Blades of Fire might look all fuzzy and gooey with its lush environments and designs, but make no mistake: this is not exactly an easy game. You’ll come to terms with the combat system quite quickly as you play, but here are a few beginner tips to help you get started in Blades of Fire.
Repair Your Weapons Wisely
This is one of the tougher lessons I had to learn early on in Blades of Fire. When your weapon durability goes down, you just repair it. Makes sense, right? Except you only get a limited number of repairs in Blades of Fire. This means that you should ideally wait till your weapon durability is almost depleted before repairing, allowing you to get the most bang for your buck, so to speak.
The good news is that you can increase the number of repairs, which brings me to my next point…
Always Go For More Stars While Forging
If you want to get more repairs on a weapon, you need to make sure the quality of said weapon is up to snuff. To do that, you’ll need to get good at the forging mini-game. After you’ve picked all your materials, you’ll hammer the weapon into shape. The goal here is to get all of the bars in line with the weapon outline, which is harder than it sounds.
Each time you strike the weapon, the heat spreads and may cause some bars to go out of shape. You can preview the heating spreads though, and even angle your hammer to try to strike it more efficiently. You only have a limited number of strikes, but for every good strike, you gain progress towards your next star. If you’re able to progress to the next star, you get a few more strikes to play around with.
It’ll take a while to get used to this system, but just keep at it and it’ll get easier.
Experiment With Weapon Types and Stances
Blades of Fire really wants you to pay attention to the kinds of enemies you’re fighting and the weapons you use. For instance, if you encounter a skeleton, you wouldn’t want to use slashing damage against it; you’d opt for blunt damage instead. Similarly, if you encounter an elemental, you might want to consider slashing or piercing damage.
When you lock onto an enemy, their outline will be green, orange, or red. Here’s what they mean:
| Outline Color | Effect |
|---|---|
| Green | Enemies will take 100% damage. |
| Orange | Enemies will only take a portion of damage dealt from your weapon. |
| Red | Enemies will take no damage at all. |
Don’t forget that some weapons can utilize multiple damage types too. Swords can deal both slashing and piercing damage, depending on what stance you’re in. The same goes for spears. I’d recommend having a sword, polearm, and spear on you when you’re just starting out. This gives you access to all three damage types, so you should be able to deal with most enemy types that come your way.
Don’t Be Afraid to Run From Bosses
You’ll encounter a lot of mini-bosses in Blades of Fire as you explore the open-world. Some of them will be too tough for your current level, and that’s intentional. For instance, while the Troll that shows up pretty early on can be taken down quite easily, you may not necessarily have the tools you need to actually finish it off. It’s totally viable to just stun a boss and run past it if you need to.
There are exceptions, of course. The Warmongers are almost always holding on to keys that you need in order to progress. For those guys, you’ll need to actually defeat them for the key.
Oh, and bosses don’t respawn in Blades of Fire even when you rest at an anvil. The rest of the guys do, though.
Always Be Forging
Forging is the name of the game in Blades of Fire. Considering that it’s almost impossible to craft high quality weapons near the start, it may actually be a good idea to forge as many weapons as you can, across the different weapon types. This is a good chance for you to get used to the forging mini-game, and also get acquainted with the different materials you can use for different parts of the weapon.
The customization is pretty insane. You get to choose the types of woods and metals, and even the pommels, length of the blade, the hilt, and more. Everything has some sort of gameplay effect on your weapon too, like the parry/block efficiency, movement speed, and damage dealt.
If this ever gets too overwhelming, you can just let the game pick the best options for you. But in my view, unlocking new materials and using them in forging is one of the most exciting parts of Blades of Fire.
Talk to Adso
Finally, don’t forget to talk to your boy companion Adso every now and then. You can do this by holding the R1 button when looking at him. Adso may be bland and annoying, but he’s also a treasure trove of useful information.
He takes notes on the enemies you face and the locations you visit, and he can also remind you of important tidbits you might’ve forgotten along the way. You can also send him back to camp if you want, but by and large I didn’t mind having him around and he can be really helpful in guiding you to your next objective when you get lost. And that happens a lot.
