Sooner or later, you will be involved in a fight. Maybe someone - like an orc, a wild animal, or just anyone who doesn't like you - will attack you. Or you will attack someone for some reason. In any case, there are some basic facts you should know about fighting.

(Oh, one important remark: don't attack NPC's without a good reason. Many of them will remember what you have done for a VERY long time, perhaps even forever!)

In a MUD, like in real life, there are differences between the fighters. Others can be weaker or stronger, have a better constitution, be slower or more agile than you are. Your success in a fight depends on the abilities of your character - skills and stats.

 
EXAMPLES:     
vitals            - check your basic abilities
stats             - check your size, weight, race
skills            - check your skills
skills long       - get more detailed info about your skills
hp                - check your health

sword         abysmal (fragmentary)

You cannot find out anything about the skills of an opponent, at least not without asking or watching him. But you can compare strength, constitution and dexterity with other people.

EXAMPLE:     
compare dex with ignar  - compare your dexterity with Ignar's
compare with ignar      - compare yourself fully with Ignar

In a fight, you should be protect yourself against the attacks of your opponent. Any kind of clothes that you wear will protect you somehow, but of course there are differences. A thin shirt won't help you much against an orcish saber, and a platemail might be too heavy for you and thus slow down your actions during a fight. You should "examine" things in order to find out more about them.

In a fight, a weapon will usually have better qualities than your bare hands. Some weapons are blunt and thus useful to crush bones, others are sharp or pointed and thus useful for cutting and piercing. A weapon can even help you to parry attacks.

Weapons can be one-handed or two-handed. Sometimes, a one-handed weapon can be too heavy for you to wield it in one hand, so that you will have to wield it in both hands. And of course, a heavy weapon will slow down your fighting speed.

 

EXAMPLES:
wield sword                - get it in your hand for fighting
wield sword in both hands  - wield a heavy one-handed
                             sword in both hands
unwield all                - unwield your weapons

Bleeding is especially dangerous because it makes you lose your vital powers quickly. You can even fall unconcious from it. Broken bones can prevent you from wielding weapons. Your weapons and parts of your armour can fall to the ground when someone breaks your bones or cuts off one of your arms. You can stumble and fall to the ground, unable to run away.

But there are also some things you can do to take care for your own and your friend's health.

EXAMPLES:
options see health on  - get extra info lines when your health
                         drops badly during a fight
cure bloodloss         - use this when you are bleeding
cure bloodloss of Cyr  - bandage Cyr's wounds
cure right arm of Cyr  - bandage Cyr's broken right arm

Now that you know the basic things, you might want to go out and kill your first victim. Or have a sparring round with a friend. So wear your armours, wield your weapon and try it out...

Fighting itself is handled automatically by the MUD. You don't have to type in every single hit or kick. There is a certain balance between your actions in a fight. You can check that with "coptions". Perhaps this will show you something like this:

 
+--------------------------------------------------------+
| Your are currently using the following attacks:        |
| Unarmed                   : punch (4%) kick (4%)       |
| Hunting knife (right hand): stab (46%) fast stab (46%) |
+--------------------------------------------------------+

Anyway, here is a short intro on that topic:

EXAMPLES:     
coptions                      - display current combat options  
coptions reset                - reset coptions to default 
                                values  
coptions save bingo           - save current in a file named
                                'bingo'       
coptions load bingo           - load coptions from that file
                                'bingo'       
coptions profile              - list all your saved coption
                                profiles 
coptions set dagger level 100 - That's how often you will 
                                use this dagger
coptions set dagger use
fast stab 100                 - only use fast stab attacks

So, when you have different weapons and different skills for these weapons, you can try to balance your activities in order to fight more effectively.

For instance, I'm not so good at using a shield, but I'm quite good at using my little shortsword. By default, the MUD did split up my activities in 48% shield, 48% sword, 4% unarmed combat.

Fighting with shield and sword became less effective, and for this reason I decided to change my coptions, using the sword more often than the shield. But I have also created a combat profile which will use 100% shield. It might be useful one day, when I try to get away from a fight, badly hurt and bleeding heavily, while the enemy has blocked all the exits. *twinkle*

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page

Back | Birgit's Home Page | Visit TimesSquare/Stadium | Explore GeoCities