Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, the latest entry in the action role-playing game (RPG) genre, has taken the gaming world by storm.
As with all other Soulslike games, your build, essentially constituted by the skills and items your character has, determines how well you can progress through the game.
A good build is, therefore, necessary for a pleasant playthrough of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. However, the wide variety of weapons, stats, and wizardry spells available for the player can be incredibly confusing, and the whole process of converging all your choices into a single well-rounded build is daunting.
An Overview of the Wo Long Crafting System
This game’s complex build crafting system may not appeal to everyone, especially casual players who are just looking for a game to kill time on or are playing this game due to the hype (filthy casuals, eh?). Still, it actually is what ascertains the kind of experience you will have through the game.
As a general rule of thumb, the first and foremost thing to consider when deciding on a build is to figure out the general playstyle you like to play games with. If you enjoy winning fights even after taking a heavy beating, for example, you should probably consider building a heavy tank build.
After you resolve the required build type, you can dig deeper into the specific Wizardry spells and weapons with compatible Weapon Scalings to further tweak your build to your liking. Certain spells and weapons will synergize better with your selected build type and amplify your strengths.
This is, in essence, the gist of the crafting system in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. So mainly, you need to choose the following things for yourself:
- Phases
- Wizardry Spells
- Weapons
Now, let us peek deeper into the available options so you can perfectly craft the right build for yourself.
Phases of Your Build
The Phase of your build will serve as the base for everything else you choose. You can think of it as your build’s general ‘type.’ Five Phases are available to players in the game, based on ancient Chinese philosophy. These are:
- Wood Phase
- Water Phase
- Fire Phase
- Earth Phase
- Metal Phase
Picking any of these strengthens your character’s related skills and stats. You can spend Qi points (earnt by killing enemies) to increase your virtue points in the Phase you pick. Skills and weapons will go on to be increasingly powerful as you put in more and more virtue points.
It is important to note that these Phases have their own strengths and weaknesses, and no one Phase destroys all others. In fact, a Phase that is strong against a certain type will be weak against another type, like Fire Phase is strong against Metal but suffers versus Water Phase attacks.
Wood Phase
The best Phase to pick as a beginner is the Wood Phase. This Phase will increase your hitpoints (HP) by the highest amount compared to any other Phase and will give you the ability to heal when you damage enemies.
It will also increase your Spirit Gain to cast more spells per battle. ‘Spirit’ is the resource you use every time you cast a spell or any non-basic move in the game, so conserving it is essential to lasting long in battle. In addition, with the Wood Phase, you do not have to worry about running out of it mid-fight, so you can mash your keys all you want.
Water Phase
This is the other best option for beginners because it allows for a straightforward playstyle. Water Phase gives you stealth, so you can pick enemies off without ringing a bell in their heads. Thanks to the Chill effect, it also upgrades your ranged weapons and causes your attacks to slow enemies.
Regarding Spirit benefits, Water Phase decreases Spirit consumption for your dodges and reflects. All in all, the Water Phase allows for a flexible and slippery (pun intended) playstyle.
Fire Phase
One for the players with anger issues (or not), the Fire Phase offers the most aggressive playstyle options in the game. If you want to toast your enemies instantly, this is easily the way to go.
Fire Phase greatly increases your damage and Spirit Gain rate on your attacks, so the more you attack your enemies, the better the position you are in. So pick this Phase and set your enemies on fire!
Earth Phase
The Earth Phase enables the heavy tank build mentioned earlier in the article. This Phase is for those with the most defensive playstyle of all. Maximize your Earth virtue to be an unkillable turtle (you can only be a turtle here because Earth Phase builds tend to be very slow).
Since this is a defensive build, picking the Earth Phase maximizes your Spirit Gain rate from defensive moves like deflects and crowd control abilities.
Metal Phase
The most unique and interesting Phase in the game is the Metal Phase. It is a balanced combination of attack and defense. It is based on weakening your opponents during your fights through your poison-based attacks.
The wizardry spell consumption rate is also minimized with this Phase, so you can cast tons of spells to wipe out your already weakened enemies quickly.
Wizardry spells
Once you have selected the perfect Phase for yourself, the next thing is to pick out your arsenal of wizardry spells. Depending on how much virtue you have invested in a certain Phase, the wizardry spells of that Phase will have increased powers.
For example, if someone has decided on a build based on the Fire Phase, they would have invested most of their virtue points in the Fire tree. So, wizardry spells belonging to the Fire tree will be their strongest spells.
Each spell has an associated spirit cost and the required morale level and virtue level required to unlock it. If you spend enough time, you can unlock every spell the game offers. However, you should pick your spells wisely because waiting for yourself to finish the game before you get some powerful wizardry spells is not wise.
Weapons and Weapon Scalings
An extremely wide variety of weapons is available for purchase and use in the game. As with wizardry spells, these weapons also synergize better with certain Phases of your build, so you can probably figure out how important picking the right Phase for yourself is.
In the Blacksmith’s weapons shop, you can look at the little circular graph on the right to check which weapons work better with which Phases. For example, if you look at the graph for the Guard Poleaxe, you can see that it primarily scales off your Earth virtue. So, if you are playing with an Earth Phase build, this weapon should serve you well.
You can spend some extra copper at the Blacksmith to upgrade your weapons. However, it is strongly advised that you upgrade the weapons with the best scaling with your build type. Otherwise, the copper spending will be highly inefficient.
Respecs and Battle Sets
One of the best parts about this game is that you can change your build and play style at any stage. This is known as respecing. You can save your builds as battle sets in case you want to return to them and then build new ones if you want to try something new.
This means that, unlike most other action RPGs, you do not need to start a new game if a certain build type is not working well for you. So, feel free to experiment and try different loadouts and pick the one you enjoy the most!
Conclusion
Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is one of the best action-packed RPGs you can pick up today. By following this Wo Long Crafting guide, you can use the complicated crafting system to your advantage and crush your enemies.
Whatever you do, be sure to enjoy the game in the process, and you are guaranteed to have a good time. What kind of builds and playstyles do you like? Let us know in the comments below so others can also try your favorite loadouts in the game!
