Manual Index
Combat System Updates (Legacy)
These notes capture a historical combat update (12/19/04). They remain as a reference point for how the system evolved.
The Art of Battle
The hit/miss system was updated so all melee attacks can hit or miss. Poor rolls can fumble and add delay; strong rolls can increase damage or ignore armor.
Combat Stances
Combat stances affect your chance to hit and be hit. Stances are available to all melee classes. Use STANCE to view or change, and STANCE ? for the list. Aggressive stances raise your damage but make you easier to hit; defensive stances do the opposite.
ATTACK TYPES Normal: Aggressive: Frenzied: Careful: Defensive: This is the normal mode of attack and defense You attack more aggressively, trading some defense for offense. Throw caution to the wind. More of your attention goes towards defending yourself. Your attacks suffer. HELP!
STATUS command now shows your current stance
Assorted Weapon Bonuses
Different weapon types have been assigned various bonuses and abilities.
- Short Weapons - Now raise your ability to automatically hit your opponent.
- Two-handed Weapons - Have been given armor penetration.
- Bite - Has been assigned higher armor penetration.
- Slings - Have been given slight armor penetration
- Bows - Have been given strong armor penetration
- Crossbows - Now take an extra second to fire, and have been given outstanding armor penetration.
Dodging
Some races now automatically dodge (effectively dodging) blows that would hit others, making them harder to strike with melee.
- Go-blin-al - Have been given high dodging ability.
- Flerian - Have been given good dodging ability.
Spellcasting
- Spells for spellcasting only classes (note: Bards and Hearts will be fixed later tonight) have been sped up slightly, and armor spells increased a small amount. (As well, they can now dodge incoming blows where they would be automatically hit basically every time before)
Shield Parry
- Shield parry now no longer needs to be set against a specific target to work, you simply ready your shield and you can parry. Parry ability is determined by your class, skill in the ability, and current stance (offensive stances reduce your ability to parry a good bit, defensive stances increase your ability to parry a good bit) if you may use stances. Also, a parry no longer automatically ignores all damage, but can stop some or all of the damage depending on the quality of the parry.
Poison System
- This update enabled poison effects on weapons and potions. Players could not apply their own poisons yet. Potions could grant temporary effects (like haste) or apply debuffs that lower OR for a time.
Furthermore, monster attacks may now make use of these poisons, and over the coming weeks many of the monsters with spell attacks that don't make a lot of sense as spells for their special abilities will have some of those swapped out for various poison types instead.
Finally, spells helping give resistance to poison should be added to some folks here shortly too.
Brawling Skill
- You may learn the brawling skill, and then use these two commands to do various small amounts of brawling damage. These skills may be used unarmed much like martial arts.
- Uses PUNCH and KICK commands
Death
- When you depart after death, max hit points and fatigue drop temporarily. Additional deaths in that window are cumulative, lowering HP and fatigue and resetting the timer.
Berserk
- Barbarians now go into the stance "BERSERK" when berserking, greatly increasing their ability to hit enemies and be hit themselves. They cannot change out of this stance. When they fall out, they'll return to normal stance. As a Barbarian progresses in skill with the berserk skill they will gain an additional swing (they start with one, and may earn a 2nd later.) Barbarians also gain the ability to ignore a % of damage from ALL attacks when berserking, which increases as they go up in level.
Fatigue loss when leaving berserk drops as the Barbarian levels. Berserk stop ends the state with less delay and less vigor loss. Barbarians fall out of berserk less easily; berserk dodging is effectively non‑existent.
- Barbarians can now howl while berserking
- BERSERK STOP now takes only 5 seconds
- Barbarians no longer die twice
Psion (PSI)
- Adjusted Psi slow
- Lowered damage, cost and delay on psi disrupt
- Psi damage on dart/bolt no longer goes down over distance
- Psion MENTAL and PSI runes no longer decrement
Clarification: this was not a full psionics rebuild, only a quick interim update.
Penthanian
- Gave Penthanian body armor a base damage block
- Armor and body armor should be ever so slightly more effective now
Miscellaneous Updates
- Raised Secian base hit points
- Monsters will now correctly do LESS damage to targets which have DR higher than their OR, the greater the difference, the less damage they are capable of doing. This also now correctly applies to auto-hits and critical strikes as well.
- Adjusted vertical reach on natural attacks
- Can no longer breathe fire with an entangled head
- Changed chance of being knocked down by damage: You no longer will be knocked down as easily from taking damage from any attack type or from taking extremely low amounts of damage. It now requires what is effectively a critical blow to have a -chance- to knock someone down / out of the air. Believe this may also help deal with some issues with FJK, but could be wrong, if not this will be dealt with when we fix up MA shortly.
- Fixed bug where you would still be on fire after being killed
- Fixed bug where you could fumble on a 2nd claw against a dead monster
- Reduced training times
- Can no longer auto-train naturals past level 41
- Animated creatures will no longer cause Secian feedback
- You can no longer stealth into rooms you can't hide in
- Thief PINCH rune no longer decrement
Treasure ...
- Changed treasure generation to tighten treasure range and lower the gem rate. Gems will now be rarer and more expensive.
- The average gen on all monsters, particularily low/mid end monsters was increased slightly, and the range of coin drops brought in a good bit so you won't get insane low drops or crazy rich drops anymore. Gems are now much harder to find on monsters, and worth a good bit more to help make them more collectible and valuable like they used to be a long time ago. Gems can now appear on any coin roll, instead of just on rich ones, their change does not effect how coin generates in any way/shape/form.
Coming Soon ...
- Martial Arts Update
- More PSI updates