Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox is an infinite old-school RPG roguelike developed and published by Alex Norton, where players take on the role of the incarnate form of a sentient sword, protecting a realm of dreams (Ahkranox) from the shadows of its tormented soul.
One of the key features of Malevolence is the ability to develop your character into any class you want to — by playing the game.
Upon starting the game, you are a blank slate. You have rounded off stats, resulting in your character not being particularly good at anything. But don’t fret: Your class is determined by your in-game actions and what you use to attack enemies.
In this guide, we are going to take a look at the steps you should take to build a warrior class.
The Pros and Cons of the Warrior
While your character may start off as a blank slate, once you begin developing your character to the class that you want them to be, you will start to gain advantages and disadvantages. The warrior, for example, has the advantage of being one of the strongest builds for melee combat in attack and defense. What’s more, he gains more health per level up than most other classes.
The disadvantage to this class, however, is his magic skills. The warrior’s lack of magical abilities results in him not being able to cast many spells while requiring a higher level before casting more powerful spells than others. The warrior’s lower intelligence also makes him more vulnerable to magic, making spellcasting enemies especially dangerous.
Your First Steps as a Warrior
At the start of the game, where you get to decide the gift you receive, it is advised to take either the sword or the shield, which will be a random weapon or random piece of armour.
All options and the gifts are covered in our Getting Started Guide, which you’ll definitely want to check out.
From here, your aim is to increase your strength and your constitution stats. Strength is increased by attacking enemies with melee weapons and constitution is increase by letting enemies hit you. The best (and easiest) way to boost these stats is by fighting Goblins and Imps.
Anything higher than that, such as Lizardmen and Orcs, will not go too well without first getting yourself some decent equipment. This is particularly true if you are attempting to boost constitution as these enemy types will deal far too much damage to make it worthwhile.
Regardless, you might have to dungeon hop for awhile to find weaker enemies, but the pay-off is well worth it — and you’ll find loot and gold for better equipment along the way.
See our Survival Guide for details on obtaining loot, gold and surviving in the early stages of the game.
Once you have gained some decent equipment and a good weapon, you should be able to face off against some of the stronger enemies like Lizardmen and Orcs. Just don’t get too overconfident and underestimate Ogres and Minotaurs. You may be able to take on Lizardmen and Orcs right now, but Ogres and Minotaurs are very, very powerful. Attacking them now will lead to a quick death.
Joining the Fighters Guild
Once you have gained a nice bit of gold and perhaps cleared out a dungeon, and completed a few quests, it will be time to take the next step in building your perfect warrior. That is to join the Fighters Guild.
Fighters guilds can be found in towns throughout Malevolence’s world. If there aren’t any in your particular town, go exploring! Fighters guilds are marked on in-town maps with crossed blades.
Before you are able to join them, however, you will have to prove that you are a capable warrior. To prove your worth, you must reach level 3 in the Slayer achievement. This stat can be viewed on your character sheet between your name and stats.
Once you reach level 3 in that achievement, you will be able to join the guild. Here you can buy equipment, and (the entire reason for joining them) you can train to increase your strength — and not have to worry about getting killed!
Note: There is a third option for quests, but it is yet to be implemented into the game at the time of writing.
But know this: Training costs gold. How much it costs will depend on how much you want to increase your strength. I would advise doing this after you have bought some of the provisions that you require for your journey. Afterward, increase your strength as much, as you can with your remaining gold.
Maintaining a Balance
The biggest challenge you will face when it comes to keeping a balance with the warrior is that you will gain strength quicker than constitution. The quicker you gain strength, the faster your constitution stat decreases.
Yes, decreases.
Once you reach around 70 percent strength, your constitution stat will begin to dwindle. At this point, you are heading for more of what I would refer to as a berserker class than a warrior (A berserker being a class that is pure melee damage, ignoring defense, dexterity and magic entirely).
Because there is no way of training constitution at the time of writing, the only way to increase it is getting hit by enemies. The best time to do this is during short periods where you become overpowered against a lot of the enemy types.
This mainly happens when you descend deep into a dungeon and find good equipment, which better protects from enemies. During these periods, mobs like Goblins can hit you 30 odd times before you need to use a potion.
Note: If you repeatedly hit the CTRL key, it will keep skipping your turn while fast-forwarding the enemy’s attack. It may not be too interesting, but your constitution will begin to rise quite quickly. Just ensure you have a good few potions on you at the time.
Go Forth and Slay all Evil in Your Path
You now have all you need to create the perfect warrior of Ahkranox. Just keep in mind that you need to keep a balance between strength and heir constitution to maximize the build. Don’t let the warrior’s large amount of health, good defense, and excellent melee damage make you overconfident.
When facing off against boss monsters who cast spells, you will have greater difficulty than with normal variations of them. Keep these things to mind and you will thrive as the greatest warrior in world of Ahkranox.
Got any other tips for building out the warrior class in Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox? Let us know in the comments below!
Published: Dec 3, 2016 07:14 pm