First Hostile Encounters

Your party will not only meet friendly creatures in their wanderings. More often than not, hostile groups of marauding monsters will confront our heroes. They prefer your skin, gold, and items to a good cup of tea. However, you are by no means defenseless. Apart from readying from readying your armor, weapons, and magic and placing your characters in the most useful order (warriors in front, magic types in the back), you can determine their behavior in combat.

Hostile encounters invariably mean fighting for your life. Combat is carried out in rounds. At the beginning of every round you determine the actions of every character. Messages will then report on the course of combat and on its results. You will be given a choice between fighting and evading combat before each round. You might also consider to flee if you are outmatched. Sometimes you will not be able to flee from an encounter and will have to fight back. Whether you wish to stand and fight bravely or run for your life, enter your choice either by clicking on the option or by typing its line number or clicking the option.

Combat

Choosing combat initiates or continues a battle with enemies. You now have several choices. If you wish to give your party new orders choose New options. Click on the words or type 1. You can now tell each character who able of fighting to do one of the following: Attack, PSI combat, Magic, Item or Defend. Only options the character can actually use are displayed. E.g. at the beginning of the game, your characters do not know any magic spells, so there is no Magic option for them in combat. Battle options are chosen by clicking on their line or by typing the corresponding number.

After the party has survived a battle or a combat round you can choose to maintain the characters’ options by typing 2 or by clicking on Old options before entering a further combat round or continuing travel. You can also choose Set Options if you need to change the combat strategy.

Body Fight - physical assault

The course of this type of combat is determined mainly by the strength and dexterity of the melee opponents. Each character has a specific chance to hit, depending on their attributes, skills, and experience. The damage he or she does or suffers depends on the weapon used and the armor class. Physical attacks can only be directed at the first row of monsters. As the paths and alleys are rather narrow, opponents, too, attack in groups. However, only monsters of a kind can attack in a group. If the party is assaulted by several groups of monsters, only the first group can be hit by physical attacks. When the first group is vanquished, the next row of monsters will move forward, and so on. Ranged weapons form an exception to this rule. A ranged weapon may be fired from a party’s back rank, and hit monsters in any group.

Mind fight - mental attack

If you tell a character to Mind Fight its effectiveness depends mainly on a character’s intelligence and mental prowess. Mind hits weaken the opponent’s mental state, diminishing their mental energy. As every psionic attack requires a considerable amount of concentration, the attacker’s mental energy is reduced by one for every attack launched. If you possess a corresponding skill, the mental energy regenerates as time passes. There is no need for physical contact with an opponent, the position of both adversaries during combat is irrelevant. The enemy group to be hit is chosen by either typing in their group number, or clicking on their group.

Magic

Your characters can cast rune spells with this option. A person can choose any spell memorized, provided there is enough magic points remaining. The minimum amount of magic points required equals the sum of all the energy units of the runes used in the spell’s creation and is listed behind the spell name.

If you choose to fight with magic, the character’s rune spells will be displayed. click on the spell you want to use or type its line number. The spell is then cast. If the spell affects a single monster instead of a group, you can now choose which monster to hit from the list that now appears.

Item

If a character has a special item he or she wishes to use in combat, choose Use Item option. Choose an item as you would a spell, but remember it can only be used if it was equipped before. If the item is not marked with a diamond, it cannot be used.

Parry

If a character is badly wounded or cannot take an active part in the combat for another reason, he or she should Parry. This makes the character harder to hit by a monster.

Editor’s note: in general, especially at first, you should body fight most monsters. only use mind fight if there is a large enough group of monsters that having your magicians shattering enemy minds is necessary. Mental energy does not regenerate, never mind what the manual says, and overusing mind fight can leave your magicians and goddesses severely endangered if you are caught by a group of witches or the like while low on mental energy. Find a rune temple pronto, as your magicians are all but useless without spells, and your priests and fairies are useless.