through the main story, finishing up side-quests, finding those hidden collectibles, and just by exploring new areas for the very first time.

One cool thing the game does is reward you with an XP multiplier. Basically, the more monsters you can defeat between hitting a Checkpoint Crystal, the higher your multiplier gets. This means every enemy you kill while the multiplier is active will give you even more XP, so try to chain those kills together!

Now, about dying. It happens to the best of us, especially in Lords of the Fallen. If you die while you're carrying a good chunk of XP, don't panic! It'll be left behind on the ground where you fell, usually as a white cloud. You can absolutely go back and pick it up. Enemies will have respawned, sure, but you can fight your way back to that cloud and interact with it to get your lost XP back.

Here's a key difference from some other games: that XP cloud doesn't stick around forever. There's a timer, and it'll slowly count down until it vanishes. The catch? The speed of this countdown is actually affected by your XP multiplier when you died. So, if you died with a really high multiplier active, your XP cloud will stick around for longer, giving you more time to retrieve it.

When you finally make it to a Checkpoint Crystal, that's your chance to level up. In the levelling menu, you can spend your banked XP to either get a Spell point for new magic or an attribute point to increase one of Harkyn's core stats. Just remember, every time you invest XP, the cost for the next point goes up, so it gets progressively more expensive to level up.

Keep an eye out for Attribute Point Shards and Spell Point Shards scattered throughout the world. These let you instantly unlock a point without spending XP. However, just like spending XP, finding and using these shards will also increase the XP cost for your next level-up. Because they're rare and super useful, it's generally a good idea to save them for when Harkyn is already at a higher level. This way, you'll get the most bang for your buck out of them.