Monsters’ Den: Godfall – The Battle Tree Guide

by Falagar / Articles, Misc. Guides / 13 Jul 2017

The Battle Tree Guide

Introduction

The battle tree focuses on melee weapon attacks, tanking damage with shields, and removing enemy defenses. It excels at inflicting heavy damage to the front row, from the front row and tanking damage from the front line. The battle tree gives access to most heavy armor, two handed melee weapons, and all one-handed melee weapons except for daggers, and shields. The battle tree is required to use greatswords. Characters with the battle tree can subclass to become champions.

Active Skills

Fierce Strike

A simple power attack, this skill’s about as basic as it gets. Use it when you need just a bit more damage on an attack and you can spare the energy.

Crushing Blow

A melee attack that shreds armor. Good against high armor enemies such as Gargoyles and Sellswords. Note that the skill doesn’t remove 25% of the target’s armor value. Instead, it deducts 25% from the target’s damage reduction from armor. For example, a target with 60% armor will go down to 35% armor when hit with a crushing blow.

Cleave

An area of effect attack that deals slightly reduced damage to the whole enemy front line. There are usually two situations where you would want to use this. The first is when it can kill one enemy and hit at least one other one. The second is when buffed with a condition such as anoint or hidden to inflict heavy damage to the enemy front line. It’s best to use cleave sparingly because the power cost is fairly high.

Kick

A situational skill that knocks an enemy in the front line into the backline. The damage is negligible so this should be used solely for the utility. Use kick when there’s a high-priority enemy in the front line such as a goblin champion that can’t be dealt with in a timely fashion. When doing this you can wait until later to handle the kicked enemy. Keep in mind this only works when the target has an empty space behind them.

Tackle

Deals half damage and prevents evasion. Ironically tackle itself can be evaded normally. This skill is most helpful on strong enemies with high evasion such as the manticore. I don’t recommend using it against small evasive enemies like spider spawnlings because they can often be killed in one or two successful hits anyway.

Charge

Deals heavy damage to a target in the backline directly in front of the user with no front line enemy in-between, as well as removing .2 action from the target. Very strong when used against vulnerable targets. If there are openings that allow you to charge it’s sometimes a good idea to move your character into the appropriate space in the front line.

Pommel Strike

Deals minor damage and prevents the target from attacking other party members for their next two turns. Useful when a front-line party member needs to be protected from a target and shield wall isn’t an option.

Shield Bash

A fast attack against an enemy that has a 50% stun chance, as well as dealing minor damage. Requires shield to use. Strong against frontline enemies that need to be stunned such as amphibians. Though the energy cost is very conservative, using it too often can lead to energy issues.

Shield Wall

Prevents enemies from attacking other party members and increases armor by 25%. Requires shield to use. Lasts until a skill is used, or the user is stunned. Great for protecting the rest of the party with a beefy front liner. Often times you’ll just want to shield wall and then wait with the character until the situation is safe for other party members. The armor buff from this works the same way as the armor debuff from crushing blow, so a character with 40% armor would have 65% armor after using the shield wall.

Passive Skills

Bloodlust

Gives 0.2 action whenever a character dies. This includes both enemies and allies. Always helpful, however, it really shines when a lot of enemies are dropping in fast succession.

Steadfast

Prevents the user from dropping below 25% health for the first two turns of the battle. Decent for tanks, however it really shines for less durable characters who are liable to take heavy damage from the front line. This skill can be used on a damage dealer in the front line to remove the need for a tank on most fights. This only tends to fail when the fight goes past the two turn mark and the high-priority enemies haven’t been dealt with yet.

Thrill of Battle

Gives +1 power regen for each surviving enemy. A small boost but useful regardless helps to alleviate power problems.

Shield Mastery

Shields give +25% defense rating. A very small bonus that will make tanks slightly more durable.

Fighting Styles

Adrenaline

Attacks do +10% damage, and the user is immune to stuns. Use this either when you need that slight damage boost to get the killing blow on an enemy, or you’re fighting heavy stunners like arachnoids. For pure damage over a few turns, there are superior options, so I don’t recommend using this as your go-to style for dealing damage.

Sweeping Strikes

Gives a small boost to speed and accuracy, as well as preventing attacks from being evaded. What this means is that attacks made by the user treat their targets as if they have 0 evasion, however, they can still miss if the user has low accuracy to begin with or a debuff to accuracy. Regardless, this will usually result in a 100% chance to hit any enemy. I cannot overstate how amazing this style is against enemies with very high evasion like rats. Also because of the small speed boost, this is a very good option for a default stance.

Hold the Line

While this is active all party members in the backline have +20% armor. This is most useful against enemy archers, however, if you’re using the character as a tank and you’re backline’s in jeopardy, it’s probably a better idea just to use shield wall.

Champion Abilities

An attack that deals massive damage based on remaining power and costs all of your power. This is the most damaging single target skill in the game, and even has the potential to one-shot legendary monsters with a buff or two. Before using this though, think it through for a little bit because you’ll be without power for a while unless you have a reliable way of recovering it.

Lowers the accuracy of enemies in melee range as well as preventing them from using ranged attacks. Very useful on tough fights to give that extra edge give some more protection to the backline. This normally won’t do much on minor encounters but in fights where you need to stay in battle for extended periods, this may be useful, especially since it only uses half of the action clock. Unfortunately, the power cost is a bit hefty for the effect.

A very powerful quick attack that can only be used against targets with lower quickness. Over a course of a few turns overwhelm can put out unparalleled damage, however, it requires that the character has enough speed to support it. As a result, it can be difficult to find the right build to use on a conventional warrior.

Falagar

He is the founder and editor of Magic Game World. He loved gaming from the moment he got a PlayStation 1 with Gran Turismo on his 7th birthday.
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