Combat system

[Kararas]

Okay. I’ve been in the game for a long time (I played 200 hours). But the combat system remained incomprehensible to me. No, I understood the basic mechanics, and so on. But I was embarrassed that my character was beaten to death by a boy with a stone. At that time  like I had a scimitar. I overshot all the time and could not block until finally they knocked me out with a stone in the head. In a battle with people, I use the tactic: Shoot from a bow, then throw an ax and finish a spear. This worked until one moment,  when the dude came at me with 2 arrows in his arm and leg and an ax in his skull. And he killed me  melee, I was in chain mail and a helmet!  Please give advice or explanations to this system of injuries and combat in general, especially misses.

[Tom H]

It may require more information to give an adequate reply, friend. You say you used a scimitar. Very few characters have any skill with swords. Was your character capable with those weapons? What burden was he carrying at the time? Level of injury? Was there bleeding? Fatigue? If enough negatives are piled up one's skills can easily be reduced to less than a 50-50 chance in attack/defense. I've suffered a fair amount of 24% damage single hits.

The greatest unknown is what was the skill level of your opponent with their weapon, and in dodging? I've lost a number of fights that my skills and armor would have led me to believe would favor me, only to be minced by a Njerp that just would not die.

Lastly, one can't rule out plain bad luck. Odds indicate probabilities, not certainties, eh?

[jonottawa]

My guess is you were exhausted by the time the boy killed you (if you mean it was a child, then you were attacking a settlement?) and you weren't wearing an iron spectacle helm. Plus what Tom said. You should use the weapon you're most skilled in. If that's axe, then use a battleaxe. If that's spear, then throw javelins and then melee with a spear. If that's sword, then use a battlesword.

You should use shift-A before you willingly engage in mortal combat to make sure you don't have any glaring defensive vulnerabilities (other than your eyes, which are an omnipresent and unavoidable glaring defensive vulnerability.)

[PALU]

As mentioned above, penalties are brutal. Being heavily encumbered (e.g. by armor or just stuff hauled around in case you need it) takes a toll on your success chances. In addition to that, heavy encumbrance also increases the rate at you gain fatigue significantly, which adds another penalty, and getting injured (doesn't matter if it was a lucky shot or not: the injury is there anyway) adds additional penalties. Through this, you can quickly have your success skill drop to the minimum, eventually making it impossible to move, and then pass out from the lightest of injuries.

Unless your character is a maximum strength giant Kaumo, you need to balance the protection of your armor against the encumbrance/fatigue rate of it, and you should drop all carried equipment you don't need in the fight (excluding at least bow and possibly arrows, as enemies can pick those up and use them against you).