Combat
Fights happen in encounters, triggered by walking. Fights against players use the same turns and rolls; how one starts is in Fighting Other Players.
Triggering an encounter
| Chance per step | 6% (about one in 15–20 steps, not a fixed interval) |
| At 0 stamina | No encounters; moving costs health (World) |
| Stamina cost of fighting | None, except escape attempts |
When one triggers:
- Monsters are picked for the biome and the distance from the origin.
- For half a second it is announced: the monster that started it stands on the way ahead with a !, beside up to three players on your tile or the eight around it.
- The player who triggered it is in the fight. Anyone on the tile or the eight around it can join; stepping onto the tile joins it.
- Everyone else in the sector is told there is a fight there.
- The first turn opens, with a 10-second limit.
The encounter screen
The fight opens in its own window, with the turn and its timer along the top.
| Show fights in 3D | Layout |
|---|---|
| On | The tile in first person with your foes on it; the Act panel; the battle log |
| Off | The enemies as a list; the Act panel; the log behind Log |
Foes
Each foe carries a plate with name, level and health bar; in the lists, name, health bar with current and maximum HP, and a sprite. Click a monster to target it. Monsters at 0 HP are greyed out.
Damage numbers
Each combatant struck in a round shows one number, starting at your own blow and counting up through everyone else's to the round's total. Yours rises over your figure beside Act; allies' blows are in the battle log.
| Number | Means |
|---|---|
| In an affinity's colour | Damage, coloured by the technique that dealt it, hot and cold caloric apart |
| Larger, with CRIT! beneath | A critical hit landed this round |
| GLANCED! beneath | A blow glanced off this round |
| Grey miss | Every attack on it missed, or yours did, before the others count up |
| Grey 0 | Blows landed but did no damage |
| Green +N | It was healed |
The number is HP actually lost; the battle log shows damage dealt, overkill included. The round that ends a fight shows no numbers.
Act
The Act panel holds a tile for every technique you know, plus Items and Run. Beside its title is you: your figure with small health and mana bars across it; press it for the turn order. A physical technique is an attack, a magic one a cast.
| Turn | |
|---|---|
| Timer | 10 seconds |
| Resolves | At 0, or once every standing player has submitted |
| All submitted | Deadline brought forward to 0.25 s and announced again |
| Monsters | Never waited for |
Attack
Pick a physical technique, then a monster.
| Damage | Technique weight, scaled by Strength and Reflex |
| Hit | Can miss: your Reflex against the target's |
| Glance | A landed blow on a quicker target can lose part of its damage |
| Critical | 1.5x damage |
| Mana | None |
| Reflex debt | Accumulates; delays you in later turn orders |
Magic
Pick a magic technique, then a monster.
| Damage | Technique weight, scaled by Intelligence and, more lightly, Reflex |
| Hit | Always; never critical |
| Mana | In proportion to weight; too little and the spell fails with no effect |
| Reflex debt | None |
Item
Uses a consumable from the inventory.
| Turn order | Last, after every monster and player, whatever your Reflex |
| Consumed | On submission; a late submission still consumes it |
| Usable in a fight | Water, Minor Recovery Vial (25 HP, never past your health ceiling), Minor Mana Vial (15 mana); not food |
| Other inventory actions | Equipping, unequipping and socketing are refused until the encounter ends |
The Recovery Vial is the only healing that works mid-fight; a Meditation Sanctum and a grave do not. Hot or cold water costs health or stamina as it does anywhere; no item touches reflex debt.
Run
Your roll must beat the highest roll among living enemies outright; a tie fails.
| Desperation | Builds with each consecutive failure, to a cap; resets on success or any other action, timer expiry included |
| Cost | 1 stamina per point of desperation, spent either way; capped by current stamina, never below 0 |
| Monsters | Pay nothing; they limp instead |
| Success | Moved one tile away, direction not chosen; a place-bound activity like resting must be reached again |
| Order | Escapes resolve in turn order, so nothing both escapes and dies in one turn |
Monsters escape by the same rules, worse when wounded. One that deals no damage for five consecutive turns tries to escape, taking its carried items and still paying XP for damage dealt to it.
See Reference: Escape.
Battle log
A colour-coded record beside the Act panel on a wide screen, otherwise behind Log. Attacks, casts, escapes and other rolled entries have a why? showing the numbers behind them: hit chance, damage, reflex debt.
| Colour | Events |
|---|---|
| Red | Deaths |
| Yellow | Misses, failed escapes |
| Blue or accent | Successful hits, casts, item uses, escapes |
| Grey | Status messages, idle actions |
Turn order
Everyone acts each turn, in order of Reflex minus reflex debt and any burden penalty, highest first; ties go by submission order; the dead are skipped. No action before the timer is an idle turn.
Pressing yourself beside Act lists everyone standing in the order the coming turn would run if nothing changes: by Reflex less debt and the burden you entered with, without anyone's chosen action, so an item user still shows in place. Your side shows health, mana and that Reflex; foes show their health.
The Reflex a fight reads includes equipment, rounded down, and counts for turn order, your hit chance, against an enemy's hit chance, glancing, the reflex damage multiplier and escape rolls.
Who monsters attack
A monster picks among opponents still standing, weighted toward the wounded.
target weight = 1 + 2 * (share of the target's health ceiling it has lost)
What monsters do
A monster's health and mana come from its stats by the Reference: Derived values formulas.
| Monster has | It does |
|---|---|
| An affordable spell, and Intelligence ≥ Strength | Casts |
| No physical attack | Casts |
| Otherwise | Swings |
| No technique it can hold | The two primal techniques |
| Only spells it cannot afford | Runs or idles, at even odds |
The technique is a weighted pick among those it can use. Its mana never comes back mid-fight, so a caster can run dry and fall back on physical attacks.
Disconnecting
A lost connection keeps you in the fight. Closing the game is not an escape.
| Time | Your turns |
|---|---|
| First 10 seconds | Nothing acts |
| After | Attack the weakest standing opponent with your first active physical technique, or idle without one; run below 30% of your health ceiling |
| Reconnect | Turns handed back |
Death
At 0 HP the character is dead for good, and the death is announced. There is no respawn.
| Death screen | |
|---|---|
| Shows | Cause, level, faction; a ledger of the life (woke, died, time lived, tiles walked, monsters killed, XP, jobs, things made, stats, defences, techniques, gear); the tile of your grave |
| New character | Character selection |
| Logout | Login screen |
Experience
Paid to surviving players once every monster is defeated or driven off, shown as
a toast: +120 XP. Level 2 -> 3.
| Term | Effect |
|---|---|
| Enemy levels | Combined levels killed or driven off |
| Distance | Further from the origin sector pays more |
| Turns | Fewer pay more; floor at 20 turns |
| Damage share | Your share of damage dealt |
| Killing blow | +5% of the base, not of your share |
| Party level | Divides the payout: the mean of each fighter's level when they entered the fight |
| Enemy HP | Does not raise the award: two monsters of the same level pay the same |
| Escaping | Forfeits the whole award; it goes to those who stay, by damage |
Drops
Only players still standing roll, each for themselves, every item on each defeated monster's table at its own chance. Damage and the killing blow do not count. About a quarter of kills pay nothing; two players can take the same item.
A party rolls at a reduced share, raised when outnumbered, never reaching a soloist's. See Reference: Combat.
Formulas
hit chance = clamp(0.70 + (effective reflex - defender reflex) * 0.04, 0.10, 1)
base damage = weight * (1 + strength/100) * (1 + reflex * 0.08) * gear multiplier
effective reflex is your reflex less any burden penalty
(Techniques), plus the technique's kinetic/10, less its
density/10. Mitigation, glancing, crits, resistances,
equipment, reflex debt, escape and experience are in
Reference: Combat, with the slot table under
Equipment contribution.