Combat

Combat in Dawntide revolves heavily around the three Combat Attributes: Force, Speed, and Balance. These will all trend towards zero when not in combat, and go up or down in combat based on your own stances, equipment and other factors as well as those of your target. After entering combat (through a keystroke or hotkey) a character will continually attack their target with either their melee weapon or ranged weapon, based on which they have chosen.

Combat Factors (Force, Speed, Balance or FSB)

• Force modifies your attack damage and the power of your spells. Range: -10 to +10
• Speed modifies your attack speed and the speed at which you cast spells. Range: -10 to +10
• Balance modifies your ability to defend yourself against melee, ranged and spell attacks. Range: -10 to +10

All characters, NPCs and monsters have these Combat Attributes. In the client, they are presented as colored points.

Stances

Stances determine the focus of your character in combat, and will affect all forms of combat from melee to sorcery. All characters start with the basic balanced stance, and more stances can be unlocked through perks as you raise your skills. A few examples are the Aggressive stance which increases your force and lowers your enemy’s balance at the expense of your own balance and the Channeling stance which improves your focus greatly but makes you practically defenseless in combat. Changing stances is a combat action that takes around 1 second and costs a chunk of all your combat factors.

Combat Actions

Combat Actions are special actions and attacks that will momentarily pause your auto attacking. Casting spells in combat counts as a combat action, and so do special attacks which usually cost a chunk of your combat focuses and endurance in exchange for delivering a powerful attack or causing a special effect on yourself or your foe. A few examples are Critical Strike, which costs 5 Force and 100 Endurance, in exchange for an attack that cannot be stopped by armor and which will stun your enemy briefly. Combat effects can have a wide number of attributes, including the following list:

• Circumstantial Requirement: Must be behind enemy, must be on enemy’s side, sun must be shining, etc.
• Combat Attribute modifier: Bonuses or reductions to FSB.
• Own Combat Attributes: Requirements for your FSB to execute a given ability. Many abilities require you to have certain levels of one or more Combat Attributes.
• Target Combat Attributes: Requirements for target’s FSB to execute a given ability against them. Many abilities require your target to have certain levels of one or more Combat Attributes.
• Effects: Effects of the attack, such as Damage or defensive bonuses. There are many different effects and effect types.
• Cost: Mana, endurance, combat factor or resource cost.

Anticipation

Anticipation allows you to gauge an enemy’s Force, Speed and Balance, as well as read which stance they are using. At high skill levels, it will allow you to read multiple nearby enemies instead of just your target.