10 essentials tips for starting out in Immortals Fenyx Rising

Immortals Fenyx Rising combines the best parts of Breath of the Wild and the Assassin’s Creed franchise, and wraps them up in a neat, mythological package. It’s a great game, but for as much as Immortals Fenyx Rising borrows, it adds just as much. From its unique gear-upgrade system to evolutions on open-world stamina management, Immortals Fenyx Rising isn’t just another open-world game.

To get you started on the right foot, we’ve rounded up 10 essential tips and tricks in this beginner’s guide to Immortals Fenyx Rising. 

Further reading

• The best Ubisoft games
• The best Nintendo Switch games you can buy now
• The best games on Google Stadia

Getting to the Hall of the Gods

In true Ubisoft fashion, Immortals Fenyx Rising begins with the titular character waking up on a beach, with a beautiful open world just waiting for you to explore it. It’s tempting, but don’t go exploring first. The first two hours or so of the game serves as an extended tutorial, providing you the tools you need to take on the rest of the game. That includes the Bow of Odysseus, the Jar of Aiolos, and the Icarus Wings (or Ikaros Wings).

You don’t need to actively seek out any of these tools. You just need to follow the main story path until you reach the Hall of the Gods, which happens at around the two-hour mark. The Hall of the Gods is where you can upgrade your gear, abilities, stamina, and health, and as we’ll get to shortly, there are certain essential upgrades.

The Hall of the Gods is located on the second region of the map you explore. The first region, where you start, is relatively small and has limited side content. We recommend skipping the side content here from the beginning and continuing on the main path for the first few hours. That will give you enough resources to upgrade a few things when you first visit the Hall of the Gods, as well as show you the ropes when it comes to flying, platforming, puzzle-solving, taming mounts, and more.

The many currencies of Immortals Fenyx Rising

Immortals Fenyx Rising is an RPG, but it doesn’t have a traditional leveling system. Instead of earning experience as you progress, you’ll earn different resources and currencies that you can use to purchase upgrades at the Hall of the Gods. To be clear, these resources are separate from the in-game currency you can use to purchase cosmetic items. You can’t buy these resources. You have to find them.

And you have to find all eight of them. It’s confusing knowing which colored gem goes to which upgrade at first, so here are all of the currencies and what they’re for in Immortal Fenyx Rising:

• Ambrosia – Used to increase your maximum health. You can find Ambrosia on the map.
• Zeus’s Lightning – Used to increase your maximum stamina. You’ll earn Zeus’s Lightning for completing Vaults of Tartarus.
• Coins of Charon – Used to purchase God Powers and new skills. You’ll find these after completing Myth Challenges.
• Golden Amber – Used to upgrade potions during creation. Found in chests.
• Yellow Adamantine Shard – Used to increase potion pouch and arrow-carrying capacity. Found in chests and yellow shard clusters.
• Blue Adamantine Shard – One of the resources required for upgrading weapons, armor, and helmets. Awarded for looting chests and defeating common enemies.
• Red Adamantine Shard – Used alongside Blue Adamantine Shard to upgrade weapons. Awarded for defeating unique enemies and looting guarded chests.
• Purple Adamantine Shard – Used alongside Blue Adamantine Shard to upgrade armor and helmets. Found in a purple shard cluster or by looting epic chests.

Unlocking your first skills

Once you reach the Hall of the Gods, you’ll take a tour of the various systems you can upgrade, including the River Styx Cistern. Here, you can upgrade your abilities, and there are a few you should purchase before setting out.

• Climb Leap – Allows you to leap upward while climbing. Also consumes less stamina while climbing.
• Glide Boost – Move faster when gliding while also consuming less stamina.
• Swim Dash – Allows you to dash forward while swimming. Also consumes less stamina while swimming.
• Telekinesis Gathering – Automatically gather all nearby resources in an area when picking up one.

These four abilities are not only the cheapest at only two Coins of Charon a pop, but they’re also the only ones related to movement. The other abilities have to do with combat. Moving around the world is a big part of Immortals Fenyx Rising, so it’s best to invest in movement skills early to make the rest of your adventuring a little more enjoyable.

Understanding gear and gear upgrades

Immortals Fenyx Rising handles gear a little differently than other games. Weapons, armor, and helmets are all, essentially, equal. All armor pieces will provide the same defense, and all weapons provide the same damage based on their class (two swords, for example, are equal). Gear sets itself apart with different perks. The Sword of Achilles you start the game with, for example, grants you an extra 33% damage with a sword combo while your health is full.

Instead of finding new gear to make yourself more powerful, you need to upgrade it. At the Hall of the Gods, you’ll find the Force of Hephaistos, where you can upgrade your gear. Upgrading a piece of gear upgrades all your gear in that category (all your helmets upgrade at once, for example). Upgrading provides additional perks for your gear, which you can find in the pause menu, as well as universal stat buffs.

Because of this system, it’s best to focus on the perks rather than the gear itself. You want to change up your loadout and playstyle based on what you’re doing. For example, you may want the Valor of the Soldier Breastplate — which grants you an additional stamina chunk — while exploring, and something like the Hubris of the One-Eyed Giant when taking on a boss, which offers 30% more defense against unique enemies.

Don’t worry too much about the look, either. If there’s a particular piece of gear you like the look of, you can apply it to other gear in your inventory at any time with no penalty.

Avoiding fall damage

Immortals Fenyx Rising has fall damage. It’s a little annoying, especially with how many mountains and valleys there are in the game, but there’s a way around it. You’ll unlock the double jump early in the game, and the ability to glide shortly after. After jumping, either open your wings or perform a double jump a second or two before you land. No more fall damage.

Managing your stamina

Stamina is a way of life in Immortals Fenyx Rising. If you have more of it, you’ll do better, so it’s best to focus on upgrading your stamina early. You’ll need Zeus’s Lighting for stamina upgrades at the Bench of Zeus in the Hall of the Gods (five Lightning for each additional stamina chunk). By the time you reach the Hall of the Gods, you’ll have earned just short of the five Lightning required to upgrade your stamina. Scout some nearby Vaults of Tartarus and complete them to upgrade your stamina before continuing.

You can also boost your stamina early, even before reaching the Hall of the Gods. Toward the end of the prologue, you’ll need to complete a puzzle at the Observatory. Climb to the top of the Observatory, and you’ll find a chest with the Valor of the Soldier Breastplate inside, which gives you an additional stamina chunk. Equipping it will remove the Robes of the New Olympian you earn very early in the game, so keep that in mind. The Robes of the New Olympian gives you an additional health chunk.

A healthy diet of pomegranates and blue mushrooms

Fenyx needs pomegranates and blue mushrooms to survive, so pick up as many of them as you can while exploring the world. Pomegranates restore some health, and blue mushrooms restore some stamina. Although they don’t restore much on their own, you can combine pomegranates or blue mushrooms to create health and mana potions at the Hall of the Gods. You’ll usually find blue mushrooms along climbing paths — a cliffside with a few obvious platforms for climbing, for example — and pomegranates in trees. Keep an eye out for pomegranates in particular. They’re easy to miss.

You can also eat blue mushrooms while climbing, swimming, or gliding, giving you as much stamina as mushrooms have, as long as you’re willing to eat them. If you’re still working on upgrading your stamina bar, stock up on blue mushrooms before a long climb or glide. You’ll want a lot of them — 15 or 20, at least.

Use the task board often

You’ll find Hermes’s Heroic Tasks Board at the Hall of the Gods. There are 36 Heroic Tasks in the game, spanning everything from combat to general exploration. Pick up as many tasks as you can before going out to explore. The tasks are usually straightforward, such as defeating a certain number of enemies or collecting enough of a certain resource, and you shouldn’t have too much trouble completing them as you go along.

For completing a task, you’ll earn some combination of resources based on the task, and sometimes, even a new piece of gear. Consider it passive income.

Different day, different weapon

You have three weapons in Immortals Fenyx Rising: A bow, a sword, and an axe. It’s best to not rely too heavily on one of them, though. Each weapon serves a different purpose, and switching between them is essential.

The bow is great for hitting unaware enemies — especially with Apollo’s Arrow. Use the bow to hit distant enemies or to score a few hits before a mob swarms you. The bow doesn’t deal a ton of damage, so aim for the head and know that your arrows usually won’t be enough to finish the job.

Your sword can finish the job, at least if nothing is blocking its path. The sword deals direct damage, not stun damage, and it doesn’t deal as much damage as the axe. However, the sword is fast, and if you spend some Coins of Charon upgrading your combos, it can put out more damage than the axe in a shorter amount of time. The sword is your bread and butter when it comes to combat.

Sometimes you can’t get in a clean hit, though. Enemies with shields can block your sword attacks, but there’s a way around that. Each enemy has a stun bar in addition to a health bar. Filling the stun bar will cause the enemy to drop for a few seconds, opening them up to a barrage of attacks. The axe, unlike the sword, builds the stun bar. If you’re facing shielded enemies, make sure to continue hitting them with the axe to build their stun bar and, hopefully, knock them down.

Stunning them all

As you progress and face bigger enemies, stunning becomes essential. Many of the tougher fights in Immortals Fenyx Rising focus on building your opponent’s stun gauge, sweeping in for as much damage while they’re down, and backing out to build it all over again.

Your axe is the main way to build stun, but there are other, more effective ways to build it. For big enemies, use rocks. You can pick up a rock or broken column and use a charged throw to greatly build your enemy’s stun gauge. Bigger items work better, so if you’re entering a particularly tough fight, take stock of the different items you can pick up.

You can also build stun by performing a perfect parry. To parry, press either LB and RB on Xbox, L1 and R1 on PlayStation, or Q on PC right before an attack lands. In addition to building your enemy’s stun gauge, a perfect parry will also slow down time for a few seconds, allowing you to get in some extra attacks or escape to safety.