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Tunic can be deceptively difficult, so don’t let the adorable art style fool you. IGN’s Tunic Tips and Tricks guide includes all the details you need to know to get your adventure started on the right foot.
8 Essential Tips and Tricks for Getting Started in Tunic
Whether you're looking to stock up on your favorite items, the key to discovering hidden secrets within every environment, or simply offering items to raise important stats such as Attack and Defense, here are eight handy tips and tricks that will make your journey in Tunic just that much easier.
See Our Other Helpful Tunic Guides
Looking for even more on Tunic? Why not check out our detailed guides for finding every key item, including the Items Guide, and also specific pages for Sword, the Shield, the Overworld Map, the Magic Dagger, and even more in our How-To Guides hub! We also have a great Ability Cards Guide for all those hidden cards to buff your skills.
Stuck and need a helping hand? Our complete Tunic Walkthrough will guide you through all main adventures, challenging puzzles, boss encounters, and the rather mysterious ending.
See our entire Tunic Wiki Guide for a complete list of all our helpful guides.
A New Angle
Hold the left trigger like you are locking on to an enemy and the camera will shift slightly upwards to reveal a different angle, and perhaps additional paths!
Why Walk When You Can Sprint
As the game progresses, you’ll begin to realize just how big the world around you actually is. If trotting along is too slow for your taste, you can press and hold down the space bar (or A button if you’re using an Xbox controller) to sprint instead. Best of all, sprinting won’t affect your stamina, so feel free to sprint to your heart’s content.
Why Sprint When You Can Fast Travel?
You can fast travel using the golden square platforms around the overworld, but triggering them is unclear at first. Simply hold A on the platform to get whisked away to the... fast travel zone? You'll need to activate the square pads from the overworld first before using them.
Learn to Dodge But Watch Your Stamina
Until you acquire your shield, you’re going to need to heavily rely on dodging to evade enemy attacks and survive. Endlessly dodging, however, will quickly eat away at your stamina if you’re not watching it carefully. If you’re low on stamina or the bar is flashing red, you’ll be completely vulnerable to enemy attacks and will take even more damage than normal.
Pressing the spacebar or A button will let you jump and roll forward to dodge attacks. As you kick off the ground, watch for dust underneath you - this small moment of safety offers you invulnerability against damage.
After you acquire the shield, be sure to still keep your eye on the stamina bar. Each blow blocked by the shield will still deplete your stamina and while your shield will never break, once you're in the red, you'll be completely vulnerable to damage again.
Offer Items to Raise Your Stats
You’ll find various items throughout your journey that you may not know what to do with - items like a bundle of flowers, a sprig of leaves, a tooth, mushrooms, just to name a few. While these items don’t look like much at first, you can actually present them at the various fox shrines found in each location as an offer to increase stats like Attack, Defense, Potions, HP, SP and MP.
Some enemy encounters may give you a run for your money so the best bet to come out victorious is to raise those stats as soon as you can.
Shop Till You Drop
If you find yourself low on your favorite items, you can always visit a shop and stock up. Shops are often hidden away from plain view so you may find yourself running into one by accident.
One sure way to find them though is by checking your map and looking for a small pair of blue dots in a black doorway.
Did You Die? Use It To Your Advantage
When you die, the hero falls over and loses all of their hard earned money. After you respawn and return back to where you were killed, you’ll see your ghost slowly spinning and floating in the air.
Chances are that the enemy who bested you is still lurking nearby, waiting for you to return. Wait for them to approach you and your ghost, and when the time is right, attack the ghost. Attacking it will cause it to explode, not only inflicting damage to the creature nearby, but giving you back all the riches you lost before.
Touch Every Wall
Tunic is a game all about exploration and discovery so be sure to explore every corner you can find. You’ll often find hidden pathways around buildings, behind waterfalls, and even in cliffs while exploring, which can serve as shortcuts on your journey.
These shortcuts can sometimes also lead you to hidden treasure chests that contain money, health items, weapons and sacred items you can sacrifice to raise your stats.
Exploring thoroughly, however, will require some patience, as Tunic doesn’t allow you to rotate the camera (aside from the trick above), so oftentimes these secret passageways can go completely unnoticed. Running closely alongside walls and following your silhouette is your best bet at uncovering the game's many, many secrets.
For more, be sure to check out our other helpful Tunic Guides: