Combat & Sparring

Combat is real-time and up close. Face an opponent, swing, shoot, or cast. Your traits decide how hard you hit, how often, and how much you can take — so your build matters as much as your timing. Spells live on the same loadout — see Magic & Spells.

Your action loadout

You carry three active actions at any moment — one per channel — picked from everything you know and everything your gear grants. Swap them anytime, free, even mid-fight, on the ✋ / ⚔️ / 🏹 buttons in the bottom bar (or on your Character Sheet).

✋ Activity — what your Action button does in the world: interact, mine, chop… and activity-channel spells when you unlock them.
⚔️ Melee Attack — S or Numpad . Hits within two tiles (no facing required). Punch is the starter; kicks, power attacks, heals, and melee spells unlock through play and gear.
🏹 Ranged Attack — D or Numpad Enter. Fires the way you face — throw the selected hotbar item, shoot, or cast a ranged spell.
Damage scales with Muscle; you strike sooner with higher Speed. Cooldown rings show when an action is ready again.
Wielded weapons add to your hits and worn armor blunts incoming ones — see Inventory, Gear & Crafting.

Hunt (Tab)

Press Tabto lock a target (or hop between valid targets). A red ring marks who you're hunting.
Hunt auto-attacks on cooldown: ranged first when your active ranged action can fire, melee when you're close. It won't spam Throw for you.
You can steer and kite while the lock holds — plain Follow is different (it just trails without auto-striking).

Actions & Reactions

Actions (from Speed) are your budget of strikes. Spend them all and you need a breath before you can swing again — so fast builds keep the pressure on.
Reactions (from Mind) are defensive. A well-timed Reaction can halve an incoming hit, rewarding sharp, thoughtful play.

Status effects

Poison ticks damage over time (Venom Fan and friends).
Rootpins movement briefly — the target can still swing, they just can't walk (Rootgrip).
More sticky effects are cooking — see Magic & Spells.

HP, knockouts & respawn

Every animal wears an HP barabove their head — green when healthy, yellow when hurting, red when it's dire. Some lurking wilds hide their bar until they stir.
Take a hard hit and your animal plays a flinch; drop to zero and you're knocked out — flat on the ground, HP bar empty, holding still.
You stay down until you choose Respawn. Idlers read “I'm dead af…” until they tap it.
Win a fight and you bank the bulk of the XP; the knocked-out fren still earns a little for stepping in the ring. Open-world hostiles, dungeon trash, and bosses pay XP (and sometimes coins / loot) by threat — details shift with balance passes.

Throwing items

Toss anything from your hotbar — it spins across the screen from your hands to where it lands or connects.
Range and damage scale with your build; some hits resolve as a Muscle contest.
Glass vials and potions shatter on impact and are gone for good; sturdier items land on the ground where they stop, ready to pick back up.

Who can you fight?

You can't just clobber anyone — The World keeps the peace unless both sides opt in:

Wilds & PvE — hostile packs, fauna that fight back, dungeon foes, and invasion events are fair game. Aggro turns nametags red.
Rivals — open-world PvP only when both of you marked each other Rival (outgoing Rival already tints their nametag red).
Friends — friendly open-world sparring between mutual Friends is still cooking; use sparring rings for practice today.
Sparring rings — step onto a sparring ring (like the grass ring on Wild Edge, or open arenas elsewhere) and anyone standing on it can spar freely. Step off and melee goes back to the Rival rules.
Don't rob the merchant — Traveling Vendors are high-level juggernauts. Attack one and the cart slams shut while they hunt you down.

On the horizon

Combat keeps growing. Here's what's coming:

More loadout options. Weirder skills, more live spells, and gear-granted moves that fight differently.
Organized PvP. Beyond the sparring ring — objective-based battlegrounds and ranked arenas. No handicaps, no normalization: every character for themselves.
Mutual Friend sparring outside the Rival path.

See Magic & Spells, Traits, Leveling & XP, and Inventory, Gear & Crafting, or play now.