Lords of the Fallen combat guide: How to best use the Umbral Lamp and Soul Flay

At the start of your journey in Lords of the Fallen, you'll be given the Umbral Lamp, a tool that stays with you at all times, regardless of your starting class. CI Games' latest souls-like, on the surface, looks like a fairly straightforward action role-playing game. However, it features some really unique gameplay systems.

The rifting mechanic is one such unique feature of Lords of the Fallen, essentially allowing you to rift between two realms at the push of a button. While you start your journey in the world of the living, i.e., Axiom, you can use the Umbral Lamp at any time during gameplay to peer or travel into Umbral, i.e., the world of the dead.

The Umbral Lamp also serves other major gameplay purposes such as Soul Flaying and solving numerous environmental puzzles. Unfortunately, the game does not go too in-depth about the tool's abilities, letting players figure that out for themselves. Here's a comprehensive guide about the Umbral Lamp and its many uses in Lords of the Fallen.

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How to use the Umbral Lamp in Lords of the Fallen?

As you explore the world of Lords of the Fallen, you'll often come across areas that will be blocked off and can only be traversed by phasing into the Umbral realm. This is where you will need to use the Umbral Lamp—to either rift or peer into the realm of the dead.

However, you must be careful about how long you're exposed to Umbral, as peering too long into this realm will allow souls of the dead and phantoms (elite enemies) to rift into Axiom.

To use the Umbral Lamp, you must press LT or L2 on your controller. You can also follow that up by pressing RB/ R1 or RT/ R2 to do different actions bound to the Lamp. Pressing RB near any of the enemies infected by the Umbral parasite will allow you to remove that parasite, making the enemy vulnerable to your regular attacks.

Pressing RT will allow you to either Soul Flay an enemy or pull objects (usually ledges or platforms) toward you in Umbral. Soul Flaying is one of the most crucial aspects of Lords of the Fallen's moment-to-moment gameplay and combat. Performing a Souls Flay on an enemy essentially allows you to yank their astral form out of their physical body.

You can deal damage to the astral form for a limited time before it moves back inside the enemy's body. The amount of damage dealt on enemies while Soul Flaying is dealt as withered damage, and once the enemy's souls return to their bodies, you must deal an additional hit on their physical form to deal health damage to them.

Soul Flaying can be quite confusing at first, even intimidating perhaps, given the act of having to juggle between your regular weapons, combat maneuvers, and the Umbral Lamp can be a bit daunting. However, once you get to grips with the game's combat system, Soul Flaying becomes second nature.

There are also some bosses in Lords of the Fallen, like the Ruiner, that require you to use Soul Flaying to defeat them.