Combat in Dark Age II relies on far more skills than you may traditionally be accustomed to. The following is a rather extensive guide to how the system works. It may help you to decide whether you want “backstab” or “critical strike” and why there is “parry” and “dodge”.

It is possible to change how your character fights, be it more aggressive or more defensive. The decision is up to you. Stances can be used in conjuction with martial arts, or by any warrior.

You fight in the traditional sense, dealing no additional damage but incuring no additional pain.

• .normalstance

You fight aggressivly, taking any chance at a hit. You will deal a fraction more of damage, but your rash fighting style results in you taking more damage. (Attack bonus < Defense negative). Fighting aggressivly is best for those who are out of the lines of direct harm such as archers or polesmen.

• .aggressive

You fight defensivly, careful of your own well being before you move in to strike. You will take a fraction of less damage, but your careful fighting style results in you missing potential blows. (Defense bonus < Attack negative). Fighting defensivly is best for those in the line of danger and more concerned with staying alive than dealing major blows. Shieldsmen may find this technique useful.

• .defensive

It is possible to recieve a temporary gain to ones strength at the cost of stamina. Rage is present in all races, though more previlent in some than others. How long you can continue to rage and how powerful your rage is depends upon your willpower.

• .rage

When you are damaged, either you stamina being lowered or your hitpoints being lowered, you naturally regenerate a certain amount. If you take too many punches though, you will begin bleeding and your regeneration will be negative causing you to slowly bleed to death until you hit 0 HPs and 0 stamina. This will not kill you. But any blow that follows will.

To stop bleeding, you need to use bandages with healing or drink a healing potion created by alchemists. Both of these will stop all forms of bleeding, but not bring you back to full stamina or hitpoints. If you continue to use more bandages or healing potions you will eventually restore your hitpoints back to full, or you can simply wait and let natural regeneration raise your hitpoints back to full.

There are two types of healing potions:

• Those that restore hitpoints (Cure Wounds)
• Those that restore stamina (Breath Potions)

Using a healing potion will result in some stamina loss. This is to prevent the ability of any warrior to just stand there and keep drinking healing potions. Once you are out of stamina, healing potions will no longer have an effect!

Meditation at any skill level (0 or 100) will cause your regeneration rates to increase. Your skill does not affect the rate of regeneration. (Meditation only affects mana regeneration). If you’re safe from harm, unequip your weapons and meditate, the reasoning being it’s akin to ‘resting’ and thus catching your breath.

This is a brief overview of death and ressurection. For more information about death in Dark Age II, see the section on death, dying and its effects. When you are ‘killed’, or rather, when you are dealt a final blow and knocked to the ground you begin to bleed out (bleed to death). This bleeding lasts for two minutes giving a chance for allies to bring you back to conciousness.

• A player can be ressurected using bandages. Make sure to target the players name as sometimes targetting the corpse will result in an error.
• You can ‘feed’ a healing potion to a player using .feed and then selecting the potion. Only healing potions will work. Not stamina regeneration potions, etc.
• Magick can be used to heal much the same as a bandage.

If you are successfully revived you will be ‘pulled up from the ground’ and have 0 hitpoints and 0 stamina.

If there is no one to save you, you can use .bleedout to skip the two minute timer of bleeding. Once dead, seek out a healer to be ressurected. Your items remain on your corpse. To retrieve them, you must return to your body.

• You have a “recharge timer” on your swing, that is reset when you switch weapons and after each attack. When that timer reaches 0, you’re ready to attack. You will make an attack upon your chosen target if it is in range. If it’s not in range, but there is another hostile in range that is attacking you, you will attack that other hostile.

• Note: missile weapons reset time upon movement. So you have to stop AND stay still for a few seconds to make a ranged attack. And, of course, missile weapons need ammo.

• Note: you need range and Line of Sight (LOS) to your target to perform an attack.

• Note: there are some weapons that are blocked from use while mounted. You cannot perform an attack with a longbow, for example. Similarly, a lance can only be used while mounted.

• Your base attack SKILL is equal to your skill with your equipped weapon plus a weapon modifier (very few weapons have modifiers, not sure if any are set up for it).
• The defender’s base SKILL is equal to their Tactics skill averaged with their skill in the ATTACKER’S weapon, and modified by the defender’s DEX modifiers.
• Both are modified by temporary modifiers such as spells. Nothing to worry about in character design.

• The Strike Chance is done with a calculation involving the ratio of the Attacker’s skill and the Defender’s skill. If they’re equal, the Strike Chance is 200/3 (67%).

• The Strike Chance is lowered slightly if the attacker is NOT in Combat mode (Warmode). Note that Combat mode prevents use of many skills.

• You have a “defense timer” that works like your attack timer. If it’s down to 0, then you’re ready to defend. Otherwise, you cannot defend. The timer is based upon your Dexterity. In general, it’s a bit faster than the attack timer, so you should be able to defend against an attack from an equally fast opponent using most weapons. You will have problems defending against 2+ opponents at once.

• You will attempt to defend twice. First with the left hand, then with the right hand. If you have a weapon (shield/weapon) in either, you will use the Parry skill. If the hand is empty (left hand is empty for 2h weapons), you will use the Dodge skill.

• The base chance to defend with a shield is constant. The base with a weapon is based on the weapon’s Speed. The base with Dodge is based upon the defender’s (modified) Dexterity. Generally, shields give the best chance to defend. The defense chance is lowered in all cases if you’re not in Combat mode. To this base chance is added a value based upon your skill, either Parry or Dodge, whichever is applicable.

• If you do defend successfully, you may roll a “critical defense”. The amount that you defend is based upon the weight of the defending weapon (shields are heavy, thus very effective when you succeed with them), or upon your Dodge skill if you’re dodging. If you roll a “critical defense”, the defending amount is subtracted directly from the damage, which is usually very nice. Otherwise, it’s added to your Armor against the attack, which is nice but not as effective as directly subtracting damage.

• If you are using Martial Arts and Dodging (which is generally the case since MA requires empty hands), you get an additional roll. The re-roll is based upon your Wrestling skill, not upon Dodge, and if you succeeded in the Dodge it may multiply your defense value. Note that Dex modifiers will greatly lower this effect... it is meant as a bonus for the unarmed, unarmored martial artist.

• The damage roll (maybe modified by a critical defense) goes into a function that is based upon armor, to determine the damage taken. The function is inverse exponential, so adding to armor values is more effective at lower values than at high values.

• In the function is a modifier based on the weapon’s Penetration. If the weapon fails to have a high enough Penetration, it’s damage is lowered partially. Mace type weapons have the best Penetration for their weight, though generally heavier and 2h weapons are best at penetrating armor.

• Also in the armor function, the attacker makes a skill check with the Critical Strike skill. If he is successful, he lowers the armor by a % before the armor enters the damage modifier part.

• “Large 1H” weapons (weapons that can be used in either 1h or 2h like a bastard sword) receive a bonus to Damage and to Penetration when used in two hands.

• The resulting “damage taken” is what affects the defender. First, the damage is split up into HP and Stamina parts, depending on whether it’s Edged, Pointed, or Blunt. Pointed does mostly HP damage, Edged does a bit more Stamina and a lot of bleeding, and Blunt does the most damage overall but most of it is Stamina, and it does little bleeding.

• Any damage to Stamina that would lower it below 10 will overflow into HPs.

• Bleeding damage lowers your HP and your Stamina regeneration. It can affect a long fight rather dramatically. You can even start losing HPs and Stamina due to bleeding, though it will not kill you if you ever reach 0 HPs from bleeding.

• Shields are good to parry with. But their main advantage is that when equipped, they raise your overall AR over your entire body. Thus even when just passively held in the way by an unskilled defender, they still have an effect, while a weapon would not help in that situation.

• You only get to make one Defense. You get to defend with each hand, but the first successful roll is what you go with. If both hands are bare, you do get two rolls to Dodge.

• If you are on horseback, you must succeed in an Animal Handling check or suffer a to-hit penalty. Also note that missile weapons used on horseback get a penalty anyhow, while melee weapons get a bonus.

• Attacking suffers a penalty if you are encumbered. 170 stone is the max for a 100-Str warrior. The penalty is a simple ratio (340 stone at 100 Str would halve your chance to hit, for example).

• If you get an Aimed Attack (attack upon a target who is not in warmode, or who is in warmode but attacking someone else), you get a bonus to your chance to hit. Upon a successful Backstab skill in this situation, you also get a bonus to damage.