Remember the tutorials you went through or maybe skipped at the beginning of Story and Quest mode? These tricks that you learnt this early on are the basic essentials you need for any situation. Mastering these techniques is vital to go from three hit combos to insane thirty or more hit combos.

So in story mode try using all the rooms in the castles you are in. Then, in these rooms use the basics from the tutorial to maximise on your damage and point gains. Learn the different ways that you can use the same traps so that you can create more elaborate and exciting situations. Using a springboard to throw them into a Bear Trap? Why not throw them into a Lethal Lance and follow up by kicking them away with a Swinging Axe.

In Quest Mode you have a bit more challenge as you must complete the objective set out in front of you. The key here is to make sure that your diabolica are set up correctly for your objective. Need an enraged opponent? Add something like an Iron Rake. Need Impact+ damage to break armour? Switch out to a Swinging Axe. Going into a level with many stairs or ramps? Take along with you a Boulder or Spiked Ball. Also remember that Velguirie can do the one thing Leagrinna cannot, Kick. Kicking is not just good to use against opponent that are too close. You can use it at the beginning or in mid combo in order to add more to your Ark point gain. Abilities are just as important as the traps, do not forget to use them.

Whether you are in a giant castle during Story mode or exploring the new areas in Quest mode, you should use your environment to your advantage. The area you are in isn’t simply a nice little asthetic place for you to admire, it can become just as deadly a weapon as the diabolica you carry.

For Story mode you will be using the castle layouts to your advantage. Early on you can use pillars to do tremendous damage to opponents and even set them up for an armour break. Set up a trap like a Wall Nudge against the pillar and set up your opponent so that they will get crushed by it falling over. After it has fallen either watch as your enemy bleeds out or  continue the combo with a Swinging Axe or other traps to increase your Ark gain. Later in the story you will come across moving environment traps called trapmobiles. Before you try using these see what they do and whether you can change that with a nearby switch. Then time your lure and traps correctly to utilise these and watch that pain.

The same tips can easily be carried across into Quest mode with the new areas you will be thrown into. Again, see what you have at your disposal and test them out to see what they do and where your victim lands. Then implement a strategy where you can either kick or throw your opponents into these and then follow up. You will soon find out that this is much easier to do than you may think.

Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess may make you rage when your perfectly planned combo doesn’t work out as planned. Luckily, you can retry your current mission from the beginning on both Story and Quest mode in order to learn from your mistakes and try something different.

Let us take armour breaking for example. This mechanic in the game is one of the toughest to master as you have to find out your opponents weaknesses in order to break them down. When you first meet an armoured opponent read their immunities and try different combinations on them. Once you have found a weakness, retry the mission and try adding in Impact+ traps to your arsenal. Something as simple as a restart can help clear your mind and give you a clean slate to work off of with the same victim.

Another common trait that you may come across in game is that sometimes the traps may not position a character where you need them to be. Yes this can be frustrating but again you can retry and learn from the mistake. If they land too short of the target, move your traps back a step. If you want to throw them into an environment trap but they just aren’t landing correctly, use the zoom in to find out where the problem in your combo lies. Then retry and go for it a second time with your fixes. You may not even need to restart the entire mission to make amendments. If your target has a lot of health or you miss a step in your combo, just lure them back to the start and try again. There is no punishment for going back and trying something again, so don’t let the game get to you.

Now you may know to switch in between traps after a successful combo. But have you ever tried switching out in mid combo? Trap switching can be a weapon you have never truly exploited before, but with a few examples here you may just learn that you can do much more with the same diabolica.

Let us have a standard combo to start with. A Bear Trap followed by a Swinging Axe that flings your foe onto a Springboard that sends them face first into a Lethal Lance. Nice combination right? Guaranteed four hits minimum. Now, let us take this to the next level. By the time your victim is flying in the air with the Springboard trap, you can open up the diabolica menu and remove the first two even three traps in the combo. After this, you can then place new traps over where your opponent is going to be after the Lethal Lance has completed. So let us try and implement this in game, bearing in mind that you can only switch out traps after their animation cycle finishes. The three hit combo goes off successfully and now as your opponent is in mid-flight you can place down an Iron Rake that will force them back onto a Delta Horse that can position them for a Swinging Axe that can launch them across the room. With this simple trick you have gone from a four hit combo it a possible seven hit combo with even more potential for you to carry it on.

Use this technique after you have learned a little about your traps and your environment. After a little bit of learning, you can literally spend anything from one to five minutes unleashing combos that can give you insane levels of Ark.

There you have it, five simple tips that can assist you in Deception IV: The Nightmare Princess. Unleash your inner tormentor and show the game and the world what you can do. Do you have any tips of your own? Managed to pull off any insane combos yourself? Why not let us know down in the comments. If you are new to the world of Deception, be sure to have a read of our review of the game.