Lords of the Fallen stats explained

Understanding the six Lords of the Fallen stats will help significantly when it comes to building and leveling up your character, as each of them is related to a different attribute you may want to focus on. As is standard with most Soulslikes, however, the names of these stats don't have an intuitive link to what they actually do, which means you can't simply pick options to level up such as attack, defence, speed, or health as you would in other more straightforward RPGs.

At the start of the game, you'll also be required to pick your Lords of the Fallen class, of which there are nine in total. Each one begins the game geared towards a different style of play, and understanding exactly what this means for your playthrough is imperative. Here's the lowdown on each of the Lords of the Fallen stats and what they mean.

Lords of the Fallen stats explained

Here are all Lords of the Fallen stats and what the mean:

• Strength
  • Increases your damage and the weight of weapon you can wield.
• Agility
  • Increases your effectiveness with lighter weapons and ranged attacks.
• Endurance
  • Increases your stamina, so you can perform more actions before tiring, and equip load, allowing you to wield heavier equipment and weaponry.
• Vitality
  • Increases your health/hit points.
• Radiance
  • Allows for casting more powerful radiant spells and wielding stronger radiant catalysts.
• Inferno
  • Allows for casting more powerful infernal spells and wielding stronger infernal catalysts.

Note that if you want to wield Umbral equipment, you must increase both Radiance and Inferno, instead of specialising in just one of the types of spell.

How to level up in Lords of the Fallen 

Where Dark Souls has bonfires, Lords of the Fallen has Vestiges. That is to say, the pace of the gameplay revolves around reaching checkpoints where you can take a breather. Once activated, Vestiges act as a place for you to rest, which allows you to heal, replenish resources, and also respawn all the enemies, except for bosses, that you've defeated since your previous rest. You can also select multiplayer options here, including recruiting a player to assist you in your game or vice versa and embark into someone else's game where they're having trouble.

However, selecting upgrade character is the most important option here, as it allows you to spend Vigor - the purple stuff you acquire from killing enemies - on leveling up the stats listed above. It's important to note that Vigor is also the currency in the game, so if you want to buy items from any vendors, you must balance your Vigor carefully. The amount of Vigor required to level up increases each time, so if you reach a point where you're struggling against a boss, don't be afraid to backtrack and farm some enemies to earn some more Vigor for upgrades. If you die, your Vigor can be recovered either at the same place you died, or by killing a nearby enemy who has absorbed it.

Best stats to upgrade in Lords of the Fallen 

The best stats to upgrade in Lords of the Fallen depends largely on your class selection and build. For the most part, there are no bad choices, but if you're fairly new to Soulslikes and want to know what to upgrade in lieu of having a specialised build in mind, here's what you need to know.

If you're struggling to stay alive, our top recommendation would be to upgrade your Vitality. The amount of health you have in Lords of the Fallen is relatively low compared to most other Souslikes in the first place thanks to the two-life system it has going on, where if you die you revive in Umbral, so investing in Vitality is never a bad shout. Umbral is, of course, a tougher environment than Axiom so you only want to end up there during a fight once you've almost finished off your opponent. Spending too long there increases the power of the enemies hunting you down, so increased Vitality means you'll survive for longer before ending up there.

However, if health isn't the issue and instead you find yourself struggling to deal damage, invest in either Strength or Agility, depending on the calibre of weapon you're using. For new players, Strength is likely to be the better bet as you probably picked one of the standard classes at the start, as opposed to Agility which is useful for slightly more advanced builds that solely focus on dancing around foes instead of utilising the block mechanic.

One important thing to remember is to try and correlate the stats you're leveling up with the stats that the weapon you're using is best suited to. When inspecting your weapon, it will have a letter grade next to some of the stats. For example, if you've picked the Udirangr Warwolf class, your starting weapon will have a C- for STR. This indicates you should invest in Strength if you want to become more adept with this weapon, and in turn, you should prioritise weapons that focus on Strength when searching for your next tool of choice.

© GamesRadar+. Not to be reproduced without permission