From the moment you start your journey as Tristan in Of Ash and Steel, you’ll likely have noticed that the game has no intention of holding your hand. Once the rest of your crew perishes in the first fifteen minutes of the game, you’ll find yourself alone and without any resources.
Thankfully, a kind stranger named Nerest decides to take pity on you and brings you back to his home, where you are clothed and fed. Here, you can recuperate some of what you lost and prepare for the journey ahead, but be warned: Grayshaft is not kind to those who travel alone.
Explore Every Area Completely To Find Secrets And Things To Do
As you likely learned while camped on shore with your crew, Of Ash and Steel isn’t going to openly present you with things. If you want to find quests, resources, or weapons, then you’ll need to make an effort to seek those things out through exploration. Many players frequently find themselves struggling to find quests or NPCs, and that’s largely due to limited exploration for one reason or another.
While exploring an area, it’s also a good idea to speak with everyone you can find in a general area before making decisions on quest-related content.
For example, on the shore, if you offered Emmett all three of the bottles of Brandy before finding out that one of the sailors wanted a bottle, you’d miss out on the information offered by that sailor. So just make sure you gather all the info you can before you act on a decision you can’t reverse.
Getting lost can be one of your biggest threats while playing Of Ash and Steel, especially since you have to worry about Tristan’s status. Still, as long as you stay somewhat close to a trail or identify a landmark, like a real cartographer, you won’t end up lost or going in the wrong direction and wasting your time.
Of Ash And Steel: The Long Road Home Quest Walkthrough
Get help to find your way to the city in Of Ash And Steel.
Stop Ignoring NPC Dialogue!
As mentioned, since you’ll have no map, you’ll also have no quest markers. So, if you want to find your objective, then you’ll need to start creating a bit of a mental map yourself and listen intensely to directions given to you by NPCs. Forget that this is a game, because there are no traditional game-based travel benefits here, but then again, that’s the point.
You will eventually get the opportunity to start mapping things out, just not yet!
NPCs will do their best to give you an idea of where to go or what to look for, and vague versions of their descriptions will generally be stored in your journal under the associated quest for you to reference. So, if you’re someone who typically skims through dialogue quickly in a game like this, you may want to reconsider that.
Remember To Monitor How Tristan’s Doing
With everything going on, it’s easy to forget that Tristan has needs that need to be managed, and if they’re not, then you might just find yourself dead soon. Be sure to maintain a steady supply of consumables to meet your hunger and other needs. If you start to run low on supplies, make restocking them your top priority.
As long as you steadily watch Tristan’s needs and take care of them as soon as possible, they should be relatively easy to manage. That said, this is also a bit dependent on the difficulty you selected at the start of the game. Difficulty affects your stats in the following ways:
- Story— Hunger, Thirst, and Fatigue will barely affect Tristan.
- Classic— Hunger, Thirst, and Fatigue will negatively affect Tristan.
- Grayshaft— Critically low Hunger, Thirst, or Fatigue will kill Tristan.
Be sure to select the difficulty that makes the most sense for you. If you don’t feel that you’ll be great at managing needs and simply want to enjoy the game for other aspects, don’t be afraid to opt for the story difficulty so you won’t need to worry about it as much.
While you may not have access to a map or much else, at the start of the game, there are a few tools at your disposal, and you should utilize them. For one thing, the game never really addresses it, but you do have a compass. So, while you can’t map out where you’ve been or where you’re going, if you keep a general idea as to what direction things are in, you should find yourself getting lost far less frequently.
Additionally, you will have access to crafting tables, fishing spots, and a plethora of other tools to make your adventure less strenuous, so you can enjoy the actual story. So, don’t forget about everything you’re introduced to at the start of the game during tutorial sequences, such as cooking, crafting, fishing, and more. All of them will come in handy.
Be Prepared To Accept The Consequences Of Your Actions
If you’ve had the unfortunate luck of being caught while committing a crime, then you likely already know that such things are taken very seriously here in Grayshaft. Whether your crime is stealing, trespassing, or something else, the locals won’t take lightly to that behavior, and you will be asked to pay a fine. That said, if you refuse to pay up, then you’d better be prepared for a fight.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t ever commit crimes. In fact, it’s likely you’ll all but need to steal from time to time. The key factor here is that you’re not caught, so just be cautious and don’t try anything too brazen. Someone you can comfortably steal from, though, is Nerest. When you wake up in his home initially, take everything, and I mean everything, before you leave.
Take Advantage Of All The Ways You Can Make Money
If you decide that a life of theft isn’t for you, although you may just have to pick a lock or two in desperate circumstances, then there are other ways to earn coin. In addition to selling items you don’t need, if you find yourself often struggling to save up money, then you should consider dumping some ability points into Insight.
One of the first people you’ll run into on Grayshaft, after leaving Nerest, is a man who wants to steal some packages left by smugglers in an abandoned village. He wants your assistance in exchange for helping you out, but if you have enough attribute points in Insight, then you can negotiate to help for half the loot, which is just a small example of how this attribute can be put to good use.
Combat Is A Non-Negotiable Priority When It Comes To Attributes
On the topic of Attributes, start thinking about what kind of game you want to play. Occasionally, you’ll be rewarded with points for a specific attribute.
However, more often than not, you’ll be earning the points and depositing them into the attributes of your choice, so it’s important to have a build in mind. Ideally, you’re going to want to prioritize one or two attributes, and one of those should absolutely be either Strength or Dexterity.
Strength increases your melee damage with bulkier, hard-hitting weapons, and Dexterity increases your damage with ranged weapons and swords. Being skilled at combat is pretty much a non-negotiable thing, as pretty much everywhere you go will be filled with things that want to kill you. So pick the attribute that suits your play style and start dumping your points into it.
Unlocking A New Skill Has Several Requirements
With attributes in mind, you’ll also want to consider the skill trees. There are three in total: Survival, War, and Crafting.
- Survival— Focuses mainly on survival skills, such as the ability to set up camp and unlock recipes.
- War—Focuses on combat, such as unlocking the ability to utilize certain weapons.
- Crafting— Focuses on skills related to crafting, such as extracting materials and producing better quality items.
Each tree has various skills you can unlock related to the topic it focuses on, but each skill will require that you meet certain stat requirements to learn it, and that’s not all. You’ll also need a set amount of gold and a trainer to learn a new skill.
Trainers are NPCs throughout Grayshaft who will teach you a specific type of skill once you meet the stat requirements and pay them their fee. You can view the requirements for a skill at any time by pulling up Skills in your main menu, and it’s a good idea that you check this frequently, as these skills are what truly end up defining your character build in the long run.
Of Ash And Steel: The Hardships Of Seafaring Quest Walkthrough
Tristan’s time at sea in Of Ash and Steel has not been kind to him, but thankfully, the physician on board is willing to help— for a price, of course.
