Combat

Physical vs magical attacks

A physical attack — melee or archery — first rolls to hit: your accuracy against the target's defence. When it lands, damage comes from your weapon and the attribute that drives it — Strength for melee weapons and also for bows, unless you have the Archery talent, which makes bows use Dexterity instead — and the target's armour absorbs part of it. A magical attack instead measures your magical accuracy against the target's resistance, and what lands is reduced by their magical and elemental absorption. The two paths share almost nothing, so a build that shrugs off swords can still melt to spells.

Landing a physical hit

Whether a blow connects is your accuracy measured against the target's defence. Dexterity pushes both sides: yours raises your accuracy, theirs raises their defence — so hitting a nimble opponent is genuinely harder. Your weapon skill adds accuracy on top, and bows lose accuracy in rain and storms.

Attacking from behind wrecks the target's defence. If you can get around an opponent — or catch one who is running — your chance to land goes up sharply. Nothing is ever guaranteed in either direction: a perfect setup can still miss, and a badly outmatched attacker still connects sometimes.

The world moves in half-tile steps, for you and for monsters alike, so positioning is finer than the tile grid suggests. A normal melee swing only lands when you are right beside the target — your character takes a half step to settle in — while critical attacks keep their longer reach. Monsters that fight at arm's length follow the same rule and close that last half step before they hit.

Critical attacks and dashes

Spending a Critical Point turns your next swing into a critical attack: it reaches about three tiles and hits far harder than a normal blow. A critical with a bow spends two Critical Points, with or without the Archery talent. A dash reaches about two tiles and carries you into the target as you strike — except with a short sword or dagger, whose dash only goes off when you are no more than one tile from reaching the target.

The critical attack now scales with your level and your mastery of the weapon you are holding. Previously it performed about the same whoever swung it; today a low-level character, or one swinging a weapon they have barely trained, lands criticals noticeably less often, while a high-level, well-trained character lands them noticeably more. Each weapon has its own profile, so mastering the weapon you actually fight with is worth real accuracy.

A dash is always a normal hit. It never turns into a critical attack, even with Super attack mode on, and it spends no Critical Points — you can dash with an empty pool.

Chaining hits

Landing blows back to back builds a small damage bonus, so staying on a target beats trading hits and backing off. Every weapon now uses the same progression — the chain rewards aggression the same way whether you are holding an axe or a rapier, instead of each weapon having its own hidden ramp.

Weapon upgrades

The upgrade level (+N) of your weapon now counts for considerably more than it used to. Its contribution is amplified when you spend a Critical Point and again inside the war zones, so a heavily upgraded weapon out-performs a plain one by a much wider margin than before. If you were treating upgrades as a cosmetic nicety, they are now a real part of your damage.

A +N run is paid in upgrade stones and Contribution — Stones of Xelima for weapons, Stones of Merien for armour and shields — or in Majestic Points for Dark weapons. What it costs in materials and attempts is priced on the Upgrade Calculator.

Armour, shields and Vitality

When a physical hit lands, the game picks one piece of your armour at random — the chest half the time, legs and boots together a quarter, the arms 15% and the head 10% — and it is that piece's absorption which reduces the blow. The same goes for the Reduce damage by that an upgraded (+N) armour piece shows: only the piece that was struck takes its amount off the blow, never the whole set added up, so the bonus on your chest counts far more often than the one on your helmet. Capes have none, and it does nothing against spells. A full set matters: one excellent piece surrounded by rags only helps you when the roll happens to pick it.

A shield can take a hit in place of your armour — never both. It can only catch a blow that comes from the front: the way you are facing or either front diagonal. Your chance to block is half your Shield skill (50% at 100). A blocked hit absorbs 1.5× your shield's absorption, up to 80%, and never less than the armour piece it covered; everything else lands on your armour as usual. Surrounded, the blows from your sides and back go straight to your armour. A shield's own Reduce damage by (+N) counts only on a hit it blocks.

Two more things sit between a hit and your health bar:

• Vitality reduces damage on its own, separately from anything you are wearing. A high-Vitality character takes less from every hit even in light armour.
• Durability. When you block, the shield now takes the bulk of the wear that used to be paid by your armour — expect to repair shields more often and body pieces less.

Crush

Every attack carries a chance to crush — a devastating hit that deals extra damage and paints its number in red. Luck is the attribute that raises how often you crush, at roughly 0.33% per point, and gear and talents can raise both how often it happens and how much extra it deals.

Stagger and interruption

A physical blow of 40 damage or more (60 in fight zones other than 2v2 arenas) knocks you back half a tile, whatever weapon dealt it. Below that, it depends on who hit you. From another player, only a short sword or a dagger truly stops you: most of their light hits hold you in place for 0.4 seconds. Every other weapon makes you flinch for a tenth of a second at most, and the damage of a player's spell does not stop you at all. The one exception is the Burn left by a mage with the Fire talent: every time it deals its damage it holds you in place for 0.4 seconds and breaks any spell you are casting. Concentration and a Tank's chance to evade a stun can spare you from it, as with any hit that stops you.

Monsters stop you according to how much damage they deal, with a blow or with a spell: 10 or less does not slow you, 11 to 25 holds you for 0.2 seconds, and more than 25 holds you for the full 0.4.

A hit of 5 damage or more interrupts a spell you are casting, and so does any blow that stops you in place. Lighter hits do not. A hit that would knock you back (40 damage or more) is the exception: if you are paralyzed, or have a wall right behind you so it cannot send you flying, it does not break your spell. A caster with someone in melee range needs to break away, out-range them, or accept that the cast may not finish.

Concentration can save the cast. Every time you start a spell, there is a chance you lock in: for that whole cast, hits neither break your spell nor stop you, no matter how many enemies are on you. The chance grows mostly with your Intelligence and a little with your Vitality: around one in five for a typical caster, about one in three with top Intelligence. It is rolled once per cast, so it holds against a crowd just as well as against one attacker. Some hits break it anyway: a knockback, a stun (any Short Sword hit, and the talents that say they stun, such as the Hammer's, the Archery's and the Fire burn), and a paralysis landed by a hit. Your chance is shown as Concentration in the Combat tab of the Character window ([[F5]]). A character with low Intelligence has no chance at all: it only starts once Intelligence, helped a little by Vitality, is high enough.

An enemy's hit also locks Recall. For 10 seconds after another player attacks you — even if the blow misses or a shield absorbs it — neither the spell nor the Recall Scroll works — except inside your own town and in places where no one can attack. Monster hits and Poison or Burn ticks do not count. Being paralyzed locks Recall for the same 10 seconds. You also have to stand still: Recall needs 3 seconds without taking a step, even if nobody has touched you, and every step restarts the count. The standing-still rule does not apply in your own city's farm, garden and two hunting grounds. When you cast Recall before the wait is over, a bar above your head — visible to everyone — shows how long is left: until it turns green you cannot release the spell, and a click cancels the cast. The Invisibility Scroll refuses to work for 10 seconds after you take a hit from a player or a monster, wherever you are. A refused scroll is not spent. Inside the Temples, where no spell can be cast, Recall is not cast either: if you know it, use it as usual and hold still for 3 seconds — a step, a hit or a click cancels it — and you are taken out without spending mana. The spots where Recall sets you down in Aresden and Elvine are safe zones: nobody can attack there.

Enemy buildings are closed to you. A citizen of one city cannot enter the other city's farm or any of its buildings: those entrances do nothing and are not highlighted on the ground or the minimap. The city itself can still be invaded, and characters with no city are unaffected.

Assists. You do not need the killing blow to get credit for an enemy. You earn an assist when an enemy dies and you had damaged them, healed or buffed an ally who was hitting them, or landed a Paralyze or a Hold Person on them — even without dealing any damage. Damage from your fields, such as Ice Storm or Fire Field, and from your summoned creatures counts too. You have to be nearby when they fall, and assists still pay out when a monster lands the final blow. Assists add up towards Enemy Kills; your character sheet (F5) keeps the count and lists the exact rules. You can earn an assist on the same enemy once every 5 minutes; if you are still waiting, the game tells you. Helping one of your own characters never counts.

Hunting far below your level pays nothing. Killing an enemy more than 30 levels below you does not make them drop items or lose experience, and gives you no gold and no experience. Criminals are the exception: they pay the usual price whoever kills them.

Killing the same player over and over stops paying. You are rewarded for up to 2 kills of the same enemy within 6 hours. Any further kill of that player inside that time gives you no Enemy Kill, no gold and no experience. They still pay the usual price for dying.

A Detect Invisibility Scroll pins its targets down. Enemies it reveals cannot turn invisible again for 60 seconds: an Invisibility Scroll used in that time is refused rather than wasted, so they keep it for later — and you know exactly where they are for a full minute. The Invisibility Potion is the exception: the scroll still reveals whoever drank one, but that doesn't stop them from drinking another. And a regular Detect Invisibility spell can't reveal them at all — only the ascended spell or this scroll can.

Landing a spell

Offensive magic contests your magical accuracy against the target's resistance. Magic pushes both sides: it raises your accuracy when you cast and their resistance when they are cast at. Paralyze and Hold Person between players are the exception: the target's Magic and Magic Resistance skill do not count, only the Magic Resistance on their equipment.

The circle of the spell relative to your level also matters. Casting well above where your level sits carries a heavy penalty — high-circle spells are meant to be cast by characters who have grown into them. Rebirth levels now count towards this, so a reborn character handles the upper circles considerably better than one who has not rebirthed.

Magical and elemental absorption

Resistance to magic in general and resistance to a specific element are now added together under a single shared ceiling, instead of each being applied separately one after the other. In practice:

• Being resistant to both an element and to magic overall protects you more than it used to across the middle of the range.
• Being vulnerable to an element hurts more than it used to — an elemental weakness is now a real liability.
• As with physical damage, there is no ceiling high enough to zero out a spell. For players, magical absorption tops out at 60%, general and elemental added together.
• Monsters have a ceiling too: no monster's damage absorption goes above 80%, physical or magical.

Some weapons and item sets penetrate part of the target's absorption, and carrying several sources of penetration stacks them. Against a heavily warded opponent, penetration is often worth more than raw damage.

Other things magic does

• Freezing now depends on your Magic skill as well as the target's resistance to ice. A skilled caster freezes things a weak one cannot.
• Species specialisation — your training against a particular kind of creature — now adds to your magical damage as well as your physical damage.
• Area spells deal the same damage at the centre as at the edge. Where a target happens to stand inside the blast no longer changes what it takes.
• Area spells are circles, not squares, aimed at the half tile you point at. Anyone whose body the circle touches is hit.
• Ice puts out fire and fire thaws ice. An ice hit removes a Burn from its target and a fire hit removes Frozen — spells, elemental arrows and ground effects alike. Ice spells also put out Fire Wall and Fire Field on the tiles they cover.
• Ground effects hit the moment you step in. Fire Field, Poison Cloud and the like strike as soon as you touch them, even at the edge, and then about once per second while you stay inside.
• How long Frozen lasts depends on who cast it. An Ice-talent caster with Icy Veins (level 55) freezes for more than twice as long as anyone else: an ascended Mass Chill Wind holds for 9 seconds from them and about 4 from other casters. With 6 rebirths, the Ice talent can also add 2 seconds to a Frozen that is already running, up to 9.

Berserk buffs

Minor Berserk and Berserk are now genuinely different spells. They used to do the same thing under two names.

• Minor Berserk adds half again to your physical damage.
• Berserk doubles it.
• Both last the same amount of time, so Berserk is a straight upgrade when you can get it.
• Neither applies to a swing where you spend a Critical Point — the two do not combine.
• You cannot hold both. Whichever you have running must finish before the other will take, so cast the one you want and let it play out.

Recovering HP, MP and SP

Out of the swing, your three pools refill in batches rather than trickling continuously — you get a chunk back, then wait for the next one. The cadence is fixed; how big that chunk is depends on the attribute driving the pool.

Each pool's size comes from your attributes and level — see Character Development.