Corruption of Champions II Beginner to Advanced Tips & Guidance

Ah. Hello there. Before we begin, this *is* an adult game, and the vast majority of fights aren’t rocket science. However, even as a weeb with little social interaction, I still noticed a few sections with surprising difficulty while playing even on Normal, and as the game at the time of writing hasn’t gotten to the endgame yet, where all your little decisions and mistakes with your character shine or stain, and to help people wanting to take their two handed gameplay further, I would like to share as much as I’ve learned so far, what I wish I knew, and maybe some talk from a bro about putting the Rut in Corruption of Champions along the way. *Applause* If you’re a visitor from the future, I hope I can make this guide as timeless as possible, even with the chaotic nature of early access. Also, you might have different opinions or insight than me, I have the viewpoint of a straight male thief, your results might vary. That’s ok. I will try to include information supporting other classes and orientations as I see it. Some people might want to say “lol why you mak long word wall about gam dis gam so ez me not play ez though me play dark mode me beat dark mode unarmed solo is ez”. Comments such as that, comments in general, hate comments or messages will probably be ignored because I’m lazy and life is terrible, and especially after 2020 I really just am empty and don’t care about xXKillerSolder47. With that said, if you’d like, come with me and maybe I can help you experience and succeed in this game filled with equal parts futa horse demons, life and death philosophy, gender identities, freedom to explore orientation and relationships, some strange and obscure kinks you’d be divorced for sharing, a combat system that begins simple but has a surprising amount of depth and customization, vanilla relationships, cats that are waifus but belong to the hood, dogs that have daddy issues but not the kind you’re probably expecting, creepy high tier cthulu monsters, sweet sweet loaded bazonga moths, body modification, class freedom, several writers with different interests and priorities that cooperate which keep things varied and fresh, several party members with unique personalities, questlines and dialogue beyond “press s to smash/ would you like to smash vigorously or tenderly”, and a plotline you’ll want to share with your friends but never be able to because they’ll brick wall you with “no, mommy says adult games are bad, I have a girlfriend and we sleep in separate beds, please don’t approach me degenerate”. … Moving on.

Upon reading the prologue you will be introduced to the character creation menu. While you have many safety features in the game itself, if you wish to change your gender, your race (cosmetically), your skill points (not base), even your name, you can. However, the one thing to pay attention to is your starting bonus stats; this value cannot be altered. At first, this doesn’t appear to be a big deal, however, if we’re going to push it one step beyond, and if we’re not wanting to start off with 3 points somewhere we don’t want or need, we’re going to want to pay attention. Everything here revolves around what you want to do or be, however there are a few things to keep in mind. First, even if it breaks your immersion, think of your starting race as a stat stick. As in, pick which one has the stats you want first and foremost. It might take a while in game, but you can change your race with items freely, the starting bonus cannot ever be changed. (As of this writing.) If it’s stayed the same when you’re playing, or if it’s changed, we’ll move on to the second part, stats. At the bottom level, we got Strength, Toughness, Agility, Cunning, Willpower and Presence. Each level, each stat goes up one point, and 3 of your stats you can choose to upgrade further, however you must pick 3, you can’t pick one stat 3 times, you must level 3 different stats. Something to note, is that all of the stats bring a surprising amount to the table, there isn’t *really* a stat that you just absolutely do not want, but, jack or jills of all trades will lead to you having problems, as enemies stats get higher in certain directions, if you decide you’d like to level all of your stats, or even more than 3. It’s a good idea, generally, to focus 3 stats per class, with your starting points put in the primary stat your class benefits the most from. Some stats, like toughness, do look mighty fine, and even as a thief or mage you might be tempted to put points into it, however, strength gives armor, agility gives evasion, cunning gives magic defense, and willpower gives lust damage defense, along with their damage increases, so increasing toughness is not as good an idea as it first appears, along with the fact that if you ever need to, there are multiple items that can compensate for lower health pools, and your defensive stats will ensure that you never hinder your party. There might be enemies or bosses that pack some hurt, but if so they’ll usually hurt whoever they touch, and leveling toughness could have the opposite intended effect, if you’re not playing as a tank you might gain 5 hp but if you lose your defenses enemies may even hurt you more, higher hp or not. There are drinks and buffs available to boost max hp, along with items like the Mare’s Ring, from marrying Atani, that boost hp and give regen, with several stats boosting hp and resolve recovery amounts from items, on top of damaging abilities that grant buffs like obscurement, which protect you further, so don’t be afraid of pumping damage stats. Generally, Thieves want Agility, Strength and Cunning, Warriors want Agility, Strength and Toughness, Charmers want Agility, Cunning and Presence, Black Mages want Cunning, Presence, and Willpower, and White Mages want Willpower, Toughness, and Presence. You do have options, but these are the safest bets to start with and boost each level. You *can* play a mage and boost strength, or a Warrior and boost Willpower, but eventually if you start wrong or equip the wrong gear at best you won’t do as much damage or take as much damage if you had just played it safe. When you start out in game and make it past the tutorial, it’s also in your best interest to prioritize finding gear or buying it to equip to each of your main slots, accessories, rings and necklaces, are expensive and rare, so it’s ok to take your time for them, but good weapons for damage dealers, armor for everyone but especially tanks.

So you’ve picked your class, your character, and your character’s manslayer/womanslayer. Now onto the pick-a-poisons. When starting as each class, you have several options for each one how to proceed. Let’s use a thief as an example. Light armor for the most part is non negotiable, because heavy armor reduces initiative, which makes your turns slower. You don’t want that. Generally as a thief you also won’t want magic sticks, unless you’re some spellblade snowflake. (Which is perfectly fine but for this example let’s not go there). So your options will be 2 handers, good damage, good variety, cheap, simple, easy to acquire, big numbers but lower chance to hit at least once, dual wielding, requires each weapon to be light, attacks multiple times with some combinations on some powers like cleave for wombo combo damage, hard to find uniques, lowered accuracy, lower damage unless you hit with both at the same time, increased chance to hit at least once, sword and shield, increased defenses and evasion, protection from crits, some unique weapons that are too heavy to dual wield but not big enough to 2 hand, bows, similar bonuses as 2 handers, some of the easiest to acquire and highest damage weapons, but you lose the melee exclusive powers, without the benefit of being able to use throwing weapons when dual wielding to use both ranged and melee powers. Each weapon type is valuable and fun, and you can’t really go wrong. Well, you can go wrong if you try to smack stuff with most mage staves, or cast spells with (most) claymores, but it’s best to experiment. There are hybrids out there, melee weapons with less magic power but decent attack and vice versa. Probably best to keep it simple at first, and make sure every purple star item you find, you save, and put it in the storage at the Frost Hound. Sell any items in your storage that don’t have purple stars if you have to, you can find them again, even if they’re rare, purple items you can’t, and you never need the money more than you need the one of a kind item, you might not need them, but eventually they may come in handy, and some have optional plot or quest relevance. In terms of stats, it’s best to find gear that compliments you, as a thief, you like evasion and crit, attack power and accuracy, charmers like sexiness and temptation, mages like spellpower, willpower, thieves like light armor, warriors like heavy armor with lots of defenses, mages like robes. There are options but those are safe rules to follow.

You want a party. You need a party. Put your pants back on. You aren’t the last samurai, you aren’t the lone ranger, you’re fighting, protecting and/or corrupting very high tier threats. No, you can’t pick a thief and sneak past the boss you have to fight that’s attacking the city, no, you can’t fight it with a solo mage head on, no, you can’t solo tank 5 enemies and kill them without Breaking Benjamin or Linkin Park playing in the background and every fight needing 30 items and a good 30 additional minutes. Now the party does leave room for variety, but your party has a max amount, by default, of 3 people. Some quests add guests, some take them away, but you never should do *anything* without making sure you have 3 members, and if you have presence leveled, it’s a good idea to have at least one summon, if not, a party member that can summon. In general, with a party of 3, it’s best to have a distinct role per person. The easiest option is, including you, a damage dealer, meaning someone who wants to deal a lot of damage very fast, a tank, someone at least who attracts threat and preferably has abilities that reduce damage taken, and a dedicated healer. However, the first members you probably meet, Brint and Cait, also work. Cait can get a class change later that gives her more healing, and brint, when switched to brienne later, can get a unique mage tank class change, however even when you first meet them, brint does a lot of damage and can draw a lot of attention, and cait has good healing, so as long as youre not a dedicated healer, whether you choose to tank, or let brint tank, you’ve got a good setup. Later, consider replacing brint with his class change as brienne for more threat, counter attacks, and a summon that can distract enemies and deal more damage, and getting cait’s class change for more heals for drawn out battles. However, maybe that’s for some basic bois. Maybe we don’t want to be basic bois. It’s a good idea to have one person with a group heal, at minimum, and one person who draws threat, minimum, preferably with at least one summon. This gives you much more variety in your options. Good tanks are brienne, arona, azyrran and atugia, damage dealers are quint, kiyoko, brint/brienne, berwyn, healers are cait, etheryn, berwyn, atugia, azyrran. class changes can alter roles however, feel free to experiment, and varying team comp on your character. one thing to keep in mind is it’s good to focus damage types. as in, you don’t want someone hurting their resolve (blue) bar only, while you’re hurting their health (red) bar only. there are some hybrid damage characters, like arona, but make sure you have someone that supports your play. if youre doing damage, make sure your team damages, if youre doing resolve damage, make sure your team does resolve damage, or at least makes the enemy vulnerable to it.

it’s also a good idea to form combinations with your powers. for example, a good level 6 melee thief combo is Deadly Shadow, estrus flask, shadow strike, sneak attack. all of them give obscurement, then sneak attack consumes all obscurement for a smack-dat-****-up button. theres a lot of room for customization though, in that example, sneak attack eats all of your obscurement, so if you happen to miss, youre vulnerable. so, instead, you could replace that with something like the white mage heal spell you could learn from sanders, that doesnt require mage stats, replace sneak attack with the heal, then after your attacks you can heal your team while keeping your protection until your abilities recharge. you can also create powerful combos with weapons, such as the chrysanthemum petal, gained from completing a quest from nakano, that gives 100 attack power and spellpower for one turn after every crit, and some moves like cleave can crit on each enemy, so you wind up stacking the turn amount up to 6 turns of increased damage. very cool. feel free to experiment, but remember colors on numbers represent what they get stronger with, and its usually not a good idea to use magic spells with no focus on them, or attacks when you have a focus on spellpower. it’s not as important, but you can also remember your partys abilities, and if you see that they have the same status effects you cause, you might want to try using abilities that cause a different set if you can. not if affects your role, but that extra bit can help. whenever you sleep at the frost hound, make sure you also get a drink from garth, experiment with each one, they each give unique stats boosts temporarily. if youre in a difficult area or you know you’re fixing to engage a boss, be sure to grab them, every little bit helps. dont be afraid to sell any item without a purple star in your inventory to make space, *except* for kaelirras tears, a item you can use to revive yourself when you die, wyldsap, a full hp and resolve recovery, and razorcup nectar, a massive xp boost to level up yourself, your party, or new party members, and ley crystal grenade, which can be used later on to sabotage a enemy camp in return for a wyldsap, or as a aoe damage trump card in battle.

finally, a brief overview of some of the characters, which hopefully points you in the right direction to soothe your magic rod or boiling sinkhole. first cait. cait cait cait. cait’s confused. right out the gate you tend to her wounds, follow her through a blizzard, and fight a cult to …”save”… her sister, then when best girl big momma kas shows up and gives you a love concussion, cait considers leaving you and running off… somewhere… but then sticks around long enough until you wake up. you have tension, she’s thankful you helped her, talks about how smexy you are, youre getting some obvious signals, you try to escalate, andddddddd she’s definitely up for a ride. shes just also available for a ride… to everyone. minus maybe cultists. weird dog man? random female dog that only makes barking noises? weird blackmailing blacksmith? *giant horse man thats textbook insane and probably has rabies?* yup. she’s saving her undercarriage though. (?) she’s… not ntr, she just belongs to the hood, and doesnt even get involved with you at all until she hits you with a mandatory “i acknowledge youre public transportation and will not slap the pink off of you for running at the rabies horse or stop you from going down on someone whenever you so choose, and also apparently i swear to defend your undercarriage because, well, congratulations to the special guy who wins whatevers behind door number 2”. she’s… vanilla.. y. sweet character that’s just more of a free love hippy, the kind that makes you attached, but you can’t be attached to them really, but you also can’t really be jealous because whoever she goes after next isn’t special either when the random wolf in a alley shows up and she spots him, then does a full excorcist 360 head spin when she acquires the scent of a male or female minotaur. brint/brienne is a total bro/husbando/sisterinarms/waifu. vanilla and wants to be *monogamous* which is pretty insane for the games world along with kiyoko. has big mommy milkies and needs lots of help, also has gameplay benefits of giving food buffs when you drink from her. arona is… a lover/rival. exemplary orc, luvs smashin, bof kinds, luvs fightin, luvs bein smashed, both kinds, luvs drinkin, luvs yellin, ‘ates cowards. can be a sub or dom depending on if you beat them in combat or if you let them win. azyrran, very sweet hornet girl, also a walking milk and drug dispenser, seems to be a polygamous person but more selective than cait and loving of her partners. atugia, dullahan, low amount of content currently, muscular, mysterious, open and friendly with relationships. etheryn, abuse victim you can help through the recovery process (or not you monster), open with relationships but super loving and makes sure you know it, evelyn, not my exact cup of tea but her dialogues interesting so i laid back and thought of england. heavy dom content, only giver not a taker, focuses on humiliation and class based dom play, one of the characters you may want to avoid if you choose.

kiyokos nearly the central character, much of your enjoyment will stem from how hard you enjoy fox girls, she doesnt really have anything that could be a deal breaker, monogamous, very loving, indebted, den mother bloodline so lets just say you best hope she loves you and you love her and child support doesnt become a thing, or else youll need a extra paycheck every visit. primary downside being… yandere tendencies and she likes being rough. like twilight breaking dawn rough though. does *everything* besides undercarriage stuff, but probably would do that too if that led to her having…. uh honey what kid are we on? anyway. various secondary characters of varying importance, most are great, whatever your tastes are you’ll have at least a few favorites, there’s plenty of vanilla lovey dovey characters with light scenes, 4 legged clawed demon beast tsunderes with not so light scenes and not crazy on the love thing, antagonists you can fall in love with, and *technically* you can go through the game without actually going with anyone, not very moral though since one characters stuck in limbo unless you at minimum, lie back and think of your happy place, and some party members and side characters have heat cycles, so you just kinda become negligent if you marry someone that fell in love with you for saving her, she has health issues you should help her with as her partner, but then i guess you just say “nah later lol im very moral lol keep the bed warm ill be back in like a couple years, ill prob bring a anniversary present or something”. men aren’t my cup of tea, but brints great too. very cool friend and vanilla, if you like him that way, partner. berwyns kinda moody but has like harry potter charm, kinda freaky though, the guy youre most likely to open his door while he just kinda, polishes his spear buck naked while staring straight at you. quints suave and mysterious, spy type, garths a great character just uh. well first he’s married and in love. and second . second he uh. well, if he asks to be rough, well by rough he means like peter griffin versus chicken. so if like one of you being peter griffin and the other the chicken, blood everywhere, just gets you going, pregnant or not, well. too many side characters to give examples of clearly, but ill give special notice to leorah. shes *pop* noice. there’s probably more i could say or left out, but if somethings helped someone out, or made a fan of the game, or if i made someone chuckle, good enough for me.