You built a character that is not gimmicky or unusual. Now things will soon attack and possibly kill you. What to do??
1. Scout ahead. You can only find traps in scouting mode (i.e., using Stealth). You can only get the drop on enemies effectively in scouting mode. You can only find cool hidden shit in scouting mode. Hit the Alt key. Congratulations, you are now in scouting mode. Everyone can scout, even if they have no Stealth skill. Only people with decent Mechanics can find stuff, though. And not everyone can sneak close to enemies, so keep an eye on your selection circles to see when you're about to be spotted.
2. Have a plan. Because you scouted ahead, you know where the enemies are and how they’re set up to hurt you. You now have all the time in the world to figure out how you’re going to open the fight, including where you want to focus which attacks and in what order. Get in position. Pop some consumables. Do some buffs. Fight on your terms.
3. Pause the game. Pause when you spot an enemy (better still, get the game to autopause for you). Pause before you do anything. Pause after you do anything. Spend more time paused than not paused. ABP, brahs. Always be pausing. Only unpause when everyone in your party is about to do something. Then pause again the second they’re done.
4. Hide behind big dudes. Front-line fighters and other builds who can take a beating go first. Rogues, ciphers, and support casters that aren’t built to tank go behind or to the side of your front line, where they can pick their moments to attack. Bows, bullets, and spells go to the back. The engagement system will punish you if you don’t keep things orderly.
4. Tie up mobs with tanks. The fighter companion you find after the prologue has a modal ability that engages three enemies at once, which stops them engaging your other characters. Hint: you want this turned on. Your front line is the shield behind which all your other characters shelter. To find out if an enemy is targeting one of those other characters, mouse over the enemy's selection circle and see who’s flashing on your team. If it’s a soft target, move one of your tanks to intercept. Use the environment and positioning to dictate who fights whom and where.
5. Once engaged, don’t run away. You can see who is "engaged" to whom by tracing the green and red arcs that connect selection circles. Also, if your movement cursor has a red highlight, the selected character is very definitely engaged, which means moving away will give your enemy a free shot at their retreating back. This a bad, terrible, no-good thing. There is almost no situation in which disengaging wildly is a good idea, especially for non-tanks. Stay in the fight and work your way out of it. Don’t be the guy who disengages his wizard and his wizard dies.
6. If you have to run away, be smart about it. Okay, so your wizard really is swarmed and really is dying. That sucks. But they will die faster if you move them, trust me. While there are some talents and equipment and shit that mitigate disengagement attacks, the best thing to do is disable the engaged enemies. At low levels, your fighter has a neat ability that knocks shit prone. Use it to break engagement so your wizard can scram. It's better to break engagement with your tanks and clear the way, as they're more likely to shake off disengagement attacks. Rogues also have cool ways to disengage, so try to be a rogue where possible.
7. Use your “per encounter” abilities. In this game, the real enemy is attrition: having your health worn down across multiple fights, building up fatigue, and blowing through your per rest abilities that can only be replenished by camping or hitting up an inn, both of which burn resources. So figure out what your per encounter abilities and use them. Per encounter. Like, use them every encounter. Save the per rest stuff for when it's needed, especially if you’re a caster.
8. But don’t, like, blow up your own team. If you’re not playing on Expert mode (and if you are, why are you even reading this?), abilities with an area of effect show where they’ll land before you use them. The red part is the base area of effect for the spell or ability. The yellow part is the bonus area granted by your Intellect attribute. This yellow part is doubly awesome because it is “Foe AoE,” which means it only hurts bad guys. The red part is less awesome because it will do harm to any party members caught in it. Some spells are
all foe AoE, right to the core. They rule. On the other hand, spells that cause physical changes to the environment (e.g. Slicken) affect everyone they touch. Reading tooltips is fun!
9. Reading tooltips is fun. The game provides a lot of information, and understanding it is critical to not dying. Mouse over everything and read it — especially the abilities available to you and especially when a new party member joins. Sensuki has good video digests of mechanics and classes if you don’t want to trawl the Cyclopedia ... but you should probably also trawl the Cyclopedia. Another way to learn what’s going on and why is to expand the combat log and click or mouse over individual lines or incidents. It’ll break down the math and dice rolls for you. Math!
10. Also, hotkeys are swell. Press Alt to pop in and out of scouting mode. I bound Z to select the whole party, since it’s close to other keys I use often — including X, which cancels actions (and stops the party dead if you have them all selected), and A, which lets you attack shit even when it’s not mad at you. Press D to run everywhere at double speed out of combat and D again to stop. Tab highlights things you can click! It’s just as useful in combat, so try it and see why. You can select your different party members with the number keys. And if you shift-click an action (like walking somewhere, or using an ability), it will add said action to an invisible queue that lets you plot out what your party members do now and next. You can also hotkey abilities by hovering over them and pressing the key you want to do it. Like a real videogame.
