How Combat Works

The Five Axes

Each monster is soft on one axis, sometimes two alike, and its page names them. Carry a second weapon for the creatures your first cannot reach.

Combat Styles

Your style decides which skill the experience trains; Constitution takes its share on top whatever you pick.

Style changes the axis only on a few weapons; 34 of the 47 melee weapons strike the same axis in every style.

• Sable Sword, Bronze Sword, Iron Sword, Steel Sword, Barrow Blade, Siltedge, Damask Sword, Wolfram Sword, Bloodwright Sword, Ossuary Blade, Huntsman's Blade, Decorative Sword: slash, and puncture on Controlled.
• Festerpoint: puncture, and slash on Controlled.

How Hits Land

• Accuracy. Your level in the lane and your gear's bonus on the axis make your attack roll; the defender's Defense level and its bonus on that same axis make its defense roll. The higher roll usually wins.
• The armour triangle. Armour can be weak on an axis: plate against Magic, robes against Ranged. A weakness lowers the defense roll on that axis, and at -24 or worse every blow on it lands.
• Damage. A landed blow deals 0 up to the max hit, and 0 reads as a miss. Melee max hit comes from Strength and your gear's Strength, Ranged from Ranged and the arrow, Magic from the spell and Spell Power.
• Defense absorbs. An ordinary monster whose Attack level is below your Defense lands smaller blows: ((its Attack + 8) ÷ (your Defense + 8))² of the roll. Bosses are exempt.
• Gear with a Damage Ward takes a flat amount off every landed blow.

Experience

Experience is paid per point of damage dealt, not per kill, and split with Constitution. Three things set what a point is worth:

Fighting Level

The battle board shows your fighting level: the level your experience is priced at, counting only the lane you deal damage with.

Your best lane is the largest of (Attack + Strength) × 0.914, Ranged × 1.5, and Magic × 1.5; all figures round down. Your fighting level is the higher of the two whenever your offence outweighs Defense + Constitution. Autocasting shows your Magic fighting level beside your weapon's.

Worked example. Attack 50, Strength 48, Defense 40, Constitution 47: fighting level 51, combat level 50.

Healing and Ammunition

• Health does not recover on its own. Eat food, or wear gear with Health Regen such as the Ring of Life.
• Arrows are spent per shot, with a 75% chance of getting each one back. Gear raises it, never above 90%: Hushquiver (+10%).

Poison

A poisoned fighter or monster loses health every 15 seconds, whatever else is happening. Its health bar turns green with a small P; hover the P for the damage and time left.

When You Are Poisoned

• In a fight each tick is a blow like any other. It can kill you, with everything that death costs.
• Out of a fight the poison keeps draining, down to 1 health and never below it. Fleeing stops the dying, not the poison. It keeps running while you travel, work, or log out.
• A second poisoning refreshes the first: the clock restarts and the stronger tick is kept. Poisons never add together.
• Dying clears it. So does waiting it out.

Ulcwen, The Blackwater Ague also poisons without touching you: every 50 seconds, 5 seconds after the log warns of it, a miasma poisons every fighter in the raid who has no Poison Immunity for 6 every 15s over 45s. Drink the cure below before it lands.

The Cure

• A Poison Antidote ends a poison the moment you drink it.
• It grants Poison Immunity for 5 minutes, which stacks in time: each one adds its minutes to what is left.
• In a fight it sits in the action strip beside your food.

Poisoning Your Enemies

Gear that poisons says so on its card. A monster you poison takes 2 every 15 seconds for 45 seconds, refreshed by every new poisoning. A monster the poison finishes is your kill, with its loot and its count. Poison damage earns no experience: only your own blows do.

A Virulet makes your poison stronger instead: while you wear it, the monsters you poison take 3 a tick instead of 2. It poisons nothing by itself.

What cannot be poisoned: any boss fought together (world bosses, clan bosses, a dungeon's boss) and any creature with a poison of its own. Their manual pages say Poisonable: No, as on Ghessa, Gravemaw, The Unburied, Flintheart, The Long-Standing. Everything else can be, the monsters inside a dungeon's chambers included.

Death & Risk

• Below combat level 10, death costs nothing.
• From combat level 10, defeat destroys everything in your backpack and 20% of the gold you carry, and you wake in the nearest town.
• Always safe: worn equipment, everything in your House (items and banked gold), and your skills and experience.

Before a risky fight, leave valuables and gold at your House and bring more food than you think the fight needs.