Combat | Hints on making a good start Sword Coast Legends Guide

Last update: 11 May 2016

Combat in Sword Coast Legends is in real time, although you can activate tactical pause to assess the situation and issue precise orders to your party members. While in this mode, you can switch between your party members, select their abilities, or potions, from the bar and get back into action in real time mode and witness the effects. Depending on the difficulty level, you can engage in friendly fire (dealing damage to your allies). On the easy difficulty level, this has been disabled completely. On the medium level, you can deal to your allies only some damage, whereas on hard level, your allies receive 100% of AoE damage, effects of curses or shots from ranged weapons. Therefore, it is important to position properly your allies and keep space between them, or from the center of the battle. Below, you can find several useful hints on how to fight combats.

Tactical pause, assessment of situation - If you do not feel like using tactical pause, play on easy difficulty level. On higher levels, it is required to use this option. And it is not because of the difficulty level, but due to the complicated nature of the fight itself. The greatest downside, of course, is friendly fire, which cannot be avoided, if you decide that AI should take the charge of using abilities and settings. Also, tactical pause is useful in the case of encounters with stronger opponents, such as bosses or mercenary groups.

Friendly fire, the enemy of your allies - The medium and the hard difficulty levels introduce friendly fire to combat. This is an inseparable element of each battle, which needs to be embraced, whether you like it or not. To avoid friendly fire, remember to position your allies right after the battle starts, within appropriate distance of each other, and from the center of the battle. While in combat, try to forward your strongest/toughest character, which makes them take on damage from all the opponents. This not only focuses the battle in one spot, but also you avoid friendly fire to the less resistant party members. While playing as the wizard, pay attention to the resistance of the forwarded character to various types of damage and curses. After you decide to cast an AoE spell, the game displays the radius of its effect. To alleviate friendly fire, try to avoid encompassing your ally with the radius and cast the spell right next to them.

Your surroundings are your ally; use it - During your exploration, you find lots of opponents. Some of them are weaker and some stronger. If you spot a troll in a narrow passage, most probably, there is no reason to worry. Yet, if there is a group of opponents there (e.g. Wilgen from the sewers, during the Making an Entrance quest) the important thing is to answer one question - Is it the best spot to fight a battle? In Wilgen's case, this is not, therefore it is a good idea to take advantage of your surroundings. Before the battle, assess the situation and find out where it is best to fight the battle. Right after the battle starts, have the entire party take a step back, towards the nearest door and deploy the Paladin, or the warrior in the passageway. They will be taking damage. The archer and the cleric should ALWAYS be behind their back. By doing this maneuver, not only do you eliminate potential threat to the less resistant characters, but also you exclude some of the opponents from the battle, because in most cases, a big group will split into two smaller ones. This tactic works with all kinds of narrow passages, doorways and dead ends.

Opponents are also resistant to damage - While obtaining new items, you often face the situation, n which items offer bonuses to resistance to damage, e.g. From damage or from lightning. If this happens, you can be sure that this works both ways. Some opponents (e.g. Rhylfang) are completely resistant to various damage (in the case of Rhylfang, it's resistance to damage from poison). If an ally happens to have a weapon of this element, damage they deal with that weapon is naught. This is why it is important to carry two, or three different weapon sets. The above situation is especially true for mages, because there is no monster in the game to be completely resistant to physical damage dealt by rogues, archers or warriors. This is not the only case, because the majority of legendary weapons (which you will be, obviously, using) have bonuses to damage from elements. If, for example, your weapon provides a high bonus to damage from lightning, while fighting with Elder Black Pudding, you do not deal even a point of this type of damage, due to his resistance to lightning.

Not every opponent is just a rat that can be squashed - During your adventures, you be encountering a wide array of monsters, people or drows. Some of them are going to be easy to defeat and some are not. You need to take that into account, because you may encounter an opponent that is too demanding for you. Cultist Cyran may serve as an example here ((Side quest A Trader's Fate). You encounter him, for the first time, at level three, when you set your foot in Luskan for the first time. For low-level characters, this character is quite a problem, not because his level is too high, but because your equipment is too weak. If you encounter such an opponent, who kills your party within several seconds, give it up and return later, after you have progressed several levels up. You will then have stronger equipment and more skills.