Before you dive into Othercide, parse through our beginner’s guide so you can hit the ground running. We’ve got tips on getting started and understanding the game’s various systems to give you a leg up.
I’ll mainly focus on combat, but there are a few other things I’ll help you out with.
Combat Basics
There’s a lot more to combat in Othercide than just moving and attacking, and not all of it is intuitive. Here’s what you need to know to get your family slaying together.
Use Burst Wisely
One of the major risk-reward mechanics of Othercide lies in the Burst mechanic. If a daughter ends her turn with 50 AP or more on her initiative meter, they will be able to act significantly quicker in the turn order.
However, every daughter can continue to act all the way down to zero. Just know that this will delay them 100 units (even if they only use 51 AP!) on the turn order.
That means a few things.
First, I recommend that you only use Burst if you’re getting something worthwhile out of it. Getting a daughter to an escape zone, killing a dangerous enemy, evacuating a threatened area, something like that. Otherwise, you’ll want to forego it for the versatility of being able to act again sooner.
Second, if you decide to Burst, use as much of it as you can. You won’t get to act sooner if you only use 71 of your AP, so you may as well get an extra shot in or move to a better location.
Utilize Memories
You will earn a lot of memories throughout your time playing Othercide, and you will need them. Memories are equipped in the “Daughters Overview” tab of the Inner Void.
Each skill for each Daughter can have a different memory attached to it, meaning a fully-leveled daughter can hit the battlefield with six different memories equipped. If she dies on a mission, those memories are lost, and swapping one out for another also causes the old memory to be lost, so keep that in mind.
That said, you’ll want their powers. Othercide is a game about razor-thin margins and given how hard healing is to come by for high-level units, anything you can do to make Daughters hit harder or take less damage is worth it.
You’ll also want to pay attention to what type of skills are getting what memories. Crunch the numbers on whether adding a base level of damage is better than a percentage (remember, an attack that hits multiple times will add the bonus for each successful hit).
Also, don’t forget that you have to actually use the skill in question to trigger the memory; bonus damage or critical hit percentage only apply to the skill the memory is equipped to!
Delayed Actions are Extremely Powerful
Healing your daughters takes sacrifice in Othercide, so delayed actions can seem like a bad option to beginners. This might be true when every hit point is precious, but don’t neglect these skills.
Delayed actions are some of the most powerful abilities in the game, provided you set yourself up to string together powerful combos.
These skills are strong for two reasons:
They do not cost any AP. Instead, they cost a percentage of your health. This gives you more actions to use without dipping into Burst or giving you that final push you need to complete a mission. They can trigger multiple times from one activation. If you have a Soulslinger using Shadow Round (which causes them to attack any enemy dealt damage by an ally), that Shadow Round will work every time any ally does damage until that Soulslinger’s next round begins.
You actually get even more value out of a single delayed action if you’ve gone into Burst since that daughter will take longer until her next round begins.
Set your pieces up correctly, and you’ll barely have to lift a finger to take down your foes.
Learn to Flank and Backstab
Characters will automatically rotate the first time they are attacked, friend and foe alike. However, attacking an enemy will lock them facing in a particular direction, meaning subsequent attacks can do significantly more damage from the side and back.
Backstabs, in particular, have a major damage multiplier, letting you shred foes if you are able to lock them one direction and then attack them from behind with a different unit.
This applies when enemies attack you as well. Do everything you can to avoid getting your daughters surrounded; they won’t last long if they do!
Study Your Foes
Your enemies do not behave randomly, even though it sometimes seems like they do. Once you’ve faced off with a particular foe and are back between missions, go to the “Codex” section of the Inner Void. It will tell you where every enemy focuses their attacks, allowing you to use their patterns to your advantage.
For example, Plague Doctors will always focus on the closest target. If you set up your actions correctly, that means you can use a daughter to kite this enemy and essentially waste their turn.
Likewise, if a daughter is one hit from being killed and another is at full health, you might want to move the full health character closer to the Plague Doctor so she will take the hit, saving the life of the other.
Since each mission tells you what foes you’ll encounter, it isn’t hard to learn how each behaves before you hop in.
If you hover over an enemy during a mission, you can also see their movement range. This does not take into account any abilities that might also move them closer, but it does give you an idea of their reach.
Remembrances
One of the big ways Othercide differs from other turn-based tactics games is that you’re going to fail. The game has some roguelike mechanics built in, where you may come to an impasse and need to start a run again. Luckily, making it further into a run will make things much easier on your next go, for a few different reasons.
By getting further in a run, you’ll unlock more remembrances and shards alike. You earn remembrances by hitting certain goals, like dealing a set amount of damage or killing a certain type of enemy multiple times. When you restart a run (called a “recollection”), you’ll be able to use your shards to unlock special bonuses.
For example, the “Red Embers” remembrance grants all of your daughters 30% more maximum HP. You unlock this remembrance by dealing 100,000 total damage, and you spend 50 shards to activate it before starting your next recollection.
Since so many different styles are effective in Othercide, you’ll need to play with your remembrance set up to find out what works best for you. Think about your goal for the next run, and always check to see what you’ve unlocked for the next go.
That’s it for our beginner’s guide of tips and tricks for Othercide. For more, be sure to check out our game page here. Let us know what you need help with, and we’ll see if we can’t push you in the right direction. Happy hunting!
