Battles & Dungeons

Quick Reference: What Affects Your Damage

Here's what changes whether your strike lands and how hard it hits.

Factor	Bonus/Penalty	When & How
Higher ground	+10% per height level	Attacking downhill (max +30%); each full height you hold above target adds 10%
Flanking	+25%	Hitting an enemy from the side (not head-on)
Behind enemy	+50%	Hitting from directly behind (worth circling to set up)
Charging	Bonus damage	Moved 2+ tiles before striking (shooters get nothing)
Rally active	+2 attack, +2 defense	Warrior hero with Rally skill in party
Enemy morale 0	−2 attack (theirs)	After one of their allies falls; recovers over time
Cover	Harder to hit enemy	Enemies in forest/swamp are harder to strike; covers nothing against glass (thrown phials)

Pro tip: Standing on high ground with an ally beside you = hard to kill and hitting hard. Take the crag, not the valley.

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Joining battle

Your captains assess the enemy and warn if it's a bad matchup. Choose Auto-resolve (dice decide), Fight (you control the battle), or Fall back. The warning turns red = take it seriously.

March onto an enemy and the game pauses to ask how you want to fight: Auto-resolve for a quick outcome decided by the dice, or ⚔ Fight manually to take the field yourself. You can also Fall back, unless you have been ambushed.

Auto-resolve is not offered in your first campaign. It opens once you have finished the Great Work. By then you know what it skips. After that the menu's Battle setting turns it on and off as you like; see Settings & Unlocks.

Before you choose, your captains give you a warning, from "expect an easy win" to "strongly advise retreat". When the warning turns red, take it seriously.

Every engagement begins one of three ways. Ambushes either way are rare: a few percent, swayed by level difference. Rogue lords with the Ambush skill spring them more often.

• Sprung ambush: you catch them unaware. On the field they stand asleep and take no turns until first struck.
• Battle: the sides face off and act in turns.
• Ambushed! The enemy surrounds your party mid-field, and there is no declining the fight.

Defending your holdings

When another guild storms one of your buildings and a garrison is standing in it, the fight comes to you like any you started: the same appraisal, the same choice to settle it quickly or take the field yourself. You cannot fall back from your own gate. If the garrison is cut down, the walls change hands there and then.

Leave a building empty and there is nothing to defend with: it simply falls. Station soldiers from the Army hub's muster board on anything you mean to keep.

The tactical field

The order of play hangs down the left edge, with the seal whose go it is popped out at its foot, showing everything they have left. Blue tiles show where they can step; red tiles show what they could reach from there. The crags are worth taking for the height bonus, and the growth is cover.

Turns run by speed and vigour; each unit gets one move and one action.

Speed counts double, so a quicker calling always acts before a slower one. Vigour is the fighter's own keenness, nought to three, fixed when they are mustered and shown on their sheet — it decides where they stand among comrades of equal speed. Standing still buys a place further up next round's line, and Quicken buys a large one. A turn you do not spend is not wasted: hold your ground and your blow, and that unit comes round faster next time. A slow soldier who waits can act before a quick one who ran and swung.

The muster roll down the left edge is the round as it is being played, and it reads upward. The seal at the foot of it, marked Now, is whoever is up: their name, their health and Essence, and how far they can walk and reach, struck on the field rather than on a panel. The faces above it are still to come, nearest first: sage for yours, terracotta for theirs, and dimmed for anyone who has not noticed the fight yet. A ▴ at the top says the round runs on past what the ribbon could hang. Tap a face to bring the camera to that fighter.

Under the roll stand the four commands. Move and Attack only arm the field, since you aim on the board rather than in a menu. Arts ▸ opens a second column beside them with everything this fighter actually carries, and Wait yields the turn. Whichever command is armed wears the verdigris plate, so what the board is waiting for is never a guess. Blue tiles show where you can step. Tap one to preview the move (and the red reach it would give you), then confirm. The ghost standing on the previewed tile is drawn facing the way that step would leave you, so you can see what you are turning your back on before you commit.

You may walk through your own soldiers. A comrade is a doorway, not a wall, so the front rank never seals its own shooters in. You cannot stop on one, though: two fighters never share a tile. Enemies block outright. Red tiles show your weapon's reach: adjacent for melee, three tiles for shooters. Heroes with Transmute Blast get a cast mode that burns half their Essence on one target. Rally, Shield Wall and Overwhelm all apply on the field, and Withdraw breaks off the fight.

Home ground counts. A soldier fighting on their own guild's home terrain strikes and guards 2 better. Every other country is neutral: no ground ever works against you. The pre-battle counsel tells you whose country you are standing in, and the battlefield's panel repeats it.

The field itself is the country you fight in: forests and marshes give thick cover, sand and ice give almost none, and highlands and broken country climb in hills and crags where a marsh lies flat. It is drawn as the country too: the same ground you were just marching over, with its own trees, scrub, cairns and bones standing on it.

Water lies in the hollows. A stream, a bog or a tidal flat cuts across most fields, thick through marsh and shallows, at most a waterhole out on sand. It is a ford, not a lake. You can wade it and stand in it, but a step into the water costs two extra movement points, and nobody throws a blow while standing in it. Footing is the whole of a swing, and a bow needs a stance as much as a blade does. That makes a stream a real line on the field: something an army pays to cross, and something a shooter is very glad to have in front of it. A fighter in the water is drawn sunk to the knees with the surface closing over them, so you can see at a glance who is caught in it. Fliers cross without noticing, and can fight over it.

No two fields are alike. Every battle rolls its own size and shape, with ragged voids bitten out of the edges where the ground simply ends. Nothing walks or stands on a void, so mind the map's edge when you plan a flanking run.

Every field is laid out differently. Alongside the country, each battle rolls the shape of the ground, and what you are given changes how the fight has to be fought:

Shape	What you are standing on	What it asks of you
Rolling	Hill and hollow	Take a rise before the shooting starts
Ridge	A spine between the lines, with passes through it	Hold a pass, or pay to climb
Basin	A rimmed bowl	Both sides start on the lip, looking down
Mesa	A flat top with sheer sides and two or three ramps	Whoever holds the ramps holds the field
Gorge	A chasm with a few crossings	Bottlenecks, and a flank that cannot come
Terraces	Broad steps climbing across the field	One side starts above the other
Crags	Standing pillars and lanes between	Turn the camera; you cannot see past them
Causeway	A narrow neck, nothing to either side	No flanking at all. Front rank decides it
Craters	A plateau blown through with pits	The pits are cover, and a step down out of reach
Open	Almost nothing	Speed and numbers, with nowhere to hide

Highland and broken country throw up ridges, mesas and pillar mazes; marsh and shallows give causeways and chasms; sand and ice tend to lie open. Storming a hold rolls a new shape for each floor, so a climb is never the same room three times.

Pinch to zoom into the melee and drag to pan while zoomed, or use the ⟳ / + / − / ⤢ pad in the corner. ⟳, its first button, walks the camera a quarter of the way round the field. That is the only way to see, and reach, the tiles a crag or a pillar is standing in front of. The world map has the same control.

Reading the odds before you commit

Tap an enemy in range to see the full damage calculation: your attack bonus, their defense, flanking bonus, height advantage, and the damage range. Nothing is rolled until you press Strike, so use this to plan before committing.

Tap an enemy in range to see the strike details: your attack bonus, terrain effects, rally bonuses, their defense, your flanking bonus, height advantage, the damage range, and whether it will defeat them.

Nothing is rolled until you press Strike. Tap the same foe again, or press the button; ✕ calls it off. If you are stepping into reach first, the card costs the blow from the tile you are about to stand on, not the one you are on, and offers the step and the strike as one decision.

Reading a fighter without fighting them

Tapping one of your own, or a foe out of reach, reads them out instead of swinging at them.

Tap a fighter you cannot reach, or one of your own, and their card opens instead of a strike: attack, defense, health, speed, reach and Essence, plus the line that says which callings they beat. It is the only way to learn what a foe hits for without being hit by them first. Tapping a face on the roll does the same thing, and brings the camera to them.

Where you stand, and which way you face

Fighters look the way they last walked, and turn to face whatever they strike. Where a blow comes from is decided before they turn. Hit a foe in the flank and it lands for a quarter more; get behind them and it lands for half again. Circling costs a turn; it is usually worth it.

You can set your own guard the same way. Wait ends a fighter's turn, and while they still have their step in hand it opens the compass first: pick a quarter, then confirm. Tap an arrow on the field to face that way, or the fighter themselves to stand fast. They turn as you pick, so you can see the back you are about to give the enemy before you spend anything, and nothing is spent until you press Confirm. Turning costs that step, and with it the +2 place in the next round's order that standing perfectly still would have bought; a shield-bearer with Bulwark also stops bracing the line. A netted fighter can still turn: the snare holds feet, not necks.

You can see all of this. The lines form looking at each other, and every soldier on the field is drawn turned the way they are actually facing. A back worth working round to is one you can pick out before you spend the turn walking there. Columns on the world map turn the same way, and face the road they are marching. Turning the camera turns the picture with it: a fighter looking north still looks north after a ⟳ turn, and the compass arrow marking that quarter still sits over their nose.

Wait with the step still in hand opens the compass: tap an arrow on the field, or the fighter themselves to stand fast, then confirm. Every character is drawn facing the way they are actually turned, so a back worth working round to is one you can pick out before you spend the turn walking there.

Each calling is as recognisable from behind as from the front, which is the point: you are meant to be able to tell, at a glance and across the field, which way every fighter on it is looking.

The ground counts too: every full height you hold above a target adds 10% to the blow (up to 30%), and fighting uphill costs you a little.

Thickets are cover. Anyone standing in scrub is harder to hit: thick in forest and swamp, almost none out on sand or ice. It is the field's answer to the high ground, somewhere worth walking to that costs nothing to hold. You can see it, because cover is drawn as the country's own growth: firs and bushes in forest, reeds in a marsh, cactus on sand, a snow-crusted tuft on ice.

A charge counts. Cross two tiles or more and strike, and the blow lands harder for the running start. Shooters get nothing from it.

Morale counts. Each fighter starts with 3 morale pips. Watching an ally fall costs the whole side 1 morale, and units at 0 morale are shaken: their attacks are less accurate until they recover morale.

Skills you use, and skills you carry

Some arts simply apply: Rally, Shield Wall, Beast Bond. Others are used on the field, and cost that hero's action:

Art	Who	What it does
Transmute Blast	Alchemist	Half your remaining Essence plus your craft, armour-ignoring; castable again while the pool holds
Quickening Balm	Alchemist, Beastmaster	Laid on ground; heals whoever stands there a few turns later
Vitriol Flask	Alchemist	Eats a three-tile square, your own soldiers included
Shadow Step	Rogue	Melts into cover; most blows miss until your next turn
Assassinate	Rogue	A knife from behind or above. Never from the front.
Ensnare	Beastmaster	A net over one foe: no steps for two turns, though they still fight
Blinding Dust	Warrior	Grit in the eyes: half their blows go wide for two turns
Quicken	Alchemist	Hurries one ally: they come round in the order much sooner

Skills & Research covers where each is studied, and the passive arts that come with them.

High ground and hard landings

No field is flat. The ground rises in half-step ramps toward hills and crags, and boulders squat on the low ground where nothing can walk. Use them:

• Shooters reach one tile further for every full height they hold above their target. A bowman on a crag commands the valley.
• Half-step ramps climb free. A full-height jump up costs an extra move point, and nothing on foot climbs more than one full height in a step.
• You can leap down any distance, but a plunge past three heights deals fall damage on the landing (the move preview warns you first). A fall bruises; it never kills outright.
• Winged creatures such as the Chimera ignore all of it: heights, ramps, falls.
• Boulders block the charge. Put one between your archer and a foe's sword and make them walk the long way around.

Dungeon floors

Garrisoned buildings fight floor by floor. The defenders split across the building's floors, and the STAIR DOWN hatch stands somewhere different on every floor. Clear the floor and the stair lights up: descend and fight on. With a rogue hero you have two more options:

• Sneak past the next floor at the door, at 25–75% by level. Fail, and that floor falls on you as an ambush. The last floor can't be skipped: a good sneak there slips you in unseen instead, and the defenders stand unaware until you strike.
• Slip down mid-fight: your rogue can move to the stairs and the whole party follows down without defeating the floor. You take damage based on enemy proximity and unit speed. Slow units can be killed on the stairs. The stair lands somewhere new each floor, so getting your rogue there is the key.

The prize at the bottom

The last floor of every hold shows its vault chest right on the field. It stays closed while defenders stand, and it blocks its tile like a boulder. Clear the floor and the chest springs open where you can see it: the spoils show on screen, and the Take the spoils button walks you out. Inside you find coin and stores scaled by how deep you fought, an artifact (finer the closer to the world's blighted heart), or, rarely, a caged hero who joins their rescuer. Victors also strip the fallen of their gear, and beaten marauder garrisons often guarded a hoard.