The Thrill Of The Fight - Beginner Guide and Knockout Tips

So you’ve got your VR headset, probably an Oculus Quest 2, and you’ve bought and installed The Thrill Of The Fight. Maybe you want to get in shape for the new year with VR’s most intense workout, maybe you just think boxing in Virtual Reality sounds like fun, or maybe you’re a connoisseur that just loves to absorb new VR experiences.

Whatever the case is you might be confused after your first match or two. You may wonder, what are the little puffs of smoke every time I hit my opponent? Why does he never get knocked out? Why did I lose, or why did I win? Well don’t worry because you’re in the right place now. Welcome to the definitive Thrill Of The Fight beginner’s guide.

How To KO

After a match or two you might be wondering. How hard do I have to hit this guy to knock him down? While you can certainly score victories on points, if you want to win by knockout you’ll need to have a better idea of what you’re doing. More importantly, you will need a better idea of where you are hitting.

Striking precisely is a key component of Thrill Of The Fight. A Mike Tyson level punch square in the face still won’t do a lot of damage. What you need to do is hit the weak points. “But how,” you ask. “Am I supposed to know where the weak points are? The game never told me!”

What you need to do is go to the Training Dummy from the main menu. When you look at the dummy you’ll see some dots on his chin and head, even one on the side of his body. Those are the weak points. Practice on the dummy a little and get good at striking those points hard. If you want to get some knockouts quickly, then get really good at throwing one sort of punch to the head. Hooks are great because you can strike from two different sides, and there is a lot of room on your opponent’s jawline.

Now hit the same point on an opponent. Your strikes that before gave off a little grey puff of smoke? Now they’re making yellow, orange, and maybe even red if you swing hard enough.

If you’re having trouble knocking them down in the first round, don’t worry, just keep hitting them hard and precisely. Your opponent has an invisible “health pool” of sorts. The more damage dealt to them, the easier they are to knock down. If you keep chipping away at them they’ll be easier and easier to take down.

If you want to see how to knockout Ugly Joe in real time check out the video of it here. A few solid hits to the jaw in quick succession and you can KO any fighter on Outclassed difficulty.

How To Win

So now you can deal some damage, great! So how do you win? It’s simple really. You can either KO the other fighter more than he KOs you, or just hit him more than he hits you, or you can KO him three times in a single round. That’s called a technical knockout. In The Thrill Of The Fight you can almost never knock out your opponent for a full 10 count. While knocking an opponent out for a ten count is technically possible, landing a hit so devastating that you get a KO victory is extremely difficult and you will rarely, if ever, see it.

Even though the ref counts every time, it will typically be to eight. That kind of ruins the suspense of the count, but it will never be more or less than 8 counts. To win a match early, just do that three times in one round. It can be really hard on some opponents. Especially when you’ve got two knockouts with only thirty or so seconds left.

In those cases especially you might have a tough time getting past the other fighter’s guard. When they aren’t actively attacking you, it can be very hard to get through. Say, for instance, that you’re not very good at uppercuts, but you throw some mean hooks. Well, what if your opponent blocks the sides of their head? You can’t punch through their block, so do you just have to wait for them to attack? No you don’t.

The AI is pretty straightforward. They will block in the last place that you hit them with sufficient strength. If they block the sides of their head then throw some straights to their face. They might not do a lot of damage, but their guard will move to protect their face, leaving the sides of their head and jaw wide open. Hits to the body can work even better, forcing your opponent to drop their guard to their abdomen.

Of course, you cannot always win with a good offense alone. Defense is just as crucial. Make sure to watch your opponent closely for attacks, and stay mobile and light on your feet. With a little practice dodging an incoming punch is easier than you think. Moving your head out of the way may buy you a crucial moment needed to bring your hands up to ward off the incoming blow.

Most importantly, even when attacking, keep your hands up. Always keep them up. Blocking is easy in Thrill Of The Fight, your gloves have a generous hitbox and they just need to be vaguely in the way of an incoming blow to completely nullify it. Don’t take hits without cause by not keeping a free hand up. Throwing a punch with your right? Keep your left in front of your head. When you progress to the Endurance or Outclassed difficulties a single punch from an opponent is capable of knocking you out for a 10 count.

How To Progress

Progression is pretty straightforward in Thrill Of The Fight. You unlock each fighter by defeating the previous fighter. There are ten in total. We have a whole list on who they are and how to beat them here. While each fighter has a different fighting style, they generally get harder the further along you get. We even have an article on the Extra Halloween Fighters. Additionally there are difficulty modes ranging from the ridiculously easy to extremely hard.

Normal is the highest difficulty unlocked by default. Beating a fighter on Normal allows you to fight them on Endurance difficulty, and defeating them on Endurance unlocks Outclassed. There are also some special fighters that are unlike anything else in the “Extras” button of the main menu.

Settings

Thrill Of The Fight is pretty customizable, which is a great strength of the game. Check out the settings menu, and if anything feels a little off while fighting, chances are you’ll find a solution here. There are a few options, but the most important are Glove Size, Drift Protection, and most of all Punch Force Adjustment.

When it comes to glove size it is easiest to have the glove size match the general size of your actual hands, with most fitting in the “Medium” category. However changing your glove size to fit your playstyle can also be beneficial, or an interesting way to shake the game up. It is much easier to block incoming punches with big gloves, but it’s harder to get past your opponent’s guard. Big hands means a bigger hitbox to make contact with your opponent’s hands. On the other hand smaller gloves are much easier to sneak in past another fighter’s guard, but not large enough to provide for easy defense.

Drift Protection is a matter of preference as well. While it is off by default, turning it on will make fast punches drift less, and keep your movements in VR much tighter. This is especially true for hooks or uppercuts. The distance to your opponent will be closer by necessity, as you won’t be able to throw punches as far, but those punches will feel much more realistic.

Lastly is Punch Force Adjustment. Automatic Force Adjustment is on by default. What that does is automatically change the force multiplier of your blows. If the multiplier is high, then a blow that is physically weak will deal a lot of damage in the game. If the multiplier is low, then a blow that is physically weak will not deal any damage. With Automatic Force Adjustment on then the game will change the multiplier according to the hardest punches that you throw. Throw very hard punches, and the multiplier goes down. Throw very weak punches, and it goes up. This system encourages throwing consistently weak blows, with an occasional knockout swing.

If that style of boxing does not appeal to you, or you would rather not have the force of your blows be arbitrarily decided for you, turn Automatic Force Adjustment off. Without it you may feel that your hits deal damage more consistently according to how much effort you put into them, and how accurate they are on weak points. Make sure to also adjust the multipliers manually to a setting you feel comfortable with.

Remember that all of your opponents will fight differently. Hitting sufficiently hard is just the first step to victory. There’s some strategy as well. For some more information on opponents at the strategies that will help to defeat them check out our opponent breakdown guide.

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Well that’s all for The Thrill Of The Fight that should be enough to get you started, and remove a little mystery around how the game actually works. You’ll be knocking out Moneymaker on Outclassed difficulty in no time. The Thrill Of the Fight by Sealost Interactive is available for $9.99 on the Oculus Store. It is also available for $9.99 on Steam. Thanks for reading, and happy boxing.