Styx is back for the first time eight years, and we’ve got some helpful tips in our Styx: Blades of Greed beginner’s guide.
Styx is back, and he’s feeling stabby (as always)! Yes, Styx: Blades of Greed is the latest game in the stealth game’s series by Cyanide Studios. The game follows the original: Master of Shadows and the sequel, Shards of Darkness. Blades of Greed sees Styx stealing as much rare and powerful Quartz as he can. All the while trying to survive a world on the brink of war.
Styx: Blades of Greed Beginner’s Guide
Save. Often
I almost joked in my review that Styx: Blades of Greed feels like “Trial and Error Simulator: The Game”. You’ll die, get things wrong, and make mistakes that draw a lot of attention. So, embrace saving regularly. Thankfully, a quick save is mapped to clicking left stick (Xbox controller), so you can do easily.
It’s entirely possible you’ll make a move, and then an enemy you didn’t clock saw you slit a guys throat. You can either handle the grief, or reload.
Keep an eye on the status bars above enemies heads. White is being alerted. Yellow is suspicious. Orange is actively hunting. Red is combat!
Explore
This should go without saying, but have a good look around. There’s loads of hidden nooks and crannies to explore, many with resources, hidden items, or collectibles to find. You need your resources to craft your traps and potions, so you are equipped to take on the variety of enemies that the game has instore for you.
Visions in Purple
When you’re using your Goblin vision sense thing, keep an eye out for any purple coloured items. These are usually key items to help you progress or are collectibles / side quest items / bags of money. All of these grant you different levels of experience that help you earn Talent Points. Talent points you need to unlock more abilities.
Blueprints also glow purple, which you need to upgrade your items and carrying capacity.
Use Your Runes
Early on in the game, you’ll team up with an Orc, Wren. She’ll give you your first rune, as well as side quests for finding more runes out in the game’s worlds. The Dee Rune she gives you lets you spot runes through walls, in that familiar purple glow, with goblin vision. I rarely unequipped this rune when searching as it made life so much easier.
Similarly, you’ll get a rune early on that does the same for emblems, the main collectible in the game. You’ll want these for experience points, as well as a tasty achievement / trophy if you can find them all.
Emblems, Emblems Everywhere
Styx: Blades of Greed’s main collectible is that of emblems. They come in the form of little scarab type beetles. They are scattered throughout The Wall and Turquoise Dawn levels. There are no emblems to be found in Akenash.
There are five types of emblems that can be found in each level, represented by increasing rarity of materials. Please note that you cannot find higher tier emblems until you’ve accessed the relevant act of the game. You can still collect previously uncollected emblems.
- Wood emblems – from Act 1
- Bronze emblems – from Act 2
- Silver emblems – from Act 3
- Gold emblems – from Act 4
- Emerald emblems – from Act 5
There are 10 of each emblem in both The Wall and Turquoise Dawn, making that a total of 100 emblems to find throughout the game. Each emblem grants you 20 experience points.
Use the Raven Rune to help collect these. They will show as purple through walls when using goblin vision. You can grab this rune super early on as part of the “Lost Runes of Turquoise Dawn I” side mission from Wren. This is located in the balloon station in The Wall, at the Harlow Shop – Wall Market location – very easy to spot. It’s on a table as soon you enter the room.
Thou Shalt Get Sidetracked by Bullshit Everytime
Do the side quests. In between each level, you will travel back to your base of operations, the Zeppellin. Here your crew will be hanging around. Talk to them regularly to get new sidequests. Sidequests are usually just items to find in the levels you’re going to anyway. Completing them give you a number of benefits:
- Helledryn’s quests grant you experience points and shiny items to store in your display cabinet
- Djarax’s quests give your crystallised pure amber which unlocks new ability slots, where you can equip for items / abilities, meaning, with all of them, you can have 16 locked and loaded!
- Wren’s quests help you find the runes that give you new boosts in exploring or battle.
You can check your quests in the main menu. Just tab across to the side activities.
Combat
The combat I found frustrating. You’ve got to aim your camera at the enemy and click the right thumbstick to lock-on. Only then will Styx draw his blade for combat. You are weak and will die fairly quickly. Use right bumper and a direction to dodge out of the way. When a blue notification appears next to an enemy, dodging at the right time will activate a ‘perfect dodge’ giving you a window to land a critical strike. There are some armoured enemies where this is your only option, so do practice getting better at dodging.
Goblin Reflex
Of the Quartz powers you can unlock by collecting the key objectives in the game, the most important (I think), is Goblin Reflex. Not only does this grant you a powerful dodge move when you’re in active combat, but it also has the option to deflect projectiles back at enemies. Super helpful, and takes a lot of frustration out of the finicky combat in the game.
Traversal
I got a bit frustrated with some of the traversal in the game. Largley because it was a bit hit and miss as to what Styx would grab hold of. There’s some things to look out for though, once you know it makes life easier. There are often cracks in the wall, thicker cuts that you can grab hold of. Similarly, on strucutres, there’s a often grey metal railings that you can grab too.
Know Your Enemies
Spotting and recgonising enemies is super helpful for thinking about how you can take them down. Any chunkier fellas, usually with a warhammer, can’t be insta-killed like a soldier or archer. You can stab them to weaken them, but this then alerts them to your presence, obviously. Similarly, armoured enemies need their armour removing before you do damage to them proper. The game prompts you to the type of attack when you sneak up on them. The prompt will say either ‘kill’, ‘stab’, ‘remove armour’. Of these, only ‘kill’ is a definite murder.
Of course, there are other ways to dispatch enemies. If an enemy is looking over a ledge, you can sneak up behind them and ‘push’ them off (the game’s prompt will say so). Equally, you can be on the other side, hanging from a ledge, if ‘kill’ appears, you can drag them off the ledge.
Watch out for the armoured inquisition enemies later on. If they spot you, or are alerted, they’ll cast a purple mist that stops you using your powers.
Environmental Hazards
Keep an eye out for yellow highlighted objects in the worlds, these are either places to hide, hide a body, or indeed use to your advantage. Look upto see if there are chandeliers, or cranes holding crates that can be dropped on enemies below. This is very useful for taking out those tougher enemies, or larger groups in one go. Throw a glass bottle into the damage zone to draw patrolling enemies into the right space.
There are also sacks of grog / mead and plates of food that can be poisoned. Approaching these and pressing Y (Xbox controller) makes Styx vomit over the item. Then it just leaves to wait for the enemy to chow down and die shortly afterwards.
Please note that if you get spotted it can often disrupt the guards patrolling and they often won’t interact with the food / drink items for poisoning. Where possible, I would recommend prioritising getting the poisoning done before you focus on other enemies in the area.
Tools of the Trade
I’m not sure how doable it is to complete Styx: Blades of Greed without using your items, so bloody use them. You’ll have to unlock some of them with blueprints, found in the world. You can throw darts at enemies, often resulting in an insta-kill, throw bottles to distract enemies, or throw sand / dust to extinguish lights, making it harder to spot you. My favourite though is the Acid Trap. Pop this down and any enemy, and I mean ANY enemy, that stands on it, will be insta-dissolved, handily taking out the body too.
You will get new abilities throughout the game, so if someone seems inaccessible, wait until you’ve got the other items and return. You will get some really helpful tools, including:
- Quartz Compass – use up on the D-Pad to open it. It will highlight quartz locations (click and hold the right stick to lock in a location, if undiscovered). It also highlights balloon fast travel stations too. White balloons mean you’ve unlocked it, black balloons means it’s still be discovered.
- Glider – let’s you glide across wider spaces, as well as use jetstreams to get higher
- Spectral dash – let’s you pass through thin barriers, like metal grates / gates
- Crystal claws – let’s you climb crystal walls
Point of No Return
STOP!!!!! There is a point of no return in Styx: Blades of Greed. It’s not one of those newer ‘not until you’ve finished the game’ ones either. It’s a hard, you go past here, you gotta start again from the beginning type affairs. In Act 5, you will need to get Quartz from The Wall and Turquoise Dawn, after, you will need to head to Akenash. Do not do this unless you are happy that you can’t go back. No side-quests can be completed if you do. You can’t mop up those last collectibles.
That’s your lot for now. I hope this was helpful as you start your expedition in Styx: Blades of Greed. Be sure to let us know if you think something is missing / should be added.
Check out more achievement / trophy guides for Styx: Blades of Greed below.
