Natural Doctrine – Tips and Tricks for Getting Started

Before you play the Natural Doctrine game, you will definitely want to know these simple but useful tips and tricks. If you have any tips feel free to share with us!

Things to Know Before Playing

• The initiative system is somewhat poorly explained, so a refresher: it is critical to maintain initiative in this game by killing the enemies whose turns come between your current turn and your next turn. So, for example, assume the turn order is: Geoff, A, Vasily, B, Zeke, C, D, E. In Geoff’s turn, he almost certainly wants to take down A no matter what. On Vasily’s turn, Geoff and Vasily can team up to take down B and C. Then, on Zeke’s turn, Geoff, Vasily, and Zeke can team up to take down D and E. In this way, the enemy gets no turns at all. If the enemy gets even one turn in this sequence, or if there are many enemies by the time everyone in your party acts, they’re likely to steamroll you by all acting several times, abusing the initiative system.
• You can’t Link if the active character just ends their turn, but you can Link if they perform almost any other action. For this reason, it may often be prudent to block even when you don’t expect to take any damage, or to potion someone even if they are at full health, just to give your allies more actions.
• When the game tells you a fight is unwinnable or pointless, this is almost always the case, with no reward except maybe a sliver of EXP for attempting to fight anyway.
• Give Geoff the ability to hold guns, even if you don’t give him any skills for them. The versatility is paramount to survival.
• Grinding generally serves little purpose, and is limited in efficacy anyway because the repeatable dungeons eventually close themselves. You’ll usually be at an adequate level to tackle whatever the next story mission is.
• Opening doors consumes an action, and you don’t get it back if there are enemies on the other side. It’s usually best to have your first unit in the action order open doors, so that you can have the most possible actions to tackle whatever’s behind it.