Ravenswatch – Beginners Guide

New Players Guide

By Pam.

Basics

The map is fixed, and you’ll find objectives in the same spots: the location players spawn from and the category of objectives are what change from one run to another.

The difficulty of objectives is color-coded – green, then yellow, then red. If you find yourself in a red area at level 1/2, you went in the wrong direction.

You (mostly) grow your character’s strength through the objectives’ rewards, so until you can fully clear the map, focus on getting those done first.

Paying attention to the layouts of each objective will save you some frustration since you’ll know where the entrance is at a glance.

Grabbing teleporters is another way to optimize the time spent through the map; as an example, the grimoires and wishing well always have one.

Click to enlarge…

Who’s The Strongest Character?!

To unlock characters, you need to defeat the Chapter 1 boss (and maybe more in 1.0; I’ll remove this once confirmed). Most characters perform well enough to leave this to preference. In a reasonable tier list (probably 10% of what you can find online), they would be ranked from S to B+.

Unless you want to speedrun the game, find the hero that works for you. The easiest character to win with is Gepetto for most people.

A) The talents are, however, a different subject:

• After finishing a game, you’ll gain RANK XP, which is how you unlock talents for heroes.
• The negative XP modifier displayed for higher difficulties does not (directly) impact that RANK XP, and playing those higher difficulties is the fastest way to RANK up a hero.
• Simple (advanced, unfun) trick: You can create a Nightmare game with a lot of negative modifiers, reach level 2, then abandon if you want to unlock them as fast as possible.

B) Talent upgrades: This will be developed in the vendor section.

Combat

For 80% of monsters, they use their attack once then do nothing for 4/6 seconds. Avoiding / baiting / iframing that first pattern is the most important aspect of combat.

Once they’ve attacked, you can then control the monster’s behavior by remaining at a specific distance. Positioning is very important: don’t fight monsters on the edges of the objectives where they might pull more from “outside”. If you have to run, run in a circle.

A) Monsters have either a stagger bar or none:

• Once you fully build the stagger bar, their stance is broken and they lose their armor plates if they had any.
• Those monsters without are staggered by specific abilities such as Piper’s defense.
• 1 plate is 50% damage reduction
• 2 plates is 75% DR
• 3 plates is 100% DR: all damage is reduced to 1

B) Leashing:

• Monsters will follow you for a bit when aggroed. Once you run far enough away, they go back to their spawn location.
• Unnecessary detail will be put below, but it should explain why it feels awful sometimes.

Invincibility Frames

Each character has access to intangible (this game’s term for invincibility frames). Dashing does not provide intangible.

Defence usually has some intangible, but it can also be:

• A trait for Snow Queen
• A special ability for Beowulf

However, some monster abilities go through intangible. They are now properly displayed with a bright pulsating outline. Examples include:

• Big treant slam
• A few bosses’ attacks

What You Should Prioritize

• The timer does not start until you leave the spawning area.
• Check the vendor (expanding on this below).
• Run from one objective to another while minimizing fights on the way.
• Health fountains don’t count as objectives and can frequently be taken without a fight. Going for an early fountain is not a good choice.
• The best objective to do early is the green eye: it will get you to level 2 (until Nightmare, and even then 90% of the time), and give you a sense of what you can do next (e.g., 1/2 green objectives then yellow eye).
• Pay attention to the type of enemy camps: the ghoul ramp is one of the worst starters for beginners, whereas fighting pigs during the day (first 90 sec) can lead to a chain reaction.
• Grimoires are best kept for later. They have a 50-second timer, so you can keep them to the end if you’re struggling. They always have a convenient teleporter.
• Same for wells.
• You can safely skip the tumors: while they provide a fair amount of XP and help with the boss HP, it’s more important to gain as much strength as possible through chests or shards for the next chapters.
• An important detail about Chapter 1 is that some objectives are tied to the quest, which means you’re likely to repeat those and waste precious time. It’s better to keep these objectives for later.
• Again, paying attention to the objectives’ layouts will teach you what to delay. The straw quest can be the most penalizing start for any player.
• Eventually, you can tell the quest type from the spawn location, but that’s more of an advanced tip.

Vendor Prioritization

• Crystal shard is the currency of the game.
• There is a lot of power in the options provided by the vendor.
• Stacking items of the same type to unlock their super effects should be your priority. This can lead to situations where you don’t want to pick up items from chests until you’ve duplicated what you’re aiming for.

Talents:

• Some talents benefit a lot from upgrading, while most get minor damage increases.

Sands of Enlightenment:

• This allows you to upgrade a talent to legendary by leaving it at normal rarity.
• By making sure the other talents you have are above normal rarity, it will be the only option remaining and should be easy to target during your Chapter 1 run.

Advanced Tips

Unnecessary Detail About Leashing

There are four scenarios I’ve noticed:

(1) You’ve managed to put enough distance between the monster and yourself as well as their initial spawn:

• They leash cleanly.

(2) You’ve managed to put enough distance between the monster and yourself, but remain in their vicinity:

• They stand around for roughly 10 seconds before walking back to their spots rather than leashing.
• This is a lot more common in co-op.

(3) You’re far away from their initial spawn, but they’re still somewhat close to you:

• They think “one more attack then I’m out”.
• They usually leash after that attack.

(4) You’re far away from their initial spawn, but they’re still somewhat close to you, however not enough to start an attack:

• They straight up disappear.

Notes:

• The last 2 scenarios can feel a bit unfair/frustrating since it pushes the “leash” distance far beyond what’s intended.
• In co-op, it can be worse: you can fight a monster constantly leashing itself back to full life while remaining in combat against the players.
• There’s the summon exception from birds/spiders, where they follow for a much longer time.

Important Tip: Aggro is delayed by 1 second, so you can dash in on fountains/chests and sneak it without fighting enemies.

How to Find the Key

• The key spawns in a circle around the boss but not in its immediate vicinity.
• The key uses shard spawn points.

In my screenshot (which you mentioned but didn’t provide):

• Red = Possible spawn locations
• Blue = Cannot spawn

Note: These are approximations.

Stone Quest Possible Spawn Location

In the screenshot above, the quest is shown 100%.

Status Effects:

• Strength: 25% increased damage (should be multiplicative).
• Weak: 25% decreased damage dealt.
• Vulnerable: 25% increased damage taken.
• Marked: 25% increased damage taken.
• Chilled: 50% reduced movement speed.

Heroes Tips

General advice about heroes (keeping it short), general performance is the idea (this is not meant to be a place to discuss balance).

Scarlet

• Combo-based character, can be tricky to master since she has a few flaws.
• Can be one of the strongest characters but needs a lot of RNG.
• Starter: Shadow Strikes.
• Distance Explosion/Devourer is playstyle preference.
• Shapeshifter is more for experienced players.
• Ult: Grandmother’s Souvenir.
• Talents helping Scarlet with AoE should be your priority.

Pied Piper

• Ranged character, very weak early game but quite strong past chapter 1.
• Lots of wasted talents because of the rat issues (that the devs have ignored so far).
• Starter: Freezing Trap/Virtuoso.
• Ult: Unchained Melody.
• Ignore rat talents unless you have Stimulant Vibes.
• Power talents are very good for burst damage, but Extra Measures is a bit risky.
• Low Notes/Chorus should remain quite good.

Beowulf

• Solid melee character overall, straightforward.
• Starter: Draconic Binds if solo, Explosive Fire if co-op.
• Rampart/Shield Charge are preference.
• Ult: Raging Chain.
• Sparkling Shield is probably his #1 talent.
• I prefer to build him around power/attack, I only use special for Intangible.

Snow Queen

• She excels in melee range.
• Starter: Dual Lances.
• She still has a lot of mid/redundant talents but your priority should be chill-applying talents (Slide, Hailstorm).
• Pirouette, Ice Shield, and Radiant Crown are excellent.
• Ult: Snowstorm.

Aladdin

• In-and-out of fights mobile fighter, melee attacks (without enchantment) should be your last resort.
• Starter: Jinn’s Might.
• Ult: Magic Carpet.
• Most of his talents are good.

Melusine

• Contrary to how she’s presented, she’s very mobile since you can wavedash out of sing stance.
• Starter: Sea Dance.
• Deep Beat, Spring Water would be preference.
• Talents: Most are good and allow you to build on special/power with lots of synergies.
• Final Burst is gamebreaking.
• Ult: Wisp Ballet for very high single target, currently benefits from waterlogging.

Sun Wukong

• Unless you are good at parrying, you’re probably better off ignoring this mechanic.
• He’s a high risk – basic reward character for most players.
• If you’re reading this, chances are you’ll miss a parry here and there and die from a mistake – easy to make many over the course of 1 hour.
• Starter: Thirst for Immortality (get Ogre Blood with this).
• Ult: Transfiguration can be very good unless you get Gepetto, but you probably need to have a grasp of all heroes/talents to extract as much value as possible.
• Focused Strikes/Airbender is the easiest playstyle combo.

Carmilla

• You need to manage your trait combined with blood very well.
• AND perfect positioning of enemies as well as managing their attack cooldown.
• Starter: Blood Rage.
• Too early to discard Life Essence, probably worth taking if you have duplicate common + Ogre.
• I only have 2.5 runs on her so.
• Build around power, special, and crit.