The Last Faith: Beginner's Guide & Best Tips

Why I'm Writing This (And Why You Should Read It)

Let me tell you something honest: I almost refunded The Last Faith after my first two hours. I was dying to rats. Rats. The same rats I'd slaughtered by the hundreds in every other soulslike. I was mashing buttons, burning through healing items, and getting absolutely wrecked by the first real boss — the one with the giant axe — about twelve times before I finally put the controller down and went to make a cup of tea. And I've been playing these games since the original Demon's Souls on PS3.

The problem isn't that you're bad. The game is genuinely confusing in ways that aren't obvious. The tutorial tells you the bare minimum, then throws you into a gothic maze where every single enemy can two-shot you and the map is designed by someone who apparently hates straight lines. I spent my first three runs trying to stack poison damage because the UI made it look like a viable strategy. I got destroyed by the second boss every single time.

So here's the deal: I've now beaten this game four times. I've tried the strength build, the magic build, the "I'm going to cry" build. I've found the secret paths, the hidden merchants, and the one weapon that makes the mid-game actually fun instead of a misery simulator. I'm going to tell you exactly what I wish someone had told me before I wasted ten hours banging my head against a wall.

Why This Game Makes You Want to Throw Your Controller

Let's be real about the pain points because the game's store page sure as hell won't tell you this. The Last Faith is a hybrid of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Bloodborne, but it inherited the worst parts of both parents. You get the cryptic, no-handholding exploration of a Metroidvania mixed with the "one mistake and you're dead" philosophy of a soulslike. It's a brutal combination if you don't know what to watch for.

The biggest issue new players face is resource starvation. Your healing flasks (called Estus equivalents — the game calls them something fancy but I call them "my precious juice") are limited. You start with like three of them. You will find upgrade materials, but the game hides them in places that require you to already be strong enough to survive those places. It's a catch-22 that made me scream at my monitor at 2 AM.

Then there's the map. Oh god, the map. Unlike Hollow Knight or Castlevania, where the map fills in as you explore, The Last Faith gives you a map that's deliberately incomplete. You'll find doors that don't open from this side, paths that lead to dead ends, and shortcuts that circle back to areas you've already cleared. It's designed to make you feel lost. And if you're the type of player who hates backtracking — this game will break you. Check out how Hollow Knight handles its map system for comparison; that game at least gives you a compass.

And the bosses. Listen. The second boss, the Priest of the Flesh, is a genuine difficulty spike that I think was poorly playtested. He has a charge attack that covers half the arena, a scream that stuns you for a full two seconds, and he spawns adds that heal him if you ignore them. I lost count of how many times I died to him. I nearly uninstalled.

The good news? Every single one of these problems has a solution. You just need to know the right approach. That's why I'm writing this — to save you the rage I went through.

Your First Two Hours: Don't Do What I Did

Here's your real first steps, not the bullshit you get from the game's tutorial NPC.

Step one: Pick the right starting class. I know, I know, "every class is viable" — that's a lie. Do not start with the Mystic class. The magic system in this game requires you to find a specific merchant two hours into the game, and you'll be running around with a wet noodle of a cane until then. Start with the Warrior or the Slayer. The Warrior starts with a sword that has a solid moveset and decent reach. The Slayer has the highest starting HP. Both can carry you through the first three bosses without breaking a sweat.

Step two: Your first weapon upgrade decision. You will find a Forging Stone within your first twenty minutes. Do not use it on the first weapon you find. I used mine on the starter rapier, thinking I'd be clever with a fast-attacking build. I was wrong. Rush the Titan Sword to +5 before you even touch the side quests. Trust me. The Titan Sword is found in the Misty Crypt area — it's behind a breakable wall to the left of the first save point. It hits like a truck, has a charged attack that pancakes enemies, and its scaling with strength is absolutely ridiculous. At +5, it deals 78 base damage plus your stat bonus. That's enough to two-shot most basic enemies through the entire mid-game.

Step three: Spend your first Souls (the currency, not the FromSoft game) on VIT and END. I cannot stress this enough. The game gives you stat points every level. Put your first five levels into Vitality (HP) and Endurance (stamina). Do not touch Strength or Mind until you have at least 20 Vitality. Why? Because every single enemy in the first area can kill you in three hits. With 20 Vitality, you survive five hits. That's two extra mistakes. This is the difference between beating a boss and throwing your controller.

Step four: Learn to parry immediately. The game has a parry mechanic. It's called a "riposte" here, but it works like Bloodborne — you press the left trigger at the exact moment an enemy's attack connects. If you time it right, the enemy gets staggered and you can perform a critical hit. This is an absolute life-saver against the big, slow enemies. I spent my first hour ignoring parry because I was used to dodging. Then I learned that the Brute enemies (the big dudes with the clubs) can be parried on literally every single attack. Once I figured that out, they went from "run away screaming" to "free experience."

Step five: The map is your enemy. Use it anyway. Every time you find a save point, fast travel back to the hub (the church with the creepy statue) and check the map table. The map marks doors that require keys, but it doesn't mark secret walls. Look for walls that look slightly different — usually a darker shade or a crack you can barely see. Hit every suspicious wall. I found a hidden merchant selling unlimited healing flask upgrades behind a false wall in the second area. I'd missed it on my first playthrough entirely.

The Stuff That Actually Makes You Good

Once you've survived the first few hours, the game opens up and you have real choices. Here's the advanced knowledge that separates "surviving" from "dominating."

Weapon swapping is broken (in a good way). You can equip two weapons and swap between them instantly. Most players ignore this. Don't. Keep a fast weapon (like a dagger or rapier) in slot two specifically for the nimble enemies that dodge your big swings. The Crimson Dagger (found in the early game sewers) has a special property: it applies a bleed effect that does 5% of the enemy's max HP per second for five seconds. Against bosses, that's a free 25% total damage if you can land a few hits. Swap to the dagger, apply bleed, swap back to your heavy weapon. This is my go-to strategy for every boss after the second one. This bleed mechanic is similar to what you'd see in Bloodborne, but here it stacks faster and lasts longer.

Magic isn't bad — it's just a different resource game. I told you not to start as Mystic, but that doesn't mean magic sucks. It means you need to build for it correctly. The key item is the Arcane Focus, which you buy from the merchant in the Sunken Chapel for 2,500 souls. This item converts your stamina bar into a mana bar for a limited time. Pop this before a boss fight, and your spells deal 40% more damage for the duration. The Lightning Bolt spell (found in a hidden room behind the waterfall in the first area) does 110 base damage and stuns medium enemies. With the Arcane Focus active, it hits for 154 damage and stuns even the big brutes. I beat the entire endgame with this combination. Just be warned: the focus lasts 30 seconds, and the cooldown is 90 seconds. Time it carefully.

The Flamethrower is a secret boss killer. I almost missed this weapon entirely. There's an NPC trapped in a cage in the Burning Cathedral area. Free him, and he sells you the Inferno Caster for 3,000 souls. This is a firearm-style weapon that shoots a stream of fire. It does 45 base DPS but ramps to 120 DPS after 3 seconds of continuous fire. Against the >fifth boss (the giant spider lady), this thing melts her health bar in about fifteen seconds. The catch? You have to stand still while firing. It's high risk, high reward. Pair it with the ring that gives you hyper armor (found in the poison swamp area) and you become an immovable turret of death.

Learn the dodge timing for delayed attacks. This is the single biggest skill check in the game. Almost every enemy and boss has attacks with a deliberately delayed wind-up. They raise their weapon, pause for a beat (about 0.8 seconds), then swing. If you dodge on the wind-up, you'll dodge right into the hit. You have to wait for the flash — every enemy has a tiny white flash on their weapon right before the attack connects. That's your cue. I practiced this on the basic skeletons in the first area for twenty minutes. It made every subsequent boss ten times easier.

Stat breakpoints matter. Don't spread your stats evenly. Each stat has "soft caps" where the returns diminish. For Strength, the first soft cap is at 25 — you get +3 damage per point until then, then +1.5 after. For Dexterity, the soft cap is at 20. For Mind (magic stat), it's at 30. Plan your build around these numbers. My strength build: 25 Strength, 20 Vitality, 15 Endurance, base everything else. That's level 45, which I hit comfortably by the time I reached the fourth area. Don't level past 25 Strength until you've got 30 Vitality. You need the HP for the endgame.

The Mistakes That Cost Me Eight Hours of My Life

I made every mistake in this game so you don't have to. Here's what got me killed, over and over.

• Treating it like Dark Souls. In Dark Souls, you can tank hits. In this game, you cannot. Armor reduces damage by about 10-15% at best. The game expects you to dodge or parry everything. I spent my first five hours wearing the heaviest armor I could find, thinking it would save me. It didn't. I got two-shot by a basic zombie. Switch to lighter armor, get your dodge roll speed up, and never look back. The Leather Set (found in the first town) is the best mid-weight set — it gives decent defense without slowing your roll.
• Ignoring the consumables. I'm the kind of player who hoards items "for later." This game punishes that. The Throwing Knives you find in the first area? Use them. They stagger enemy casters, which are the most annoying enemies in the game. The Holy Water (green flask) does 60 damage in a small AoE and instantly kills the ghost enemies that phase through walls. I had 30 of these by the time I reached the ghost-infested area. I could have skipped the entire section. Don't be me. Use your items.
• Not using the quick-select menu. You can bind items to the D-pad. I didn't realize this until hour six. Go into your inventory, select a consumable, and press the prompt to bind it. I bind healing flasks to Up, Throwing Knives to Left, and Holy Water to Right. It's infinitely faster than opening the menu mid-combat. This single change probably saved me fifty deaths.
• Rushing the final boss under-leveled. The final boss, the Last Faith himself (yes, that's his name), is a level check. If you're below level 60, you will have a bad time. I rushed him at level 48 and got obliterated. His second phase has an attack that covers the entire arena with a shockwave. You need 25 Vitality minimum to survive that attack with a sliver of health. I had to farm souls in the penultimate area for two hours to level up. The best farming spot is the room before the third save point in the Sunken Cathedral — six enemies, respawn, repeat. You get about 1,200 souls per minute. Don't skip this grind.
• Not paying attention to NPC quests. There's a woman in the starting town who asks you to find her daughter. Find the daughter in the sewers, and the woman gives you a key to the secret garden. I missed this entirely on my first playthrough. The secret garden has a merchant who sells the best healing flask upgrade in the game — it makes your flasks restore 40% of your max HP instead of 25%. That's a massive difference. The daughter is located in the Flooded Passage, behind a grate you can only open from the other side. Circle around the top of the area, drop down, and you'll find her. Talk to her, then talk to the mother. Easy to miss, absolutely mandatory for the endgame.

Questions You're Too Proud to Ask

Q: Is this harder than Dark Souls?
A: Different kind of hard. Dark Souls is about patience and pattern recognition. This game is about speed and resource management. The bosses have less HP than Souls bosses, but they're faster and hit harder. I'd say it's roughly on par with Bloodborne's difficulty. If you beat Bloodborne, you can beat this. If you haven't, expect a rough first ten hours.

Q: How do I get more healing flasks?
A: You upgrade your flask capacity at the Blacksmith NPC in the hub. He's behind a door that requires the Iron Key, found in the Moonlight Tower (second area, top floor). Bring him Flask Shards — these are hidden throughout the game, usually in optional areas. I found seven shards in my first playthrough, which gives you 5 total flasks. There's one shard behind a joke of a secret wall in the tutorial area. Check every corner.

Q: What's the best build for a first playthrough?
A: Strength build with the Titan Sword. No question. It's the most forgiving. You don't have to worry about mana, spell management, or positioning. You just hit things hard and dodge. If you want a second recommendation: the Dexterity build with the Blood Rapier. The Blood Rapier has a special ability that heals you for 2% of damage dealt. It's found in the Blood Chapel, behind a triple-locked door. You need three keys from three different areas, but it's worth the hassle. The healing effect is noticeable and makes exploration safer.

Q: I'm stuck in the poison swamp. How do I get through it?
A: The poison swamp in the Mire of Despair is the worst area in the game. You need the Poison Resist Ring, found in a chest in the Dry Passage (a side area off the first town). The ring gives +50 poison resist, which reduces the tick damage from 8 HP per second to 3 HP per second. Combine it with the Herbal Poultice consumable (crafted from materials you find on the moss enemies) and you can walk through the swamp without dying. There's also a secret path on the far right side of the swamp that leads to a bonfire skip — you can bypass 60% of the swamp if you hug the right wall and look for a ledge you can drop down to. I missed this on my first playthrough and it took me two hours to cross that hellhole.

Q: Is the DLC worth it?
A: There's no DLC yet, but the game got a free update that added a New Game Plus mode and a boss rush mode. NG+ is genuinely harder — enemies have double HP and deal 1.5x damage. It's a good challenge if you want to test your build. The boss rush mode unlocks after you beat the final boss once. It's fun but not essential. I'd say replay the game with a different build instead.

Q: Why can't I fast travel to every save point?
A: Because the game hates you. No, seriously — you can only fast travel from the main hub to any save point you've discovered. You cannot fast travel to the hub from anywhere except the hub itself. This means you have to walk back to town every time you want to upgrade or buy items. It's annoying, but there's a pattern: the game places shortcuts that loop back to the hub in every area. Look for elevators, one-way doors, and breakable walls. They always lead back to safety. The Sunken Cathedral has an elevator that takes you directly to the hub's lower floor. Use it.

Q: I'm softlocked because I can't beat a boss. Any tips?
A: You're not softlocked. Every boss in this game can be beaten with the right strategy, but you might need to explore more. If you're stuck on the second boss (Priest of the Flesh), go back to the first area and find the Fire Paper consumable — it adds fire damage to your weapon for 30 seconds. That boss is weak to fire. If you're stuck on the fourth boss (the Blood Knight), you need the parry timing I mentioned earlier. He has three attacks, all parriable. Practice on the elite knights in the area before his boss room. If you're stuck on any boss, just leave, explore other areas, level up, and come back. The game has branching paths — I finished the third area before I realized I'd missed the entire fourth area. Exploration is the answer.