The Valiant Beginner’s Tips: Flanking, Heroes, Abilities & More

The Valiant beginner's guide
The Valiant beginner's guide

The Valiant has quite an intense and fast-paced combat system that’ll definitely keep you on your toes. This is especially true on harder difficulties, in competitive multiplayer, or when trying to complete challenge playthroughs the demand for high levels of skill can be quite overwhelming. We’ve put together a list of helpful tactics and pointers to get you started in your career as a Medieval knight.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to succeed in the world of The Valiant.

 

Specialize Your Heroes

Heroes and their retinue are the cornerstones of your warband. Not only do they have the most powerful abilities, but their units are on average far more survivable and devastating than the basic mercenary units you’ll use to fill out your ranks. Throughout the campaign, you’ll recruit an eclectic cast of heroes and units, each with their own strengths, weaknesses, and abilities.

Because your force will only ever be composed of a handful of units, it’s wise to specialize your heroes for particular tasks and tactical roles. The skill point system and equipment rewards are the best way you can customize your heroes and their squads to ensure your warband performs like a well-oiled machine.

 

Set Formations

Matching the right units to optimally deal with the enemy is a critical component to dealing with each tactical challenge in The Valiant, so a prepared formation can help lay the groundwork for effective matchups. You can set a formation by first selecting all the units you want to be grouped together and then right-clicking and dragging the mouse forward until you see a formation silhouette that suits your needs. Ideally, swordsmen, axemen, and other heavy infantry are best suited for the front ranks, while cavalry, light, and ranged infantry are best in reserve and available for maneuvering.

 

Explore for Loot

In every mission, you’ll be able to find secrets, equipment, and loot scattered all across the map. These can be single-use items, equippable items for mission preparation, resources for recruiting units or even building structures. Cavalry and lighter infantry such as spearmen are excellent units for scouting the battlefield and finding these items.

 

Archers Pin The Enemy

When coming into every combat encounter, it’s in your best interest to engage the enemy on your terms, meaning you’re moving your troops into the best possible positions and targeting the enemy’s squishiest units. One of the best ways to keep the enemy pinned is to lead with a volley of archers, an ability that can slow or immobilize units in an area. This way you can break up an enemy formation and take it down piecemeal.

 

Lead With Hero Units

Since your heroes are the most powerful units of your warband, they can essentially act as the spearhead of your fighting force, while the mercenaries fill in any gaps. So when a skirmish inevitably starts, your heroes can lead the way and focus the enemy’s attention on them. You can be certain that your hero squads can withstand enemy shock attacks quite effectively and buy you enough time to maneuver the rest of your troops for the killing blow.

 

Charge at the Enemy

The Valiant includes a charge mechanic where units will rush at a target when they reach a certain distance and if you’ve actively clicked on the target. Once a charging unit connects with its target, it’ll inflict a significant amount of bonus damage to the charged unit.

Judging the distance at which the unit will charge is the tricky part, as if you give an allied unit an attack order that’s too close or there’s another unit in the way, the ordered unit won’t engage its charge animation. As such, leave at least some space between your units for them to maneuver, and giving attack commands from a fair distance will set you up for maximum damage and flexibility.

 

Use Abilities

The Valiant’s combat is quite ability-centric, where each unit, hero and mercenary alike can have powerful battlefield abilities that can change the balance of an engagement. For example, swordsmen have a shield bash ability that knocks down nearby opponents, which leaves the knocked-over unit open to bonus damage. Most units have such impactful abilities, so we recommend you learn what they do, and how they work, and utilize them at critical moments in a combat engagement.

 

Keep Fortitude High

All units have a stat bar under their unit icon with two main indicators: a white one for Fortitude and a blue, yellow, red, or purple one (depending on unit allegiance) that indicates hit points. Fortitude is essentially a stat that represents a mix of stamina and morale and all damage that unit suffers will first go to its Fortitude and only then to its actual hit points. By keeping Fortitude high, you ensure your units effectively avoid all critical damage that may take out unit models, which will in turn reduce damage output.

Some heroes have abilities to restore Fortitude during battle, be it an immediate flat buff or a general damage reduction while in combat in an area. Other ways to restore Fortitude involve capturing encampments between engagements that can restore not only Fortitude, but also hit points and even act as a place to recruit wholly new units if you lost any previously.

 

Cycle Units

Speaking of keeping Fortitude high, cycling units out of combat can be a neat tactic for keeping your units fresh. However, this approach only works if you have reserve units available to relieve embattled ones as if you simply try to move out of combat or unless the unit is cavalry, the AI will pursue and cause additional damage without retaliation from your withdrawing forces.

 

Flank With Cavalry and Spearmen

Cavalry, spearmen, and other mobile or light units are some of the best units for hitting the vulnerable parts of an enemy formation. In particular, Spearmen are an interesting unit, as they have a unique Discipline stat that denotes their damage output and it decreases over time when they’re engaged in combat. This makes them an ideal shock attack unit that quickly charges in, clears the enemy out, then repositions and prepares for the next strike.

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