Brighter Shores Magic Cave Choice Guide | Cryonight, Guardian, or Hammermage

Our Brighter Shores Magic Cave Choice Guide will help you open the Magic Cave in Hopeforest and make the choice between the Cryoknight, Guardian, or Hammermage factions.

Your Brighter Shores adventures will begin in Hopeport with a fairly simple plot, but things will get more complex when you move on to Hopeforest. Your skills as a Scout will soon be enhanced by joining a faction and gaining magical powers — read on to learn how to open the Magic Cave and what you need to know before you pick a faction.

How to Choose Your Faction in Brighter Shores

You can choose your faction in Brighter Shores by completing Episode 1 and progressing to Hopeforest. From there, you'll need to complete a few more steps to get access to the Magic Cave and be able to choose your faction.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Complete Episode 1 and progress to Hopeforest.
2. Complete the first stage of searching for your companions in Hopeforest.
3. Make your way to the Dryad Glade and save the Dryad by killing the Mutant Stag. You'll receive the Dryad Leaf as a reward.
4. Head northwest to the Thin Trail, past the Narrow Path off of Tangled Lane.
5. Use the Dryad Leaf on the stone door to summon the Dryad and open the Magic Cave.

With the Magic Cave opened, you can head inside and you'll soon be able to choose your faction.

Brighter Shores Magic Cave Choice | Cryonight, Guardian, or Hammermage

Once you've opened the Brighter Shores Magic Cave, it's time to choose between one of three factions: Cryoknight, Guardian, and Hammermage. When you're ready to make your choice, you simply need to walk into the magical pool associated with that faction (blue for Cryoknight, green for Guardian, and yellow for Hammermage).

Here are the upsides and downsides of each of the factions:

Cryoknight

• Uses Cryonae Magic (Ice Magic)
• Vulnerable to Tempestae Magic (Lightning Magic)
• Uses metal weapons and armor

Guardian

• Uses Arborae Magic (Nature Magic)
• Vulnerable to Cryonae Magic (Ice Magic)
• Uses bone weapons and armor

Hammermage

• Uses Tempestae Magic (Lightning Magic)
• Vulnerable to Arborae Magic (Nature Magic)
• Uses stone weapons and armor

Which Faction Should You Choose in Brighter Shores?

Each of the Brighter Shores Factions is balanced against one another and against the enemies of the world. As far as I can tell, there is no clear advantage; you should pick whichever faction you like the best.

For example, let's look at some of the first enemies you can encounter in Hopeforest with the Scout profession:

• Ragged Outlaw: Attacks with Impact, Vulnerable to Arborae
• Vagabond Goblin: Attacks with Infernae, Immune to Infernae, Vulnerable to Tempestae
• Grizzly Bear: Attacks with Impact, Vulnerable to Cryonae

As you can see, each of these three early-game enemies are vulnerable to one of the three types of magic that you will specialize in by aligning yourself with a faction.

In some areas (and at higher levels), though, things are different. In the Hopeforest area, the Viper enemy is immune to Tempestae and the Spriggan enemy is immune to Arborae, so you won't have much of an advantage fighting against them depending on the faction choice you've made.

Whatever choice you make, the important takeaway is to pay attention to the elemental weaknesses and immunities of enemies. You may need to attack them with different weapons or equip different armor to protect yourself.

Finally, you're going to want to pay special attention to your elemental weakness. If you're a Cryoknight, you're vulnerable to Tempestae magic; that means that you should try to have as high of a Tempestae resistance as possible.

That's the end of our Brighter Shores Magic Cave Choice Guide. Make sure to look at our other guides below!