This guide uses what I can only imagine is an oversight (one of many) on the developer's part. By using the described equipment and tactics you can reduce your skill cooldown to 0%, allowing you to spam skills. This makes the game exceptionally easy regardless of the difficulty and is perfect for getting the Insane difficulty and Valhalla mode achievements. By relying on skill damage at a distance you will reduce the negative effects of the poor roll mechanics and offset the damage spongey aspect of the game on the higher difficulties. As this build relies on light armor you will also not have to worry about the "exposure" mechanic that so many players "love".

The following description will focus on how to do the build on a Tyr (Shield/sword) character, but keep in mind that other classes can run it as well with reduced efficiency.

The best suited class for this guide is the Tyr path for the following reasons:

- Carrying a shield allows another cooldown reduction rune slot
- Carrying a shield gives a good chance to block improving survivability
- Carrying a shield enhances your armor rating to offset the light armor required
- The Tyr style "Deadly Edge" skill is ranged allowing you to fight from a safe distance
- Deadly Edge is a "physical" attack meaning no monster will ever be immune to it.
- The Tyr style skills have mob control aspects (freeze/stun/slow) fit for all situations.

The build revolves entirely around gathering the right set of equipment. However, the equipment required is fairly common so you can do it on your first character. However, since the stash is shared among characters (and if you are going for the achievements you will need to replay the game at least 3 times) you can prepare the equipment on another character run first.

In order for the build to be effective you need your skill cooldown to be as low as possible and your stamina regeneration to be as high as possible. In order to spam the Deadly Edge (which will probably be your main damage source) you need around 10-20% skill cooldown. It does not need to be 0 since the casting animation takes around a second, allowing the skill to refresh in the meantime. Getting to 0 cooldown is more important for the heavier skills and talisman usage.

The equipment you are looking for is:
Armor: Light armor for the -10% skilldown, with a rune socket (for -12% skill cooldown "Birch" rune). Optimally you will get "Odin's robe" from mission 17 which has an inherent +25% stamina regeneration bonus as well.


Shield: Heavy shield with a socket for -12% Skill cooldown "Birch" rune.

Healing Charm: charms with -15% Skill cooldown.


Belt: On normal difficulty belts (Cotton Sash) can drop with an inherent -17% skill cooldown. You cannot craft these, but they do drop often. If you do not come across one you can craft the lower cooldown version in town.


Accessory: Any accessory with -10% Skill cooldown. The optimal choice here is the "Falcon cloak" if you get lucky with the drop from the early missions.


Helm: Any light helm providing -5% Skill cooldown. The optimal item here is "Diadem of the Allfather" due to it's increase of "Gift Damage"


Weapon: There are no weapons that give skill cooldown. Use your weapon to increase your WDPS, which is calculated by average weapon damage divided by weapon speed. Because swords are fast (0.5 attack speed) they tend to have high WDPS. No elemental damage modifiers on the weapon will increase your skill damage output so you are very free to choose.

Ring: No rings provide skill cooldown reduction, so your best bet is to use one with +15% Stamina regeneration

Once you secure one of each of these items you will end up with 81% skill cooldown reduction, leaving you at 19% Skill cooldown. Maximizing the passive skill "Battle Mastery" additionally reduces cooldowns by 10%


Now you should be at 9% Skill cooldown, meaning that a skill that usually takes 10 seconds to refresh will now take 1 second.

NOTE: All of these items can come with a "random" stat that additionally reduces skill cooldown, as seen in the screenshots.

Power Slash:
This is your fire skill. I found myself using it rarely because it does less damage than Deadly Edge and is very close range. It can be useful for quickly taking down enemies vulnerable to fire.

Deadly Edge:
The bread and butter of this build. Due to its high damage it will slightly push back enemies allowing you to comfortably kill anything at a distance. The skill passes through anything including solid walls. Use this to your advantage to attack enemies that cannot get to you, while staying safe.

Bash:
I use this skill mostly for quick movement or getting out of AOE damage attacks. While it has slow/stun it is also extremely buggy and often slides along enemies instead of damaging them, putting you in harm's way. Use with caution.

Shield Barrier:
This provides a 360 degrees heavy damage strike with slow effect. Use on fast enemies and groups. Usually slowing an enemy with Shield Barrier allows you to push them back with Deadly Edge so that they can never reach you.

Frost Circle:
Slow cast but heavy damage and freeze. At max level you will almost always freeze your targets and since you can spam it this can make any enemy a joke. Keep in mind that enemies that are "Immune to ice" are not necessarily immune to being frozen. This means you can comfortably freeze heavy hitters like the frost giants.

TALISMAN:
This is where the build really shines. All you really need is the resources to buy the Talismans you like. Usually charms take 60 seconds to recharge but they are also affected by Skill cooldown meaning you can spam any talisman. This allows you to do fun things like spawn an army of golden boars or undead soldiers like so:



Or you can use the invincibility talisman to be permanently invincible during bosss fights.

Skill Cooldown:
This goes without saying.

Stamina Regeneration:
Having a high stamina regeneration allows you to use heavier skills more often. If your stamina recovery is insufficient you will find that your skills are recharging before you have enough stamina to recast them.

Gift Damage:
This will directly increase your damage output. Your weapon should always have the best rune available to your level that adds Gift Damage.

Run Speed:
I strongly advise focusing on this aspect as well as adding run speed runes to your shield and armor after the gift cooldown. Being able to run quickly means you will not have to waste stamina to roll out of harm's way.

Block:
Having a block value of 40+ increases survivability greatly, especially on the heavy hitters in the later levels on higher difficulties.

Level up point allocation:
First and foremost add points into Resistances. Once that is maxed at level 20, start adding points into Armor and/or Health. DO NOT add points into Damage and Attack speed as neither will increase your damage output. They only affect normal swings, not skill attacks.

Secondary class:
With many other builds people usually carry a bow on their alt weapon slot. For this build this is redundant since Deadly Edge is stronger than any bow skill. The best choice would be maxing the Rage skill of the Odin tree because it provides an additional 25% cooldown reduction while active. Rage effects remain in effect even if you switch your weapon so you can benefit from this additional cooldown reduction by activating range with a staff and then switching back to the Tyr style. This is particularly useful if you want to spam Talisman skills for boss encounters.

The following screenshot is with activated Odin shrine and Odin rage:


Shrines:
Keep an eye out for Shrines of Odin before you can get to 10% Skill Cooldown from your equipment only. Using an Odin shrine for 25% skill cooldown reduction before entering a boss fight makes bosses far easier.