Combat

Once inside Combat,you are met by Greg, who asks you if you want to practise your fighting skills. Say yes, and he will take you into a training room. But if you try to go in without him, the door slams in your face.

You get roughly three goes at attacking the dummy before Greg takes you out again; this is to make sure everyone gets a go. But he always asks you if you want another try, so you can spend almost as much time as you want in here¹. However, while you can't get into a training room without Greg, you can leave any time you like.

You're not allowed to hold more than one weapon at a time in the training rooms, although sometimes you can go in emty-handed and practise unarmed combat. The torch counts as a weapon (type = mace), but to conserve its limited energy, I'd recommend using it unlit; although it appears to advance a separate skill when lit, this isn't so (although you can do your opponent more damage by lighting it, for obvious reasons).

> Greg asks: Would you like to try out your skills Sothis?
You say: Yes please
> Greg says: Ok Sothis, you can use room one.
Greg leads you into room one.
This is a small training room, designed to help the new adventurer get off to a good start on Discworld.  The air is stale with the combined stench of sweat, beer, and old warriors.  Off to one side is a rather unusual training dummy above which is a small plaque.
There is one obvious exit: combat.
Xrazzicaz is standing here.
A small plaque is on the wall.
Xrazzicaz says: Welcome to Combat Boot Camp, Sothis.
Xrazzicaz says: This here course is set up to teach you the basics of fighting.
Xrazzicaz says: You can attack this here dummy and I'll tell ya how well ya done.
Xrazzicaz says: Arr! You have the look of a fine fighter, Sothis.

The commands required to start a fight with anyone or anything on the Disc are simply attack and kill.

So, to begin, simply type attack dummy or kill dummy.

Watch in fascination as your screen fills with the results of your feeble beginner attemts at killing a dummy. But don't despair, as you watch the dummy effortless punch you in the head and dodge your every cunning move - no matter how useless you are, you're still earning XP, and you're improving all the time.

Saving...
You feel better at dodging things.

See? You just TM'd fighting.defence.dodging.

(Eh? What's a TM?)

The Task Master (TM) System

Discworld MUD helpfile: http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/playing/documentation.c?path=/concepts/taskmaster

There are a few ways of learning things in the game, and the most naturalistic is the Task Master (TM) system. Simply, the more you do something, the more experienced you become at doing it, and repeated practise will result in improvement.

Different skills TM at different rates, and the more you improve, the fewer TMs you'll get. But during combat in the Combat room, you'll get to see a lot of them.

The Fighting Skill Tree

There's a more complete and detailed look at the Skill Trees in the section I intend to finish writing really soon - but due to the kill-based nature of the game, the Fighting tree is worth looking at right now.

Type skills fight to see your fighting skills.

=======SKILLS=======Level/Bonus=============================
fighting............    0    0
| melee.............    0    0
| | dagger..........    0    0
| | sword...........    0    0
| | heavy-sword.....    0    0
| | axe.............    0    0
| | mace............    0    0
| | flail...........    0    0
| | polearm.........    0    0
| | misc............    0    0
| range.............    0    0
| | thrown..........    0    0
| | bow.............    0    0
| | fired...........    0    0
| unarmed...........    1    5
| | striking........    3   15
| | grappling.......    0    0
| defence...........    1    5
| | parrying........    3   15
| | blocking........    0    0
| | dodging.........    2   10
| special...........    0    0
| | weapon..........    0    0
| | unarmed.........    0    0
| | tactics.........    0    0
| | mounted.........    0    0
| points............    0    0
> 

You can TM up to 2 levels of Fighting in Combat.

The way to do this is to TM both the melee weapons (i.e. those listed under fighting.melee) and unarmed combat to level 5. Once you hit level 5, try a different weapon - it is possible to get to level 6 for dagger, but I've yet to get further than that on any of the others.

Taking the time to put this work in, especially if you are keen on remaining an Adventurer, is crucial - TMing skills is the cheapest way to acquire them, and you're earning XP to spend on other skills while you're doing it.

Of course, you still have to buy the weapons... but you can always sell them back again afterwards. Try them all out, then make sure you have at least one dagger for when you leave the Newbie Area.

Weapon	Price	Type
Small knife	12p, sell for 10p	dagger
short sword	2 dollars, sell for 1 dollar, 41p	sword
battered iron sword	4 dollars, sell for 2 dollars, 53p	heavy-sword
bone hatchet	2 dollars, sell for 1 dollar, 41p	axe
torch (lit or unlit)	free	mace
wooden flail	2 dollars, sell for 1 dollar, 41p	flail
staff	80p, sell for 64p	polearm
iron chain	buy for 25p, sell for 22p	misc
See Coilla's invaluable site for more information about weapons: http://www.geocities.com/dwweapons/.

Try a weapon out, and every time you get a message saying "You feel better at [whatever you're using].", do skills fight to see how well you're advancing.

As soon as you hit level 5 in a particular weapon class, unhold [weapon] and hold [new weapon], then attack dummy again. And so on, until you've TM'd every weapon class to level 5. Then stop, and sell all your weapons (except the torch, and the dagger if you've got one of those instead of the small knife)².

You gain XP at a rate of three points for each turn. How can you tell? By watching the monitor.

Monitor

Discworld MUD helpfile: http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/playing/documentation.c?path=/helpdir/monitor

The monitor is a very handy little item which gives you helpful information while engaged in battle. It should be on by default, but if, when you first start attacking that dummy, your screen looks something like this:

You attack the training dummy.
> As the dummy spins around, an arm swings towards you but you see it in time and dodge it.
You tap the training dummy in the left arm with your lightable torch.
Xrazzicaz says: That's an excellent attack.
As the dummy spins around, an arm swings towards you but you see it in time and block it.
As the dummy spins around, an arm swings towards you but you see it in time and dodge it.
As the dummy spins around, an arm swings towards you but you see it in time and dodge it.
You tap the training dummy in the chest with your lightable torch.
Xrazzicaz says: That's an excellent attack.
As the dummy spins around, an arm swings towards you but you see it in time and dodge it.
You tap the training dummy in the chest with your lightable torch.
Xrazzicaz says: That's an excellent attack.

... then your monitor is off: you see the fight, but there's no indication of how injured you're getting or how much XP you're earning.

To turn on the monitor, simply type monitor on.

You set your hit point monitor to on.
> Hp: 500 (500) Gp: 50 (50) Xp: 8301
As the dummy spins around, an arm swings towards you but you see it in time and dodge it.
You hit the training dummy hard in the face with your old staff.
Xrazzicaz says: That's a rather poor attack.
Hp: 500 (500) Gp: 50 (50) Xp: 8304
As the dummy spins around, an arm swings towards you but you see it in time and dodge it.
Hp: 500 (500) Gp: 50 (50) Xp: 8307
As the dummy spins around, an arm swings towards you but you see it in time and dodge it.
You swing at the training dummy with your old staff but, although unable to defend, it somehow avoids the attack.
Xrazzicaz says: That's a rather poor attack.

Now you're getting some useful feedback on your performance (or lack thereof). Let's take a closer look.

Hp: 500 (500) Gp: 50 (50) Xp: 8301

Hp: 500 (500)

Hit points. The first number shows how many hit points you've got right now (and this goes down the more injured you get. The second number, in parentheses, shows your total number of hit points. As you can see, at this point, Sothis only had 500 hit points! Nowhere near enough to keep from dying on a regular basis. But fear not - you can increase your hit point total by advancing your other.health skill. More on that in Learning Skills.

Gp: 50 (50)

Guild points. As with hit points, the first number shows how many you've got at this particular moment, and the one in parentheses shows your total number. And Sothis currently has 50, which, again, is precious little. Increasing your guild points, however, is a bit more involved than advancing hit points. So, more on that in the Learning Skills section.

Xp: 8301

Experience points. Good old XP. Not much to add to what you already know by now - except that from now on, in every fight (or any experience which causes your hit points to drop), you'll be able to see how much XP you're earning in the process. Cool.

Tactics

The trainers give you helpful advice on how to get the most out of combat. One piece of advice is to change your tactics:

Xrazzicaz says: You can improve your chances of defending by setting your tactics to a more defensive attitude.

What does he mean? Type tactics to see.

Your combat options are:

   Attitude - neutral.
   Response - neutral.
   Focus - none.
You will use both hands to attack.
You will use both hands to parry.

You will not attempt to parry unarmed.

You are not concentrating on anyone.

For more details, have a good read of the Discworld MUD helpfile: http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/playing/documentation.c?path=/helpdir/tactics.

Have to admit, I found the information on tactics fairly obscure at first - but I strongly recommend as many readings as it takes to make sense of it, as your tactics settings have a profound effect on your success in a fight.

So there's not much I can add... except to demonstrate my own current options and how I changed them in the following series of handy steps.

Step One

What are my current tactics?

> tactics
Your combat options are:

   Attitude - neutral.
   Response - neutral.
   Focus - none.
You will use both hands to attack.
You will use both hands to parry.

You will not attempt to parry unarmed.

You are not concentrating on anyone.
>

Not sure what the thing about concentrating is all about, so I'll leave it until I do.

Not attempting to parry while I'm unarmed sounds sensible, so I'll leave that as well. And since I personally want to travel light and rely on my dagger skills, I'll probably have a dagger in each hand - so the default option of using both hands to attack and parry is one I'll keep as well.

However, my focus is set to none, which means I'm stabbing rather randomly in any fight. My response is set to neutral, which means I'll just stand there and get hit rather than actively attempt action... hmm! But apparently I don't care anyway - my attitude is neutral as well.

Except, of course, I do a great deal, so I'm going to change those three options to something a bit more helpful.

Step Two

So, what alternative options are available to me? As previously mentioned, the helpfile is a bit dense - but typing syntax tactics gives a helpful list of options:

syntax tactics
Forms of syntax available for the command 'tactics':
tactics 
tactics attitude {insane|offensive|neutral|defensive|wimp} 
tactics response {dodge|neutral|parry} 
tactics parry {left|right|both|unarmed} 
tactics attack {left|right|both} 
tactics focus {upper body|lower body|head|neck|chest|abdomen|arms|hands|legs|feet|none} 

To change your attitude from neutral to one of either insane, offensive, defensive or wimp, simply type tactics attitude [chosen attitude]. Insane and offensive confer bonuses (i.e. a great chance of success) in fights where you've attacked someone, while defensive and wimp do so if you need to defend yourself.

There are parts of the Disc where you're likely to get attacked by marauding NPCs. However, these are easy to avoid, and as a tourist and professional wimp, I shall be avoiding them (and I recommend you do likewise). Which means that any fight I'm in is likely to have been instigated by me, so I shall choose my attitude accordingly.

tactics attitude insane
You change your attitude from neutral to insane.
> 

From mild-mannered adventurer to knife-wielding maniac in a few simple keystrokes! Nice. But presumably my victims will be fighting back, so I'd better think carefully about what to do when this happens.

tactics response dodge
You change your response from neutral to dodge.
> 

Yup, the best defence is not to be there when the blow lands. Why parry when you can dodge?³ Although I think I'll still leave the other settings regarding not parrying when unarmed and always parrying with both hands.

This is because, in a fight, while you may favour dodge over parry, there will be moments when you find yourself parrying anyway - all the tactics response option choice has done has given me a better chance of taking the option which best suits my style of play (i.e. confers a bonus) when the option to dodge or parry presents itself. But sometimes, an opponent may make a move which denies me my chosen option to dodge and forces me to parry - and under those circumstances, I really don't want to do it one-handed!

Finally, it helps to be aiming at something when you launch any attack. So, which area would be most vulnerable? Which area would take the most damage if you could hit it?

The answer to this rather crucial question depends a great deal on who you're attacking. When your fighting skills are low, it pays to aim at something big - e.g. upper body. But if you're reckless enough to attack a troll, you're pretty much wasting your time unless you go for the neck. This is a point worth remembering, because most rich NPCs have bodyguards, and most bodyguards in Ankh-Morpork are trolls.

And of course, the neck is a fairly vulnerable area on any character. And I've TM'd fighting skills much more often in fights when I've aimed at the neck, simply because it's more difficult to hit.

tactics focus neck
You set your focus zone to neck.
>

Step Three

And there we have it! Now to check your tactics again and see if you like them.

tactics
Your combat options are:

   Attitude - insane.
   Response - dodge.
   Focus - neck.
You will use both hands to attack.
You will use both hands to parry.

You will not attempt to parry unarmed.

You are not concentrating on anyone.

I've found this set of tactics fairly useful in combat, so feel free to give it a try. And if you can make more sense of the full range of tactical options available, please do click Contact Me and let me know your ideas⁴.

Score

Discworld MUD helpfile: http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/playing/documentation.c?path=/helpdir/score

The score command is a many-splendored thing which can specify all aspects of your acheivements on the Disc by use of a number of modifiers. Check out the helpfile above for full details.

In the meantime, however, just type in score for a handy run-down of all your efforts so far. They might look something like this:

You have 500 (500) hit points, 50 (50) guild points, 0 (659) quest points and
50 (50) social points.
Your current experience is 8714 and you are level 1 in the Adventurers' Guild;
your overall rating is 0.
You have died 0 times and can die 7 times before you are completely dead.
Your wimpy is set to 20%.
You are unburdened (3%) and quite comfortable.
You are neutral, worshipping no god.
You are 30 minutes and 59 seconds old and have logged in 1 times.

Note the line about current experience. As mentioned above, in combat, regardless of your opponent, you gain XP at a rate of three points a turn. However, if you win the fight, you then earn a nice extra splurge of XP, the amount of which depends on the relative strength your opponent.

It can be rather fun to see how much XP you gained for fighting someone right after you win. Not so much fun if you lose, of course... but Death is a subject all of its own. (Or should I say "his" own?)

Wimpy

NB: Wimpy has nothing to do with the wimp option in setting tactics mentioned above.

Discworld MUD helpfile: http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/playing/documentation.c?path=/helpdir/wimpy

When you typed in score, you may have wondered about the following line:

Your wimpy is set to 20%.

Your wimpy setting is the point at which you wimp out of a fight - that is, run away before your opponent can kill you. The game automatically sets your wimpy to 20% when you first login. Which means that when your hit points drop to 20% of your total, this happens:

Your feet run away with you!

Handy, eh?

The idea is that if you get into trouble in a fight, you have a better chance of surviving. This was very useful in the early days of the Discworld MUD, apparently, when people generally connected via dial-up and bandwidth was more of an issue - because if you were in the middle of a fight and your connection hit a lag⁵, you could end up dead.

Getting lagged to death is considerably less of a risk these days - but for any newbie in a fight, wimpy can be a life saver.

There are drawbacks, however. You have no control (and frequently no idea which way you've gone) when your feet take decisive action on your behalf - so you could end up inadvertently running into greater danger, or wandering back into it by mistake.

And, recent research by the AM Daily⁶ has shown that you earn more XP in fights when you set your wimpy to 0% ("brave mode"). This is a big consideration for an Adventurer.

So, give the issue of wimpy some careful thought. My advice would be to leave the wimpy setting as it is until you've advanced your health and fighting skills to a decent level - for example, until you're stronger than NPC thieves and you've got your fighting.special.weapon skill to level 15⁷. Then consider going to Brave Mode.

That's pretty much it on the subject of combat for now. Once out in the big wide Disc, however, and it gets a bit more serious - I mean, you could end up dead! So let me draw your attention to possibly the single most important command in any fighter's arsenal.

Consider

Is it possible to overrate the importance of considering an opponent before diving in, your little dagger at the ready?

No it isn't.

Never attack anyone or anything on the Disc (with the obvious exception of the dummy) without doing consider first. To do this, simple type consider [name of prospective opponent] - e.g. consider Xrazzicaz.

Xrazzicaz is into the don't-even-think-about-it region.

So now you know. You're much too puny to take on Xrazzicaz, who would squish you in seconds. Better stick with that dummy.

Better yet, why not see about spending some of that lovely XP and learning some skills?

1. You can login about three times while resident in the newbie area. And if you haven't found Womble's brooch by then, the game just kicks you out into the big wide Disc, ready or not!
2. It's not possible to TM fighting.unarmed.grappling, fighting.defence.blocking, or any of the fighting.range or fighting.special skills in Combat. But it doesn't really matter at this stage - just get as many of the others as you can!
3. Unless you like being hit... but far be it from me to comment on your private life.
4. Full credit will be given to anyone who's input I use on this page. Thanks in advance!
5. "Lag" - name for that period of time in which your Internet connection hangs, leaving you with a frozen browser screen and no option but to wait with mounting tedium for the damn thing to come back to life. Most frustrating.
6. Unslidge (RT 2006) Fact or Fiction: Wimpy Drains Your XP. Ankh-Morpork Daily, Edition 75: Poetry in Motion. (Conclusion: it does!!!)
7. That is, until you acquire enough levels of fighting.special.weapon to learn some special fighting commands, giving you much better odds in a fight. See the next section for more details.