The Citadel Project Shadows, crossbows and dark secrets

Direct combat is a losing proposition here. You are at a disadvantage against the infected, with no spells to fall back on, so every encounter becomes a decision: hide, sneak past, or set up a kill that never turns into a fight. That constraint is the point. It makes a dark doorway feel like a plan and a lit corridor feel like a mistake. The combat is deliberate and punishing in the Souls-like tradition: learn how the guards move, pick your moment, and accept that a botched attempt costs you. When you do strike, it is assassination, not a duel. Tearing the gangrenous growths from an infected back only works if you were never seen.

Your one tool that matters is a crossbow, and the bolts you find along the way turn it into a Swiss army knife of mischief. Water bolts snuff out torches and deepen the darkness you hide in. Rope bolts let you climb to routes the guards will never check. Fire bolts do the messier job. The choice of which bolt to spend, and when, shapes every run through a level. A torch dies, the doorway goes black, and you move through it while the patrol walks past none the wiser. Scavenging for ammunition matters too, so every shot you take is a small decision.

You cannot beat the infected in a straight fight, but you can out-think them. Pushing is always available: shove a foe onto the ground, off a cliff, or onto a thorned barricade. The Citadel's vertical architecture invites worse ideas. Climb above a patrol, drop onto it, and let physics finish the job. The labyrinthine megastructure is built for this, with alleys, heights and depths that turn every level into a three-dimensional puzzle of routes. Just remember the housekeeping: a body left in plain sight puts the whole area on alert.