Basic combat is viable for hunting, but it is extremely dangerous and difficult without the use of combat enhancers such as magic, bardic songs, alchemy, traps and ambushing, or battlecraft skills. These skills are all covered a bit more in the skills section of this documentation. This is a good thing to keep in mind when choosing your skill tier at the beginning of your adventure, you don't want to leave out any of the above skills unless you want to have a hard time of it or just not hunt period.

Basic Combat does not favor any profession or skill group in any way. Some professions or skill groups may have more modifiers or better enhancements to help them along in combat, but at its very base the system makes no decisions based on you profession. Lack of weapons and dodging skills are easily made up with combat enhancers that were discussed in the first paragraph or trade skills which you will hear more about later.

Different Types of Combat
Player versus Player (PvP) and Player versus Critter (PvC) combat are based upon two different base concepts, and exist for completely different purposes. PvC combat allows a player to hunt creatures at or near their level, in exchange for treasure and experience. This is mostly to help you advance in level and afford all the cool and nifty things available in the game. The tougher the critter, the more compensation you receive in both the form of wealth and experience.

PvP combat does not reward the victor with any experience or dinar. Engaging in combat with your fellow players is not possible in the majority of the game but special areas do exist, such as arenas, where you may engage in these activities. Do not expect that simply because you are 100 levels the senior of an opponent that the outcome will be a foregone conclusion. You will find that you must use your advanced skills, abilities, equipment, and tactics to prevail in PvP combat, as no preference is given to level.

Hunting Tactics
When hunting the various critters found throughout the lands, there are a couple of concepts you should be aware of. Your ability to hit creatures is largely a factor of the level difference between you and your intended prey. When you are hunting creatures your level, you will be able to hit them roughly 50% of the time and they will have the ability to hit you roughly 40% of the time. You will be able to do approximately 20% more damage to creatures than they can do to you. This gives the player an upper hand, but does not ensure victory. Creatures are intelligent and will use tactics to exploit your weaknesses. Not only that, the creatures have access to all the skills and abilities that a player does.

No best tactic, weapon, armor, training path, or skill will ensure that you will always prevail in combat. You must study your opponent, go into combat prepared for contingencies, and it is a very good idea to always have a getaway plan for when things begin to go poorly. Different creatures are going to fight differently. Some may be pack animals, some may be loners but possess the magic needed to summon creatures to fight for them. You really need to feel things out and know what you're going up against before rushing headlong into a situation.

The time required to kill any given creature on level is targeted at 45 seconds. The means of achieving this are provided through a mix of basic combat, combat enhancers made available through your choice of training paths, equipment, tactics, and skills. The system is carefully designed to ensure that everyone can achieve this. Just as much care has been taken to ensure that no matter what techniques you use, you will very rarely exceed this either. If you find that you are not achieving an average kill time of 45 seconds, talk to other players, try changing tactics, use different equipment, and explore the possibilities.

Combat is not designed to be easy. If you wish to portray a character that does not use combat enhancers or favors only one method or tactic, then do so knowing that you are entering combat at a disadvantage. Our creatures WILL attempt to exploit your weaknesses.. if you refuse to exploit theirs then you can expect to have difficulty. All creatures throughout the lands have a weakness. All creatures also have strengths, or resistances to specific tactics. For instance, skeletons are immune to piercing damage, but they are vulnerable to bashing damage.

There are many areas in game where the creatures compliment each other's skills, abilities, weaknesses, and strengths. This makes the area more difficult to hunt in, without increasing the skills, abilities, weaknesses, or strengths of a single creature. If one creature is vulnerable to blunt damage, another creature in that area may very likely be immune to blunt damages. We are of the opinion that intelligent creatures may form bonds with, or live in close proximity to creatures that are their polar opposites.

How to Engage in Combat
Now that you know the basic concepts and a few tips for what's behind the combat, let's show you how to get into a combat situation. To engage in combat, grab your trusty weapon (for new players, free ones are available in the mentor garden) and begin exploring for an appropriately challenging creature to do battle with. For new players, the rats and bullies in the catacombs under Athens are a good starting point. Higher level players may have to roam a little farther to find just the right evil creatures to defeat.

Use the MEASURE command to gage how much of a threat to you an evil creature represents. Opponents that are worthy will provide a suitable challenge. Opponents that are dangerous should be avoided unless you are very sure of your skills!

Once a suitable creature has been found, the next step is to engage them in combat. Engagement can be accomplished via the ADVANCE or LEAP commands. Note that LEAP requires some acrobatics skill, so beginning heroes will have to stick to ADVANCE. Keep in mind that some weapons, like bows, pole arms and some special abilities, are able to attack from outside of melee range and so do not require you to ADVANCE into melee first.

When engaged to a creature, remember that you might be positioned to its front, rear, left, or right. Also, a sneaky creature might move around to be on your front, left, rear, or right. Use the EVALUATE command to determine which creatures have engaged you and on which side. Use the TURN command if you need to turn to one side or another so that you are engaging your opponent front-on.

Once engaged, you can begin melee combat. This is done by choosing the attack you wish to do and typing in the relevant commands. For new players, some good suggestions might be JAB and SWING if you have a weapon, and LIGHTNING PUNCH if you do not. Follow the attack name with the name of the creature you are attempting to strike. For example, to perform a jab against a mermel, you would type JAB MERMEL.

Note that you do not need to reference the name of your weapon in the command. As long as the weapon is in your hand, it will be used. Also, once you have targeted a creature you need not type its name every time you swing, just type JAB along and it will default to the last target you attacked. This is very important to keep you from switching targets if another one enters the room.

What Are All Those Numbers?
Once you attack a creature, your attack and its results will be displayed. It will look similar to the following:

Let's break this down and explain what just happened:

You swing your steel journey staff at the berserker.
[Attack STR: 79 / Dodge: 198]
This number shows your skill versus the target's effective dodge. This determines how well they will be able to dodge.

...The berserker attempts to dodge the attack.
[To-hit:70 Roll(1d100):79]
This line displays some key information as to how well you are fighting. The first number, To-hit, indicates the number you must roll by the random die roll for your attack to hit. The second number is a randomly generated number between 1 and 100. In the above example, the To-Hit threshold was 70, indicating the random roll must be 70 or above to hit.

...Your steel journey staff is the very shape of devastation as it bashes the berserker!
If he can still walk after that, the berserker should rethink ever tangling with you again!

...The berserker suffers 817 points of damage! The berserker is lucky to still be in one piece!
Directly under the result line and indented slightly will be the second result line. This displays the total amount of damage done to the opponent.

...The berserker is stunned!
After the two result lines there may or may not be additional lines to display extra effects that may have occurred with the attack. In the above example, there is a line indicating that the attack stunned the mermel. A stunned opponent is unable to act for a short time.

Roundtime: 4 sec.
The very last line is the roundtime line. This is the time, listed in seconds, for which you will be unable to act after making an attack. This represents the time it takes to perform and recover from the attack. This is a very important piece of information. During the roundtime you will be unable to move or perform any actions. Also, during that roundtime you will be considered "off-stance" and opponents will have an easier time hitting you. You can use the STANCE command to determine how off-stance you are during roundtime. The amount that you become "off-stance" during the roundtime is dependant on the move you did.

Creatures will also become off-balance after attacking you, so a good attack strategy is to try and time your attacks so that you strike when a creature is off-balance. Keep repeating your attacks until your opponent dies or flees! You can use the HEALTH command to determine how many hit points you have remaining. If it looks like you might lose the battle, don't hesitate to use the RETREAT command to disengage and then run away! Discretion is the better part of valor.

If your opponent dies, remember to use SEARCH command to search their bodies. You might recover some money or valuable items from their corpse.

To-hit
The To-hit number, as we mentioned above, shows your chance of successfully hitting a foe with a particular attack. To-hit is influenced by a variety of factors. The first and most important of these factors is the level of the attacker versus that of the defender. You can check your own level with the EXP command. A creature that you MEASUREd and seems to be a worthy opponent will be around your own level. A creature that measures as dangerous will probably be somewhat above your level.

The level of the attacker lowers the To-hit number, and the level of the defender raises the To-hit number. If both the attacker and the defender are the same level, these modifiers will cancel each other out. In practical terms, you will have a very hard time hitting players or creatures that are higher level than you, and an easy time hitting ones that are lower level.

The second factor that influences To-hit is stance. You can check your stance with the STANCE command. If both the attacker and the defender have a stance of 0, then the To-hit will be unmodified. Note that will almost never occur. Stance is set automatically by combat moves and endures for the duration of that move's roundtime. Both the attacker's and defender's stance lower the To-hit number, making it easier to achieve a hit. There are also extra factors that may influence the To-hit number. These include things like being prone, stunned, or immobilized by webs.

Ouch! That Smarts!
The damage that is done on a successful hit is dependant on the weapon used, or the brawling move used in the case of unarmed combat. The skills of the attacker and the defender also modify the damage heavily. A skilled attacker will have no trouble inflicting large amounts of damage.

For the attacker, damage is modified upward by the relevant offensive skill. If the attacker used a one-handed weapon, then the skill involved would be melee weapons. Likewise if the attack was an unarmed attack, then the relevant skill would be unarmed combat, etc.

For the defender armor is used to lower the damage. While dodging helps you not to get hit at all, your armor (the armor skill itself allows you to wear armor without penalty) is what determines the damage you take when you are hit. Attempting to wear more armor than your skill will support will result in encumbrance. Encumbrance modifies the damage up quite a bit.

All damage you deal to a foe will fall under one of several types. Such types include: bashing, piercing, slashing, fire, electrical, cold and holy damage as well as many others. The above list is not exhaustive, merely a sampling. Normally the damage dealt will be quite obvious from the messaging or nature of the attack. In the case of weapons, you can determine what sort of damage a weapon deals by using the ASSESS command on your weapon.

It's important to be aware of the damage type or types you are inflicting since different opponents may have resistances or vulnerabilities to some attacks. The thick hides of some animals may render them resistant to piercing damage for example, and so they will take little or no damage from rapiers or daggers.

Roundtime
Roundtime is a factor of both your ability to wield your weapon your mastery over the attack that was used. Either your strength or your coordination or possibly both will reduce your roundtime associated with your weapon. To determine which of these attributes affects your weapon, you should MEASURE it. A weapon will be either ultra-light, light, medium, or heavy. Note that these weight ranges are not absolutes, but rather relative to the weapons class. A greatsword might weigh more than a longsword, but a longsword is a heavy one handed weapon and a greatsword is a light two handed weapon.

Some moves have longer roundtimes than others. JAB is much faster than LUNGE for example. Experience and practice will help you determine which moves have the optimum speed for your needs. Remember that while you are in roundtime you are off-balance and easy to hit, so the shortest possible roundtime can be critically important.

Weapons
There are 5 basic weapon classes in Alliance of Heroes, each drawing on different skills, or sets of skills, which you may train in. Each weapon has a minimum and maximum damage value. Various materials throughout the lands modify these base values, giving you inherent benefits and penalties based on those materials. Weapon damage is adjusted upwards as you train in the corresponding weapon skill. You may also learn more maneuvers as your character progresses in both level and skill.

One-Handed Weapons
A player may wield a one-handed weapon in each hand, may choose to use a shield, or may leave the non-weapon wielding hand empty to receive a hand-and-a-half damage bonus for that weapon.

Two-Handed Weapons
Two handed weapons require that the non-weapon hand be empty while attacking. All two handed weapons receive a two-handed weapon bonus to damage.

Polearm Weapons
Polearm weapons may be use either in melee combat or at ranged combat distances. While at ranged distances, Polearm class weapons draw on your ranged weapon skills for damage. While in melee, the weapon draws on your melee weapons skill for damages. There are slight penalties for using a polearm class weapon in melee combat as they are considered less effective at close distances.

Brawling Weapons
Brawling weapons are weapons that can be used while you wear them, in conjunction with brawling attacks. These weapons increase the damage of normal brawling attacks, and in some cases open up new brawling attacks, based on the individual weapon used.

Ranged Weapons
Ranged weapons are either thrown or fired at an opponent. These weapons may be used without having to engage in melee combat with your opponent

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