Skul: The Hero Slayer tells a familiar tale: your king has been captured and it falls on you to defeat his enemies and rescue him from their clutches. This time though, you’re the bad guy. Skul is a fledgling soldier in the Demon King’s army, and his journey will see you fighting off humans and their allies to save your diabolical leader.
While most of Skul: The Hero Slayer’s gameplay and mechanics should be familiar to fans of action roguelikes, there are some unique mechanics at play that even veterans of the genre need to understand to hit the ground running. If you’re interested in the game, remember to buy Steam Wallet Code as it is now fully released on Steam!
Here are 6 of the most important tips and tricks to succeed in Skul: The Hero Slayer.
Get the Flexible Spine Trait ASAP
No ability in your arsenal is more impactful than your dash. This skill allows you to jump in and out of combat, avoid enemy strikes and projectiles, as well as maintain a safe, advantageous position at all times. But unlike many other roguelikes, the basic dash in Skul doesn’t have invincibility frames. This means you’ll still get hit if you try to dash through enemies or bullets.
The Witch is one of the first NPCs you’ll meet in the game, and she grants you Witch Traits, which are permanent upgrades that apply to all your runs. Defeating enemies and progressing through the game will occasionally grant you Dark Quartz, which is used to buy and upgrade traits at the Witch. One of the first traits you’ll want to focus on is the Flexible Spine trait.
The Flexible Spine trait makes you invincible during your dash and will transform the way you play the game. When maxed out at level 2, the invincibility effect lasts for 0.3 seconds, allowing you to dash through projectiles without taking damage. This adds a whole new level of freedom to your play — instead of dashing to avoid bullets, you can dash through them to get in close for a strike.
Prioritize Mages and Long-range Enemies
It always pays to be cautious in a game like Skul: The Hero Slayer where a single wrong move can end an otherwise great run. In this game, it’s safer to approach large groups of enemies rather than wait for them to come to you. This is because many enemies in Skul can hit you from a distance, making it hard for you to move around freely. Some enemies can also lay traps, and if you leave them alone for too long, they can turn the area around them into a minefield.
When encountering a group of enemies, make it a habit to scan and identify any major threats — mages, archers, flying baddies, etc — before initiating a fight. The melee enemies in Skul are hard enough to defeat on their own, but it’s much tougher to clean them out when you need to dodge bullets, magical projectiles, and dive-bombing fliers all at the same time. Fortunately, ranged and flying enemies have relatively low HP (at least compared to melee fighters), so destroying them shouldn’t take long, giving you the space you need to defeat the tankier close-range enemies.
Smash Totems First
You may have noticed that some enemies are much tougher than the ones you’ve fought before — even if they’re the same type. For some reason, this new group will hit harder or can take more damage. Whenever this happens, look around for nearby totems. Totems are special structures that provide a buff to any enemies in the area.
There are four different kinds of totems identifiable by their shape and color. The green cross totem provides a heal over time, the blue wings totem boosts movement and attack speed, the red twin swords totem buffs damage, and the most annoying of all, the brown shield totem, blocks a fixed amount of damage.
You should look for a way to close in on and destroy totems the moment you see them. Mainly because they make fighting enemies in the area way harder. The shield totem in particular should always be destroyed as soon as it is spotted since the HP block makes even the weakest enemies so much harder to kill. Aside from that, destroying a totem temporarily grants you that buff while removing it from enemies, which helps in destroying groups of enemies faster.
Rack Up the Gold with the Ancient Alchemy Trait
The Ancient Alchemy trait is vital if you want to consistently go for deep runs.
Ancient Alchemy allows you to make money back on any items you destroy during a run. Items are equipable scrolls that provide a passive buff to Skul, but you can only carry a limited number of them at a time. Destroying equipped scrolls is the only way to make space for a new item, but by default, this doesn’t reimburse any of the Gold you spent on it. With the Ancient Alchemy trait, destroying a scroll will give you up to 842 Gold that can go towards new items for your loadout.
The Ancient Alchemy trait is especially useful once you get to the later Acts. The extra Gold makes switching builds mid-run much easier, so you no longer have to commit as hard to the scrolls you buy in the early game.
Speak to NPCs More Than Once
The Fox Hunter and Ogre NPCs will give you skulls and artifacts respectively, but did you know that you can get them more than once?
If you’ve got Dark Quartz to spare, it’s always worth spending a bit on the Ogre and Fox Hunter for a chance to get a new artifact or skull. This is particularly valuable in the later stages when your general-purpose build loses its effectiveness and you have to choose a more specialized setup.
Remember, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get an item that’s better than the ones you currently have, and Dark Quartz becomes more valuable the deeper you get into your run. Consider only spending later on if you’ve got empty slots or if you’re having difficulties with your current loadout.
Chain Your Abilities with Skull Swapping
Skulls are equipable items that affect how your character looks, feels, moves, and attacks. Think of them as you would weapons in your regular action platformer — one skull might transform your character into a ranged fighter, while another transforms him into a brawler with a heavy strike. You can equip up to two skulls at a time in Skul: The Hero Slayer.
Each skull comes with its unique ability with a unique effect, such as creating explosions in an area or hitting enemies in a line. Abilities have a cooldown — after using an ability, you won’t be able to use it until the cooldown timer has run down — but did you know that you can chain your abilities?
Each ability has an independent cooldown timer — using one skull’s ability doesn’t cause the other to go into cooldown. This means you can deal massive damage to groups of enemies by unleashing one skull’s ability, then swapping to your second skull and unleashing its ability right after.
Summary
That’s all the tips and tricks we have for Skul: The Hero Slayer, hopefully, it provided some useful insights on how to better play through the game. If you have any other tips that you would like to share with us, feel free to let us know in the comments below!
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