WarTales Strategy Guide & Tips: Valor, Positioning, Crafting & More

The life of a mercenary in WarTales is tough and filled with dangers from hostile bandits, packs of territorial animals, and roaming champions. The best chance to survive the worst of surprises, the company ought to be prepared with tactics and safeguards for any situation. Heed these nuggets of wisdom with our WarTales tips and you should find success in your campaigns.

 

Actively Explore

It’s a wide, open, scary unknown world in WarTales with the map shrouded in darkness, almost tempting any budding mercenary company to disband. The only way to counter such a fear is to embrace the unknown and move into undiscovered areas to create a habit of curiosity and ambition.

There are also practical strategic benefits to exploring as much as possible, such as finding loot or locations that can lead to further treasures, secrets, and quests. In addition, the act of exploring the world builds the party’s Knowledge meter, which accumulates points that can be spent on learning new crafting recipes or augmenting the company’s strategic and tactical skills.

 

Assign Professions

In the early stages of a campaign, individual companions really only have tactical utility, but as the company explores the world, they’ll find activities and items that will inevitably unlock professions. These professions let the character in question perform activities, such as forge items, prepare potions, or even fish. Professions essentially strengthen the company’s strategic flexibility and resource gathering, as well as giving small stat boosts that will certainly help in combat.

 

Actively Craft

The three primary crafting professions are the Smith, Herbalist, and Tinker. As characters utilize their profession more often, they’ll gain experience levels in said profession and will be able to create even better items. Moreover, crafting is an efficient way of utilizing any loot gained from roaming the land since raw resources, such as wood and iron ore, can take up most of the party’s carrying capacity and inventory space.

 

Engage and Pin

The player’s mercenaries will undoubtedly find themselves pulled into tactical combat against a variety of human and animal foes. Battlefield manipulation is the name of the game in WarTales and this is done primarily by engaging enemy units with friendlies.

To engage, a companion must move adjacent to a target and then perform an attack. This will engage the allied unit and the enemy, meaning that if either character tries to move away, the withdrawing entity will suffer a free attack from their opponent. This engagement mechanic can be effectively utilized to neutralize, distract, or block dangerous and irritating enemy classes, like archers or polearm users.

 

Use Valor Liberally

Aside from armor and hit points, in tactical combat the party’s most important resource is Valor – a currency used for activating special abilities. Valor is gained by resting at an inn or camping in the wilderness while campaigning. The most impactful abilities can only be performed when expending Valor, so it’ll be necessary to utilize this resource against deadlier opponents, such as champions or swarms of bandits.

 

Use Run to Disengage

One of the most useful Valor abilities is the Run skill available to the Ranger and Archer classes. This skill gives the character a short free move on top of the standard movement action, which also allows them to move through entities and away from an engagement. More importantly, the Run skill doesn’t incur an opportunity attack as it doesn’t count as a dedicated disengage move, letting the character in question escape a disadvantageous position.

 

Be Wary of Positioning

Precise positioning is a vital component to success in WarTales’ combat, as it could mean opening up an enemy weak point for a decisive attack or leaving your own characters vulnerable and overwhelmed with no option of retreat. Some character classes, like the Ranger, have abilities that gain additional effects based on their position in relation to an enemy entity. There are a number of area-of-effect attacks and skills that can affect both friendlies and opponents if players aren’t careful in their spacing and battlefield formation.

 

Surround Enemies

One of the most useful effects from supportive positioning is the ability to surround enemy units. To surround a particular enemy unit, players will need to deploy at least three friendlies adjacent to the target.

A surrounded enemy will suffer additional damage based on the number of units adjacent to it. Surrounding can be a useful tactic when dealing with isolated and tough enemy units, such as champions or heavily armored footmen. Be careful when surrounding polearm enemies as they likely have area-of-effect attacks that can easily make your company regret closing in.

 

Gain Bravery

While unused Valor carries over from battle to battle, players have a way of refilling their tactical Valor resource by gaining Bravery, which is essentially a temporary resource that can be used for character special abilities.

When companions reach their first level up, the first skill they will gain is some kind of positional ability that generates Bravery. Utilizing these Bravery production skills will ensure the Valor bar is filled and leaving the company’s tactical options open and flexible.

 

Use In-battle Items

When players spawn into combat, there’s a chance that the battlefield may be littered with usable items, for example throwing spears. Anyone can use these items as long as a character advances to the designated area.

Using these random in-battle items count as a free action, meaning a companion can move, use the item, move again, and then perform another action. These freebie items aren’t critical to success, but they can certainly be useful in weakening the enemy’s position and give the player’s mercenaries more action per turn, which is almost always beneficial.

WarTales is available on PC.

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