Whether you’re a newcomer or an experienced player of both Souls-likes or Metroidvanias, Nine Sols brings its own twists to the formula. With that in mind, there are some helpful tips I wish I had known in the early game. Here are my 5 beginner tips for Nine Sols.
Top 5 Beginner Advice for Nine Sols
Learn Boss Patterns and Get Comfortable With Parries
Nine Sols is indeed inspired by Souls-likes, but its main inspiration is Sekiro, which is drastically different than the others focusing on rhythm parrying bosses. That’s why I recommend doing two things to improve your gameplay: learn all of the boss’s moves in the first few tries and rebind the parry button if necessary.
Knowing which moves are coming at which time will help you get the rhythm of your parries down. As for the input, rebind the parry to a trigger or button where your dominant finger rests naturally. Both of these will help you get more comfortable with constant parry and talisman counters, making the game more like Guitar Hero than a 2D hack-and-slash. Stasis Jade Stones can help early to make talisman counterattacking safer because they’ll snare enemies.
Internal and Direct Damage
If you parry an attack with imperfect timing, you’ll accumulate purplish Internal damage instead of Direct damage, which is regular damage to your HP bar. The difference is that Internal damage regenerates over time or with Jade Stones like Breather if you don’t take further damage. Most notably, Internal damage cannot kill you, so if you imprecise parry the boss, you won’t die if you’re low on HP.
This also applies to enemies as they take Internal damage from certain attacks and skills like Tai-Chi Kicks. That said, this damage won’t kill them, and it’ll regenerate if you stop damaging the enemy. To convert all Internal damage to Direct damage, you must use a Talisman explosion on that enemy.
Don’t Brute Force Fights
There are plenty of builds or playstyles in other Souls-likes where you can button mash or brute force your way through a fight. As we mentioned, Nine Sols works more like Sekiro, so this won’t work with encounters. Observe the attacks, parry them, then use your talisman if you’re safe. To practice, you can try using dodges until you get the parry timing down, and even imprecise parries are still better than getting hit since you can restore internal damage faster with something like the Breather Jade Stone.
Look for those white cloud effects before a hit to parry regular attacks with ease. In the same vein, when you see Crimson attacks, check whether the enemy also glows green for a Tai-Chi parry. All of this restores your Talisman counters so that you can always counterattack.
You Can Parry Guardian Statues to Disable Them
If you’ve come across those stone robot statues with spears that are invulnerable, you can actually deactivate them. Simply wait for a Guardian Statue’s attack, and if it’s a white effect, use a regular parry, and if it’s a crimson one, jump on them and Tai-Chi air parry. This will disable them for a few seconds and allow you to hack them to turn them off. Also, be on the lookout for any doors with three blue circles on them, this means there are Guardian Statues hidden nearby that you can disable to open this door.
Get Full Control and Swift Rise ASAP
When I was starting out I was wondering which skills are the best to buy first. There are a lot of interesting ones, but Full Control allows you to micromanage Talisman charges. This allows you to quickly pick and choose how much you spend in case you need to trigger one powerful explosion or several lesser ones. Furthermore, Swift Rise allows you to recover in boss fights and avoid getting hit by additional attacks. Lastly, I like using the Skull Kick for airborne mobility so this isn’t a bad pick-up early as well.
Those are my top 5 beginner tips for Nine Sols. For more, check out our Nine Sols guides.
