Mad Island – Combat Tips and Tricks

Understanding Combat

To beat this game, you have to fight enemies. You might fight them because they are bosses blocking your progress, they have loot you want, or just for food.

Make sure you know about the Heavy Attack button (default: F). Heavy attacks are slower than normal attacks and can’t be canceled at first, but they deal double damage. They also save your weapon’s durability, which is important when you can’t make repair kits yet. You need a weapon to do heavy attacks.

Later, you can upgrade heavy attacks with skill points to do more damage, cancel them by blocking with a shield, and make them faster.

The basic fighting strategy is to dodge and attack. How you do this depends on the type of enemy. There are six main types:

1. Herbivores (chickens, pigs, deer): They run away when they see you or get hurt. Sneak up behind them and use a heavy attack to kill them in one hit.
2. Fighters (natives, wolves, bears, bats): They are as fast or faster than you, but their attacks are slow. You can run past them and do a heavy attack while they’re stuck in their attack animation. Back off and repeat.
3. Heavies (large natives, anglers, crawling androids): They are slow but deal a lot of damage and have a lot of health. You can trick stab them like fighters, but you might be able to get in two heavy attacks. With enough speed and a level 3 heavy attack, you can hit them as they approach, then run away and repeat.
4. Projectiles (native children, guardian children, cows): They attack from far away. Run in circles around them, wait for their projectile to miss, then run in for a heavy attack. The exception is turret androids in the lab – their shots are too fast to dodge, so use a shield to block, then counter-attack.
5. Rushdowns (leg androids, weird running birds): They are much faster than you and attack quickly, so you can’t trick stab them. Use a shield to block their attack, then counter-attack.
6. Elusives (birds, mandrakes): They are like herbivores but can see in all directions and will leave the game if threatened. Spot them first and use a ranged attack to kill them in one shot if you want their loot.

In boss fights, remember that bosses can only do one move at a time and won’t change their mind until they’ve done it. If a boss runs straight at you, it’s going to do a melee attack, so you can safely trick stab or use spacing retreat if it’s slow enough.

Understanding Weapons

Some weapons to keep in mind are:

Cactus Sickle & Shield:

These are the best budget gear you can get. They only cost 10 cactus to make, which you can find plenty of in the desert. You can craft them at the Sand workbench, and you can get the recipe by sneaking into a native camp at night.

The sickle has 15 attack, which is better than the Iron sword’s 12 attack. Iron is better used for other things anyway. The cactus shield has 1000 durability and is useful even in the late game. Just remember that if an enemy dies from the reflected damage, you won’t get EXP from it. You could argue that the Blood sword and Blood knife are better because they have higher attack, but they need bloodstone to craft, which takes more time to get than cactus. You might also want to use bloodstone for other things like raid horns. Plus, Cactus gear is good enough to get the next two weapons from the underground ruins, which might be the best weapons in the game.

KATANA:

You can find this weapon in the reward chest guarded by a robot on level 5 of the ruins. It has the highest damage of any weapon in the game that I’ve found, except for the Giant Glove (which has 5 more attack points but is sold by the trader). To get the Giant Glove, you have to kill the Giant, which isn’t worth it because she’s a waifu. The KATANA also has a unique heavy attack that makes you dash forward and deal AoE damage.

With this weapon, you trade trickstabs for facestabs. This means you time the heavy attack so that by the time the enemy’s hitbox comes out, you’ve already cut them with the cool dash. It’s definitely worth getting this weapon, so you should retry level 5 ruins until you get one. Since you can’t craft this or other weapons from the ruins, you should use repair kits to restore their durability, especially since the KATANA only has 140 durability. You can craft repair kits at the iron workbench for just 1 iron ingot, 1 rope, and 1 sap.

Crystal Sword:

You can find this weapon in the reward chest guarded by a dark soul boss on level 10 of the ruins. It has lower attack than the KATANA, but it makes up for it with an almost screen-wide heavy attack that ignores terrain height and walls.

With this weapon, you can pretty much forget that bows exist. It’s the best weapon against swarms of enemies. Like the KATANA, you can’t craft this weapon, so you need repair kits for long-term use. It’s definitely worth getting this weapon, so you should retry level 10 ruins until you get one. With the combination of KATANA, Crystal Sword, and Cactus shield, nothing can stop you – unless you fail to dodge big attacks or forget to maintain your gear’s durability.