The industry is littered with Soulslikes trying to perfect the style FromSoftware kicked off, yet the Umbral Lamp mechanic from Lords of the Fallen might birth a league of its own. Imagine romping through gunky marshlands or a ruined castle full of monsters, and just at your hip, you can grab a magical lamp to unveil a dark realm with secrets. The Umbral Lamp in Lords of the Fallen is more than just an exploration tool, though. It has various uses in combat to tip the odds in your favor.
You’ll be getting very acquainted with this realm-hopping item, so if you’re unsure or want to learn more about it, here’s everything you should know.
How the Umbral Lamp works in Lords of the Fallen
To explain how the Umbral Lamp works, you’d first need to understand the two realms in Lords of the Fallen: Axiom and Umbral. These parallel worlds exist in juxtaposition, with Axiom as the living world and Umbral for the dead.
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Players will mostly explore the game through Axiom; however, whenever necessary, they must peer into Umbral with the lamp to uncover bridges made of bones or creepy doorways to explore further in Axiom. At times, players also sacrifice one of their two lives to enter the deadly realm to sling out interactables with the Umbral Lamp or even recreate illusions from the past between NPCs to learn more about the game’s history.
Simply holding the button assigned to the Umbral Lamp and adjusting the camera will shine its unholy light on whatever you’re facing. Illuminating the environment and interacting with objects is the primary gimmick of the Umbral Lamp, yet it also allows you to plant Vestige Seedling Spawns as respawn checkpoints. At Umbral flowerbeds, you can use the lamp to make a pseudo-bonfire if you have a seedling, saving yourself from a rough spot if you’re too far from a Vestige checkpoint.
In combat, the Umbral Lamp thrives as a tool to strategize through challenging encounters. For instance, you can yank an enemy’s soul off a cliff or toward you with the lamp. While they’re vulnerable, you can attack the soul to wither their health. In some cases, enemies get protected by Umbral Parasites, so you’ll have to siphon the creatures with the lamp before you can damage them. Siphoning is also useful for triggering explosive blots on walls in the Umbral realm to kill a crowd of enemies or building up charges needed to sling enemies around.
The Umbral Lamp is, without a doubt, the best tool available to you in Lords of the Fallen. The more you know about it, the better you can approach and overcome obstacles. It definitely adds a new twist to the Soulslike formula that may imprint how the genre plays out later.
If you’d like to read more articles on this title, check out how to play co-op in Lords of the Fallen.
