Combat

Combat

Health is the Hitpoints level. A new character has 10; level 40 is 40. Hitpoints and Defence rise from every fight; Melee rises with a blade or bare hands, Ranged with a bow, Magic with a staff.

Three ways to fight. A blade stands beside the foe. A bow shoots from a few tiles back and draws faster than a blade swings. A staff casts on the Magic skill from the same distance. Staffs are fletched from two logs, on the bows' ladder.

Short draw or long. A shortbow looses fast and steady. A longbow is the slowest bow, and pays for its slow draw the way a staff does — a bigger hit per point of level and strength — so over a minute the two come out level: the same damage a second, landed in fewer, harder shots. Pick the short draw for a steady stream, the long for the heavy hit.

One hand or two. A one-hand blade leaves a hand for a shield, so a melee fighter can stand behind more defence than anyone. A two-hander — a greatsword, smithed from five bars — fills both hands instead: no shield, but it hits hard enough on the melee beat to match a bow-and-quiver's damage a second. It is melee's version of the ranger's and mage's choice: the shield's cover, or the offence that fills the slot. Putting one on sets your shield aside, and putting a shield back on sets the greatsword aside.

A spell is slow and heavy. It comes on the longest beat in the game, slower than any bow, and it reads only 50% of the foe's defence when it rolls to land, so it misses far less against the armoured. It also spends fewer points of level and strength per point of damage than a blade or a bow: a staff hits about twice as hard, half as often. Over a minute the three ways come out level — what differs is the rhythm, and what you would rather be fighting.

Landing a hit. Chance = your accuracy ÷ (your accuracy + their evasion), where accuracy is 10 + level + gear accuracy and evasion 10 + Defence + gear defence. A hit deals 1 up to your max hit, nothing subtracted: monsters wear no armour. Max hit = 1 + (level + gear strength) ÷ a divisor that depends on the weapon: 8 for a one-hand blade or a shortbow, 6 for a two-hander, 5 for a longbow, 4.5 for a staff. So a foe's defence decides how often you land, never how hard, and the chooser shows your max hit and your chance to hit against each one. Weapons swing every few ticks (see Gear); bare hands every 5.

Xp for damage dealt. Every point of health you take off a foe pays the same flat xp, on every monster — the weapon skill in full, Defence and Hitpoints a third each. So overkill is wasted: fell a foe in one heavy blow and you are paid for its health, not your hit. The best xp an hour is not the richest monster but the one you can take down with the least waste and the fewest misses — the chooser's xp/h, run on your own character, tells you which. The richest coins and the best xp are no longer the same monster. The world boss pays the same way, three times over, by the share of its pool a blow took.

Food. Set "eat at" and how much to carry; the character eats when its health drops past the mark and walks to the depot for more when the pack runs out. With no food it drinks at a fountain, which gives one health every 4.8s -- slow on purpose -- once health falls under 33%. Out of a fight, health comes back on its own at one point every 60.0s: a night of mining ends at full, a fight does not.

Dying. Brought to zero in a zone, you drop what you carry and wake at a depot at full health; the route ends and the next queued task starts. In a world-boss raid the pack is kept.

Zones. Each zone has one kind of monster wandering it. A fight turns to one of them at a time and kills it to the end before the next; you stand beside it, an archer a few tiles back. The chooser marks each zone Easy, Medium or Hard for your level and says how long you would last; the Drops chip on each row is the monster’s table.

Contracts. The board on the square carries three orders a day from the town's own people: so many bars for the smith, so many trout for the inn. Deliver from storage at the counter and take coins (10 times the vendor's price); one of each per day, and the same three for everyone. Easy, middling, hard: the third is a reason to go back to a skill left behind. New orders at the day's turn.

Signposts. Every post out of the square carries the names of the three who went furthest down that road: the best miners on the way to the quarry, the best anglers toward the shore, the best fighters toward the dark. The same rankings as the ranks window, on the map.

Pets. One kill in five hundred thousand leaves the monster's young -- a Gnawer pup, a Rimewolf cub, a drake hatchling -- as a thing in your pack. Tell it to Follow from the bag and it walks at your heel for everyone to see, and the whole room hears about it in chat. Luck and brews do nothing to the odds; a pet is a story. They are worth nothing to the vendor, never on the market, and the collection log wants all 20.

Skill pets. Every skill but combat has a pet of its own, found at the work: one thing gathered or made in three million leaves it, and one harvest in a hundred thousand for farming, where a harvest is slow. A Pebble golem for mining, a Baby kraken for fishing, an Acorn squirrel, a Queen bee, a Raccoon, a Chef rat, an Ember salamander, a Fletch falcon, a Toadstool, a Yarn kitten and a Star fairy for enhancing. Like the young of the monsters they are only for show, follow you from the bag and walk after you, each in its own way.

Every kill leaves a part -- a pelt, a skin, a bone, a scale -- one each time, stackable, in the table above. The hides are what Crafting cuts into leather for the ranged hand, up to the troll's at 95 and the drake's at 99; the ice wight's shard stiffens the best cloth, and the cinder colossus's chip goes into the one metal set past meteoric, at Smithing 99. The bones, dust, claws and the deep horror's ichor are the second thing in most flasks Herblore brews. Voidshards drop from kills in small numbers and are what enhancing eats. With the pack full of food, what a kill drops goes straight to storage rather than being lost, and the fight goes on.

Potions. Herblore brews the herbs the fields grow into an hour of something better, drunk from the pack (tap the flask in the bag): Gatherer's draught -- +10% xp from gathering; Hunter's brew -- +25% odds of a rare find; Warrior's tonic -- +10 accuracy and +10% max hit; Elixir of the vein -- +10% xp from everything; Abyssal tonic -- +25% coins from monsters; Swift draught -- +20% movement speed; Nourishing draught -- +25% healing from food; Haste draught -- +20% attack speed. A second of the same kind extends the hour rather than stacking. A rarer brew is a stronger brew — an uncommon lifts its effect by three tenths, a rare by six tenths, on up to three times for a legendary — so a Rare Hunter's brew is +40% odds rather than +25%. The flasks in force sit in the top bar with their minutes, and show what they are actually doing.