Combat

Combat occurs whenever you come across one or more opponents, whether immediately or as a result of a choice encounter.

Once in combat, you draw a 'hand' of 5 techniques from your deck of Techniques. See the combat info section of the game for details.

Striking without selecting any technique means you take no actions that combat round, but it will let you redraw an entirely new hand of 5 techniques. Note that the 5 techniques that were in your hand are discarded and not reshuffled into this combat's current techniques deck.

Techniques are divided into seven categories: etheric, evasion, fire, melee, ranged, stealth, and none. Many effects and items of equipment give bonuses to the power of techniques from certain categories, or increase your defense against them. (Note that there are six damage types which consist of the five listed previously plus direct damage, which is often, but not always, associated with unclassified techniques.)

Any technique with a value listed for base damage will reduce the opponent's hit points on a successful use. Techniques with a value listed for base defense (generally evasion techniques) allow you to avoid some, or even all, damage from one or more categories of offensive techniques, as specified in their description. Passive defense from equipment or effects can reduce damage from a given attack to 1, but cannot completely eliminate it.

Sometimes, you will encounter multiple opponents working together. By left-clicking on an opponent's portrait, you can choose which one to target each round (if you don't choose, the living opponent furthest to the left will be targeted). Your current target is indicated by a little black arrow below the targeted opponent. Note that while almost all attacks target one opponent only, defensive techniques will protect you against any incoming damage of the correct type.

Terminology

The parts of combat rounds are not explicitly named in-game, but for most purposes, we've been using the following standards on the wiki:

  • A combat is everything that happens from when you start a fight until you win/lose/run away.
  • A combat is composed of one or more rounds. This is everything that happens when you click "Strike" (or press Enter) once. (ie. a single screenful of text)
  • A round is composed of one or more passes. A single pass consists of a single action that you and/or your opponents do at the same time. If you chain five techniques together, the round will consist of five passes. Passes are separated by a blank line in the combat readout.

Formulae

The amount of damage done by an attack is calculated as follows:

  • All techniques have a base damage and an associated attribute (eg. Perception)
  • Any +damage bonuses from equipment or effects is added to the base damage to give attack power
  • A random number is chosen between:

min damage = attack power - opponent's defense
max damage = min damage + MIN(min damage, attribute)

  • Defense cannot reduce damage below 1.

Example:

Evasion techniques are similarly calculated.

  • The base defense is added to any +evasion from equipment or effects ("defense power")
  • A random number is chosen between:

min defense = defense power
max defense = defense power + MIN(defense power, attribute)

See also: Special Combat Mechanics

Running away

You can get one of the following outcomes when running away:

(1 enemy)
You try to escape, but can't shake the <opponent>. (fail to escape - take no actions for a round, draw a new hand)
You escape <opponent>'s pursuit. (cost 1 energy)
You dash away from <opponent>, quickly shaking off any pursuit. (cost 0 energy)

(multiple enemies)
You try to escape, but can't shake the them. (fail to escape - take no actions for a round, draw a new hand)
You escape your opponents' pursuit. (cost 1 energy)
You spring away from your foes, losing them quickly. (cost 0 energy)

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