Wartales: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide – Tips & Tricks to Get Started

by bmichaellogan / Game Guides, Tips & Tricks / 24 Nov 2021

After spending some time in closed beta, Wartales is finally available to play as an early access game. A land without honor, after hundreds of years of war, sees a massive open world where society must rebuild amidst a tumultuous time. Using unique turn-based combat, players must battle their way through bandits, wild animals, and whatever else this hostile land has ready for fresh-faced characters.

However, before you dive into developing your companions or exploring Wartales’ deep crafting system, there are some beginner tips you should know.

Repairing Can Get Expensive

You’re going to find out really fast how expensive repairing can get in Wartales. When you’re out on a journey and you have little currency, you’ll find that repairing can drop your currency significantly if you’re not careful.

Instead of using your repair tools while on a journey, try to wait until you return to a village for much cheaper repairs (and heals).

Don’t Forget The Food

If you’re familiar with the type of open-world adventure roleplaying game like Wartales is, then you shouldn’t be surprised when you find a food bar at the top right that keeps track of how much food you have on your adventure.

How much food do you want to take with you on your adventure in Wartales? Well, if you have about two or three days’ worth of food, then you should be good. However, if you find yourself running low on food, you could trade with some of the caravans on your adventure or spend some time hunting.

Watch Your Positioning

Speaking of combat, sometimes trying to take your enemies from both sides isn’t the best option. When you’re first starting out in Wartales, it’s suggested to keep your party together until you can get the hang of positioning. Once you get a little more experience with positioning and have leveled your companions a bit, then you can get a little creative with your positioning and even deal more damage. But for now, get used to the positioning system first.

If you’re confused about where you should place your fighters when it’s time to position them, there’s an initiative order at the bottom left of the screen. If you hover over this initiative order with your mouse, it’ll highlight the character on the screen. This initiative order in Wartales will help you figure out where to position your characters for victory in encounters.

Knowing Where To Find The Different Professions

Each one of your party members will have a specific profession that you assign. When you click on your companions on the left side of the screen as you’re looking at the map, you’ll see their profession to the right of their name. Keep in mind; you can also switch professions on the fly to balance your party composition and ensure everyone has something to contribute.

Now that you know where to find your professions, it’s time to shed off your beginner’s wings, take your companions, and start on your adventure through the hostile lands of Wartales.

Miscellaneous Tips & Tricks

Pressing TAB during battle displays everyone’s health/armor bar.

The Knowledge ability helps you learn new blueprints, patterns, and recipes from the Compendium. Discover new areas to fill the progress bar and earn Knowledge points.

Skill mastery book contains knowledge that will allow one of your companions to upgrade one of their class skills. Open a character sheet to choose which skill to upgrade. Open your companion’s status panel to use the skill mastery book and right-click on their class skill.

You can cook nutritious meals by crafting a cooking pot, which grants bonuses to the troop.

First aid is extremely important. Look for a couple of people that have first aid. You never want to have only one person with first aid in your team. Remember that; you cannot use first aid on yourself; you can only use it on others, and it does cost valor points. Also, it removes all debuff effects.

Every class can learn to heal, some people in your party will receive a ‘Captain’/’Lieutenant‘ ranks at certain points, which give them new support abilities (you get to choose who in the company gets the ranks), and some classes are more support-based (e.g., a spearman who hits everyone that attacks characters next to him, or an archer that commands beasts, but deals less dmg themselves)

You can use a campfire to pay and feed your troop.

You can knock out foes by having someone attack from the front while another attack from behind using the ‘knockout‘ ability (which appears automatically). If you have chains, you can take humans prisoner, and if you have a rope, you can capture animals who will fight for you. Ropes can be found in the town market or as loot/pickups on the map, and chains can be found in prison on the right from your starting location.

Use the world map to keep track of the places you have explored and the ones still unknown to you.

A high suspicion level will cause you to be sought by the guard, and you will have to pay for your crimes.

When a character dies, the question you should ask yourself is, “Can I get a character that will fit my squad better than the one who died?” So, when you go to town to buy a replacement, which will cost you both influence and gold, you might be able to find someone who suits your squad better than the squadmate who died, so don’t worry too much about whether you’ll keep everyone alive or not.

Knowns are the basic currency. You must pay your Companions’ wages every three days.

Companions are more refreshed after sleeping in a tent.

Traits cannot be re-rolled – but they are dynamic – so if you have a guy using a 2H weapon all the time – he will get the trait for two-handed weapons eventually.

It is possible to play as ‘infected‘. If you let your party get bitten by rats – and don’t feed them meat – they will turn into plagued enemies.

To add forged layers to the armor, first, open the unit panel of a companion wearing armor with a layer slot, then right-click on the layer to add it to the armor. Getting four additional points of strength from layers is a significant damage boost (usually 10 percent additional damage, plus skills).

You have only one manual save. However, the game will keep three hidden autosaves. One for when the battle begins, one for when you leave a village, and one for when you enter a ruin. When you load from the menu, the most recent of the three will be displayed as “autosave.”

The happiness of your troop depends on many variables. Make sure your companions remain happy, so they do not leave the troop. There is a soft cap that limits the number of mercenaries you can have in your party. Make sure that four party members visit the campfire to increase happiness. To assign them to it, use drag and drop. Also, always use at least 1 alcohol. There is a wine that gives you +2 happiness. Special Food (sold in towns or cooked in crafting) can also give you extra happiness. In addition to that, you can spend knowledge points on party skills that increase happiness.

In a fight, raw materials (a few scraps of metal and leather) come in handy for repairing your companions’ armor.

One of the fastest ways to get rich is to sell everything to the caravan and then attack.

You can capture prisoners, but you’ll need chains (purchased from the prison) rather than rope to do so – so make sure you grab some of them first!

To release prisoners, inspect the prisoner and select the ‘Manage Companion‘ option when you camp (it looks like a gear in the character image). From there, you can release a prisoner.

Spearman uses two-handed polearms that deal less damage in melee but have a default knockback and double damage when used in the range. As a result, they can always force a disengagement on enemies you don’t want to deal with for a moment.

If you land a critical hit with the throwing knife, you can kill a light-armored enemy with one shot.

Guards patrol everywhere when you commit a crime, and they will only stop when you have paid for your crime or been brought to justice. Killing a squad of guardians only adds to your crime, and you must pay the price.

You can lose 30+ food due to the interruption when you have a large squad.

You can totally rock a party of wolves only. No upkeep at all. Also, you can still trade – and merchants even greet you with a ‘milord’ still! To capture wolves, you need to have a rope in your inventory; then, you can use the capture skill with a companion who is not engaged toward an engaged wolf. The lower health the target has, the higher your chance of success. The same goes for capturing prisoners.

If the terrain allows, you can use pitons to cross the border without a pass/payment.

Using a Molotov cocktail is risky. The burning ground would also hurt your men or force them to change course, and the damage is also relatively low unless you hit bosses.

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bmichaellogan

Freelance copywriter, graphic designer, and medical professional who moonlights as a gamer. Gaming has always been a passion that I wanted to share with others through my writing.
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