Beating People Up

Alas, no matter how kind or soft-spoken you are, there are a lot of people and creatures in Nethergate who would like nothing more than to savagely attack you. Fortunately, there are a wide variety of weapons, magical and mundane, you can use to defend yourself. Then, when you defeat the enemy, you can take their stuff! Combat may be painful and stressful, but in Shadowvale it tends to be necessary an awful lot of the time, and profitable as well.

There are two ways to get into a fight. First, you can enter a town containing hostile characters. Second, you can encounter a band of wandering monsters when walking outdoors. When the group moves next to you, you will find yourself sharing a battlefield with them.

How To Attack

To attack someone, you should first equip a weapon (by clicking on it when it’s in your item list). Then walk into the foe to attack. That’s all there is to it.

When you’re wandering around in town mode, if you move your lead character into an enemy, the lead character will attack. This isn’t very efficient, though, since your other characters can’t do anything. To let everyone act separately, enter combat mode by pressing the Start Combat button (or typing ‘f’).

Rounds and Action Points

Combat is divided into segments of time called rounds. Each round, each character gets around 4 action points with which to act. Each action eats up some of your action points, and, when you reach 0, you can’t do anything else that round. When nobody has any action points left, a new round starts, and so on until combat ends. To see how many action points each action costs, select Combat Help from the Help menu.

During a round, the fastest characters act first. The fastest character is usually the one with the highest Dexterity, although other factors (like being hasted or slowed, or having a lot of Roman Training) can play a part.

If you want, one of your characters can wait to act until after all of the monsters have used up their action points. To do this, press the Wait button (or type ‘w’). If you don’t want your character to do anything that round, press the Parry button (or type ‘p’ or hit 5 on the keypad).

When you’re knocked below 0 health, you’re dead. If you get hit hard enough, you’re turned to dust. Also, some creatures can turn you to stone with a gaze. Any character luckless enough to suffer one of these fates will be out of action until you can get back to a healer or cast a Raise Dead spell. Also, if you’re really desperate, the character editor can heal people.

Health and Damage

When something takes damage, it loses health points. When health goes below zero, the character dies. Your characters have an extra advantage. When one of them takes a blow which would knock him or her below 0 health, the health will end up at 0 instead, and you will hear a warning coughing noise. This will give you a chance to move that character to safety or apply healing.

There are several ways to restore a character’s health. Damage will be slowly healed over time. Several spells in the Health Circle will cure damage, as will healers in towns. If you have a first aid kit, you can use the Use First Aid command (in the Actions menu). However, you can only use first aid on a character every so often, and your first aid kits will be slowly used up over time. You can also make potions which cure damage.

Killing Everything Off

When you’re in town and don’t want to fight anymore, press the End Combat button to reform as a group and return to town mode. All of your characters need to be within five spaces of your lead character for this to work. If you got into the fight outdoors, you can use the End Combat button after all of your foes are dead.