Styx: Shards of Darkness – Useful Tips and Tricks

A guide for creative tactics, obscure game mechanics, and other general information useful for all sorts of Goblins. From the humble Rakash to the greatest Master of Shadow.

Tips and Tricks

Note: Credit goes to Grum

Obscure and Useful Gameplay Mechanics

• Aerial kills have a minimum amount of distance that you have to be from the enemy in order to work. There needs to be a 3 meter gap in order for the kill to trigger. So make sure you are high enough up.
• As soon as an Aerial kill triggers, the enemy is considered dead, even if the animation is still playing. So if you have the Rebirth ability you can start the kill animation and teleport away with ease.
• Styx can whistle. This is a mechanic that I didn’t know existed for a while when a I first started playing. It’s a very useful way to get an enemy’s attention and lure them towards you without having to use any items or amber. Works very well for setting up corner and ledge kills.
• Styx’s clone can also “whistle.” Well, it’s more of a pained groan, but it gets the job done. Very useful for getting enemies out of the way or for bringing them towards chandeliers, bells, ledges, or Styx himself for an easy aerial kill.
• If an enemy is searching for you and they look into where you are hiding, you can still turn invisible to avoid their sight.
• By default, a clone can push enemies off cliffs, poison water/food, interact with the environment (booby-trapping alarm bells, dropping chandeliers, etc), explode into a smoke cloud, and grab enemies to distract them. They cannot collect crafting material, tokens, or do most objectives.
• Trolls do not have an “orange” alert like all of the other enemy types. They go from “yellow” straight to “red.”
• The clone can distract the bosses in the various boss fights. Sometimes, the bosses in the game will target your clone over you; making your clone an ideal distraction. CO-OP also works very well for distracting the boss with either the other player or with either of your clones.
• Crafting materials are not shared in CO-OP. So you’ll probably want to divide up any loot that you and the other player find.
• The levels are masterfully made so that there are usually at least two or three routes to take. So if you are taking one path and it just isn’t working, there typically is another way around. Whether that be from above, below, or through side passages.
• By holding down shift (that’s the default key for it) you can run/crouch walk extremely slowly. Very useful for Roabies.
• Life-saving clone removes all of your amber if it triggers.
• If you get the Vagabond’s Carryall ability and then swap it for Amber Mixture, then you will lose any of the excess items that the Carryall allowed you to hold.
• Aerial kills cancel all fall damage. Just be careful that the enemy is not too far down, because if Styx falls too far he will become a ragdoll and will die.
• Grabbing ledges while falling will completely cancel all fall damage. This can be a little tricky to do, but once you get the hang of it, it is very useful.
• Cocoons can be thrown on ledges and the clone will spawn grabbing the ledge.
• In mission 2, you can collect tablets to do a secondary objective. You do not actually need the tablets to open the vault. The tablets just help you choose the right sequence. However, grabbing all of the tablets will give you bonus Skill Points, so it’s a good idea to grab them all.
• Cocoons cannot be thrown very far down or else they will not work. So if you are too high up, the cocoon will just fall apart instead of working and you will have lost some valuable crafting resources.
• Grab all of the Quarts that you see. There is a final ability in the skill tree that requires every single one of them in order to use it.
• If you have the Akenash outfit equipped and are at very low health when your clone dies, that will also kill you due to the outfit’s down side.
• If you are playing on Goblin difficulty, Master difficulty, or playing CO-OP, the Tapered Dagger is a direct upgrade to the normal dagger due to its downsides not applying.

Useful Strategies and Techniques

• Getting locked doors to open without using a lockpick. Throughout the game there are many locked doors. You can use lockpicks to get through the door. However, I found a better strategy. If there is an enemy on the other side of the locked door, you can whistle (or make any sort of noise) and the enemy will open the door on his own to see what made the noise. This makes opening the locked door completely free and sets up an easy corner kill.
• Guaranteed Booby-Trapped bell kills. If you aren’t worried about killing enemies, this is a good way to eliminate multiple enemies very easily. Kill a guard and bring their body to a booby-trapped alarm bell. leave the corpse right in front of the bell. If another enemy comes by, they will see the corpse and will instantly try to ring the alarm bell. And by doing so the alarm bell will fall and kill the enemy. It’s a noisy strategy, but it works very well.
• Skipping many of the trials in the Labyrinth of Passage level. If you have the Rebirth ability and the cocoon ability, you can skip many parts of the dark elf trials. This tip is pretty straight forward, but it works extremely well. When playing this level, try to find where the end of each of the trials is. There are usually parts of the map where you can throw a cocoon to the ending of the trial without actually having to do the whole thing. Works extremely well for the roabie trial.
• Temporarily Unlocking Crafting skills in order to get useful items. If you are short on skill points but still want to craft some of the more advanced items, then this is for you. You can unlock the necessary crafting skill, make the item, then you can undue the skill and you will still have the items you crafted with it while also keeping the skill points that you had spent and then refunded. This is very useful early on in the game.
• Using Lethal Clone ability in the Goblin Prison mission. If you are not going for the Mercy insignia, then I would highly recommend using the lethal Clone ability in this mission. Because you do not have a dagger or bolts, having a clone that can kill enemies is extremely useful and makes the mission a breeze.