Combat!

Combat on SWmud is deep and rewarding! This guide explains the basics of combat.

The Combat Round

First off, combat has a regular heart beat: Every 2 seconds, a combat round occurs. Here is what happens on a combat round:

Auto-attacks - each combatant attacks their target with their weapon. This happens automatically, unless the combatant is stunned or otherwise unable to attack.
Monsters may choose to use skills if they have any available.
Everyone's global cooldown ("combat delay" or "disable") is reduced by 1.

Note: Players generally get a first-strike advantage against monsters: every time you re-enter a room with an aggro mob, you will get one free swing at the monster before they start swinging back. See <panic bouncing> for details.

Combat Skills

When your combat delay is up, you will see "You feel capable again." and you will be able to use a skill.

When you start out, you will probably only have your racial skill and maybe one guild combat skill available to you. The main thing at this point is to make sure you are using your combat delay as much as possible: any round where you're not on combat delay is a round where you're missing damage.

Once you get more levels, you will start developing an arsenal of skills that can interact with each other in interesting ways. A great source of joy of many SWmud players over the years is experimenting with different character builds to try new and interesting skill combinations.

A Few Notes on Tactics

The most effective way to fight monsters (though it requires the most concentration) is to bounce in and out of the room of your target.

After a certain point, you may be have enough skills or hit points to sit in a room and "straight-tank" the monster.

Regardless, always be on the lookout for following mobs - they are some of the most dangerous monsters in the game.

Another important part of your combat ability comes from your healing: keeping track of your healing skill cooldowns and your drugedness state will let you stay in combat longer!

Defensive Stats

The list of defensive stats are as follows:

Avoidance Chance (AC) - Ability to dodge autoattacks.
Damage Resistance (DR) - Percentage damage reduction.
Damage Threshold (DT) - Flat damage reduction. Applied after DR.
Percentage Armor Penetration - The attacker ignores a percentage of the target's DR.
Flat Armor Penetration - Allows the attacker to ignore a flat amount of the target's DR. Applied after Percentage Armor Pen.
Hit Point (HP) Shields - Temporary "HP" added to a player. Shields do not visibly alter your HP. They act as a buffer that must be depleted before your current HP pool is affected.

NOTE: Skills and abilities can be used to reduce a target's defensive stats to a negative value. This provides an advantage to the attacker, and it ensures that skills reducing a defensive stat remain useful at all times. A negative AC makes a target easier to hit, a negative DR makes the target take additional percentage damage from the opponent, and a negative DT makes the target take additional flat damage equal to the negative DT value. Hit point shields always assume a positive value. Armor Penetration can also bring the target's DR to a negative value, which boosts the attacker's damage. Penetration only affects DR, it has no effect on DT.

Offensive Stats

The primary offensive stats are as follows:

Hit Bonus - Increases the attacker's accuracy or chance to hit.
Critical Chance - The attacker's chance to strike critically.
True Damage - DR or DT cannot reduce the attacker's damage below this value. This is not added damage! It ensures a certain amount of their damage bypasses DR/DT.
Base Damage - Adds a flat amount of damage to the attacker's auto attacks. Ex: +5 to each auto attack.
Percent Damage - Percent boost to the attacker's autoattack damage. Applied after Base Damage.
Base Skill Damage - Adds a flat amount of damage to damaging skills used by the attacker.
Percent Skill Damage - Percent boost in damage for any damaging skill used by the attacker. Applied after Base Skill Damage.