Game Mechanics

This page will provide an overview of various game mechanics.

Energy
Energy is the mechanic used to determine how long actions take to perform, or in other words: How much you can accomplish before the enemies get a chance to act. Your character can perform actions and expends energy until the energy level dips below zero, after which your character will recover energy based on their speed.

Common expenditures of energy include: The energy cost of actions may be affected by other effects or elements of the game, for example hunger level.
 * Attacking with a weapon (energy used is determined by the weapon, as shown on the weapon's statistics)
 * Swapping weapon loadout (500 energy)
 * Taking a step under normal conditions (1000 energy)

Combat
This section will highlight information regarding gameplay mechanics related to combat.

One-Handed vs. Two-Handed Weapons
Characters can wield a one-handed weapon (or shield) in each hand or they can wield a two-handed weapon which will occupy both slots.

One-handed weapons are typically faster and do less damage while two-handed weapons are generally slower but deal greater damage (for weapons of a similar type/quality).

Dual Wielding
Characters wielding a weapon in each hand will be able to attack with both weapons. The placement of weapons on the character's profile from the inventory screen affects which weapon is considered the "main hand" weapon and which is considered the "offhand" weapon. The "main hand" weapon is the leftmost hand (i.e. the character's right hand) on the character's paper doll, which will also be the hand that is equipped first when double-clicking a weapon to wield it from the inventory.

When attacking with two weapons in this manner, the "main hand" will deal 100% of its normal damage, while the "offhand" will deal 50% damage. Both attacks will go off simultaneously and the energy cost of the attack will be the average of the two weapons.

Blocking
Characters equipped with a shield can mitigate incoming damage through successfully blocking enemy attacks.

Characters have two attributes that display the effectiveness of their ability to block, which can be seen on the character sheet: Shields have several attributes that impact their ability to influence the blocking attributes identified above: Behind the scenes, a "Block Rating" is calculated using the "Block Value" of the shield. This "Block Rating" is then used to determine the overall "Block Chance" per the following formulas:
 * Block Chance - The percentage chance that an attack will be blocked.
 * Block Amount - On a successful block, this is the amount of flat damage that any incoming damage will be reduced by (e.g. a "Block Amount" of 2 would result in damage the player received being reduced by 2 when a successful block occurs).
 * Damage Mitigation - This attribute directly determines the "Block Amount" for the character.
 * Block Value - This value feeds into the formula used to determine the "Block Chance" for the character (higher is better). It can be considered a "soft exponential multiplier" to the "Block Chance". For additional information on the exact formula used to determine "Block Chance", see below.

Disarming
Some enemies may attempt to disarm you. Their likelihood of success will be tied to their ability to perform the action as well as the weapon(s) you are wielding. Weapons will have a "Disarm Chance" expressed as a percentage. This "Disarm Chance" will be multiplied against the success rate of the disarm action for the enemy to offset their chance of succeeding (a lower percentage for "Disarm Chance" will translate to a weapon that is less likely to be disarmed by such an attempt).

In general, smaller weapons have a lower Disarm Chance than larger weapons, and will therefore make it less likely that you will be disarmed.