How spirit works in Babylon’s Fall

Because Babylon’s Fall is an action RPG, it is filled with tons of stats and systems that can dramatically alter your gameplay experience depending on familiarity with them. Developed by Platinum Games no less, these systems are paired with a combat system that has its own intricacies to master.

The spirit meter is one of those systems that can make the game much easier if you have a handle on it. Our guide below details how it works, along with some tips to help you get a little more out of it.

How spirit works

Spirit is just Babylon’s Fall’s fancy name for stamina. If you’ve played many modern action games and action RPGs, you’ll be familiar with the basics. Many combat actions are tied to this spirit meter, placing you at a disadvantage if you ever let your spirit deplete completely.

Dodging and using spectral attacks drain your spirit meter, meaning you won’t be able to make use of either tool upon depletion. The overall spirit meter can be increased by using gear with a high spirit stat, but there is so much more to consider when it comes to keeping a consistently healthy spirit bar.

Managing spirit

For starters, you need to understand how to replenish spirit. Every weapon except the shield has a spirit siphon stat, which determines the amount of spirit generated per hit. Unless you’re rocking shields in both the light and heavy slots, standard attacks will be your most basic tool. Follow up attacks after perfect dodges and parries restore a larger chunk of spirit than standard attacks, but this is where you need to be careful.

Dodging itself drains spirit, so you don’t want to spam dodges as you would in a typical Platinum action title. You’ll be penalized heavily. You need to get comfortable with dodge timing in order to hone in on the perfect dodge window. This attention to timing also applies to parries.

By placing a shield in your heavy weapon slot, using the shield enables a parry animation. Unlike dodges, parries don’t drain meter, but the window of opportunity is much smaller than the perfect dodge. We only recommend parries for skilled players. Otherwise, you’ll spend more time taking damage than dealing damage, which is counterintuitive to repleneshing spirit.

Spirit management hinges upon damage per second. This is where gear management comes into play. While the spirit stat itself is worth keeping note of, spirit regen and spirit siphon are integral to spirit management.

As we discussed, every weapon except the shield has a spirit siphon stat. This even applies when they’re placed in the spectral slots. While it may be tempting to go for all damage all the time, spectral weapons with high levels of spirit siphon are incredibly useful, allowing you to automatically claw back some of the spirit drained per spectral attack.

As long as you’re able to refill spirit faster than you can drain it, you’re inherently dealing more damage per second, increasing your chances of dealing critical hits and knocking enemies back, which feeds into the enchantment system. Every piece of gear has a chance of dropping enchantments, which offer additional modifiers.

As a simple example, an armor enchantment might provide a temporary boost to your overall spirit siphon after dealing 20 consecutive attacks without getting hit. You’re better off pairing this enchantment with a sword than a hammer because you’ll land those consecutive attacks much more quickly.

If you have a preferred play style, your gear will need tweaks to keep up with spirit management. Don’t just look at raw stats. Consider what each weapon or armor slot adds to your kit and remember that enchantments can be just as transformative as anything else.