Torment: Tides of Numenera is built around effectively using your companions. I'm sure it's possible to play the game solo dolo, inXile Entertainment wants to make sure you can use the benefits your companions have to offer to make your experience either easier or more compelling. You can have up to three companions in your party, for a total party size of four.

There are several worthy candidates to take these three spots by your side, but none are as frequently discounted, tossed aside or even sold into slavery as often as Rhin, the Lost Child who Shapes Gods. Throughout the Early Access period and the first two days of the game's release, people have often posed the same question: is Rhin useless?

Well, I wanted to find out. So I carried Rhin along with my party deep into the Bloom, and I've found out that no, she is not useless. In fact, when used correctly, she's very good.

Why Do People Think She's Bad?

Because, in many respects, she is. Natively, she has an inability in all things combat that can't be buffed up. She gets penalties for melee weapons and ranged weapons, which, as you can imagine, puts her in a bit of a bind. While she doesn't get any penalties for light weapons, the previous penalties will do enough to harm those.

So, without a weapon, she has a fist. Her fist will do, no matter much effort you put into it, 0 physical damage.

To top it all off, she has an inability in endurance, which means her health pool is next to nothing, and if any enemies beyond the first area so much as lightly breath on her, she'll melt like a snowball in hell. This is all a fancy way of saying that she can seem pretty useless in combat, relegated to merely getting out of the way and not dying, and even that she can't always manage.

So How Can I Use Her Well?

You need to identify what she's good at, which doesn't seem like much. At tier one, she comes with exactly one ability: "God of Hiding," which makes her really good at, you guessed it: not fighting. At this point, it's gotta be a joke, right? Like, really? She's only good at not being for good for anything? OK.

But, unpacking that. You can really use her well as a battlefield support. You have to have someone running around healing people or boosting depleted stat pools. It's easy to play this wrong and have all the good items on your main hero, because he's super cool, right? Instead, give all of these items to Rhin. Equipped with all support items, she can hide, heal someone, hide, boost stats, hide, and so on and so forth.

In order to make this equitable for Rhin, since hiding takes speed, you'll have to give her extra edge in speed as quickly as possible so she doesn't use it all up in her first few turns. But, you want to make sure you also get some key skills abilities for her, which we'll go over.

Which Skills and Abilities Should I Get For Her?

Once you get to tier 2, she starts to become a little better. You'll want to get her the Resourceful Ability (just trust me on that one), and, to aid her support capabilities, you should get her Innervate. Innervate will target yourself or an ally, will heal for 6 health and remove all negative fettles (status effects).

As for skills, you'll want to boost her healing as well, which will turn that 6 health ability into an 11 health ability and turn your 16-point healing item into an 21-point healing item, and that's just with one point in it.

You may see where I'm going with this, but you'll also want to put points in the Cypher Use skill. Again, just trust me.

Wait… Does She Become Good With Cyphers At Tier 3?

I am so glad you asked that question. You're a smart man. In case you haven't noticed, I've been telling you to get Cypher buffs this whole guide. If you don't know, Cyphers are items that can be offensive or defensive, but have a great effect. The catch? They're one time-use, and you can only hold a certain amount of them.

So, by now, you should have taken care of Rhin's ability to hold more Cyphers. At Tier 3, she'll unlock an ability that blows this whole thing wide open. It's called "Cypher Adept." Instead of Cypher's being a one time use, she can use this ability that is active until the next time she sleeps, so you don't even need to already be in a crisis for it to happen, that conserves the next cypher she uses, giving it an extra use. This ability also has three uses per day, so go to town.

So, what to do with Rhin, someone who doesn't do well in combat but is excellent in Cyphers? You load her up with as many offensive Cyphers as you possibly can, letting her use each one multiple times, and turn her into a mystical killing machine.

Holy Crap, Rhin Really Is Good!

Now you're getting it. Like most children, Rhin just demands a little patience before you can see the good in her.