Overview
A short guide to help you play Forged of Blood
Basic Guidance
I’ve seen many reviewers post that this game is too hard or too complex to learn. I don’t agree, I think it’s easy to learn, but has lots of choices. That said, if you feel it’s too hard or too complex, I hope this brief guide will help you bypass the learning curve.
1. Melee Weapons Suck
Unless you have a ton of Mobility, Shift, and Initiative you waste too much time getting melee characters in position to do damage. This is not efficient. On top of that The overwhelming majority of enemies are melee and you’re better off killing them before they can hit you rather than running out to meet them so they can crack your skull. Don’t waste your time with melee weapons unless you want to increase the difficulty level and increase the duration of all battles.
2. Ranged Weapons Suck Less
If you must use weapons, ranged weapons are better than melee weapons
3. Longbows are the best Ranged Weapon
If you’re going to use a ranged weapon, you want one that actually has some range. The dagger has an embarrassing range of 10 (thrown) and the short bow has a better, but still not good range of 20. The longbow has a range of 40! Why does this matter beyond the obvious you can hit enemies from much farther away before they can hit you? Attacks of Opportunity. The longbow has a weapon ability called Farshot’s Vigilance which you should use every turn. Combine that with skills or magic buffs that increase Attacks of Opportunity or Number of Attacks and whenever the enemies move you will fill them full of arrows. Do have one of your magic users create a buff spell for your longbow users to buff stats, hit, and attacks and watch the arrows fly. You can’t do attacks of opportunity reliably with anything but the longbow, so stick with that.
4. Magic is “Easy Mode”, especially on High Magic setting
If you have High Magic set, I would recommend all your characters in all of your talons have magic. This will require you to farm some Magurite for all your characters, but that’s easy enough to do as there are many ways to get them in the game, but the best is when the magic beast show up on the map. If you kill them, you always get a Magurite and the bigger the beast the better the Magurite’s power.
I like this Talon configuration best
Magic
Magic Tips:
Mages focus on single target or AOE damage spells 100% of the time
Ranged start with Buff, switch to Longbow, and let the AoO killing begin!
Ranged can switch back to Magurite to Heal or Rebuff as necessary
Spells Thermal Magurite
Frost Bolt – Single Target Damage
Snowball – Medium Size AOE Damage
Blizzard – Large Size AOE Damage
Fire Bolt – Single Target Damage
Fireball – Large AOE Damage
Battle Power! – Increases Sight Range, Mobility, Damage, and Penetration
Spells Spirit Magurite
Spirit Bolt – Single Target Damage
Spirit Bomb – Large AOE Damage
Stone Skin – Damage Reduction on Target
Heal – Heals target and Heal Aura
Cure – Removes Negative Conditions from Target and Aura
God Mode – NumofAttackTargets+X, Core Stats increase +XX, to Hit +X to Target and Aura
Arcane Magurites should be replaced as soon as possible with Thermal or Spirit Magurites
Avoid spells that debuff enemies as they will make it impossible to cast damage spells on them. There’s a weird spell precedence situation that only comes into play when you cast something with duration on an enemy like a debuff. Just don’t do it. Killing them is better anyway. So focus on damage and buffs for your characters and win.
For AOE spells use Selective Casting
For Damage and Healing Spells use Ephemeral to bypass Armor and Solidify to bypass Dampen
For single effect damage use Focused then Staggered then Strengthen then Empower and Forceful to reduce saves (unless you have Unresistable Spells ability)
For multiple effect damage remove Focused and change Forceful to Accuracy (unless you have have Unresistable Spells ability)
For single effect buff spells use Focused then Strengthen then Empower, use Follow and Duration to make effects last and stay on target
For multi effect buff spells use Strengthen then Empower, use Follow and Duration to make effects last and stay on target
Additive is optional for buff spells if you want to be able to recast and have results stack. I didn’t bother because with an all magic talon enemies didn’t last long enough to worry about stacking buffs.