Combat

How fights are timed, how attacks land, and how damage is worked out from the swing to the wound.

Fighting in Rogue is resolved in fixed two-second rounds. You do not type an attack each time you want to swing: once a fight has started, everyone in the room who is engaged swings automatically on every round until one side dies, flees or is otherwise taken out of the fight. What you do type are the skills, spells and manoeuvres that go on top of that steady rhythm.

Rounds are run per room, not per character. When the first blow is struck the room starts a round timer, and every combatant in that room resolves inside the same tick. This is why a fight that spills across a doorway feels like two separate fights: each room keeps its own clock.

Starting a fight#

attack <target> begins combat. kill, hit, waste and gank all do the same thing. A few situations stop you before you swing:

• You are sitting or lying down. Stand first.
• You are mounted. Dismount first.
• You are in social attire. See dress and undress.
• You are already busy with another timed action.
• The room forbids violence, such as consecrated ground.
• The target is a companion, a hero, or a protected NPC.

If you want to know what you are walking into, consider <target> gives you a plain reading of the gap between your level and theirs, and states their level outright. It is honest about hopeless fights.

The shape of a round#

Each round works through a fixed order, which is why combat output always reads the same way regardless of who is in the room.

1. Queued skills and spells fire. Anything you triggered since the last round resolves here, before any weapon swings.
2. Players and ridden heroes take their auto-attacks.
3. Bonus attacks resolve, such as rogue and bard ripostes.
4. Warriors gain adrenaline, 4 points per round to a ceiling of 100.
5. Your own attack lines are printed, followed by your health line. Your swing always appears last in your own output, immediately above your vitals, no matter what order the room was processed in.
6. NPCs take their auto-attacks, which is why hostile blows appear below your health line.
7. Defensive reactions such as parries and blocks are flushed.
8. Damage-over-time and heal-over-time effects tick once.
9. Anything that died during the round is finally removed, so every skill and spell message appears above the death message.

A character who is stunned is skipped entirely in the attack passes. A character who is knocked down or petrified cannot attack either, though a knocked-down or stunned player still gives their target a free counter-swing.

Landing a blow#

The base chance to hit is 90 percent against a target of your own level, moving by roughly 2 percent for each level of difference between you. That figure is capped at 95 percent and floored at 5 percent, so no fight is ever a certainty in either direction.

On top of that there is a flat 5 percent chance to miss outright, applied before anything else, that no amount of level advantage removes. Two-handed weapons carry a further 5 percent miss chance, reflecting the heavier swing. Neither of these applies against level 0 training dummies, so newcomers are not taught that the game is capricious.

Many effects then move the number. Blindness and blinding flashes halve your chance. Being mocked, deafened or afflicted with a dirge shaves 10, 15 and 5 percent off it respectively. Blessings, bardic finales and accuracy runes push it back up. A handful of themed enemies described as rarely missing are allowed to exceed the normal 95 percent ceiling, up to 99 percent.

Working out damage#

Damage starts from the weapon. A weapon's class sets the width of its damage band, from roughly 4 to 10 at the bottom of the range to 12 to 50 for the very best. Your level decides where inside that band you tend to land: a high-level character with a modest weapon still rolls near the top of its band, which is why an old favourite stays serviceable far longer than its numbers suggest.

From there the swing is modified in order:

Two things are settled last of all, on the finished blow, so they count your fighting style, your sharpened edge and every other bonus as well as the roll. A two-handed weapon adds 33 percent, paying for the lost shield and the extra miss chance. A swing from the off hand lands for half of what the same blow would have done from the main hand. A bow is the exception: it takes its two-handed bonus as 20 percent on the roll.

Critical hits come next. The base chance is 5 percent, plus one point for every 4 points of Agility above 10, so 15 percent at the Agility cap. Various effects add more. A critical does not multiply your roll: it replaces it with the maximum that attack was capable of, so a critical is always a full-power blow rather than a small roll made slightly larger.

Rogues, thieves and assassins are tuned differently. They gain half the Agility crit points, reaching 10 percent at the cap rather than 15, and their criticals land for 85 percent of the attack's ceiling rather than the full maximum.

Critical hits on skills#

Skills and spells can be critical hits too, on exactly the same chance as a weapon swing: the same base, the same Agility, and the same shouts, runes and potions.

Every skill hit rolls inside a band of its own. A skill whose damage is worked out as a single figure rolls evenly from 13 percent under that figure to 13 percent over it, so its average is the figure itself. A skill that already had a range of its own keeps that range. A critical lands for the top of the band. Nothing is multiplied: a critical is simply the most that skill can do, and that goes for rogues, thieves and assassins as well.

Luck pulls a skill's roll toward the top of its band, as it does a weapon's: not at all at Luck 10, and 90 percent of the way at Luck 50. It can never push a skill past its own maximum.

You know a skill was a critical by the red star in brackets after the hit line, in front of the damage number if you have numbers switched on. It is the same star a critical weapon swing carries. Both sides are shown it: whoever landed the blow and whoever took it. Onlookers are not.

The same roll reaches fighting-style procs and the damage procs on weapons. Damage that ticks over time, such as bleeds, poisons and burns, is not a hit and does not roll for a critical.

Healing can be a critical as well, on the healer's own chance. A heal has no band to top out, so a critical mending simply heals 20 percent more, and its number carries the same red star for the healer and the healed. Healing that ticks over time does not roll.

A handful of abilities have a critical of their own that works differently: a ranger's aimed shots, Shiv, Spin Kick, Shock and the gnome's Spark Blast. Those are unchanged, and the ordinary critical above applies to their base hit as well.

Flurries#

Some weapons, and the Berserker style, can set off a flurry of extra swings. How many you get is tied to the same critical chance. A flurry made for two swings gives one, and two on a critical. One made for three gives two, and three on a critical. A flurry that rolls a range, such as one or two, keeps its range and gives one more than its top on a critical. A critical flurry carries the red star on its own line.

Getting hit#

Incoming damage passes through several layers, and they are not interchangeable.

Shields. A warrior with a shield equipped blocks 40 percent of attacks outright, before anything else happens. A cleric running Anvil of Kranos can block from level 31, at 10 percent rising to 20 percent at level 100. Fighting in the Bulwark style adds 10 points or more, and lets anyone who can use it block as well. A block stops the whole swing, and the chance is capped at 95 percent. A shield a merchant has spiked with Spike Service also hurts whoever it blocks.

Level gap. For every level a defender is above their attacker, the attacker deals 2 percent less damage, capped at 50 percent. An attacker of equal or higher level is completely unaffected, so this never distorts fights between equals. It applies to players and NPCs alike.

Active defences. Parry, evasion and the bardic dances are avoidance defences, and only one of them can fire per attack. If none fires, the passive shields and wards are tried in turn, and again only one may take effect. Aura of Sanctum is the exception: its flat 10 percent reduction does not use up the slot.

Parry becomes available at level 30, procs between 50 and 90 percent of the time as you climb to level 100, and reduces damage by a flat 60 percent, with strength pushing that as high as 70. It costs 1 endurance per proc, and it stops if you run dry. Evasion becomes available at level 9, procs 80 to 90 percent of the time and reduces damage by 30 to 40 percent. Below level 40 for parry and level 30 for evasion, both simply pay out their minimum chance and reduction. Agility adds one percentage point to all of these proc chances for every 4 points above 10.

Fighting in social attire switches off the whole defence chain. Parries, dodges, wards and absorb pools all stop firing, and any resistance or stat bonus your gear was carrying stops counting. Your armour class and your shield block still work, so you are not defenceless, but everything you were relying on above them is gone.

Armour. Armour is the last layer and the most predictable one. The pieces you wear are weighed against the level of whoever is hitting you: against a level 25 attacker every 4.8 points of worn armour are worth 1 percent, against a level 50 every 8.8, and against a level 100 every 16.8. A full kit of your own level therefore stops about two fifths of a same-level blow at every level, a weaker enemy finds it thicker and a stronger one thinner. Your shield, Constitution, set bonus, runes and armour blessings are flat: every 25 points of those are worth 1 percent whoever swings. There is no class floor and no class ceiling: an unarmoured warrior mitigates nothing, and armour never stops counting. What separates a warrior from a mage is which categories of armour each is permitted to wear, covered in gear, rather than a hidden cap on mitigation. An absolute ceiling of 75 percent exists purely to stop stacked effects reaching total immunity. Armour works on weapon and fist blows; abilities and spells are not reduced by it.

Your armour class is the sum of the armour rating on every worn piece, reduced by each piece's condition, plus rune bonuses, plus any completed-set bonus, plus five points for every point of Constitution above 10. NPCs use a different and older mitigation profile tuned against their difficulty tiers.

Endurance and exhaustion#

Every attempted weapon or unarmed swing costs endurance: 1 EP below level 51, and 2 EP from level 51. Misses cost the same as hits. Each offhand or flurry strike pays its own base cost. An unaffordable swing is aborted without payment.

Fighting styles add modest upkeep once per attacking round, regardless of extra swings. At level 100 the average extra EP is:

Upkeep scales proportionally with character level. Fractional costs accumulate until a whole point is payable. Changing styles does not clear the remainder. Vitality runes reduce upkeep without reducing the base price of an attack. See vitals for endurance recovery.

Fighting styles#

Use style to see mastery, style <name> to switch, and style info <name> for your current rank's mechanics. Each style has fifteen mastery ranks.

Normal, Offensive and Defensive are available to all classes. Offensive adds 1 primary-hit damage and scaling follow-ups. Defensive deals 2 less primary-hit damage and 7-10% less weapon damage, and takes 8-15% less damage, with guard, counter and endurance recovery procs.

Temporary testing override: Every class can use every combat style from level 1. Weapon and shield requirements still apply. The normal unlock levels below are preserved for after testing.

Warriors unlock Aggressive at level 32 and Berserker at level 55. Aggressive adds 2 primary-hit damage but takes 5-9% more damage. Berserker adds 3, takes 10-17% more damage, and can break into a flurry of one additional real attack, or two on a critical hit. Higher aggression also has higher endurance upkeep.

Thieves unlock Dirty at level 15: 3 primary-hit damage, and pirate tricks with scaling damage and blind, stun, deafen, silence or hobble effects. Mages unlock Aetherflow at level 19: paid casts can save 5-30% SP and occasionally recover a small scaling amount. Recovery never exceeds half the amount paid. Casting trains Aetherflow.

Reaver is available to warriors and paladins at level 40 with a two-handed sword. It adds 4 primary-hit damage, takes 5-8% more damage, and procs either a sweeping spin through the room's foes or a brief armour sundering stroke. Allies in your party or team, heroes, pets and minions are spared.

Bulwark is available to warriors, paladins and clerics at level 20 with a shield. It deals 9-12% less weapon damage, takes 10-17% less damage, and adds 10-17 percentage points of block chance. Every block retaliates for small, scaling damage and can knock the attacker down for four seconds.

Duelist is available to warriors, thieves and rogues at level 25 with two one-handed melee weapons. It adds 2 primary-hit damage, increases offhand chance by 5-19 percentage points and grants ripostes and quick follow-ups. Weapon and shield requirements apply throughout combat.

Attack procs share a four-second cooldown. Berserker flurries additionally have a twelve-second cooldown; Bulwark knockdowns have ten. Defensive reactions share six seconds and Duelist reactions share four. Style switching does not reset these timers. Proc follow-ups cannot start recursive style chains.

Fighting other players#

Other players are valid targets of attack wherever the room does not forbid violence. There is no separate flag to set and no consent step: the same defences, the same mitigation and the same round order apply as against any other opponent, and a player who loses pays exactly the price described in death.

Leaving a fight#

flee sends you through a random open exit. It fails if you are held by an effect that forbids flight, or if your leg is wounded. Fear can force the same flight on you against your will.

You cannot quit while anything hostile is in the room with you, and that applies whether you have swung back or not. There is no timer on this: the moment nothing in the room has you on its enemy list, quitting works again. Dropping your connection is not an escape either. See death for what happens to a body left behind.

Related pages#

• Vitals covers health, spell points and endurance.
• Stats covers the attributes feeding the numbers above.
• Conditions covers stuns, roots, poisons and buffs.
• Death covers what happens when a fight goes badly.
• Gear and durability cover what you are fighting with and how it wears out.
• Groups covers fighting alongside other people.