Welcome to the walkthrough for Korgan. The game is a pretty basic dungeon-crawler. If you've played Diablo you more or less know what to expect.
There are however two twists. The first is that you're able to switch between the game's classes (mage, warrior, rogue) instantly at any time. The second is that it's going to be episodic in nature. While what that actually winds up meaning for gameplay, achievements, and your wallet is yet to be determined, there is some good definite news.
Specifically, the prelude is free of charge and contains 1000GS worth of achievements that can be easily cleaned up in a couple of hours. There are only 3 areas in the prelude with no town or any story to worry about. Each area has several primary quests and a couple of secondary quests. The achievements are pretty self-explanatory. While there are a few missable ones, so long as you make sure you clean up each area's checklist you should be fine.
The gameplay is pretty simple and straighforward. You don't really need to worry about much strategy other than 'kiting' enemies. Both the mage and the rogue are ranged characters so you can move away from an enemy, shoot them, move away, shoot again, etc., until the enemy dies. Additionally, the mage's heavy attack has a chance to freeze enemies which makes your job even easier. This strategy works for almost all enemies in the game save for a boss or two and the dark knights which seem to be immune to ranged damage altogether.
Controls
- Move - Pretty self-explanatory.
- Interact - Pretty much everything that you need to interact with is done by clicking and holding the stick. This includes opening chests, reading obelisks, and disarming traps.
- Heavy Attack - generally does more damage but is slower.
- Light Attack - quick but does lighter damage.
- Special - each character has a special meter that fills up as they do damage. Once full you can use it.
- Switch Character - switches to next character. Order is always the same.
- Left Potion - uses potion equipped in left slot. By default it is the healing potion. If you're moderately good at kiting enemies you will have no need for this. There's also an achievement for dying 10 times, and no real penalties for dying so feel free to not heal...
- Right Potion - uses potion equipped in right slot. By default it is the mana/energy/etc., potion (varies per character). Since you can regenerate energy/mana by just standing there there's really no reason to use these outside out of a boss fight, but since you'll be kiting anyway your mana should regenerate quick enough to not need these.
- Inventory - brings up the inventory screen, level-up screen, settings, etc.
Characters
Mage
Probably the most overpowered character of the bunch and the default character I played through most of the game with. The reason is simple: the heavy attack has a chance to freeze enemies making them immobile. This means you can finish them off with the light attack or switch to a different character to finish the job. Since for most of the game you'll be fighting one enemy (maybe two) at a time, this makes most fights ridiculously easy.
The mage uses mana which slowly regenerates when it's not being used. You can simply stand in one spot after killing an enemy in order to make sure you go into your next fight with full damage potential.
The mage's special is a high-damage, wide-area lightning storm around the character that strikes several times. This is really your only area-of-effect spell and only effective way of doing damage to a group of enemies. It is also great against bosses as it does a large chunk of damage to their large health pools.
Rogue
The other ranged character is also pretty powerful since she can easily hit-and-run. The heavy attack launches several bolts in an arc which don't really do enough damage to handle crowds, but is great against bosses since all bolts will generally hit the same large creature.
The rogue uses energy which is pretty much identical in function to mana.
The rogue's special is a 360 nova of bolts. It's really not that many bolts nor do they do any significant damage so it's rather underwhelming as a special. It's almost always better to just use the heavy attack which will do more damage because it's focused in one direction.
Warrior
The warrior is the only character that has to be up close to the enemies to hurt them. This is a rather big disadvantage because it means you're likely to get hit. That being said most enemies' attacks are easily dodge-able by circling around them. You can dodge the attack, hit the enemy, dodge the next attack, and repeat the cycle without taking damage. The heavy attack is a "jump attack" of sorts, but it is rather slow to land so you will likely get hit while trying to execute it and it doesn't really do enough damage to compensate for the risk. You're pretty much always better off doing several light attacks instead.
The warrior doesn't have a resource he uses for his attacks so you can spam them all you like. He does get a bar of armor in its place. While you have armor it will deplete first when getting hit. You will only take health damage once your armor is gone.
The warrior's special is rage. This is a buff/debuff. For a short period the warrior will deal twice as much damage but will also take as much damage. So long as you can effectively dodge attacks this is a nice trade-off but there's really no reason to play the warrior when the other two classes are much easier to kite with.
Skill Trees
Each time you level-up your heroes will get their health and mana/energy/armor fully refreshed and you will get a skill point. The skill point is shared so only one of your heroes can level up their skill. In the prologue you will probably get close to 10 of these if you clean up everything. Honestly, the description of the skill trees here will probably be more complicated than when you just look at it in game and realize how basic it is.
Each hero has their own skill tree of 6 different skills (3 tier-1 skills, 2 tier-2 skills, and only one tier-3 skill). Each skill can have up to 2 points put into it. You cannot get higher level tiers before maxing out all the lower level tiers for that hero.
The skills also don't really change anything. They're just small bonuses to damage, a stat, or health for the most part. Simply dump all skill points into your favorite character or damage, since you'll care mostly about killing things quickly. I managed to max out the mage damage skills and then started working on the rogue, but feel free to do whatever you want. It shouldn't really make a difference for the prologue.
Dying
There really isn't much of a penalty for dying. This is good because there's an achievement for doing it 10 times. You don't lose your gear and you don't lose money. Money is worthless anyway since the Prologue has no town. Any progress you've made towards a quest is kept. The only downside is that the enemies gain full health back and some traps might respawn.
The prelude has only 3 areas. The basic strategy will be to clean up all secondary quests first as there is a missable achievement which will require a new playthrough if you don't finish all secondary quests:
Don't worry, it is rather obvious when you'll be facing the 3rd area's boss since it will be one of the primary quests. Basically, don't kill the 3rd area's boss (treant) before completing all secondary quests. The reason for this is that the game auto-saves your progress into the "starting point" for the future DLCs and you cannot go back.
Area 1 - Dungeon
The first area of the game will also give you a basic tutorial of sorts. There will be a primary quest and a secondary quest. As you complete each more will open up. All of the quests boil down to either a fetch quest or a kill quest. The very first achievement you will probably get is the one for killing 10 enemies:
While making progress on the quests, keep an eye out for glowing areas on the ground. These signify traps. If you step on them you'll take damage and sometimes suffer a debuff (poison, being frozen, etc.). Instead, switch to the Rogue, face the trap, and hold down the interact button to disarm the trap. This not only avoids the damage, but also grants you XP. Also, doing so 10 times leads to an achievement:
There are way more than 10 traps across the 3 areas, so you will unlock this eventually, though probably not in the first area. Traps also spawn when you die, so you can farm them that way if you've been really bad at not disarming them.
Another cumulative achievement you can work on is killing 10 frozen enemies. Simply get an enemy to low health and then use the mage's heavy attack to freeze them. Depending on the enemy, either the first attack will freeze them or it might take several. So long as the enemy is encased in a block of ice when you kill them it'll make progress towards the achievement:
Finally, make note of the portal on the mini-map and walk to it. Since it is your first one you will not be able to use it, but the second one you find can be used. This is needed for the following achievement:
Keep on making progress on the primary and secondary quests. Pick up any loot as you find it and equip better gear as you get it. Note that certain items can only be equipped by a certain class. In order the quests will be:
Primary:
Necromancy Items (8/8)
Destroy the Portals (5/5)
Kill Spiders (6/6)
Kill the Spider Queen (1/1)
Secondary:
Defeat a Demon (1/1)
Find a Power Rune (1/1)
All of these will also be highlighted on the mini-map so they should be fairly easy to complete. The only one that is a bit of a problem is the portals since they'll actually spawn more than one enemy at a time and you don't really have any weapons for dealing with that. You can try dragging the enemies away, but new ones will spawn while you do that. I circled the portal while shooting at it and then worried about the enemies after the fact. You can berserker charge in with the warrior and focus on the portal as well, since his armor and large health will keep him alive long enough to take out the portal.
While making progress towards the boss, if you've been diligently picking up all loot from enemies you will accumulate 1000 crystals (the game's currency, which is pretty useless in the prologue as there is no town for shopping):
Eventually you'll get to the Spider Queen. Once you enter the room you'll be locked in it for the battle. There will be 4 spider archers in each of the corners and a giant queen spider which will try to attack you with melee. Ignore the archers as a new one will spawn if you kill one. Simply circle the queen while dodging the projectiles. Every time your special fills up (if using the mage) use it since it'll do a decent chunk of damage on the queen. The rogue's heavy attack is also good since the queen is so large. Once you defeat the queen you'll unlock:
You should have both secondary quests done before this, but you can and should clean them up before heading to the next area.
Area 2 - Ruins
In the second area you'll be doing a rinse and repeat of the first, except with a ruins visual theme as opposed to a dungeon.
You will also find a second teleporter, use it to teleport back to the first area to get the following achievement:
Teleport back to the Ruins and work on completing all the quests here:
Primary:
Investigate Corruption (6/6)
Collect Belladonna (8/8)
Heal Villagers (8/8)
Defeat Leviathan (1/1)
Secondary:
Find Chests (4/4)
Defeat Dark Knights (2/2)
Both of the secondary quests are noteworthy. The first is to open 4 treasure chests in the area. These do not show up on your mini-map, but are pretty obvious looking and as the first 3 primary quests are fetch quests you should run into the chests while doing them. Make sure you get these before leaving the area.
The second primary quest is to kill 2 dark knights. These guys are tough because they're immune to ranged damage and do lots of damage with their attacks. This means you have to kill them with the warrior. The pattern is to let them swing their attack at you and dodge it by circling around them and to land a strike right afterwards. Repeat until the knight dies. While doing so you will probably die a bunch of times. This will be progress towards the 10 deaths achievement and you can also intentionally die here quickly to farm the achievement:
Eventually you will get to the Leviathan. As with the first boss the strategy is identical. Simply circle around the boss dodging his attacks and striking when able to. I actually think this boss is easier since it is one-on-one and there are no archers. There are two phases, but the second phase is identical to the first aside from a visual appearance change in the boss. Once you defeat the boss you'll unlock:
Area 3 - Woods
The third area is pretty much the same exact gameplay as the first two except it is in the woods. By this point you should have all the cumulative achievements (crystals, freeze kills, traps, deaths).
The quest list is as follows:
Primary:
Servants of Doom (8/8)
Magic Ink (6/6)
Artifact Gear (8/8)
Treant's Core (1/1)
Build Artifact (1/1)
Secondary:
Find Chests (4/4)
The only secondary quest in this area is to find the chests. It will be available from the start. As with Area 2, these will not show up on your mini-map. You should find them while doing the first 3 kill/fetch quests.
Before killing the Treant (Treant's Core Quest) make sure you have done all of the secondary quests. You will miss the following achievement if you don't do so:
The Treant himself is very similar to the Leviathan fight. Simply run around in circles while firing at him. Once he drops you will get the following achievement:
Pick-up his core and head to the altar on your mini-map for the final quest. Upon interacting with the altar you will unlock:
If you did all of the secondary quests you will also unlock:
Congratulations on the 1000GS!