Pyre – FAQ/Strategy Guide

Tips, Tricks, and Advice

Check out your opposition

The game lets you closely examine the opposing team before the match using the little button in the bottom right during your squad selection phase. You can see your opponents’ classes, their skills, their stats, and their equipment. This lets you get a pretty good idea of what you’ll be up against and gives you an advantage since you can pick characters to specifically counter theirs. Be sure to always check your opposition and plan your own team accordingly.

Do Scribe Challenges

You’ll eventually open up the ability to run each character through a unique, personalized challenge that pits that lone character against three enemies in a slightly modified Rite. You should do these challenges for a couple reasons. First, you really learn the ins and outs of a character when you’re forced to rely solely on that one person to both clear enemies and get the orb to the enemy Pyre. Apart from the learning experience, you’ll also earn a special character-specific talisman if you complete the trial, and many of these talismans offer amazing, unique boosts to that particular character.

Learn each character

I won’t spoil too much here, but you’re going to be forced to use pretty much all your characters. As you liberate characters, you deplete your own roster, and characters who are used too often get banishment sickness, leaving them unusable for the next Rite while they recover. And on top of all that, random events while you’re traveling will sometimes knock down a character’s stats temporarily, which makes them less useful. Knowing how to use each character (and having each character leveled up at least a little bit to unlock a couple abilities) will make it easier to roll with those changes and stay competitive in the Rites.

Pay attention to equipment

Each character can use a talisman, and every character should be using one as soon as you have a small collection. Talismans can do a lot of things, from earning money to giving characters boosts to stats. Use talismans to overcome characters’ deficiencies, counteract unexpected penalties from events, or boost abilities you know you’ll use a lot. The talismans from the Scribe Challenges will often have unique effects like making aura casts bounce or pierce through barriers, and these can completely change how you use a character. Always look at your talismans and figure out if that’s the best talisman for that character in this Rite.

Learn to shoot

The game doesn’t make a huge point of this, but every character can pass the orb to other teammates and lob it in a particular direction. You’ll make your life easier if you learn to lob the orb into the opposing Pyre instead of having your character dive in. Characters who dive into the Pyre are banished until someone else scores; characters who throw the orb need a little more time to set up but don’t automatically get banished for the next round. Throwing the orb is a little tougher and requires more planning since you have to stop by the enemy Pyre and charge the throw, but it’s worthwhile since you get to keep your scorer on the field.

Pass and shoot offensively

At a glance, passing the orb and shooting it don’t look like offensive skills, but with a little creativity they can swing the game. Remember that characters lose their auras when holding the orb and gain them back almost immediately upon relinquishing it. If you find your orb carrier getting boxed in, you can quickly put them back on the offensive by passing the orb to an ally to make your first character’s aura pop back; if the character has a big aura and the enemy is too close, they’ll get banished. Be aware, though, that passing the orb will automatically make you control the new orb carrier, so you won’t be able to aura cast with your original character. You can be even more underhanded by throwing the orb at the encroaching enemy. If you hit them, they’ll automatically grab the orb, losing their aura right as you regain yours. Even if you don’t force them to hold the orb, you can rapidly aura cast or ram them to banish them. This dirty little trick works best with character who have large auras as you may be able to catch the enemy inside your character's aura as soon as it pops back up.