Garden of Witches: Beginner’s Guide

Garden of Witches is an action roguelite that focuses on combat speed, build customization, upgrade synergies, and progressively challenging bosses. The protagonist, Sill, is a witch who wields different kinds of magical scissors in conjunction with spells, special abilities, and other items.

Even though Garden of Witches does have its share of traits similar to other roguelites and survivors, there is a lot more attention paid to combat mechanics and bosses here than in many other titles. Success in the game relies more on creating a synergy of various elements such as weapons, spells, attributes, and Imprints rather than just accumulating upgrades.

The following guide will help you get familiar with all of these systems before you try any more complicated builds.

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Getting Started: Understanding Your Loadout

Before entering the stage, you can configure the Sil’s equipment using the loadout screen.

The possible choices are:

• Main weapons
• Spells
• Special skills
• Relics
• Curses
• Many different upgrades and attributes

Your main weapon is a tool that provides your attacks. Spells and skills help you to complement your weapon with various attack modes and abilities.

It is important because all the weapons differ greatly from each other. Some of them demand that you actively use charging and shooting them, some attack automatically, and some attack with area damage.

Additionally, you can play completed chapters again on harder difficulties to test your increasingly strong characters.

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Combat Basics

Garden of Witches is a combat-oriented roguelite game, which means positioning and timing play an equally important role as your character build.

Enemies get tougher as you go through levels, while elite enemies and bosses pose even more difficult challenges.

One of the mechanics that you need to know about in order to succeed in this game is that your cooldowns refresh after entering a new room. It means that you can start each fight with all of your best spells unlocked.

It results in the following cycle:

• Enter a new room.
• Perform the strongest attacks with no cooldowns.
• Eliminate enemies.
• Get your rewards or solve the problem of the room.
• Move to the next room with refreshed cooldowns.

Don’t hesitate to unleash all of your power in the beginning of a fight if you can dispose of enemy units fast enough.

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Weapons: Your Build’s Foundation

There are several kinds of scissors available for Sil, and all of them will force you to play in a completely different way in terms of combat.

Among the available weapons of Sil that I saw during my time there are:

Giant Scissors

A heavy weapon, and it has an attack pattern that differs from regular scissors.

Broken Scissors

A two-handed kind of scissors that offers you a completely different approach to the attacks.

Magic Scissors

They can be charged and released afterwards. The shots of Magic Scissors become exceptionally dangerous after certain upgrades.

However, their main problem is in the fact that you have to build the charge before releasing the attack, and this process leaves you vulnerable if you are staying in an unsafe place.

The weapon will get stronger when you start equipping your project bonuses, stacks, reduced cooldowns and effects that will make scissors follow enemies.

Singing Scissors

These scissors will attack automatically, while their active ability can be triggered manually to reload them.

Lapis Scissors

This kind of scissors does area of effect damage around Sil and is helpful against the clusters of enemies near you.

All of the listed scissors offer completely different approaches to combat, and don’t think that the strongest weapon is the one with the highest damage per hit.

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Spells and Special Skills

Weapons are not the only means to inflict damage.

Two spells plus four abilities can be used to craft an effective set of attacks with various functions.

For instance, if you want to craft a really powerful build around Fireball, you can do that by increasing your fire damage and all necessary stats.

Another good example would be Raven, which becomes very useful once you start spending experience on summoning more crows and increasing their attacks.

Special skills can deal huge amounts of damage as well and are best suited for elite enemies and boss battles.

What matters is not to think of abilities separately, but to find a combination with the same damage type.

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Building Your Character

As you play through the level, you will come across upgrades that make your weapons and spells better.

These upgrades might boost:

• Damage
• Cooldown
• Number of projectiles
• Max stacks
• Charging time
• Projectile speed
• Speed
• Burning damage
• Area of effect
• Summons

An effective start would be a build that focuses on a specific path, rather than upgrading all aspects equally.

In other words, if your Fireball becomes your best weapon, continuing to work on Fireball would yield better results than upgrading other abilities entirely.

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Understanding Imprints

Another one of the progression systems that the game features in Garden of Witches is the Imprint system.

After gathering three upgrades of the same rank, players unlock the Imprint system.

The Imprints basically change how a weapon and spell perform rather than adding just a simple numerical buff to their attributes.

It becomes especially useful when making specialized builds.

For instance, there is the Imprint for Magic Scissors that lowers its base damage but increases its damage depending on the charge gauge. There is also the Imprint that lowers its damage and increases the number of attacks.

The most important thing to remember is that a lowered damage stat does not always mean a bad upgrade.

Sometimes the Imprint will lower one attribute while significantly improving the performance of the weapon.

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Don’t Ignore Cooldown

Cooldown reduction is among the best stats in any build.

When you reduce cooldowns, you will get the chance to use your best attacks often, and that is usually better than increasing the damage dealt.

This is especially applicable where the attacks deal great damage on their own.

When you have the following:

• Great damage
• Low cooldowns
• Many charges
• More projectiles

you can make your attack become a continuous source of damage.

This applies to weapons like Magic Scissors, which benefit greatly from increased charging rate.

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Fireball: An Excellent Early Damage Option

Fireball is especially useful as a starting offensive investment.

With proper upgrades, its damage output can become incredibly strong, and there are several ways to affect how it operates.

There is one path of upgrades that increases Fireball’s burn efficiency depending on the number of charged gauges it uses, while the other makes the cooldown of Fireball regenerate after hitting the target.

One more effective choice is Rapid Casting, which makes it deal extra damage and charge faster.

Fireball can be upgraded even later.

Fragment

This ability decreases Fireball’s damage output but makes it spawn three new Fireballs after an explosion.

It may be worth trying when you need some extra area damage instead of one big explosion.

Burn effects

There are various effects that can make Fireball do more burning damage to the targets. There is one ability that triggers immediate combustion when the total burn damage dealt exceeds the health of the enemy.

The main thing to remember is that there are multiple ways to use Fireball – either as a burst damage, attack repeat or burn damage.

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Building Around Ravens

Although Raven seems less intimidating compared to Fireball or some other special ability at the start, once you invest into its mechanics, there is plenty of room for development here.

One of the directions which I would like to focus on in particular is the one involving the increase of the number of summoned crows and decrease of the number of their attacks.

The idea is to summon enough crows in order to use their ultimate attack.

When the number of summoned crows exceeds nine, they are automatically destroyed and substituted by the phantom giant crow.

The attack of this monster is very damaging; the phantom giant crow deals 5,000% of additional Crow damage to all enemies around it.

Thus, Raven may be considered as a good summon skill for the dedicated build.

Nevertheless, the skill requires some upgrades before it can fully unleash its potential.

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Projectile Builds

Should you have several attacks that are projectiles, then projectile upgrades will be very useful to you.

For instance, should you have Fireball, scissors, and Raven which all rely on projectile damage, then a global upgrade for projectile damage will positively affect multiple aspects of your build.

It will do so in a more cost-effective way than an upgrade that will affect just one part of the build.

In making your choice among upgrades, always consider:

Which number of my attacks will this help?

The best upgrade isn’t always the one with the biggest percentage in the description.

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Curses: Risk for Greater Rewards

Curses rooms add another dimension to the risk versus reward game.

A Curse is a temporary punishment that makes the current part of the run harder but offers great rewards after its effects end.

For instance, one particular Curse makes you unable to get battle rewards for three battles. When you are free from the Curse, you get not only the lost rewards but also two additional rewards.

Here are some examples:

• Make your dash ability cooldown higher temporarily and then offer you a global cooldown reduction when the Curse effects are over.
• Reduce your damage for several battles, and then increase it after the Curse ends.

The rule here is quite straightforward:

Suffer now for future gain.

Curses rooms are especially good when your build is strong enough to withstand the Curse effects.

Yet don’t accept any Curse blindly. If your character barely manages to survive the current battle, getting weakened for several battles will most likely ruin your run.

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Dice and Rerolls

Dice are rolled to re-roll available upgrades.

This is a good practice, as the initial upgrade choice that you get isn’t always going to be helpful with respect to your existing build.

What you shouldn’t do is rush to use up all your Dice at once; try to save them for use in later parts of the dungeon.

This can become quite helpful especially once your build becomes focused.

At the beginning of your dungeon run, any upgrade that has some impact will prove useful. However, in the later stages of the dungeon, you will need some specific upgrade for completing an Imprint or finishing your build.

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Relics and General Attributes

Relics offer yet another option for building up your character.

Some relics can buff your character globally as opposed to boosting a single piece of equipment.

A global buff on your weapon damage, for instance, is especially helpful if you already took a damage penalty via an Imprint.

A global buff on projectiles is extremely useful if several attacks from your build are projectiles.

Other potential buffs can be applied to:

• Max HP
• Speed
• Attack
• Cooldowns
• Damage
• Stacks
• Charge speed

When you have to choose between specializing or going global, just figure out how much of your build either choice impacts.

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Boss Battles

The bosses are among the unique aspects of Garden of Witches.

Although Garden of Witches shares some characteristics with other action roguelikes, the boss fights in this game demand an approach that emphasizes combat more than other games.

The bosses have more health and tougher attacks, so a build that is able to handle regular rooms will likely struggle against a boss.

Do not base your strategy solely on dealing maximum theoretical damage.

Apart from damage potential, your boss build needs:

• Consistent damage output
• Reasonable cooldown time
• Mobility
• Sufficient survivability
• Attacks that you can perform frequently

Be especially careful about charge-type weapons, because Magic Scissors, for example, deal insane amounts of damage, but the player needs to consider where and when to attack.

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Surviving Difficult Encounters

Mobility should be valued as much as attacking.

With each subsequent enemy, the damage becomes progressively higher, while bosses have new types of attacks that can punish bad mobility.

Sometimes, players get caught up in doing maximum damage, so they completely ignore any danger coming their way.

Do not worry too much about charging your attack until it is perfect. Sometimes, it is better to let go of your attack and move away.

The same goes for abilities – only use them to take out high-priority targets.

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The Talent Tree

Garden of Witches offers a consistent progression system outside of individual runs in the form of a Talent Tree.

Initially, the tree is quite restricted in accessibility.

To unlock the nodes, you have to spend blue gems, and each unlocked node gives you access to other nodes.

In this way, a slow progression through the tree is achieved.

The bonuses available include such ones as:

• Starting Dice
• Speed
• Maximum HP
• Attack
• And others permanently increasing your stats

The endgame Talent Tree is Level 70, and by this time all the nodes will be available.

Permanent progression is significant since it provides you with stronger runs even when individual builds fail.

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A Simple Beginner Build Philosophy

When starting out, don’t try to create the most complicated build possible.

Instead, establish a reliable core.

A simple approach is:

1. Choose a Primary Weapon

Pick the scissors you enjoy using and invest heavily enough in them to make them reliable.

2. Choose One Main Spell

Fireball is an excellent example of a spell that can become extremely powerful with repeated investment.

3. Add a Supporting Spell

Use your second spell to cover whatever weakness your primary attack has.

4. Look for Synergies

If several attacks are projectiles, prioritize projectile bonuses.

If you are building around summons, prioritize summon-related upgrades.

If your weapon depends on charging, consider charge-speed improvements.

5. Pursue Imprints

Once your build starts producing repeated upgrades of the same rank, look for opportunities to unlock Imprints that complement your strategy.

6. Save Some Dice

Don’t waste every reroll early. Keep some available for later when you need specific upgrades.

7. Use Curses Carefully

Take advantage of Curses when your build is strong enough to survive their temporary penalties.

8. Prioritize Boss Performance

A build that destroys normal enemies but struggles against bosses isn’t necessarily a good build.

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Understanding Garden of Witches gets significantly simpler when one realizes that not everything is just a stat boost.

Interactions matter, especially experimenting with them. The very essence of Garden of Witches lies in mixing the systems of the game, and the most effective combinations are formed when some negative status, unusual Imprint, and various useful upgrades suddenly start playing along.

With this knowledge in hand, the immense arsenal of weaponry, magic, relics, Curses, and attributes seems much more manageable.