Battle Basics

• Every turn, you can cast as many spells as you have mana for. You do this by selecting Cast Spell below a witch, and choosing what spell to cast.
• Every spell has options (pictured above) - hover over options for tooltips. Most spells can be multi-cast (using hits/count). In the screenshot above, I am choosing to fire 2 strikes.
• The health, mana, barriers and pact bar will all flash to show a preview of the spell. In the above picture, it shows that the strikes will deal a little over half the health of the faun, and if they are both critical hits it will nearly kill the faun. The preview does not account for strikes missing.
• The box next to enemies/characters are their buffs and debuffs. Hover over them for a tooltip about what they do. The dots above the health bar are barriers - they each take a hit to be broken, and must all be broken before you can deal any damage.
• It's natural to want to cast as many spells as you can each turn, but sometimes the right strategy is to end your turn doing nothing - saving up mana for the next turn. This is because often it takes a lot of mana to breech the enemy's defenses (barriers, or clearing illusions with sense), so it's better to get more hits in after breeching the defenses once, then breaching the defenses twice and hitting as many times as you can over two turns.

Characters

Griselda's Spells

• Barrier - Griselda can cast up to 7 barriers (shown as dots above her health), and like with enemies, each barrier completely blocks one attack, taking no damage. Additionally, if you set the element to the element of the enemy, each barrier broken will recover 7+ mana of Griselda's, making them almost free to cast. Check what enemies are targeting Griselda, and how many attacks each will will do (visible in the encyclopedia if you sensed them, or by clicking their health bar). Keep in mind that enemies can miss, and if the barrier isn't broken, you recover no mana from it.
• Attract - Makes all enemies target a witch of your choice this turn (usually Griselda). Combined with Barrier, you can keep Dianthus alive by forcing all enemies to attack Griselda, and having Griselda block all the hits.
• Intimidate - This is similar to Attract, except instead of changing the enemy targets THIS turn, it makes it more likely for enemies to target you on all future turns. For longer battles, this can save a lot of mana over Attract, as with 4 or so stacks of Intimidate, enemies will almost always target you. It also makes non-combat spells more likely to target you - allowing you to control who the Faun will Sever. This is a buff however, which can be cleared by enemies with Spectral Wave!
• Camouflage - The opposite of Intimidate - but since you only control 2 witches, it is essentially the same - 1 Intimidate on Griselda is the same as 1 Camouflage on Dianthus.
• Burst - Deals damage approximately equal to the amount of mana Griselda has, using up all her mana in casting it. It can also miss, and only counts as one hit if the enemy has Barriers. It's weaker than Strike, but Griselda doesn't start knowing Strike, and so it can be useful for finishing off an enemy with low health.
• Light - makes one enemy more likely to miss for one turn (for all its attacks). Useful if you're feeling lucky, or in a pinch.
• Shadows - Similar to Light, except instead of making one enemy more likely to miss, it makes all allies less likely to be hit.

Future Spells

Griselda learns spells based on what classes you take each week. You can look at the Spell List tab of the Encyclopedia to see a list of all spells, and at what class you learn them. Strike, Pact and Sense are all useful first level spells that Griselda doesn't have. However, don't stress too much about what spells you learn, as the battles are designed that you can win them even if Griselda never takes a single class.

If you do teach Griselda Strike, unless you also teach her Elemental Strikes she will only be able to use fire-type strikes. They will also be weaker than Dianthus's fire strikes, as Dianthus has higher Bravery than Griselda, so it's usually best to use Griselda's strikes to clear barriers, and use Dianthus for the actual damage dealing.

Dianthus's Spells

• Strike - Each hit can clear 1 barrier, or damage fae - and fae do have strengths and weaknesses you can target by setting the element.
• Sense - Unlocks the encyclopedia and stats of the target enemy. It also clears all illusions on that enemy. If an enemy has Shadows or Decoy, you definitely want to clear it with Sense before striking, as both increase the number of misses you'll get.
• Link - Increases the mana regeneration of a witch by 10 each turn. It costs 20 mana, so 2 turns after you cast it you've broken even, and beyond that you'll be generating more mana than if you never cast Link - so definitely useful for longer battles. Keep in mind witches have a mana cap (no sense generating more mana than the witch can hold per turn), and that Link can be removed by Spectral Wave.
• Sever - Decreases the mana generation of an enemy by 10 each turn. The value of this depends on the enemy and what it uses its mana for - but it will lower the number of barriers and spells the enemy can cast each turn, and no enemy in this game can clear Sever. Keep in mind that enemies will have at least 7 mana regeneration per turn no matter how many stacks.
• Heal - Restores HP of a witch. Since Dianthus has high Kindness as an Earth witch, this actually heals a LOT of HP, and can save you in a pinch so don't forget about it.
• Farspeak - Unfortunately, being the grump she is, Dianthus will always choose the wrong option when farspeaking with fae. It makes for some funny dialogue, but has no benefit in combat. Yes, this does mean if Griselda learns Farspeak, she has additional farspeak options.
• Pact - She will outright refuse to cast this.
• Burst - No reason to use this since she has Strike.

Future Spells

Over the course of the game, Dianthus will learn:

• Light/Attract (from her Summoning classes) - same as Griselda's Light and Attract spell. But, useful if you need to cast them and Griselda is out of mana.
• Wave - The same as Strike, except it hits all enemies, costs twice as much mana and can not miss. Usually, you want to pick off one enemy at a time with Strike (as it takes mana to breech defenses), but against multiple enemies relying on Shadows/Decoy, this can be worth it as it cannot miss no matter how many stacks of Shadows the enemy has.
• Strike Mastery - This adds a Type option to Strikes - you can hover over them to read descriptions of them all. I usually do Homing strikes, as like with Wave, they cannot miss.

Enemies

At this point, I recommend you try fighting the enemies yourself and use the above to come up with strategies to defeat them. However, if you're struggling with a specific enemy, here's some tips on each one.

Red-eyed Faun

These enemies are relatively weak, have no barriers, and only two attacks. The only thing that makes them dangerous is Sever. Like Dianthus's Sever, this will lower your mana regeneration until you can only generate 7 mana per turn. There are 3 general strategies to defeating them:

1. Defeat them quickly - the less of them there are, the less stacks of sever will accumulate. They're weak enough that this is more viable than it seems. Use Sense to remove Shadows - if even one Strike misses because of Shadows, you were better off using Sense.
2. Control who they Sever using Intimidate. This means one of your witches will end up with only 7 mana generation per turn, but for Griselda who can recover mana from blocking hits using Elemental Barriers, this isn't as bad as it sounds.
3. Give them a taste of their own medicine by using Sever. Even a single stack of Sever will stop a Faun from casting Sever for the rest of the battle, taking away its one strength.

Nightmare

While they don't have much health, they can cast a LOT of barriers and have a Decoy which will dodge the first hit of every attack unless you cast sense on it, making them one of the hardest enemies to actually injure. They also have the dreaded Spectral Wave, which like Wave is a ranged, undodgeable attack, but it also clears one random buff per hit. That means Link, Shadows and Intimidate are pretty useless against them. However, there are many ways to deal with them:

• Simply ending your turn to stockpile mana often gives you enough to breech their defenses AND defeat them in one turn - especially if Griselda has Strike too and can help breaking barriers. Just be careful to actually defeat it that turn if Griselda strikes their barrier, as it will regenerate mana from fire-element strikes, allowing them to cast more than one wave or cast more barriers next turn.
• While you can't use Link, you can use Sever. Each stack of Sever will mean it can cast one less Barrier next turn, making it easier to injure, and eventually you can even stop them from using their Wave.
• While their Wave cannot be dodged, it can be blocked. There's no reason not to put up fire barriers to protect Griselda from each Wave, as you'll regenerate mana from the Wave just like you would a normal attack.

Knightsbane

With high health, barriers, hard exoskeleton and regeneration every turn, Pact is probably your best option if Griselda has learned it. Unfortunately, even when pressured, Dianthus still won't use Pact. But, it is possible to defeat without Pact (even on Hard where it has a lot more regeneration per turn). Luckily, with a defensive Air witch and an offensive Earth witch, you couldn't pick a better pair of witches to deal with the Knightbane.

• This is going to be a longer, drawn out battle. Spells like Link, Sever and Intimidate are your best friends.
• With her high creativity, Griselda actually generates MORE mana when her barrier is broken than it costs to cast. With Attract/Intimidate and 5 Air Barriers when the Knightsbane attacks, you can literally stall the battle forever.
• Even with casting 5 Air Barriers, Griselda will have mana left over because of above. She can use this mana to cast Pact, Confuse, or Strike to clear Barriers (if she has those spells). If she doesn't have Elemental Strikes, it's not worth actually hitting the Knigtsbane with it's Fire resistance and Griselda's low Bravery.
• If you happened to have crafted a Cleansing Potion (using Potions) or had previously Pacted a Nightmare in the previous battle, then you can clear the Knightsbane of it's regeneration and fortify. Without those buffs, it becomes a relatively easy battle. You can also try your luck at Summoning if you have it, but only a Nightmare is particularly useful.
• For Dianthus, the goal is to hit with many Earth-strikes to deal more damage than it regenerates every turn. With her high kindness and its earth weakness, you can actually do this without any Link or Sever in Normal mode, but it will take a LONG time (and this is impossible on Hard). Instead, Link Dianthus so she can cast a ton of strikes EVERY turn while Griselda keeps it stalled. Even if you want to pact it, this is worthwhile, as the lower its health, the easier it is to pact.

BOSS

To avoid spoilers, I won't name the boss here. But, the biggest issue you'll have with it is its Siphon ability. Every other turn, it will use Siphon to steal all mana from one witch, leaving them unable to cast anything, and applying a weakness debuff. The other turn it will use that stolen mana to fire element-less strikes. The stolen mana lets it strike enough to kill an undefended witch in one or two attacks. However, since it doesn't attack on the turn it Siphons, you have two turns to prepare for the strike - even if one witch will have no mana for one of those turns.

• You can block the strikes with barriers - unfortunately, it fires a lot and they are element-less so you cannot recover mana from them.
• Unlike in most battles, stockpiling mana can be dangerous right before it Siphons - you want to use up as much mana as possible from witches in danger of being Siphoned to limit how much it can steal. This might mean casting cheap spells like Light, which can help you dodge some of its strikes.
• Intimidate does affect who it chooses to Siphon. While there's never a guarantee with Intimidate, with enough stacks of it, you can be relatively certain it will always Siphon and attack a single witch. This frees up the other witch to stockpile mana. Unfortunately, this means the targeted witch will get all the Weakness debuffs from the Siphons, lowering their attack and defense and making strikes that make it through their defenses more dangerous.
• The only defense the boss has is Decoy - and at this stage of the game Dianthus has Strike Mastery, so you don't even have to clear the Decoy as long as you use Homing strikes. As long as Dianthus isn't Siphoned too much (losing mana and lowering attack), you can defeat it quickly enough that you don't have to worry about the Weakness piling up on Griselda.
• In Hard difficulty, it has Regeneration. While not as much as the Knightsbane, it's enough to need Link.