Rogue Lords Guide for Beginners

Welcome to my blog. Today’s article is a Rogue Lords guide. This will be a general overview guide, and I will create in-depth guides on things like team composition in other articles.

This article will be simple and designed to get you playing the game as quickly as possible. As a result, I will not talk about all the disciples(team members) as I have other articles coming down the pipeline for those.

We will only cover the things you need to know to get started with this game and the three starting characters.

If you’d like to read a review of this game you can find that here: Rogue Lords Review

Affiliate link to purchase the game from Green Man Games here: greenmangaming.sjv.io/eK4B5O

Also before we start, don’t forget to check out our merch store if you’re in the US. We sell dnd dice sets, gamer t-shirts as well as gamer room decoration.

Rogue Lords Guide: Introduction

So basically, the game’s premise is to progress through all chapters, beating Van Helsing’s supporters and the bosses for all the chapters.

So if you’re starting, you will only have three disciples available: Dracula, Headless Horseman and Bloody Mary.

Dracula is mainly the team support who will buff Bloody Mary with the sharpening status while Bloody Mary attacks enemies while Headless Horseman tanks.

But before I get into that, I will talk about the game. So to beat a mission, you have to move through 6 book chapters and beat the boss of the chapter. You will do this with the skills, relics and buffs you hopefully encounter to power you up.

So when you first start the game, you will be pitifully weak and need to level up. In the review, I covered many different types of encounters in this game, but I will include the map legend below and go through them again just in case you didn’t read the review.

(Below is the map legend)

Rogue Lords Guide: Map and Encounters

Next in our Rogue Lords guide we will cover the map and encounters.

Ok, so at the start of every book, you have the chapter marker, which will always raise your terror level by a quarter (terror needs to be increased four times to level up to the next terror level, which unlocks higher power skills as you level up your terror).

Combat

So combat encounters involve you fighting a battle with either one group of enemies or two, and when you start a combat encounter, you can pick the reward you get if you beat the encounter.

You can choose from free which are:

Raise the terror level by a quarter
Get one or two skills
Get souls (in-game currency)

Now I should mention that the way you lose in the game is in combat, but I will touch on that later when I specifically talk about combat. Also, be aware that in this game, each character(called disciple) and the enemy has two health bars called SP and HP (I will touch on that later)

Elite Combat

So Elite combat is much more brutal than regular combat, and you only get the choice of one reward, which is a relic. Still, since relics are potent, these are almost always worth going after, with a few caveats I will discuss later.

Event

Now we come to events. Now you can’t lose in events unless you end up in combat in one, but events are more random than the above two encounters, as when you come to the end of the event, it will tell you what reward you will get if you complete each event with one character.

You can only pick one character to get buffed in the event. Still, events can do all sorts of things, including giving you a relic, more powerful skills, and souls and raising the terror level, and you will never know which one you get until you choose a disciple to participate in the event.

Events require you to pass social checks based on your parties’ skills, but when deciding which character should undertake an event, you should choose it based on who has the highest chance to complete it. It would be best to select it based on who will get the best reward, not who has the highest chance to complete it.

So, in the beginning, since you are using Headless Horseman to tank anything that buffs his HP, SP is good, and anything that buffs Bloody Mary’s HP damage is also fantastic.

Grim Reaper

Next, we come to the Grim Reaper—the in-game shop where you can buy relics and skills for the cost of souls.

As you can see above, the Grim Reaper always gives you three skills per character to purchase, three relics and the skill enhancement option for 20 souls.

Now the skill enhancement works as follows. So the Grim Reaper holds onto the skill for now, and you can’t use it while the grim reaper has it, but the next time you encounter the grim reaper, he will give you pay your soul at a higher level.

A good option for enhancement when just starting for Bloody Mary is getting Mirror Blade to level 3, as it costs 0 action points at that point. Another good option for skill enhancement is Dracula’s Bloodlust skill, as it drops to one action point usage when it gets up to level 2.

Sacrificial Altar

The sacrificial altar allows you to sacrifice a skill to increase your skill limit from 5 to 6 at the cost of offering a skill for sacrifice. When you sacrifice a skill, you never will get that skill to show up as a skill to pick ever again.

In the case of Dracula, I would sacrifice Fury Fang. I would offer Slash for Headless Horseman, and for Bloody Mary, I would sacrifice Twist of Fate or Stabbing.

When you sacrifice a skill, you can pick one skill from the three at the same level you offered.

Styx Fountain

The last common encounter is the Styx Fountain which recovers your essence by 20 or removes one negative trait from all disciples (which you get from failing events or even sometimes from succeeding events or relics.)

And final combat is the boss of the chapter.

Secondary Encounters

One last thing about encounters (adventures as they are called in the game) is that sometimes you will see a second encounter in the area in blue when you arrive at a location.

This encounter is optional in that you don’t need to do it to advance, but it’s generally worth your interest to do so. You can also spend six essence to change the secondary encounter to something else.

Also, be aware that you can do the secondary encounter after the main encounter in the area

Rogue Lords Guide: Essence

Now Essence is your kind of health bar in this game that allows you to cheat as the Devil would, but so you can use it up to do all sorts of things in combat, such as add or subtract from a disciples or enemies health bar, move a stat around, recharge a skill.

You can use essence out of combat to increase the chance of a succeeding social test (used in events), create a portal allowing you to access a different part of the map and replace a secondary encounter with another.

You will most likely be using essence during events to increase your chance of winning encounters and want to avoid using them in combat. You want to avoid using essence as often as possible, as you only get 20 back at the Styx fountain.

Luckily though, through terror effects and relics, you can recover more essence, and there are terror effects that increase your max essence.

Rogue Lords Guide: Terror

So now in our Rogue Lords guide we are going to talk about the goliath that is terror. Now you want to raise your terror level to at least three as soon as possible to get access to Level 2 skills, but also because you get a relic every time you raise your terror level.

As a result, most often during combat encounters, you want to raise your terror bar so you can level 1 up. Also, when you increase your terror bar, a terror effect occurs on the map a certain distance away.

Giving you bonuses for visiting that encounter. Some of these are powerful such as:

Getting back all essence at a Styx fountain (instead of the standard 20)
Getting 60 souls if you visit a location
Skill or Relic discount at the Grim Reaper by 10 to 70%
+2AP in combat
The first cost of essence use is free

As you can see, while these are random and you will never know which encounter will get what effect, you can see which encounters would get terror bonuses.

The skill or relic discount is incredible, and the first cost of essence is excellent for events and elite combat, as you can use it to auto-pass an event with no essence cost.

In elite combat, you can use it to get the most difficult enemies’ health bar to zero, allowing you to kill them in a single turn, and also the +2 action points in elite combat also help massively.

Killing an elite enemy in a single turn makes them a breeze, guaranteeing a free relic. As a result, you should always be trying to raise your terror. The only exception is if you have two Level 1 skills and are trying to get a third.

I will discuss this in-depth later, but in this instance, you might hold off on raising terror because you want to focus on going after skills to get that third skill for a skill raise.

Affiliate link to purchase the game from Green Man Games here: greenmangaming.sjv.io/eK4B5O

Rogue Lords Guide: Skills

So, before we touch on combat in our Rogue Lords Guide, we will discuss skills, as there is much to discuss here. So skills come in three levels: one, two and three and some skills are only available at Level 2, and each character has three wicked skills only available at Level 3.

Now there are three main ways to get access to better skills. Increase your terror level, obtain three copies of the same skill at the same level to level up that skill (only seen it work with level 1 and 2 skills) or upgrade a skill via skill enhancement at the grim reaper.

Increasing the terror level

As discussed, increasing your terror level means getting access to higher-level skills. Until you get to terror level 2, you will not be offered level 2 skills, so growing your terror level is usually the highest priority.

The only exception is if you have two copies of the same skill at level 1 and you’re trying to get the third, but you are at tier 2 or 1. In that case, it might be best to hold off on upping your terror level and focus on farming skills so you can get that third copy.

But unless you’re trying to farm for specific skills, you should always focus on increasing the terror level.

Getting three copies of the same skill at the same level

The following way to get access to higher-level skills is to get three copies of the same skill at the same level. When this happens, the skill level increases from one to two or two to three, and you get another skill at the same upgraded level.

But getting three copies of the same skill also gives get you another skill of the upgrade level, so if you upgrade a level 1 to level 2, you will get another level 2 skill or level 3 if increasing a level 2 skill to level 3

Skill enhancement at the Grim Reaper

The last method to upgrade a skill is by skill enhancement at the grim reaper. So as discussed before, it costs 20 souls, which is relatively cheap, and you leave a skill with the grim reaper, and you can’t use it until you revisit the grim reaper.

Skill enhancement is helpful for pretty weak skills that, once leveled up, become strong, like White Lady’s Mask of Torment, as leveling it up to level 3 is a high priority. One helpful thing that can happen is having two Grim Reaper encounters at the same location.

This is fantastic as it means you can level up a skill via skill enhancement at the same location.

Lastly, you have what’s known as the sacrificial altar, which we discussed above, but I thought I would touch on it as you shouldn’t go out of your way to sacrifice skills as you will encounter these anyway on your travel.

If you’re trying to upgrade a skill to level 2 by getting the third at the beginning of the game, it’s worth doing this just for a chance to upgrade that skill.

Rogue Lords Guide: Combat

Next, in our Rogue Lords guide, we will discuss combat. Combat is critical in this game because it’s how you lose it, as you can’t lose it in events unless you end up in combat.

Now in this game, combat is quite different from what you would encounter in other turn-based games. The first thing you will notice is that you only have five action points, and most skills cost two action points.

What this means is it’s doubtful that your entire team will be able to use a skill in a turn. Also, when a disciple uses a skill, it is exhausted and can’t be used again until that character uses their recharge skill.

So, as a result, you need to think about what you will do with your action points each turn. While most of the time you want to be doing damage, you also need to tank and do things like heal, remove debuffs etc

Combat is why team composition is vital in this game. While all characters can be damage dealers or transition into damage dealers by getting power skills, not all characters are good at team support or tanking.

Also, the character that is your primary damage dealer will be using most of your action points to do damage and as valuable as tanking is, you can’t really on tanking alone to get through the game.

You must be able to do massive damage by about the 4^th chapter of a book(mission); otherwise, the enemies will defeat you quickly. Luckily there are many ways to buff your damage in the game, so if you play right and the rng doesn’t go against you, you have a chance.

A big part of winning combat in the late game is assembling the skills you need to deal with the various things you will encounter in the game. Things such as:

Skills to remove debuffs
Skills to apply zombie to enemies to prevent healing
Skills to switch the enemy’s HP and SP
Skills to tank or reduce enemy damage output (preferably both)
Skills to damage enemies

How does combat work in Rogue Lords?

So as I have explained, you have five action points to use in each turn of combat, and you always get to go first. Now the good thing about this game is you get to see what the enemy will do when you end your turn most of the time.

You will see icons or numbers (or both) above the enemies’ heads, telling you what they will do. In terms of damage, HP damage will be in red numbers above the enemies head, and purple is for SP damage

A blue arrow pointing up indicates that the enemy is about to buff themselves, and a purple arrow pointing down means that the enemy will apply a debuff to your team members. So the essence of combat is you use up action points to use skills, and then you end up you

So since you know, most of the time, what an enemy will do, this allows you to tailor your approach to what you will do in that turn accordingly.

As I said before, in this game, enemies and your disciples have HP and SP, with HP standing for health points and SP for spiritual points. These are two separate life bars; to kill your enemies, in most cases, you only need to do damage to one, not both.

So, as a result of this, most of the team, when you come up with a team of disciples, you are going to decide what the most common form of damage your team will be doing is.

For instance, if you are playing at the start of the game, you will focus on HP damage because that’s the predominant type of damage that Bloody Mary does, as well as Headless Horseman initially.

You should try to get skills that do the other type of damage just in case you need to do that damage later on, as some enemies you encounter require you to finish their HP and SP life bars to defeat them.

Combat is also why you should have a skill that allows you to switch a disciple or enemies HP and SP if you can, just in case you run into one of those enemies that requires you to do damage to both

The other reason this is useful is that if an enemy starts with a weaker HP than an SP, but you are focusing on SP damage, you can switch the enemy’s life bars.

Also, be aware that the if a disciple’s HP or SP hits zero, they become vulnerable (as do enemies). In the case of enemies, if their HP is zero, they take once more instances of HP damage that will kill them with the same applying to SP as well.

Now with the disciples, it’s different in that if they become vulnerable, further damage will drain essence, and if your essence drops to zero, you will be defeated.

Protecting against essence loss is why tanking and debuffing enemy damage is so significant because if any of your disciples become vulnerable, you can be defeated. Luckily, in this game, your character’s health bars start at 100% full at the beginning of every combat.

On the other hand, demonic essence doesn’t automatically regenerate, so it’s imperative to keep your characters safe while killing the enemies. You don’t want to lose daemonic essence if you can help it.

So that is how combat works. You use up your action points on skills and recharging, then click end turn, and the enemy gets their turn, and then you cycle back and forth until you defeat all your enemies or they defeat you.

Next, we will cover the buffs and debuffs you encounter in combat. This is vital as understanding how these work is crucial to playing this game, and you also can’t stance debuffs or buffs of the same type as the new one will replace the old one.

Rogue Lords Guide: Buff and Debuffs

So now we will discuss the buffs and debuffs you will encounter and how you use them.

Weaknesses

So weaknesses are debuffs that do extra damage to either HP or SP, depending on the debuff. These statuses are why it’s crucial to have a skill that can remove weaknesses on your team, as they can limit your ability to do damage.

Incredible when applied to enemies, so get rid of these on your disciples and use them on your enemies

Bleeding

Bleeding is one of my least favourite weaknesses to apply to enemies, but it’s one of the worst enemies can inflict on your damage dealer. This status applies HP damage every time the combatant with the debuff does damage.

Nasty if applied to your damage dealer, you can potentially kill yourself in a single turn if you’re not careful just by damaging the enemy.

There is a relic that doubles the damage that bleeding and decomposition do, but be aware it doubles the damage even if the bleeding status. Irrespective of whether your team or the enemies have the status.

Depression

Depression is a nasty debuff to have applied to your disciples but great on your enemies and is Baron Semedi’s bread and butter. It triggers at the beginning of an enemies/disciple turn doing SP damage, and at the end and lowers max SP.

Be aware that there is a relic that doubles the damage depression and burn statuses do for both you and your enemies, which is worth getting if you have an SP damage build as long as you can remove the debuff of your team.

Zombie

This weakness turns healing into damage. You won’t use it often, but having at least one ability to apply zombie is very important, as you will encounter enemies that can heal their team for insane amounts of health.

Burn

So burn weakness does extra SP damage every time a character with the status gets hit by an attack. Honestly, it’s not a status that I use, as if you want SP damage, depression is better.

The other problem is that because it only does 4 SP damage, it’s stopped by most protection statuses that an enemy will have.

Decomposition

Decomposition is the same as depression, except it does HP damage instead of SP and doesn’t decrease HP max. The Creature similarly makes excellent use of this to Baron Samedi uses depression.

Cure

Warmth

So warmth heals SP damage and trigger twice per turn and heals fast. Lilith starts with a skill that applies warmth and wall, which is great for a tank.

Vampirism

Vampirism heals the holder by 3 to 5 HP per HP damage they inflict. I have to admit I have never used this one that much, as only Dracula and Bloody Mary can apply it.

It could be mighty with a character that does lots of hits like Bloody Mary, and in my opinion, there are better statuses you can apply to your team, but it may have advanced use that I will cover in individual character guides.

Cheat Death

Cheat Death is fantastic, but it’s scarce. If a character has no HP left and suffers another source of HP damage, they will be completely healed. Dracula is the only character that can get this.

Pay attention to this status if it’s on an enemy, as they use it more often. You could heal your enemy instead of killing them if you’re not careful. Cheat death is probably the status I would spend essence on to move onto a disciple who’s vulnerable and going to take HP damage.

Regeneration

A mighty healing status that, unfortunately, only the enemies can apply. Excellent if you move it onto a team member using essence, and one of the reasons you need to be able to apply zombie to enemies

Control

These limit the damage enemies and disciples can do, and you can only apply one at a time. Also, these skills can work alteration and protection status on your team to reduce damage further

Clumsiness

Reduces HP damage by 10

Migraine

Reduces SP damage by 10

Exhaustion

Halves the damage the enemy or disciple with the status does.

Enhancement

Presence of Mind

Boost SP damage is so helpful with an SP-damaging team

Growth

Growth refunds of the action point cost of skill up to 3 action points. It is potent but requires you to think before acting because it gets used up no matter your skill and is only used by disciples.

Great with Bloody Mary for a free recharge to get the Mirror on an enemy so she can start the battle and do some real damage

Sharpening

Boosts HP damage by 4. Mighty with skills that target all enemies or do multiple instances of damage.

Maneuvers

Provocation

Provocation is a skill that a tank must have: Lilith and Headless Horseman. It forces the enemy to target that disciple if they make an attack/debuff targeting one disciple.

Won’t do anything again attacks that target all enemies. If the enemy has this, you are forced to target that enemy with attacks and debuffs that target one enemy.

Wandering Spirit

When applied to an enemy or disciple, that character can no longer receive any new status effects, but statuses already on that character will not be affected

Superpower

A powerful skill that Headless Horseman, Baron Samedi and Dracula have access to. Doubles the damage a disciple/enemy will do. Luckily can’t be applied by enemies.

Mirror Effect

Whenever an enemy or disciple has this, any statuses applied to them are also used to the combatant that inflicted the status.

Alteration

So now we will talk about alteration. Alteration is a status effect that doesn’t interfere with any other status and can be applied to an enemy. It reduces the damage enemies do and works great with other debuffs and buffs that alter damage dished and received.

Rogue Lords Guide: Relics and Elite Combat

Lastly, we come to relics. Now relics are potent items that provide a buff to either your team or a particular disciple.

Some of these buffs are permanent, and last the entire battle in a combat encounter, and some allow you to start combat with a powerful buff like +2 Action Points at the beginning of a fight.

Some relics are game-changing and incredibly potent, and others are ok. Now as discussed above, the most reliable ways to get relics are:

Increase the terror level
Win an elite combat

So, my stance on relics is this. Once you have some powerful skills, you can start going after those relics by fighting those elite combat encounters to get those juicy relics, but I wouldn’t go after elite combat at the beginning as you are ill-equipped to deal with them.

I have read some guides that say you should go after them always because if you can’t beat them anyway, you’re not going to defeat the boss, but I beg to differ.

Rogue Lords is a game where you could suddenly get a great skill and relic, and then a run turns from an expected loss to an expected win, so at the beginning of the game, you should be trying to upgrade those powerful skills and get more skills.

Once you have the skills to do a few things, you can start taking on those elite combat encounters to get those relics—skills such as removing debuffs, healing, tanking and considerable damage skills.

Lastly, some relics make events easier, like the Netherworld Crow. If you get this, events will become significantly more manageable and more cost-effective as it radically reduces the cost of altering the success rate of social tests.

Another good relic to go after is Battle Plans, as it reduces the HP and SP of elites and bosses by 20% and starts them off with two exhaustion which is excellent for starting a battle.

Well, that was our Rogue Lords guide. Thanks for reading.

Affiliate link to purchase the game from Green Man Games here: greenmangaming .sjv.io/eK4B5O