Combat and Survival

Combat combines automatic weapon attacks with the skills you choose to use between them. Watch your target, resources, cooldowns, and active effects; knowing when to escape is as useful as knowing when to attack.

Before a fight

Inspect a possible opponent before attacking:

look wolf

Check your health, stamina, mana, equipment, and available skills. An opponent’s level and description can help you decide whether to engage, but builders can create unusual enemies whose danger is not captured by level alone.

Your class determines your standard combat kit. See Classes, Skills, and Feats for the detailed standard-class reference, and use learn and the skill panel to review the choices currently available to your character. See Formulas and Attributes for how equipment and stats affect damage and survival.

Starting combat

Use kill <target> to attack a character:

kill wolf

You make an opening attack and enter combat. You and an opponent fighting you then make automatic attacks every two seconds. Hostile creatures can also begin an encounter themselves.

Entering combat prevents normal movement. It can also prevent actions such as resting, learning skills, entering or leaving an instance, and quitting the game. Defeat the attackers, escape with flee, or otherwise end the engagement before trying those actions.

Using skills and hotkeys

Enter a skill’s command or select it in the interface. Skills can spend stamina or mana, have a cast or channel time, apply an effect, and begin a cooldown.

In a standard class-based world, numbered shortcuts generally map core skills to 1 through 5 and flex-skill slots to 6 through 8. Assassin shortcuts can change with stance. Classless worlds can instead assign custom skills to numbers 1 through 10.

1 wolf
6 wolf

Use cooldowns to list abilities that are not ready yet:

cooldowns

Builders can replace the standard class system or add custom abilities. Standard-class characters can review choices with learn and the skill panel; classless characters can list learned custom abilities with skills. In either system, use help <skill> and the interface’s skill details to inspect an ability. Interface and Commands explains command shortcuts and custom aliases.

Focus and targets

Set a focus when you expect to issue several commands against the same target:

focus wolf

Afterward, an offensive skill entered without a target uses that focus. You can also pass focus as a target to other commands:

kill focus
heal focus

Check the current focus with focus, and clear it with:

focus none

Your focus is a stored keyword, not a guarantee that the target is still present. It remains until you change or clear it; a later command fails normally if nothing nearby matches it.

Controlling or leaving a fight

Command	What it does
`assist <character>`	Join the fight of a character in your room.
`taunt`	While in combat, force your current target to attack you.
`disengage`	Leave combat when nobody is attacking you.
`flee`	Spend 20 stamina and, after a two-second delay, escape through a random eligible exit.

Fleeing is not the same as choosing a direction: the destination is random, and an enemy with tracking behavior may pursue you. Flee before your stamina is too low to pay its cost.

For coordinated encounters, including following, forming a group, and sharing rewards, see Playing Together.

Reading your combat state

Three vitals determine what you can do:

Health keeps you alive. You die when it reaches zero.
Stamina pays for movement, fleeing, and many physical abilities.
Mana pays for many magical abilities.

Combat messages and the interface also show temporary effects such as buffs, damage-over-time effects, crowd control, and shields. An effect can change what actions are available even when your vitals are full. Watch cast or channel progress as well: beginning another incompatible action can be refused or interrupt what you were doing.

Winning and looting

When a creature dies, it can leave a corpse in the room. A corpse behaves like a container: inspect it, use loot as a convenient corpse-looting action, or take a particular item with the normal container syntax.

look corpse
loot
get sword corpse

Inventory limits still apply. The full set of commands for comparing, equipping, using, and carrying loot is in Items and Equipment.

Recovering after combat

Health, stamina, and mana regenerate while you are standing. When the room is safe, rest increases regeneration from 2% to 6% every two seconds.

rest
stand

Resting leaves you vulnerable: you cannot move or attack, and incoming attacks deal double damage. Being attacked forces you back to a standing state. Use stand yourself before moving on.

Death and returning to play

When your character dies, the game creates a corpse where you fell and sends you to the death location configured by the world. You return with 1 health and begin in the resting state.

The penalty is chosen by the builder. Depending on the world, death may:

Have no item or gold penalty.
Leave your inventory, or both your inventory and equipped items, in the corpse.
Charge a gold repair cost.
Destroy equipped items.

Some multiplayer worlds also make corpses decay. If the death message says that belongings were left behind, recover them promptly and ask other players for help if the route is dangerous.

Recover in safety, use stand, and then decide whether to return to the encounter. World-specific instructions and the death message take precedence over these general possibilities.

A complete encounter loop

Inspect the opponent and check your vitals.
Enter kill <target> to begin, or react when a hostile creature attacks.
Use skills between automatic attacks; watch costs, effects, casts, and cooldowns.
Assist allies, taunt, disengage, or flee as the situation requires.
Inspect and loot the corpse after victory.
Rest in safety, then stand before continuing.