Starting out in Garden of Witches can feel overwhelming. There are different scissors to choose from, spells, special skills, relics, Curses, Imprints, and plenty of upgrades that can completely change how your character plays.
Garden of Witches is an action roguelite where simply picking the biggest damage upgrade isn’t always the best strategy. Your build works best when your weapons, spells, stats, and upgrades complement each other.
This beginner’s guide explains the main systems, combat basics, useful early-game builds, and tips that can help you survive longer and create stronger runs.
Garden of Witches Beginner Guide – Tips, Builds, Combat
Before entering a stage, you can customize Sill’s loadout with different equipment and abilities.
Your available choices include:
- Main weapons
- Spells
- Special skills
- Relics
- Curses
- Attributes and other upgrades
Your weapon determines how you approach most fights, while spells and special skills give you additional ways to deal damage or handle dangerous situations.
Different scissors can play completely differently. Some require you to charge attacks manually, others attack automatically, and some are designed around close-range or area damage.
Don’t assume that the weapon with the highest damage number is automatically the best choice. A weapon that fits your preferred playstyle and works well with your upgrades can be much more effective.
You can also replay completed chapters at higher difficulties once you’ve become more comfortable with the game.
Combat Basics
Combat is one of the most important parts of Garden of Witches. Your positioning and timing can matter just as much as your build.
Enemies become stronger as you progress, while elite enemies and bosses require considerably more preparation.
Take Advantage of Refreshed Cooldowns
One useful mechanic to remember is that your cooldowns refresh when you enter a new room.
This means you can use your strongest abilities without worrying about saving them for the next encounter.
A typical room can therefore go like this:
- Enter the room.
- Use your strongest attacks immediately.
- Clear the enemies.
- Collect the rewards or complete the room objective.
- Enter the next room with your abilities refreshed.
If your attacks can quickly eliminate the enemies, don’t be afraid to spend your cooldowns early.
Weapons
Sill has access to several types of magical scissors, and each one encourages a different approach to combat.
Giant Scissors
Giant Scissors are a heavier weapon with an attack pattern that differs from the standard scissors.
They can be useful if you prefer a more deliberate style of attacking.
Broken Scissors
Broken Scissors are a two-handed weapon that provides another unique attack style.
Their mechanics make them play differently from the more conventional scissors.
Magic Scissors
Magic Scissors can be charged before releasing their attack.
When properly upgraded, their charged projectiles can deal tremendous damage.
The downside is that charging leaves you vulnerable if you’re standing in a dangerous position.
Magic Scissors become particularly interesting when combined with upgrades that improve:
- Projectile damage
- Projectile count
- Charge speed
- Cooldown
- Projectile behavior
- Enemy tracking
The key is learning when to charge and when to release the attack early.
Singing Scissors
Singing Scissors attack automatically, making them useful if you don’t want to constantly manage every individual attack.
Their active ability can be manually triggered to reload them.
Lapis Scissors
Lapis Scissors deal area damage around Sill.
They’re particularly useful when enemies surround you or several enemies are grouped closely together.
Which Weapon Should You Use?
There isn’t necessarily one weapon that is always the best.
Instead, consider how the weapon fits your build.
For example, a high-damage weapon that requires charging might be excellent with charge-speed and cooldown upgrades but awkward if you don’t have enough mobility.
Choose the weapon you can consistently use effectively, then build around its strengths.
Spells and Special Skills
Your weapons aren’t your only source of damage.
You can combine two spells with four special abilities, giving you plenty of room to create different combinations.
For example, Fireball can become the centerpiece of a build if you invest in fire-related damage and upgrades that improve its behavior.
Raven can also become powerful after investing in additional summons and improving their attacks.
Special skills are particularly useful against elite enemies and bosses because they can provide large bursts of damage.
Instead of looking at every ability separately, try to identify a common theme.
If several abilities benefit from the same damage type or mechanic, upgrading that mechanic can give you considerably more value.
Building Your Character
During a run, you’ll find upgrades that can improve different aspects of your character.
Depending on your build, you may encounter upgrades affecting:
- Damage
- Cooldown
- Projectile count
- Maximum stacks
- Charge time
- Projectile speed
- Movement speed
- Burn damage
- Area of effect
- Summons
One of the biggest beginner mistakes is spreading upgrades across everything.
If Fireball is becoming the strongest part of your build, continuing to improve Fireball may be more useful than putting resources into several unrelated abilities.
Build Around a Core
A simple rule is:
Find what is working and make it work even better.
If your main weapon is already performing well, look for upgrades that directly improve it or improve mechanics it shares with your other attacks.
Understanding Imprints
Imprints are another important part of build customization.
After collecting three upgrades of the same rank, you can unlock an Imprint.
Unlike a simple stat increase, an Imprint can change how a weapon or spell functions.
This makes Imprints particularly useful for specialized builds.
For example, an Imprint for Magic Scissors might reduce its base damage while increasing the damage gained from its charge gauge. Another may lower its damage while increasing the number of attacks.
So don’t automatically reject an Imprint because one of its numbers is lower.
A reduction in one stat can be worthwhile if the new effect significantly improves how the weapon performs.
Don’t Ignore Cooldown Reduction
Cooldown reduction is one of the most useful stats to look for.
Being able to use a powerful attack more frequently can sometimes be more valuable than simply increasing its damage.
This becomes especially noticeable when your attacks already hit hard.
A combination of:
- High damage
- Short cooldowns
- Multiple charges
- More projectiles
can turn a strong ability into a much more consistent source of damage.
Charge-based weapons such as Magic Scissors can also benefit greatly from faster charging.
Fireball: A Strong Early Damage Option
Fireball is a great ability to build around, especially while you’re learning the game’s systems.
There are several ways to improve it, allowing you to specialize in different forms of damage.
You can focus on burn effects, improve its charging mechanics, or build around repeated casts.
Some upgrades improve Fireball’s burn effectiveness based on its charged gauges, while others can help its cooldown regenerate after hitting enemies.
Rapid Casting is another useful option because it can improve damage while allowing Fireball to charge faster.
Fragment
Fragment changes Fireball by reducing its damage but causing the explosion to create three additional Fireballs.
This can be useful when you want more area coverage rather than one large burst.
Burn Builds
Fireball can also be developed around burn damage.
Certain effects increase the amount of burn damage enemies receive, while another effect can trigger immediate combustion when accumulated burn damage exceeds an enemy’s remaining health.
This means Fireball can be built around several different approaches:
- Burst damage
- Repeated attacks
- Burn damage
- Area damage
Experiment with the upgrades available during your run and choose the version that best fits your other abilities.
Building Around Ravens
Raven may not look particularly impressive at first, but it can become much stronger with the right investment.
One interesting strategy is to increase the number of summoned crows while reducing the number of attacks they make.
The goal is to accumulate enough crows to trigger their ultimate attack.
Once you have more than nine summoned crows, they are automatically destroyed and replaced by a Phantom Giant Crow.
The Phantom Giant Crow deals 5,000% additional Crow damage to enemies around it, making it a powerful payoff for a dedicated Raven build.
The downside is that Raven needs several upgrades before this strategy reaches its full potential.
Projectile Builds
Projectile bonuses become especially valuable when several of your attacks use projectiles.
For example, if your build includes:
- Fireball
- Projectile-based scissors
- Raven
then a global projectile bonus can improve multiple parts of your build at once.
This can be more efficient than taking an upgrade that only improves one ability.
Whenever you’re choosing between upgrades, ask yourself:
“How many parts of my build does this improve?”
An upgrade with a smaller percentage can sometimes be better if it affects several of your main sources of damage.
Curses: Risk vs. Reward
Curses introduce a risk-and-reward mechanic into your runs.
A Curse temporarily makes your run harder, but completing its negative effect can provide much stronger rewards afterward.
For example, a Curse might prevent you from receiving battle rewards for several fights. Once the Curse ends, you can receive the rewards you missed along with additional rewards.
Other Curses can temporarily:
- Increase dash cooldown
- Reduce your damage
- Make battles harder
The eventual reward can include improvements such as global cooldown reduction or increased damage.
The basic idea is simple:
Accept a temporary disadvantage in exchange for a stronger future reward.
However, don’t take every Curse you encounter.
If your character is already struggling to survive, making the next few fights harder can easily end the run.
Dice and Rerolls
Dice allow you to reroll available upgrade choices.
They’re useful when the upgrades you’re offered don’t fit your current build.
However, don’t spend every Dice immediately.
Early in a run, almost any useful upgrade can help. Later, your build becomes more specialized, and you’ll often need a particular upgrade to complete an Imprint or strengthen your main strategy.
Saving some Dice for the later stages can therefore be extremely valuable.
Relics and General Attributes
Relics provide another way to strengthen your character.
Unlike upgrades that only affect one weapon or spell, some Relics provide global bonuses.
For example, a global weapon-damage bonus can help compensate for an Imprint that reduced your weapon’s base damage.
Likewise, projectile bonuses become much more valuable when several of your attacks rely on projectiles.
Relics and attributes can improve things such as:
- Maximum HP
- Movement speed
- Attack
- Damage
- Cooldown
- Maximum stacks
- Charge speed
When choosing between a specialized bonus and a global bonus, look at how much of your build each one actually affects.
Boss Battles
Bosses are one of the biggest tests of your build.
A setup that destroys ordinary enemies can still struggle against a boss because bosses have much more health and more dangerous attacks.
Don’t judge your build purely by its maximum theoretical damage.
A good boss setup should also have:
- Reliable damage
- Reasonable cooldowns
- Mobility
- Survivability
- Attacks you can use consistently
Charge-based weapons deserve special attention here.
Magic Scissors can produce enormous damage, but you need to choose the right moment and position to charge them safely.
How to Survive Difficult Encounters
Mobility is extremely important.
As enemies become stronger, standing still for too long becomes increasingly dangerous.
It’s easy to focus so much on maximizing damage that you stop paying attention to incoming attacks.
Don’t make every attack wait for the perfect opportunity.
Sometimes it’s better to release a partially charged attack and move away than to stand in danger trying to maximize its damage.
The same principle applies to your special abilities.
Use them when necessary, particularly against dangerous or high-priority enemies, instead of wasting them on targets you can already handle.
The Talent Tree
Garden of Witches also has permanent progression outside individual runs through its Talent Tree.
The tree starts with limited access, and you unlock additional nodes by spending blue gems.
Unlocking one node gives you access to further nodes, allowing you to gradually work through the tree.
The bonuses include things such as:
- Starting Dice
- Movement speed
- Maximum HP
- Attack
- Other permanent stat increases
The Talent Tree eventually reaches Level 70, at which point all of its nodes can be accessed.
These permanent upgrades are useful because they make future runs stronger even when an individual build doesn’t work out.