Dinoblade

Overview

Dinoblade is an action RPG from Team Spino LLC where you play a young Spinosaurus hauling a colossal Great Sword in its jaws through a prehistoric world that a cataclysm reshaped. Dinosaurs grew intelligent, forged weapons, and split into rival clans. Your clan was nearly wiped out. You carve a path across seven distinct biomes to find out what caused the cataclysm, and the answer is bigger than you expect: the final truth of the story puts the fate of your species in your own jaws.

The game launched July 23, 2026 on Steam for Windows at $19.99, built in Unreal Engine 5 by a team led by a professional triple-A animator. The demo earned a 97% positive rating from over 4,700 players during Next Fest, the game passed 500K wishlists before launch, and the full release sits at Very Positive with roughly 92% of 1,800 reviews. A first clear runs 6 to 10 hours, and Boss Rush Mode plus achievement hunting adds another 5 to 10.

Genre and feel. This is a Souls-like built on a posture system instead of a pure health race, and it layers a stamina bar plus a Resonance meter (your blue mana bar) on top. You cannot cancel attacks. Every swing is a commitment, because the Spinosaurus attacks with neck movements rather than arm swings. The rhythm lands closer to Sekiro's deflection dance than Dark Souls' roll-and-poke, but heavier. There is no difficulty slider and no character creator. You are the Spinosaurus.

What actually makes it special. The boss roster is the star. You fight more than a dozen named dinosaurs with distinct weapons: Kira the Exile and his charging combos, AXE the hammer rex, Kasei the Tyrant with his throwable cleaver, Mokusei the Titan and his arena-shaking stomps, Dosei the Giant Claw who turns invisible and sets his scythe on fire, the double trouble of Reaper and Shade, Horn the laser-spitting Lokiceratops, and the final pair of fights against Akai Tsuki and Maakyuurii. Beating the campaign unlocks Boss Rush and a Rematch system that lets you refight defeated mini-bosses for practice.

A free content update in fall 2026 added a playable Raptor for Story Mode and Rematch Mode, so the game is still growing. This guide covers the full release as of October 2026.

Quick Facts

UE5 means the minimum specs undersell it. Expect frame dips in the dense jungle and swamp biomes on mid-range cards; the Performance section covers the settings that matter. DLSS ships built in (the DLSS option displays ON by default since the July 29 patch).

Getting Started

Your First 30 Minutes

The game opens in the Tyrant's Canyon. Follow the moon in the sky when you lose the path; the level design routes you by moonlight and the sound of waterfalls. Your opening looks like this:

1. Pick up the flaming sword and finish the tutorial honestly. The tutorial teaches block/deflect, light combos, sprint, dodge, lock-on, and healing charges. A perfect deflect restores stamina AND resonance; a late block only eats stamina. Internalize that asymmetry now, because the entire game runs on it.
2. Fight everything in the cavern. Small dino packs give enough XP for your first level before the first Save Stone. XP slows down later, so bank it early.
3. Learn the Charge Attack at the waterfall. It costs 5 Resonance plus stamina and acts as a ranged poke. The waterfall crossing triggers the popup. Test it on the hammer dino ahead: it winds up three big swings, then stalls, and a charged hit to the face interrupts the third.
4. Rest at every Save Stone you pass. Resting respawns enemies (more XP) and refills your healing charges. Since the October 2025 demo update, healing potions refill at save points rather than on death, so the correct rhythm is: rest, clear, rest, clear.
5. Practice the Instinct Counter before Kira. When a boss's Resolve Bar is full, one of their attacks becomes a clash trigger. Parry that exact attack and you enter a clash; winning it deals massive damage. The game teaches this right before the first boss, and a July 30 patch increased Instinct Counter damage scaling so Strength builds keep it relevant all game.
6. Beat Kira the Exile. He is the first boss, not the tutorial joke his arena suggests. His three-hit combo is dodgeable with movement, his charge follows into a line explosion, and his Instinct Counter windows are the most generous you will ever see. Winning unlocks the Summoning system (you can summon defeated bosses) and the Soul Arts shop, which runs on Boss SP.

Beginner Mistakes

Blocking instead of deflecting. Late blocks drain stamina for nothing and fill your own posture. Perfect deflects cost nothing, refund stamina and resonance, and pile posture damage onto the enemy. If your stamina is always empty, your timing is late, not your build wrong.

Hoarding Resonance. Charge attacks cost 5 Resonance and the bar refills from perfect deflects. Players who never spend it fight every ranged-exchange battle the hard way. Charge attacks are also the safest way to damage certain bosses (Mokusei, Shield) without entering their slam radius.

Treating red-glow attacks as undodgeable walls. Red glow means unblockable, not unparryable. Most red attacks can still be perfect-parried with frame-tight timing, and the community consensus is that only true soul-based attacks (Haku's hammer smash, Akai's blade storm) are genuinely unparryable. Learn which is which in the Rematch mode rather than eating every red flash forever.

Ignoring your own posture. Blocking and taking hits fill your meter. Above roughly 70%, a single partial parry staggers you into a boss combo. Watch both bars. The enemy's bar flashing means one more good parry breaks them; your bar flashing means disengage for two seconds.

Skipping optional bosses. Shield, Tank, Reaper and Shade, and the scythe Carnotaurus mini-bosses all become summons when defeated, and summons are extra bodies plus Soul Arts currency. Optional does not mean skippable; it means the game trusts you to find your own power.

Not fixing the camera before the first dark forest. Darkclaw's Forest is where the camera collision problems bite. Max camera distance, and prefer manual rotation over lock-on in tight tree corridors. A July 27 patch fixed target lock dropping behind obstacles and the December 2025 patch fixed the wall camera, but dense foliage still eats frames and sightlines.

Core Mechanics

The Posture and Resolve System

Posture is the heart of every fight. Both you and every enemy have a gauge that fills as you trade blows. Max it out and the victim staggers wide open. Four facts govern everything:

The asymmetry is the whole game: perfect parries pile enormous posture damage onto enemies without touching your own meter. Careless blocking bloats yours while barely scratching theirs. The community estimate puts enemy posture recovery at 15-20% per second of inactivity for bosses, which is why backing off to heal often erases two minutes of work.

A posture break staggers regular enemies long enough to kill many of them outright. On bosses it opens a 2-3 second punish window and frequently triggers phase transitions. Timing matters: if a boss transitions phases at a health threshold, a break that lands during the transition is wasted because the meter resets. Hold the final parry until the new phase starts, then break them immediately.

The Parry

The perfect-parry window is an estimated 8-12 frames and is consistent across every enemy in the game. You learn one timing, not fourteen. What changes per enemy is the wind-up length: a Parasaur spear thrust is fast, Kasei's cleaver toss is slow, and both use the same final window.

Read wind-ups, not impacts. Every species telegraphs differently: Kira charges before his rush, Stick steps back before his spear swing, Dosei rolls before his scythe spin. After a perfect parry you get roughly 0.5-1 second of counter window, enough for one or two hits, never a full combo. The loop is: parry, counter, pressure, parry again.

Red Attacks and the Instinct Counter

Red-glow attacks are the game's crowd control on your confidence. Three tiers exist:

1. Red glow, parryable: most red attacks. Parry them with perfect timing for the same posture payoff as a normal deflect, but a missed timing costs full damage plus posture. Risky, learnable, optional.
2. Red glow, truly unparryable: soul-based attacks. Haku's hammer smash and Akai's blade storm are the confirmed cases. Dodge these, always.
3. Clash attacks: when a boss's Resolve Bar is full, one of their attacks becomes an Instinct Counter trigger. Parry it to enter a clash; winning deals massive damage and stagger. The July 30 patch buffed its scaling, so building around Instinct Counters is now a legitimate strength-build strategy rather than a demo-era gimmick.

Stamina, Resonance, and the Commitment System

Stamina gates attacks, sprint, and blocks. Resonance (the blue bar) gates Charge Attacks and heals back from perfect deflects. Running does not cost stamina. Attacks originate from the neck, animations cannot be canceled, and the Spinosaurus's mass makes every commitment real.

Never start an animation longer than the enemy's recovery window unless they physically cannot punish it. Heavy attacks after parries. Full combos only after posture breaks. Everything else is light attacks and dodge rolls.

SP Skills, Summons, and Soul Arts

SP skills run on cooldown timers shown on the HUD. Categories that matter:

• Posture burst: massive instant posture damage. The single best SP category. Fire it at 70-85% enemy posture to force a break, not at 30% where the enemy heals it off.
• AOE: hits multiple enemies at once. Kira's swamp adds and the triple fire-T-rex fight in the Snow Crater are the showcase fights.
• Summon: calls a defeated boss to fight beside you. Unlocked by beating Kira. Every optional boss you defeat adds another summon to the roster, and The Necromancer achievement wants all of them unlocked.
• Alpha Roar: your transformation-flavored burst. Maxing it and using it once is the Feed the Beast achievement, and a patch specifically reduced its lag spike.

Soul Arts upgrades are purchased with Boss SP, a separate currency from standard SP. One campaign gives you enough Boss SP to max roughly two to three skill branches. The rest max out across Rematch runs and Boss Rush, which is exactly how the Master of the Blade / Dance / Dash achievements are meant to be finished. Hidden Boss SP orbs (five, listed in the collectibles section) accelerate this.

Progression Strategy

XP, Souls, and What Each Currency Does

Snow Crater's Alamosaurus herd is the XP goldmine: passive sauropods with enormous health pools and huge XP payouts. Killing six of them is also the Silencing the Earthquakes achievement. They never fight back; the only cost is your patience and your blade's durability of conscience.

Skill Branch Priorities

You cannot max everything in one campaign. Focused investment wins:

1. Posture damage first. It compounds across every fight in the game.
2. Health second. Posture Burst kills and boss combos punish thin health pools.
3. Parry window extension early, respec out later. It carries you through the learning curve; once your timing is consistent, those points work harder elsewhere.
4. Meteor Zone / Meteor Slice / Meteor Dash last. These are the max-level achievement skills; maxing all three is a second-campaign project funded by Rematch grinding.

The Full Route

1. Tyrant's Canyon: Kira the Exile -> AXE -> Kasei the Tyrant
   - Grab Max Heal Ore #1 (split path near the end, left cave)
   - Boss SP orb behind the waterfall
   - Tiny Tank side rescue past the waterfall checkpoint
   - Sword #2 in the rock after Kasei's arena
2. The Great Lake: Shield (optional) -> Mokusei the Titan
   - Max Heal Ore #2 behind Haku... wait, behind the lake arena hills
   - Boss SP orb on the lake-center bone pile
   - Sword #3 spawns where Mokusei dies (arena center)
3. Darkclaw's Forest: Stick -> Speed -> Ketsuro -> Dosei the Giant Claw
   - Boss SP orb up the left cliff before the hammer rex
   - Sword #4 on the cliff rock near Ketsuro's arena
   - Sword #5 spawns where Dosei dies
4. Red Ashe's Swamp: Tank -> Haku -> Red Ash -> Reaper & Shade (double) -> Horn
   - Fire upgrade along the left river path
   - Sword #6 in the trees behind the dead Europasaurus, opposite Akai's entrance
   - Max Heal Ore #3 near that same corpse
   - Boss SP orb at the end of the river from the blue-flower save stone
5. Akai Tsuki: two fights (Blood Moon, then True Form)
   - Sword #7 drops after the True Form falls
6. Snow Crater: sauropod herd -> triple fire T-rex -> Maakyuurii (2 phases)
   - Boss SP orb right of the entrance along the trees
7. Boss Rush unlock + Rematch Mode + achievement cleanup

Build Philosophy

Three loadout pillars: weapon, skill branches, SP abilities. Point them all at one goal.

The Posture Assassin (boss killer): posture damage skills, Posture Burst, heavy weapon. Parry-counter-heavy-reset, four to six cycles per boss. Weakness: add fights. Swap to the Great Sword for Kira's swamp and the triple rex.

The Balanced Blade (first clear): starting Great Sword all game, split points between health, posture, and parry window. No bad matchups anywhere. This is the Boss Rush build too, because health carries between fights and the Great Sword never has a wrong answer.

The Instinct Hunter (post-patch): Resonance-friendly skills plus Instinct Counter scaling. Fishing for clash triggers turns every boss with a Resolve Bar into a damage piñata, and the July 30 scaling buff made it genuinely strong. Highest skill ceiling, highest style points.

Weapons — The Seven Swords

Seven swords exist, one earned per major milestone, and collecting them all is the Stainless Extinction achievement (9.5% of players have it).

The starting Great Sword remains competitive to the credits; the tier difference is real but the game is balanced around its moveset. Switch weapons between encounters, never mid-fight, and match the weapon to the biome: reach for Mokusei's electric blade in the swamp where damage over range matters, and the heavy hitting swords in the Snow Crater where bosses have giant posture pools.

Boss Guide — Every Named Fight

Achievement unlock rates give a rough difficulty map: Kira falls for 84% of players, Kasei for 52%, Dosei for 28%, Akai Tsuki for 15%, and Boss Rush for just 4%.

Kira the Exile (First Boss)

Three-hit combo, charge into line explosion, generous Instinct Counter windows. The tutorial boss in disguise. Dodge laterally through the combo, punish the charge recovery, and take every clash the Resolve Bar offers. His defeat unlocks Summoning and the Soul Arts shop.

AXE (Canyon Mini-Boss)

Hammer rex with three-swing chains. He stalls after the third swing; that is your punish. The two-carnivores-attacking-an-Ankylosaurus rescue (Tiny Tank achievement) happens in his area: kill only the two attackers and keep the Anky alive, resetting via the waterfall checkpoint if it dies.

Kasei the Tyrant (Canyon Alpha)

Two phases, two movesets, the demo's wall. He swings and pushes in phase one with slow, readable timing. Phase two adds durability and his signature move: throwing the huge cleaver and following it. The toss is your best opening, because the recovery after the catch is long. Use SP abilities freely; the fight is a war of attrition. Sword #2 waits in the rock beyond his arena.

Shield (Great Lake, Optional)

A wall of a boss who shoves and tail-whips. Melee trades are losing trades. Dodge in, charged attack, dodge out. His summon is worth the annoyance.

Mokusei the Titan (Great Lake Alpha)

A sauropod colossus. Ground stomps damage everything nearby and his spin attack (tail plus log) hits like a meteor. Fight him at range: charge attacks and ranged SP while tracking his stomp rhythm. Entering melee is how the 16% of players who never beat him died. His arena center sprouts sword #3.

Stick (Darkclaw's Forest)

Spear-wielding Spinosaurus, high durability, steps back before every big swing. The step-back is your dodge signal. Parry the jabs, dodge the sweeps.

Speed (Darkclaw's Forest)

A small, fast, genuinely adorable T-rex that jumps and flips like a gymnast. His speed is the threat; his health pool is not. Aggression wins; passivity lets him dance forever.

Ketsuro (Darkclaw's Forest)

Axe thrower who hurls his weapon and slams the ground, and charges to stun you if you stay too far. Melee range is actually safer than mid-range here. Close distance, punish the slam recovery, retreat only through the charge (dodge sideways, never backward).

Dosei the Giant Claw (Forest Alpha)

Therizinosaurus with a scythe. Phase one: barrel rolls and scythe sweeps. At half health he phases into an invisible shadow with a flaming scythe, and this is the fight that teaches camera discipline: keep your back to open ground, listen for the audio tell, and use SP during his cool-down windows. Sword #5 spawns where he falls.

Tank (Swamp)

Ankylosaurus with a spiked hammer who rolls and spins. Slow, readable, and the easiest of the swamp roster. Summon material.

Haku (Swamp)

Tarbosaurus with a spiked mallet. Spins and thrashes the ground. Keep distance during the spin-up. His hammer smash is one of the two confirmed truly-unparryable soul attacks. Dodge it, always.

Red Ash (Swamp)

Fire sword, vicious swings, a charge that ends in a touchdown slam. The slam recovery is the whole fight: bait the charge, sidestep, unload during the landing recovery.

Reaper and Shade (Swamp, Double Fight)

Two small, fast bosses at once, activated together at the fire tree. Target one at a time, keep distance from the other, and accept that this is the scrappiest fight in the game. AOE SP and summons carry it.

Horn (Swamp)

Lokiceratops with a laser mechanic. Spins and paints laser sweeps across the ground. Avoid the painted lines, punish the spin recovery, and keep swinging.

Akai Tsuki (Blood Moon, then True Form)

The penultimate boss pair. Blood Moon form throttles you with constant swings; keep distance and charge in on recovery. True Form dual-wields katanas, slashes vigorously, strikes from above, and lobs fireballs at range. This is the deepest test of parry consistency in the campaign, and his blade storm is the second confirmed unparryable soul attack. Winning claims sword #7 and sets up the finale.

Maakyuurii (The Ice King, then The Flame Reborn)

The true final boss. Phase one wields an ice cleaver with jump stomps, spins, and charge-up swings. Phase two ignites: fire breath beams aimed directly at you, a thrown cleaver that boomerangs back, and ground fire strikes. Every skill the game taught converges here. The July patches tuned his hitboxes and roar timing, so fight the current version, not launch-week folklore.

The Triple Fire T-Rex (Snow Crater Gauntlet)

Three flaming T-rexes swing Ankylosaurs as clubs simultaneously. When one dies, fireballs rain where it fell. Kill them one at a time toward the arena edge so the fireball zones stay out of your running lanes, and bring AOE SP plus your best summon.

Collectibles and 100% Route

The Three Max Heal Ores (The Iron Dino, 9.8%)

1. Canyon: near the map's end, take the split left past the mid-size dinos; the ore hides in a small opening in their cave.
2. Great Lake: behind the main arena, up the left hillside, hugging the left wall to a cave before the cliff.
3. Swamp: left of the dead sauropod on the map's right side, in a corner where the trees open.

Known bug: some players collect all three and the achievement never pops, even across multiple saves. It is not you.

The Five Boss SP Orbs

1. Behind the canyon waterfall near the start.
2. Center of the Great Lake, on the bone pile underwater.
3. Darkclaw's Forest, up the left cliff before the hammer rex.
4. Swamp: from the blue-flower save stone, follow the river right to its end; the orb floats above the water between trees.
5. Snow Crater: enter, turn right, follow the trees; it appears quickly.

Tiny Tank (Save the Anky, 13.4%)

Canyon, past the waterfall, left detour near the hammer rex. Two carnivores attack an Ankylosaurus. Kill exactly the two attackers, keep the Anky standing, wait for the pop. If it dies, rest at the waterfall checkpoint to reset and retry.

Step-by-Step Strategy

Sequence 1: The Pressure Cascade (every fight)

1. Close distance with 2-3 light attacks.
2. Perfect parry the counter-attack. Huge posture damage, free resources.
3. Land 1-2 counter hits inside the 0.5-1s window.
4. Keep attacking to prevent posture recovery.
5. Parry again. Repeat until the bar breaks, typically 4-6 cycles.

The cascade is a feedback loop: attacking forces counters, parries build their posture, counters create openings. Disengaging is the only way to lose.

Sequence 2: Managing Your Own Posture

1. Treat 70% self-posture as the red line. Above it, one partial parry staggers you.
2. Perfect parry only. Partial parries are posture poisoning.
3. Dodge one attack per cycle on purpose, the scariest one, to let your meter breathe.
4. Spend Resonance on charge attacks during forced retreats so the disengagement still deals damage.
5. If your bar is critical, create distance for a 2-second reset, then re-engage. Never heal by retreating across the arena; heal by repositioning.

Sequence 3: The Posture Burst Kill Window

1. Build enemy posture to 75-85% through parries.
2. Wait for a guaranteed-safe animation window.
3. Fire Posture Burst.
4. The bar maxes, the finisher window opens.
5. Execute the finisher.

Firing the burst at 40% is the classic waste. The enemy recovers the progress before you can cash it.

Sequence 4: Add-Fight Isolation (Kira's swamp, Reaper & Shade, triple rex)

1. Turn lock-on OFF. The camera sticking to one target is how flankers kill you.
2. Position so enemies line up; one swing, multiple posture bars filling.
3. Open with AOE SP to tag everything at once.
4. Kill the smallest add first to reduce incoming angles, then focus the boss.
5. Summon Tank or Shield to body-block while you parry the main threat.

Sequence 5: Boss Rush Run

1. Boss Rush unlocks from the main menu after the credits. No mid-rush checkpoints; a fail restarts the gauntlet. A completion timer runs the whole time.
2. Bring the Balanced Blade kit: Great Sword, health-and-posture skills, Posture Burst.
3. Treat the first fight as a no-damage requirement. Health does not refresh between Alphas; early chip damage compounds.
4. Run the Pressure Cascade and save Posture Burst for each boss's 75-85% mark.
5. Accept the grind: Feeding the Blade (beat Boss Rush) sits at 4.1%, the rarest achievement in the game.

Sequence 6: Rematch and Achievement Cleanup

1. The fall 2026 update added Rematch Mode: return to a defeated mini-boss's arena and look for their fallen weapon to refight them.
2. Use rematches to farm Boss SP toward maxing Meteor Zone, Meteor Slice, and Meteor Dash (the three Master achievements).
3. Max Alpha Roar and use it once for Feed the Beast.
4. Knock out Parry God (100 deflects, 32.8%) passively across rematches.
5. The Raptor playthrough counts as a second story run; use it to sweep any missed collectibles on a fresh save.

Advanced Tips

The AI is rule-based. Distance-triggered enemies attack when you enter a range; bait by stepping in and out. Action-reactive enemies counter specific moves; feint lights to fish out their response. Combo enemies chain only if the first hit lands; parry the opener and the whole chain dies.

Bait with your own commitment. Your attacks cannot be canceled, and neither can theirs. Start a heavy just outside their range; they whiff their punish into your recovery, you recover, they are still recovering. This manufactures openings no parry gives you.

Posture breaks versus phase transitions. If a boss transitions at a health threshold, hold the final parry. A break that lands mid-transition is wasted meter. Break them one second into the new phase instead.

Camera as a mechanic. Max distance, manual rotation in forests, lock-on only in open arenas. Kira's swamp adds and Dosei's invisibility phase punish lock-on players. The patches fixed the worst camera offenders but foliage still eats frames and sightlines.

Audio tells matter. Every wind-up has a sound: whooshes, scrapes, growls. If the ambient jungle noise is drowning them, pull the ambient slider down and leave music up; the boss tracks double as rhythm cues for pattern loops.

Performance tuning. Lower shadows and foliage first; those two settings cost the most in the jungle and swamp. DLSS is built in and displays ON by default. The Alpha Roar lag spike was patched; if power-up effects still hitch your machine, cap the effect count in the options. Steam Deck runs it at medium settings, 30-40 FPS, playable but not pretty.

Settings-not-saving bug. Some players report graphics and control settings resetting between sessions. Re-check your camera distance and keybinds after updates until it is patched.

Respec exists and is cheap. Respec out of parry-window assists once your timing is consistent. The points fund posture damage, which compounds across every remaining fight.

The 666 Souls achievement is passive. The Reaper (17.3%) just wants your lifetime soul count to hit 666. Play normally and it arrives during the swamp. If you rush bosses and skip trash mobs, it will not.

Raptor mode changes the game. The playable Raptor trades raw power for speed and a different moveset. It is the freshest way to re-experience the story and a genuinely different combat feel. The load-game UI bug when starting as Raptor was patched in the fall update.

FAQ / Common Mistakes

Q: How long is the game? A: 6-10 hours for the campaign. Boss Rush adds 3-5. A 100% achievement run across Rematch and a Raptor playthrough lands around 20.

Q: Is it free? A: No. $19.99, frequently 20% off. The old demo is free and its 97% positive rating is a fair sample of the combat.

Q: Are there difficulty options? A: No. Single difficulty tuned for action veterans. One caught combo can kill you at full health.

Q: Can I parry the red attacks? A: Usually yes. Red glow means unblockable, not unparryable; only true soul attacks (Haku's hammer smash, Akai's blade storm) are parry-proof. Perfect timing still parries most red attacks, but a miss costs full damage.

Q: My Iron Dino achievement did not pop after all three ores. A: Known bug affecting multiple players. Collect them on a fresh save if it matters to you; otherwise wait for a patch.

Q: Do bosses respawn? A: Campaign bosses do not. Rematch Mode (fall 2026 update) lets you refight defeated mini-bosses at their arenas via their fallen weapons, and Boss Rush replays the Alphas in sequence.

Q: Which weapon should I use? A: The starting Great Sword through the first playthrough. Collect all seven swords for the achievement, then pick per-biome: electric blade for the swamp, heavy blades for the Snow Crater.

Q: Is there multiplayer? A: No. Single-player with Boss Rush leaderboards.

Q: Common mistake: backing off to heal. A: Enemy posture recovers when you disengage, faster for bosses. Heal by repositioning inside pressure range, not by retreating to the arena wall.

Q: Common mistake: hoarding Posture Burst. A: At 70-85% enemy posture, fire it. The cooldown exists to be spent on breaks, not saved for a perfect moment that a dodge opportunity already gave you for free.

Q: Common mistake: fighting the camera in forests. A: Max camera distance, turn lock-on off around adds, keep your back to open ground. Three settings changes worth more than any build tweak.

Q: Common mistake: ignoring summons. A: Every optional boss you skip is a summon you do not have. Shield and Tank body-block bosses while you parry. The Necromancer achievement wants the full roster anyway.