Astria Ascending has its difficult underpinnings, but there are several ways to circumvent its initially daunting challenge. Several menu settings can be toggled to personalize the experience. This includes a difficulty players are able to change at will. However, some users are more stubborn.
If you insist on finishing Astria Ascending on normal or hard difficulty without altering the default settings, dungeon excursions are easily exploitable. Our guide below will help you conserve resources without pulling your hair out. If you’re having trouble with bosses, visit some of our boss specific guides.
What you need to know
Before understanding what to do, you’ll need a quick rundown of how Astria Ascending’s healing system works. Characters regenerate health while running around dungeons. The tutorial prompt gives the impression it refills gradually over time. In reality, it’s nearly instantaneous. Even downed party members regain a full health bar after battles.
The magic pool, however, does not regenerate in the same manner. Players must visit towns if they wish to refill both their health and magic pools without using items or spells. We can use this information to transform every dungeon from a battle of attrition to a cakewalk.
Exploiting the game
If you find yourself struggling, your safest best is a party mostly consisting of physical damage dealers, filling that lost spot with a magic user for those especially peculiar monsters that need to be damaged with magic. We recommend Dagmar in this last position during the early game as his elemental abilities are the most easily obtained of the magically inclined party members.
With this party composition in mind, you’re safe to use basic physical attacks on most enemies. Don’t worry if a monster resists physical attacks as you will only lose focus points. Considering focus points don’t carry over from battle to battle, it’s not worth worrying about for standard encounters.
If anyone dies during the process, you can swap them out with someone in the reserve party. After the battle, anyone that dies is brought back to life as if nothing happened. If you find this method especially boring, you’re free to use magic to speed it along, but don’t be afraid to fast travel a lot.
Astria Ascending allows fast travel between towns and portals within dungeons. If you find yourself using magic semi-frequently, fast travel back to town every time you come across a fast travel portal. To take things further, you can always fast travel back to a town as frequently as you want. The retreading of ground between fast travel portals means you’ll net more gold, skill points, and experience points. Regardless of how judiciously fast travel is used, as long as you internalize how little consequence actually exists in Astria Ascending, you’ll get through any dungeon with little trouble.
