Fighting Other Players

There are two ways to end up fighting a person instead of a monster, and they work nothing like each other.

Faction war is automatic. Two rival factions meeting on contested ground fight, and nobody is asked — that is what a declared war is. See Factions.

Duelling is the other kind: you, choosing to fight someone, at close range, where they get a say. That is what this page is about.

Death is permanent either way. There is no wager, no arena and no rematch — you are betting the character.

Getting close enough

You cannot open on someone across a room. Only two positions work, and which one you are in decides everything that follows:

Diagonals do not count, because you cannot step diagonally either. Anything further away is refused outright.

You also cannot open on someone in your own faction, on anyone already in a fight, or while you are in one yourself.

Ambush

You are beside them and they have not seen you yet. Both of you roll reflex plus a twelve-sided die, and you must beat them outright — a tie goes to the defender. Surprise is the thing you are claiming, so the burden is on you.

If you win, they are caught. They are not asked anything. The fight simply starts, and they spend the first turn at −1 reflex. That is the whole prize: one turn of advantage, and then it is an even fight against someone who now knows exactly who you are.

If you lose, they spotted you. They are asked whether they want to fight, and they may simply walk away — no roll, no cost, nothing you can do about it. If they choose to fight you anyway, they start at +1 reflex, because they watched you fail to sneak up on them.

Nothing about this depends on which way anyone is facing, or on whether they could see your path. Facing is not modelled. It is reflex and the die.

Request

You are standing on their tile, looking at them. Nothing is hidden, so nothing is rolled to open — they are simply asked.

If they want to fight, it starts, with neither side favoured.

If they want out, they have to talk their way out: both of you roll intelligence plus a die, and they must beat you outright. A tie leaves things as they are, which means in the fight — they are the one trying to change what is already happening.

Losing that roll puts them in the fight they just tried to decline. That is the only thing refusing can cost.

Answering

You get ten seconds — one combat turn.

Saying nothing is refusing. The window closes and runs exactly the same code an explicit refusal would, intelligence roll included. This is deliberate: it means someone cannot walk up to a player who is offline, away, or asleep and farm them by waiting.

Refusing does nothing else to you. You are not moved, not marked, not put on a cooldown, and nothing is remembered. Refuse every challenge you ever get and the game will not treat you differently for it.

You can only ever have one challenge open at a time, so you cannot be buried under prompts by several people at once.

If either of you leaves — disconnects, or abandons the character — the challenge is void and the one still standing is told so. Nothing is settled against somebody who is no longer there.

What failing costs the attacker

Fail an opening and you carry a penalty for 60 ticks, about a minute:

Each is the stat that opening runs on, so failing makes you worse at the thing you just failed at: keep getting spotted and you get easier to see coming; keep pestering people and you get easier to refuse.

They stack. Ten failures in a minute is a −10, and each point drains away on its own timer. Logging out does not shed them.

They apply to nothing else. This is worth being clear about: a −5 reflex here does not slow you in combat, does not hurt your escapes, and does not touch anything outside your next attempt to open on somebody. It is a PvP-only debt.

What killing someone is worth

A duel pays the winner exactly as a fight against a monster does. The formula is the same one on Combat: their level sets the pool, your share of the damage sets your cut, and a quick win pays more than a long grind.

A kill takes everything they had. Their pack and everything they were wearing passes to whoever killed them — sockets and all, so you inherit the work they put into a weapon rather than a bare copy of it. Anything that will not fit in your pack waits in your pending drops, the same as a monster's loot does when you are overloaded.

Driving someone off pays, but takes nothing. They fled with their possessions, exactly as a monster that gets away does. You are paid for the damage you dealt and nothing more.

So the difference between winning and finishing is the difference between being paid and being paid and inheriting. It is also the difference between an opponent who lives and one who does not.

What this means in practice

Read the two openings together and the shape is clear:

• An ambush is the only opening that can force a fight. Win the reflex roll and the other player never gets asked.
• A request is close to a formality against someone who does not want it. They only have to win one intelligence roll, and every time they win it you get worse at the next one, while they stay exactly as good at refusing. Against a determined refuser, asking politely trends towards never working.

So if you actually want the fight, the tile you want is the one next to them, not the one they are standing on. Walking onto their square is the courteous opening, and courtesy is refusable.

And from the other side: if you do not want to be duelled, the thing to watch is not people walking up to you — it is people stopping one tile away.

Markets are not safe ground

Nothing in this game gates a fight by room, and the market is no exception. It is deliberate: a safe tile invented for trading would become the tile everybody used for everything except trading.

It matters more there than anywhere else, because a market is a place people stand still in — reading a list, comparing prices, deciding. And anyone who has been trading is carrying tickets, each of which is a claim on goods sitting somewhere else. Kill them and you inherit every one.

If you are running a dozen listings, you are carrying a dozen reasons for somebody to start something.