Disclaimer

The purpose of this guide is mainly to help players with optimal strategies when building the characters and which upgrades to prioritize first. It is based on my personal experiences with the game and how I felt the most comfortable with the skill building. It’s not meant to be a guideline to be followed strictly. 🙂

While Children of Morta is not a hard game, specially by rogue-like standards (which tend to be brutal), I believe that all information helps. And I hope this guide may help you!

I will try to keep this updated based on new possible patchnotes, since we’re expected to get yet another playable character after Apan.

Have a nice reading while listening to the fantastic piece that is “We are the Bergsons”.

Overview

Overview

John is the bastion, the foundation of the family. While Mary is the heart of the Bergsons, John is the body. As the “main character” of sorts, John’s base stats are very balanced, which combined with his defensive-oriented skills and ability to block attacks makes him the definitive “tank”.

Pros

• Excellent for new players to grasp the fundamentals of the game.
• Solid gameplay through the whole game.
• Primary Attacks have decent reach and cover a wide arc, allowing John to hit multiple enemies at once.
• Can negate nearly any incoming damage with his shield. Pulling the shield allows John to frame-cancel nearly all his animations.
• Great crowd-control skills.

Cons

• Relatively low damage output.
• Poor mobility, having only one Evade charge.
• Heaven’s Strike has a high cooldown and is a bit random in nature.
• His Stamina drains very fast when shielding against various attacks in succession, specially when facing hordes of enemies.

Gameplay Style

John is best played facetanking his opponent and blocking at opportunity. This makes him one of the best characters in co-op, acting as true tank, which is specially valuable when paired with frail damage dealers such as Lucy or Kevin.

While holding John’s shield, players can press the primary attack button to perform a focused thrust while still retaining his ability to block, making him able to both attack and defend. This come at the expense of reducing his ability to swipe enemies in wide arcs.

John’s best asset, however, is his ability to frame-cancel nearly any animation with his shield block, effectively negating the endlag of some moves (most notably Heaven’s Strike). This greatly improves his viability in combat; mastering this is key to play John, and if done correctly it can https://www.reddit.com/r/ChildrenofMorta/comments/f0bb6h/animation_cancel_johns_sword_swings_to_increase/.

Rank 0 Skills

Shield of Thorns: Melee attackers take damage when blocked by John’s shield.
[Passive Skill]

Level 1: Thorn Damage 50%
Level 2: Thorn Damage 75%
Level 3: Thorn Damage 100%

Overview: This skill is part of John’s core gameplay. Since John wants to be facing his enemies head-on all the time, being able to reflect damage greatly improves his damage output. Once you master John’s frame-cancel, this skill has even more value. Max this as soon as possible.

Heaven’s Strike: Call swords down from the heavens upon John’s enemies.
[Active Skill]

Level 1: 150%
Level 2: 200%
Level 3: 250%

Overview: Provides John with a decent area ranged damage, which fix one of his flaws as a melee-oriented character. However, the random nature of this skill sometimes fails to hit the most optimal targets. Nevertheless, this skill deals massive damage, and should be maxed before everything else.

Rank 1 Skills

Of the Same Blood: Increase the max health of all the family members.
[Family Trait]

Overview: Automatically unlocked once you reach rank 1 (total of 4 points spent). While the 10% increase it provides is not much, it helps in the long run.

Aged Vigor: Increase John’s armor. [Passive Skill]

Level 1: 7%
Level 2: 11%
Level 3: 15%

Overview: Armor passively reduces damage taken from all sources. For John this is useful, but since his shield can block nearly everything, maxing this shouldn’t be a priority.

Guardian’s Rage: Unleash your rage to become temporarily invulnerable and deal thorn damage to attackers. [Active Skill]

Level 1: 6 seconds
Level 2: 8 seconds
Level 3: 10 seconds

Overview: John’s “Oh s***!” cooldown, best saved for bosses or when in really critical situations. I personally don’t find a need to upgrade this until maxing everything else.

Rank 2 Skills

Father’s Authority: Family members gain Heaven’s Strike runes for their various abilities. [Family Trait]

Overview: Automatically unlocked once you reach rank 1 (total of 8 points spent). Like all the Rune traits, this is situational as it is RNG dependent.

Shield Slam: Fracture the ground at John’s feet with his shield, to damage, stun, and knockback nearby enemies. [Active Skill]

Level 1: Damage 80% and duration 2.5 seconds
Level 2: Damage 100% and duration 3.2 seconds
Level 3: Damage 120% and duration 3.9 seconds

Overview: Amazing area-of-effect that surrounds John’s. Great for gaining some breathing room for repositioning, and great to use as a follow-up to Heaven’s Strike. It’s Level 1 form is more than enough. Spend points on it once you max John’s other core skills.

Grit and Might: Increase John’s maximum stamina. [Passive Skill]

Level 1: Stamina 100
Level 2: Stamina 125
Level 3: Stamina 160

Overview: After Shield of Thorns, this is John’s most important skill. More stamina equals to more blocking, which equals to more reflected damage and less stamina starving. Max it after Shield of Thorns reaches Level 3.

Heaven’s Grace: Chance for John’s primary attack to reset Heaven’s Strike cooldown and guarantee a critical hit. [Passive Skill]

Level 1: 5% chance
Level 2: 7% chance
Level 3: 9% chance

Overview: Being able to reset Heaven’s Strike and guarantee a critical hit is pretty good, and makes you feel like Thor thunderslamming everything. While I have to yet confirm this, it appears that Heaven’s Grace proc chance is based per attack and enemy hit. Max this once you upgrade John’s other core skills.

Rank 3 Skills

Father’s Protection: John appears to shield any attack that would cause fatal damage to any of his family members. [Family Trait | 3 minutes cooldown]

Overview: Automatically unlocked once you reach rank 1 (total of 14 points spent). One of the best Family Traits in the game, being a powerful “cheat death” mechanic.

Shield Dash: Charge forward with John’s shield to damage and stun enemies. Uses 1 evade charge. [Active Skill]

Level 1: Damage 140%
Level 2: Damage 180%
Level 3: Damage 220%

Overview: On paper this skill is quite good, since it covers a pretty long range and allows for repositioning, but I find it situational at best. While the damage quite high, and it’s only truly effective when hitting enemies lined up on tight corridors. Consuming an evade charge is a huge deal for John, who only has a single charge (although Mark’s Fluid as Water Rank 4 Family Trait remedies this later). You can either spend a single point on it or skip it completely.

No Quarter: John deals additional damage to enemies who are near death.
[Passive Skill]

Level 1: Damage 30%
Level 2: Damage 40%
Level 3: Damage 50%

Overview: Very powerful skill that makes John a great executioner. While it is not clear the health treshold necessary to trigger the extra damage, it appears to be around 25%, which is pretty good. This also affects bosses. Since its effect is not 100% uptime, I recommend fully upgrading this later; a single point suffices mainly to access his Rank 4 later.

Rank 4 Skills

Father’s Passion: Ever thinking of his family, John’s love transcends physicality, slowly regenerating the health of his family while in the dungeons. [Family Trait]

Overview: Automatically unlocked once you reach rank 1 (total of 20 points spent). Arguably one of the best Family Traits in the game. While the effect itself feels pitiful (1 health ever 1.5 seconds) it is very powerful in the long run, specially when exploring. Even better, this effect stacks with the Ring of Healing Divine Grace.

Shield Blessing: John’s Ancestral Shield absorbs damage when blocking, increasing the damage of his next shield-based attack. [Active Skill]

Level 1: Shield Damage Boost 15%
Level 2: Shield Damage Boost 20%
Level 3: Shield Damage Boost 25%

Overview: While this damage boost doesn’t seem much, it greatly contributes to John’s damage output and synergizes with the rest of his shield-oriented skills, as you will reflect damage with Shield of Thorns and immediately retaliate with this skill. Max this after fully upgrading Shield of Thorns and Grit and Might.

Last Stand: Upon receiving fatal damage, John gains a small portion of health and becomes invulnerable for 5 seconds. [Passive Skill | 3 minute cooldown]

Overview: Possibly the best personal “cheat death” passive in the game, essentially granting John a second Guardian’s Rage. Very useful on New Game+ Hard Mode.

Skill Priority Suggestion

There isn’t really a “build” of sorts as you can technically max all skills, but planning which skill to invest in the long run is helpful to maximize the character’s potential.

Rank 0

Start by spending three points on Heaven’s Strike to give John his much needed skill and pumping his damage output. After that, a single point Shield of Thorns to start building the core of his gameplay and unlock Rank 1.

Rank 1

Drop a single point on Guardian’s Rage, and save three points to max Heaven’s Strike and unlocking Rank 2.

Rank 2

Start by getting Shield Slam to unlock the extra skill, then invest five points on Shield of Thorns boosting the reflect damage to 100% and unlock Rank 3.

Rank 3

I find Shield Dash a quite useless skill, but it is up to you. You can either:

1. Drop one point on Shield Dash, one on No Quarter, one on Aged Vigor and three on Grit and Might to unlock Rank 4.
2. Or completely ignore Shield Dash and drop six points on Grit and Might to max it out and unlock Rank 4.

Rank 4

At this point it is entirely up to you. I’d max Shield’s Blessing as soon as possible, and then spread out points on skills of your choice.

Ending Comments and Special Thanks

I hope you enjoyed my simple guide. I had a lot of fun making it! I hope it helps you somehow.

I plan to make one guide for every character, so if you enjoyed this one, keep an eye for my next ones.

A special thanks to some spread out posts in Reddit that answered my questions about armor and some additional data. And of course, a huge thanks to Dead Mage and 11 Bit Studios for making and publishing this game, respectively. The amount of heart this game has is huge. I really hope they expand the development road, because this game deserves a lot more content!

This is all for Children of Morta John – the Warrior – In-Depth Character Guide hope you enjoy the post. If you believe we forget or we should update the post please let us know via comment, we will try our best to fix how fast is possible! Have a great day!