Skyforge Combat guide
This Skyforge Combat Guide will help you get up to speed quickly by providing useful tips for how combat works in the game.
The combat system in Skyforge combines many elements that may be familiar to MMO gamers with plenty of new concepts in the mix. Understand the combat system in Skyforge early on will make for a smooth transition into the game, and insure that you’re primed and ready for the more difficult challenges.
Progression and Access to New Content
Because of the Skyforge’s specific combat system, there are technically no levels in Skyforge, so the standard enemy scaling and color-coded difficulty indicators won’t apply here.
Instead, you will want to be conscious of two major statistics: Proficiency and Prestige.
Proficiency
In Skyforge’s combat system a statistic called Proficiency instead of traditional levels to help determine what gear you are able to equip. Proficiency is primarily increased by actively unlocking certain nodes within the Class and Ascension Atlas. Each piece of gear you obtain (weapons, rings, amulets, etc.) will have a Proficiency Rating shown in the tooltip when you hover your mouse over the item in the Character window.
Prestige
Prestige Replaces character levels, and indicates the overall progression and relative power of your character. It is important to note that creature kills will not directly increase your Prestige. When you choose on class in combat, the class Sparks will begin dropping when you kill the creature in the Atlas, and Class Sparks can be spent on unlocking new class nodes, thus feeding into your Prestige total indirectly.
These two statistics will be important to keep in mind, your Proficiency will directly factor into what gear you are able to equip and your Prestige goes up, new areas will begin to appear, and you will also gain access to higher difficulty levels of previously unlocked maps.
Enemy Types and Prioritization
Each enemy you encounter in Skyforge will have a special indicator shown above it. These symbols will help you make some decisions in terms of kill order.
Indicates support-type enemies and will typically be your highest priority target. They can heal, or otherwise make the fight more difficult.
Indicates enemies that can deal significant damage. Will be higher priority targets when found in groups of enemies.
Indicates weaker enemies. Alone they don’t pose much of a threat, but in larger numbers they can still cause significant damage. These will typically come in larger groups and can quickly be defeated by AoE attacks.
Indicates tougher enemies with higher HP. When found in groups you’ll typically want to deal with these last.
You have to get into the habit of prioritizing targets as it will greatly increase your survivability as content and combat becomes more challenging. Because of most combat encounters will involve a mix of the various enemy types.
Melee versus Ranged
Even if your primary goal is to unlock a specific class within the Ascension Atlas, it is a good idea to become proficient with at least one melee, and one ranged class early on. Having basic functional knowledge of at least one melee and ranged class means you can swap your class when needed to deal with specific encounters. Unlocking the first few skills for any class is very cheap in terms of Spark consumption, and doing so will give you some flexibility when needed.
Bosses tend to have unique combat abilities, and adjusting for these can make a big difference in terms of your survivability. For example some bosses may be into spamming AoE ground attacks that make melee against them very difficult, so being able to temporarily switch to a ranged class can be highly beneficial. And some bosses will use stronger attacks when engaged at range, so for these you might want to consider switching to a melee class.
This guide focuses on a number of areas where combat in Skyforge deviates from the norm. Hope this Skyforge Combat Guide will give you some help!