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Here are some notes on what stood out to me after playing through the opening hours, along with a few things that seem worth keeping in mind.
First, Familiarize Yourself With the Time Progression System
The single most important thing is getting used to this game’s unique time progression system. Make sure you read the tutorials carefully.
The Prologue does more than introduce the story and setting. It also serves as an important tutorial, so use this opportunity to experiment and familiarize yourself with how the time system works.
I have summarized its mechanics in my guide to the 30-day time limit, so refer to it whenever necessary.
Use Multiple Save Slots and Save Frequently in Case of Bugs
The game may crash repeatedly at critical moments, such as during the Blood Mass.
To avoid getting stuck and being unable to progress, rotate between multiple save slots and save frequently.
What to Do First
As long as you follow the tutorial instructions, the game will introduce you to most of the essential mechanics.
One piece of advice, however, is to gather as many plants as possible whenever you find them growing on the ground.
They can be used as ingredients for health potions and other consumables.
In particular, buying all the ingredients needed for health potions from merchants is extremely expensive. It is therefore important to pick up whatever you find and stockpile ingredients.
As mentioned in the guide above, exploring the open world does not cause any in-game time to pass.
This means you never have to worry about running out of time because you spent too long gathering alchemy ingredients.
Early Combat and Healing Tips
Money for healing is extremely scarce in the early game.
There do not appear to be any cheap inns where you can rest. During the day, your main options are eating food or drinking potions. At night, you can restore Health by feeding on animals or humans.
For daytime healing, I strongly recommend eating food.
Potions restore Health instantly and do not suffer reduced effectiveness during combat. However, they restore relatively little Health and are extremely expensive.
To illustrate the difference in cost-effectiveness:
- A single food item restores 1.5–2% of your maximum Health per second for 50 seconds. In other words, just one item can restore 75–100% of your maximum Health.
- A single health potion restores only 30% of your Health, yet the combined price of its crafting ingredients is twice the cost of one food item.
Even by a rough estimate, food is around six times as cost-effective for healing.
The trade-off is that food restores less Health during combat, whereas potions instantly restore their full amount without any reduction. Knowing when to use each one is therefore important.
Best Early Skills
Honestly, increasing your maximum Health and weapon damage seems like the safest choice.
I tried investing in a skill that increases the maximum number of Activation Charges—the resource consumed when using Abilities, rather like MP—as well as a skill that increases the number of Ability Slots available.
At the very least, unlocking these skills immediately after the Prologue—when I still had very few Abilities to use—was a mistake.
What is the point of increasing your Ability Slots or maximum Activation Charges when you barely have any Abilities to use in the first place?
Best Early Equipment
At the beginning of the game, you only have two realistic weapon options: the training sword that your father, Pieter, tells you to pick up as part of the story, and the greatsword found in the mine.
This will ultimately come down to personal preference, but I found the training sword easier to use because of its lower Stamina consumption.
What Beginners Should Keep in Mind
The most important thing to understand is that the game appears to be deliberately designed so that you cannot experience every possible choice in a single playthrough.
Some NPCs will inevitably be sacrificed, and the more NPC casualties you try to prevent, the less time you will have to develop Coen’s skills.
So the only advice I can really give is this: choose the option you are least likely to regret.
The general rule rarely seems to change: choices and actions that consume more time tend to unlock more powerful skills or provide deeper and more personal interactions with characters.
What to Do If You Get Stuck
You are unlikely to become completely stuck because of the game itself. The greatest obstacle, however, is the crash that can occur during the Blood Mass.
I have written a separate article detailing the steps I took to work around the crash, so feel free to refer to it if you encounter the same issue.
