Risen is a great game that may appear to be extremely difficult or unfair to some people, but this is simply not the case. Risen is not skyrim; you cannot mash mouse buttons to win the game. Combat takes skill, patience, and timing, and these will all come naturally to you as you progress through the game. In this guide, i'll be answering certain questions such as "this enemy is too strong / OP, what do I do" etc, as well as inform you of mechanics that you may or may not know exist.

Here are a few universal rules for Risen (and other games like it):

Save often. Have more than one save file just in case something happens, and save right before every single conversation, confrontation, thievery attempt, or anything else that has even the slightest chance of going horribly wrong. This game likes to screw you over hard and often.

Be conservative. Use items only when you absolutely need them, only sell items that you cannot use, and only buy items after you've scouted the area. People always sell stuff they should have kept, bought something that they found 10 minutes later, or wasted healing items when there were no more enemies to fight.

Explore and scavenge as much as possible. Healing plants, food, water barrels, and beds are the only things keeping you alive in the beginning of the game, and the latter two options are only options when you're near civilisation. You can find a lot of cool stuff in unexpected places, and sometimes these finds will make your life incredibly easier.

If a battle is too hard for you, retreating is almost always an option. Everyone wanders into the wrong neighborhood from time to time, but smart adventurers know when it's time to gtfo. Running to a friendly guard or NPC for help is also an idea, just make sure that the NPC can handle whatever threat you're bringing to it.

Save those stat-changing plants. Sure, +1 Strength sure sounds cool, but +5 Strength sounds cooler. Those plants can be made into potions that have a much greater effect than their plant counterparts.

Save potions for use during combat, and food for use outside of combat. Potions do a lot more in much less time than any food could do, and time is crucial when you're fighting for your life.

Be flexible. Sure, you could use nothing but a big axe all game, but keeping a shield and sword around to deal with tougher enemies is always a great idea.

Be observant. Upon fighting a new enemy, do nothing but block them for a bit to see how they attack, and how you could fight back without putting yourself in harm's way. Noting prefixes of names (Hungry Wolf, Black Wolf, etc.) is also beneficial.

There is almost always another way. The game won't force you to pay a guy 500 gold for a quest item that you have to take to another guy to claim your reward of 200 gold; there are alternative means of doing things. Steal, Lockpick, Pickpocket, Kill, Brawl, Bribe, Spellcast, Parkour, and Sneak your way to victory.

Save your game before lockpicking. The lock combination stays the same even when you load your game, so loading the game after you discover the combination is a great way to save some lockpicks! (Contributed by MrRupinski. Thanks!)

Only train things you will use. Your YEARS of masterful crossbow training won't pay off if you never use a crossbow, and surely the learning points could be better used elsewhere.

Carry a shield and one-handed weapon to deal with problem animals. Some animals cannot be blocked with your weapon and you will need a shield to block wolves, spinerats, and other creatures. Dodging will only get you so far before they get a 4-hit combo off on you..

Do not mash LMB to attack. If you time your swings right, your combo will attack twice as fast. Every type of weapon has a different combo window, so swing at the air for a bit until you get the general idea of the timing.

Have a usable crossbow or bow on you at all times. Ranged weapons are incredibly important regardless of whether or not you can hit hard with them; you can pull one enemy out of a group, see enemies through bushes or trees, and take note of the enemy's prefixes to guess at how tough they are. You can even trigger switches and winches with shots. (Thanks, Vazoth!) If you actually hurt people with a ranged weapon, that's even better; keep firing and backing up until they get too close, and then engage them in melee if they get to you.



Dodging is generally more advantageous than blocking. While it does take considerably more skill, dodges reward players more than just blocking would. Some attacks cannot be blocked or stun you for trying to block them, so at the very least you should be dodging those. (Thanks Kror!

*By 'stats' I mean strength, dexterity, and wisdom*

Strength and Dexterity can be trained up to 100 by trainer, but stat-enhancing potions can take you as far as 200, so it is best to save all your Str/Dex potions until you are fairly certain you aren't gonna invest anymore points in them. (Thanks Kaoy!)

Strength

Strength allows you to use crossbows and many melee weapons. It also determines how effective you are when using Melee weapons of all kinds; even if a sword has a DEX requirement, its damage will still scale off strength. Str can be increased by eating Ogreroot, Spending gold and Talent points at a STR trainer, or by drinking permanent STR-Enhancing Ogreroot potions. You can also eat eggs and other things to have a chance of increasing your STR permanently.

Dexterity

Dexterity allows you to use dexterous weapons, such as the bow and cutlass. It also affects how much damage you deal with all Ranged weapons, even those that have a strength requirement. DEX can be increased by eating Pixie's Cap, Spending gold and Talent points at a DEX trainer, or by drinking permanent DEX-Enhancing Pixie Cap potions.

Wisdom

Wisdom is needed to gain levels in the Seals skill. It is primarily increased by bookstands, which might give you a small amount of experience, a recipe or +3 wisdom dependant on the area you find the bookstand in. Bookstands in a library will most likely give you wisdom, while a bookstand in a kitchen will probably provide you with a recipe. You cannot read a bookstand over and over to get wisdom; each stand is one-use. To further increase your wisdom you can look out for small stone tablets, which are hidden throughout the world. After reading them you will gain +4 wisdom. It is said that laboring at sawmills for long periods of time also nets you a few points in wisdom, but I don't personally know this to be true, or how effective it is.

(Vazoth contributed most of the wisdom section.)

(Kror informed me of Str scaling affecting all melee weapons and not just str-related weapons, and ranged weapon damage only scaling off of Dex.)

Often in Risen you will find that you are outnumbered by numerous strong foes. Combat is often difficult enough when fighting one foe, and is even more anger-inducing when you get ganged up on.

The key to fighting multiple enemies at once is positioning.



Enemies cannot phase through or "run past" each other; they have to go around each other to get to you. They CAN attack through other NPCs to get you though, so be cautious. You want to use this to your advantage as much as possible, so see if you can find a narrow walkway or tight space to funnel them down. Deal with them one at a time; have one enemy in front of all the others so they can't bumrush you. Angle yourself to make it so that one enemy is blocking another's way. Lure one slightly away from the others and deal with them, being careful as to not overextend yourself into the other enemies attack ranges. Keep your guard up at all times, and know where all aggro'd enemies are (don't let them sneak up on you).

You can also kite enemies by running backwards and constantly firing at them with a ranged weapon while they're catching up. You can take out a few enemies before the rest of the group catches up to you, or you can aggro one out of the group and deal with them one at a time.

Some enemies will break your guard even if you have a shield. For these enemies, I reccomend having a long weapon such as a two-handed sword so that you can make use of their large range and power. Your only means of defense against enemies that break your guard is the dodge function. By pressing space, you lunge in whatever direction you're walking in, possibly throwing your enemy's aim off. Moving forward and pressing space will make you jump, and jumping during combat is a surefire way to get yourself killed. Dodging loses its effectiveness when fighting multiple enemies.



The fight should go like this:

• #1: You strafe around your enemy, and then dodge to the right or left of their attack the moment you see it coming / before it starts
  
• #2: You wait just a little bit to see if there are any more attacks coming. If not..
  
• #3: You do one 3-hit combo and then back away quickly
  
• #4: Repeat #1-3 until they die

It should only take you a fight or two like this to get used to dodging. If dodging to the right or left does not work, then go backwards. Saving the game after every combo you land is a great way to save time, but be smart about it.

Alchemy takes three things: A recipe for the potion you're making, the ingredients for the potion, and an alchemy table. To enter the alchemy interface you need to be near and use an alchemy table. You cannot do anything without all 3 requirements.



To prospect ore, you first need to find a ore that you haven't already prospected. There are 3 ore varietys: Iron, Gold, and Obsidian. Iron is red, Gold is yellow, and Obsidian is black. You need a pickaxe and the prospecting skill to mine ore. You get a gem every 3 veins. Or, if you quicksave before you mine, reload, mine, reload, and mine again, you can get a gem every time, because the game doesn't reset the counter when you reload. (Thanks to Gustave5436.)

(Iron on the left, gold on the right)

Smithing takes the ore you get from prospecting and allows you to turn it into one handed swords at level one, bast*rd swords at level two, and two-handed swords at level 3. Give the ore to a smith and in return you'll receive a sword blank of your chosen type. Take this blank to a forge and heat it up, then to an anvil to hammer it, then cool it off in a water trough, and finally, sharpen it on a whetstone. Smithing can also let you make enchanted jewelery using gold ore and gemstones at a goldsmithing table, but only if you have a goldsmith hammer.



Gutting animals just lets you get more loot from animals, but you will come across tools such as wing shears, jaw chisels, etc. that let you collect even more parts from animals simply by having them in your inventory.

Lockpicking lets you use lockpicks to play a minigame to have a chance of opening chests of your current lockpick level or lower. The game is played by guessing at the combination needed to open the lock. This combination consists of multiple left and right movements, which you can use by pressing the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard. If you mess up on an input, it will show up in red, your lockpick may be broken, and you have to start over. Locks are always the same no matter how many times you fail.



Pickpocketing opens a dialogue option in which you babble about nonsense to distract your thievery target, and then click on an item in their inventory to steal. You have a timer to choose what item to nab before they catch on, though.

Acrobatics afaik works passively and you don't have to do anything extra to make it so that you take less fall damage.

Sneaking (by pressing the ctrl button by default) makes it harder for enemies to hear or see you. This is a great skill to learn for you thieves out there, as it makes it possible to enter someone's house without everyone in a 24 mile radius coming up to you to thwart your thieving attempts.



Create scrolls is an ability learned only in the monestary, and you cannot learn it without joining the order You can get the scroll skill without joining the order, only you can't get it till the tail end of chapter 2. The man in the scroll workshop will teach it to you if you speak with him after coming to the temple as Don Estaban's emisary. (Thanks Kaoy!) You take a rune's energy and implement it into a scroll that anyone can use. For this you need the rune for whatever scroll you want to make, a blank scroll, a writing desk, and whatever else the scroll ingredients call for.



Crystal magic requires a crystal of the corresponding magic type you want to cast, and uses mana every time you cast a spell with the crystal. The mages at the monestary teach you this skill.



Seals enable you to use magic runes. These runes are like magic scrolls with the difference that they cost more mana than the equivalent scroll, but won't disappear if used. However, runes are divided into four levels. The stronger and more useful spells are unusable until higher levels. To unlock these levels you need to learn the appropriate seals, which requires minimum wisdom of 50+ for Seal 1, 100+ for Seal 2, 150+ for Seal 3, the maximum amount (200) for Seal 4 and 5 LP for each seal. (Thanks Vazoth!)



Digging isn't really a skill but it's definitely worth mentioning. If you have a shovel, you can dig in dry patches of land to unearth chests full of loot. Simply get close to the patch and click the left mouse button to start digging.

You may already know that you can exit town without doing any plot quests just by jumping over the walls, but did you know that you can jump -into- town as well? On the way to the front gate, head left onto the ledge above the field with all those nasty inquisitor guys. Jump through the palm tree onto the rocks, and then just jump around until you work out how to get high enough to jump onto the town wall. Saves yourself the fee of going in the back way, especially if you make multiple trips in and out of town.

Contributed by Gustave5436. Thanks!

This guide is not complete nor am I by any means a Risen veteran, so the information in this guide may be flawed. I am open to all suggestions and comments; If you see something wrong with the guide or know of something the guide does not go over, please let me know and I will add it in, as well as give credit where it is due. I'd rather have hurt pride over a crappy guide.

I read every single comment I get, so even if I don't respond directly to you, know that i've seen what you have to say. I will do my best to answer any questions you may have about the game; leave one in the comments and i'll get to it ASAP.

Thanks for reading, and have fun with this amazing game.