Best Abilities to Unlock First in Astor: Blade of the Monolith

Astor: BotM starts you off with several different options for active abilities that you can purchase. With red orbs and runestones being scarce as you start out, you might be wondering which skills to get first. Here are the best abilities to unlock first in Astor: Blade of the Monolith.

Best Skills to Get First in Astor: Blade of the Monolith

I highly recommend that you start with the active combo extender Sword abilities and the Shield Bubble talent. More specifically, this is a great order of unlocking the first sword skills:

1. Runic Finisher 1: You should get this ability ASAP because we want to make use of our blue mana bar. Runic abilities allow you to spend mana for powerful AOE effects. For example, the Runic Finisher 1 allows you to hit B/O on a controller or the RMB on a PC after the third light attack to perform an AOE magic attack.
2. Launcher: Opens up your combos so that you can safely launch and follow an enemy to the air. Especially useful on higher difficulties. Other enemies won’t be able to damage you and you can perform a three-hit light combo and then finish off with a heavy attack immediately after to slam down on the ground.
3. Shield Bubble: The Shield Bubble in the Talents section makes it much easier to block and parry since the frontal shield can sometimes be finicky to time for parries.
4. Combo Finisher/Strong Combo Extension: This will boost your damage actively with extra attacks during your combos before you take that split-second animation recovery. These are much better than the passive damage boosts.
5. Passive Damage Level Ups: I would prioritize these last since they’re not that impactful in terms of damage increases. For example, going from Level 1 to Level 2 and Level 3 only increases the Sword’s damage from 15 to 18 for Light and 23 to 27 for Heavy attacks. It’s better to take the active combo extended abilities first.

That’s it for my guide on the best skills to unlock first in Astor: Blade of the Monolith. For more Astor guides, check out our beginner tips.