If you’ve found yourself travelling across the harsh and unforgiving lands of Kenzera and suffering its consequences more often than not, we’ve got some top tier tips ready for you! Settle down at the Yumboe camp and read on as we offer you some sage advice on how to safely assist Zau on his quest. If you haven't started your quest just yet, remember that Tales of Kenzera: ZAU is out now for 19.99 or as part of PlayStation Plus extra. Now, let's get started.
At the start of the game, Zau isn’t quite at his full potential, with a limited amount of HP. As Zau explores Kenzera, he can find large awe-inspiring Baobab trees, which he can use as a point of reflection.
Upon sitting down underneath these and reflecting on his memories, Zau will be rewarded with an additional segment on his health bar, making him more resilient to ending up in the land of the dead himself!
A true test of a shaman’s ability can be found in the multiple Spirit Rituals across Kenzera. These gruelling rituals test your combat abilities with multiple waves of enemies for you to overcome. Sounds simple enough but you’ll have to show your mastery of the dance with the sun and moon masks to get past all foes, but upon completing each rank of the spirit ritual, you will be rewarded greatly!
Completing the first round will grant Zau a permanent upgrade in which he gains an additional Spirit bar, which can be used for additional healing and unleashing devastating ultimate abilities like the Lunar Blast and Supernova!
Get past the second round and Zau is rewarded with an additional Trinket slot, which can allow you to have multiple trinkets equipped at once, allowing you to reap the additional benefits that they offer!
If you are able to overcome the third round of each Spirit Ritual, Zau is given a free additional skill point ready for you to use on the Skill tree to unlock the powers that it holds!
The Shaman Trials may be notoriously challenging for you to jump, platform, dash and glide your way through, but upon completion of these you will get a reward in the form of an additional trinket! These trinkets all offer unique bonuses, like gaining more Ulogi (Experience points) from defeating enemies, do more damage by hitting enemies into the environment, do more damage when at full health and gain additional spirit by defeating foes, just as a few examples.
This in combination with unlocking multiple Trinket slots from completing the Spirit Rituals can lead to Zau gaining some interesting and powerful bonus perks to help him in his quest to return his Baba!
As awesome as the Lunar Blast and Supernova are, using these Spirit Attacks consumes a lot of Zau’s Spirit, which is also a vital resource when it comes to Zau healing. This leads to you having to find a good balance between offence and defence.
Due to this, it would be wise to ensure that you always try to keep at least 1 segment of Spirit available for when Zau is running low on health to keep him alive.
This doesn’t mean you should never use the ultimate abilities at all, as they can be very useful to quickly dispatch multiple or stronger foes at once. Like all things in life. It comes down to finding a healthy balance!
If you find you are running out of Spirit too often, we recommend you undertake the Spirit Rituals we mentioned earlier, as completing these can reward Zau with additional segments of Spirit that he can utilise! Zau can also find and equip unique Trinkets that increase the amount of Spirit he gains from damaging his foes, adding to the pool that can be used to healing or unleashing spirit attacks.
Some enemies Zau encounters can be found to have shields making them tougher to deal with. These shields will protect their main health bar, and can recharge over time if you don’t eliminate them quickly enough.
Sometimes, these shields can come with immunities to either the Sun or Moon mask attacks. If you find yourself face to face with an enemy with a blue shield, the best way to combat them would be with Moon mask attacks, as they are resistant to Sun mask attacks. Likewise, red shielded enemies are best combated with Sun Mask attacks to quickly deal with them. Make sure you are using the right Mask to deal with these enemy types effectively.
In the first act of the game, Zau will gather special abilities from visiting the Shaman Shrines, like the water freezing Bamba’s Stone and the penetrating Akida’s Spear.
These both have great benefits for traversal, from freezing waterfalls for climbing up to new paths, or unlocking impassable doors, but also are extremely useful in combat too!
Bamba’s Stone can be launched at enemies and freeze them in place, giving you the opportunity to score big hits on them while they are defenceless, or to give you a breather and regroup yourself in the heat of battle.
Akida’s Spear can also be weaponised by allowing you to throw it across long distances to strike your foes at range. It can also be upgraded in the skill tree to allow it to strike multiple enemies in one well aimed throw!
The Moon Mask is great for ranged combat with its ability to fire 8 shots before having to recharge. This is a handy weapon in combat, but can be made even better by spending some skill points in the right places. You can invest skill points on the Moon Mask skill tree, taking Increased Light Charges, upgrade its firing capacity to 12 allowing you to get 50% more firepower before needing to reload.
You can also unlock the Perfect Recharge skill which gives you an active reload, allowing you to reload faster if you can time it right. If you manage to nail the timing, you will also be given a temporary boost in your firepower as a reward!
If you get really stuck, Tales of Kenzera: ZAU has 3 difficulty options available to you which you can switch between at any time. In the Pause menu, you can go into Settings and then Gameplay where you can switch from Relaxed, Standard and Challenging.
These settings will modify aspects of the game to either reduce or increase the amount of damage you take, the amount of health enemies have as well as other gameplay tweaks to make it easier so you can fully experience Zau’s story with less stumbling blocks.