Focused Bolt is a skill available in Dragon's Dogma.
Description
- "Focuses the user's active enchantment into a powerful burst that can be fired from the ground or air."
An advanced version of Magick Bolt that fires multiple bolts at once at a target.
The Core Skill boosting Augment Ferocity increases the damage of this spell by 10%.
Use
To charge, press and hold the [Light Attack] button (an initial Magick Bolt may fire) until the top of the staff glows.
- The staff tip will pulse/glow whilst the skill is charged (~4 seconds).
- The pulse/glow will flash and change when charged (appearance depends on element of staff).
- To fire Focused Bolt, release the [Light Attack] button.
- At very close range, before the charging orbs can transform into rays of light, the damage is reduced, and the spell lacks its penetrating power - avoid casting at point blank range.
As long as the [Light Attack] button is held down, the attack can be charged or the charged attack stored:
- Running, jumping, rolling, grabbing objects and people, throwing objects (using the [Heavy Attack] button), as well as sheathing and unsheathing the staff, and raising the magick shield (as Mystic Knight) will not affect the spell as long as [Light Attack] is held down.
- Jumping may be used to prevent the initial Magick Bolt from firing, as well as charging the next Focus Bolt without a break after the previous Focused Bolt was shot.
- Use of another skill, including the skill Levitate (but excluding Feather Jump) as well as looting, will cancel the charged skill, and also cancels charging of the skill.
Elemental Variants
Using Focused Bolt with a temporary elementally enchanted weapon on the Staff will result in changed behaviour of the bolts that are released:
- Fire - Fires a triple volley of fire elemental magick to inflict damage to the highlighted target.
- Ice - Six balls of ice appear in front of the spellcaster, that, after a short delay, home in on the highlighted target, inflicting ice elemental damage with a possibility of freezing them.
- Thunder - Fires five balls of electricity that ricochet off of the surrounding environment and targets to inflict lightning elemental magick damage.
- Holy - Fires six balls of holy light that hover momentarily while homing in on targets before transmuting into beams of holy light that approach the target rapidly to inflict holy elemental magick damage. There is a chance that some energy is absorbed to heal the caster. The beams may pass through a second enemy beyond the targeted foe, and can sometimes pass through solid objects.
- Dark - Six balls of dark energy float slowly to the highlighted target to inflict dark elemental magick damage.
Permanently enchanted staffs (e.g., Thunderclap) will shoot Focused Bolts without the altered behaviour described above. The bolts produced from these weapons will move in the same fashion and at the same speed as from a plain staff but will carry the color and effects of the staff's permanent element.
Notes
- Contrary to some beliefs, jumping does not boost the power or damage from Focused Bolt. This includes when the augment Ferocity is equipped - damage is the same with or without the augment when jumping.
- Eminence also has no effect as it only affects physical skills. Focused Bolt is wholly magick based.
- The advanced Sorcerer core skill Magick Billow is affected by jumping however.
- (Glitch) Transitioning between areas (loading screen), or saving and reloading affects the properties of temporarily enchanted focused bolts - thought the visual effect of the enchantment remains, the elemental properties and magick power boost are lost.
- (BUG) (all platforms) When casting a holy enchanted focused bolt is specific areas the (some or all of) bolts may immediate dissapear on being produced, or alternatively the bolts may be produced and travel but without a sound effect. This bug is occurs consistently in specific areas of the map, and is localised to those - casting the bolt a character's length away from the 'bugged area' will work correctly.