Dishonored 2 Guide: The 10 most important powers

Dishonored 2 is a very different game when it comes to stealth. Unlike Thief and Deus Ex don’t: bona fide superior powers that can bend reality to your impulse. It doesn’t matter if you pick to move through Karnaca as Corvo Attano or Emily Kaldwin, you’ll have access to a unique subset of super-natural abilities that can totally shape what you are capable of, and all the crafty aspects you can dispose of, disable or bypass your enemies. But you won’t get access to all of those powers right away, because you need to unlock them with Runes you find dispersed throughout the environment. And due to the reason of so many Runes lying around (they aren’t easy to find), you need to start planning early which powers you want in your collection.

This guide will try to help everyone with that process Having the place of both Corvo and Emili, I’ve sighted which powers you’ll want to prioritize, and how they are going to enhance your playstyle choice. Dishonored 2 is a game that will try and bring you down by the way of your choices that you’ll use throughout the game, you will probably end up doing some powerful experimentations of your own. But for your first time through, these space-and-time-twisting skills are specifically vital.

General powers

Corvo and Emily share the exact same set of Enhancements, passive boons that sound fine but can totally inform your playstyle. The top recommendation from my side:

Shadow Kill: this will save you a lot of time and level-wide alerts, to be honest. Dead corpses will turn to ash once you have killed an unsuspecting target, so you won’t have to tuck-in their body in a hiding spot and the passersby won’t even notice that someone was killed here. This can still be useful on a Low Chaos run: killing a lot of guards along the way won’t send Karnaca into turmoil, even if it does weigh somewhat on your conscience. Also, keep in mind that the two upgrades to this power – which will turn all kills into ash, or turn bodies into bloody swarms,  so sneaking assassins should be fine with just the basic power.

Agility: Getting to a higher vantage point always comes very handy, it doesn’t matter if you plan on knocking out a room full of guards, or getting all fired up to slice the throats of some high-priority targets to kick off a murderous row. Being at a higher level will make it easy for you to traverse the very vertical level layouts, giving you the edge of vaulting up to the rooftops that were once out of your reach. No doubt, you could use Far/Blink Reach to enable your access to most heights, but being able to hope up to a ledge with your stealth instincts is greater than the basic run and jump. Also, the extra oomph of a double jump will make it much easier to land on your enemies with the precise pinpoint for quick kill/ stealth knockout.

Bone charm Crafting: This one is ultimate in detained satisfaction. Getting your skills up in the Bonecharm Charming is a great way to further modify how you play the game, and Trait-Synergy turns incremental buffs of Bonecharms into significant leads once you start stacking your favorite effects.  Although it is very expensive to access, acquiring Craft Runes is your best bet for developing your suite of power beyond the general limits, as you will be able to transform your Bonecharms into Runes slots until later, also, you can effectively include two Bonecharms into one to save on space. You may feel a little less powerful in the beginning, but Bonecharm Crafting is specially designed for long-term investment, that’s vital for learning more powers and upgrades for later use.

Emily Kaldwin’s abilities

The Queen of Dunwall has a lot of powers that linger on trickery, where you can set up all types of misdirection or total avoidance. It won’t matter if you’re aiming for High or Low chaos playthrough, these abilities will constantly come in handy:

Shadow Walk:  Dishonored 2 made this ability famous way before the actual game was released, This is a shapeshifting one in which Emily moves into a crawling creature of uncontaminated shadow, creeping along the ground and staying passively hidden unless you start running circles around guard’s feet in rooms that have good lighting. When fully decked-up with Shadow Run and Enhanced Shadow Attack, this ability can turn you into an absolute slaying machine, as you’re almost invincible during all the brutal execution animations – or if your prefer non-brutal approach, Shadow Walk is still the only choice for slipping by large group of enemies, then sucking the memories out of whichever poor sap gets covered from the group.

Domino: Shadow Walk may be the most flash, but Domino feels like Emily’s genuine signature power. Linking up your targets to either brutalized or hit simultaneously is simple, even with Domino’s relatively short distant ability; just find a high pole/perch, peer down on your opponents, and start planning all the skillful tricks you can get up to with Domino. If you’re feeling specifically feisty, try generating Domino link from an opponent to a mirror image Doppelganger, then implementing yourself to score the kill. Or, link a room of opponents together, shoot one with a Sleep Dart, then loot all of their bodies before they hit the ground in their third form of sleeping; snoring.

Corvo Attano’s abilities

When it comes to Corvo’s powers, they are almost identical to the set he had in previous part of Dishonored, but this time you get to pick and select which upgrades to unlock for the Royal Saviour. Rat flocks are less of a factor in Karnaca than they are in Dunwall, but still, you can roleplay as death-bringing Pied Piper with the hungry flock. For everything else try to contemplate a little bit:

Lasting Possession:  This one is great for stealth, Ghost-Style moments where you aim to pass through in a proper undetected way. If you Unlock Corpse Possession, the amount of potential hiding places in the levels surely increases. If you’re really finding a challenge, Lasting Possession is vital for scoring the impressive Circle of Life Trophy/Achievement, where you bob your Possession in-between a person, rat, fish, hound, and the bloodfly all linked between a single activation. Good luck finding the perfecting options and sequence to execute it.

Stop Time: This one is no doubt the best ability of Corvo: A signature power to bend and freeze time, this is a life-saver, it’ll help you set up all kinds of mystical maneuvers. Throw an unconscious body off a perch, then hit the ammunition right out of the air. It will allow you to perform simple executions like sneaking past entire armies with ease, and the power to spool time forward step by step can create some memorable moments of hilarity, as the surprised guards of citizens react to your existence in shock with their low and slow voices. In terms of pure creative potential for the bizarre murders or exclusions, nothing tops stop time.

Powers that were built for Great Confusion:

If you’re just looking to see the world burn and you’re fine with brutalizing anyone and everyone in your vision, these powers are going to help you well. But if you’re striving towards stealth playstyle it might be best to pass on the following abilities/powers and save your runes for something extra valuable.

Reflexes (Improvements): This can make or crush your survivability in your battles, particularly on tougher challenges. The strength to parry incoming attacks is necessary when you’re going up into a group of enemies, as you’ll immediately find that slashing wildly is only valid if you’ve already got the jump on someone. Skilling into Superior Deflect is important for turning incoming gunfire and bolts, and the fact that you can use these turning diversions to execute opponents who are up close is a huge boon in large-scale battles. But maybe the most important of all is Adept Parry, which increases the timing windows for parries and should probably give you hundred percent success rate on your parries in the process. That information is a gift when you’re trying to block incoming strikes in fear and in the heat of the battle, and it’s sure to save your life many times.

Doppelganger (Emily): It’s unquestionably neat to be able to enchant a mirror reflection of yourself, though, in training, your Doppelganger can be a tad awkward. If you want to transform Emily into a one woman army, you’ll need the Deadly Shade and Twin Shades upgrades, which will let you generate two clones that can attack and even kill your opponents. But for stealth targets, the complexity that Doppelgangers cause among opposition ranks can just as quickly be replicated by a Howling Bolt and a quick Far Reach jump to a high vantage position.