The First Berserker: Khazan: 10 Essential Beginner Tips

Khazan” is gaining recognition for being a particularly challenging experience within the Soulslike genre, especially during its initial stages. While most games in this category aren’t walkovers, “Khazan” stands out as it presents a steeper learning curve than what is typically encountered due to its amalgamation of influences and concepts from both the Dark Souls and Nioh series.

Regardless if you’re an experienced player in the genre or newcomer to Khazan, it’s likely that you’ll benefit from some additional advice to help you navigate this Soulslike game effectively.

Fortunately, the game offers a less challenging mode for players who find it overwhelmingly tough. However, no matter what level of difficulty you choose, you’ll encounter pulse-racing action throughout your journey.

In this compilation of tips, you’ll find familiar concepts and gameplay mechanisms from past genre installments. Even if you’re already acquainted with them, a quick review could be beneficial when starting a game as challenging as Khazan during its initial stages. Moreover, it’s crucial to familiarize yourself with the new and innovative mechanics that Khazan introduces in relation to the Souls series, as they add an interesting twist to the formula.

Let’s help you kick off your journey with The First Berserker: Khazan in a winning manner!

10. Blocking Is Your Best Friend

Constant Dodge Rolls Won’t Work

In the world of Souls players, there’s a wide range of strategies when it comes to combat. While games like Sekiro require swift mastery of parries, it’s possible to finish Dark Souls and Elden Ring without ever fully grasping the art of shield usage or proper blocking techniques.

In the game Khazan, if you fail to learn blocking techniques early on, you’ll find yourself in quite a difficult position. However, the advantage here is that mastering these skills is less punishing compared to games like Sekiro, for instance. The game offers a relatively wide margin of time for executing precise blocks.

As far as your endurance level permits, correctly timing blocks can effectively prevent any incoming harm, making blocking crucial for victory. While evasion moves like dodging are useful, they may cause you to move away from the fight and exhaust your energy more quickly.

As a gamer, I always keep my focus on maintaining my health, and blocking is key to that. It keeps me in the thick of the action, ready to strike back at the enemy the moment they make a mistake.

9. Pay Attention To Weapon Scaling

A Point Worth Reiterating

In case you’re familiar with games developed by FromSoftware or several others within the same genre, the concept presented in Khazan may not be entirely novel or unexpected. However, it’s crucial to acquaint yourself with this aspect right from the start to ensure a smooth gaming experience.

As a fervent enthusiast, I’d like to share an intriguing aspect about the weapons we wield: the more you enhance specific attributes – strength, willpower, and proficiency – the greater the impact they have when deployed. It’s essential to note that vitality and endurance are also crucial stats you can boost, but these don’t affect weapon scaling in any way.

Whenever you’re uncertain about which stat to enhance, it’s usually wise to choose the one that amplifies most effectively with your favorite weapon. A higher weapon scaling for a particular stat means that your weapon inflicts more damage as you increase its corresponding level.

Remember that as you level up a stat that grows well with your weapon, you may reach soft caps where further increases will provide less benefit. However, in the beginning stages of the game, you can disregard this concern.

8. Don’t Get Exhausted

Sitting Duck Simulator

Just like the Nioh series, Khazan incorporates an uncommon feature known as an exhaustion mechanic, which isn’t typically seen in traditional Souls games. To put it simply, if you run out of your stamina and sustain damage, Khazan will temporarily be unable to move until his stamina bar fully refills.

As a gamer, if I struggle to conserve my energy or stamina, I end up being an easy prey for my adversary way too frequently, leaving me exposed and vulnerable.

Engaging in a frenzied, relentless assault on an opponent may initially seem like a good strategy, aiming to overwhelm them before they’ve had a chance to respond. However, each strike depletes your stamina significantly, and if you overdo it, leaving yourself vulnerable with empty reserves, you could find yourself in a precarious position, ripe for retaliation once your stamina is depleted.

Engaging in activities like running, assaulting, evading, and shielding can quickly tire you out, so it’s crucial to use them strategically in a fight without overexerting yourself and risking fatigue.

Initially, it’s advisable to take a step back in battles and observe how many moves you can use before your energy depletes, to avoid exhausting Khazan too quickly and being easily defeated by a powerful enemy with a single hit. Enhancing endurance for increased stamina is always a good strategy as well.

7. Leveled Stats Raise Multiple Things

Everything Raises Health

In most games, increasing your strength stat boosts both weapon damage and equipment load, as well as certain resistances. However, in the game Khazan, this relationship works a bit uniquely.

In this setup, each stat that can be increased contributes slightly to your total health capacity, which proves quite useful. Initially, you might think about pouring many levels into vitality to ensure a surplus of HP for security purposes, but you may discover later on that it’s not as essential as it appears.

Boosting vitality provides a significant increase in HP (by 50 points), however, all other stats also grant a 10-point boost to your health. This means you can be more aggressive in distributing levels into endurance for additional stamina or anything else for increased weapon damage, without fear that your health will be severely affected as a consequence.

Regardless, it’s important to note that only Vitality increases your unique damage resistances within Khazan. Therefore, it would be unwise to disregard it entirely. You do have a bit more leeway in this aspect compared to the norm.

6. Switch Your Control Scheme

Souls-Style Is In The Options

It’s all about individual taste, but you might find the control setup in Khazan unfamiliar if you’ve recently played similar games in the Souls-like genre.

You’ve got two different control layouts to pick, and none of them offer the ability to customize button assignments. Regrettably, neither scheme perfectly mirrors controls used in other games, but one comes pretty close compared to the other.

By the game’s close, many players might prefer to adjust their control settings to Scheme B in ‘Khazan’. This configuration moves your light and heavy melee attacks onto the right triggers rather than face buttons, and positions the dodge roll similarly to how it is positioned in FromSoftware games.

Making this adjustment will provide a smooth, immediate improvement to the game’s feel, making it more intuitive and welcoming.

5. Don’t Spend Skill Points Till You’ve Tried All Weapons

Your Favorite Weapon-Type Could Be Forthcoming

During the initial stages of your mission, you will gradually earn skill points which can be utilized to unlock additional features such as perks, special attacks for your weapons, and enhancements for Khazan, including general boosts and abilities that remain effective irrespective of the currently selected weapon or gear.

For now, resist the urge to enhance your dual-wield weapons by leveling up in the skill tree. You’ll soon discover that as you progress in this initial mission, you’ll acquire the capacity to handle greatswords and lances too. Each of these weapon categories will have their unique skill trees and move sets.

In my opinion, among the three weapon categories, I found the dual-wield options to be the least appealing after experimenting with everything else. Fortunately, it meant I didn’t invest a lot of ability points into a skill set that I likely wouldn’t utilize throughout my gaming experience.

Consider saving your skill points temporarily or distributing them across various skill sets that aren’t weapon-specific until you determine which weapons you intend to specialize in for the remainder of the game. It won’t be a catastrophe if you use points that ultimately turn out to be unnecessary, but it can still leave an unpleasant feeling knowing you squandered some valuable resources.

4. The Javelin Is More Useful Than You Think

Long Range Stun Action

During your initial mission, you’ll also acquire a weapon known as the Javelin. This is a long-range projectile that Khazan can conjure to take down enemies from afar, effectively thinning their ranks from a safe distance. The primary function of the Javelin becomes instantly apparent, enabling you to maintain a healthy buffer zone with enemies while dealing damage to their health pool before they get too close.

In the heat of battle, I’ve discovered an unexpected advantage with the javelin: it’s perfect for taking down those towering foes up close. You might not pick up on this right away, but give it a try!

After acquiring the javelin, you’ll soon encounter an area where a massive wild boar rushes towards you head-on. A well-timed throw of the javelin at its face won’t instantly kill it, but it will momentarily daze the boar and cause it to collapse unconscious, allowing you to swiftly move in for a decisive strike.

To put it simply, give the javelin a try, and you’ll soon discover that it’s surprisingly useful in a variety of tricky predicaments. In tight spots like low health during a boss battle, needing to deal extra damage, or when dealing with an aggressive yeti, the javelin can be your go-to tool. If you’re struggling to hit a bothersome monkey, the javelin is your best bet too!

Oh, and aim for the head.

3. Match Your Armor Sets

More Fashionable Anyway

Often, choosing armor in Soulslike games mainly involves finding the right balance between combining different pieces based on their optimal stats, all while staying under the maximum weight threshold.

Generally, I don’t prioritize style over function in my game choices; I prefer to maximize stats regardless of appearance. More often than not, I end up resembling a hybrid of a giant onion-man and a pirate due to high stats.

Instead of just focusing on maximizing your defense rating by haphazardly combining equipment in Khazan, it’s essential to take other factors into account as well.

In this game, wearing several pieces from the same armor set isn’t a novel concept for RPGs, but it’s essential to note that doing so offers surprisingly beneficial advantages and bonuses as your coordination improves.

Even though individual armor pieces might have higher damage ratings, if they don’t form part of a matching set, it’s probably not beneficial to use them because you’ll end up with multiple unmatched armor parts. Keep in mind that some weapons are compatible with full armor sets, offering additional benefits when used together with your chosen attire.

The Ashen Wolf equipment collection serves as an excellent illustration of this concept. Donning two items from this set reduces the stamina needed for dodging by 10%. Add a third item, and your healing supplies restore 20% more HP. With five pieces, you gain an additional full healing item at each rest. These benefits accumulate, allowing for some truly impressive builds if you’re a fan of coordinating outfits.

2. Unlock Phantoms ASAP

More Perks Are A Good Thing

Following the conquest of the powerful Blade Phantom boss, Khazan will make his initial visit to The Crevice – a region that functions as the central hub-world of the game, similar to the Firelink Shrine. Here, you’ll have the chance to immediately dive into the next storyline phase. However, it’s worthwhile to briefly divert your path for an intriguing side quest.

Blade Phantom, currently teaming up with Khazan, will also share information about some extra boss fights you might want to engage in. Initially, he’ll inform you about Keshta, The Relentless, another formidable adversary that is definitely worth your effort to locate and confront.

Following the acceptance of this extra task and vanquishing Keshta, who shares a similar set of moves with Blade Phantom, Khazan will acquire the power to arm himself with a spectral variant of specific bosses and subsequently harness their spirits as allies.

These ghostly souls can be upgraded, providing Khazan with extra benefits that will make your adventure smoother. Instantly upon equipping Keshta’s phantom, Khazan gains enhancements to his stamina regeneration, and the rewards linked to his endurance improve with each level as well.

1. Take Time To Really Learn Bosses

Don’t Worry About Runbacks

Battles against bosses in Soulslike games are notoriously demanding, and you can expect Khazan to be among the most difficult ones you’ve ever faced. While it may seem straightforward, being patient during these confrontations is essential for success in this game.

Just as many games within its category, the boss battles in Khazan are highly teachable, a feature that while appreciated in other titles, may not always be critical.

Frequently, mastering the use of your i-frames or ensuring you’re adequately prepared for combat by equipping suitable gear can allow you to overpower a boss in another game without needing to deeply understand every move they possess.

In the game Khazan, it’s less probable that this method will work, as you might have to endure several unsuccessful attempts before truly understanding how to engage in a boss battle and emerge victorious. Fortunately, checkpointing is very forgiving, allowing you to quickly return to the boss room without having to make a long trek back.

Approaching learning and memorizing a specific boss in this manner becomes significantly easier, less aggravating, and essentially stress-free when you adopt the right attitude, as it reduces overall pressure.

It’s alright if you don’t win at first, because your main goal is learning. When you feel certain about how an opponent might attack, that’s when you can start becoming more assertive and aim for victory.

2025-04-03 16:59