Hello! This is a bit of a different post than I usually contribute to the Forge, and indeed, rather different most of the stuff anyone posts on the Forge. This particular discussion is about For Honor. For Honor is an amazing semi-realistic medieval combat game developed by Ubisoft. Despite a rocky start with connection issues at launch that scared a bunch of the player base off, Ubisoft Montreal has done a phenominal job sticking it out and fixing issues to help realize the potential that the game has. Many players have been somewhat resistant to giving the game another try due to the bad first impressions of oppressive connection issues, but Ubisoft has aimed to fix that too by offering For Honor: Standard Edition free on Xbox One and PC (and probably PS4 in the future). This has been really expanding the player base, and I as a fairly long time player of the game am very excited to see it growing up to what it should be.
With that said, the purpose of this post is to provide some starting tips based on my experiences in the game for those of you who are wanting to get into the game. I've seen a lot of Reputation 0 players recently, and am hoping they stick around to contribute to the player base and community. So, in that interest, here is a compilation of starting tips for anyone wanting to get into the game.
**Yes I realize I posted this in the wrong section** This isn't supposed to be in the Story Corner, but some reason I don't have access to the general discussion section. Admin will move this when they get the chance, but I am posting it here for now.
BASIC KNOWLEDGE
I'm just gunna briefly mention a bit about how For Honor works for very new players. If you have played for a bit already and know the fundamentals, feel free to skip this section.
Reputation: For Honor operates on a leveling system that's pretty cool. Every 21 levels you gain with a certain character, you will earn a reputation point with that character. Each Rep point you earn contributes to your overall Rep, which generally indicates the experience and skill of a player.
Steel: This is the currency for the game. While it can be bought at prices that seem just a little too high for me, it can be very easily earned in the game by completing orders and playing matches and such. No, this is not an endless grind you won't get anywhere with. Playing the game without shelling out more dough is a very viable way to get more steel. Most players do it and don't pay for steel unless they want to support the company or the game. Trust me, it's not that hard to earn it without paying.
Combat: For Honor operates on a very unique combat system that involves light attacks, heavy attacks, block, parrying, dodging, guard breaking, and all sorts of other moves. You have a health bar and a stamina bar. Health is self explanetory. Your stamina pool represents how much you can attack and such before you over fatigue your character. Going out of stamina makes your attacks incredibly slow and lowers your movement speed by a ton until your stamina regenerates, so once you are out you basically have no choice but to defend until it's back. Some attacks and other moves will cost more stamina than others.
Factions: There are three factions in For Honor: the Vikings, the Knights, and the Samurai (and soon the new Wu Lin Chinese faction). You will learn about the lore of each of these factions as you play the story mode. Your choice of what faction you belong to at the beginning of the game DOES NOT limit your character selection: it only changes who you fight for in the online Faction War. In the faction war, each player earns activity based troops to deploy in certain regions. The goal is to have the most troops in the most regions as a faction to win the battle and eventually the campaign.
Characters: Finally, we come to the characters. Each faction has 6 characers, all of which are totally unique and play completely differently from one another. Playing as a new character offers a completely different experience. There are four types: Vanguard, Heavy, Assassin, and Hybrid. All the heroes fit into one of these four categories. Vanguards are versetile all-arounders. Heavies rely on defense and damage. Assassin's rely on speed and agility. Hybrid characters will be a combonation of two of the three other class typse.
NOW THE ACTUAL TIPS . . .
Right, so with all that said, here are my top ten tips for starting the game . . .
10. Don't start online
This is one of the most important things with starting off in For Honor. It's best to spend the time picking a charatcer you like, training with that character, and playing the storyline before you even attempt to do anything online. If you start online without doing the campaign tutorial at the very least, you will get very frustrated very quickly. I would even recommend finishing the campaign and training beyond that before you start. Both get you a bunch of steel which will be crucial to unlocking some really cool characters you don't get to play as in the campaign (more on that later). It's what I did, and it really pays off. I've heard a lot of people say "Well I got into the game too late and everyone was already better than me when I started." The problem with that is, the game mostly tries to match you up with people similar rep to you, especially at the beginning when you are rep 0 or rep 1. The real issue with these situations is that the player in question did not take the time to train first. For Honor takes time to get good at. It's not one of those shooter games you can hop on, learn basic mechanics, and go "Oh hey, the controls of this are exactly like this other game I'm a beast in" and then go wreck some folks online. Because of For Honor's new and innovative combat system, it requires work, training, and skill to become better. It feels much better to be the guy the spent several hours training and then hops on and wrecks all the other noobs than to be the noob who gets frustrated and quits the game because he forwent training of any kind. By no means do I mean to scare you off of the game, but it is a challenge. A very fun challenge at that, but it does take some getting used to.
9. Getting steel fast at the beginning of the game is pretty easy. Here's what to spend it on
Getting steel early game is pretty easy. You get a ton from finishing the training sessions, from completeing the storyline, and from orders and other accomplishments. I would highly recommend you spend this on characters before anything else. At least buy all of the standard characters. They're not that expensive, and the ability to try each one out and see what you like is very valuable for your longevity with the game. At the same time do not be afraid to spend your steel on cool outfits and such. I remember spending a bunch of time racking up steel and being paralyzed as to what to do with it. I kept thinking "Maybe I'll need it for something really important later and regret spending it." Don't do that to yourself. Once you have a character you like and you've done a bit with, do not be afraid to buy that super cool outfit you wanted. In fact, buying these awesome customizations is the main insentive for playing and winning matches, and for progression in a lot of cases. One thing to keep in mind though: there are 6 characters that were added after launch that can be unlocked by buying the season pass, but they can also be purchased in game. But beware that they come at a much higher price than the standard characters. So, if you see a couple season pass heroes that catch your eye, I'd hold off on the cosmetics and buy the characters you want first.
8. Take time to pick your starting character
The character you pick at the start of the game is important because it will be your first impression of the game. Now, intially you will only have access to the thre Vanguard characters (one for each faction). However, the other standard characters come very cheap and you will be able to purchase them after completing a couple story missions. Each character type has a different difficulty rating, representing how hard it is to learn them. The Vanguards are the only Easy characters. The rest are Medium or Hard. But DO NOT LET THIS SCARE YOU. Especially if you train with whataver character you pick before going online, you should have no trouble figuring them out. Just take time to read up on their moveset and such. I actually started playing the Nobushi from the Samurai faction, which is marked as a Hard character, and didn't have any trouble wrecking the other noobs I played in the beginning of my online experience. So the message here is, if you see a character that you just think is super cool, do not feel compelled to figure out a Vanguard first if you do not want to. Buy the character and play him (or her). You'll have more fun doing it anyway. Also, if you really are struggling, a youtuber called Klyka has an amazing series where he brings in top world players for each of the standard characters (and a couple of the season pass ones) and does a sort of dojo training experience that you can watch through the video. They are very well done, and learning from masters of these characters at an early stage is very valuable. If you want to check it out, the link to his For Honor: Hero School series playlist is right here.
7. Don't open your loot crates . . . yet
You'll probably start out with a couple of loot crates (don't worry they're not microtransactions: they are just earned in game) that will give you armor and weapons. Premium loot crates are guaranteed to give you higher level gear. So my tip here is DO NOT OPEN THESE YET. You will get plenty of gear from just playing matches to start with. The best time to open these is when you hit Reputation 5 with a character. At that level you start to get the ability to get Legendary gear. Open the loot crates then and get your legendary items in a much more convenient way. It's well worth waiting to open these buggers until you can get some really good gear from it. You'll eventually earn more of these crates at the end of campaigns or events, but not frequently enough to make them worth opening with low rep characters. Stock them up for a time when you hit Reputation 7 with one of them.
6. Spend time in the training arena mastering the art of parrying
Back to the training aspect. When you are training up before going online, focus on parrying. Parrying strikes is an essentaily component of gameplay. The system is hard to explain here, but you'll get a tutorial at the very start of the game. Parrying is essential in a lot of ways, but requires accurate timing and move anticipation, so spend a bunch of time with AI parrying over and over again. The better you are at it, the better you will be as a player. This applies to almost any character (although less so for Assassin's because of the their Reflex Guard, which is a whole different matter). Even still, no matter what character you want to main at the start, parrying is a key skill to learn.
5. Watch your stamina
Going out of stamina is very easy with pretty much any heroes, but some have a pretty low stamina pool (like the Nobushi) so it's very imortant to keep an eye not just on your health bar, but on stamina too. The effects of going out of stamina are debilitating, and will spell out death a solid 50% of the time, especially against heroes like Highlander and Centurion who are very good at punishing out-of-stamina players. Of course, you don't want to be afraid to throw out attacks, but just bear in mind that you can't keep it up forever.
4. Play AI Dominion matches for leveling
Dominion is a zone capture mode that is very fun and gets you LOADS of XP compared to other games. When you are trying to level a character, your best bet is to play Dominion against AI. Not offline though. You can go online and play with a team of players against a team of AI. Usually you can win pretty consistantly, getting you even more XP and making it the most efficient use of your time for leveling. Playing against other players is fun too, but you won't win as consistantly, making it not quite as good for leveling.
3. Sadly, this means most people only play Dominion
Yeah. Dominion is very very popular, and it's super easy to get into a Dominion match at pretty much any point in time. Unfortunately that means that some of the other cool 4v4 mods like Tribute and Deathmatch have kinda fallen by the wayside, and it can be difficult to get into those types of matches sometimes because there are less players queued for them. If you want to play them, just keep trying. All the match types are pretty fun and worth playing. The best way to get into some of the less active modes like Tribute is to get a party of friends together. That way you won't have to wait for as many players. Even partying with one or two other people can help.
2. Pay attention to gear stats, but don't get too worked up over it
Gear stats are important, but they only effect one game mode: Dominion. That's right, your gear stats only count for anything in Dominion, and Breach. This may seem strange at first, but when you think about it it makes sense. The other modes rely much more on individual combat than others, so making it fair by eliminating gear stats as a veriable is actually a smart move on Ubisoft's part. Dominion and Breach are sort of the main feature of For Honor at the moment when it comes to online play, so gear stats are still a viable thing to consider, but they are definitely not the be all and end all. Even in 4v4s, gear stats are far outweighed by player skill. You really don't need to worry about it too much until rep 7 when you can get top level gear. Then you can spend time and crates getting the right gear with all the perks you want. Then of course you can always change the look of your gear for a pretty insignificant amount of steel.
Also, DO NOT BE AFRAID TO DISMANTLE GEAR! Now that you can unlock visual custmization that can switch gear to at any time, there's no reason to keep any gear besides whatever you are using or your final gear set (unless you are using multiple loadouts).
1. Keep up to date on game news
This is a very important part of For Honor. Ubisoft Montreal is constantly pumping out updates and new event game modes and sales and such. In fact, there's new outfit content evey single week. Make sure you keep up to date on this stuff so you don't miss out. For example, there's an event going on at the time of writing this called Reigning Inferno that I never would have known about had I not taken the time to head onto the interwebs and see what was up with the game, considering that I was on vacation when it launched. Not only is keeping up to date valueable for getting to experience events and new limited time modes and such, but it's also important for making the voice of the community heard. Ubisoft Montreal has an awesome history of listening to their community, and kudos to them for that, but the credit is also partially due to the outspokenness of the community itself. For example, Ubi Montreal was recently going to be removing upwards of 300 items from the game and recycling them so you could buy them all along with weekly content when they came around. There was actually a very good reason for this that wasn't communicated well that came out later, but obviously people didn't want to lose their items. The For Honor community made this known, and Ubi Montreal put a stop to the whole thing. They really do listen to their community, so keep up to date on stuff so that you can encourage stuff you want to see happen and discourage stuff you don't.
That's about all I have for basic tips and tricks. Aside from all that, enjoy the game, and feel free to DM me if you want help with anything specific :D
Replies
Man, just reading the guide makes me want to play even more. But I have no time, or money, or friends...
Do you play XB1? I'd play with you to take care of the friends problem . . .
To anyone considering this post, For Honor is great, just don't get caught up in all the try-hard competitive stuff. It'll drive you nuts.