In Lords of the Fallen, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. If by “skinning,” you mean “slaying,” and by “cat,” you mean “pretty much every life form you come across.” You could go through the whole game hacking and slashing, or you could opt for a more complex yet rewarding way of taking down your enemies. Magic. Here’s how magic works in Lords of the Fallen.
The three types of spells in Lords of the Fallen
There are three types of spells in Lords of the Fallen: Radiant, Infernal, and Umbral. To create an easy-to-understand parallel for those Dark Souls fans, Infernal spells are essentially Pyromancy, Radiant spells are essentially Blessings, and Umbral spells are essentially Sorcery. There are differences between the systems used in both games, but that’s the gist.
To elaborate, each class of spell offers a different playstyle, and any one catalyst (the tool required to cast the spells) can only cast one type of spell. This means that players will mostly have to stick to one school for maximum effectiveness.
The Radiant school of spells, out of the three of them, offers a larger selection of healing and buffing spells, as well as a fair share of offensive spells.
The Infernal school of spells is far more destructive, and all spells apply burning and fire damage on the enemies for heightened damage. A very offensive build.
The Umbral school of spells does offer some middle ground between the two but is mostly centered around applying wither damage to enemies.
You can multiclass these schools, but because they scale with different attributes, you will never be able to become super powerful in any one school, aside from Umbral. Radiant spells scale with your Radiance attribute, Infernal spells scale with your Inferno attribute, and Umbral spells scale with both your Radiance and Inferno attributes.
This makes it easy to be an Umbral caster who also dabbles in Infernal and Radiant spells, but less easy for a highly-optimized Radiant caster to throw the other two in the mix.
Magical combat in Lords of the Fallen
Whether you’re set on your school, or you’re experimenting, you’ll need to know how to engage in magical combat.
Firstly, you need your Radiant and/or your Inferno attributes to be at a high enough level to wield the appropriate catalyst and cast the spells. The more powerful a spell, the higher the required attribute level will be.
Once you’ve made some headway into the game, it will be easy enough to come across an Umbral and Radiant catalyst. Not so much an Infernal catalyst, but one of the classes starts with one.
Go into your inventory, equip the catalyst into your ranged slot, and select the available spells that you want to use in the grids below. Different catalysts will offer a different amount of slots for your spells.
Like you would for your ranged weapon, select it and hold the appropriate button to get it out. On the bottom right of your screen will be each spell you’ve equipped and which button will cast them. So lock-on to a target, and blast away!
Be mindful that each spell costs mana. You can increase your mana by investing in your Radiance and Inferno stats. For magic-heavy encounters, it’ll be worth stockpiling on consumables that allow you to recover mana. Certain enemies will drop them if you grind for them.
I hope you’ve enjoyed our guide to all things magic in Lords of the Fallen. I hope your journey isn’t too arduous, Lamp Bearer. For more Lords of the Fallen help, look no further than PC Invasion.
