Walkthroughs

The Elder Scrolls: Blades cheats and tips - Essential tips for combat

The Elder Scrolls: Blades cheats and tips - Essential tips for combat

Get big combos with our Elder Scrolls: Blades tips

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Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls: Blades has finally landed on iOS and Android, and if you're lucky enough to get into the early access period, you'll be playing along with us.

Right here we're going to break down the ins-and-outs of combat, how you should fight, and how to best monitor your health while dungeon delving.

There's a lot to learn, but you'll quickly adjust and start mashing out the strong monsters with our tips on The Elder Scrolls: Blades.

How does it work

The Elder Scrolls Blades

The Elder Scrolls: Blades might resemble its console and PC brethren, but in practice it plays very differently.

Of course everything here involves the touch screen. To strike at your enemy with a weapon, you hold the touch screen, which reveals a red circle. That circle will quickly be filled with a yellow circle, and once it's filled, you release to unleash an attack.

It's simple, but it has nuance. You can't just fire off your weapon as quickly as you can. This isn't a tap-to-win game. If you want to have enough health to take you through dungeons and missions, you need to play smart.

In between attacks you'll need to keep your shield up to blunt any incoming attacks, and then you have to worry about Stamina and Magicka.

On top of your health, you'll be measuring out your Stamina and Magicka usage, which is used by accessing skills. Most skills will be straight up damaging, like a Fireball or a Shield Bash, but others can be used to recover health or gain the upper-hand.

Balancing your Health, Stamina and Magicka while smashing through enemies is something you have to be conscious of here. You can find food to recover health in dungeons, but it's in short supply, and you'll want to go into each fight with a full health bar.

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1
Shields up

Whether you've actually got a shield equipped or not, the little shield icon during battle will be crucial. Hold it to block.

Of course, without a shield the effects won't be quite so effective. But a block is better than not when faced with the bad end of a weapon.

Using a shield is a good idea though, as the powerful Shield Bash technique can guard you against an attack, on top of dealing good damage, and it's not usable without a shield equipped.

2
Smart skills

I've already said that monitoring your health is one of the most vital things you can do, but you can also recover health with smart skill usage.

There are early Magicka and Stamina skills that can be used to recover health, and smart usage of these can see you come out of fights with enemies with more health than you went in with.

In addition to other skill effects, you can really dole these out to either deal maximum damage or healing.

The Elder Scrolls Blades

3
Weapon speed

This one should be pretty obvious. Big two-handed weapons have a tendency to be slow, in addition to not giving you a shield, while most of the smaller weapons are much more manageable.

Check for buffs on your weapons too. Some weapons come with speed or power buffs, which should affect your decision on which one is best to use.

If in doubt, check the DPS rating of your weapon. It's good to have a backup weapon though, for when one is in the smithy or damaged.

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Dave Aubrey
Dave Aubrey
Dave is the Guides Editor at Pocket Gamer. Specialises in Nintendo, complains about them for a living.