The Thaumaturge: Tips and tricks The Thaumaturge guide, walkthrough
The Thaumaturge is a game with many mechanics that are difficult to understand, and you will be helped by our tips for getting started. On this page of the guide we highlight combat, using the skills of the protagonist and Salutors, developing Victor, exploration or having conversations with NPCs.
Last update: 06 March 2024
While playing The Thaumaturge, you may come across many potentially problematic or incomprehensible situations. In our guide, you'll find a set of starting tips in which we draw attention to important or initially puzzling issues. They include, for instance, engaging in turn-based fights, exploring maps, using the abilities of Wiktor and the Salutors, and conducting effective interrogations.
- Use your perception as often as possible
- Observe the sequence of actions during the fight and react to it
- Unlock the 4 main types of Salutors as soon as possible
- Deprive opponents of their unique traits
- Do side quests with a time limit
- Heal during clashes
- Try to deprive your opponents of focus
- Return to the traces; annotation Dimension force too low
- Explore the same locations at different times of the day
- Be careful when choosing dialogue options
Use your perception as often as possible
- From the very beginning of the game, Wiktor has the ability of perception, and using it is free and unlimited. You can activate it by clicking the right mouse button or R2/RT on the controller.
- Perception has 2 main and equally important applications. You can use it primarily to track current quests. Using perception can display a red trace, which will lead you to a character or object related to a specific quest objective.
- The second use of perception is finding observations. Thanks to perception, you can scan the area around the protagonist (red circle). This will allow you to locate traces or items for further investigation. We recommend exploring each new map, visited for the first time, with the help of perception.
Observe the sequence of actions during the fight and react to it
- During each fight, a planned action queue appears at the top of the screen. These are timelines from which you can read the sequence of Wiktor's attacks, his Salutor, and the opponents present on the battlefield.
- First of all, you should aim to eliminate the enemy before he makes his next planned move. The most straightforward way to achieve this is by planning attacks with a faster pace, meaning those that will appear earlier in the sequence of actions and will be used first.
- We also recommend relying on skills that influence opponents' movements. Depending on the ability used, you can, for instance, delay the enemy's next attack or completely cancel it in a given turn.
Unlock the 4 main types of Salutors as soon as possible
- Salutory are beings that the main character can capture and turn into his allies. Unlocked Salutors are fighting on Wiktor's side and can greatly help achieve victory.
- You'll start the game with the Salutor Upyr, but at the end of the prologue, you'll also unlock the Salutor Bukavac. After starting Act 1 of the campaign, focus on the initial main quests. They will allow you to acquire 2 more Salutory - these are Lelek and Veles.
- Each of the mentioned Salutors represents a different Dimension. Thanks to this, you'll have a variety of sidekicks, which will make it easier for you to plan tactics during fights.
- We have posted a compilation of all available companions on the page List of all Salutors.
Deprive opponents of their unique traits
- From Act 1 onwards, you might come across enemies with unique traits. An active trait guarantees resistance, and it can, for instance, make a given enemy invulnerable to standard attacks or reduce the damage it receives.
- Each trait is associated with a specific Dimension. Choose the Salutor representing this Dimension at the beginning of the turn and attack the opponent with a trait. This will remove the trait, and the opponent will be vulnerable to all subsequent attacks.
- If you don't have a set of "starting" Salutors yet, avoid regular attacks and inflict negative states on enemies. The most common state is Suffering, which deprives the opponent of a few health points every turn. It can also stack, so that the enemy loses more HP at once.
Do side quests with a time limit
- Some of the side quests have a clock icon and a note: Availability of this quest is limited. This means that there is a risk of wasting the quest and permanently deleting it from the journal. It will happen if you don't take care of it quickly enough.
- The clock informs you how much time you have left to complete a given quest. Do these quests first, and don't postpone them, especially since several of them will unlock access to optional salutators. There's a risk that you may miss the opportunity to gain strong allies.
- We have described the topic of time-limited quest availability in more detail on the FAQ page Can you fail a quest?.
Heal during clashes
- Wiktor starts with only 40 health points and can easily be defeated on the battlefield. There are no standard potions or other health-restoring items in the game. Instead, you can heal yourself by using skills.
- From the very beginning of the game, the Eerie Intoxication ability is available, which is associated with Upyr. It restores half of the lost health points, so it's worth using it only after Wiktor's health bar drops to about 20 points.
- In the further part of the campaign, you will acquire other healing skills. Carefully read their descriptions to learn the most effective way to restore the most health. The game will also allow you to permanently extend your health bar by developing selected skill trees.
Try to deprive your opponents of focus
- The character's focus is symbolized by yellow dots above the health bar. Both Wiktor and selected opponents have focus points.
- Some of Wiktor and Salutor's abilities help disrupt the focus of enemies. The Diversion skill is available from the very beginning of the game. By default, it only takes away one focus point, but you can upgrade this skill and make your opponent lose more points.
- After the opponent loses all focus points, you can use a strong attack and deal a lot of damage. Select enemies with the least amount of focus from the start, as it will be easier for you to exhaust them and remove them from the clash.
Return to the traces; annotation Dimension force too low
- It may happen that when using perception, some traces/observations will appear with the annotation Dimension force too low. This means that you cannot examine a given place or object until you have sufficiently developed a given Dimension (a requirement of 5 Word points in our example). Remember these places to return to in the future.
- Unlock skills related to a given Dimension, which can be found in the Thaumaturgy menu. Some of them permanently increase the power of the Dimension.
- The absence of one of the Salutors may hinder further development. You need to find more Salutors through advancements in the game before proceeding with the further development of the tree. After obtaining the required number of points, return to the location with the observation to explore it.
Explore the same locations at different times of the day
- From the moment the first act begins, you can use the daytime change option (we described this on a separate page in our guide). To do this, you need to find a bench, interact with it and select the hours that interest you.
- We recommend visiting the same places at different times of the day. Thanks to this, you can, among others: find various collectibles with the Point of Interest annotation, which appear as stars on the map. Additionally, the time of day affects the availability of selected side quests and shops, as well as the buildings you can enter. However, be careful, because at night, bandits may lurk in places that were safe during the day.
Be careful when choosing dialogue options
- Having conversations is one of the more important elements of the game. You can extract various information from NPCs and advance further in quests. Pay attention, as important decisions arise in conversations. In extreme situations, an unfortunate selection of dialogue options could lead to a confrontation or even block access to a gift from the interlocutor.
- Some dialogue options may not be available in certain conversations. Most of the time, it involves the lack of observation associated with a given person. It's best to interrupt the conversation, check the surroundings, discover the missing trace, and then return to the NPC and choose the available option.