Son of a Witch as a Roguelike: A Players' Guide
So, I decided to write this guide to give some general gameplay tips and advice to those who are struggling getting through the levels on Son of a Witch. I am, for some crazy reason, one of SoaW's most successful players on challenge leaderboards. This is confusing for one important reason - my reaction times are pretty bad and I'm not used to beat 'em up games at all. What I am good at is playing roguelikes: RPGs where survival, discovery, and tactics are key elements through the game. It's with that roguelike-player's hat on that I'm writing this advice guide, to give you some hints and tips on how to build up your character, beat the bad guys, and - most importantly - survive through the levels!
This is the first part of a huge three part guide - the other two parts are the Unofficial Monster Manual (https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5372.0), and the Unofficial Equipment Guide (https://exilian.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=5385.0), which have stats and advice on literally every monster and item in the game so you know how best to use them!
Basic wisdom
- The first and most important rule: if you need to deviate from this guide, do so. Son of a Witch is a game that will throw unexpected situations at you, and you need to learn to react to that. Whilst this guide roughly discusses my strategy in the game, I never stick to it completely in any successful game - being able to adapt is crucial.
- Most of the time, Son of a Witch is best treated as a survival game more than a combat game: your ability to deal damage quickly and accurately is secondary to your ability to dodge and heal. If you're dying a lot on low levels, it's probably a sign that you're not moving enough.
- Remember that movement is in two planes, and they are fundamentally different. Attacks almost always happen basically in the left-right plane, which means that for dodging attacks the up/down plane is considerably more important.
- Remember you can switch weapons! You're not obliged to keep doing whatever your character is good at. This especially applies to bows, where even if your archery is terrible, specialist arrows like ice, poison, and slowness can be vitally useful in robbing shops or fighting bosses.
Building a character
The main thing to bear in mind as you advance through the levels is that you're trying to build a character who'll become capable of beating bosses. Of course your personal skill at the battles will have a huge impact on things, but the key point of roguelike play is that there's also a lot you can control by getting your strategy right. You don't need to "finish" character building at any point per se, but more things will get set in stone over time as you use runestones and develop weapons that are better than anything you could buy/pick up otherwise. I usually want to have my weapon choices etc mostly sorted by the end of the Castle level at the moment: if you're starting out, aim to have them sorted sooner in general. It's better to adopt and start building up a decent weapon than hold out for trying to find the one perfect thing you want which might not even exist in this instance anyway.
An additional point on top of that is that your character doesn't ultimately have to major in the thing they're originally designed for. Say, for example, that you start out as a knight but find a crossbow, two replication scrolls, and a golden bow on the first level, you don't like hammers much and there are no decent swords around. It's a perfectly valid and good gameplay choice to decide you're going to go for being primarily an archer and use the bow for most of the rest of the game! There's an advantage in doing what you're good at - namely, better starting stats - but there are often alternative options and character builds available.
So what should you look for or plan for when developing a character? My first and foremost piece of advice is "no shenanigans" - in other words, basically you want to be fast and hit hard, and the rest is secondary. Having 100 or so health is optimal, I think, but being able to dodge is more important than being able to absorb damage (which you generally can't) in this game. I would usually advise pretty strongly against trying to rely on any special effects like elemental damage as a core part of your strategy: too many enemies have immunities to various of them (if you focus heavily on poison, for example, it will stand you in very bad stead against the undead who are immune to it). Focus, instead, upon improvements to whatever basic stats or weapons you need for your main strategy. Of course there are a lot of free upgrades you'll find that may improve elemental damage, and there'll be situations where you can use that effectively - the point is, though, that reliable high-damage hits are the key thing in SoaW in general.
Character types
KNIGHT
CHANTER
ARCHER
DRUID
PYROMANCER
SKELETON RANGER
BARBARIAN
Combat & Combat Styles