Banquet for Fools: 10 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting
The learning curve on this island is basically a vertical cliff face covered in grease and angry ghosts.
I love old school roleplaying games that refuse to hold my hand, but there is a fine line between a fun sense of discovery and actively hiding vital information. Banquet for Fools leans heavily into the latter. I spent my first dozen hours getting absolutely brutalized by mechanics that I did not even know existed. You can read my beginner guide if you need help understanding the basic combat math and how to survive the starting town, but that barely scratches the surface.
Once you get a handle on armor and dodging, you are going to slam face first into the game's weird economic quirks and hidden combat rules. I ruined my first save file because I did not understand how the crime system worked or how to properly manage my stamina. To save you from that exact same misery, here are the most important things the game casually forgets to tell you.
The Dual Wielding Speed Hack
I ignored dual wielding entirely on my first run because halving the damage of your offhand weapon sounds like a terrible trade. I was completely wrong. Your overall cooldown speed is determined by your equipped weapon. When you dual wield, the game averages the attack speed of both weapons. If you have a massive, slow swinging mace in your main hand and a featherweight dagger in your offhand, your primary attack rate skyrockets. You get to bypass the agonizingly slow cooldowns of heavy weapons while still hitting like a truck.
Red Chests Ruin Lives
The game does a terrible job of explaining property laws. When you are exploring a settlement, pay very close attention to the highlight border around lootable containers. Chests with white borders are free game. Take whatever you want. Chests with red borders are privately owned. If you accidentally click a red chest without being in a dedicated sneak state, you instantly become a wanted criminal. The entire town will turn hostile.
Hammers Are Master Keys
If you did not build a dedicated rogue with high sensory and lockpicking skills, you might think those shiny locked chests in the wilderness are completely inaccessible. They are not. You can literally just smash them open. Take your guard with the highest Strength stat, equip them with a weapon that features a high "Breaks Armor" value, and manually attack the chest. It feels incredibly barbaric, but it works flawlessly.
Bandits Wake Up
Taking out a camp of grave robbers or bandits is only half the job. Every bandit is a walking paycheck, but only if you actually secure the bounty. When you knock them out, you have exactly 24 in-game hours to report them to a local guard. If you go take a nap at the inn or wander off to explore a cave, those bastards will wake up and walk away, taking your hard earned emeralds with them.
The Exile Island Auto Capture
Speaking of bounties, getting into combat stance against human enemies can sometimes be awkward if they initiate dialogue first. There is a massive shortcut here. When you are talking to bandits, look for any dialogue response that specifically mentions "Exile Island." Selecting those dialogue options will automatically throw your party into Capture stance the second the conversation ends, giving you the immediate tactical advantage.
Keep Your Gems Intact
You are going to find a lot of raw gemstones while exploring caves. Your immediate instinct will be to use a mortar and pestle to grind them into minerals for the magic system. Do not touch them. Every Vol tree in the game sells a unique set of spells, and they require very specific mineral combinations. If you prematurely grind all your emeralds and rubies, you might find yourself lacking the exact dust you need to buy a vital crowd control spell later. Hoard your gems until you are staring directly at the spell you want to purchase.
Enemy Fatigue is Your Best Friend
During long fights against heavy hitters, you will eventually notice tiny sweat drop symbols appearing above the enemy models. This is a Fatigue debuff. Every single time an enemy attacks, they accrue fatigue, which slowly drains their Evasion stat. Your guards do not suffer from fatigue at all. If a boss is dodging all your attacks, sometimes the best strategy is to just turtle up, absorb their hits, and wait for them to tire themselves out before going on the offensive.
Firing Employees Costs Experience
Sometimes you draft a guard who just fundamentally sucks. Maybe their attribute spread is terrible, or you ruined their skill point allocation. You can talk to Mareshal Grigore in Forten Lazure to fire them and roll a brand new level one character. The catch is that the departing guard will steal a chunk of your total, hard earned experience points on their way out the door. It is a massive penalty. You will likely have to re-unlock vital combat techniques because of the lost EXP. Only fire a guard if they are completely unsalvageable.
White Bugs and Ghost Curses
Resource management in the field is brutal. If you run out of Spirit energy for your Pagan caster, look at the ground. There are tiny white bugs crawling around the island. Stepping on them gives you a small hit of free Spirit energy. It is gross, but it will save your life.
On the flip side, getting touched by a ghost applies a curse that drains your maximum health. Resting at a campfire will not fix it. You have to find a Chanter in a settlement and buy their specific runic bands to cure the fatigue. Always carry incense globes so the ghosts just run away from you in the first place.
The White Greva Trap
There is an early quest that asks you to hunt down a White Greva. You will track this weird fish monster into a damp cave, engage it in combat, and proceed to miss every single attack until it wipes your party. The game does not explicitly tell you this, but White Grevas are completely invincible in the dark. You have to manually lure the creature out of the cave and into the sunlight before you can actually kill it.
