Combat Guide World 10

[rabidduck]

Hey everyone I've recently been learning the combat system and I found it hard to find anything explaining the system in much depth so after my learnings I decided to do a write on on combat. Im sure there are things Im missing still so please leave a reply adding anything you feel helpful or that I explain poorly so that anyone else looking has a good resource. This write up in intended to be put into a video eventually so some of the verbage may seem weird, however I wanted to throw it to the forums first to look for any tidbits I may be missing.

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Hello this is a combat tutorial for haven and hearth, this information was put together during world 10 so depending on when you are viewing this the information may be completely different. This information is largely to teach people the basics of the combat mechanics and not any specific strategies to combat specific foes.

One thing to preface is that I use the Amber client with the settings Alternate combat Ui and Simplified opening indicators, I am unsure if these exist in the base client, so if you are not using Amber, some of this information may appear to be unclear.

First a very broad statement of how combat works is that you perform moves that apply a debuff called Openings and this allows moves to perform more damage.

There are 4 Types of moves in the game which are Attacks, Restorations, Maneuvers and Moves. All moves have a cooldown that are affected by your agility score, however some of these moves will require Initiative, which must be built up from other actions first. In general abilities that deal the most damage build Openings slowly and skills that build Openings deal low damage. Also to note actions that in thier descriptions say they require 3+3 Initiative to use require you to have 6 Initiative however when activated will only consume 3 charges.

The first of these actions is simply called ‘Attacks’, these actions are what deal damage as well as build up Openings on a enemy.

The second of these actions Restorations, these are what you will use to remove Openings that an enemy have placed on you to help mitigate damage. One of the biggest questions I had starting out was when to use these and there isn’t a magic number to just stop at however I generally try to reduce them when I get close to 40. A situation you may find yourself in especially on a newer character if that you feel you are having to use a Restoration over and over and cannot keep the enemies Openings down, it may mean you don’t have the agility needed to use actions fast enough; however there may be another reason which Ill speak more about later. Also Restorations are not affected by Melee or Unarmed Combat in anyway. In their current form there are basic Restorations that function just off a cooldown and much stronger ones that grant Initiative to the enemy target. This is a fairly new mechanic so I am unsure the best use case for these restorations as they could result in very dangerous moves to be used on you such as Bear Hug which will cause extreme openings.

The third action is Maneuvers, which I commonly like to call stances are essentially a buff for the rest of the combat on your character. All I can really say about these is that you can only have 1 active at a time, and that it is not possible to receive more than one copy of it. Most of the actions that fall under this category are unlocked from various skills that you purchase through LP such as Forestry and not through combat like other actions.

The last action you can perform is Moves, these exist purely for generating Initiative however are not the only source of generating Initiative.

Random tidbit of information that may not make sense yet however is a term I may throw out there is Delta. Delta is essential a number that is calculated on the difference between 2 characters AGI scores as well as the difference in their UA or MC depending on the skill. Generally this isn’t something you really need to think about and just know that the higher your stats then your target the better. I personally believe there are some other factors in this calculation based on how weird calculations come out, however have no idea what they are.

Chances are you’re looking at your list of Attacks and wondering what exactly to use. Early on when you haven’t unlocked many moves it honestly doesn't really matter as all the starting Attacks aren't that good and essentially do the same thing. Some key skills I would recommend going for that I find are the best are Quick Barrage, Sideswipe, Artful Evasion, Sting, Zig-Zag Ruse and Flex. there are many other useful skills however I feel those are the important ones to start with to take down a lot of things.

You may be wondering how to allocate points between Melee and Unarmed combat, in my opinion don’t bother with Melee Combat at all and focus all your points into Unarmed. Now this is where things can become confusing and unclear about combat since in my opinion it doesn’t make sense. A character who focus’ on their Unarmed skill will still use a weapon such as sword to deal damage, and interestingly enough the Melee Combat skill has no effect on this. The only thing that Melee and Unarmed stats do is increase the effectiveness of applying Openings from a Attack to an enemy and not the damage of the Attack action. I should also note that all Attack actions are classified into Unarmed or Melee and their relative stat increase the effectiveness of Openings for their own type. Unfortunately Melee skills have poor opening generation so investing into Melee combat is not good because those points could be spend on Unarmed to generate much better openings.

Something else to mention about the calculations of Openings is there interactions with Maneuvers. Maneuvers in my opinion are easily looked over as a new player for a few reasons mostly stemming from their awful descriptions. I did mention that having more points into Unarmed makes your Unarmed actions make more Openings however it is in comparison with the enemies stats which uses the previously mentioned Delta calculation (represented in game with the literal Delta icon). Once again this is a concept that can get a bit confusing however when you the player are the recipient of an Attack Action be it Unarmed or Melee that number will be put against the defence type of your current Maneuver for the Delta calculation. The default Maneuver is Chin up and it uses Unarmed, so if you never activate a Maneuver or even have one in your combat deck. Putting this information into an example we'll use a Bear who has an attack called Punch and it uses Unarmed stat and you currently have the Parry Maneuver up which is the Melee attack type. What will happen for the Delta calculation is when the bear attacks with his 100 Unarmed it will compare against your 200 Melee skill resulting in his skill performing less than the base amount of openings has you had 100 Melee skill. In that same situation say you were using Chin up it would then calculation the Openings based on your Unarmed stat, and say you only had 50 Unarmed this would’ve resulted in the attack generating more than the base amount of openings.

I’ll speak on a combo now to perhaps help illustrate Unarmed and Melee Combat is action. First we will say your character is currently wearing a wooden shield and a sword of any type and we’re going to use the Attack actions Kick & Sideswipe, which is a combo great for taking down easier targets quickly before they get many Openings on you. You go to attack a fox you’ll first want start off with kick as it has much higher Opening generation compared to Sideswipe, and once you have landed couple kicks you will switch to using Sideswipe for a lot of damage. Important to note here is that although Kick is a Unarmed Attack Action you can still perform it without any penalty while using a weapon. In this situation a character who has High Unarmed will be putting up a Opening of say 17% per attack so within 2 kicks you’ve got yourself 34% which is good enough to start using Sideswipe for a ton of damage. Now had you been in the mindset of I’m going to use a Sword and use a Melee skill so let’s raise my melee stat; now your Kicks may only be generating a few percent on Openings resulting in having to use 4 times as many kicks to generate the same opening and ultimately do the same damage with a significantly longer setup because the stat doesn’t help damage at all.

Let’s speak about a few combos quick and on their strengths and weaknesses. To touch on the previously mentioned Kick, Sideswipe and Oak Stance combo although this can kill a lot of things very quickly before you even need to use a restoration. Oak stance will allow you to get attacks in even faster which is why I use it in this combo. It generates no Initiative so you are forced to either use a non Initiative restoration or use a restoration that grants to the enemy which is the more risky option or use a Initiative Generating ‘Move’ such as Think or Take Aim which are both excellent moves to have and can be used at range. Another strong and popular combo is Flex,Parry and Sting. Flex can remove some Openings on you will also applying Openings that will make Sting do great damage on a enemy, and using the Parry maneuver will also help build the opening you want. Depending on the target you will likely need some other actions to make this work however revolves around Flex, Parry and Sting.


Another mechanic about combat that is very easily overlooked and not known is the entire reason why you can have multiple of an attack in your combat deck. For every copy of an action you have in a deck it’s effectiveness improves in the form of cooldown or attack weight, which the exception being for actions in the ‘Moves’ category which do not benefit.

Just to touch on stats for a moment as well your best stat you can get is Agility, it will always result in more damage over a period of time compared to strength however that said you do want both since strength will increase your damage.

I’m unsure if I mentioned the terms at all however when you see Attack Weight and Block Weight in the game it is referencing the Opening calculation for the Delta formula and has 0 impact on damage inflicted.

A stat you may see in your combat moves is Grievous Damage, this is damage dealt as HHP damage and has 0 uses in PvE and purely something for PvP combat.

Some skills will utilize multiple Openings such as Cleave however as far as I am aware won’t result in 2x the damage but 1.5x with 2 Openings maxed. Situations where this arises are uncommon.

Another fact that I’m sure you’ll notice on your own is that as a Opening stack gets higher there is diminishing returns on further stacks on that Opening type, that said the damage increase is not linear and will yield significantly more damage as it gets higher.

Some skills are essentially lying on what they do, most notably are Combat meditation and Oak Stance. They claim to have what look like severe penalties towards generating openings however in practice affect very little, so it’d good to still run something like Combat meditation even if you are starting combat and wanting to generate openings.

Combat Meditation is a unique Maneuver is that it has a charge gauge, charges are based off the Delta system.

Hope this information helped and good luck!

[Centellion]

This is the first time I have ever really understood this combat, thank you

[graalggtv]

It's very unfortunate that an update happened a few hours before your post and caused it to be outdated in a few regards, mostly in this paragraph:

Let’s speak about a few combos quick and on their strengths and weaknesses. To touch on the previously mentioned Kick & Sideswipe combo although this can kill a lot of things very quickly before you even need to use a restoration it generates no Initiative so you are forced to either use a non Initiative restoration or use a Initiative Generating ‘Move’ such as Think or Take Aim which are both excellent moves to have and can be used at range. Another ok combo is spam Quick Barrage and the use Artful Evasion, this is likely the laziest combo as it doesn’t do great damage but you will have unlimited Initiative and Artful Evasion can be used to remove all Openings. Another strong and popular combo is Flex and Sting, Flex can remove some Openings on you will also applying Openings that will make Sting do great damage on a enemy, depending on the target you will likely need some other actions to make this work however revolves around Flex and Sting

Restorations don't cost IP anymore, they add IP to the enemy instead.

Also, I believe this next paragraph is wrong:

Another mechanic about combat that is very easily overlooked and not known is the entire reason why you can have multiple of an attack in your combat deck. For every copy of a action you have in a deck it’s effectiveness improves in the form of cooldown, which the exception being for actions in the ‘Moves’ category which do not benefit.

For some actions, it does reduce cooldown, but for most attacks, it affects the attack weight, not the cooldown.

Either way, very good initiative and guide, I would have loved to have access to something like this a couple months ago when I started playing and had no idea of how combat worked. Hope you do manage to make a nice video tutorial on it... : ^)

[rabidduck]

It's very unfortunate that an update happened a few hours before your post and caused it to be outdated in a few regards, mostly in this paragraph:

Let’s speak about a few combos quick and on their strengths and weaknesses. To touch on the previously mentioned Kick & Sideswipe combo although this can kill a lot of things very quickly before you even need to use a restoration it generates no Initiative so you are forced to either use a non Initiative restoration or use a Initiative Generating ‘Move’ such as Think or Take Aim which are both excellent moves to have and can be used at range. Another ok combo is spam Quick Barrage and the use Artful Evasion, this is likely the laziest combo as it doesn’t do great damage but you will have unlimited Initiative and Artful Evasion can be used to remove all Openings. Another strong and popular combo is Flex and Sting, Flex can remove some Openings on you will also applying Openings that will make Sting do great damage on a enemy, depending on the target you will likely need some other actions to make this work however revolves around Flex and Sting

Restorations don't cost IP anymore, they add IP to the enemy instead.

Also, I believe this next paragraph is wrong:

Another mechanic about combat that is very easily overlooked and not known is the entire reason why you can have multiple of an attack in your combat deck. For every copy of a action you have in a deck it’s effectiveness improves in the form of cooldown, which the exception being for actions in the ‘Moves’ category which do not benefit.

For some actions, it does reduce cooldown, but for most attacks, it affects the attack weight, not the cooldown.

Either way, very good initiative and guide, I would have loved to have access to something like this a couple months ago when I started playing and had no idea of how combat worked. Hope you do manage to make a nice video tutorial on it... : ^)

Ah thanks for the information I didn't know some effected weight, I've been putting off the video for people like you to correct me on bits I'm sure I got wrong =p

[JackMehoff]

For stances, I'm pretty sure your mc/UA affects the openings on you?

[rabidduck]

For stances, I'm pretty sure your mc/UA affects the openings on you?

Yah it does it's part of the delta formula used on manuvers, something I'm still I'm the process of writing up(as of now has been updated), Ive got a few more sections to touch on, this one one that's not yet published.

[Thedrah]

i wanna point out, the opening is applied to the enemies current opening missing

meaning you do 10% opening to an enemy at the start of combat, you create 10% opening. second hit does 10% * 90% = 9% opening, he now has 19% opening, third hit 10%*81% = 8.1% so he now has ~73%. fourth hit: 66% opening

the same is said about restorations, you have 40% opening on say blue/backhand, sidestep restores 20% * 40% = 8%, so you now have 32% opening on blue/backhand

the fun of multi colored attacks benefit from they deal more damage on lower opening on multiple openings. it's important if you don't want the beast to run away at low hp

[rabidduck]

i wanna point out, the opening is applied to the enemies current opening missing

meaning you do 10% opening to an enemy at the start of combat, you create 10% opening. second hit does 10% * 90% = 9% opening, he now has 19% opening, third hit 10%*81% = 8.1% so he now has ~73%. fourth hit: 66% opening

the same is said about restorations, you have 40% opening on say blue/backhand, sidestep restores 20% * 40% = 8%, so you now have 32% opening on blue/backhand

the fun of multi colored attacks benefit from they deal more damage on lower opening on multiple openings. it's important if you don't want the beast to run away at low hp

Ah I did mention they don't scale the same every hit(except in a shitty example to explain a concept) but I had no idea what the formula for knowing what it was, thanks!

[internettab]

I found a Combat Manuver inside a Vakrods today. 4x Feigning punch or something , didn't know these existed in drop form I thought you just learned them

[Sevenless]

I found a Combat Manuver inside a Vakrods today. 4x Feigning punch or something , didn't know these existed in drop form I thought you just learned them

You can create those and give them to other people.