Wartales: How to Fight | Combat Guide

Wartales uses the turn-based style during combat which allows you to plan your moves ahead.

Since actions don’t happen in real-time, you will be able to take your time as you formulate how to take down your enemies.

That said, if you’re a complete beginner, then you might find Wartales’ combat a bit complicated. As such, we’ve created this guide just for you.

How Combat Works in Wartales

While Wartales’ combat plays out similarly to other games with turn-based combat, it has a few nuances that make it a little bit unique.

At the start of any fight, you will be able to position all of your units across the battlefield. All you have to do is drag a unit that you want and place it in a position that you prefer.

However, while it’s tempting to surround all of your enemies, that tactic won’t work at all times. Instead, you want to keep your team members near each other so that they can support each other during combat.

On the bottom left corner of your screen is the turn order. This indicates whose turn it is and who will come up next, and so on. You can also hover over the icon of the enemies in the turn order. Doing so will highlight where they are on the battlefield.

With the basics out of the way, let’s look at the other important aspects of combat in Wartales.

Armor and Health Bars

You’ll notice two different health bars on top of your units and your enemies’ heads. These represent their armor and health bars.

If you’ve played games like Divinity Original Sin, you’ll find this mechanic familiar. Basically, if you attack an enemy, you will reduce their armor first. This means that unless an enemy’s armor bar is depleted, you won’t be able to damage its health bar.

The same also applies to your party. Due to this, you want to make sure your units have higher armor values in the first place.

If one of your units reaches 0 health after taking damage from an enemy attack, he’s still not taken out of the battle yet. However, he won’t be able to use skills or attack a target. All he can do is move.

If that unit receives an enemy hit once more, he will then die. To prevent that from happening, you want to heal that unit as soon as possible using health potions.

Valour Points

You can use valour points to activate certain skills in a unit’s hotbar. However, these are shared all throughout your party.

This means that if a unit used a skill that consumes valour points, then your other units may no longer use a skill if your valour points are currently zero.

The number of valour points you have is displayed in the lower center of your screen. However, you only gain them by resting, so you want to make use of it properly during combat.

Friendly Fire

Friendly fire is actually a thing in this game. If you attack an enemy with a friendly unit in the way, you might end up damaging that unit as well. This is especially true with archers.

Luckily, the game will show you the chance of a unit hitting a friendly unit whenever you point to your target for an attack.

To avoid this, you can either stand behind a teammate or just position a unit in a spot where it will be able to get a clear shot of the target.

Enemy Leader

In some cases, you might come across a group of enemies with a leader. You will be able to distinguish a leader by a red star icon on top of its head.

As a leader, this enemy will provide a bunch of buffs to its teammates. So when you happen to fight a group of enemies with a leader in it, you want to prioritize taking it down as soon as possible.

This way, you can make the battle a lot easier since your other enemies will no longer have a buff on them.

Engaged Mechanic

The last one we have is the Engaged mechanic, which basically happens when one of your teammates fights an enemy in a 1v1.

If you attempt to get away from the engagement, your unit will suffer from an attack of opportunity. This is basically a free attack that your enemy can do.

The Engaged mechanic will also provide you with an advantage as it will cause the target unit to have a 20% chance of receiving a critical hit. In other words, your teammates can finish off that target unit pretty quickly.

ALSO READ: Wartales: Which Skills to Choose | Specialization Guide