Combat Commands

The shared verbs every character uses to start, steer, survive and end a fight.

Every class in Rogue fights with the same small set of verbs. Which spells and abilities you have depends entirely on your guild, and those live on the class pages; what follows is the machinery underneath them, which works identically whether you are a warrior with a greatsword or a necromancer behind a wall of minions.

The shape of a fight is simple. You size a creature up with consider, you start on it with attack, you steer your blows with target, you watch how badly it is hurt with xa, and if it is going badly you flee. Everything else is refinement.

Starting a fight#

attack#

The general engagement command. It uses whatever weapons you have wielded, or your bare hands if you have wielded nothing. Numbered targets let you pick one creature out of several with the same name, and attack all engages every hostile in the room at once.

attack wolf
attack warrior 2
attack all
attack stop

attack stop disengages, but only if your enemy is not actively fighting you back. Several situations block attacking outright: consecrated or otherwise protected areas, being mounted, sitting or lying down, and being paralysed. Companions and protected NPCs cannot be attacked at all.

If you lead a group with auto-attack enabled, group members in the same room join the fight with you.

melee#

Engages a target specifically in melee. It is a deliberate commitment rather than a general opener: while you are engaged, attempts to flee root you briefly, and your opponent has a chance to pursue you automatically if you do get away. The target must be a living creature in your room.

melee wolf

cast#

Casts a spell you have learned. Syntax varies by spell, and some spells take no target at all, but the general forms are consistent.

cast fireball
cast heal on marla
cast shadowbolt against wolf
cast cripple on leg of warrior

shoot#

Fires a ranged weapon. The weapon must be wielded and, for most weapons, loaded first.

shoot bow at wolf
shoot wolf with bow
shoot bow north

Choosing what you hit#

target#

Sets which creature your blows and abilities are directed at. It does not start an attack on its own; it decides where the attacks you are already making go. Numbered targets work here too.

target wolf
target warrior 2

ignore#

The counterpart to target. It stops you attacking a particular creature, or everything at once, which is the usual fix when a stray area attack has pulled you into fights you did not want.

ignore wolf
ignore all

enemies#

Lists every creature, player or NPC, that currently bears you ill will. Useful before you walk back into a room you fled from, because NPCs remember.

enemies

threat#

Threat is how much attention a defender pays to each of its attackers. Damage generates it automatically, and certain abilities generate a great deal of it deliberately. A defender attacks whoever holds the most threat unless a taunt is forcing its focus elsewhere. Threat clears when a defender dies, and your own threat clears when you do.

threat
threat wolf
group status full

The Fighter taunt ability, available at level 10 for 5 spell points on a ten-second cooldown, applies a large threat bonus and briefly locks the defender onto the taunter. Use threat in a group fight to see who is about to pull aggro off the tank.

Reading the fight#

consider#

Compares a creature's level with yours and reports roughly how the fight would go. It is a rough guide based on relative level and should not be treated as a guarantee, but it costs nothing and it is a great deal cheaper than the alternative.

consider wolf

xa#

Gives a descriptive health reading for your current combat target, your marked ranged target, or any creature you name. There are no numbers, only a ladder of descriptions running from Perfect Condition through scratched, slightly wounded, bleeding, wounded, bleeding profusely, severely wounded, critically wounded, Gushing Vital Fluids, and finally Knocking on Death's Door. Undead and constructs use their own descriptions, such as damaged and falling apart.

xa
xa wolf

Rangers can read a target's distance with xa before melee is joined. Once in melee, only the condition shows.

hp#

Your own vitals in one line: current and maximum health, spell points and endurance. score and summary give the fuller picture, but in a fight hp is what you want.

hp

dps#

Toggles numerical damage values onto the end of combat messages. Off by default, because it turns evocative prose into a spreadsheet, but invaluable when you are actually comparing two weapons or two rotations.

dps
dps on
dps off

Getting out#

flee#

Runs for a random available exit. You have to be in active combat for it to do anything at all. Some conditions stop it working: boss encounters, leg wounds, and being engaged in melee will each hold you in place, the last of them rooting you briefly before you can break away.

flee

wimpy#

There is no wimpy command. Automatic fleeing at low health is a setting, and it lives with the rest of the display and behaviour options.

settings display

Set a percentage there and you will flee automatically when your health falls below it. It is the difference between a bad fight and a dead character, and it is the first thing most experienced players configure.

dispel#

Ends a magical effect currently running on you. Not every effect can be dispelled; only those that support voluntary removal.

dispel

Combat mode and social mode#

Rogue keeps two presentation modes for your character, and they are not purely cosmetic.

undress#

Puts you in combat mode. Others see your armour and your weapons, your armour protects you properly, and you can start fights. This is the normal state and where you want to be any time danger is possible.

undress

dress#

Puts you in social mode. Others see your clothing rather than your armour and weapons, which is the point of it for roleplay. The cost is real: in social mode you cannot initiate attacks, and if something attacks you, you receive no armour or weapon bonuses at all. You are effectively defenceless until you undress again.

dress

After the fight#

loot#

Takes items from a corpse and announces the results to your group. It requires you to be in a party of at least two.

loot
loot wolf corpse

lootall#

Loots every corpse in the room in one action, again for a group of at least two. If the group has auto-bury enabled, the emptied corpses are buried afterwards.

lootall

bury#

Buries a corpse and removes it from the area. Anything the corpse still contains is dropped on the floor first, so nothing is lost. With no argument it buries the first corpse in the room.

bury
bury wolf corpse

Corpses are also raw material. skin takes leather and hide, and butcher takes meat and other edibles; a corpse can give both, but only once each.

Fighting style#

style#

Your fighting style changes the balance of your combat behaviour, trading offence against defence. Mastery in each style grows with use, and some styles are gated behind a class and a level.

style
style progress
style defensive

The styles are normal for balanced fighting, offensive for more offence and less defence, defensive for the reverse, dirty for thieves at level 24, aetherflow for mages at level 20 which reduces spell point costs, aggressive for warriors at level 15 which trades defence for damage, and berserker for warriors at level 30 which does the same far more severely.

Related commands#