In addition to the basic combat features there are some additional advanced combat features that more advanced players will want to explore.

Weapon Skills¶

Weapon Skills are a carry over from Bloodborne’s trick weapon feature, making each weapon a bit more unique.

There are a variety of skills, most of which do more damage or give you an advantage in battle, but most skills have a FP cost attached to it. This means that if you are a magic user you will likely avoid weapon skills and save your FP for spell casting, but don’t forget that FP can be recovered by consuming an Ashen Estus Flask.

Shield Parry¶

Some shields have the ability to parry and if timed right you can stun the enemy during their attack, allowing your to perform a critical attack to them. While parrying was a critical part of the previous Souls games, the addition of Weapon Skills has removed Parry from some shields.

Experiment with shields to determine if you want one with Parry or not. For players who had trouble with parrying in the previous games, you now have the option to gain something else by equipping a different shield type.

Status Ailments¶

When you encounter a status ailment a status bar will appear in the middle of the screen, slowly filling up over time until it is completely full. Once full the ailment will take affect and the bar will begin to diminish rather than rise, counting down until the ailment is removed.

Some of these ailments can be deadly unless cured, so keeping curative items on your hotkey bar is a very good idea when you know the ailment is encountered in an area.