7 Tips For New Dark Alliance Players

(answering some important questions for you)

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Starting a new game sometimes comes with a lot of questions. What to level up first? What to spend my resources on first? What difficulty do I play on? Is there any hidden secret loot or are there any collectibles I need to get? How to farm specific gear quicker? Those are just some examples. I’ll try to answer these questions alongside a few more with a this short guide.

7 Tips Video Version:

Collect All Attribute Points:

Each Quest/Story has a collectible Attribute Point located somewhere in Act II of that quest/story. At launch the game has 9 such quests which means 9 collectible attribute points. Make sure to look for those hidden attribute points (which you might miss if only following the main quest directions) and collect them. Some of those have more complicated to solve puzzles, which I’ll make sure to make a written guide and video for. Make sure to find those 9 attribute points and implement them in your builds.

I can not confirm or deny whether the incoming Summer DLC and the two Fall DLCs which will each add a new story with 3 acts each will give an extra attribute point in act 2 of those. However, since the Free Fall DLC says that there will be “new difficulty ratings” that probably would mean a difficulty higher than Vanquisher and having extra attribute points for that would be great and make sense.

Don’t Over-push the Difficulty:

At times you might find yourselves tempted to push the stage difficulty to the next one before you’re ready to make that leap. The suggested gear score rating for each difficulty is a great way to know if your team is up to the task. However, it’s important to know that suggested gear score is for a group of 4 so the less party members the bigger score each of them will need to do that specific difficulty. For example, two players of gear score 1500 can clear super quickly 1250 score maps but might struggle in 1500 maps and clear unreasonably slow. A solo 1500 gear score person will definitely find it tough in a 1500 map (except maybe if it’s a Ranged hero like Catti-brie or the upcoming mage and with a good dps). 3 People will need at least 2000 gear score each to be able to finish a 1850 recommended score map reasonably fast. The case is different when a single person can carry the map by themselves and the rest are there to just get boosted and distract the enemies as meat shields at times 🙂

It’s better to co-op but solo’s doable too:

As I mentioned above, solo will be doable and when reasonably geared and with the right build certain classes can solo certain content. While you’re new it’s going to be much better to play with others and it will allow you to push your gear score quicker because of being able to tackle the higher difficulties sooner. This results in gearing up with the next rank of items quicker and climbing to the next difficulty quicker and so on. I’d recommend giving the public matchmaking a try (normally I don’t recommend this in games if it can be avoided) as it will let you progress at a faster pace.

Preferred Loot Drops:

Pay attention to each quest/story on the map screen. They all have a “Preferred Gear Set Drop” written under it, which means that there’s a higher chance of pieces from that set to drop when doing either of the 3 acts of that quest. This helps to focus farm the set(s) that you want for your build much quicker.

Upgrade Your Weapon First:

When you first start on any hero, you won’t have much gold or crystals and since you’ll be constantly pushing the gear ranks as you climb the difficulties you’ll find yourself with a lot of stuff that needs to be upgraded or unlocked and not that much gold or crystals at your disposal. I’d say that maxing out your weapon should be the only thing you upgrade at the start gear-wise so that you have enough gold for unlocking moves and upgrading consumables.

Which Consumables to Upgrade First:

I’d say that on every class you’ll most likely want to unlock the Potion of Heroism (yellow one) for ultimate meter recharge early on. Next, you’ll probably see a lot of benefit in unlocking the Elixir of Concentration for quicker ability cooldowns. Some classes and builds will greatly benefit from Stamina Potion but it seems that it’s not that high of a priority as not everyone needs it as much. The other 3 elixirs are not that bad and probably will be very useful for specific boss fights where physical resistance or elemental resistance or Unstoppable (immune to stuns and knockdowns but you still take damage) is useful. The damage grande seems kind of underwhelming and I’d stay away from that one after a certain difficulty has been reached.

Use the Environment:

Using the environment can be very helpful especially in those early difficulties like Hero, Guardian, or Champion (1250, 1500, or 1850 recommended score) maps. There are a several things that can damage enemies: exploding barrels, acid pools, ice shards on the ground, and various traps. Take advantage of those when possible and see your foes get destroyed quicker.

This concludes my short list of tips and things you need to know as a new player in Dark Alliance. I might make another list of useful info once I think of other helpful pieces of advice.

The Dungeons & Dragons Dark Alliance aRPG developed by Tuque Games released on June 22nd 2021 for PlayStation, XBOX & PC (both Steam & the Microsoft Store) and is also available for both the XBOX & PC via the XBOX Game Pass. The game got shredded by the reviews on Steam for many reasons but after playing it for already close to 60 hours I can say that it’s not as bad as people make it out to be. It’s true that there are a lot of things that seem unpolished with the co-op and there are a some badly designed features (such as the looting mechanic that only rewards at the end of a mission), however, there is a lot of fun to be had while playing the game.