User:Jerl/Combat Manual

This is a manual on basic combat techniques that I've written to help new players...Or old players who never picked up on the vital things that will be discussed in this manual. It discusses the basic methods for fighting things in a way that will prevent you from being the one that gets killed.

Chapter 1: Basics

Most MMORPGs work like this: you click a monster, then watch your character beat it up until one of them dies, perhaps drinking potions or eating food to get health back. Or maybe it's like World of Warcraft, where you have to actively use each attack, but nonetheless you both attack at the same time and it's more or less a war of attrition each time you battle a monster.

Mabinogi isn't like that. When designing the game's combat system, DevCat decided to do things a little different. Instead of the usual method, Mabinogi has more of a turn-based combat system.

However, most turn-based combat systems are inactive, you can't constantly be doing things to attack your enemy. So, DevCat came up with Mabinogi's method of forcing the combat to be turn-based: stunning and knockback.

Stun, Knockback, Knockdown

Whenever you attack a monster, it'll be stunned and unable to attack for a short period of time. This allows you to attack it again and again a certain amount of times, dependent on your weapon.

After you've hit it the maximum amount of times allowed by your weapon, the monster gets knocked back, giving it and yourself time to load a skill or drink potions.

Sometimes, a monster will be knocked down instead of back. This happens if you use certain skills, or if the monster gets attacked again while being knocked back. This can happen when fighting with a team, or when using ranged combat like archery or combat. While it makes the monster take longer to be able to attack you again, it often forces it to use a skill. In addition, if you hit it again before it gets up, it can immediately attack you with no delay, so try to avoid hitting things that have been knocked down.

As will be discussed in the next chapter, rushing to attack the monster again after this is usually a bad idea. The reason being the way that DevCat designed the combat system.

PIIIIIING!

Unfortunately, some monsters cheat. They have skills called passive defenses that activate when the monster gets attacked by certain kinds of attacks. When this happens, the monster will make a loud noise, often called a "ping." When this happens, the result is the same as if you had attacked it while it was using defense: you get stunned instead of the monster, and the monster can immediately strike back before you can react. Usually it will also reduce the damage they took from your attack. There are three types of passive defenses: Heavy Stander, which blocks melee attacks; Natural Shield, which blocks ranged attacks; and Mana Deflector, which blocks magic and alchemy attacks. In addition, each of them is broken up into 3 levels: level 1, level 2, and level 3. Monsters will level 1 passive defenses will only have their stun reduced. Monsters with level 2 passive defenses will have their stun reduced, and will take less damage. Monsters with level 3 passive defenses will never be stunned and will only take 1 damage. Of course, monsters with a level 3 passive defense will never have level 3 on all 3 types. And, thankfully, usually monsters will only have one or two types.

These passive defenses are quite dangerous. When fighting monsters that have them, it is important to be careful. Since their stun is reduced, using attacks that rely on stunning the opponent to provide you with time to make your next move becomes quite risky, so using attacks that knock down the monster in one hit every time, like Smash, Windmill, or Firebolt, is recommended.

It is also possible for players to have a very similar reaction to a monster's passive defense skills. While monster passive defenses are actual skills that the monster has, most of the time humans who have passive defenses only have an increase in their auto-defense stat for one type of combat. This means that they won't receive damage reduction. However, it is still quite an advantage in many situations.

There is also another way some monsters cheat. Some monsters can't be knocked back or down no matter what you do. It's usually called Advanced Heavy Stander, though unlike the Heavy Stander skill, it is not a skill. The monster has just been coded to never be knocked back or down. Monsters with this characteristic tend to be large field bosses that usually take a whole mob of people all attacking at once to defeat. However, some other monsters have the ability as well. When fighting monsters with this trait, extreme caution must be taken, especially if the monster has normal passive defenses as well.

C-C-Cross Counter!?

What if you and the monster both hit each other at the same time? It's possible, for the first attack. When this happens, one of 3 possibilities occur: your attack hits the monster, causing it to get stunned, and you come out fine; both your attack and the monster's attack hit, causing you both to be stunned and allowing the one with the slowest weapon the ability to attack first; or your attack won't hit, the monster's will, and you're likely to die. Which of these happens depends on who just attacked. If neither of you have hit the other, it's most likely that both attacks will hit. However, if one of you just got hit, that means that you're likely to get the advantage. What this means is that constantly attacking monsters over and over without using skills is reckless, and likely to result in your death, since monsters tend to hit hard enough early on to waste you in just a single combo, or sometimes even just one attack if they're using a skill.

Weapon Speed

The speed of your weapons greatly affects combat, but it does it in a somewhat unexpected way. The slower your weapon is, the longer it stuns the enemy for. With some fast weapons, the stun time is so small that you can barely delay your attack at all or else you'll get hit. For the slowest weapons like a claymore, you get nearly two seconds to attack again. Of course, this helps significantly in the cross-counter scenario mentioned above, as well as with other techniques that will be taught later.

Chapter 2: Defensive Combat

So, if you can't rush to attack the monster right after you've just beat up on it, what are you to do? Stand there like an idiot and wait for it to come and hit you back?

No, that'd be silly. Along with being turn-based, Mabinogi's combat is also skill-based. This means that, as you play the game, your character will learn abilities that help with fighting. So, instead of attacking blindly, you can instead use these skills to make it so that when the monster comes to attack you back, it won't stand a chance.

Note: To get the most out of this chapter, learn each section fully and practice it quite a bit before moving on to the next.

Watching the Enemy

Of course, the most important way to use skills is to use the enemy's skills against them. When you know that they're going to do, you can act accordingly and prevent them and intervene. Of course, reminding on your Sharp Mind skill is silly and dangerous, since most of the time it won't actually tell you what the monster's doing anyway. Instead, you should watch the monster's movement.

Monsters, like humans, have 3 speeds they can move: running, walking, and stopped. Each of them indicates different things. We'll start with running.

If a monster is running at you, look out: it's going to try to attack you. How you should react to it, though, depends on something else.

• If it doesn't have a skill bubble over its head, it is going to use a normal attack. This means you should attempt to defend yourself using a skill.
• If it has a skill bubble over its head, it is probably going to use Smash. This means that you should cancel your Defense skill if you've loaded it. The best way to react from there is to attack it with a normal attack, since normal attacks will always win out over Smash. Of course, if you've prepared Counterattack instead, you should probably just let it attack you.
• If it has a skill bubble over its head AND it's being circled around by a sparkle of light, a ball of fire, or a ball of electricity, look out: it's going to attack you with magic. This is the most tricky scenario, since usually if you get hit by a monster's magic, it'll hurt really bad. The best way to protect yourself is to attack it with another ranged attack before it hits you, whether it's with archery or another magic spell.

If a monster is walking, usually you're safe for the time being. However, you still have some things to consider:

• If it doesn't have a skill bubble over its head, then it has simply been coded to run around a bit before attacking you. You will still need to use a skill to defend yourself, but it means you have a bit of time to prepare it, so don't panic.
• If it does have a skill bubble over its head, and it is capable of using archery, look out: it's most likely going to shoot at you. This is extremely dangerous, since it might be using the Magnum Shot skill, which will cause severe damage and can't be blocked without a shield. As with the earlier scenario where a monster is going to attack you with magic, the best method to protect yourself is to attack it first with another ranged attack before it hits you, whether it's with archery or another magic spell.
• If it does have a skill bubble over its head, but it can't use archery, relax: it's probably using Defense. You can either use a skill to attack it through its defense, or prepare a skill for when it cancels it. Beware, though: sometimes it is using Smash instead. The way to tell, though is by paying attention to the time it takes for the skill to load. We'll talk more about that in just a bit, though.

If a monster is standing still, you're usually safe, but still pay attention:

• If it doesn't have a skill bubble over its head, its AI simply instructed it to pause before attacking you. Prepare a skill to protect yourself with, or attempt to attack it before it stops dilly-dallying.
• If it does have a skill bubble over its head, it's either going to use Counterattack, Windmill, or Defense. In any of these three cases, you don't want to rush in and attack it; you want to keep your distance. The only way to tell what it's going to do is by either paying close attention to how long it takes for the skill to load, or attempting to force it to walk towards you. If you walk far enough away, monsters using defense will tend to slowly walk towards you. You can use this to your advantage. You should also learn what skills the enemy has. If it doesn't have windmill, it's safe to move relatively close as long as you prepare a skill to defend yourself with when it cancels whatever skill it's using. If it doesn't have counterattack, then you can just immediately prepare a skill to break through its Defense skill.

Other than how the monster is moving, though, paying attention to other factors is important. You can often tell what skill the monster is using just by how long it takes to load, and when you get good at it you can even act on it before the enemy has finished loading it. For starters, Smash will take longer to load than any of the other basic skills. Defense and Counterattack will take the same amount of time to load, and Windmill will take less time. It's important to memorize exactly how long this is so that you can immediately respond to the monster's next move.

Of course, just knowing what the monster is going to do isn't usually enough. You need to have some tricks up your own sleeve, or else you'll end up dead yourself. This is where YOUR skills for defending yourself come in.

The Defense Skill

The most basic skill for this is the Defense skill. When you use this skill, and a monster hits you, it'll reduce the damage you take by a large amount (55 points at rank 1!) and stun the monster as if you'd just hit it, allowing you to attack back. Obviously, this is advantageous, since it allows you to keep hurting the monster without the monster hurting you very much. However, the skill has disadvantages. Since it doesn't completely neutralize how much damage you receive, it's possible for really really strong monsters, like Golems and Ogres, to hit you hard enough that you get hurt even if you're using defense. There's also the Smash skill that monsters use, which will completely ignore your defense and do more damage than if the monster had just attacked you normally. However, in order to learn how to use other skills to defend yourself, learning how to use defense is key. It's easier to learn how to use the defense skill than the other skills, but it works in a relatively similar way.

To use the Defense skill, make sure the monster is away from you. Since skills take a few seconds to start working, you can't just load it in the middle of combat. The best time to start loading the skill is right as the monster gets knocked back by a normal attack. Preferably, there shouldn't be any delay at all. Set the Defense skill to a hotkey and practice using it on Foxes or Gray Wolves. When you can reflexively start loading the skill before the monster hits the ground after getting knocked back, you're on your way to learning how to use it effectively.

But once you've started to load Defense, don't just stand there. While Defense is loading, and after it's been loaded fully, you can walk at a reduced pace. You can use this to get closer to the monster if you want it to hit you sooner, or to safely retreat to load a different skill, drink potions, or change weapons. It also gives you time to think about what to do next. Indeed, it's very useful time.

The Counterattack Skill

As stated earlier, the Defense skill has some flaws. It only reduces damage received by a fixed number, and is completely vulnerable to Smash. As a result, it's useless against things that use Smash a lot, like the monsters in Tara Shadow Missions, and doesn't provide much help against monsters that hit really hard, like Golems and Ogres. So, what should you do if you're attacking these, then?

There is another defensive skill that you can use in these situations: the Counterattack skill. This skill turns back the monster's attack on them, causing you to take no damage. And, instead of knocking the monster back, like the defense skill used with normal attacks would, it knocks it down, causing it to take more time to recover and giving you more time to load another skill. But the Counterattack skill has to have weaknesses; no skill in the game is invincible. That'd be cheap.

For starters, you can't use counterattack consecutively. In other words, you can't keep using it over and over again. Counterattack can't be loaded for a couple seconds after the skill's animation is over, which is usually no long enough. By the time the skill would have loaded, the monster usually will have made it back over and clobbered you. However, as will be discussed in the next chapter, there are ways to keep using it over and over.

In addition to this, unlike the defense skill, it offers no protection against ranged or magical attacks. To monsters that use archery or magic, you'll become a sitting duck to hunt. You should learn about the monsters you'll be fighting so you can decide which skills to use.

The Windmill Skill

So, what happens when you're attacked by multiple enemies at once? Neither Counterattack nor Defense will help you in this situation. The first monster that attacks you will trigger it, but the next one will be free to take a swing at you. But, you can't be expected just to play dead every time more than one monster comes to attack you.

This is where the Windmill skill comes in. The windmill skill doesn't just hit one monster, it hits all of the monsters around you in a 360-degree angle, with a radius that depends on your skill rank. As this is, it's a rather powerful area of effect attack that can be used in offensive combat when you get stronger, but for now let's consider its defensive capabilities.

When you use it, all of the monsters attacking you will be knocked down, giving you time to load another skill. At rank 9, its loading time becomes lightning-fast too, so it can be more useful than counterattack as an emergency measure to protect yourself from an attacking monster. On top of that, it resets the monster's AI, which with some monsters gives you a few seconds to prepare yourself.

The Play Dead Action

Of course, there is often no better solution than to fall to the ground and pretend to be dead. Monsters will continue to notice you for a while, but most of them won't make any moves to attack you. After a while, they'll give up and leave you alone, and you can stand back up and run away or fight again. Beware of the drain to your stamina, though; and for monsters with area of affect attacks like Stomp or Windmill, it won't help very much at all.

Defense Counter

In the end, though, Counterattack becomes the safest skill to use in most forms of combat. Unlike Defense, which only nullifies a bit of the damage you receive, and Windmill which just directly hurts you, Counterattack doesn't hurt you at all. But, as stated, it can't be used consecutively, which becomes its downfall. This is where combining it with the Defense skill comes into play.

Since the Counterattack skill can't be followed by another Counterattack, you need to follow it with something. The most basic choice is Defense. When a monster hits you with Counterattack loaded, you immediately begin to load defense while walking away so that when it comes to attack you again, you aren't just letting it do so. This process is repeated until the monster is dead. In other words, whenever a monster gets knocked down by your Counterattack, you load Defense, and whenever you knock a monster back with normal attacks after it attacks you while you are using Defense, you load Counterattack, and you keep alternating between the two skills until the monster has been defeated.

This requires good timing, though. You absolutely must begin loading the skill before the monster touches the ground. In fact, you should attempt to load it as soon as possible, since being even a half a second late can be enough to kill you. This requires a lot of practice, but in the end it is very worth it.

Magic Counter

But, Defense Counter also has its weaknesses. It's great against monsters that don't hit extremely hard, but it will only be a bit more useful than just using defense against things that can hit you hard enough through it that you still get hurt. On top of that, it's impossible to keep monsters at a distance when you're using Defense Counter, something that is a very bad thing when fighting monsters with area of effect attacks like Stomp or Windmill. But, fortunately, there's a safer, if slower and weaker, alternative: Magic Counter. Magic Counter involves alternating between attacking a monster using magic bolts and the counterattack skill.

The simplest form of Magic Counter to understand is Firebolt Counter, or Fire Counter. Fire counter involves knocking a monster back with Firebolt, and then immediately loading Counterattack. When the monster comes to hit you while you're using counterattack, you begin to charge firebolt again. Timing is even more crucial for this attack, since unlike Defense you can't begin to walk away. You know you have it right when you only see one animation for both attacks. In any case, the purpose of this tactic is to keep monsters away from you, so that if they use Stomp or Windmill you won't be in their area of effect, or if they charge at you you'll be certain to have counterattack loaded again.

There is one other form of Magic Counter that you should learn and practice, though. Once you get the hang of it, in most situations it functions better than Fire Counter. This form is called Icebolt Counter, or Ice Counter. It is done in the same way as Firebolt Counter, but instead of using Firebolt you use Icebolt. While you're first learning how to use Magic Counter, it might be a risky type to try, but it has some advantages over firebolt counter. Firebolt, as a knockdown type skill, tends to force monsters to load skills like Defense or Counterattack. This isn't good when you're loading counterattack yourself, since your stamina will constantly be drained. Icebolt, on the other hand, only momentarily stuns the monster, giving you time to load the counterattack skill, but provoking it to charge straight for you. This means that less time will be spent waiting for the monster to trigger your counterattack, and more time will be spent actually countering its attacks. Other than this, though, icebolt requires less mana per cast, which means that you can use it more times before needing to drink a potion to recover mana.

There is one final form of Magic Counter, called Lightning Counter, which is only recommended for people who are more experienced. Lightning bolt acts the exact same way as icebolt, but uses more mana even than Firebolt. The biggest disadvantage for less experienced users, however, is that, without a large amount of Int, its damage will be much smaller than either Icebolt or Firebolt. Those with large amounts of int, though, will usually find it to be more effective.

In the case of all forms of magic counter, simply reading about it usually isn't enough. Before trying it yourself, ask someone who knows how to do it to demonstrate it for you, so you can see it in action.

Chapter 3: The Four Main Forms of Combat

Now that you know how to fight without getting yourself hurt, and a few combinations of skills to use to help you do that, it's time to learn about the four main forms of combat in Mabinogi.

Mabinogi does not have official classes. One can learn and rank any skill they want at any time. However, the four main forms of combat still stand separate in most usage. While their usage is often crossed over, usually this isn't with any particular effectiveness. Generally, early on one must choose one form of combat and stick with it until they're strong enough with it to be able to last on their own. Then they can dabble in the other forms to supplement their main form. The reason sticking with one early on is a good idea is simple: a character with rank C everything will be weaker than a character with rank 9 in only melee combat skills. Why? It's simple. Ranged attacks aren't very effective until a high rank anyway. Magic attacks require lots of ranks to do any significant damage at all. Melee skills are powerful, but can't be mixed very well with the other forms other than by magic counter. Alchemy in general is expensive, and at low ranks most of the alchemy attack skills aren't very powerful.

With this in mind, choosing one of these four main forms of combat to focus on is a really great idea.

Melee

Melee combat is the easiest to learn, and in the beginning it is by far the most effective in combat. The only problem is that it generally has no support abilities, and its only long-ranged attack has a 10 second cooldown between uses.

To put it simply, melee combat is physically attacking a foe from close range with fists or weapons held in the hand. For humans and giants, it is especially effective in comparison with the other forms because of the ability to dual wield swords and blunt weapons respectively, which gives them the ability to land four to eight hits in close succession. Melee is also usually the safest to use, since, unlike archery it always hits, and unlike magic, you don't need to have high-ranked skills to be safe.

In terms of the range at which melee is most effective, it would be the close-ranged combat form.

Archery

Archery is difficult to master. Even if you gave someone a character with rank 1 archery skills, they'd still have troubles being effective against things that they don't actually kill in one hit. However, for both elves and humans, it has the potential to be the most powerful form. Unlike might normally be suspected, archery doesn't really take much of a support role. Instead, it takes more of a long-ranged sniping role.

Archery is shooting a physical projectile at a foe with a bow. For elves, it is usually more effective than melee because of their increased dexterity, decreased strength, and the fact that they shoot two arrows at a time. Humans, on the other hand, aren't very efficient until their skills are ranked high and they have a moderate amount of dexterity. Archery is the least safe form to use, since it's possible for your attack to completely miss and do nothing. However, it gains the most damage per stat point of any type of combat, and unlike melee you only need to train one stat, whereas melee still needs both str and dexterity for damage and balance respectively. In the case of humans, a high rank of the Ranged Attack skill is required for aiming to be fast enough for this form not to be suicide.

In terms of the range at which archery is most effective, it would be the long-ranged combat form.

Magic

Magic is really simple to use by its self. However, the fact that it requires large amounts of if you're going to use it by its self, along with the fact that in order to acquire the skills that make it most effective you have to collect a lot of difficult-to-collect pages in books, means that its usefulness is stunted. Normally magic is only used to supplement the other forms, but with a chaincasting wand and/or advanced magic it is possible to fight with only magic.

Magic is the use of mana to create projectiles to shoot at the foe. Magic attacks are always elemental, which causes them to do different damage to monsters with different elements. As mentioned before, magic is mainly useful to supplement other forms of combat, so using it by its self isn't usually recommended.

In terms of the range at which magic is most effective, it would be the medium-ranged combat form.

Alchemy

Alchemy is the most advanced form of combat. It's relatively easy to use, but requires quite a bit of effort before you actually go into combat in order to have the required crystals.

Alchemy is the use of elemental properties of matter in combat. Generally, it's the most versatile form of combat. It's capable of taking supportive roles as well as being directly aggressive. One of alchemy's biggest advantage is that it doesn't rely on stats; all of the damage comes from the rank of the individual skills and from the Alchemy Mastery skill. However, in order to use alchemy, you must have crystals. Some crystals can simply be bought from NPC shops, but more advanced alchemy skill require that you make the crystals yourself. Generally, making these crystals is just as much of a pain as using life skills.

In terms of the range at which alchemy is most effective, it would be the close-to-medium-ranged combat form.

Chapter 4: Melee Combat

Melee combat might be the easiest form to start out with, but mastering it takes just as much effort as the other forms. A lot of this method of fighting is rarely mentioned. For the most part, when people explain melee combat techniques to someone, they limit themselves directly to skill combination tactics. However, this means that everyone has to learn extremely valuable things on their own.

Luckily for the less knowledgeable, I'm going to write about it here! As an experienced user of melee combat, this here will be a chapter on the ins and outs of melee combat.

Theory

The point of melee combat is to get up close and prevent your opponent from attacking you by keeping them stunned with your own attacks. The other forms of combat also have keeping the monster from attacking you as a main point, but melee takes it a step further. With melee, you're trying to prevent the monster from doing anything, by attacking it with an overwhelming force that kills it before it has time to react. Of course, it doesn't always work this way. However, melee in its core is built for aggressive combat instead of defensive.

Aggressive combat is the opposite of defensive combat. With defensive combat, you're attempting to minimize the damage you take, and protect yourself at all costs from your enemy. Aggressive combat, on the other hand, involves directly attacking your opponent in an attempt to kill it as quickly as possible, often disregarding your own safety. In some situations, aggressive combat is still inappropriate, but in most it can be the most useful way to use melee combat if you're strong enough to pull it off.

However, just blindly charging the enemy is no good. If you do that, you're no better than a newbie with auto-combat still turned on. You must instinctively watch the opponent for openings and abuse them. Pay close attention to what they're doing. If they're doing something that you have a skill to counter, hurry up and use it!

Monsters running around often have openings.

• If it's running straight at you...well, it doesn't have an opening. Prepare a skill to defend yourself.
• if it's running and stopping, or running in circles around you, its AI forces it to delay before attacking you. Often you can load an execute Smash before it decides to attack. You can also always attack it normally. Whatever you do, though, make sure you take advantage of this opening!

Monsters using Defense are very vulnerable. Aggressive melees have quite a few methods to deal with them without simply waiting for them to cancel their skill.

• If you notice quickly enough that they're using Defense, charge in and Smash them. The quicker you do it the better, since some monsters tend to cancel their Defense skill rather quickly or suddenly.
• If you don't think you'll make it in time to Smash them, you can use magic to support you. If you distance yourself and load a Firebolt, you can knock them out of defense with it or knock them down any if they've canceled it. With good timing, you can have the monster still be practically on top of you.
• You can also use Icebolt. Like with Firebolt, if you keep your distance, you can just hit them with it. If you're far enough away, even though they'll block the icebolt shot, you can load counterattack and wait for them to come hit you. Or, you can walk right up to the monster so that when it cancels its defense skill, you can immediately hit it with icebolt and rip into it with normal attacks.
• Of course, if you're impatient, Windmill also works. The monster will block it, but due to Windmill's invincibility frames, you can prepare a skill before it can actually hit you in retaliation.

Monsters using Counterattack are sitting ducks. Once you recognize what skill they're using, it's more of an advantage for you than for them.

• Windmill will knock anything using counterattack down.
• All forms of magic go straight through counterattack. Depending on how you want the monster to attack afterwards, you have your choice for which would be best.
• Most monsters won't directly attack you after canceling Counterattack; instead they'll walk around for a while like when they first aggro you. Once you've learned how the monsters you're fighting work, this can be valuable.

Monsters using Windmill are trickier than monsters using Counterattack, but if you know what you're doing they still won't pose much of a threat.

• Learn your own windmill radius. The size of a character's sprite directly affects how far its windmill reaches, so with smaller monsters you can often windmill further than them. Furthermore, the radius of your windmill will increase at rank 5, and even further at rank 1, to a size where very few monsters can hit further than you can.
• Magic works the same on Windmill as Counterattack.
• Of course, you can always make the monster hurt its self. If you can afford to take a bit of damage, loading defense and making the monster actually use its windmill can help out a bunch. Monsters rarely attack or load skills immediately after Windmill, so unlike when a monster attempts to block your Windmill with Defense, you're likely to win.

Monsters using Smash can be tricky, but when you know how to defeat it, it becomes a huge opening for your own attacks.

• You can simply attack it normally. Normal attacks ALWAYS beat Smash attacks.
• Icebolt and Lightning Bolt will cause it to cancel Smash, but still charge at you. Instead of using counterattack, you can then use Defense to deal more damage.
• Windmill also works well, and you can hit other surrounding monsters at the same time, which can decrease how long it takes when you're fighting them.

Monsters using archery are the trickiest, but they've got holes in their combat style that can be abused.

• The Charge skill completely trumps all but the most powerful archers. It protects you from their attacks while you fly towards them at an extremely high speed, which means you can often hit them before they hit you. The Charge skill is extremely valuable to a melee combat user.
• Magic bolts can be used to prevent the monster from actually shooting at you until you get close enough to attack it. They also often make the monster switch away from its bow, which effectively turns them into just a weaker version of their melee cospawns.
• Of course, monsters using archery should be your very first target when entering a room. Try to take out as many of them as quickly as you can. It's often worth it to even ignore meleers that aggro you while you're attacking them. After all, archers tend to be much much more dangerous even than a multiaggro group of meleer monsters.

Monsters using magic can be dangerous, but you can still beat them.

• Defense will stop an Icebolt or Lightning Bolt from stunning you. You can use it to get closer to the monster while it charges its attack.
• Of course, beating it at loading its magic is helpful. Stunning the monster with icebolt, or knocking it back with firebolt, and then moving in for the kill is effective.
• Sometimes, however, it's best just to charge forward and do your best to get at the monster before it uses magic again.
• Monsters using magic should be your second target when entering a room in most cases. As they have a ranged attack, they can be a pain to deal with; however, unlike archers, the range at which they can use their magic is smaller, and, also unlike archers, their attacks don't cause injury, which means that you can drink a potion and it'll be like you never got hit.

Monsters using alchemy can be irritating. Usually they won't be strong enough to actually deal much damage, but they will often use the Wind Blast skill, which out right neutralizes many of your tactics.

• Try to kill them as quickly as possible before they have a chance to use Alchemy.
• Monsters that use alchemy will also often use melee attacks. You can attempt to lure them into doing this in order to get close enough to them to take them out.

Of course, if you notice any other openings, exploit them. Keep your eyes peeled! Some monsters have specific openings, like a tendency to use a certain skill after you smash it, that can be exploited.

N+1

Not everything that you should learn has to do with the way the monsters behave. There is a single technique that it is practically required that you learn in order to get the most out of your melee combat tactics.

That technique is known as N+1, or N+2 if you're dual wielding. N stands for "normal attack combo." The +1 means that you're doing one hit more than a normal attack combo. Doing one extra hit is definitely very useful, since obviously it means you're doing more damage. It's fairly easy to do, too. It involves inserting pauses between attacks. One good way to memorize it is by using visual reference points. Of course, these don't work very well when you're dual wielding, so you'll probably need to learn the timing first while single-wielding.

• With a 2-hit weapon, you'll want to hit the monster, pause for a small period of time, and then hit it twice more. To summarize, the combo should look like this: HIT pause HIT HIT
• With a 3-hit weapon, you'll want to hit hte monster, pause for a small period of time, hit the monster, pause again, and then hit it again twice. To summarize, the combo should look like this: HIT pause HIT pause HIT HIT
• Dual-wielding weapons are only slightly different from single-wielding. The timing is exactly the same, but since for each click both swords will be used to attack, time the second click after the second sword is used to attack.

As with Magic Counter and Defense Counter, timing is key. If you're too soon, you'll end up only doing your normal number of hits. If you're too late, the monster will be able to attack you. Practice makes perfect. When you can use N+1 without thinking, you've made a large advancement in your ability to fight.

The Smash Skill

All of the forms of combat have one powerful attack that will knock a monster down and do massive damage. For melee, that skill is Smash. Learning how to properly use Smash is an important thing for person specializing in melee combat.

To start with, I'll discuss when NOT to use the Smash skill, to get it out of the way.

• First of all, you don't want to use the Smash skill against things that have a skill loaded but aren't moving at all, unless you saw them walk slowly without canceling the skill. It's very dangerous to use Smash on enemies that are using counterattack. It multiplies the damage you're doing, which in turn gets multiplied when the monster turns it back around on you. And, if it's Windmill, it'll often do a large amount of damage anyway.
• Never use Smash on monsters that you know are likely not to delay upon aggro. Remember, their normal attack will ALWAYS win out against your Smash.
• Don't use Smash on monsters you can kill with one non-critical normal attack. Smash takes a long time to load, and its animation distrupts you. If you load Smash in anticipation of something stronger and rats spawn, cancel the skill.
• Do not use the Smash skill when a monster is neither using defense nor has passive defenses if your Smash skill is below rank 8 for single-wielding or rank 5 for dual-wielding. Until these thresholds, Smash will do LESS damage in total than an N+1 combo. Specifics will be gotten to shortly.
• Do not use Smash against monsters that have high intuition unless you can shrug off their attacks.

Now, to understand when Smash would be appropriate, first I'll go over some of the main points of the skill.

• Smash can break though the Defense skill.
• Smash can do very large amounts of damage. At higher ranks, it's capable of producing damage greater than any other skill other than intermediate and advanced magics.
• Smash will ALWAYS knock a monster down, regardless of whether the monster has Heavy Stander.

Because of these reasons, some obvious situations when Smash would be appropriate become obvious.

• When a monster is using the Defense skill, and you know you will have enough time to load and execute the skill before they cancel Defense.
• As a first attack when it will do more damage than attacking normally, such as when a monster has significant Defense that will block a set amount of damage per hit, therefore making it more useful to put all of your damage into one strong blow.
• As part of a combo chain with other skills, such as Windmill, Charge, or Down Attack.

The Windmill Skill

Windmill is one of the most versatile skills in the game. It can be used in a large variety of different situations for many different purposes. Learning how and when to use Windmill will greatly increase your effectiveness in combat.

To start with, I will explain some of the traits of the skill.

• Windmill will hit all targets within a somewhat close distance from the user. This distance increases greatly at rank 5 and rank 1.
• Starting at rank 9, Windmill loads very quickly.
• Windmill will ignore a target's protection when calculating Critical Hit chance.
• Windmill will take away 10% of the user's HP every time it is used.

Given these characteristics, there are many completely different scenarios which might prompt one to use Windmill. First, I'll list some of them, and then I'll give details on the use of the skill in them.

• Attacking many enemies at once.
• Defending attacks from a single enemy.
• Defending attacks from many enemies at once.
• Attacking something with a high protection stat.
• Purposefully reducing your own HP for whatever reason.

First, the most obvious use of Windmill is attacking multiple targets at the same time. This can be risky, though, since if the monsters multiaggro, using this skill could get you targeted by many more monsters than if you intentionally attacked only one. However, it can pay off greatly. When a user of Windmill has a high ranked Windmill and Critical Hit skill, a critical windmill can cause massive damage to many of the monsters around the user. In many situations, it will completely kill the monsters. This is especially useful when the skill is at rank 1, where you can cover a very large portion of a dungeon room with the skill's radius. When combined with switch rooms, one can hit and kill dozens of monsters at once with this skill. One thing to note, however, is that when you get a critical windmill on a large number of targets, it may cause you to lag slightly. If there are more monsters outside of your windmill range that aggro you during this lag, it's possible for them to seriously hurt you. Another thing to note is that, since Windmill will reduce your HP by 10% every time you use it, it isn't recommended to use Windmill against large groups of multiaggro monsters unless you're sure that the skill will kill all of them, otherwise you will just draw a large amount of attention onto yourself and also leave yourself more vulnerable to being killed.

The next use is defending attacks from a single enemy. Since Windmill can be loaded very fast, it can be used much faster than Counterattack or Defense. In some situations, such as with very fast moving monsters, this characteristic can be very helpful. It is also possible to use Windmill between Counterattack and Defense for more damage without putting yourself at more risk than necessary. However, just like attacking many monsters at once, this tactic should be conserved, since overuse of the skill will leave you with very little HP.

Next, defending attacks from many enemies at once. If you find yourself in a multiaggro situation, Windmill may be the only way to protect yourself from getting hit. Counterattack and Defense only work for one hit. If multiple monsters attack you at once and you are using counterattack, only the first one will be affected; if you're using defense, that first one won't even take damage from it. However, since Windmill will hit all monsters within range, it can be used to defend yourself from multiple enemies. Just like always, overusing this tactic can lead to you dying; however, often in situations where you are using it to defend yourself from multiaggro, you're likely to die anyway. However, if you're being attacked by multiple enemies who only 1-10 damage to you per hit, this tactic isn't recommended, since you will lose more HP from the skill than by just diligently attempting to attack them with normal attacks.

The final common situation is attacking something with a very high protection stat. Some monsters have very high protection, which means that most attacks won't do much damage. The only way to get full damage out of your attacks against a monster with high protection is to score a critical hit, and the high protection often prevents that from happening at all with normal means. However, Windmill will ignore the protection when calculating its critical hit chance, so Windmill can be used to deal large amounts of damage to monsters with very high protection if you're capable of scoring a critical hit. This quality of Windmill also makes it useful against monsters that don't have particularly high HP, but which have high passive defense ranks.

Finally, the least common use of windmill: purposefully lowering your own HP. There are many reasons one might do this. Sometimes, one will desire to purposefully die, for reasons such as receiving the "who was Defeated by a Fox at Age 17" title, or to cause items to be dropped and moved into the lost and found, or to help train the Healing or Party Healing skills. Whatever the situation, the only reliable way to lose much of your HP without risking being killed is to use windmill on monsters that you know will die in one hit if they do not go deadly.

Now, I must stress that using Windmill is DANGEROUS. Misuse or overuse of the skill WILL cause you to die. As I've explained above situations where one may desire to use Windmill, I will now describe situations in which windmill is a VERY bad idea.

• When your HP is low. If you Windmill with low HP when you do not need to, all you accomplish is bringing yourself closer to death.
• When you're fighting many monsters who don't hit very hard but have large amounts of HP. For example, the rats and spiders in Alby Normal Hardmode will do very little damage at all to a player with a moderate amount of Defense, yet take a long time to kill. If a player uses Windmill too many times against multiaggro monsters like this, you're just hurting yourself more than you need to.
• When you're out of potions and/or mana with which to heal yourself. If you can't recover your HP, then using this skill when you don't need to is just senselessly wasting 10% of your HP.
• Using windmill too much while Transformed is undesirable for the same reasons as listed above. When a player is transformed, their HP will be much higher than usual. As a result, it will take many more potions or uses of the Healing spell to recover HP, so using Windmill recklessly while transformed can lead to undesirable consequences.

Charge

Normally, pure users of the melee combat form don't have any way of attacking opponents that are far away. However, melee users have the Charge skill to make up for that.

Usually, if you can't attack things from far away, things that can attack YOU from far away will be extremely dangerous. If you can't close the distance before they strike, you can't attack them at all. Charge fixes that not by allowing you to attack from far away, but by making your opponent not far away anymore.

Put simply, the Charge skill is charging at your opponent at a high speed and ramming them with a shield. 400% of your normal speed, to be specific. Within a couple second, an enemy that is quite distant from you will be right in front of you, and you'll be able to attack them easily. Any ranged attacks that hit you while you are charging will have their damage reduced, and they won't stun you or knock you back at all. Unfortunately, magic attacks WILL have full effect and stop your Charge, so be careful not to charge into something using magic unless you know they won't shoot it at you. When you hit your opponent with the skill, they will be stunned and pushed back for a moment. During this time, you can walk up to them and attack them with normal attacks, or prepare a skill to use against them, such as Smash or Counterattack.

Talking along those lines, Charge is one of the most versatile skills in the game in terms of how you can combo it with other skills. One of the most effective combos in the game is Smash > Charge > Smash, but you can also team it up with many other skills.

It should be noted that Charge can only be used within a certain range, dependent on your skill rank. Your opponent must be neither too far away nor too close, or the skill won't work. It's very important to get a feel for how far those ranges are, so that you don't attempt to use Charge when you're incapable of doing so, instead of something else that would help you more.

Charge is definitely one of the more important skills in the game. When you understand how to use it properly, it will help you quite a bit in combat.

Assault Slash

Another skill that recently got added to the melee combat arsenal is Assault Slash. When you knock an opponent down, normally the safest option is to prepare a defensive skill for when they get up and try to attack you. However, we now have Assault Slash.

Assault Slash can only be used on monstersthat have been knocked down. Monsters that have been knocked back cannot be targets; nor can monsters that have been bounced down by repeated attacks. This means that this skill is only usable after knockdown attacks such as Smash, Firebolt, and Windmill.

Using Assaut Slash requires good timing. If you use the skill too soon after knocking something down, it'll bounce them back up like if you shot them with a fifth arrow or icebolt in a row, and they'll be able to attack very quickly afterwards. If you try to use it too late, it won't let you. When you use it at the right time, though, it will knock your opponent back in the same way as Charge does. This should give you enough time to prepare your next move.

Skill Combinations

Using how to use these moves by themselves is good, but to maximize how useful you are in combat, learning how to use them together is very important. When you use two skills together as a deliberately designed tactic, it is called a skill combination.

While every skill combination and its specific usage is unique, we group them into five categories: Attack+Defend, Attack+Stun, Attack+Push, Attack+Pull, and Attack+Run. Specifics and examples of each type can be found at Category:Battle Tactics and Solo Battle Tactics.

Attack+Defend

Skill combinations in the Attack+Defend are those where, on your opponent's attack cycle, you use a defensive skill. During this period, you are not trying to hurt your opponent; rather, you're trying simply not to get hurt by them. This type of tactic is most useful against opponents that you can't defeat quickly. Although it will slow down fighting them even more, it will minimize the damage you take from the exchange.

Attack+Stun

Unlike Attack+Defend, skill combinations in the Attack+Stun category are used to keep attacking your opponent even when it should be their turn by taking advantage of stun. This category includes tactics such as N+WM/1+WM as well as others that require magic or archery to use. This is mostly useful against monsters that you can kill somewhat quickly. Tactics in this category can extend your attacks much further than usual. However, Attack+Stun tactics can rarely be used by themselves. In most situations, they must be combined with another category of skill combinations, such as Attack+Defend or Attack+Pull.

Attack+Push

Attack+Push is very similar to Attack+Defend in that the main purpose for it is to prevent yourself from getting hit. Unlike Attack+Defend, though, it involves using pushing an opponent back further after attacking it to give you time to load a more defensive skill, such as Counterattack, or to prepare another offensive skill to attack it with. Usually, however, the latter use isn't used in melee combat, since it requires that you attack a monster from a distance. The best example of such a tactic in melee is Smash-Charge-Smash, which is mainly used for its large damage output. For less experienced players, though, the tactic Fire-Counter is much more common and useful.

Attack+Pull

Attack+Pull is the very opposite of Attack+Push. Attack+Pull attempts to force a monster to come right back to you immediately after you attack it. The only commonly used examples of this are Ice Counter and Fire Ice Counter. With this tactic, you attack your opponent, and then use another skill to prevent it from loading any skills and provoke it into running straight into your defensive skill, such as Counterattack. It takes more practice to get used to using Attack+Pull tactics with counterattack than it does to get used to using Attack+Push ones, but it is often preferable to either prevent your opponent from using Area-of-Effect attacks or from standing around and causing you to waste stamina from loaded counterattack.

Attack+Run

Attack+Run category tactics are used when your only hope of killing something is to wither down its health bit by bit, while completely avoiding any chance of getting hit by escaping the situation. Tactics in this category usually involve running away or using the play dead skill; however, Pet Revolver also fits into this category, even though it is your pet that is attacking and running instead of yourself.

Chapter 5: Archery-based Combat

Archery is a difficult combat form to master, but it is definitely one of the most rewarding. It has many advantages over other forms of combat, to the point where the only reason it isn't more commonly used is because people who don't already use it usually only don't because acquiring dexterity to increase their damage is a pain.

Theory

Archery-based combat is based on the maxim of keeping your opponent as far away from you as possible, in an attemot to prevent them from attacking you at all. Later on, when one gets more effective at archery, it often becomes more preferable to get as close to their opponent as possible, but earlier this may leave an archer too open to attacks. Archery can have a very large damage output, due to there being much more available dexterity than strength, but it can also leave you very vulnerable to getting hurt, since if you miss it leaves you open for attacks, and you cannot use a shild while using archery.

The main theory behind archery is to keep attacking you opponent until they are dead. Often, this involves just repeatedly shooting at them with Ranged Attack or Magnum Shot. However, Just like with melee combat, you must pay close attention to what your opponent is doing.

Monsters running around have openings.

• If it's running straight at you, you should definitely attempt to shoot at it. If you don't have enough time, you can load and execute the Windmill skill to protect yourself.
• If it's running and stopping, or running in circles around you, it's AI forces it to delay before attacking you. If you have a good idea how long the monster delays for, you can judge whether to attack it with a normal Ranged Attack shot or a stronger skill such as Magnum Shot or Crash Shot.

Monsters using Defense can be vulnerable.

• When you notice that something is using Defense, prepare and use Magnum Shot. Even if they cancel their skill, the fact they prepared it in the first place gives you an opening to prepare your Magnum Shot and start aiming at them.
• When a monster is holding a shield, Magnum Shot will not cause them to be knocked down, because of the fact that shields apply Level 0 Natural Shield when one uses the Defense skill while holding one. However, this is only dangerous if they're extremely close. If you're at a moderate distance, you should be able to prepare your next skill.

Monsters using Counterattack or Windmill are completely vulnerable to you.

• For both, it gives you a significant amount of time to do whatever you need to do. You can drink potions, switch weapons, and of course use whatever skill you are going to use to attack them while they're wide open for you.
• If you can't tell which it is, don't go too close. Getting hit by a Windmill can be very painful to an archer.

Monsters using Smash are very dangerous to archers.

• If you can hit them with a regular Ranged Attack shot before they reach you, you can save yourself, but this is dangerous since your shot can miss.
• It may be preferable to switch to a melee weapon and distrupt your opponent's smash with melee combat temporarily, since regular melee hits have a 100% chance of stopping Smash.

Monsters using archery or magic can be tricky, but they can also be very easy to kill with ranged attacks.

• If you get the first shot, you're almost guaranteed to win in a fight with monsters. Their AI prevents them from shooting very often, and often their Ranged attack skill isn't very high ranked.
• Monsters who use magic also often use melee. Generally, it's best to treat them as melee users when you're using archery, but at the same time be on guard for when they attempt to use magic.

Zero Shot

Zero Shot is the archery equivalent of N+1, though it lets you get many more additional attacks than N+1. Zero shot is effectively attacking a monster from very close range so that it's stunned longer than it takes you to prepare your next shot. A skilled archer can continue using Zero Shot indefinitely if they time their shots after a monster gets knocked back. It should be noted that this tactic requires very little lag, as well as that you disable your Nagle Algorithm, since you need to be able to shoot very fast for it to be safe.

The Ranged Attack Skill

In other words, regular archery shots. This is equivalent to melee's normal attacks; however, unlike normal melee attacks and Combat Mastery, it has even more dependency on the skill. The rank of the skill determines how fast you can aim. Higher ranks of the skill are very preferable, since being able to aim faster means being able to shoot faster. The faster you can shoot, the more useful you are as an archer.

The Ranged Attack skills for humans and elves are very different.