Summary
Following on from the great success of their previous Soulslikes comes Team Ninja’sWo Long: Fallen Dynasty. Taking place in the run-up to the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, it focuses on deflection and constant movement, rather than the more planned actions and builds of previous games of theirs.
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One major feature of the game that has been dramatically improved over the Nioh series is the use of magic. Known as Wizardry Spells here, they come in the Five Virtues of classical Chinese belief and can be more smoothly woven into combat. But with so many to choose from, it can be hard to know where to focus your attention.
10Elemental Weapon - All Phases
The Five Virtues of the game are as follows — Fire, which focuses on aggression. Water, which focuses on movement. Earth, which focuses on defence. Wood, which focuses on healing. Metal, which focuses on wizardry. Though you can certainly specialise in a specific virtue, it helps to dip your toes into each of them a bit.
For example, it is essential to get the elemental weapon spell for each phase. This gives you a guaranteed way to deal continuous elemental build-up on an enemy since other damage spells can be pretty limited in that regard. Plus, they only take Spirit, meaning you can utilise them frequently if you’re effective in combat.
9Imposing Slab - Earth Phase
Most of the damage spells in Wo Long show their true benefits in their secondary effects rather than their raw damage. Imposing Slab is a great example of this, throwing up multiple explosive pillars of rock in front of you.
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The damage is decent on this spell, but the real power is in the great stagger and knockback it has. It may not beat critical blows, but it can pretty effectively knock back all but the most powerful of enemies to give you some extra breathing room.
8Absorb Vitality - Wood Phase
Wo Long can be punishing in how much damage its enemies dole out. Many Soulslikes can be punishing to the uninitiated, but with Wo Long’sincreased focus on deflecting, there’s no build that can let you avoid that. You miss deflecting, and you will take some severe damage.
This is where Absorb Vitality comes in handy. Rather than using up your limited healing, try to use Absorb Vitality to heal minor wounds, as it restores health proportionate to what you deal. Exactly because of that, it is great to use just before a Fatal Strike for a great amount of health recovery.
7Aqua Blink - Water Phase
For the most part, encumbrance isn’t as major in Wo Long as it is in its contemporaries. While it affects the Spirit consumption of Spells and Martial Arts, the biggest effect is reducing your dodge distance. Considering most of your time will be spent deflecting, it’s not too major a trade-off.
Of course, some enemies are big, and a good dodge will be necessary from time to time. Aqua Blink means you can get out of the way no matter what. It effectively turns you into a misty vapour, dashing across the battlefield. You can use it to close the gap between you and an enemy, dodge attacks, or away from the heat of combat for a breather.
6Elemental Plague - Metal Phase
A core aspect of the Five Virtues is how they affect each other. Water is weak to Earth, Earth is weak to Wood and so on. Knowing these type match-ups is essential to Wo Long as it lets you completely nullify an enemy’s phase if you counter it, though the same applies to you.
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Elemental Plague serves to make this system even easier for you. When used on an enemy, it makes them more susceptible to the Five Phases, letting them build up incredibly quickly. The more you stack, the weaker an enemy gets overall, letting you tear through them quickly. Plus, every time an effect procs the enemy is briefly staggered, cancelling any attack they’re doing.
5Amplify Damage - Fire Phase
Seeing as Fire focuses on aggression, it makes sense that you’ll be doing your best to stay in the middle of the fray, throwing out strikes and utilising Martial Arts at every opportunity. As such, you may not be actively using a bunch of Wizardry Spells, but keeping Amplify Damage in your moveset is great for this active playstyle.
Amplify Damage does exactly what it says, increasing the damage you deal from all sources, but increasing the damage you take in equal measure. It’s a risk-reward spell, but one that has massive returns if you’re good at avoiding getting hit.
4Illusionary Shell - Earth Phase
The Earth Phase is fully focused on holding your ground, decreasing the spirit consumed for various defensive actions, and offers plenty of spells to boost said defensiveness. One such spell is Illusionary Shell.
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This spell casts an invisible shield around you that disappears after a set period of time, or taking enough damage. In most scenarios, this lets you absorb a few hits before taking damage, or severely decreases the damage from what could’ve otherwise been a fatal attack. It’s a lifesaver.
3Toxin Bubbles - Metal Phase
The majority of the Metal Phase is focused on the accumulation of the Poison status effect. Like many status effects, Poison deals damage over time to any afflicted enemies, as well as making them weaker to Fire.
Though many spells have similar effects, Toxin Bubbles is one of the best at it. It sprays a long-lasting pool of poison in an arc in front of you, causing poison build-up and damaging any enemies inside it for its entire duration. It’s great for crowd control.
2Enhanced Defense - Earth Phase
This is another Earth Phase spell, this time focused on reducing the damage you take. Enhanced Defense, just as you might expect, buffs your defence by a pretty large margin. This lets you take a few extra hits before succumbing toyour inevitable death.
It might not always be effective against some of the tougher enemies as the game goes on, but considering it’s one of the earliest spells you acquire without needing investment in the Earth Phase, it’s great while you get your bearings in the game.
1Cleanse - Wood Phase
The Wood Phase, when it’s not raining down lightning, is focused on keeping you alive through buffs to your defence and healing. It’s also one of the few phases with the ability to support allies, other NPC and player-controlled.
Cleanse lets you very quickly remove all negative effect accumulation from both you and your allies, as well as granting a positive effect that reduces all status effect accumulation for its duration, excluding the Metal Phase (its weakness). It effectively lets you become the game’s healer.
