Combat for dummies

[Ogare 74]

I'd like to understand combat better. Can we make a list of simple action and reaction situations? So, If opponent does X you do Y.

 

I'm doing this list based on what I've seen of the combat revamp. For the most part the combat system isn't changing. Besides words in event we are also getting picture indicators. One change I'm most interested in is that mobs will try to find optimal attack combos. Some mobs won't be good at it I suspect.

 

my questions:

I'm confused about where to swap aim location when opponent is blocking where I'm aiming. These things confuse me: fighting style, damage boost location (head, eyes, crotch ...), flanking.

 

I'm curious if blocking has to correlate to the toon's target to get benefits. Can we attack one mob and set our block to give optimal defense against another mob?

 

 

I'll start here:

* Block wherever your opponent is aiming. If fighting opponents block wherever either the most opponents are aiming or the most dangerous opponent is aiming.

[Trash 189]

face the opponent

[Ogare 74]

17 minutes ago, Trash said:

face the opponent

You sure we shouldn't try to flank? I guess that is facing the opponent.

 

I'm wondering if this is a dumb question, people just don't know answers, or maybe they do and dont' want to reveal PvP (even know I'm only interested in PvE) advantages.

[John 254]

22 minutes ago, Ogare said:

You sure we shouldn't try to flank? I guess that is facing the opponent.

 

I'm wondering if this is a dumb question, people just don't know answers, or maybe they do and dont' want to reveal PvP (even know I'm only interested in PvE) advantages.

 

For PvE, you'll be fine with a few simple things such as getting the correct distance (depending on weapon) and trying to get a height bonus. You can't outflank an NPC as it will always turn towards you when it's fighting you solo. PvE in Wurm is easy (or at least it gets so once you get to a certain skill level), and time spent trying to optimize a single engagement is more likely to be a waste of time as whatever you're fighting should be dead or dying by the time you have the time to change your "aim" back and forth.

[Ogare 74]

I'm under the impression that proper use of combat gives big bonuses. I suppose I could just run away from trolls till I got 80 fs. But what is the hurt in explaining how it works?

[Minnie 178]

2 hours ago, Ogare said:

I'm under the impression that proper use of combat gives big bonuses. I suppose I could just run away from trolls till I got 80 fs. But what is the hurt in explaining how it works?

 

Yes, it’s disheartening that every question about how to do combat better is invariably answered with “it doesn’t matter in PvE.”  First of all, that’s just not true—there are plenty of situations in which it *does* matter, the obvious example being new players working their way up to 70fs.  And even above 70, higher level mobs can still sometimes present problems, especially if your armor and/or weapon are not the greatest, or if your body stats are not particularly high, or if you’re fighting multiple mobs at once on tricky terrain, or if you’re attacked when your health is low.

 

But besides all of that, I don’t see the harm in wanting to understand the system and utilize it to your best advantage in every fight, regardless of skill level, and regardless of whether the fight is easily winnable.  So I hope that if anyone knows the answer to OP’s questions (or has any guesses or other helpful info to contribute), they will speak up.

[John 254]

2 hours ago, Ogare said:

explaining how it works?

I think the biggest issue is trying to explain what has taken players years to master. Sindusk has made an excellent attempt, but it's a lot to digest:

Postes has also made a guide for the basics of PvP, which also apply to PvE (sticking to a single weapon, how to grind up your FS and some other nice links). There should also be some recent videos showing off people fighting, which will at least give you a good chance to see what experienced players do in combat in terms of positioning, aiming, focusing, spell casts and changing stances:

I hope that's at least of some help.

[Thorinoakshield 603]

[starts wall of text]

 

I don't have a nice training video, but here's what I've learned over the past (6) years:

 

1) Don't use the auto fight option. Switch to manual, as you may be able to defend and attack better;
 

2) Get yourself a height advantage. Not just by moving to higher ground, but also from horseback.
Riding L-carts or Wagons does give you that advantage, but also give you an increased difficulty, so avoid fighting from those until you're at  the higher ranks. A good way to check is to attack something from a L-cart and see what colour the arrows showing what you are attacking at the oponent are. Green means you will most certainly hit; white means you may hit or miss in  the same rate, orange means you may occasionally hit and read means you will miss most of the time.
 

3a) Don't call the guards until  you really have to.

Guards - both the tower guards as the spirit guards - give you a reduced FS gain compaired to solo-ing a monster. Therefore it's better to postpone calling out to them, as to immediately call out on them while you may be able to defeat that monster you're facing.

 

3b) Related: Running away is not a sign of cowardice, but a sign of common sense.

Running away from a monster means you may gain some distance to enter a safe area, to heal up and to get into the fight again. There's no need to fight 'til the end, if you know  that end is more likely coming for you earlier as it is for the monster.

Considering only Trolls (afaik) are able to regenerate, healing yourself up gives you that edge you may need early on.

 

3c) Also related: travel light. Especially early on. If that means you need to drop ###### because you're under attack, drop it. After that monster is defeated you can pick is up anyway. But when the monster defeats you, you're left with almost nothing. Which is a lot worse if you can't remember where you got killed in the first place.

 

4) If you have one, drop your tent, then try to lure the monster away from it.

You got 3 optional spawn points in this game; your tent, a starter town (or multiple at some servers) and your deed (if you have one). USE them.
Drop that tent, lure the monster away from it if you think you can't defeat or outrun it and try to kill it. If you got killed, you will spawn nearby and with some luck close enough to get the items of your corpse, without agro-ing that monster.

 

5) Don't ditch the starter gear for something better.

This may be a controversial one for some players, because of the "higher qlis better" mindset, but it doesn't always work like that.

Each and every new player start out with a nice 50ql longsword, a nice shield and 50ql leather armour. While 50ql doesn't seem much, it's basically just as good as 70+ ql items made by players because as a new player you got no skill at all in the use of it anyway.

More important, when you - as a new player - die, all starter items are on you the moment you respawn. Which means you will respawn near your tent, on deed or in a starter town (depending at which option you choose) with your full gear and full health.

Which also means that you're able to attack that monster again, without having to worry you will loose your gear.

 

Now, imagine you're a new player who's bought that 90ql rare huge axe with all those high 90 - 100 enchants on it, as well as 90ql Drake armour with Web-armour or AoSP at it and you got killed in the middle of nowhere by a bull and you can't remember where......
I'm certain a player stumbling over your remains 4 days later will be very, very happy.
 

Another reason why it's controversial:
When this game was released, players started with no weapons and armour at all. Later that got changed to being equipped with a 10ql small wooden shield and a 10ql (I think it was) short sword. With the current equipment new players are a lot safer as they used to be.

 

6) As for gear: Stay away from plate until you got at least 40 body strength. Plate offers more or less the best damage reduction, but it's so heavy you almost need an engine in it to move forward. Not to mention, because you can't move fast, your dodging is terrible

A lot of players are still using Studded Armour, even at higher levels and the reason for that is that studded is one of the best armour types for both offence and defence.

Studded armour has a better defence vs both piercing and slashing damage compared to leather and is certainly better when being confronted with the blunt damage troll clubs do.

Drake is basically Studded Armour on steroids, but it's expensive. (Dragon) Scale armour is plate on steroids, but expensive too. Don't buy these two, unless you intend to play this game for a long time.

Chain mail armour has the best defence vs both piercing and slashing damage - which is done by almost any monster - however, when fighting a troll you will end up with lots of bruises.

 

7) Make sure you always have some cotton (strings or pieces of cloth), healing covers and farmer's salve with you.

Those three items are able to heal you up, but also can turn a severe wound into a light or medium one. Which means your chances to survival are a lot better

 

8 ) As mentioned earlier, in manual fight you're able to choose where to attack your opponent, as well as where to defend. And this is most likely the only spot ingame where a left handed player has an advantage over a right handed player   considering you can use your right hand to pick the numbers from the number pad, or the cursor keys to move.
The combat tab shows you where your oponent is planning to attack you; meaning you can use the number pad of your key board to defend yourself into that direction.

Using the number pad, you can also choose from one of the 9 options where to attack your oponent.

5 is the default setting, meaning attacking the body of that monster.

1, 2 & 3 are the lower parts of the monster

7, 8, & 9 are the top parts of the monster, including its head;

4 & 6 are the left and right side of the monster.

Leaves the "0" (zero); which is meant to focus; which will give you a small edge if you increase it during the fight.

 

What I usually do in a fight is picking a spot to attack; i.e. left arm; and move 3 positions clock wise or counter clock wise over the number pad to switch my point of attack.

For instance:5 (starting position;  4 (left arm), 9 (right shoulder / upper arm), 2 (lower body / crotch?), 0 to focus, 7 (left shoulder / upper arm), 1 (left leg / foot - and breaking the pattern; 0 to focus; 8 (head), 4 (left arm - 6 step pattern); 2 (lower body / crotch - to break the pattern again and going into counter clock wise order)

Usually by then the monster is dead; unless it's a tougher one like a champion or one having a certain condition.

 

What I don't do, is using the special attacks. Those consume lots of stamina; which you will need if the fight is going on a longer time.

 

9) Then we have fighting stances;

The game got 3 different stances, all having it's (dis)advantages. For "sword (or maul, axe) and board", using defensive or normal fighting stance works best. The shield will add a bit more defence and resistance to you anyway, however you won't hit as often in defensive stance as you would in normal or agressive stance.

In agressive stance you will hit most often, but you are also more vunerable to being hit by the monster. It's not something I would reccommend to new players. However, it works quite well when using a L-maul, huge axe or 2 handed sword.

 

10) The easiest way to train FS is by using your starter longsword and cut down trees. It works to get your FS up to 20-ish skill, while also training your longsword skill.

If you intend to use another weapon later, use that one instead. No need to skill longsword and swords (parent skill), when you are going to use a Large Maul later.

Another way to train FS is to create yourself a training dummy and release your agression at  that one. Just keep in mind you need to repair and imp that dummy every once in a while.

 

11) Last but not least: Choice of weapons.

Like in all games, each weapon has its (dis-)advantages.

Small weapons swing fastest, but do smallest damage; normal weapons have an average swing time and do average damage, while large or 2 handed weapons do most damage but swing slowest.

On top of that the swing rate is also depending at the kind of weapon, meaning swords are faster as axes, which are faster as mauls.

And there are staves; which are somewhere in between and considered as the meta by some players.

Dual wielding weapons can be done as well, however don't expect to do much damage with the off hand weapon as the current fighting engine isn't really suited for that.

As for bows, using them in a fight is a very long process which can be trained at PvE, but you will most likely need to train it a lot before you're even able to do lots of damage compared to melee. It cerainly isn't something I would reccommend to do as a starting player.

 

So my advice, choose the equipment and combat style that you think suits you best and stick to it. Don't switch weapons when you see others doing more damage with something they use, because FS isn't the only skill helping you with that. Each weapon got their own skill and parent and the only thing you achieve by switching out weapons is starting from scratch and dealing less damage because you aren't less trained in it.

 

 

[/end wall of text]  

Thorin

 

[Ogare 74]

Thank you Thorin. I do appreciate that you took the time to write all that up. But I'm looking for less Wurm boilerplate generalized advise.

 

For example...I'm on foot, with a two-hander, in aggressive and targeting mob's upper parts. The mob goes to defend high. Where should I switch my targeting now? Or should I just keep attacking high because head shots do extra damage.

 

 

 

[sarahbee 66]

The problem with asking those questions is that the answers aren't clear-cut. Unless someone (you) is willing to fully understand the combat code and creature stats and write a simulation program that takes as parameters the creature (with age), your skills, the weapon you're using (quality and enchantments), whatever other CR buffs you have (mounted? priest favored terrain? etc) it's really hard to say what will be better. 

[Thorinoakshield 603]

22 hours ago, Ogare said:

Thank you Thorin. I do appreciate that you took the time to write all that up. But I'm looking for less Wurm boilerplate generalized advise.

 

For example...I'm on foot, with a two-hander, in aggressive and targeting mob's upper parts. The mob goes to defend high. Where should I switch my targeting now? Or should I just keep attacking high because head shots do extra damage.

 

 

 

That's up to you. But personally I'd change the area of attack the moment the AI decides to defend what you're attacking.

While headwounds do have its effect, so does having a medium wound at an arm or leg. So switching area's of attack is always useful; both in PvP and PvE.

 

The reason why I wrote a more general advice, is because it's that what a lot of players even don't know. Too often I've seen players with 50-ish FS heading into a rift fight wearing plate and being on foot; just to discover they barely can't get out of the way when being bashed and having "only" 1kg of cotton on them as they thought plate would protect them from all damage.

Too often I've seen new players asking about the best armour or best weapon; while they're basically starting out with good gear.

 

If players want to master combat in this game, they need to start mastering the basics: use gear that suits your needs, not what seems to best, make sure you got your supports (cotton, healing covers, farmer's salve, TENT!) with you and don't be ashamed to call for help (guards or other players) or to run away. But most important, be unpredictable.

The AI will calculate where you may place your next attack and where it will place the next attack. If you keep following the same pattern over and over again, you may as well turn auto-combat on and wait for victory or defeat.

If you're manually fighting, however, you may switch to a spot one didn't think about.

 

So, using your question; of course you can keep bashing the head of that monster  you're attacking. But the AI will defend that part and all you achieve is banging at something  that doesn't get damaged; just to break through the defences once in a while.

If you, however, switch to attacking the undefended legs, you got a huge chance to wound your opponent there. Which means your chance at a victory is a little bit closer.

 

Thorin  

[Ogare 74]

@Sinduskcombat explained post is nice. WU is the best thing that ever happened to WO.

 

Regarding my question about where to switch aim when mob blocks the following chart is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. The post say defender's lower center and upper center soft spot aren't working but I'm going to operate on the assumption that it does. This only affects critical chances but every little bit helps.

+------------------------------------------+
|Defender Stance|Attacker Stance           |
+------------------------------------------+
|Middle Center  | Upper Left, Upper Right  |
+------------------------------------------+
|Lower Center   | Middle Left, Middle Right|
+------------------------------------------+
|Middle Left    | Upper Right, Lower Left  |
+------------------------------------------+
|Middle Right   | Upper Left, Lower Right  |
+------------------------------------------+
|Upper Center   | Lower Left, Middle Left  |
+------------------------------------------+
|Upper Left     | Lower Right, Middle Right|
+------------------------------------------+
|Upper Right    | Lower Left               |
+------------------------------------------+
|Lower Left     | Lower Center             |
+------------------------------------------+
|Lower Right    | Upper Center             |
+------------------------------------------+

Using this chart, mobs start out defending middle center, so the first move I should make in combat is aim upper left or right.

 

 

The next big question is whether to pursue flanking. I can run through the mob and turn to face it right after it moves. The combat doc indicates mobs turn to face attacker on first swing of the turn. Also, all calculations are done at the start of the turn. So moving right when the mob turns should give me time to get into position. But does that count as moving for the calculations? I know I won't be able to do it mounted on a horse/vehicle. Not sure giving up a guaranteed height buff  (mounted on horse) for the chance to get a slightly better flank buff is worth it. Right now mobs don't try to flank nor do I often encounter groups of mobs. Tho that may change this summer after the encounter update Wurm's been hinting at.

[DaletheGood 1,073]

Few things I've found that helped when fighting. Always, always, always lead your horse when you're dismounted. First thing I do when I login or dismount is lead my horse. If you get caught by a mob while on foot you cannot lead the horse if you're actively fighting. You have to run away first to disengage before leading. If the horse is being lead though, you can immediately Ride it even if in the midst of a fight.

 

Circling a mob does help in a fight. I've tested it countless times on similar mobs and found I had much better success when circling rather than just standing there and duking it out. It is a bit fiddly to do sometimes, so an alternative is to ride back and forth thru the mob as soon as he turns towards you, so you're facing his back more often than his front. I tried circling when I fought a duel against Morrowen and held my own for awhile, but when I stood still, he was much superior.

 

Even if you have an LT weapon, don't sleep on getting your first aid skill up. When fighting greenish or champ trolls I still have to run away sometimes to heal up before going another round with them (not as often now that my fighting is much higher). And have cotton on you always. I carry 5kg in my horses saddle sacks so it's always handy.

[Ogare 74]

10 hours ago, DaletheGood said:

Circling a mob does help in a fight

What fight style where you using? What weapon? I'd think a long reach weapon would be easier to use in a flanking horseback attach style.  Horses are difficult to make turn in a tight radius. This also asks the question of whether to take the distance penalty so it's easier to flank opponents on horseback.

 

"Finally, the CR will adjust by -1 if you are between 1 and 2 meters outside of ideal striking range for your weapon. It will adjust by -2 if you are over 2 meters outside of the ideal striking range for your weapon." (Sindusk's - Wurm Combat System Explained)

[DaletheGood 1,073]

6 hours ago, Ogare said:

What fight style where you using? What weapon? I'd think a long reach weapon would be easier to use in a flanking horseback attach style.  Horses are difficult to make turn in a tight radius. This also asks the question of whether to take the distance penalty so it's easier to flank opponents on horseback.

 

"Finally, the CR will adjust by -1 if you are between 1 and 2 meters outside of ideal striking range for your weapon. It will adjust by -2 if you are over 2 meters outside of the ideal striking range for your weapon." (Sindusk's - Wurm Combat System Explained)

I normally am in Aggressive stance and use a steel staff with all the usual high ql enchants, LT, MD, MS, Nimb, etc. As for the turning radius, I make a tight circle by holding down the turn key (usually D for a right turn) and making the circle tighter with the S (back) key. If the mob isn't hitting me as often since I'm circling it, then the occasional loss of the CR doesn't seem to matter as much. Plus with the staff, since it hits so often, I get the bursts of LT more often than I did when using a huge ax, so yeah, it works for me.