Combat


 * This page largely covers the melee and ranged modes of combat. For magical combat, see the Magic article.

Combat is the use of combat skills to defeat Creatures when hunting or completing Quests. It is how you ultimately earn experience and Luminance to improve your Character.

Peace mode


Peace mode is the state you're in when the dove button is shown on the interface and you're not in a combat stance. In this mode you can perform Secure Trades, carry out all Crafting actions and heal yourself more successfully; however, your defense will be at its lowest in this mode and you be open to attack and damage. You click the dove to go into combat mode and bring up the corresponding combat panel depending on which type of weapon you're wielding.

Combat mode
This mode is active when you're wielding a melee weapon such as a Sword or a missile weapon such an Atlatl. The combat bar has a slider for changing the speed versus power when wielding a melee weapon or speed vs accuracy when holding a missile weapon. The high, medium and low buttons refer to the attack height. When you're in combat mode, your defense is at its maximum.



For the magic mode of combat, see: Magic

Offense
This section covers information on skills and methods to successfully hit the target and inflict damage.

Skills
There are two main classes of offensive combat skills. Primary skills that are used to inflict damage on the target, and secondary combat skills that work with the primary skills to carry out additional maneuvers and improve their damage output.

Primary combat skills

 * Missile Weapons—Helps you fire missile weapons such as bows, crossbows and thrown weapons.
 * Finesse Weapons—Helps you wield finesse style melee weapons.
 * Heavy Weapons—Helps you wield heavy one handed melee weapons.
 * Light Weapons—Helps you wield light one handed melee weapons. Also helps you punch and kick.
 * Two Handed Combat—Helps you wield all two handed weapons.

Secondary combat skills

 * Dual Wield—Allows you to equip any one handed weapon in your off hand (shield) slot.
 * Dirty Fighting—Your melee and missile attacks have a chance to weaken your opponent. High attacks can reduce healing effects on and attack skills of the opponent. Low attacks can reduce the defense skills of the opponent. Medium attacks can cause small amounts of bleeding damage.
 * Recklessness—Increases outgoing melee or missile non-critical damage, and incoming non-critical damage from all sources.
 * Sneak Attack—Your melee, missile, and magic attacks do more damage from behind. In addition, if you have Deception you have a chance to cause this extra Sneak Attack damage from the front.

Telling Blows
Successfully hitting the target depends on the attacker's abilities being greater than the defender's ability to resist/defend. Attack ability is affected by the following:
 * Attacker's skill with the weapon used.
 * Skill level can be affected by Vitae, Burden, weapon modifiers, buffs.
 * Range modifier (missile weapons) causing accuracy to decrease with distance (each missile weapon lists its range).
 * The accuracy bar (missile weapons) on the combat panel.

Stamina loss
Main article: Stamina

When you attack you lose stamina. The amount of stamina lost depends on a number of factors:
 * The weight (burden units) of your weapon.
 * The weight (burden units) of your shield.
 * The setting on the power bar.

In addition to using lighter items and a lower power setting, the rate at which you lose stamina can also be reduced by increasing the Endurance attribute (regeneration bonus) when you have a non magic defensive skill trained or specialized.

Damage and Attack Modifiers
Once a successful hit has been made, the resulting damage is a total of the following:
 * Weapon modifiers.
 * A melee weapon's maximum damage (damage variance differs by weapon type).
 * Critical hits.
 * Melee power bar maneuvers ranging from the lowest setting of 50% to the highest power setting of 150% damage.
 * An attacker's current Strength when using Heavy, Two Handed and Light Weapons, and Coordination when using Finesse and Missile Weapons.
 * A character's damage rating.
 * The target's level of vulnerability reduced by life magic and weapon rends.

Weapon Modifiers
For lists of weaponry by type, see: Weapons

Melee Weapons
Melee weapons have a base damage range and do not get a visual damage bonus modifier like with ranged weapons and magic casters as they already get a damage modifier through use of the power bar (i.e. a longer power up increases damage). They do, however, get modifiers for both offensive and defensive skills.

Ranged Weapons
Ranged weapons get a damage modifier (as a percentage) and a damage bonus value. The modifier is multipled by the projectile's damage and the damage bonus is then added to get the total damage.

Ranged weapons also get modifiers for defensive skills but not offensive as with melee weapons.

Magic Casters
Elemental magic casters (e.g. elemental loot casters and rended quest casters) have modifiers which provide a damage bonus to spells which match the caster's element. These bonuses apply to spells used in Player versus Player (PvP) and Player versus Monsters (PvM) combat.

In addition to the damage and defensive skill modifiers, all Magic Casters can also get a modifier that adds a bonus to Mana Conversion. Magic casters do not currently have offensive skill modifiers.

Weapon Variance
Main article: Variance

Variance is the difference between top end and low end damage on a melee weapon. Weapons spawn with a top end damage, and the low end is calculated using the variance. One handed melee weapons spawn with one of 5 variances, Two Handed weapons spawn with one of 6 variances.

Weapon Rending
Rending gives the weapon the ability to make its opponent vulnerable to attacks of a certain specific element. The amount of vulnerability depends on the attack skill of the wielder. This effect does not stack with Life Magic Vulnerability spells. Rending properties can be added to loot weapons by imbuing with certain types of Salvage using the Weapon Tinkering skill.

Critical Hits
Critical hits allow you to inflict twice as much damage onto the target. 10% of all attacks are critical hits. Critical hits can also be inflicted by creatures. Certain properties can be found on weapons, or added to them using the Magic Item Tinkering skill, that increase the chance or damage of a critical hit.


 * Critical hit! You impale Olthoi Ripper for 1320 points of piercing damage!

Character Rating
Main article: Rating

Rating is a modifier to incoming and outgoing damage including critical hits. There are also rating modifiers for healing, mana consumption, mana charging and aetheria surging. Your rating modifiers can be increased via many ways such as your choice of Weapon Mastery or through the use of Augmentations.

Attack Speed
In addition to the power/accuracy bar setting, attack speed is also a function of your weapon's speed and your character's Quickness attribute.

Charge Attacks
When a player executes a melee attack, they first move towards their target until they are within range to attack. This movement is a charge–it is much faster than the character's normal movement rate, but because of that speed it can only be sustained for a very short distance. If, at the end of the charge, the player is still too far away from their target to attack, they will stop the attack and see the message, "You have charged too far!"

Power bar maneuvers
Many weapons can alternate between stabbing and slash motions depending on the power setting. Some one-handed weapons can also deal more than one blow per attack when they have the Multi-Strike property.

Recklessness
"Recklessness allows a player to increase their melee or missile damage at the cost of increase the incoming damage they take. Recklessness does not apply to critical damage numbers. When trained, the combat bar will highlight the area where recklessness is active, which is between 10-90% power. Below or above this range allows the player to attack normally without the recklessness effect. The skill provides a maximum +20 Damage Rating increase if specialized and +10 Damage Rating if trained. This effect decreases proportionally if the Recklessness skill is less than the combat skill."

Attack height
Changing the attack height via the combat panel allows you to direct your attack to a specific part of the target's body. This is can be used to exploit a weakness in the opponent's armor or for attacking a creature that is too high or too low for any other attack height to reach. The attack height is also used by the Dirty Fighting skill to weaken the target.

Body Zones
Player characters and creatures are divided into various zones, which correspond to specific body parts. For example, the head, chest and upper arms are considered to be in the high zone whilst the lower legs and feet are in the low zone. The medium zone is slightly more complex and can include the chest, abomen, upper arms, lower arms, hands and upper legs. Left and right body parts can be hit individually but is not important as armor levels for the left and right sides are always equal. Once an attack height is chosen, the actual zone that is attacked is a matter of chance with equal probability.

Front and back attacks are also distinct. For example, a creature wielding a shield would be weaker when attacked from behind as shields only protect the front. Rear attacks are very useful if a target is not directly engaged in combat with you. The Sneak Attack skill provides bonuses to rear attacks.

Dirty Fighting
"The Dirty Fighting skill works with missile and melee combat skills by weakening your opponent based on your attack height. The chance for you to land the Dirty Fighting attack is maximized at 25% if your Dirty Fighting skill is equal to or greater than your combat skill. If your Dirty Fighting skill is below your combat skill the chance is decreased proportionally.


 * High Attack Height: Target’s Attack skills reduced by 20 if specialized, 10 if trained. Also, the target’s Healing Reduction Rating is increased by 30 if specialized, 15 if trained.
 * Medium Attack Height: The target bleeds by 20 damage per tick if specialized, 10 damage per tick if trained.
 * Low Attack Height: Target’s Defensive Skills reduced by 20 if specialized, 10 if trained.

All of the Dirty Fighting effects last for 20 seconds once activated."

Sneak Attacks
"The Sneak Attack skill gives a bonus to attacks landing from behind the target. This skill works with Melee, Missile and Magic attacks. Specialized Sneak Attack provides a maximum of +20 Damage Rating to attacks from behind and Trained Sneak Attack provides a maximum of +10 Damage Rating. If your Sneak Attack skill is equal to or higher than your attacking skill (War Magic, Missile Weapon, Heavy Weapons, etc.), then you receive the maximum damage. If your Sneak Attack skill is lower than your attacking skill, the effect you gain is reduced proportionally compared to the difference of the skills. Another benefit of the Sneak Attack skill is that it allows a chance to do an increased attack from the front of the target if the player also has the Deception skill. Trained Deception will allow for a maximum 10% chance to land a Sneak Attack from the front of the target, Specialized has a maximum of 15%. If the Deception skill is 306 or higher, the player receives the maximum benefit. Anything below 306 reduces the chance proportionally. A player or creature can reduce the damage of a frontal Sneak Attack by having the Assess Person skill. An Assess Person skill of 306 will prevent all frontal Sneak Attack damage. An Assess Person skill below 306 will reduce the damage of a frontal Sneak Attack proportionally."

Skills
Defensive skills aid in reducing damage received or avoiding it altogether.
 * Magic Defense—Helps you resist magic from spells and magic items.
 * Melee Defense—Helps you evade melee (hand-to-hand) attacks.
 * Missile Defense—Helps you avoid damage in missile (long-ranged) combat.
 * Shield—Use the Shield skill to make full use of shields and magic reducing properties of shields.

Resisting Telling Blows
Successfully resisting an attacker's blow depends on the defender's abilities being greater than the attacker's ability to land a blow. Resist ability is affected by the following:
 * Defense skill related to attacker's weapon type.
 * Skill level can be affected by Vitae, Burden, weapon modifiers, buffs.
 * Whether the defender is in Peace Mode or Combat Mode.
 * Counterattacks.
 * Defender's current stamina.

Weapon Modifiers
In addition to the offensive modifiers mentioned above, weapons can also receive bonuses to all three of the defensive skills.

Counterattacks
If you counterattack at the same height as the target is attacking you will gain extra defense. However, if you counterattack at a different height your defense will be reduced based on the difference in height.

Body Zones and Armor Protection
For lists of armor by coverage, see: Armor

Wearing armor protects your character's body zones from damage and also gives your character endowments if the armor is magical. Successful hits on your character always display the body zone affected during melee combat.


 * Tumerok Gladiator grazes your lower arm for 2 points of bludgeoning damage!

Life Magic and Natural Resistances
Increasing the attributes, Strength and Endurance (the two are roughly of equivalent importance), allows you to have a level of "natural resistance" to the 7 damage types (bludgeoning, piercing, slashing, acid, fire, cold and electric).

This caps out at 50% resistance (the equivalent to level 5 life protections) to these damage types. This resistance is not additive to life protections: higher level life protections will overwrite these natural resistances, although life vulns will take these natural resistances into account, if the player does not have a higher level life protection cast upon them.

For example, a player will not get a free protective bonus from natural resistances if they have both Prot 7 and Vuln 7 cast upon them. The Prot and Vuln will cancel each other out, and since the Prot has overwritten the natural resistances, there will be no resistance bonus.

Your character's natural resistances, drain resistances, and regeneration rate info is found on the Character Information panel.

Note: Natural resistances are not increased by Strength or Endurance buffs. It is the raw Strength and Endurance scores that determine the bonus.

Stamina loss
When you're in combat mode (and your defense is at its maximum), you will lose Stamina for every incoming attack that you successfully evade. You do not lose stamina when evading attacks in peace mode; however, you will be more open to attack as your defense is at its lowest when out of combat mode. The rate at which you lose stamina can be reduced by increasing the Endurance attribute (regeneration bonus) when you have a non magic defensive skill trained or specialized.

Death, resurrection and vitae
Main article: Death Penalty

When you die (by misadventure or by being killed by an enemy), you leave behind a corpse containing some of your items and you'll resurrect at the last Lifestone to which you attuned your character. In addition to your dropped items, you will also incur a Vitae Penalty and all your skills will be decreased by the percentage of that penalty along with the maximum values of your secondary attributes -- Health, Stamina, and Mana.

Images
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Update history
A Reign of Stone A New Threat
 * Hit messages now report those body parts affected during melee combat.
 * You now receive a message if a player casts a spell on an item that you are wielding.