NARAKA: BLADEPOINT Guide to naraka combat and systems.

TLDR

Here are the most important notes if the rest of the guide doesn't interest you. Like I said this is not comprehensive, meant to only get people started.

Blue attack beats basic attack.

Parry beats blue attack.

Basic attack beats parry.

Tap dodge to get an invuln dodge, holding dash goes into a sprint, and nothing has invuln, not even the dash part.

Weapons have basic attack chains, which usually work in 3s and the 3rd is blue. (Greatsword is usually on 2nd and 3rd, but it has more)

Weapons can be charged for different blue attacks.

Attacks are horizontal or vertical, their uses in basic chains and their blue finishers are usually interchangeable (not for greatsword, but check the weapon you want to learn just in case), but most charged attacks differ based on choice of horizontal or vertical.

You can interrupt chains or charging with jumping, crouching and dodging.

If you crouch, pressing vertical attack does a rising slash that is a basic attack, use it to vary up your basic attack chains.

Always try to grapple towards enemies at a downwards angle if you can.

Do the advanced tutorial if you didn't already.

Survival is the main mode, its BR, has ranked and unranked.

Bloodbath is FFA, if you just wanna fight, die, respawn, repeat, within a small portion of the map.

Bloodsport is the serious tournament style best of 3 1v1 mode, if you wanna meet more competent players and observe consistent fights to learn.

Melee Combat!

The part you're probably here for.

The melee combat of Naraka has a basic rock-paper-scissors system at its core:

Focus attacks that beat basic attacks.

Parry that beats focus attacks.

Basic attacks that beat parry.

Dodge doesn't actively interact with either of these, but can help you avoid them if done well and you don't want to guess, I heavily emphasize the done well part, since if you just dodge willy nilly people will just adjust their attacks to catch you, or dash after you and then hit you. When you dodge, if you simple tap the button, you get invuln frames and a short dash dodge, if you hold it, you dash and immediately go into sprint, but you dont get any invulvn frames, if you quickly tap twice you invuln dash then invuln roll, if you tap then hold, the second one won't have invuln.

Basic attacks can be horizontal or vertical and are your usual click to do chain. You can mix vertical and horizontal hits in the chain, which behave mostly similarly, and the last attack is usually a focus attack. (Except with greatsword, greatsword is a wild beast)

Focus attacks are primarily done in two ways, the first is holding an attack button, which charges a focus attack, depending on if you're charging a horizontal or vertical attack you'll get different attacks from the weapon. You will take damage from basic attacks while charging, but they won't interrupt you, and the amount of damage you'll do to them will be far greater than what you took. The other main way of getting focus attacks is through basic attack chains, each weapon will at some point of its basic attack chains have a focus attack.

Parry is a short move during which your character strikes a pose that can block a focus attack. When successful, the enemy is knocked down, the weapon they used to make the attack is dropped on the ground in front of you, and you can follow up with an extremely damaging counter attack. Keep in mind you can not parry basic attacks, and will instead just eat them. You can also eat the focus attack if you mistime the parry.

Attacks clash with attacks of the same priority, so basic clash with basic, focus with focus, when that happens, each player takes a little damage, I'm not sure if that damage can kill though.

Each weapon has 2 aerial attacks, the horizontal, which usually gives you slight momentum changes, the vertical which stops any movement you might have and just launches you straight down for a slam attack. You cannot charge attacks in the air but you can parry, this is mainly relevant for the grappling section, but could be useful, if you find out somebody has been waiting for you as you're landing from a jump. You can also press crouch while in the air to do a fastfall.

On the topic of weapon combos, the rule of thumb that i observed so far is that each weapon has a 3 attack combo, of which the 3rd one will be a focus attack for MOST weapons, the greatsword has focus attacks on both 2 and 3 for its most common chain. You can use this to know when to possibly expect a focus attack so you can attempt a parry. However, its not that simple because of the following three things:

#1: When you're doing a chain, you can just start charging during any hit of it to mix your offense up.

#2: The game also lets you cancel charging or stop chains. You can do this with dodge, jump and crouch. These are useful for cancelling a focus attack charge, or interrupting your chain so that you can start it again with basic attacks instead of going into focus.

#3: The game also has an additional attack move, a rising attack which is done by using vertical attack while you're crouching, each melee weapon has its own. This is also a basic attack, that can't be charged and, if successful, launches the opponent into the air, giving you the chance for very large damage. How you get that damage is dependent on the weapon you are using, and will probably require you to spend atleast a little time in the training mode testing out what you can do. So if you interrupt your chain with a crouch, instead of starting a fresh chain with basic horizontals or a charged horizontal, you can go for the launcher with vertical.

The combination of these factors dictate the flow of Naraka's close quarters combat. You're weaving attacks to try and catch out your opponents decisions. For instance, you can start charging a focus attack, then cancel the charge with a dash to try and hit the parry attempt. Or you can do your basic attack combo, then instead of going into the combo focus attack, you do a rising slash, which then beats their parry. Or achieving the same by dashing in between attacks to keep your chain varied, its all a matter of trying options and playing mindgames.

Ranged Combat! Also Grappling.

This section will be a lot less detailed, since ranged weapons are pretty self explanatory.

At any point you can use a ranged weapon, but if you get hit by a melee weapon, it will stop you from shooting. There are different guns that all do different things, not much more to it.

However grappling is more interesting, aside from using it on terrain for traversal, you can grapple onto enemies to launch yourself at them. If they are in the middle of climbing you will interrupt that, however if they are performing a focus attack (or character ability) you will not.

While you're grapple flying you have two attacks available. With horizonal strike you do a beefed up version of the regular jump multi-hitting attack, which also keeps a lot of your momentum. The vertical attack is the same, you stop your forwards momentum and slam down towards the ground with a downwards attack. You also have the same aerial parry, if the enemy sees you will grapple and prepares a nice charged focus for you to land on. You can also use your aerial jump to stop the momentum as well.

If you are opting for the multihitting attack out of grapple, i suggest you do it while you are above your opponent, even slightly, so that you're angled downwards. Since if you do it from ground level (or beneath), there is a good chance you'll just fly waaaaaaay past your target. If that happens you can use the fast-fall (crouch button while in air) to quickly land and get back to it.

As you might expect grappling is cool for things like getting out of trouble, getting into trouble, catching runners as well as ranged weapon users and is in general a super fun tool.

What To Look Out For In Weapons.

Now this list will be far from conclusive because its just my observations during my playtime. I wont list every possible thing with these weapons, just the ones I think are be more common. Weapons get modified with souljades, which can come in pink or orange/gold variety. Take a look in training mode to see all of them. Finally, I could be missing a lot of things, but i think these will serve well as an introduction.

Longsword.

Its charged focus attacks send out slicing waves (horizontally or vertically, depending on the button charged.) You can normally parry these attacks if you're in melee range of the longsword user, but if you are at range, a parry sends the wave back.

One of its souljades (upgrades you can collect during the course of a match) let the user alternate between the two finishers, so instead of it being 2 basic attacks then a blue attack (horizontal or vertical), the longsword will be able to continue the chain by alternating the horizontal and vertical finishes, which would make it look like: basic basic focus horizontal, focus vertical, focus horizontal... So a chain could go on for a lot longer, you can still parry those blue attacks though. Stay frosty an you'll be able to stop them from repeating it too much.

Katana.

Its charged attacks will create a small storm of slashes infront of the user that will make Vergil fans everywhere squee in delight, despite the fact that these slashes have some range to them and look disjointed, you can parry them without issue. If you dont parry and instead avoid or clash with them, or even get hit, be careful the katana user can follow them up a followup single focus slash that moves them forward a fair bit.

Greatsword

DISCLAIMER, GREATSWORD CHAINS ARE BEYOND MY CURRENT ABILITY TO EXPLAIN SUCCINTLY, SINCE I DONT KNOW HOW THEY WORK EXACTLY YET. But most greatsword users will do basic horizontal, focus horizontal, focus vertical, that means it goes against the usual parry on 3s and instead parry on 2s and 3s. But greatsword has a much larger variety of chains available if you wanna sink your teeth into it.

Greatsword users can move while charging the horizontal attack, and that charge has several stages. First stage is a basic focus slash, the second is two focus spin attacks and the third is a BUNCH of spin attacks that just might kill you outright if you're missing hp. For the initial stages of the charge, they keep the focus attack armor, but towards the end they lose it, so unless they let go of the attack, they can be interrupted out of the charge if they hold it for too long, as opposed to other focus attacks which keep armor for the whole duration of the charge.

Even without the massive hit, this can be dangerous because they can start charging after any attack while moving to stay on you if they want to throw your timing off, and as long as they don't hold for too long, you can't interrupt it with basics. They can also cancel it with jump/dodge/crouch like any other charge attack.

They cant move while charging the vertical attack, and it has multiple stages but those don't massively change how the attack behaves, they all end in a jumping slash, i assume its just damage. They can however, follow that up either with another charged vertical attack (which they can constantly repeat but don't let them get away with it, its slow), or a basic attack to start a chain.

Finally, after clashing, either basic or focus, greatsword users can go from that clash directly into charging, so don't get too caught up in using a bunch of basic attacks.

Spear

Spear users have the usual horizontal or vertical charge attacks, but if they hold either one for long enough, they can go into a spear focus lunge, if that lunge connects, they can go into a followup attack that has them twirl most of your hp bar away.

Dagger

Dagger has a buncha ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

First of all, the charged horizontal attack is pretty much a rising attack, but focus instead of basic.

The charge vertical attack has two parts, the first is a basic blue focus attack that you can parry and just stop them in their tracks, but if you dont stop them from continuing it, the second attack is a PURPLE focus attack, which stabs you a bunch. Purple basically means you cant parry it, so either parry the first one, or avoid it entirely, or use an ability if you have a relevant one.

Dagger also has a special dodge, if they dodge after an attack, that dodge is better than a regular dodge, and instead of a basic attack, the horizontal attack triggers a leaping focus attack. So be on your toes, if they dodge after an attack they can go into either basic vertical or focus horizontal if they want to keep attacking you.

Finally if the dagger player clashes, they can follow up with the same leaping focus attack.

Nunchunks

Nunchuks have the usual horizontal and vertical charged attacks, but they have a gimmick that influences them.

After getting hit, or successful counter comboes (the one after a successful parry), nunchucks users get stacks. They can have up to 4.

While they have stacks, the charged horizontal attack can expend those stacks to block other focus attacks, then if they successfully block one, follow up with a devestating punish attack, while the charged vertical attack can expend those stacks to add additional hits onto itself, up to 5.

The nunchucks upgrades also let them gain stacks through offense, and a legendary one makes it so that the charged horizontal attack (the blocking one) doesnt expend stacks when blocking, and also block ranged attacks.

REMEMBER, the blocking focus attack is still a focus attack, dont try to basic attack them out of it because you cant use another focus attack on it.

Dual swords

Both the dual swords charged attacks result in a flurry of blows that absolutely shreds people.

The horizontal one can be held for a long time, but not forever, much like greatsword, and they can also move pretty quickly doing it. While they're moving they can dodge/jump/crouch to stop the charge too.

However, unlike greatsword, which is considered in the middle of a focus attack during most of their charge (cant be interrupted by basic attacks), the dual swords only get the focus armor after they let the attack fly, but once they do, the attack connects REALLY fast, and then the afformentioned shredding happens.

If a dual swords user is running at you while charging, its basically a game of chicken, do you attack them to smack them out of the charge, do you walk up and parry because you think they'll let it go before you can hit them. The charge also happens pretty quick, so they can sneak it in during their basic attacks when youre not expecting a focus.

The vertical charged attack takes a while to charge, and they cant move during it, but it has two stages, and the second one also hurts really bad.

Blood rippers

Has only one form of attack, hold button, it continually attacks, you can move while doing it, its a

chainsaw lawnmower, the name is very appropriate. Its op, and thankfully only in late game morus' blessing shops. (basically like other shops on the map but everything inside is free, it announces its arrival and then disappears after a time, narakas version of a care package)

On first press its inactive for 1-2ish seconds or so, then it spins up and is a constant purple focus attack for as long as you hold the button down. You can't lock on with it, so you actually have to hit enemies, and then stay on them. Basically you have to keep running into them, and if you don't veer to the side and miss a bit that enemy is dead unless they have an ability that lets them act while being hit. Seriously, if you stay on an enemy with this thing, the only way they survive is if you run out of durability on it, which you wont.

What To Look Out For With Heroes.

All Naraka characters have one ability and an ultimate, as well as two variations on each that slightly change how it behaves.

I wont be listing much here, this will only be for a few characters based on my experience and what might seem the most problematic.

Viper Ning

The lady from the tutorial, her ultimate marks enemies in visible to her a pretty big area around her as she chants for 5 seconds. She disables marked enemy grapples for duration of the chant. If you stay in her line of sight after those 5 seconds she will stun you...for 5 seconds. Which is as bad as it seems, but there is counterplay, the most basic is break line of sight then grapple out. Viper ning cant attack or defend herself while she is chanting, so if she is insistent on staying on you, you could try killing her, finally if you cant get away, or break line of sight, and are sure you cant possibly kill her in time, get on a ledge or platform above her right before she pops so that shes has to waste a second or two getting up to reach you, potentially saving your life.

Her ultimate's 2nd variation keeps you silenced as well as unable to grapple, but the stun only lasts for 2 seconds.

Its last variation keeps the silence and grapple block from the last one, but it lets her fight normally in exchange for removing the stun entirely.

Tianhai

His ultimate turns him into a very chonky statue, when this happens, RUN AWAY AND STAY OUT OF SIGHT, DO NOT ENGAGE, NO MATTER WHO YOUR CHARACTER IS OR WHAT GEAR YOU HAVE.

When he is in statue form both of his attacks grab enemies, one grabs from a distance (like a flying hand) the other swipes to grab in front of him. Once he grabs you he will slam you into the ground for massive damage. If he doesn't have anyone in his hands he can ground stomp. You can damage him, but as far as i know it doesn't interrupt. Just, just run away. If you really want to fight him, do so with ranged weapons, and be ready to dodge the flying hands.

His variations either buff his stomp or heal him when he slams people, but both give glowing weak points to his body in exchange.

Yotohime

Everything she has creates swords that deal damage and she can teleport to, so be wary of that.

Yueshan.

Definitely not Guan Yu. The base variation of his skill is a shoulder check he can do while getting hit, so its kind of a life saving measure, unless hes getting juggled, it does have the longest cooldown. The other variations on it have lesser cooldowns but cant be done while attacked.

His ultimate is an install, much like Tianhai. And just like with Tianhai, the best thing is to run the ♥♥♥♥ away. Just unlike Tianhai, he doesnt have long range grabs, and so its perhaps safer to pelt him with arrows/bullets. One of the variations gives him a leap attack, so that might give him better gap closing while installed but that's about it. He otherwise doesnt grab at all and just has dangerous hits. Those hits can only be avoided and not parried or clashed im pretty sure. His third variation says he can give himself immunity to stun, but im pretty sure while installed he always has that, and the variation is only to give that to teammates temporarily.

In a clash of the titans, Tianhai will win, atleast in my experience. Could be wrong though. Tianhai couldn't grab installed Yueshan, but the swipes still did a lot of damage.

Takeda Nobutada.

Edgy samurai man harboring a demon within. His basic ability gives him a buff for 10 seconds, if he is hit by focus attacks during this time, he blocks the focus attack damage, slams you to the ground, heals himself and also takes your weapon for himself. (or drops it on the ground if his weapon inventory is full). He also steals your lunch, slaps your girlfriends ass and spits on your shoes.

So, how to deal with this, well, he cant do it if you don't hit him with a focus attack, so cancel charges, or focus on basic attacks and parrying while it is active. You'll know if its active because his hands will be enveloped in a purple energy and swirling petals.

Both of the variations change that move so that instead of it being a 10 second buff, its a lunging attack, which does the afformentioned things, if it connects with someone doing a focus attack. It doesn't matter if you're charging, or actually doing a focus attack, you're going down on the floor.

The first variation of the lunge still blocks focus attack damage and heals, but it doesn't take your weapon, and it can be interrupted by basic attacks, it has the shortest cooldown.

The second variation of the lunge doesn't block focus attack damage, and it doesn't heal, but it does take your weapon, gives him damage reduction and it cant be interrupted. The cooldown is 2 seconds longer than the previous one.

Much like with the buff the best way to deal with these is to go light on the focus attacks. The good thing is that now he has to make a conscious decision to go after your attack, which means he can be baited into doing it, but in return charging attacks is much MUCH more lethal for you, since it doesn't matter if you're gonna stop before you hit him, he will hit YOU.

It is important to mention that Naraka lets you customize the facial features of its heroes pretty extensively, as well as give them different hairstyles, so you'll have to learn to recognize them through outfits, which might be annoying, it also might not be that big of a deal, not sure yet.

That's all I got for you here, other chars are either self explanatory, i'm not experienced enough with, or don't have any good tips to give you currently.

What To Expect From Modes

The primary mode is survival, it is your usual battle royale mode with lootable weapons, armor, healing, everything youd expect. It also has the usual unranked and ranked mode.

The casual modes include a flavor of the week mode, which is a mode with special rules that changes routinely, bloodbath, which is basically FFA where everyone has pink armor and every weapon available (also pink).

There's bloodsport, which is a 1v1 tournament in which you pick three heroes and weapons, then fight another player in a best of three format, where if you lose a round, you switch to the next hero. Losers are free to stay and spectate advancing winners if they want to.

Finally you have the training modes, which includes 2 tutorials, the one you completed on booting the game, and an additional one, as well as the free training mode, which lets you pick any weapon, any souljade and even any character, as well as any of their talents to test and try things out.

Now, before any of the other modes, I suggest you go to the training modes tab and complete the advanced tutorial, the game wont direct you to do it.

It explains how the survival mode works, it will also give some goodies as a reward, I highly recommend it.

After you're done with that I think either mode will help you learn but in different ways. Survival has the usual BR annoyances (like not finding the weapon you want, or getting stuck in a cluster when you're lower on hp) but i still think its a good way of learning, the main downside is the downtime, sometimes you will find no fights for extended periods, you have to requeue when things go sour, which can be annoying if you really wanna fight and learn.

That last problem bloodbath solves, by dropping you in a small arena with a bunch of other players, gives all of you weapons and armor, and lets you respawn. Which means you get to fight your heart out, but also that it might be overwhelming and confusing if youre trying to get the hang of it.

Finally, Bloodsport is an excellent way if you really just want to sit down and learn, its a 1v1 fest, and there will usually be competent players going at it, you might get destroyed, but you can always stay and spectate to see how people deal with things.

The End

That's it, that's all i got.

Like I said, this isn't comprehensive, but i think its enough to give people an idea what to do and what to look out for.

If a statement here is incorrect feel free to comment and correct me, or if you know how greatsword chains work please help!

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2855559230

Guide to naraka combat and systems.