Garden of Witches Combat

Garden of Witches combat is a small arena, a giant pair of scissors, two spells, a dash, and a boss who did not agree to attend tea. That sentence was true in Early Access and is still true in 1.0. Everything underneath it changed. Attribute tags, synergy breakpoints at 2 / 4 / 6, and runes were stripped out. Team Tapas rebuilt the loop around four nouns: Scissors, Spells, Imprints, Relics. Charge, Combo, and Channeling tell you how each noun is used, not which spreadsheet column it lives in.

If you are coming from a 2025 guide, throw away the tag-cap advice. You are no longer trying to delete every “witch character” tag so Scissors 6 can fire. You are trying to make one weapon or one spell feel inevitable, then spend Imprints to change how that tool is aimed.

The verbs: dash, scissors, spells

Dash is invincibility. It is also your reposition. On Normal, you will live or die on whether the dash cooldown is available when a cone hits the floor. Cooldown reduction is not optional forever, but it is also not the only upgrade in the Book. Learn the controls so dash is never on a mushy bind.

Scissors are the basic attack. Sil plants her feet. Early reviewers called melee clunky compared with Fireball. 1.0 answered that complaint by giving each weapon its own crit rule instead of one global combo card:

• Default Scissors and Giant Scissors crit on the last hit of their combo, with a dedicated finisher animation.
• Broken Scissors turn every hit into a crit once Sharpness hits 100%.
• Magic Scissors charge, then fire piercing shots. Past the first charge gauge those shots can guaranteed-crit.
• Singing Scissors arrive from Maydel after Epilogue 1 and play a different song — do not force them into a chapter-one kit.

Sharpness is the melee resource. Ambush still feeds it. Some Relics, like Cat’s Eye Ring, dump Sharpness when you cast a Spell. Hunger (a Broken Scissors imprint) doubles the Sharpness cap and then dumps the bar if you go two seconds without gaining any. That is a build, not a trap, if you actually hit things.

Spells occupy two slots. They have cooldowns, stacks, and sometimes a Charge hold. Counter is the clearest example of a Spell that is also a defense: block for 0.4 seconds, punish the whole radius, go invincible for a second. The Book lists it near 1350% damage, 17 seconds, 4 meters. You will not press it every room. You will press it when Abigail’s sickle or a spider volley would have killed you.

Fireball is the poster child for 1.0 Imprints. One imprint path charges a heavy shot. Another path stutters smaller bursts so hit effects proc. Same icon, two games. Read spells and imprints before you lock the Armory.

Garden of Witches first impressions: scissors, Ambush, and the first boss

Charge, Combo, Channeling

These three words replaced a lot of the old attribute text.

• Charge: hold the input, watch the gauge, release for extra projectiles, extra crits, or extra waves. Magic Scissors lives here. Downpour (an imprint) adds a projectile once the gauge is high enough. Threading makes those projectiles track extra times at the cost of raw damage.
• Combo: scissors strings that only pay on the last swing. Do not dash-cancel the finisher unless you are saving a life.
• Channeling: stay in the skill. Walking away is a miss. Blood Marble’s ground-control versions want you to keep enemies in the soup, not to kite out of your own spell.

Special Skills have gauges. 1.0 standardized charge speed and made Imprints the way you restore their old personality. Echo of the Swamp is the famous one: it used to auto-cast your second Spell on Scissors crits. After the overhaul the base kit is tamer and the imprint is the identity. If a YouTube short still shows a 10-second 100% damage buff off a 300-point gauge, that clip is pre-0.9.2.

Relics, curses, Dice, and rooms

Relics are no longer a pile of tiny percentages. The 0.9.2 / 1.0 Relic pass cut the pool so each pick is loud. Arcane Parasite is a flat Spell damage bump. Blue Chakram feeds Spell Rampage when Magic Scissors crits. Crawling Collector hands you a Die per room. Smiling Ouija Board pays damage for every tag you strip — a leftover name from the synergy era that still works as a “delete clutter” relic.

Curses exist. Relic rooms can now include combat so you are not grabbing a curse in a vacuum. Wells let you heal, strip a problem, or take a Die. Elite rooms pay an Imprint plus an attribute and hit harder than their HP bar suggests. The walkthrough calls out when a chapter starts inserting those rooms on a timer.

Dice reroll offers. Spend them when a shop is one card away from completing an imprint path. Do not spend them to chase a meme Relic while your dash cooldown is still medieval.

How a fight is actually won

1. Enter the room and look at the floor, not at Sil. Telegraphs in this game are generous if you are facing them and lethal if you are mid-swing.
2. Dash through the first cone, not away from it, unless the cone is a grab.
3. Use Scissors on small enemies to farm Sharpness and stacks. Use Spells on elites and bosses during the recovery frames after a slam.
4. If your Special Skill is charged, spend it on a phase change, not on the last 2% of a trash pack.
5. At the fountain, heal if a boss page on this wiki says the next witch has a one-shot. Upgrade if your imprint is still locked.

The embedded video is a long first-impressions run from before the overhaul. Use it for dash timing, Ambush, and the “you will not beat the first boss on attempt one” lesson. Do not copy its tag picks. For current loadouts go to best builds and the Armory planner.

Garden of Witches still rewards greed, but 1.0 wants greed with a name. Pick Giant Scissors or pick Fireball. Imprint it. Stack Relics that talk to that verb. Then go make a witch sit down for tea.