In The Thaumaturge players will, regardless of how they explore and investigate, sometimes have no choice but to fight. When this happens, players will need to take advantage of status effects and the abilities of Wiktor and his Salutors to succeed. Many such abilities will either inflict damage or reduce the enemy's focus.
Dealing damage is necessary to end a fight in The Thaumaturge, but draining an enemy's focus can prevent them from attacking and open them up for devastating attacks. This means that players will need to choose carefully and balance damage dealing with focus draining if they hope to succeed. The ability to reduce enemy focus is granted during the game's second tutorial battle, after Wiktor has restored his connection with the Salutor "Upyr."
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How to Reduce Enemy Focus
After regaining Upyr's power, Wiktor can use the "Diversion" ability to reduce an enemy's focus by 1. Upyr itself can use the "Liberum Veto" ability to reduce an enemy's focus too, while also removing negative status effects from Wiktor. These will serve as the initial means for players to reduce enemy focus, though they won't be enough on their own when enemies start getting tougher. The "Thief of Thought" upgrade from the Deed section of the skill tree will allow any ability equipped with it to reduce focus by 1 if the target has the "suffering" status effect. This is an excellent way of stacking up focus reduction if equipped to "Diversion", and pairs well with Wiktor's second Salutor: "Bukavac." Later on, other Salutors (like Lelek) will provide more powerful ways of manipulating focus.
How to Exploit Breakdown
After an enemy's focus is reduced to zero they will suffer the "Breakdown" status. While an enemy is suffering from breakdown they cannot take any actions and can be targeted using Strong Attacks. Strong Attacks deal a ton of damage and, in many cases, also have powerful secondary effects. For example, Upyr's Strong Attack will heal Wiktor for half of the health he is currently missing, while Bukavac's Strong Attack will inflict the suffering status on all enemies. Both Wiktor and his active Salutor can use one Strong Attack during the turn an enemy is suffering from breakdown so this can be used to focus down a single target.
How to Avoid Getting Your Focus Broken
Players will notice that Wiktor has his own Focus points, which can be drained by enemy attacks and inflict the Breakdown effect on him when they run out. To mitigate this, players will need to make good use of Wiktor and his Salutor's abilities to either end the fight quickly, prevent the enemy from attacking, and/or restore Focus using abilities capable of doing so. An early upgrade from the Mind section of the skill tree, "Relaxation," will restore 3 focus whenever Wiktor uses the ability it is attached to. This can be handy for reducing the impact of focus-reducing attacks from enemies in longer fights. Players can also use upgrades like "Fortune" and "Lucky Chance" to interrupt or slow enemy actions, helping Wiktor to reduce the damage dealt to his health and focus during the fight.
The Thaumaturge
- Platform(s)
- PC
- Released
- March 4, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Fool's Theory
- Publisher(s)
- 11 Bit Studios
- Genre(s)
- Adventure , RPG
