The important one

Combat

Pick a monster, and every rep you perform becomes one attack. Whether that attack lands, and how hard, is decided by your two skills doing two different jobs.

Goblin, lvl 14

Skeleton, lvl 40

Red Dragon, lvl 150

Strength: how hard you hit

Strength sets your max hit: the ceiling on the damage a single rep can deal. Every landed rep rolls between 1 and your max hit. Your Strength level raises the ceiling, and your weapon's strength bonus raises it further: the same level 30 hits noticeably harder holding a mithril sword than a bronze one. This is why weapon upgrades feel immediate: they move the top end of every single rep.

Agility: how often you hit

Agility is your accuracy. Each rep, your attack roll (Agility level plus your weapon's attack bonus) goes up against the monster's defence. Win the roll, the rep deals damage; lose it, the rep whiffs: a 0 across the screen and a boss that didn't feel it. Low-level monsters barely defend themselves. A Night Elf or a dragon will make a low-Agility character miss constantly, no matter how strong they are.

The two together. Damage per rep is roughly accuracy x average hit. A pure-Strength character hits like a truck but rarely; a pure-Agility character connects constantly for scraps. The fastest kills come from raising both, then letting gear multiply the result. Exact formulas stay our secret, but they are faithful cousins of a certain 2007 game's math, and the intuition transfers.

Hearts: your fight timer

You don't have HP: you have hearts, and each heart is worth 10 seconds in the fight. Run out of hearts before the boss runs out of HP and the fight ends. Each monster sets a base number of hearts for the encounter (nastier monster, fewer hearts, and the end-game horrors start you negative), and your armor gives them back: total defence across your ten gear slots converts into bonus hearts.

You flee immediately. If a monster's base hearts plus your armor's bonus comes to zero or less, you cannot fight it at all: "You flee immediately. Your armor is insufficient." That's not a bug, that's a gear check. Go smith something.

Killing something

Each monster has an HP pool. Your reps chip it down; the kill triggers the loot roll. Drop tables are per-monster, rolled per line: one kill can drop several things or nothing but the satisfaction. Rarities in the fight intro run Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Extremely Rare: the exact odds you learn the hard way.

Melee or ranged

There are two combat styles. Swords and cudgels fight melee; bows fight ranged and need arrows equipped, with the arrows carrying most of the damage. Each monster has typed defence, so some are weak to arrows and some to steel: check the fight intro before you commit. Arrows get used up as you shoot, so keep fletching.

Melee

Ranged

Arrows

Dragon's Bane

Dragons. The red and black dragons will end most characters in seconds. A Dragon's Bane potion keeps a dragon away from you for one minute of the fight. Craft it before you go.

Reading a monster

Stat	Meaning
Level	Overall menace. A rough guide to whether you belong in this fight.
HP	Total damage (reps) needed to kill it.
Defence	How often you'll miss. Counter it with Agility and attack bonuses.
Hearts	Your time budget against it, before armor.

Fights still train you. Reps in combat pay the same skill XP as free training and count toward your daily goals and personal bests. Gold comes from loot: plenty of monsters drop coins alongside their materials.

← Skills & XP Gathering →