Combat basics

Turns and speed

• A fight runs in rounds. At the start of each round, everyone standing is lined up by speed, fastest first. Ties are settled at random.
• Haste makes you 30% faster and Slow 30% slower, so they can change the order from one round to the next.
• At the start of your turn your cooldowns tick down, you gain your class resource, and damage or healing over time lands. If you're stunned, that's the whole turn.
• Some heir traits bend the order: an early riser always takes the first turn of a fight, whatever their speed, and a heavy sleeper loses theirs.
• Status effects count down at the end of each of their holder's turns.

Intents

Every enemy shows its intent: the ability it will use on its next turn and who it's aimed at. It picks the next one straight after acting, so you always see what's coming. Intents are honest, with two exceptions: if someone taunts or the target falls, the enemy re-aims, and a boss that enters a new phase picks a new move.

Each intent has its own icon, and the ability's name is always written next to it. What each enemy can do is on its enemy page, once players have seen it.

Seeing further ahead

The Codex nodes of the legacy tree (Read the room and Spoilers) show elite and boss intents up to 3 turns ahead: under the current intent, a small Then: line lists that many moves after it, in order. Normal enemies, pets and minions still show only their next move.

• The plan is decided in advance, so it's as honest as the intent itself. A taunt or a fallen target re-aims it, and a boss entering a new phase makes a new plan.
• A stunned enemy loses its turn but keeps its plan: the next move just comes later.
• In a party, the member with the best Codex node shows the plans for everyone.

Your turn

You get one action. Pick an ability, Guard, an item, Flee or Auto.

Abilities

• You have 4 ability slots, chosen from your class's pool. A new character starts with the class's starting loadout; your class page marks which abilities those are. See Choosing your abilities.
• Cost is paid in your class resource. You can't use an ability you can't afford.
• Cooldown is how many of your turns you wait before using it again. An ability with cooldown 0 works every turn.
• With more than one enemy, single-target abilities ask you to choose one. If an enemy has Taunt, single-target attacks must go to it.

Choosing your abilities

Every class has a pool of abilities, and you choose which 4 to take into battle. Every ability in the pool is open from level 1.

• On Discord, pick Abilities from the More menu. Each slot has its own menu. On the web, open the Abilities tab in town: pick a slot, then an ability.
• Choosing an ability that's already in another slot swaps the two.
• Changes are free, but only in town or at a camp. Everywhere else on an expedition your abilities are locked in, whether you're on your own or with a party. Gear stays locked for the whole expedition, camps included.
• Each class remembers its own choice, across lives. A class you haven't set up yet uses its starting loadout.
• A fight uses the abilities you had when it started.

Resources work differently for each class: some fill up as you fight, some drain as you cast. See Class mechanics.

Guard

Guard gives you a shield worth 10% of your max HP. The shield soaks up damage before your HP does and stays until it's used up. Guarding also gives you your turn's resource gain a second time. It's the classic answer to a heavy attack.

Items

Consumables such as potions come into the fight from your pack, along with anything you've found on the current expedition. Using one takes your turn. See Items.

Flee

Fleeing is a roll. The base chance is 50%, plus 5% for every point of speed you have over the fastest enemy (or minus, if you're slower). It never drops below 10% or goes above 90%.

• A failed flee costs you the turn.
• You can't flee while a boss is standing. Gate bosses are to the end.
• A trait's flee chance (a coward's, say) is added before the limits above. A stubborn heir can't flee at all.
• On an expedition, getting away drops 10% of your carried gold and sends you one step back down the road.

The autopilot

Every fight starts on autopilot, which plays your turns so easy fights resolve in one go. It plays like a sensible average player, and it never flees. It hands you control before it does anything risky:

• when an elite is in the fight,
• when a boss is in the fight, and
• as soon as your HP drops below 50% of your max.

The game tells you why it stopped. Under permadeath, dying to a bot's decision would feel unfair, so it doesn't make that kind of decision. Once things are safe again, press Auto to hand the fight back. Auto is greyed out while any of the three reasons applies.

In party fights there is no Auto button. Instead each player has 1 minute to act, and if you don't, the autopilot plays that turn for you.

Winning and losing

• Win, and you get XP, gold and, on an expedition, a loot roll.
• Lose a solo fight and your character dies, for good. See Life, death and heirs.
• In a party, a member at 0 HP is downed, not dead, until the fight is decided. Parties has the rules.

Status effects and damage

Burn, Bleed, Stun, Vulnerable, Taunt and the rest are listed with their exact effects on Mechanics, along with how damage, defense and crits are worked out. Reapplying a status refreshes it; it doesn't stack.

Keyboard shortcuts

On the web and in the Activity, fights can be played from the keyboard.

• Some abilities add more buttons while they last, such as a form's moves. Those take the next number keys, up to 6.
• Shortcuts pause while a menu or dialog is open, or while you're typing. Tab, Enter and Esc work everywhere.
• On a device with a mouse, each button shows its key.

In Discord, the same actions are buttons under the fight, with items in a menu and a Full log button for the round-by-round log.