Combat
This page is meant to be an introduction to combat mechanics in Project: Gorgon.
Contents
Armor, Health, and Power
All can be replenished by Combat Refresh, Potions, and Abilities.
Armor
Incoming damage will affect both health and armor while each are available. Some enemies and many player skills can bypass armor entirely. Many sources of Acid damage deal ONLY armor damage.
Armor mitigates 1 point of damage for every 25 points of armor remaining.
Thick Armor instead mitigates 1 point of damage for every 20 points of armor remaining. Found on enemies, as a Shield Treasure Effect, by drinking a Thick Armor Potion, or even as a special attribute on a pet Graz
Health
Health is your lifeline for continued existence. Reaching 0 results in turning into a corpse, with respawn options.
Power
Power is consumed to use most abilities, flying, and running in combat. Most basic attacks have no Power requirement, intended to provide a default attack, however, the cost can be augmented by Treasure Effects, enemy debuffs (most notably Broken Bones), and buffs. Power is used for ALL abilities, martial, magical, mental, or otherwise.
Damage
Damage is split into many subtypes.
Direct, Indirect, and Targeted Damage
Direct Damage
Direct Damage is the upfront, "I hit enemy," type of damage.
(((Base Damage + Skill|Generic Added Damage) * (Sum of all Skill|Generic Damage Modifier)) + (Base Damage * Base Damage Multiplier))
This results in the Base Damage Multiplier being outclassed by Added Damage Modifiers for most scenarios, as the base damage of most abilities are quite weak. Effectiveness changes the more damage types you add, skills such as Battle Chemistry with four base damage types will find more value in Base Damage than a skill like Hammer which will generally be specialized in either Crushing or Lightning damage.
Triggered Abilities such as Bard's Song of Discord, Archery's Treasure Effect for Acid Burst on Crit, Vampirism's Treasure Effects that make Blood Mist deal AoE bursts, Mentalism's Mindworm Treasure Effect that attacks a secondary target, Priest's Treasure Effects for retaliatory Flamestrike, etc. generally deal Direct Damage unless it is a Damage-over-Time effect (like Archery's Treasure Effect for Poison on Crit).
Indirect Damage
Indirect Damage is everything else, Damage-over-Time effects, Delayed Damage, Reflect, etc.
Damage-over-Time Calculation
((Damage per Tick + Added Damage per Tick) * (Sum of all Skill|Generic Damage per Tick Modifiers + Sum of all Skill|Generic Indirect Damage Modifiers))
Non-DoT Calculation
((Indirect Damage + Added Indirect Damage) * (Sum of all Skill|Generic Indirect Damage Modifiers))
For almost all abilities, the Tick Rate is every 2 seconds. Battle Chemistry breaks this mold by dealing damage every second as well as Spirit Fox's Cinderstorm.
Delayed Damage, most notably from Hammer's Latent Charge and Rabbit Abilities, it is not the same as Damage-over-Time and is handled differently in the back end. It is still affected by increases/decreases to Indirect Damage.
Reflect abilities such as Shield's Fire Shield, Fire Magic's Molten Veins, Druid's Brambleskin, Warden's Privacy Field, and Survival Instinct's Poison Flesh all deal Indirect Damage. Passives (such as the Scorpion armor set), Unarmed's Treasure Effects that mitigate, accumulate, and add that damage to the next Punch/Kick, Shield Wax that makes enemies take acid damage, the Fire Shield Potion and Acid Shield Potion, all deal Indirect Damage. Reflect damage will not be increased by the modifiers that increase Tick damage.
Targeted Damage
Direct and Indirect damage can also be Targeted toward specific stats.
Armor damage will directly attack Armor; Acid and Nature damage are the most common sources of this, however, skills like Unarmed and Shield have abilities or can be modded to deal additional armor damage with attacks. Stripping an enemy of their armor will reduce the mitigation they have, however, once armor is depleted, armor damage does nothing.
Health damage will bypass armor entirely; Psychic damage is the most common source of this, however, many other damage types have the opportunity to deal Health only damage.
Currently, there are no known attacks that are able to deal damage to Power, however, there are numerous debuffs that enemies can inflict that accomplish the same function.
Damage Types
Damage is split into five Categories, Physical, Elemental, Body, Esoteric, and Other
- Physical: Slashing, Piercing, and Crushing
- Elemental: Fire, Cold, and Electricity
- Body: Trauma, Psychic, and Poison
- Esoteric: Acid, Nature, and Darkness
- Other: Demonic and Nothingness
Nothingness is equivalent to "True" damage, as it should not be mitigated by anything, simply adds or subtracts health. Generally not seen by the player except for those cruel masters that torture undead servants or perform animal cruelty.
For further information, a list of damage conversions, and a skill breakdown of damage types used, see Damage Types
Attacking
Many mechanics go into hitting your enemy and sometimes, more importantly, how you hit them.
Accuracy and Chance to Miss
By default, players have 100 Accuracy and an attack will always hit. However, players, monsters, and many pets can have the ability to evade attacks, at which point the attacker's Accuracy and the defender's Evasion are pitted against each other. Different Attack Types can have different Evasion ratings. The stunned condition completely removes chance to evade. Do Note: Mesmerized is not a stun.
Chance to Miss is rolled separately from Accuracy and cannot be mitigated. Most notable sources are from Dark Chapel's Darkness (which affects enemies as well) and Alcohol Buffs.
Critical Hit=
Some abilities have a chance to critically hit the enemy, by either exploiting a targets mind, knowing where to hit for maximum damage, or just by being the best pet around.
Attack Type
Attacks can be categorized into tags, with multiple tags being valid for a single attack: Melee, Ranged, Burst, and Projectile.
For example, Fire Magic's Fire Ball is both a Ranged and Projectile attack, while Psychology's Mock is, at base, only a Ranged attack, but can be modded to be both a Ranged and Burst attack.
Melee
The most common attack type for enemies.
Melee attacks are single target, and generally limited to 5m and below, with most of the exceptions going towards enemies of larger size and the only player exception being Weather Witching's Shocking Grasp modded with "Shocking Grasp Damage +X%. Range is increased +7 meters (but is still a Melee attack)."
Ranged
Ranged attacks are... ranged! From the shortest ranged attack of 10m belonging to Battle Chemistry's basic attack, Toxic Irritant, to the furthest ranged attack of 48m belonging to Bard's Horn abilities (fully modded for +15 range and a Destiny Horn for an additional +3), Ranged attacks allow you to hit most melee enemies from further away than they can hit you. Despite this, kiting is not generally recommended as the power cost of running while in combat will rapidly deplete your reserves.
Burst
Burst attacks are almost anything that hit multiple enemies, exceptions to this are the Treasure Effects that cause you to trigger an internal ability that hits a separate enemy like Mentalism's Mindworm and Archery's Extra Fire Arrow/Extra Mangling Arrow. Damage that is dealt with Burst attacks (both direct and indirect) will deal full damage to up to three targets. If there are more than three enemies, damage is reduced for every enemy beyond the third, down to a cap of ten enemies. Any enemy beyond the tenth will receive damage as if there were only ten. This applies to both players and enemies! Players and any summons count toward the cap, so when fighting a boss that has a nasty AoE rage attack it is sometimes better to have everyone get hit rather than just the tank.
Projectile
Projectile attacks are any attack that throw, shoot, or otherwise fling something at an enemy. To the best of our knowledge, projectile attacks are always ranged attacks as well. Projectile attacks have the unfortunate (or fortunate) attribute of travel time to the target. This can result in the player firing the killing shot at an enemy, dying to the enemy, and then the attack hitting. On the flip side, this also allows the player to see a projectile, heal before it hits them, and potentially saving themself from dying.
Effect of equipment
Soon enough you'll find that equipment has a significant impact on your total damage output and survivability. This seems obvious for an MMO but in Project: Gorgon equipment with bonuses that augment specific abilities is very common. For example "every time you use your Sword Parry ability, regain 10 Health". This type of ability enhancing mods would be found in raid gear in other MMOs.
You character becomes much more powerful once you have multiple pieces of equipment (weapons, armor, amulet) that enhance your choice of skills along with useful ability enhancing mods. Thus committing to your skill choices is important. While you can easily switch between skills, you'll find that even skills of the same level can vary greatly in damage potential unless you also switch your equipment.
Critical damage
Items sometimes have +xx% to Critical Damage. The default critical damage (not crit. chance) seems to be 125%.
Critical Damage gear is quite uncommon. Archery gear seems to get more of it.
Regeneration in and out of combat
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Sitting does not accelerate your out-of-combat regeneration unlike in some veteran MMOs. You'll want to find various foods, drinks and snacks to top up your Health and Power between fights.
Regeneration appears to "tick" once every four seconds (so if a food says "+5 Health per update" it means +5 Health every 4 seconds).
Some combat skills such as Mentalism also provide Health, Power and Armor regeneration. Some of the abilities are group-oriented, other abilities are self-help (for example Positive Attitude will quickly restore a small amount of Armor, Health and Power).
In-combat regeneration from foods or drinks is a rarer commodity. There are in-combat Power or Health regeneration potions that can be bought from NPCs or crafted. They tend to be very pricey, and of course have a fairly limited duration.
If you "mezz" a creature for long enough (eg. Tell Me About Your Mother), the "In combat" indicator will disappear and one update of out of combat regeneration will happen, even though the creature is still aggressive.
Foods
Most types of regenerative foods and drinks are crafted or bought. Exceptions are the Mild Cheddar Cheese which drops from Giant Rat, and Milk which can be obtained from the Cows in Serbule with an empty bottle. These are non-negligible sources of Power regeneration which can be very helpful to new players.
Buffs
Typically one food or drink can stack with one snack and one flower. However this is still very much in development. It seems that foods provide Health and Power, while drinks provide only Power. Both can be stacked. Flowers provide a max power bonus (right-click them).
For people specialised in Sword combat, the Calligraphy skill offers a temporary effects that allows for special combinations. Similarly the Meditation skill offers temporary effects for people specialised in Unarmed combat.
Rage and special attacks
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Rage is the energy source that powers monsters’ special attacks. As you hit monsters or they hit you, they gather Rage, and when their meter is full (an orange looking hand), they user their super power.
Many player skills, like Sword and Psychology, have abilities that hamper monster Rage. For example Psychoanalyse will slow down the rate at which the enemy builds rage, while Sword Parry will reduce the enemy's rage by a flat amount.
An enemy's special attacks will be revealed to the player in the target window when the relevant Anatomy skill is of sufficient level (ie. by fighting this type of creature long enough).
You can tell when an enemy uses a special attack by the overhead icon.
“I’m leaving the Rage system alone for now, until we have more players grouping up. Looking at the stats for small group combat, it looks like groups use rage-depletion a little more often. So it may be that I can tailor Rage to be a more compelling group-combat mechanic, where one person in the group has the “rage-keeper” role. That could be interesting.
— Developer blog May 13, 2014
Movement and kiting
In a game like this, where you can find all kinds of clever ways to stack speed buffs, it’s possible to run extremely fast. This is a problem in a combat, where the players can be much more mobile than the monsters.
One way the game currently addresses this is that you can not “sprint” backwards, just walk backwards. So if you want to get away quickly, you have to turn around.
“But that change by itself doesn’t solve anything, because the game doesn’t force you to face your target to attack things right now. This means you can turn away from the monster, run down the hall at high speed, and keep shooting arrows — the arrows would go through your head and hit the monster behind you. This is silly and bizarre.— Developer blog May 13, 2014
Kiting is something the devs want to address eventually, although it is intended to allow some amount of kiting — "archers should be able to move and get a few extra attacks in".
Vulnerability
Monsters periodically go into this vulnerable state, and some attacks do extra damage against vulnerable monsters, so it’s sort of a whack-a-mole mechanic — you use your vuln-boost ability when you see the monster flashing vulnerable.
A big red glowing thing happens when the monster is vulnerable, plus it makes a sound.
An icon flashes over the monster’s head when they’re vulnerable, and Anagoge Island has an explanatory tip about this (when you get your first Sword ability that does extra vulnerable damage).
Looting enemies!
Loot appears at the top of the loot window and can be picked up via either double-clicking the icon, or by using the Loot All button. Not all creatures will have loot.
If you have the right equipment, you may also have the option to perform an autopsy, skin, butcher, extract a skull, and bury the creature. Some creatures can be skinned but not butchered, and vice versa. To have a chance (20%) of extracting an organ, you will need an Organ Knife.
Note that to skin or butcher an animal, you will need to have a free inventory space, even if the yielded item is stackable and already present in your inventory.
Also note that the butchering knife and skinning knife are distinct items, and do not overlap in features. You must have both in your inventory. There is a "multi-purpose" knife, but it has less bonuses than the highest quality butcher and skinning knives.
When an enemy is slain and it drops special loot (cyan, yellow, purple colour), there is a distinctive sound and a particle effect.
Ability Tags
Some abilities are classified as "Nice Attack", "Core Attack", "Epic Attack", or "Signature Debuff". These keywords determine when certain effects apply. For example there is a Sword Treasure Effect "For 6 seconds after using Precision Pierce, your Nice Attacks deal +64 damage". This will boost the damage of all abilities which are tagged as "Nice Attacks" (this will affect Nice Attacks from any skill, not only Sword's Nice Attacks).
Within each category there are some similarities. For example Epic Attacks tend to have high damage and long cooldowns. However, there is no gameplay effect for any category other than as keywords to determine when effects will proc. The only exception is the "Basic Attack" keyword, which will trigger a Combat Refresh.