No Rest for the Wicked: How Each Stat Works and Leveling Tips

In this guide, we’ll explore how each stat works and drop some handy leveling tips in No Rest for the Wicked.

No Rest for the Wicked is Moon Studio’s most ambitious project to date. Visually, the game is pretty stunning, which really isn’t much of a surprise when you think that they were the ones who designed the Ori games. But underneath the beautiful graphics, No Rest for the Wicked is a game that proves challenging for even veteran soulslike fans.

Similar to games like Dark Souls or Bloodborne, No Rest for the Wicked features a deep and intricate leveling system allowing the player to increase their health, stamina, damage, etc. If you’re new to this genre, though, things will no doubt seem pretty confusing when you start.

Which stats should you upgrade first? 

What does each of them do? 

Well, once you’re done with this article, you’ll have answers to all these questions. So, without further ado, let’s get to it!

No Rest for the Wicked: Each Stat Explained

In No Rest for the Wicked, you get eight different stat attributes that you can play around with to optimize your build. Before we dive deeper, here’s a quick rundown of all the stats and what each of them does:

• Health: Pretty straightforward; gives you more hit points, allowing you to withstand more damage.
• Stamina: Gives you a larger stamina pool. Stamina is necessary for attacking, blocking, parrying, and dodging.
• Strength: Increases your damage output with a strength-based weapon.
• Dexterity: Increases your damage output with a Dexterity-based weapon.
• Intelligence: Increases your damage output with an Intelligence-based weapon.
• Faith: Increases your damage output with a Faith-based weapon.
• Focus: Gives you a larger focus pool. Focus is used when activating your weapon’s Rune attacks.
• Equip Load: Affects your total equipment load. Every equippable item in No Rest for the Wicked has a certain weight. With a high Equip Load, you will be able to carry heavier weapons and gears without getting overencumbered. Each point increases your maximum weight capacity by 10. 

How To Level Up In No Rest for the Wicked?

In No Rest for the Wicked, as you kill enemies and bosses, you gain experience points. Once you reach a certain number of experience points, you gain one level. Now, the good thing here is that each level you gain in the game gives you three attribute points that you can invest in any of the eight stats.

Similar to souls-like games, clearing objectives doesn’t give you any extra experience. However, on your journey, you may come across some Experience Potions that can give you a nice boost of exp when consumed. These are single-use items, so we recommend only using them when you need to gain an extra level.

Currently, only Small Experience Potions are available which gives you 50 experience when used. Later on, we might see other similar consumables that give you a bigger boost. For now though, this is the only way to level up in No Rest for the Wicked?

No Rest for the Wicked Leveling Tips

No Rest for the Wicked can be a pretty unforgiving game if you’re not prepared for it. And no, we don’t mean simply optimizing your build based on your knowledge of the weapon and gear system of the game. You also need to know which stats to invest in to get the perfect balance.

When you start a new character, you start with ten levels across the board. This is different from other soul-likes, where you usually get to pick from one of the available pre-made classes that have different stat distribution.

While this might be a bad thing for those looking to build a perfectly optimized character right from the get-go, for a beginner, it’s actually pretty good. This lets you try out most of the weapons available early on in the game.

For early games, we recommend investing heavily in Health. This will give you a larger HP pool. The enemies in the game deal a ton of damage early, and having that extra bit of HP will make all the difference when you start a new game.

Once you have a nice HP pool, start investing points in Stamina. Stamina is your bread and butter when it comes to combat. You need it for everything from attacking to dodging. And you don’t want to get caught with zero stamina when the enemy hit is about to land in this game.

When you’re happy with your Health and Stamina, it’s time to build some damage. Pick the stat that matches with your primary weapon and start pumping some points into it. For example, if you’re using a Two-handed Claymore, adding points into Strength will boost its damage significantly.

In addition, if there’s a weapon you want to equip but you don’t meet the stat requirement, try to put some points into the required stat whenever you get the chance. Also, make sure you add a couple of points into Focus so that you can access the Rune Attacks for your weapon. Some of them are pretty devastating.

With enough points in the Focus stat, you’ll be able to increase your Focus bars which lets you use multiple Rune Attacks or use powerful variants.

We recommend investing points into Equip Load only when needed. If you’re going with a Dexterity build, you might want to stay in the Light Weight Class. However, for most people, Normal Weight Class should be fine.

If there’s an armor set or a weapon that you really want to use, but it pushes you to Heavy territory, invest a couple of points into the Equip Load stat.

Build the Perfect Cerim

The leveling system in No Rest for the Wicked lets you try out different playstyles by tweaking the available attributes. While souls-like veterans might not require as much Health or Stamina investment as we mentioned, for a newcomer to the genre, Health is pretty much the most important stat.

Hopefully, our leveling tips can help you build the perfect Cerim. Good luck!

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