Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

The Prince of Persia series is back in the well-received Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown. In the 2D action-adventure Metroidvania, players head to the time-shattered region of Mount Qaf in an attempt to rescue the iconic Prince from kidnappers. With this challenging and sometimes complicated story available to players today in Early Access form, we’ve come up with a few tips and tricks based on our time with Ubisoft’s exciting title.

Using guided exploration mode

It may seem crazy, but one of the best things you can do before embarking on your The Lost Crown adventure is to set Exploration Mode to Guided. Essentially, this just makes it easier to see where you have and haven’t been on the world map, while allowing you to see which direction to go in without having to open the world map often for hints of the right course. Guided is convenient, clear and simple, and we can’t recommend it enough for a first-time player of the game.

Venture off the beaten path

It may also seem silly to say this, but you may be tempted to just follow the main story and keep ticking off the core quest beats. While that’s obviously very important to do, one of the best methods you can use to ensure that Sargon routinely improves and becomes increasingly capable in combat is to wander off the beaten path, exploring routes that allow you to explore, and find chests, defeat side bosses, complete secondary missions, and find upgrades for health and the like along the way. This may take a while, but you’ll really feel it later in the game when some very strong enemies make their appearance.

Purchasing permanent upgrades

Once you unlock the Haven, Sargon will meet a number of vendors with whom he can spend his hard-earned crystals on upgrades, amulets, Xerxes and other goodies. If you have the means for it, buy upgrades that will significantly improve Sargon in the first place. This means acquiring more potions, more efficient potions, deadlier swords and other weapons, and even upgraded amulets. If you don’t have the resources for those upgrades, save up and wait until you can buy a major upgrade instead of just buying another amulet.

Use the Wolf-Bride amulet

How do you determine what the best amulet combination is? Which amulets are better than others? In general, the best amulets are the ones that fit how you like to play the game. But there is one amulet that is fantastic for helping you generate Athra. The Wolf-Bride amulet is ideal for anyone who has a hard time generating Athra, because it allows you to convert some of the damage taken into Athra, and believe us, this becomes a lifesaver when it comes to boss fights against enemies that use hard-to-evade attacks. You can find this after defeating the boar boss in the Soma Tree -region of the map early in the game.

Bahman’s Breath is a life-saving Surge early on

Early in the story, when you only have a limited number of potions and also don’t have that many unique skills and weapons at your disposal, you may find it difficult to maintain your health bar. An incredibly useful way to overcome this is to put Bahman’s Breath Athra Surge to good use. This skill allows Sargon to generate a healing pool that will replenish his health bar for a period of time, and is a great alternative to using one of your key healing potions. If you combine this tip with the Wolf-Bride amulet tip above, you should have no problem generating the Athra needed to routinely cast Bahman’s Breath and stay healthy, especially in early boss fights.

Use Athra Surges to interrupt an enemy’s flow

In addition to doing a lot of damage, offensive Athra Surges are also very useful for slowing down an enemy. If you are dealing with an enemy with an opponent’s shield that likes to move around a lot and causes you to have trouble pinning them down, a great method to take the sting out of their flow is to simply hit them with an Athra Surge. This could be the cheaper Verethragna’s Smite, or even one of the more expensive Level 3 moves like Bahamut’s Rage. Regardless of what you have available, if you need a moment to heal or collect yourself, use an Athra Surge and take a breather.

Redeem your collectibles

There are a few collectible missions in The Lost Crown, including finding several sand pots around the entirety of Mount Qaf. While you might think of this as a sole collectible mission line – and it kind of is – you can also get rewards for your continued progress. Every now and then, head to the prophecy room east of the Haven and redeem all the pots you’ve collected so far in exchange for a range of rewards, including amulets, crystals, Soma Tree Petals and more.

Use the eye of the wanderer

Ubisoft has tried to take some of the frustration out of the Metroidvania space by letting players create images of dead ends and puzzles that must all be solved using the Eye of the Wanderer mechanic. Simply put, don’t forget to use this feature. It will be a lifesaver by reminding you where to return to as you acquire new skills and abilities, and it is useful for keeping an eye on puzzle solutions and other secrets scattered all over Mount Qaf.

Hopefully these tips and tricks can help you on your quest through Mount Qaf. If you have any doubts about checking out Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, be sure to read our review of the game here or watch the video review below.