Lies of P Starter Guide & Guides Hub

Our Lies of P starter guide will not only teach you all the important info you’ll need to get started in Lies of P, as well as links to all of our other relevant guides on the game. 

Lies of P Starter Guide Hub

There are a few important parts of Lies of P that you probably won’t know off the bat, even if you’re a Souls-like veteran. We’ve listed the most important gameplay features below with a brief explanation of how they work. 

Avoiding Damage (Dodging or Blocking)

Like any Soulslike, avoiding damage in Lies of P is super important, and you have various options at your disposal, split into two groups: dodging or blocking. 

Dodging

Dodging an enemy’s attacks is a decent strategy, especially since it can help you to avoid damage completely while blocking only reduces incoming damage in most cases. That said, dodging won’t save you from Fury Attacks (see below) in the early game, and the game tends to skew towards blocking strategies. 

As you might expect, dodging costs stamina, so you have to include in your stamina management during combat. Certain skills and upgrades can actually remove both limitations of dodging, though they only appear in the mid-to-late game and you’ll have to build you character around using them. 

Blocking

Blocking is another way of avoiding incoming damage in Lies of P. When you block an attack, the incoming damage to your health is reduced by a certain amount depending on your weapon. 

When you block an attack, you also generate a small amount of temporary ‘Guard Recovery’ points. While these points are active (illustrated above) you can regain HP by attacking an enemy quickly. 

This means that blocking and then aggressively exploiting openings is another viable strategy, but requires a large amount of stamina and health to pull off. 

Perfect Guarding

Perfect guarding occurs when you don’t start blocking right up until the last second before an attack lands. This type of block doesn’t do health damage at all, only stamina damage. 
You’ll need to practice your timing on perfect guarding, as it is quite precise. That said, it can be used to reduce incoming damage to zero, even from those bright red fury attacks. It also does a lot of stagger damage (see below.) 

Perfect guarding will also sometimes result in your enemy's weapon breaking, which can reduce how much damage they’re doing to you. 

Fury Attacks

Occasionally, an enemy will gain a red aura and unleash a powerful attack. These attacks are called fury attacks, and can either be big flashy attacks, or a flourish at the end of a combo. 

Not only can you not block these attacks (outside of a Perfect Guard) but you also can’t dodge through them. The only option is to either be nowhere near your enemy when the attack lands, or get really good at using perfect guard. 

Weight

Like certain other Souls-like games, Lies of P has a weight system, but it’s relatively simple in this case.  Your weight carrying limit is decided by your ‘Capacity’ stat, and when you go over a certain percentage of weight you become slightly heavy, then heavy, and finally very heavy. 

While you’re heavy you’ll have reduced i-frames during dodging and slower attack animations on most weapons. As well as increasing capacity, you can wear certain amulets to increase your carrying limit. 

Weapons

Lies of P has a unique weapon system, allowing you to deconstruct and rebuild your weapons by splitting them into handles and heads. At any Stargazer (Bonfire) you can assemble your weapons to create something new, outside of a few special weapons such as boss items. 

The handle of your weapon defines the attack animations and stat-scaling, while the blade defines attribute and base damage. This means if you have a weapon attack style you like, you can just keep swapping to blades that are right for each situation. 

To make the most of the weapons in the game, and learn where to find them, check out our Lies of P Weapons Guide. 

Staggering

Staggering is a mechanic in Lies of P that allows you to get in a huge attack against an enemy, even against bosses. Hit an enemy with a fully charged heavy attack (R2/RT) while their health bar is flashing white and they’ll go into a weakened stance. 

Head for the glowing red spot on bosses, or just walk up to them until you see the fatal attack logo (see below) to appear. Press attack at this point to perform a high-damage attack against your enemy. 

Fatal Attacks

When you approach an enemy from behind or stagger them you’ll see a symbol of three red lines appear on your lock-on icon (pictured above.) If you use your regular attack (R1/RB) while that symbol is active, you’ll perform a unique attack animation that does high damage. 

Not only does a fatal attack do high damage, but it usually also leaves your enemy in a vulnerable position afterward. You should use this time to either charge up another powerful attack, buff your weapons, or heal damage. 

Status Ailments

There are two types of status effects in Lies of P, standard and special. Standard can only be removed with an Attribute Purification Ampoule, and specials can only be removed with a Special Purification Ampoule. We’ve listed them all below and described what they do. 

Normal Status Effects

• Decay - Decay is a build-up of acid damage. Once the bar fills, your weapon durability will start to decrease and you’ll take constant health damage until it’s removed. You also take more damage from acid sources. 
• Corruption - When corruption builds up you’ll start to take constant health damage.
• Overheat - As fire damage builds up Overheat will fill. Once active your guard recovery will be reduced and you’ll take more damage from fire. You’ll also receive constant fire damage until the effect ends. 
• Electric Shock - As electric damage builds up, Electric Shock will fill. Once activated, this effect increases how much damage you take from both physical and electric sources. You’ll also constantly lose Fable (the blue bar) and monsters will take extra stagger damage. 

Special Status Effects

• Shock - Shock immediately reduces your stamina recovery, even before it’s filled. 
• Break - Like Shock, Break debuffs you immediately, reducing your ability to heal yourself with Pulse Charges. 
• Disruption - When the disruption gauge fills, you will immediately die.