The rooms of different areas in The Unliving have plenty of traps that can surprise you and delete your undead army. Spells and sacrificial runes help you avoid these scenarios by making you invulnerable, healing the undead, or dealing extra damage to the enemies to reduce the pressure on your army.
During your raid, you can take multiple optional routes to get different altars where you can find an Echo Essence. These have a chance of letting you choose from multiple spells and sacrificial runes, and some of them shine out more than others.
5/5 Little Death
Edge of Immortality will be your main base of operation once you're done with the tutorial. You'll meet multiple people here that'll help you in your endeavor of getting the items back for the rite. You'll also see multiple white circles divided into groups of ten on the floor, starting just above The Lieutenant.
As you progress through a raid, you can get Arkhe through multiple means. These can be found at the altars on optional paths, given to you for progressing in an area, and also for the number of undead you raise. You can get tons of spells and sacrificial runes using this currency.
To get Little Death, you'll need to go through three groups of circles, since it's in the fourth one. The game doesn't let you choose the circle you want to unlock, and you're required to get them all in a certain group before moving on to the next one.
Once unlocked, you can find Little Death as one of the choices while interacting with Echo Essence. Upon using the ability, it will create a bomb at the position of your cursor using echoes around you. This bomb explodes to deal damage in a small AoE.
4/5 Star Echo
Unlike Little Death, Star Echo is significantly easier to get because it can be the third spell you unlock in the third group of Arkhe upgrades. While it requires a bunch of echoes to activate this ability, the effect is worth it. Upon activation, the ability bombards a huge area with echoes.
This ability sort of overcomes the problem with Little Death, and that is the area of effect. Although echoes are only spawned when you defeat a living, it can be quite hard to get enough to activate this ability and get value out of it. There might be too few enemies left when you have the ability ready.
One of the scenarios where this ability shines is when you attack enemies behind a barricade, and more of them come out from a hatch behind your army. You start getting attacked from both sides and your army tends to get divided, which isn't good. This spell can help you get rid of the flank quickly so the undead can focus on the main group.
3/5 Arrows Of Wraith Scream
The main goal of The Unliving is to collect different items required for the Rite. In the beginning, you already have one of these items shown on the left side of the main portal at the top, and there are a bunch of spells and sacrificial runes that unlock for free with it.
Arrows Of Wraith Scream is one of them, and it produces an explosion wherever it lands. This ability is usually aimed at the location of your cursor, which makes it important to pay attention to that. If used correctly, this ability can deal a significant blow to the back line of the enemy.
2/5 Wandering Skulls
Wandering Skulls is another ability that is unlocked from the start of the game. Whenever it's activated, The Necromancer takes a few surrounding echoes to form multiple projectiles that can be deadly for the enemies if used correctly. After a delay, these projectiles target random enemies and deal over 100 damage to them.
The best part about these projectiles is their speed. Even if the enemy is moving, they won't be able to dodge it because of the speed. Furthermore, this ability can also attack different items like barricades, fires, cannons, or traps which makes it perfect for the Apotheosis fight, the final fight in Burial Isle.
During the fight, you have to escort Apotheosis through the castle walls while protecting him from getting damaged. While doing this, you will face multiple cannons that are in an unreachable place for The Necromancer and the undead. If you get enough echoes near these cannons, you can use Wandering Skulls to get rid of them.
1/5 Funeral Lens
After finishing the Apotheosis fight in Burial Isle three times, you'll be able to get the second item for the Rite that will unlock more Arkhe upgrades near the portal. Unfortunately, you'll still have to spend a lot of Arkhe to get through these upgrades, and Funeral Lens is the last one.
Even though it's not specifically an echo spell, it has a higher chance of appearing with the Echo Essence. The spell uses Lifeforce to create multiple projectiles that deal quite a lot of damage to the enemy. One thing to note about these projectiles is that they all converge at the placement of your cursor when you activate the ability.
This means that they'll follow a random path, damaging enemies in the area, before going through the focal point and disappearing. This can be used to deal damage to tanky giant enemies in the game. It also has quite a short cooldown, making it easily accessible.
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