The Huge Recluse Guide

This guide is long and I do not recommend reading it all at once. Just skip to the sections you want to learn about the most though I do encourage to eventually go through all the sections on spells. If you're new to Recluse you might want to stick to some of the beginning chapters and come back once you get more comfortable with her.

This guide is in continuous development and so I'm making new changes and additions from time to time as I play and still discover more things.

As to biases, I dislike the shattering crystal meta and discuss just how broken it is at the end. I'm strictly a cocktail-focused player because I believe this is how the character is intended to be played and it brings out the most intricacies Recluse has to offer. As such this guide is heavily skewed towards aiding that playstyle and let's just be honest, there just isn't as much to say about spamming a single sorcery though you'll still find a few words on that here. I'm trying to be as comprehensive as I can after all. I'm also exclusively a trio player and so I will not be discussing solo play. I play both with randoms and with friends but never in voice chat.

I will also NOT be covering Sorcerer's Rise puzzle solutions, go watch a vide on that. It will be much easier to follow and understand and there's plenty

This is a brief overview of some basic information that will be repeated and vastly expanded upon later in relevant sections.


For Recluse there are 4 stats that matter to us: Intelligence (INT), Faith (FTH), Vigour (VIG) and Dexterity (DEX).
We have S in both INT and FTH making Recluse excellent with both sorceries and incantations.
Vigor is responsible for HP and sitting at just D means Recluse is very squishy and there are many bosses with attacks that can outright one-shot her from full HP even at high levels, we'll discuss survivability in detail later on.
Dexterity determines spell casting speed and with a C this gives us 19 DEX at level 15.


PASSIVE: Elemental Defense
This allows us to replenish 20 FP per use by siphoning elemental affinity from enemies and players damaged with elemental damage. Whatever kind of elemental damage they suffered last (magic/fire/lightning/holy) will be stored, using the ability will remove the affinity.

Interrupting your casting to collect affinity and restore FP may feel bad but many spells allow you to cast them quicker right after collecting to mitigate that.


SKILL: Magic Cocktail
When using the ability to siphon elemental affinity to replenish FP, the element siphoned is added to the magic cocktail. Once 3 affinity residues have been added, the cocktail is finished and the next use of the ability will cast a special spell depending on the composition of the cocktail at 0 FP cost instead of siphoning affinity. The order or proportions of specific elements have no effect on the final cocktail, only the presence or lack thereof of given affinities matters for the final cocktail.



ART: Soulblood Song
As with any art activating Soulbood Song grants I-Frames for the duration of the animation. Afterwards fire off an area of effect blast that lightly damages enemies and marks them. When you or allies attack marked enemies the player replenishes HP and FP proportional to damage dealt. Damage against marked enemies is increased by 15%. Art activation also deals exactly 40 revive damage to downed teammates, exactly enough to revive them from 1 bar.

Techniques for reviving teammates are a big topic in this guide and therefore before going in, you should familiarize yourself with how exactly this works by watching the following video by Zullie the Witch:

To list out some relevant info we'll need for later for a quick lookup:
- the amount of revive HP and revive HP recovery each bar has depends on how many bars there are in total
- only the weapon category (dagger, greatsword etc) and type of attack (light, charged heavy, two-handed, jumping, etc)
- each spell has unique revive damage irrelevant of the stave/seal used to cast it
- damage, scaling, rarity, successive attack buffs etc. are irrelevant for revive damage
Here's a link to the revive spreadsheet by Zullie that also contains the values for each spell in the game:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1w1qkrqrbp3uQ7d4MyYv4CYAWhKfanQnhI2hLf1Fkn6k/edit?gid=274364398#gid=274364398

It is also worth noting that the reviving capability of spells or weapons is unaffected by weapon proficiency so you can just use the best reviving tool you have at hand with no regard to your rune level.

Souldblood Song can be split into a few stages:

I-Frames: First, as with any other Art grants generous I-Frames for the entire duration of the animation. This can be used to safely avoid large attacks when in a pinch. For example in Adel's (Gaping Jaw) 3rd phase when he stars the tornado you might find yourself too close to the center to be able to escape in time. You may have gotten hit and stunned by him zipping around or struck by lightning or misjudged where the center of the arena is and run the wrong way, probably a combination of the above. You can use the I-Frames granted by the Soulblood Song to avoid the tornado killing you in this or similar situations.

Damage: Once the animation ends, Recluse will release a large AoE blast in all directions lightly damaging enemies which can be useful for clearing large groups of regular enemies. It won't kill them outright but at least it is some damage. This might actually be considered a downside as Soulblood Song excels as a damage multiplier for any spells you cast after but dealing damage on activation will very often draw aggro to you denying you that damage spike and even leading to death.

Reviving: If downed teammates find themselves within the blast's reach, Soulblood Song will deal 40 revive damage. If you refer to the revive mechanics section of this guide you'll see that this is the exact amount of HP a single bar has when downed with 1 bar. Therefore, while not very powerful, this can be used for revives. At 2 bars it will deal just under 1 bar (5HP short) which can still be helpful if you're holding aggro by shortening the bar while giving you I-Frames. At 3 bars this will do only half a bar of damage and is rarely useful at this point.

Mark: In addition to the damage, the Song will also mark hit enemies for 16 seconds. The mark increases damage received by 15% and replenishes HP and FP to the attacking player in amounts proportional to damage dealt. The FP replenishing effect can be particularly useful for casting otherwise inefficient and non-viable but extremely powerful spells like Comet Azur allowing them to sustain themselves without running out of FP. This effect alone is worth keeping some big spells on hand just to really make the most out of the ult. More on this later.

Additionally, there are 2 relic effects that affect the functionality of the Art.

Activating Ultimate Art raises Max HP: true to the name this gives you a 50% more max HP for a time after activation. Recluse is very squishy so every bit of HP is appreciated. As of patch 1.03.1 this will continue to be in effect even after it's nominal 30s duration expires until you take damage. Taking damage before the 30s expires won't cancel the buff, only the first instance after the 30s will. This is a huge survivability bonus that I'd consider mandatory in depth of night and pairs amazingly with damage negation at max HP as if the hit that takes away the buff may end up dealing less damage than the 50% hp buff it gave you, so you end up at say 110% of your normal max hp, but buff gets cleared so your max hp goes back to 100% and you're back at max hp again and have your max hp damage negation without using a flask.

This relic alone lets Recluse have the highest HP pool in the game, albeit temporarily. Here's the highest I was ever able to get it with this relic (50%), fire/holy cocktail (30%) and scholar's level 3 prawn/crab (30%):

Suffer blood loss and increase attack power upon Art activation: bloodloss may sound bad but at least in this case it can not kill you, even if you're on 1HP and use the art with this relic effect you will remain alive at 1HP. The damage is then offset by the healing effect of the art so it rarely is a real downside.

Attack power increase is 15% and lasts for 40 seconds stacking with the 15% against marked enemies for the 16 seconds that the mark lasts and you still keep the 15% from this relic effect for 24 more seconds. Just 15% may not sound that great when tied to an ultimate art, but the bloodloss opens up synergies with effects like 'bloodloss in viscinity increases attack power' so with the Lord of Blood's Exultation talisman for example your damage buff goes from 1.15x to 1.15*1.15*1.2 = 1.58x buff on ulting and you can apply this to the strongest spells you have since the FP recovery from the mark makes them essentially free.

Compared to other effects:
- [element] Attack Up +2 gives 6% and +4 (deep relics) gives 12%
- affinity attack up +2 gives 10%
- improved [school] sorceries/incantations give 12%
- improved sorceries/incantations +2 give 10%
While all are less than 15%, those effects are always active and not just for the 40s after ult so given the choice I'd go with one of the above myself.

In theory the HP restoration you get from attacking marked enemies should let you recovered the lost HP but you might find that to not be too easy of a task. The amount recovered seems to be based on damage so you really want to cast something with as much burst damage as possible and you want to deal as much as you can in that 16s period before the mark expires. That can be a high-damaging spell (you don't really care about the FP since the mark recovers it) or a strong cocktail.

The thing with souldblood song is it really is designed to be a damage amplifier and MAYBE a healing option. Yeah, it can revive from 1 bar, at 2 its usefulness becomes very questionable. It's still worth it to use it for that if the other teammate can't or even both get downed at once but it's not worth it to hold the ult just for that. With the increased HP on art use relic lasting until you get hit after the initial 30s, ulting as often as possible will help keep the buff up and will be a huge boon to your survivability as well as accelerate your progress thanks to that damage spike. It works best paired it with a strong spell, I particularly like dragon breaths for this since they have high damage, can be aimed and are very easy to land while the high FP cost is countered by the souldblood song itself. They're also excellent at filling up your health with the restoration effect of the mark.

Cocktails are great to fill up the health gained or lost with either or both relics. Assuming starting at full health, the lightning stake, gravity bomb and fire breath will work on their own. Ice storm if it hits all ticks against a single will work with just one of the relics but not both. With 2 or more enemies it will fill fully with both. Lightning slash (lighting/magic) and lightning dash (lightning/fire) can also work with both but it's very close so some HP increases will stop it from being enough and you'll need to get 1 or 2 more other spells in.

You won't be able to make use of the damage spike nor heal the HP for the relics if you hold the aggro so try to use it when the boss is attacking someone else, preferably right after switching to them to guarantee yourself as much time as possible and minimize the chances of the ult's damaging part drawing aggro back to you.

Memorizing all cocktails and their ingredients is key to being a better Recluse player, but if you're just starting out a good general rule of thumb is that the more varied the ingredients the more powerful the result.

The order of acquisition or the proportions of elements in the case of two-element cocktails does not matter. Only the presence of an element or lack thereof in the concoction determines the result, therefore the recipes below will be simplified.

All cocktails count as sorceries in terms of damage scaling. Boost them with INT, and sorcery passives. Deep relics also feature Improved Sorceries effects as well Affinity Attack Up which would be ideal.

Given teammates that by chance or conscious decision play into your cocktail needs, you can really spam even the triple-element ones. Here's proof against Adel at depth 4:
https://youtu.be/mJWoJz3Uyis
I find that the higher depth you reach in Deep of Night the more players tend to understand what you're doing with cocktails and try to accommodate for it somewhat. That said don't expect anything like that before at least depth 3.

Pure Magic
Launches a magical wisp that periodically hits the target 4 times leaving magic residue.

Damage is negligible. If ever acquired on purpose, the main use would be to regain a large amount of FP without the need to cast more spells.

The same delay between each hit however makes it a decent reviving tool that can keep the bars from regenerating.

Pure Fire
Throw a very steeply arched fireball that leaves burning ground.

Damage and range are tiny, but the fire it leaves reapplies fire residue instantly after you collect it so assuming the enemy does not move out of the fire you can replenish a great amount of FP very quickly with this.

If you release lockon and aim as high as possible you can cover a much larger area.

Pure Lightning
Coat yourself in lightning improving your dodges.

This can be a great utility in boss fights to avoid long and complex combos if you can fire it off quickly enough.

Dodging Fulghor's phase 3 blade twirling has never been easier and his weakness to lightning all but ensures you'll have plenty from your teammates as well.

Pure Holy
Increase damage negation and poise for 30 seconds. This can be nice paired with melee spells and HP recovery on post-damage attacks relics, but being pure holy makes it a pain to get on purpose and there aren't any holy melee spells to recycle it.

Affected by spell effect duration buffs.

Magic/Fire
Launch a slow moving fireball with good tracking that deals low amounts of contact fire damage leaving fire residue and eventually exploding once it touches the ground.

The number of hits is variable and it doesn't instantly travel to the targeted enemy and is quite slow but can hit more times that pure magic giving it better FP restoration potential.

The slow travel and very long potential lifespan can give some interesting opportunities as you can cast it from a distance and then spam some strong spell like Comet and then switch to collecting once the fireball reaches the boss quickly restoring your FP and pure fire you'll likely get will help continue this even if the fireball expires. This is a very very specific scenario but one that allows you to dish out a lot of damage quickly and then recover lots of FP just as fast.

Magic/Lightning
Fire a piercing arc projectile dealing good damage to the enemies it passes through.

Leaves lightning residue making it partially self sustaining requiring only to add magic after collecting the left over lightning. That is assuming your teammates don't replace it with something else.

Hold to delay the cast.

Magic/Holy
Reduce your and allies' FP use by 100% for 8 seconds.

Depending where you look it's between 5 and 10 seconds, but I'm telling you it is 8, if you don't trust me, go ahead, take a stopwatch, go to the sparring grounds, grab a holy weapon, get the cocktail and measure it yourself.

This can be mostly useless or your key to massive damage if combined with the right spell, especially all the spells that drain FP continuously and can be sustained for as long as you have FP. Most notably (and commonly) this will be Comet Azur but also Crystal Torrent, Unendurable Frenzy, Meteorite, Meteorite of Astel and Surge o Flame! though that last one drains FP quite slowly anyway.
This is affected by spell effect duration buffs.

Fire/Lightning
Long-range dash ending with a lightning strike at the end position.

It would be worth finding out just how many I-Frames it has to see it's dodge potential. I haven't used it enough for this purpose to be able to tell. There is a good use to close distance if you use melee spells.

Leaves lightning residue.

Fire/Holy
Create a torch above you that grants players who comes close 60 seconds of increased max HP and reduced status buildup while enemies suffer reduced max HP reminiscent of destined death effects.
At first I wrote here that it's really just something you get on accident and isn't that great and while the accident part I'd say is still mostly true, I've come to appreciate it a lot more in deep of night. This also stacks with the max hp increased on art use relic which can push your hp over half your screen, though only temporarily.
Duration can be buffed with spell duration extension effects (duh).

Lightning/Holy
For the next 15 seconds you will automatically parry all parryable attacks that hit you from the front.

This is bugged at the time of writing and can make you completely invulnerable to damage but it is not guaranteed. Interestingly, it can still parry for a short time after getting downed. Sadly there isn't much use for the intended part of this cocktail against most bosses and night lords. Can be useful against Bell Bearing Hunter or Crucible Knights though.

Magic/Fire/Lightning
Gravity bomb.

Appears a short distance in front of you and pulls in small enemies towards the center staggering them briefly and dealing damage, then explodes for an additional burst of damage. This is a great crowd clearing tool but the cast time is long which combined with short range can make it risky against bosses if you're holding aggro, though if you can survive the hit the high poise will almost guarantee you'll see this to the end. The explosion tends to get stuck on terrain resulting in no damage. To prevent this, release lockon and aim slightly upwards. Free aiming this is very easy and often better as you can also position it better for hitting more enemies and prevents your lockon jumping too much between enemies resulting in ineffective casts.

It also deals 60 revive HP of damage, reviving downed teammates from 1 bar and almost doing so (2/3 of the way there) for 2 bars.

Leaves magic residue.

Magic/Fire/Holy
Flame thrower.

The support cocktail. Deals good damage and replenishes HP and FP for allies. Especially good with melee teammates as you can catch both them and the boss in the cone to simultaneously deal damage, heal and replenish FP. It's held back a bit by the lack of communication - other players probably won't guess you have this ready and wait for you instead of using a flask unless they literally don't have one. It would also be helpful to be able to see FP bars to help other casters like Duchess and Revenant get FP back, right now your best choice is being on a call with friends or observation-assisted guesswork. Best practice is to free aim it at the ground as it is easy to overshoot teammates since the flame rises upwards with distance.

Leaves fire residue.

Magic/Lightning/Holy
Encase yourself in ice for about 6 seconds not counting the casting time while surrounded by an ice storm dealing constant damage and applying frostbite.

The range on this is much bigger than it seems from the caster's perspective and you're completely invulnerable to damage while it lasts making it an excellent tool for surviving attack chains or just generally when you take aggro or avoiding large AoE attacks.

The ice storm also makes it great against crowds killing most regular enemies and the constant ticks can finish off undead as well.

There is a short period after it ends where you can't do anything and are vulnerable to damage so it can kill you if you're unlucky.

You still take damage from the rain while encased in ice.

Fire/Lightning/Holy
Delayed Lightning Strike.

The most damaging cocktail but also the hardest to obtain due to the difficulty of finding weapons/spells with all the necessary elements.

The initial cast deals some damage but the main strike is the part you want to hit. It also staggers a lot. The delay is 5.5 seconds between both damage procs. Very easy to miss due to this but very rewarding. After the initial cast you can try to position yourself so that the lightning is between you and the boss, or even inside the AoE. If the initial damage managed to grab their attention you should have a fairly easy time hitting it unless the boss starts some big attacks where they move around a lot. If not it remains to hope that the boss just doesn't move as much and your teammates try help lure the boss into it or use their ults to stagger it. The main strike also staggers EVERYTHING but the bell bearing hunter (goes to show what an absolute chad he is). It also breaks regular Libra's meditation bubble but you have to have it ready and cast it immediately to make it in time. You'll have a lot of very fun moments like digging out royal revenants from underground, slamming dragons out of the sky or putting down magma wyrms on their 10th marathon.

Leaves lightning residue.

Spell Casting Speed is a function of dexterity. With a C scaling in dexterity Recluse ends up at just 19 points on level 15, but the cap for casting speed is at 70, a whole 51 points away.
When you see gear with passive effects like Spell Casting Speed +1 or +2 what this actually does is increase your VDEX, which is kind of like DEX but just for spell casting speed (maybe more, I'm not sure, but it does not count for scaling with weapons). +1 gives you 30 VDEX and +2 gives 60, meaning that with a combined +2 you're going to be as high as 79, which is above the cap.
So ideally you get a +2 and can move on from there.

Given that seals have 3 of the 4 elements in the game and you already start with the 4th, seals are arguably more important than staves for Recluse.

Betting on random chance is not a great strategy, you're not Revenant, you get increased drop chances for staves, not seals. Although you can change that in Deep of Night with the dormant power helps discover sacred seals relic effect.

You can get guaranteed drops of seals from altars present in the following locations:
- wooden huts that are not marked on the map. One is always right next to the site if grace in the north-west of the map unless the mountaintop shifting earth is active. Other than that one more can spawn randomly as the first small enemy encampment you drop onto.
- Great Churches:
- no affinity (Guardian Golem) -> the seals will be on the upper floor surrounded by bats. I recommend you run up, pick up the seals without looking and only check once jumping below. If you don't have inventory space, it may be risky without killing the bats first. If you wish to fight the golem, you are completely safe if you stay on the ramparts as long as you clear the demihumans and any aggro'd bats. The demihumans may jump down on their own. Be careful using soulblood song here as you're going to just aggro everything.
- no affinity (Mausoleum Knights) -> jump down into the boss room but turn right instead of left
- fire (Fire Monk) -> same as mausoleum knights
- holy (Oracle Envoys) -> in the far corner to the left of the main altar and boss
- (DLC/Great Hollow shifting earth) North-East -> inside along the wall closest to the boss location
- (DLC/Great Hollow shifting earth) South ->
- (DLC) marshes (ordered by how close to the entrance the altar is)
- poison (Spider Scorpions) -> right at the entrance in the small alcove to the right of it
- madness (Nomads) -> on the right edge of the first ledge drop
- blood (Sanguine Nobles) -> watch your right as you go through, there will be a small room with a lit brazier right after you drop from a ledge and the seal rack is inside, you'll be ambushed by some slimes
- rot (Cleanrot Knight), sleep (Cuckoo Knghts) and frost (Frost Crayfish) -> about 2/3 of the way to the boss in the main path. For rot and sleep watch the left wall. For frost watch the right wall
- (DLC/Great Hollow shifting earth) Northern Castle
- the structure is too big and complex to give a clear explanation in text so see this video instead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WztBj4Qcte

The easiest element to obtain is magic. You start with magic spells and Recluse has an increased drop rate for staves which feature predominantly magic affinity spells and just a few fire ones. Magic spells also have the most multihits so breaking through teammate attacks is the easiest.

Next up is fire, the only other element you can get on a stave and a common seal element. There aren't really any good multihit fire spells but there are lingering effects like pools of lava or burning ground. Wylders will also often inflict fire with their ultimate art and a relic effect that gives them a followup attack after grappling and applies fire grease to their weapon.

Lightning comes after, a little rarer to find on seals than fire and only really has 1 really decent multihit spell (Lightning Strike).

By far the rarest element to find is holy. It is exceedingly rare to find a holy incantation on a seal as Recluse, but if you do most of them are pretty good.


Now, this was all about spells and incantations, but it would be a mistake to limit ourselves like that. Lets not forget melee weapons and bows also can deal elemental damage and can have powerful weapon skills. In case you can't find a source of an element in a magical form, always stay on the lookout for something more physical.

Check the affinities of weapons offered by merchants, don't dismiss melee weapons or bows you get as drops from bosses, check bow stands in camps. Especially do so for holy. Don't be stingy about 10k runes for that holy rapier, even if you somehow find a holy seal later 10k just isn't that much. If you have runes to spare even getting a purple 42k weapon from the township merchant can be worth it especially for ranged options like the erdtree bow or halo scythe with its weapon skill. Even if you end up losing a level due to this, 12 is a soft cap anyway and from 12 to 15 the difference for each level is not big.

There's a section for this later on but in general don't limit yourself to just spells. Weapon skills can be incredibly powerful in Recluse's hands. Every weapon can be a stave.

For Holy specifically, if you manage to find a weapon with a Wraiths on Walking effect, this will activate very often for recluse due to walking animations during spell casting. The released wraiths will deal holy damage and each time multiple are released which helps prevent replacing it with other elements by teammates.

If you've ever played recluse, you've seen it. You have magic and holy, lightning bolt in hand you strike the enemy to complete the ice storm cocktail and then you look and you got another holy because ironeye just won't stop shooting that holy bow. It can be is frustrating as all hell but we sadly can't just take our teammate's toys away and snap them on the knee. To their credit sometimes they give us what we need.

So how do we deal with this? What can we, as a Recluse do in the situation where our teammates are using elemental weapons and constantly applying affinities we don't need/want?

One answer is to just accept it and only care for the FP recovery part while casting whatever (hopefully decently strong) spells we have. Sometimes we just have to accept that this is how things will be for the time being and live with it, but not all hope is lost.

What you have to understand here is that the collecting doesn't happen immediately as you press the button but only sometime later in the animation. That's why even when you pressed it when the enemy had holy, a teammate may replace it will fire in between your button press and the frame of the animation where collecting happens and so you get fire instead of the intended holy. The failure state of affinity collecting doesn't trigger after the collection frame so you can time it to press the button slightly before your spell hits to have a higher chance of collecting the intended affinity. This comes with practice.

Be on the lookout for multihit spells, spells that leave lingering zones that damage anything inside.
Multihits and lingering effects will immediately replace any affinity applied by teammates by your own.
Spells that allow you to recover from the casting animation and start collecting before the spell connects. Keeping more distance also helps in this.

When travelling you can stop by to hit a few regular enemies to get the elements you need to get an opener for the next boss fight. Same thing after defeating the night 2 boss, if you don't have a cocktail ready you can run into the rain to hit a few regular enemies still remaining there to get a cocktail to open on the night lord.

One last tip for dealing with Ironeyes. Sometimes they'll have Night of the Lord which applies a random affinity when switching weapons and this will get some more elements, though not nearly fast enough to rely on it really. Other than that, try counting how many shots the ironeye has before he runs out of stamina and get a spell in for your affinity when recovers. You want to cast preemptively accounting for the travel time of the spell to increase your window of opportunity. At some point he might get enough stamina to shoot more before running out so you'll need to readjust. Is it a psychotic way to go about this? Yes. Is it really the only way? Sometimes also yes. You'll also have a chance when they're applying mark or dodging.

Bestial Sling is a somewhat overlooked spell, the damage isn't bad and it does some decent stance damage, but it doesn't apply affinity, and has basically no range. When you have two of them though, some interesting things start to happen.

Namely, by alternating casts between the two, you're able to recover a lot of stamina in between each cast and even cast faster. This allows you to cast far more times before running out of stamina. At level 3, which is the level requirement for the Clawmark Seal that always comes with this spell you can go from 4 to 8 casts staring from a full stamina bar (tested in training grounds) and it only gets better as you level up.

In the video below I first use Bestial Sling in one hand until my stamina depletes. Then I use it in both hands, alternating casts between left and right hand, also until stamina depletes.
In the first case, my stamina does not regenerate between casts and I run out quickly.
In the second case, I recover some stamina between each cast resulting in twice as many casts before running out. This ratio can be adjusted with stamina and spell casting speed.
Link in case embed doesn't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5zbcQitWeY

The same principle applies to some other spells, but Bestial Sling seems to benefit the most.

You can do this with the non-chargeable Glintstone Shard lineup except Swift Glintstone Shard. You will recover some stamina between each cast allowing to cast more before running out but the casting speed will suffer. You can even use two different spells here like Glintstone Pebble and Great Glintstone Shard. I haven't tested this extensively enough but it seems unlikely to be useful over casting until you run out of stamia, the collecting affinity which allows you to recover the stamina as well.

Bloodflame Talons work almost as well with this technique as bestial sling, exception being that the casting speed remains very close to casting one copy. It is also much harder to find.

Carian Greatsword and Adula's Moonblade don't benefit from the stamina regeneration but subsequent casts are faster when alternating.

I think those are all spells that can be better if casted alternating between two staves or seals. Correct me if I'm wrong and I'll update this.

As for actually getting two copies of the same spell, obviously you can just get lucky, especially with more common spells that are guaranteed on certain staves or seals and by going to places with guaranteed drops for those, but there's also the option of duplicating in Noklateo or a walking mausoleum.

The purpose here is not listing attributes like damage or FP cost. Rather I'll attempt to highlight the unique aspects of spells or indeed mention the more mundane stats when those are part of what a given spell excels at. As much as this guide is supposed to be exhausting, I think there is more value in being more to the point about why you might want to pick up this or that spell (or avoid it) than have you read a spreadsheet and try to extract some value out of it.

The way I decided to divide the spells is more according to similarity in use that allows to express thoughts commonly applicable to the mentioned spells, this isn't following any in-game categorization method like sorcery schools. Specific spells of course will have their quirks and I'll be mentioning those where applicable.

In order from weakest to strongest we have:


All of these have decent tracking and range but enemies that can dodge will dodge them easily. This is mainly a concern for Everdark Libra's summons, though the stronger ones can still manage with their damage numbers.

Glintstone Cometshard and Comet are chargeable and will penetrate enemies allowing them to hit multiple targets if they line up (useful for ED Libra). This is also useful for reviving as enemies and especially nightlords won't be able to body block you.

Glintstone Icerag, while dealing slightly less damage than the Great Glintstone Shard can apply frostbite for a big damage tick and a 15% damage received debuff. This is somewhat less viable with teammates using fire weapons as those will clear the debuff.

Comet is one of the best spells for reviving downed teammates with significantly higher revive damage than the other spells listed here. It deals 37 revive damage uncharged and 39 charged. For comparison Glintstone Cometshard only deals 13. 37-39 is not quite enough for a single bar in 1 hit but you can quick cast 2 or use another spell. Where it really shines though is at 2 and 3 bars, where you can revive super quickly by quick casting provided you have enough FP.

In order from weakest to strongest we have:



These spells cast multiple fast projectiles with good tracking that are good at hitting dodging enemies.

The multiple projectiles help gather their affinity while teammates are attacking, the stronger versions cast more projectiles making it even easier.

Stars of Ruin and Star Shower cast enough projectiles over a long enough period that if you start collecting affinity immediately after casting you can get 2 samples of magic. This is mainly useful if you use it as your primary damage dealer and don't focus on cocktails as it makes it easier to sustain the spell's FP consumption without relying on shards

Loretta's Greatbow
Loretta's Mastery

The biggest turndown of these two spells is the very long casting animation. However, they do have a way of mitigating that somewhat by the huge range, great speed and good tracking. This means you can comfortably cast them from across the nightlord arena where you're safe from their attacks and even if they aggro on you, you have the time to release it early and recover to dodge. They're certainly not the kind of spells you'd want as your main damage dealer, but they are worth keeping for when you're far from the action.

They also can become a surprisingly valuable matchup against certain nightlords with wide, sweeping attacks that make it dangerous to stay in range of more conventional spells, especially if you have some aggro reduction passives. Those include mainly Everdark versions of Fulghor and Gladius as well as regular Maris. To a lesser extend also Evedark Libra with specifically Loretta's Mastery as you can one-two shot most summons from a somewhat safe distance, though you have to also be on the lookout for Libra itself. The quick cast actually isn't half bad in terms of how long it takes so you can get some really consistent damage from a distance

With Loretta's Mastery try to position yourself on at least even ground and preferable with slight elevation to avoid one of the arrows hitting the ground.

Both spells can also be a great revive tools. Greatbow deals 40 revive damage uncharged, this is an instant revive from 1 bar no matter the distance. Mastery deals 80 uncharged, so 2 shots will get up from 2 bars and even 3 is manageable if another teammate holds aggro.

Those spells carry some good damage paired with excelent tracking but lack the speed of glintstone star sorceries as well as lifetime to chase down faster foes. Nonetheless, they're all multihits that give you ample time to recover from the casting animation to collect, sometimes too ample.

Rykard's Rancor, for how imposing it looks doesn't really end up dealing much damage most of the time and the delayed explosions paired with low speed and range cause most of them to miss anyway.

The main drawback of these spells is the parabolic trajectory, lack of tracking and relatively slow travel speed which can make hitting certain enemies a huge pain.

You can get more range out of them by free aiming and aiming high. Takes some practice but isn't too hard given the size of most nightlords.

Flame Fall Upon Them makes it easier to hit by hurling many low-damaging fireballs in wide spread so that it is less likely the enemies will dodge. You won't be doing much damage with 1 or 2 hits but it is a good way to get fire for a cocktail.

Giantsflame Take Thee also makes a large explosion on impact saving near-misses and knocking many enemies down. As long as you can keep up with the FP demands being a little above what you collect this can pretty much stunlock enemies like banished knights or black knife assassins while doing great damage. Others also have a little AoE but it's barely noticeable. This one's great for reviving 1-2 bars at range, being able to revive 1 in a single cast and due to the AoE you can revive both teammates at once if they're stacked. It's worth learning to free-aim this spell to get more range out of it.

Giantsflame Take Thee deals great revive damage (46-49) with AoE so it works for 2 downed teammates if they stack up.

Flame Fall Upon Them also can revive from 1 bar in 1 hit but you need basically all fireballs to hit so you have to stand directly on top of them.

Everdark Libra. That's where you use those. Knock the summons to the ground with a quick cast and kill them quickly with another spell, preferably something melee like Carian Slicer.
Also just a nice thing to have at least prior to the nightlord if you're using melee spells like Carian Slicer, Catch Flame or O Flame! to knock down some smaller humanoid enemies and get through them faster. And even if you use more ranged spells you can still help out your melee teammates by knocking enemies prone. If you're lucky you can get Noble Presence or Wrath of Gold and deal some damage with the cast though the FP cost is quite hefty for those two.

Spells that deal damage in a circular AoE centered on the caster.


Of all of these I found Zamor Ice Storm to be the most damaging, at as much as 800 damage to the training dummy (the one that fights back) if all ticks hit with a white quality stave. On top of that it applies frostbite for a 15% damage take debuff, staggers and can stance break. This is really a hidden gem of a spell and the only things holding it back are the lengthy casting time, somewhat small area of effect and not being affected by spell effect duration buffs.

Both Ancient Dragons' Lightning Strike and Death Lightning I consider unrepentant trash, they take absurdly long to charge, deal little damage and you're not guaranteed to hit enemies even as they're directly in your face. Same applies to Gurranq's Beast Claw. The only potential is against large enemies you can get under for more strikes to hit.

Ancient Dragons' Lightning Spear and Fortissax's Lightning Spear are much better. The Fortissax's one while dealing more damage also takes longer so I actually prefer the single spear from the former as it makes the cast safer, especially for affinity collection. The lightning travels for a moment so if you cast at a slight distance you can have the chance to recover and collect during teammate attacks though it's far from ideal.

Quick casting Radagon's Rings of Light has more range than the charged knockback spells, especially it's main competition in Wrath of Gold, charging increases it further. It also deals more damage. Both take some time to cast which is not ideal for relatively small range so it's better to use charged casts from slightly further away. As a result, Radagon's Rings of Light longer range makes it safer, though you lose the knockback effect.

Wrath of Gold is also an amazing reviving tool. Quick casting it deals 46 revive damage which is more than the 45HP each bar has at 2 bars. This makes it revive in 1 cast at 1 bar, 2 casts at 2 bars and 6 casts at 3 bars. Quick casting it is also very fast itself so even 3 bar revives are viable though at this point you might need to use a starlight shard as it is also quite FP-intensive.

Scarlet Aeonia applies scarlet rot that all nightlords are susceptible to. It's a rare effect so your teammates are unlikely to apply it themselves so it's always nice to get some extra damage.

Greyoll's Roar is also a very special one. It has a hefty FP cost but will apply attack and ALL damage negation debuffs for about 45 seconds.

The greatest crime here is that mists do not deal any revive damage which would make them an amazing utility for reviving downed players.

Instead, poison mist and freezing mist only apply their relevant status effect while Night Maiden's Mist deals damage directly... but also to yourself.

You can't have more than 1 Night Maiden's Mist active at a time. Same applies to Poison Mist and Freezing Mist but you can't also have both of the latter 2 active at a time. So you can have Night Maiden's Mist and Poison Mist or Freezing Mist active, but not Poison Mist and Freezing mist.

All mists can be enlarged by charging them.

Night Maiden's Mist is a projectile that creates a mist where it lands. Aim higher to deploy it further away. This will not work with the other two.

Night Maiden's Mist can be used as a quick source of FP as it lasts quite long and instantly reapplies magic to anything inside.

Night Maiden's Mist especially can be used strategically during a run as a sort of fire and forget attack. For example on the middle floor or keeps to kill off some of the weaker mobs there while you run past. Central Castle's northern and southern ramparts are also good targets if you have jar giants or banished knights. Right before fighting Astel in Noklateo you can also drop one for the dragonkin soldier below.

Melee spells can be some of the strongest in the game by damage potential, but can also be very risky given the squishiness of Recluse. You do have the best dodge in the game after Duchess so it's not all bad. Moreover, nightlords tend to be very mobile drasticaly reducing the effectiveness of those spells, which is not to say they don't work there. They are however, some of the strongest options for everything before the night lord fight if you can manage the risk of staying up close.

All of these spells benefit tremendously from spell casting speed.

Carian Slicer is the bread and butter of melee spells due to being guaranteed on one of the staves and it can easily outdamage other melee classes, I really recommend learning to use it.

Gavel of Haima destroys humanoid enemies easily throwing them to the ground and obliterating the poise on everything else but it is slow and does have a heavy FP cost. At most you will be able to recast it 3 times due to the stamina cost, but most of the game you'll be stuck at 2.

Carian Piercer can also knock enemies down really well and with better range that Gavel, but it can't be recast as quickly.

Carian Greatsword is just... not great, low damage, slow and barely ever staggers so enemies can just shrug it off and hit you regardless and you won't be able to dodge as readily as with Slicer. If you have 2, alternate between them to make subsequent casts faster.

Adula's Moonblade and Lansseax's Glaive are the two impostors here that prompted me to add the quote marks around melee as both release traveling projectiles ahead of them. Of the two I find Lansseax's Glaive easier to hit with and it seems to have more range plus lightning is more valuable than magic, but the frost from Adula's Moonblade is also very useful

Catch Flame, Bloodflame Talons and O Flame! are both incantations meaning you'll find them on seals, they will apply fire instead of magic like the other spells here. In practice they function very similarly to the Carian Slicer with O Flame! being the stronger of the two and chargeable.
In terms of raw damage it is Catch Flame < Bloodflame Talons < O Flame! (quick cast) < O Flame! (charged) but Bloodflame Talons also builds up bloodloss.
With 2 copies of Bloodflame Talons you can alternate between them to recover some stamina between each cast while maintaining the casting speed for more casts before you run out of stamina.

The dragon spells do some massive damgage and great stance break while having lots of poise themselves so as long as you survive you should be able to power through most blows and still land them but given recluse's rather lacluster HP pool can still be quite risky. Dragonclaw has a followup. Despite having quite a distinct shriek, Dragonmaw doesn't benefit from roar attack buffs.

Comet Azur will cast an unmovable laser beam, if it clips the ground at any point the entire spell will not go any further, look for high ground.

Crystal Torrent spews crystal shards in a wide cone so if one hits the ground, the others can still fly past. The damage output is similar to Comet Azur assuming all shards hit, so the damage will deteriorate over distance. This spell does have a small degree of tracking however and can follow moving targets thanks to it making it more reliable.

Meteorite and Meteorite of Astel summon meteorites that hit the ground in a wide cone but short distance in front of you. They can deal extreme damage if they hit and they can stagger easily as well. Meteorite of Astel will summon significantly more meteorites of the two. Beware that the initial cast costs a lot of stamina and if you run out it will cancel itself immediately.

Rock Blaster has probably the highest damage potential but it is a strictly melee spell. You can walk while casting it but only slowly. Best used against staggered enemies.

Unendurable Frenzy spews frenzy flame in front of you, you can walk slowly while casting it. This is a good option against Libra, but it has another limiting factor in the form of frenzy buildup that will force you to stop casting.

Surge O Flame is the weakest of the bunch, it's basically a short-distance flamethrower and quite cheap to cast on its own already.

---

All of those spells are capable for putting out mountains of damage but are limited by their equally huge FP consumption. So what if we just... remove the FP consumption part?



The first method is also the most accessible, you start with it and it is Recluses ultimate art: Soulblood Song. By marking the boss with it you can recover FP as you attack them with your spells effectively countering their FP consumption. The amount recovered depends on damage dealt and for some spells including Comet Azur it will not be enough to overpower the consumption but it still can vastly extend how long you can hold it. With some spell FP cost reduction gear you can offset it completely.



Pros:
- immediately accessible, no gear requirement
- combos with 15% damage boos from the mark and another 15% if you have the right relic
- lasts long (16s)

Cons:
- may need spell FP cost reducing gear to sustain the spell
- long activation time
- long recharge time
- still requires some FP for the initial cast
- meteorite spells may miss smaller enemies randomly leading to running out of FP and premature termination



It gives you 8s of 0 FP use allowing to sustain any spell for the duration. This time can be increased by picking up spell duration buffs. For this you will need to find a source of holy, which is the rarest element to get on seals, so be on a lookout for alternatives like holy melee weapons or bows, preferably something fast or with a ranged skill. Check holy locations and merchants.

Pros:
- if you have the ingredients, this is the most accessible method of them all
- time can be extended with buffs from boss rewards and a charm
- only need to pick up holy as you start with magic already
- decently fast activation
- effect is AoE and applies to allies meaning your teammates will benefit too and you can even have multiple recluses with Comet Azur

Cons:
- need to find a source of holy damage (though seriously, holy isn't hard to get if you look for melee)
- occasionally it can be difficult to get the right cocktail with elemental spam from teammates
- lasts less (8s) but can be buffed
- may require sacrificing a weapon slot for a holy source



Eliminates FP consumption for 15 seconds and can be bought for 5k from merchants if in stock. Remember that township merchants have separate inventory and as such offer another opportunity at finding this. Each player can but it separately giving up to 3 uses but this isn't possible to communicate with randoms so 1 is much more realistic. Sometimes this can also be a reward from rises or treasure chests.

Pros:
- fast use
- lasts long (15s)
- can drop from Sorcerer's Rise rewards
- random chance for the merchants to sell it for cheap 5k runes
- can get up to 3 if teammates are generous not counting rise drops

Cons:
- single use

What is important to remember is that you can still just cast those spells without any of the additional preparation beforehand. Casting time on them already quite long and if you need to add to this the time it takes to use your ult or cast the holy/magic cocktail or even drink the FP flask (fastest method) makes it take even longer and then on top of that you need the boss to stay more or less in the same spot for the duration of the spell to dish out the damage. For some bosses it won't really be a problem, Erdtree Avatars don't tend to move much, but others can be very challenging to time well, especially for phase 3 everdark bosses. You want to be on a lookout for spell FP cost reducing gear and perks anyway, same for max FP and the max FP for solving rises relic effect is also something you're likely running with. By the night lord fight even without great RNG you should be able to sustain it for a fair bit on your own and can recover the FP with shards that you've been stocking on throughout the game. (right?)

When facing a night boss, try to gather residues for the holy/magic cocktail and precast it as you hear the sound announcing the boss's arrival, then start casting your spell, as long as you're facing the general direction, you can still lock on the boss when it appears and be on target with Comet Azur, some other spells work differently of course. It is a little hit-or-miss depending on what boss it is, but most tend to not move for the first couple seconds and by the time they do your teammates will already be hitting them in melee so they won't likely move much when attacking them and if they decide to come for you it's a straight line into the laser they're taking to the face. As you play the game you'll learn to predict bosses before they appear by the regular enemies that spawn first helping you determine if precasting is viable.

Some Night Lords take their sweet time to switch to phase 3 or have large rest periods after their ultimate attacks in phase 3. For example Libra's phase switch takes very long and it likes to summon immediately giving you a huge window to pound on it with your strongest spells. Adel's huge lightning explosion and creating the tornado can be dodged using I-frames from your ult, which will mark him and allow you to start casting knowing he'll not move for a decent amount of time afterwards.

You're likely be prioritizing the Holy/Magic cocktail as much as possible but sometimes it is inevitable that a teammate will sneak in a different element than you want and the worst time and you end up with a different combination. In case it is something like pure magic or magic/fire or even pure fire, so cocktails that will hit multiple times with over time making it more difficult to get other elements until they expire you can cancel lock on and cast them behind you to avoid issues, you're not missing out on any significant damage by doing so anyway. This is also something you can do when doing triple element cocktails.

- reduced spell FP cost will help you sustain some of the more costly among these spells with your ult, but not necessarily forever
- 2 cumulative points of spell casting speed from weapons or radagon's icon talisman will make the cast much faster and that leaves more of the spell FP cost cancelling effects for the damage part of the spell
- stack as much spell effect duration as possible to extend holy/magic and get longer casts for more damage. This will not appear on weapons, only a talisman and perks from boss drops, so my advice is to take it always from the start even if you don't know if you're going to get Comet Azur at a later point. This makes the largest difference in your damage potential and in combination with spell casting speed allows you to recast in case the boss moved
- less likely to be targeted will help avoiding aggro during the lengthy cast so enemies won't knock you out of the spell
- any magic/sorcery damage buffs will obviously make the damage output higher. I haven't confirmed it, but since the FP restoration from attacking enemies marked by soulblood song seems to be scaling with damage dealt, increasing the amount each damage tick deals should theoretically also increase the FP restoration and make it easier to sustain the spell with the ult

Quite obviously you're going to try to aim for center of mass if multiple lockon points are available. Once you learn the particular boss's move set enough you'll be able to tell if they have any attacks that move them back and if not, then aiming towards the front may be better as only forward-moving attacks remain or if they have attacks that cause them to stand on hind legs then aiming towards the back is better. This is mostly relevant to standing to the side of the boss. When facing them from the front or back, try aiming at the back-most lockon point as that will most likely stay near the ground and won't cause you to overshoot. Avoid aiming for the head as in many cases it tends to move a lot and can easily cause you to miss.

Moreover, certain bosses can have very annoying lockon point positions, specifically various horse riders like Tree Sentinels or Fulghor. Namely, the lockon on a tree sentinel is on the relatively small rider and you can't lock on the much bigger horse so even small movements after the cast will cause you to miss even if the horse would still be hit if you shot just a bit lower. High ground is helpful to get a downwards angle buf if not available your best bet is free-aiming by starting the cast with lockon engaged, then disabling it and aiming just a little lower. This concerns Comet Azur more than Crystal Torrent given the latter's slight tracking.

Comet Azur can revive crazy fast even from 3 bars but features a very wide hitbox and downed teammates will cause you to aim downwards. This means that it is very easy easy for the spell to hit terrain and not reach the downed teammate, so if you're going for a revive with it make sure you're standing DIRECTLY on top of them.

If you have your ult and holy/magic or FP flask ready, start with the ult as even if you end up draining your FP pool, the other two methods work even if you have 0 FP. Going the other way may cause you to be unable to even start casting and waste your ult. You'll also get some ult charge back on the second cast with the cocktail/flask.

Expensive, with long range and wide AoE and surprisingly powerful in the right hands. All but one of these spells come in pairs in terms of what they do with the named version always being stronger than the other.

The named versions except Theodorix's Magma can be cast mid-jump which can help with some uneven terrain as well as avoiding ground attacks that can normally also be jumped over. Casting mid-jump also allows you to aim lower at the ground resulting in less distance but a much wider cone helpful for clearing large groups.

With the exception of Placidusax's Ruin every spell here can be held to extend it up to 2 breaths. Both magma breaths require a separate input for a followup instead.

Rotten Breath and Ekzykes's Decay are particularly valuable due to inflicting rot that all nightlords are susceptible to but which is also in the shortest supply among all status effects. They are also far safer to use than Scarlet Aeonia.

Magma Breath and Theodorix's Magma will leave pools of magma on the ground burning enemies. Aim high to cast further. Theodorix's Magma leaves more magma over a larger area.

While very expensive to cast, the philosophy for particularly the more damaging among these spells like both fire and glintstone breaths is basically the same as for sustained spells. They are a great match for Soulblood Song which will be able to sustain a few casts with the FP restoration on attacking marked enemies while being significantly easier to cast as they allow turning while casting. Having access to holy lets you use them with the magic/holy cocktail as well, basically all the tips from the sustained spells section apply. Placidusax's Ruin can also work in this way but it locks you into a much longer animation with no way of stopping early so it can be very dangerous.

Placidusax's Ruin first fires a small, repelling AoE that deals lightning before the main wacky inflatable tube laser dragons start their own thing which helps at close range so it can be used to clear large groups. For bosses this is so slow it becomes mostly impractical apart from stance breaks or the initial appearance in the case of night bosses as those typically give you a few seconds before they start attacking.

If you can get fire on glintstone breath or the stronger varinants of either, they're honestly better than any sustained spells. Less damage potential, yes, but much safer and easier to use since you can turn around and the damage is still good. Fire breaths absolutely melt tree-themed bosses. You also get the utility of super fast and easy clears of large groups of trash mobs.

What's also interesting is that these dragon breath spells can be boosted quite a bit further than any other sorcery or incantation. This is due to the Improved Roar & Breath Attack Power relic effect that can only appear on regular relics which gives a 15% improvement and can appear together with the Improved Dragon Cult Incantations effect which gives 12% though not with [Affinity] Attack Up which gives just 6.5% at +2 which is the max value on regular relics. So a single regular relic can improve dragon breaths by 1.12*1.15 or 28.8% while everything else can only get up to 1.12*1.065 = 19.28%. Deep relics stay the same.

So to conclude this section, dragon breaths offer you utility (frostbite, rot, magma pools for easy fire) or high burst damage you can deploy with FP sustaining methods like Souldblood Song, the Holy/Magic cocktail or a Cerulean Hidden Tear.

Don't discount healing incantations. You're squishy already as Recluse, this can already be amazing at preserving flasks during the nightlord fight and if things go badly and you run out this is a great substitute that you can use indefinitely.

Healing teammates is also very useful, and gives you more leeway on collecting churches. Recluse is uniquely suited for using healing incantations, despite Revenant starting with one, due to their extremely high FP cost and Recluse's FP replenishing mechanics. First time I got Lord's Heal and decided to use it I was able to keep my underpowered team alive for 12 minutes in the Everdark Sentient Pest fight. We won and I still had 3 flasks left.

Sadly, healing spells do not deal any revive damage.

Even the weaker ones can be great to top up on health for the full HP damage negation effects to activate.

Stronger versions of over time healing work faster. These can be especially useful in combination with passive effects that grant damage negation at full HP and for guardian teammates.

If you're playing with a Revenant, you can can keep an eye out for when they drop their starting seals as that has Heal on it.

Here's a video of me using 1 (one) entire flask in a 10 minute fight against regular Caligo on depth 4 while also keeping my teammates alive as well by using Lord's Heal and the fire breath cocktail (as it also heals). We were lucky enough to get mountaintop, but we messed up badly, lost runes and levels and didn't manage to get the mountaintop power in time.
https://youtu.be/W6nQ7HUpeh8

Most of these are self-explanatory, you can use them to get some extra defense against specific nightlords, especially the shared effects. It can help survive some oneshots. Especially worthy are Golden Vow a damage and physical defense buff and Protection of the Erdtree as it covers all elemental damage types.

Dragonbolt Blessing will increase your resistances to all status effects but reduces lightning resistance. It also makes enemy attacks bounce off you breaking their combos. Can be useful for fighting Libra's summons, especially if you want to use melee spells.

Law of Regression cleanses all buffs and debuffs in your vicinity. The main uses I can see for this is clearing attack buffs on ED Gladius, stacked buffs on ED Libra's summoned condemned and also Gnoster's parasite. However it is going to be difficult to get close enough and cast it for Gladius, same thing with Libra's summons and if they got so buffed then you're probably not winning that fight anyway. That only leaves Gnoster. It will likely be a bit faster to clear the parasite than with regular attacks though as Recluse you can use spells at a greater distance to do it so not really, but it does work on yourself... if you don't have poison boluses. It becomes slightly more useful in Deep of Night to cleanse all the buildups you get from relics or negative weapon passives.

Neither of these seem to work against bosses from the single chance I gave to each so they're pretty much useless. I hope I'm wrong because they could present some genuinely interesting opportunities to alter the flow of the fight. Here's some info regardless.

Shadow Bait lasts very short but allows you to redirect enemy attention. Arc it high to place it further giving you more time. I haven't tested if it actually resets the aggro properly after it disappears making the enemy choose a new target or will they just return to the original target but if the former is true then there is some potential to this.

Darkness despite what it says on the tin doesn't actually seem to conceal the caster from testing in the sparring grounds. Instead it covers the eyes of any enemies that step into the (very) short lasting black cloud it creates preventing those enemies from targeting anyone.

Not gonna lie, I haven't used these much. There aren't many enemies that they could be useful against but I know for a fact none of these work against Libra's projectiles.

Thop's Barrier can be used to deflect projectiles but if they have good tracking they might turn around, at least it's a bit easier than having to dodge for the rest. That said, while you can cast it repeatedly there are windows between each cast that a fast enough spell can get through so it is not a perfect shield.

Eternal darkness is probably the most useful aside from Law of Causality which has a different function. It places a black hole that sucks in projectiles so it can protect allies too and it lasts a while so you can cast it once and go on the offence while standing in relative safety instead of having to react to each cast against you. While I haven't tested this, it could make for a good shelter against Gnoster's projectiles, especially his ult in the ED fight. I did try to use it against condemned Recluse in ED Libra fight but with 2 more players and condemned + Libra himself it is difficult to make proper use of it. Maybe in a solo run.

Law of Causality is just not worth it on Recluse. At best it's a Guardian, maybe Executor spell. Testing on the puppet in sparring rounds it takes 5 to 6 hits to trigger and does just below 500 damage at level 15. At that point you're dead 2 or 3 times over.

Starlight Shards are a consumable that restores 60% of your max HP.

Don't let anyone tell you you don't need them because "you can recover FP with your ability". This is the classic "switching to a pistol is faster than reloading" dilemma but instead of switching to a pistol you can just keep shooting. Of course Revenant or Duchess can't recover their FP like you so giving them some is appreciated, but it is still worth keeping one or two.

Especially in the nightlord fight cocktails will have a hard time keeping up with just spamming spells in terms of damage output, their cast times are long and put you at risk and they can be hard to hit given how much nightlords move.

• Cocktails do however maintain their utility aspects and elevate them.
  
• Magic/Lightning/Holy (Ice cube) cocktail will let you survive nukes and periods of boss aggro safely while dealing some damage and applying frostbite.
  
• Fire/Lightning/Holy (lightning strike) can eliminate Everdark Libra's summons right after they spawn in if you time it right and get them to stay close for long enough)
  
• Magic/Lightning/Holy (gravity bomb) is another great opener for Everdark Libra's summons, less damage but more reliable and will also work if they disperse.
  
• Magic/Fire/Holy will allow you to heal your teammates letting them preserve flasks and replenish FP for other casters.
  
• Magic/Holy (prevent FP use) cocktail will let you cast sustained spells for massive damage provided you time everything right. If you have multiple Recluses in the team with such spells (perhaps duplicated in Noklateo) you can both take the benefit of each other's Magic/Holy cocktails and ults. It also allows you to use expensive healing spells for free or spam good reviving spells to get up downed teammates quickly as those typically have hefty costs.
  
• Fire/Holy (golden star) removes a percentage of enemy max HP once so you can actually deal quite a lot of damage by casting it near a nigthlord given their health pools and it also increases your and your allies' max HP for a time.
  
• Even pure Magic can be used to keep a downed teammate's revive bars from regenerating.

Having some shards on you will let you keep those cocktails ready for when you need them most.
If you managed to find some good healing spells, those cost a lot of FP to use. Having a healthy stock of shards will ensure this won't be an issue.
If you have good reviving spells like Comet or even Comet Azur you can revive even from 3 bars relatively quickly, but that takes A LOT of FP to do successfully. With a shard or two you can top up on FP to have enough for that revive,

• 3+ for free: Rises - there are 3 boxes on the bottom floor, each guaranteeing at least 1 shard.
  
• 2 for cheap: merchants will sell 2 shards to each player for just 1200 runes a piece. Always get them.
  
• infinite for cheap: township merchant has an infinite inventory of shards for each player for just 1200 runes a piece. Stock up when you can.
  
• 2 expensive ones: merchant right before the nightlord has 2 for 6k runes each. This is 5x more expensive than Limveld merchants. Even then, those are often worth more than a level given the soft cap at level 12. Unless you're fighting Everdark Libra and want to get some free flasks from the forced deal that takes your levels away instead of flasks. And hey, even if you lose a level by buying the shards, that lives you with plenty of runes for the flask that prevents most damage once and the one that heals you when low on HP. That's basically like buying 2 extra HP flasks and way more worth it than a single level up.
  
• shards are also a random drop from chests and boxes

I'll limit myself to only discuss the Everdark versions here. This isn't a move guide, just tips on what I found to work well against specific nightlords. Since I only intend to talk about the Everdark nightlords, I won't be discussing Heolstor. I also have very little experience with ED Caligo as mentioned in his own sections as well so I won't be giving any tips on it either as I don't feel qualified to do so yet.

- Starlight Shards from the nightlord merchant are expensive, it's better to get them in limveld for 1/5 of the price first and if you have enough runes then buy more before the nightlord. 2 is often going to be enough, but more is always welcome.

- If you're playing a duo or trio, you will have the opportunity to siphon affinity from your teammates depending on what type of elemental damage a boss is doing. Pay attention to that damage type and it will make it easier for future runs to plan if you need a spell/weapon with that element for a cocktail you want to have available for the fight.

- Before you even touch the spectral goop and leave limveld, check if there is a merchant nearby. If so, you can make a quick trip through the rain and buy some consumables like the shards if you didn't get any earlier for much cheaper than the nightlord merchant will sell them. Maybe even check the weapons they're selling if you're still lacking an element you want or maybe there's a passive that you'd like.
This is no longer viable as of patch 1.02.2 as graces are now turned off after night 2 and rain damage increases every tick.

- As you might know, level 13 is the soft cup for stat increases. You won't gain much going beyond this. For the price of that tiny improvement of going from level 13 to 14 or from 14 to 15, you can get the tear that drastically reduces damage from a single attack and another one that heals you automatically at low HP once. This isn't much different from buying 2 flasks for the price of a single level and will prove much more useful.

- If you don't have enough runes for the merchant (maybe you leveled up on accident?) you can always jump off a bridge :) No, seriously, jump off the bridge, you'll respawn a level lower, can collect all the runes you lost including for the lost level and spend them at the merchant however you wish.

- It is always nice to have a good cocktail ready to open the nightlord fight with. If night 2 isn't proving too difficult, you can try to focus on getting something good towards the end of the boss fight and holding onto it. Even after the boss is dead, there's still regular enemies around that you can use to get some affinity before going in for the final fight. Although that proves surprisingly challenging at times as you often end up just oneshotting them and can't get the residue in time. As of patch 1.02.2 it is much more difficult to pull off as graces are disabled and damage increases every tick so you're pretty much limited to only enemies you can reach with your spells while inside the circle.

- The main danger of Gladius for Recluse is his damage and range. It's going to be very hard to outrange his wide sweeps with the chained sword and he can do the fanned out explosion chain attack up to 4 times in a row, each one a potential one-shot, especially if he gets buffed by you or teammates attacking him during his aura farming.

- It follows that the more dangerous part of the fight is when he's merged into a single three-headed wolf as that's where all those heavy-hitting, wide-sweeping attacks are.

- Recluses great dodge make the split up part of the fight quite a lot easier, it's quite easy to dodge the smaller dogs, but you have to keep an eye on the one with the sword as it still can occasionally do a wide sweep with it or even worse the fanned explosion chain attack that can oneshot you.

- Damage negation at max HP buffs will go a long way in helping you live. This is always true for Recluse but here it's basically mandatory to not get oneshot. They're great paired with healing incantations, even the weak ones to top up on health after those hits without using a flask. Even a warming stone can work in a pinch.

- The only spells that really let you outrange the dog are Loretta's Greatbow and Loretta's Mastery. They're excelent in this fight.

- The Ice Storm Cocktail is a great utility in this fight. You can hit all 3 wolfs at once when he splits up with it and teammates are unlikely to carry fire weapons so the 15% physical damage negation debuff will likely be able to stick for the full duration. In the merged part of the fight this will help you survive his big, dangerous attack combos like the heolstor nuke or the fanned explosion chains thanks to the invulnerability it provides.

- Adel's main issue is he moves a lot. You don't necessarily need spells with huge range, but good tracking and speed will help for sure. Melee spells can be a bit awkward as similar to all other dragon-shaped enemies they can be hard to reach with as the lockon takes you on a ride.

- Continuous spells can be very effective. Despite how much he moves, there are large windows where he's going to be relatively still giving good opportunities to cast them along with various prep you need to do to cancel out the FP consumption. Those are when he's stance broken, failed double grabs if you're angled correctly so he doesn't move out with the second grab and successful grabs as those last a very long time including the recovery after he's finished. Another potential opportunity is using your ult to survive his tornado creation or the purple orb blast and mark him for FP recovery so you can start casting immediately. This last one is quite a bit more risky of course.

- Ice Storm Cocktail can be useful if you can't get out of range of some of his big AoE attacks, though with the head slam you have to be quite fast with casting it.

- You might be tempted to fight Gnoster, being a ranged character and all that, but the issue here is it can dodge quite well so you'd think you can solve it with good tracking spells but then it also has high magic resistance and all of those spells with good tracking deal magic damage. By all means, it is still viable, just not ideal.

- Fourtis on the other hand will be easier to hit and is actually quite straightforward in melee. Once you learn his attacks you'll have no trouble cutting him up with carian slicer. Best keep to his tail and watch the legs and tail. If he raises his legs, dodge to the opposite side to get out of rannge. If the tail starts shaking, quickly dodge away to get out of range in case it's the shriek as that can kill you almost instantly. Once he ults, try keeping under and to the back of him.

- Ice Storm once again is the goat for completely avoiding damage from a boss's ultimate attack.

- With Eternal Darkness you can completely shrug off Gnoster's ult.

- Law of Regression will allow you to cleanse Gnoster's parasite from yourself without help.

- Fourtis is especially vulnerable to any and all sustained spells. The most of any nightlord. Comet Azur can actually be your main weapon against him here and you can potentially melt his entire healthbar in the non-buffed state with one cast as long as he's not aggro'd on you and you keep the distance well enough.

- This fight is worth bringing a warming stone to throw down during the phase transition as it is very long as can save your or your teammates a flask this way. It also give ample opportunity to reapply any buffs you might have on your seals.

- Eternal Darkness is a useful utility to safely counter Gnoster's projectiles. I doesn't work as well during his ult sadly, but will still catch some so it may give you an edge.

- Moves a lot so most offensive cocktails are kinda useless. The one exception is the lightning slash (magic/lightning). It will be easy to get since Maris deals magic already and everyone's going to be trying to get lightning against him plus the cocktail applies lightning as well.

- Fire Breath is also good, not to deal damage necessarily but more for support, help other heal up and get them some FP back since this is a battle of attrition most of the time. It's also good at clearing the exploding bubbles from regular maris which transfer damage back to maris.

- For the same reason any (big) aoe spells that hit above ground are going to be great for the bubbles. The best option by far are going to be dragon breaths.

- For the 3rd phase you don't really get to use any offensive spells so focusing on getting buffs and healing spells will pay off the most. I haven't tested of Thop's Barrier or Eternal Darkness work but if they do they could have some potential.

- The condemned Libra summons are of course the biggest hurdle and need to be dealt with quickly. Thankfully for us, Recluse actually has the most options for this.

- Lightning Stake cocktail has the highest damage and can even oneshot them outright completely trivializing that part of the fight if you can get the cocktail every time. You want to cast it as soon as libra starts summoning to account for the very long wait time for the main strike. Run in the middle right after casting to try to pull aggro if you're late with the cast.

- Gravity Bomb cocktail is also great, in total it deals about the same damage as the Lightning Stake's main hit and the first hit won't be dealing damage to them so this is actually a better option. Timing will be easier, it pulls them in so they can't get away or I-Frame it. The main drawback is this cocktail does not take Holy which is the damage type Libra deals so it will be harder to get.

- The easiest cocktail to get will be the Ice Storm. Libra deals holy so it's easy to get from teammates, magic is the easiest so all you need to worry about is lightning. However, this is unlikely to kill the summons outright, but will still get them low and frostbitten so finishing them off should not pose much of a challenge and while the storm is active they'll get staggered so your teammates can hack away at them easily.

- Fire Breath cocktail I have not tried, but it seems like it would be the least reliable. It will definitely be the hardest to hit all 3 summons with it, especially as they start walking and rolling around.

- The main drawback of trying to use cocktails is the reliability of being able to get them fast enough. Stock up on shards so you can immediately get to gathering essences for the next round and hold onto the finished cocktails while not running out of FP.

- Another good option is using strong AoE spells like Zamor Ice Storm, Lansseax's Glaive or the dragon breath spells. They're unlikely to kill them outright, but are great openers still.

- Melee spells can be hard to work with as the summons will often dodge away. To counteract this, you use Rejection or a similar, damaging variant. It does work, but it is still a bit of a desperate move.

- Night Sorceries are a good pick for when you can't kill off the summons from the start as NPCs can't input read you to dodge them. Night Comet also just deals a lot of damage and has a common stave where it is guaranteed.

- If you can find Comet, that will also be a good option that will help you revive teammates and it's penetration can allow you to hit multiple summons with one cast. Get a lot of shards for it and don't charge the casts for more DPS. It casts very fast if you don't charge.

- Stars of Ruin is also pretty good. The tracking is great and you get many projectiles so the summons can only dodge a couple of them.

- Meteorite of Astel is amazing for this fight. If you position yourself close to Libra as it summons you can annihilate both the summons and Libra itself. You will need something to counteract the FP use. Here's a video of me killing ED Libra with a friend in under 2 minutes using Meteorite of Astel duplicated in Noklateo:
Link in case embed doesn't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb855WZmhKY

- Libra has an incredibly long phase transition you can use to get a lot of damage in. It does have a high damage negation but it's still possible to get in around 3k+ damage with Comet Azur. At least that was before the 1.02.2 patch where Libra's damage negation buff while summoning was removed. Now, that only says 'during summoning' and we're talking here about the phase transition so it still remains to be tested if this is also affected. If so, it would be a huge window of opportunity perfect for Comet Azur or Crystal Torrent. You can try the same while it is summoning as it stands still for quite long, but you will be leaving the summons untouched so it is very risky.

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- For regular Libra, Lightning Stake will also break it out of meditation but it takes almost as long as the meditation itself so you have to cast it pretty much instantly as the meditation starts to have a chance.

- The situation here is somewhat similar to Gladius in that ED Fulghor's attacks have a lot of reach that make him difficult to outrange.

- Similarly to Gladius then, Loretta's Greatbow and especially Loretta's Mastery will let you stay the most safe against him.

- Fulghor is weak to lightning so your teammates are likely to use lightning weapons. This gives you easy access to the pure lightning cocktail that makes dodging him a breeze. Pick all spell effect duration extensions you can for this.

- Another great way to avoid damage here is the Ice Storm cocktail. As mentioned above, he's weak to lightning so you can get it supplied by teammates. Fulghor himself also deals holy so you can snatch it from your teammates. This only leaves magic and this is going to be very easy to get.

- Thanks to the likely availability of lighting, fighting Fulghor in melee is surprisingly viable using the pure lightning cocktail though it's not recommended per se.

- For the big waterfowl dance-like attack chains in 3rd phase, it's going to be difficult to outrun him, so it is better to dodge towards him and try to get behind him where it's the safest unless you already have some distance.

- Landing a lightning stake would be great given he's weak to lightning but he just moves too much and too quickly and there's very few reliable spots for it so I'd really recommend sticking to magic/lightnig for good and reliable damage, fire/holy for extra hp, pure lightning for better dodges and magic/lighting/holy to survive aggro.

Caligo presents a unique danger with its long-range breath attacks so outranging it is hopeless even with Loretta's spells.

It also deals magic damage which won't be too helpful.

Fire of course is the way, anything works but for short range be careful about it breathing down or using other attacks centered on it. Something with a little more range is nice so you can keep attacking when there's ice underneath it. Avoid aiming at the head as it moves too much for fireballs. The body is a much easier target. Unendurable Frenzy can be a trap due to the very long recovery and short range so it may be difficult to get away in time from those self-centered attacks.

Healing incantations are very nice to have to heal up small bits of damage from the ice breath and get damage negation at max HP back if you have that. Even the really weak ones just for self.

Damage negation after taking damage also helps to reduce the damage from repeated hits by the ice breath or ground ice.

If you can make it, fire breath cocktail can be used to deal good fire damage to Caligo while healing up allies from any chip damage and getting them back their FP for weapon skills.

Lightning Stake cocktail will be fairly easy to land, preferably right after it moves so there's a better chance it doesn't escape. It will stagger Caligo which is always nice. Main issue here is actually getting the cocktail. Caligo deals magic so there's no use from it and there are a lot of lingering fire effects like from the Vyke's spear on top of being almost guaranteed a wylder on the team so getting anything but fire and magic (from Caligo) can be extremely difficult

Even though the balancers don't deal any elemental damage, Cocktails are still very powerful in this fight. You'll have a very easy time collecting affinity regardless of your own team composition due to the numbers on the boss's side and the triple element cocktails are all AoEs that will not only do massive damage but also hit multiple harmonias. Since the balancers are weak to sleep, there's a better chance of your teammates not having any elemental damage giving you more free reign with cocktails as well.

- Fire breath will stagger them nicely and if they try dodging out you can just turn after them
Ice storm has the biggest AoE and applies frostbite compensating for lower damage and will also be the safest cast given how many harmonias there are. It's probably the best option here.
- Gravity Bomb is great as well. It will pull the Harmonia in with a good AoE so they can't escape the main explosion.
- Lightning Stake is also good but not for the Harmonia themselves, the AoE is small so you won't catch as many and they might be dead by the time it hits given the low HP of individual Harmonia.
It's a good cast during the coordinated attack sequences of regular balancers as those have a long buildup with the main one staying in place the whole time so a hit is basically guaranteed unless you're reeeeeally late on casting it. Won't oneshot the leader but will take out a solid chunk of their HP and that's the most important one of course.
- For everdark, you'd want to hold it for the worm phase, you can cast it during the final nihil-like attack or if have good positioning to avoid the spear barrages you can do it then as well. This is bound to take out a big chunk of the worm HP and make it much easier to finish off ending the phase prematurely.

For spells AoEs of course will let you multiply the damage output. Dragon breaths seem obvious but they are still quite risky as they don't stagger the Harmonia and take a while to cast fully and there's a risk of the leader teleporting directly on top of you with a big AoE that you won't have time to stop casting and dodge. I wouldn't even try dragon breaths without less likely to be targetted. Even small AoEs like from fireballs are decent when they bunch up together sometimes. From guaranteed spells Giantflame Take Thee is quite good here for the stunlock potential. For everdark though, if you can get less likely to be targetted, you can stay slightly behind your teammates as the Harmonias rush them and the dragon breaths will decimate them. They can also be useful at destroying the sacks on the worm to end the phase prematurely.

They don't tend to dodge projectiles so night sorceries don't particularly benefit.

Using souldblood song here has to be done with some caution due to it dealing damage and drawing aggro.

As always, any form of spell-based healing will be very strong here. The Harmonias can attack fast, especially everdark but don't deal all that much damage per attack so healing spells will be very good at conserving flasks for everyone.

Just because I don't see this mentioned anywhere else, here's a more general tip for everdark harmonia flowe bloom in the worm phase: listen closely and you'll hear 3 heart beats as the flower blooms, the explosion happens on the 3rd beat.

As with the balancers, the Dreglord doesn't deal any elemental damage so cocktails may be a little harder to get outside of the first phase when he starts spawning the rot zombies.

AoE and triple cocktails will be good at killing the zombies, dragon breaths work out well there and that will prevent the Dreglord from getting buffed.

Lightning stakes actually seem very easy to hit. Even when he makes pillars in second phase, he just goes straight up and remains in the AoE and he likes attacks with huge buildups that give you plenty of time to cast a cocktail. It might just be my luck or experience but his moves really seem timed perfectly to leave the AoE and come back right after for the actual strike which makes it seem like you're constantly catching him with those and it's super satisfying.
Video proof at depth 4: https://youtu.be/BDeTyCTtTkg

This fight tends to last quite long so any healing spells will likely come in useful

There are quite a few ways to play Recluse coming from various relic setups. Of course it does depend on what relics you have available and let's be honest, even with a hundreds of hours in the game it's unlikely you'll be able to put together a truly perfected build. Other guides out there take this into consideration for the most part and rely mostly on guaranteed relics so what I want to do here is highlight some more diverse options that start to come together as you get more relics and maybe you'll just have the right ones to make one of them work and see if that strikes your fancy.

Currently the mostly agreed on meta would be to stack as much magic damage and improved crystalian sorcery buffs and relying on getting a shattering crystal stave. There are two blue staves that come with it guaranteed which is what really makes it so powerful. You're rarely going to have a run where you don't get that. Just to paint the picture, the theoretically most optimized relic build for Shattering Crystal would consist of 6x Improved Crystalian Sorceries (12% each), 3x Magic Attack Up +2 (6.5% each), 3x Magic Attack up +4 (12% each), Collecting Affinity Activates Terra Magica (20% when standing inside), Ultimate Art causes Blood Loss and Increases Attack Power (15% on top of the 15% against marked enemies). This leaves 1 more regular effect and 3 more deep effects for other things, you'd probably want a gaol (5%) or night invader (7%) relic, or both by replacing terra magica or blood loss on art. For the sake of getting just the numbers you are guaranteed from relics though, the above setup not counting gaol/invader would give you about 5.31x damage multiplier on Crystalian Sorceries. You could get that a bit higher with the INT/FTH for MND deep relic for recluse too. This is just from the moment you drop on the map. There is no hiding just how much this kind of damage breaks the game.

Before Deep of Night stacking damage types other than magic wasn't of much use for Recluse as you were only guaranteed increased drops for staves which mostly limited you to magic damage with occasional fire. In Deep of Night we can now change that to get increased drops for sacred seals opening up possibilities of stacking other damage types to counter bosses. The logic would be the same as with the magic build above. Stack the right element and an appropriate school to boost incantations of that element. You can get very similar numbers this way. The only element where this gets a bit more iffy would be Holy as even with increased drops for seals there's still a decent chance you won't get a good holy incantation you can use at range. Where this becomes potentially more advantageous than pure magic relying on shattering crystal is the school buffs. For magic you can swap crystalian sorceries for night sorceries and look for night comet though it's rarer or maybe carian sorceries if you're feeling risky with a carian slicer. Save for night comet, the other two options are quite close-ranged putting you at risk. On the other hand, incantations like lightning bolt or strike, the various fireballs and holy disks all will comfortably outrange them. Sadly these playstyles are only really available in Deep of Night expedition due to reliance on the seal relic.

This is the most "intended" playstyle so to speak. A lot of this guide prior has already explored the most intricate aspects of gameplay with it as there's a lot of depth here. As of patch 1.03 the "Dormant power helps discover sacred seals" relic effect can appear on regular, non-Deep-of-Night relics which makes the build much easier to pull off outside of DoN. When building for this, focus on stacking Improved Affinity Attack Power as it affects all spells and cocktails. +2 gives you a 10% increase as opposed to 12% from a +4 for a single element so the difference is not big. Alternatively Improved Sorceries or Incantations also work, but not nearly as well. Cocktails count as sorceries so Improved Sorceries will improve their damage but to get those in the first place you'll be using incantations which of course won't be affected. Improved Incantations will improve your incantations but leave out the cocktails. The INT/FTH for MND relic is surprisingly viable here to get some more extra damage as you'll be collecting almost every cast so the decreased max FP won't be nearly as noticeable. You can still try offsetting the lost FP with other effects if you're lucky enough to roll the right relics. Max FP from 3+ seals is the best here as you're certainly going to be using at least 2 seals actively and 3 is very likely too and you can get up to it with just 1 seal altar. A great addition to this is starting with the Wraith Calling Bell as it deals good magic damage and it is an item that takes up a consumable slot instead of a weapon slot so you don't even need to keep a stave to maintain access to magic. This freed up weapon slot is very valuable as you're already going to be using up 2 or 3 for seals to attack with so you'll have relatively few slots left for weapon passives. You can take the Undertaker relic that extends duration of spells to help you cast some stronger stuff with magic/holy as well as extend the duration on the max HP buff from fire/holy, improved dodging from pure lightning and autoparry from lightning/holy. Gaol or invader relics are cool too, I'd take invaders for deep of night as those give better loot than gaols, you won't draw red godskin duo and are less costly in terms of routing. What's left is up to you though probably the most obvious choice is some improved incantation schools to buff the commonly used spells so dragon cult, giantsflame or godslayer. Personally I like dragon communion as well. The breaths pair greatly with souldbood song while dragonmaw and dragonclaw do some good damage, stance break and stagger.

This is not something I've been able to put together and test out yet, but it is I think a very interesting concept so hear me out. With Deep of Night we got a relic for recluse that gives you 20 more DEX, 5 END and 4 VIG for 10 INT/FTH. This makes using DEX melee weapons quite viable in terms of damage on recluse. You could go with let's say katanas from a dormant power relic. And then what I think really could tie this build together is the Helostor's Night of the Lord relic which adds a random affinity to your weapon when you switch it along with increasing its attack power for bit. You could fight in melee for a bit and when you or the boss back off or you run out of stamina, you then collect the affinity and build cocktails that way. You could also swap melee weapons for bows to do it a bit more safely. The biggest annoyance of course would be having to swap weapons often, especially if you don't roll the affinity you want and I'm not claiming this would be a "strong" build by any means, but hey, we're playing a video game, it's all for fun. Of course you might have some reservations due to how squishy recluse is, but at higher depths you get to a point where even the tankiest characters have to rely on strong damage reduction buffs to have a chance at surviving a hit so in a paradoxical turn of events recluse becomes weirdly viable in melee due to having the second best dodge after duchess in terms of iframes.

Recluse is already the glass cannon of Nightreign, but Deep of Night brings it out even more. With increased enemy damage one-shots are way more prevalent, but 3 additional relic slots also make her damage potential skyrocket even more. As you progress to higher depths, you'll encounter more red enemies and all of them drop weapons with 2 positive and 1 negative passive. This gives you more loot to choose from and consequently makes finding the passives you want easier so it is even easier to stack those damage buffs. The only factor that somewhat holds the damage potential back is the highly increased difficulty of clearing evergaols which makes it so the gaol relic is not nearly as viable as it used to be.

Let's take a look at the strongest spell in the game: Shattering Crystal
It deals magic damage and classifies as a crystalian sorcery.

Here's a list of relics effect that affect it:
Magic Attack Up +0/1/2 and +3/4 on deep relics
Improved Crystalian Sorceries
Improved Sorceries +0/1/2 (deep relics)
Improved Affinity Attack Power +0/1/2 (deep relics)
Improved Attack Power for Every Evegaol Prisoner Defeated
Improved Attack Power for Every Condemned Defeated
[Recluse] Suffer Blood Loss and Increase Attack Power upon Art Activation
[Recluse] Collecting Affinity creates Terra Magica

Improved [school] Sorceries and Magic Attack Up +2 can appear on the same relic. Shattering Crystal is already super strong and it is guaranteed on 2 blue quality staves making it the most reliable to make use of this effect.

It is no exaggeration that with just relics it is theoretically possible to increase the damage of crystalian sorceries over 5 times the normal value if you focus on them completely. No other character in the fame boasts this level of damage potential.

This might compel you to stack all this magic damage as much as you can with the relics you have chasing those massive damage numbers and of course it can be viable, but let's not forget the glass in glass cannon. If you focus purely on damage you will just die when you get hit and all that damage potential you've had will drop to 0. When making a build for Deep of Night you have to be honest with yourself. Are you going to be good enough at dodging to justify focusing so much on stacking damage buffs and forgo survivabiliy? Most players will not.

Here's what you can do instead if you want to live:
- Fathom of Night relic - 100hp boost for either the basic or ED version. Both will also give you some other bonuses like continuous HP regen, HP regen on low HP, item sharing or flask sharing. Continuous can be useful in some cases, it isn't strong but can help if you get damage negation at max HP and there are deep relic curses and negative weapon passives that cause continuous HP drain so you'll be able to counter one of those. To be fair though, you'll still likely lose a massive chunk of your HP that will demand a flask heal so it's only really useful for topping up if the flask didn't make it and at that point you could just get 2 warming stones and they should do the job.
- Increase max HP by 5% for every great church boss defeated (deep relic)
- Increase max HP by 10% (deep relic)
- Partial HP Restoration upon Post-Damage Attacks +0 and +1/2 (deep relic). I don't recommend this, it's hard to get a decent amount back in time with spells unless you get something very specific like poising through attacks with dragonmaw or dragonclaw.
- [Recluse] Increase max HP upon ability activation - absolutely mandatory as far as I am concerned. A massive 50% boost to your max HP until both at least 30 seconds have passed and you received any damage. The more HP you have from other sources the stronger this will be. You don't get healed for the additional HP so you need to use the HP restoration on attacking enemies with soulblood song to get that health and strong spells will help with that. This relic gives you levels of HP that even at D5 it's hard for anything to outright kill you even with no damage negation weapon passives.
- [Recluse] Improved Vigor, Endurance, and Dexterity, Reduced Intelligence and Faith - the Vigor increase is 4 points, 80 HP. The INT and FTH decrease can be countered with the other stat-modifying relic. The Lost FP from that can then be either ignored because you can replenish FP anyway or countered with a plethora of FP-increasing relic effects or the deep relic that reduces FP consumption. It will take some relic luck to pull off though.
- Improve physical damage negation +0/1/2 - up to 12% physical damage negation from the start of the game.
- [Recluse] Collect Affinity Residues to Negate [incoming damage from that] Affinity [by 20%] - This can be a nice buff in nightlord fights in a team since you can collect affinity from a teammate to gain resistance to the nightlord's own element.

I've been personally running Deep Night of the Fathom, HP buff on ult, HP from Great Churches and HP restoration on post-damage attacks. By level 15 I can have had more health than a base level 15 guardian and push beyond 1500 when activating my ult, face tanking multiple hits as Recluse at depth 3. You can absolutely go much further than this but at least for depth 3 this has served me well.


Don't forget to buy you one time damage negation and automatic heal at low HP flasks from the spirit shelter merchant either. I also highly, HIGHLY recommend checking limveld merchants for Uplifting Aromatic and Cirimsonspill Crystal Tear. They will sell both of these items or neighter.

The former gives you one time high damage negation like the tear you can buy later at the spirit shelter merchant but it costs 4000 runes instead of 25000, it also gives a damage buff, stacks to 2 (the merchant sells 2 as well) and at makes it truly stand out is that as an aromatic it will always apply to nearby allies as well regardless of if you do or do not have the item sharing relic. Let me repeat that. This is a total of 6 instances of massive damage negation (2 for each player) and damage buffs for 8k runes if ONLY YOU buy this. If everyone does, this goes to 6 instances for every player. Congratulations, you've just doubled the number of hits you can take in the nightlord fight.
The latter increases your max HP for 2 minutes, I don't have to say why this is good.
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It should be no secret by now that I'm a bit of a cocktail preacher and most of the tips here are related to a cocktail-centric playstyle. Recluse's entire kit is made to have you juggle multiple spells of different types to create those powerful combinations that sometimes rival and indeed, exceed the damage potential of all character ults in the game and for all intents and purposes, that would be the "intended" way to play the character. So why is that you almost never see Recluses running cocktails and everyone just spams Shattering Crystal or Stars of Ruin when they get that?

The answer lies in relics, weapons buffs and consistency.

Let's start with relics and weapon buffs.
Those are the relics that improve your damage output with spells:
- Magic/Fire/Lightning/Holy/Physical Attack Up (6.5% at +2, 12% at +4 deep relic) (physical attack up for physical incantations like bestial sling)
- Improved Affinity Attack Power (10% at +2 deep relic only)
- Improved [School] Sorceries/Incantations (12%)
- Improved Sorceries/Incantations (10%, deep relic only)
Improved [School] Sorc/Inc can appear together with any of the other effects on the same relics, everything else is exclusive.
So when building for a specific affinity (like in a shattering crystal build) we get ideally the max specific affinity buffs for 6.5 and 12% paired with the appropriate improved school but the first effect can easily be substituted with improved sorceries or incantations if going for say fire incants against Caligo or general affinity attack power in deep relics for only a 2 percentage points smaller buff.
Meanwhile if you're building for cocktails, you can't rely on improving any single affinity because you necessarily will be using all of them. Improving specific schools won't do well for the same reasons. Improved incantations sounds nice since it's still most of what you'll be using but that only appears for deep relics and falls flat when you realize that all cocktails are classified as sorceries and will not be affected. Improved sorceries thus goes the other way - better cocktails, but piss poor damage otherwise. As a result you're really only limited to Improved Affinity Attack Power which caps at 10% and is only on deep relics. Aside from improved attack power for defeating evergaol prisoners and night invaders, there's nothing general enough in regular relics for cocktail builds.

To nail it in, an optimal shattering crystal build will have 6x Improves Crystallian Sorceries, 3x Magic Attack Up+4 and 3x Magic Attack Up+2 for a total of 1.12^6 * 1.12^3 * 1.065^3 attack power with shattering crystal while an optimal Cocktail build will only have 1.1^3 attack power on top of having less effects that actually benefit it. Oh and Terra Magica only affects sorceries with its additional 20% buff, isn't that amazing. At this point a single Shattering Crystal cast can be buffed so much it can deal more damage than even the strongest cocktails.
But we're not done! I still haven't said a single word on weapon buffs but it's really the same story. You can get buffs to a specific affinity, general affinity, sorceries or incantations and charged sorceries or incantations! And guess what? Almost all of these will work for any single-element build, but for cocktails again only the general affinity buff will affect you in whole but the more general the buff the smaller the numbers are too so not only do you again get a smaller selection of buffs, they're also going to be smaller. In the end it's probably best to just take incant buffs but even that can be denied to you due to your inventory space. When going for cocktails you need to keep multiple seals on hand just to have access to these elements, even in the best case scenario of having a wraith-calling bell in a consumable slot for magic and dual-element seals you'll be taking 2 slots for spells you use and you may even have to dedicate as many as 4 inventory slots for those leaving only 2 for buffs. How many do single element builds need for that? 1. And don't forget you'll need your damage negation at max HP too! And oh, it would be nice to slot in that improved spell casting speed, wouldn't it?

Now for consistency.
Recluse's default dormant power helps her discover staves. Sorceries they cast house almost all of the game's magic affinity spells and a couple fire spells. For cocktails though, you need every element.
For starting weapon you already get a stave that gives you easy access to magic.
Fire, while possible to find on staves is still more common on seals
Lightning and holy are exclusive to seals.
To mitigate that, a seal dormant power relic is already mandatory which takes up a slot in your build and is nowhere near guaranteed to give you any other useful effect.
Even then, you still have 2 other teammates dealing all kinds of their own elemental damage. This CAN be helpful to get you elements you lack but is nowhere near reliable and more often than not you'll find yourself cursing them for replacing the elements you want with something that spoils the entire concoction. If you get an ironeye (and there's almost always an ironeye) with an affinity bow, you can say goodbye to the entire playstyle. Anyone using fast weapons like fists or daggers will be a major cause of friction as well and faster weapons tend to be more popular at higher depths of DoN as well.
By comparison, for a Shattering Crystal build all you need for success is to find the spell and there are 2 blue staves where it comes by default. And even if you can't find it, there's quite a few strong sorceries that are 'good enough' like Stars of Ruin, Comet, Glintstone Cometshard etc. You need just one of those to succeed where going for cocktails you need multiple seals with the right affinity incants and then the incants themselves are hopefully decent too.
One saving grace for seals is that stave stands only appear in forts and it's quite rare to go to more than one in a run, while great churches that have seal altars are a much more open design making them a more common choice, even if just to get stonesword keys but from there it's just a tiny detour to get yourself 2-3 seal rolls plus there's that shack in the north-west.

A slight advantage Cocktail Recluse has o the damage front comes from boss resistances. Pretty much everything is at least slightly resistant to magic damage but weak to fire, lightning or holy. You will of course be juggling spells so not every cast will be benefitting from the optimal affinity type BUT you will be putting the worst matchup away most of the time, at least in duos or trios as you'll be able to get that from teammates hit by the boss.

So yeah, choose wisely; play into the character's kit and suffer trying to complete a build that sort-of works and is completely dependent on your team's weapon choices and RNG or drop nukes on everything you meet every couple seconds. Truly, a choice of all time.

Don't get me wrong, this is a Recluse vs Recluse comparison. Cocktail recluse is still incredibly powerful, she keeps up with other nightfarers very well and absolutely outmatches the Shattering Crystal Recluse in all other areas than pure damage, particularly in utility. She's better at fighting groups with AoE spells and cocktails, can stunclock annoying enemies like banished knights with cocktails or spells like Giantsfame Take Thee, she absolutely destroys night invaders in the same way. Dragon breath incants are great for that too. She has an easier time filling up her HP after using Souldblood song with both relics, can avoid danger with the ice storm cocktail, can heal her team with the fire breath cocktail which does come up, albeit rarely, and can be a genuine run saver though there is something to be said about the boss being dead by then if you had 5x damage on Shattering Crystal.

While yeah, on the damage front there's no beating Shattering Crystal spam with semi-optimal relics, but where going for cocktails shines is the utility. You can buff your team with more max HP which is invaluable in Deep of Night, lightning stakes stagger and cancel combos on almost anything on top of doing some massive damage, ice storm and gravity bomb decimate groups and fire breath is decent at it too on top of letting you heal allies and get them back some FP which also does come up from time to time and other cocktails all have their own utility as well. Even the pure magic can micro stagger a lot of smaller enemies or keep revive bars from refilling. Incantations themselves let you counter specific nightlords offer more utility than magic; the stagger with Giantsflame Take Thee which is guaranteed on a blue seal and can sometimes be found at merchants will trivialize banished knights and is great at reviving up to 2 bars. You'll have better chances finding healing incantations too. Magic also doesn't really have a great option to synergize with ult, especially the bloodloss and max hp on ult relics, while with a cocktail build you can use it to give a big buff your cocktail damage which in turn will max out your HP and the damage can be further boosted by a duchess restage or scholar's level 3 analyze both of which synergize best with as much burst damage as you can provide which especially the lightning stake excels at. The waiting even gives the duchess and scholar time to prepare and gives other characters a good signal to coordinate ults to get the boss staggered for the stake even further enhancing restage. Then immediately after the cocktail and ult you can start casting something big like dragonfire which you won't miss like you could with comet azur or meteorite.

Great! First thing you need to know is what kind of Recluse you're dealing with. The fastest option is to check her relics. Most of the time you'll see one of two things:

A) A bunch of magic / crystallian sorceries stacked - in this case you don't really need to do anything at all. All they want is a shattering crystal stave, a stone 2 to get it to purple and maybe some shards. Give them sorcery/charged sorcery/magic buffs.

B) none of the above and likely a seal discovery relic - this one will be trying to cast cocktails. This kind of Recluse can be very needy and a lot of what you do will affect her so the rest of this section will be dedicated to explaining those interactions and what you can do to affect her positively. Some of this may involve concessions on your part and of course when it comes to that it's completely understandable if you draw the line there. It's the most difficult part of this entire guide to write because I really don't want it to come off badly. I don't want you to feel like you have to limit your options just to appease the chocolate dark moons but I still want to go over absolutely everything. I'll try to at least separate what I think is somewhat reasonable.

So first of all some info on how cocktails work. If you do not know how this works, each time someone (enemy or ally) gets hit with elemental damage, a residue of that element will be applied to them. Recluse can see those residues and collect them recovering some FP in the process and adding the element to her cocktail. Only one residue can be stored per enemy/ally at the time and it will always be the last one, any new elemental attack will simply replace the previous residue. Once Recluse collects 3 such residues she completes a cocktail the effect of which is determined by the specific elemental contents of that cocktail. A general rule of thumb is that the more distinct elements in a cocktail the more powerful it tends to be with the strongest made up of 3 distinct elements.

Why is this important? Because your attacks if they deal any sort of elemental damage will also apply this residue (and replace any that may have already been applied). And this is really the entire issue with this type of Recluse. This CAN be beneficial for the Recluse IF she doesn't have a way of dealing that damage type herself but more often than not, you'll be replacing the residues she's actually trying to get and making her collect things that she already has, leading to weaker cocktails. At the start of a match, she'll only have magic from her starting seal so you dealing elemental damage will be more helpful but as she finds seals to deal other damage types she'd much rather you only dealt physical damage and let her take care of getting her own residues. This is obviously a big ask so don't feel pressured to stick to purely physical weapons. Since the residue applies on every hit the faster a weapon is the more issues it will cause the Recluse. Heavy, strength-based weapons are easy enough to work around, while faster ones like fists will be a pain. Anything that leaves lingering AoE effects like magma puddles or rain of stars (on walking effect) can cause some issues as well though it isn't too bad honestly. In general, using slower weapons will make it easier for the Recluse to spam nukes.

Some things to watch out for:
- If the Recluse uses a fire breath cocktail (and doesn't turn into a dragon), try staying in that fire breath - it will recover your HP and FP
- If you see a lightning circle on the ground, try to keep the boss inside with your positioning. If you have a staggering ult, use it then to make sure they don't leave. If you succeed, after a delay of about 5.5s a lightning strike will hit. This is the strongest cocktail Recluse has, it hits as strong if not stronger than any character ult. It also staggers nightlords and bosses except the Bell Bearing Hunter so you can keep attacking even. If you see your Recluse using this one a lot, you might want to even keep your ult specifically to time it for this cocktail.

As for routing, this Recluse will not want to go to Sorcerer's Rises as much as she doesn't have much use for staves and she'll be collecting affinity more often than the A) Recluse and thus will be running out of FP less so there's less need for shards as well.
Great Churches and a hut in the north-west house altars that drop 2-3 white or blue seals, visiting those will be much appreciated.

Here's some interactions with specific nightfarers:
Wylder: Can deal tons of fire especially with greatswords and the fire attack followup after grappling hook relic. Usually is fine though unless the fire spam is really heavy. The Onslaught Stake's stagger is great at keeping the boss in place for a Lightning Stake Cocktail for a second proc of massive damage and another stagger letting you wail on the boss more and keeping it in the ground fire longer if you happen to run that relic.
Guardian: S tier teammate for a Recluse, we love you. Guardians can really plant their feet and keep the boss on them oblivious to the orbital lightning strike about to hit them and focusing mostly on blocking will make any elemental damage pretty much a non-issue.
Ironeye: Nothing compares to the restraining power an ironeye with an elemental bow has on Recluse's ability to make any decent cocktail. I'm sorry but that Erdtree bow is a death sentence to any stronger cocktails, even when the Recluse is experienced at dealing with it. No joke, I've been counting arrows to get my residues collected when you run out of stamina. That's how bad it is. We'd much rather you got a bow with a status ailment. Blackflame blade seems fine most of the time as it lasts very short, especially if you wait a few seconds before reapplying it and I know how strong it is.
Duchess: Can be great to restage big cocktail hits. Has potential to stay glued to the boss with fast attacks which can cause issues if using elemental weapons. Going for magic, stars of ruin can make it difficult to get different elements but slower things like shattering crystal are totally fine as you won't be able to spam it nearly as much.
Raider: Great as long as you stick to big bonks. I know fists are popular at higher depths and for a good reason so it's hard to recommend anything also given how Raider's kit falls off pretty badly the deeper you get since trading hits isn't really viable anymore.
Revenant: splitting aggro with summons is also helpful for Recluse and casting incants can be helpful to get the elements Recluse lacks while usually leaving enough room for the Recluse to get her own elements in. Try focusing more on charged incants to make those windows bigger. Charged is also more FP efficient which is better for you as well since you don't get to restore FP like Recluse. Bestial incants or Dragonmaw/Dragonclaw do not apply affinity so those are also a good match.
Recluse: A second Recluse will generally not fare well here. You'll be replacing each other's affinity and stealing it from one another...
Executor: Can be great for the same reasons as guardian if you actually use the sekiro parry mechanics. It gets worse once you get rivers of blood and start spamming the weapon art... yeah I don't think we can take that one away from you.
Scholar: Level 3 firepots are a bit painful with the lingering fire but honestly aren't too bad. We'll still appreciate focusing more on consumable buffs but a few pots here and there are fine. If you can time the additional 60% damage taken on next hit debuff with cocktails, that will be MASSIVE. It's by far the best use for this ability and can take a lightning stake over 4k damage easily if not higher. Since you're mostly going for statuses you're probably going to be using less elemental weapons which helps too but even if you do use elemental weapons, then you'll still be taking some more time off from attacking to analyze so even with fast weapons like thrusting swords you're going to leave us plenty of room to get affinities. Chilling mist applies some magic damage, just a heads up.
Underaker: Same thing as Revenant on the incantation side if you build into those. For melee you tend to be quite persistent and have a pretty fast moveset with hammers that will cause us problems so we'll appreciate with sticking to non-elemental or going for something heavier. Your ult is a match made in heaven for Recluse though. It has great range, staggers and you get to use it for free when someone else uses theirs. This is awesome as you can easily stagger bosses from a great distance when Recluse puts down a lightning stake to guarantee it hits or the Recluse can ult herself right before to give you a free use of your own just for that. Recluse may also like to use her ult as a damage spike with some heavy-hitting spell but the same ult deals some damage which can draw aggro so the stagger you provide will ensure she can actually make use of it and that anything she casts lands.