Combat Tips For Ender Magnolia: Bloom In The Mist

Ender Magnolia: Bloom In The Mist features a very interesting combat system: you utilize the power of your homunculus allies as you fight against a variety of hostile enemies in the Land of Fumes. As an Attuner, Lilac can command certain homunculi and use their abilities in combat.

As the game progresses, the battles can get extremely challenging, and you’ll have to use everything at your disposal to stay ahead of your enemies. Fortunately, these combat tips will help you get a quick grip on the game’s mechanics early on so that you don’t have much trouble when you reach the end-game enemies.

Gather Charmed Fragments To Increase Your HP

Exploration is an integral part of the game, and you’ll be going through many zones that may contain hidden secrets. But, it’s all worth it in the end, because you can get so many useful items that can drastically improve your combat abilities.

The Charmed Fragment is a collectible item that you can find all over the Land of Fumes, hidden in breakable containers or some hard-to-reach platform, but what this item does is that it permanently increases your maximum HP, greatly boosting your survivability.

While the increase in HP after finding one or two Charmed Fragments may seem minimal at first, the numbers quickly pile up and by the time you have six or seven, you’ll notice a considerable difference. So, it’s always worth going out of your way to explore that hard-to-reach platform or a hidden passage, in case you find something worthwhile.

Collision Deals No Damage, Use That To Your Advantage

The only thing that can truly damage you in this game is the actual attack of an enemy. If you bump into them, walk past them, or even if you stand in front of them, you will take no damage, unless they’re using an attack. You can use this to position yourself safely before the enemy uses one of their attacks.

In certain boss fights, such as the Shackled Beast, the best place you can be is behind the boss while they’re busy using an attack. If you manage to walk past them or use a dodge to cover more distance to get behind their back, you can deal considerable damage without worrying about getting hit.

You can also move through certain enemies in water and the only thing that will deal damage to you is their attack projectiles. It can be an effective way to just swim to the other end quickly without having to worry about enemies damaging you by touching you. You will still have to try to avoid their attack projectiles by dodging them.

Choose Wisely When Enhancing Abilities

When you’re upgrading an ability for the first time, you might pick something that fits with the rest of the moves you’ve been using so far, because that’s what I did. However, there’s one critical thing that you have to keep in mind while picking an ability: you can equip only one ability from a character at once.

For example, if you were to enhance Lito’s second ability, thinking that it would go well with his first one, then you shouldn’t go ahead with it. That’s because you’ll only be able to equip either the first ability or the second one.

Ability enhancement materials are rare to get by, especially in the early game, so you have to make this decision wisely. You can see the attack stats and the details on the right half of the ability enhancement screen at a Respite to figure out which ability would be more useful to you compared to the character’s other abilities.

Think Twice Before Equipping An Ability On A Specific Button Slot

Certain abilities in the game remain active, as long as you’re holding the assigned button. However, and this is important if you’re playing on a controller, it is to make sure you don’t have such an ability equipped on a button that is difficult to hold while doing anything else.

Yolvan is a good example here. Yolvan’s ability remains active as long as you keep holding the corresponding button, and he’ll keep shooting out bullets while you move, jump, or dash. Suppose you’ve equipped this ability on either of the Action buttons on the controller, then you won’t be able to hold it comfortably while using jumps or your other abilities.

But, if you’ve assigned the ability to the buttons on the back of the controller, then you can easily keep holding the button while you move around. This can be a game changer, considering Yolvan can easily increase your damage output from a safe distance, even when you’re not manually attacking an enemy.

Ranged Attacks Are Underrated

Some ranged attacks are blocked by platforms, so you can hide under these platforms to avoid certain attacks. If you’re able to use ranged attacks, you can even hit enemies while you’re standing on a platform below them. Furthermore, if a zone has water in it, you can knock down enemies into the water with ranged attacks to kill them immediately.

Fall damage is a great way to deal a ton of damage to flying opponents, and usually, their break gauge isn’t that difficult to fill with ranged attacks. If there’s no water available in the zone, you should try to maximize the damage by making sure they fall from at least a significant height so they take a ton of damage.

You can further increase the amount of damage dealt to an airborne enemy by attacking them with Nola’s melee combo in midair as they fall to the ground. You can get plenty of successful attacks before the enemy hits the ground to take fall damage.

Keep Track Of An Enemy’s Effective Range

Many enemies and bosses that you encounter in the game have ranged attacks, but luckily, these ranged attacks have a maximum range and if you’re standing outside this range, you’ll be safe and will be able to deal damage to the boss with your own ranged attacks.

It may take a few tries before you can gauge an enemy’s maximum range, but after facing regular enemies many times, you’ll have a general idea of the max range of some of their moves. You will be able to deal with them effectively without putting yourself in harm’s way.

Use Attacks That Inflict Status Effects

The status effects in this game are quite powerful. The Blaze effect deals damage over time, while the Freeze effect stops the enemy in its tracks for a moment. The Shock effect lowers the enemy’s defense, which allows you to deal enhanced damage.

You’re also vulnerable to these status effects, but you can increase your resistance against them with certain relics.

Lito, which you can encounter quite early on, can inflict certain status effects on the enemy with each of his abilities. Lito’s first ability inflicts Blaze, and his second ability inflicts Freeze, which can be quite useful against certain enemies, either to dish out increased damage or to freeze them in place.

You Can Use Shackled Beast’s Counter On Ranged Attacks

While dodging melee attacks is fairly common, you can also deal significant damage to an enemy by using the Shackled Beast’s counter on a ranged attack. Shackled Beast is a boss that you’d have to defeat in the early game, and after defeating him, you can use his counter ability, which functions as a parry, but with a short cooldown.

Each of Shackled Beast’s abilities performs a different counter-attack with a different range, so you have to keep in mind the effective range of which ability you have equipped as you use the counter.

Even if your attack doesn’t connect with the enemy after a successful parry, you won’t take any damage, so it’s worth doing it if you think it will connect, otherwise dodging and using some other attack is easier.