Combat Style

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Basic Combat Strategy

There are a few basic forms of combat that are applicable to any class.

Plinking

"Plinking" refers to the combat style that focuses on avoiding damage while slowly wearing away at a target with a ranged weapon. The term comes from one of the combat messages when using a crossbow:

There's a quiet plink sound as your bolt hits <it>, dealing X damage. SMACK! WHACK! WHAMMO!

Plinking is the combat style of choice for many low-skilled players, especially moxie classes. The basic principle is based on the fact that when the player has a ranged weapon equipped, Moxie is used to determine your chance to hit a monster, whether that monster can hit the player with regular attacks, and how much damage the player would take when hit. This allows players to focus on raising just one stat in order to attack and defend.

Strengths of Plinking

• Combat requires no MP
• No permed skills required
• Requires very little effort for moxie classes
• Often the only option for low-skilled players

Weaknesses of Plinking

• Combat is tedious and repetitive
• Fumbling becomes a significant hazard during extended combats
• Adding Monster Level can making plinking challenging or impossible
• Boosting moxie is more difficult for non-moxie classes
• Monsters can still land critical hits on the player, which can add up during long combats
• Can only be used with ranged weapons (in most cases)

Basic Theory

The player boosts their moxie to the point where they will minimize the hits they take, and then wears down a monster with a ranged weapon while taking nearly no damage. The concept of safe moxie is somewhat misleading because monsters can still land critical hits at any amount of moxie, and there is some evidence that the originally spaded formula of monster attack + 7 is incorrect. However, with that amount of moxie, players will take very few hits, and the damage from those hits will be as lower than it would be with less moxie. Moxie is also the stat used to determine whether a ranged weapon hits, so Muscle can mostly be ignored.

Since plinking implies the player would not have a higher muscle than the monster's defense stat, the damage formula shows that ranged weapons will do relatively low damage. They get no bonus damage for moxie above a monster's defense, and they receive a penalty to their base damage that makes ranged weapons do only 75% as much damage as a melee weapon of the same power. This can lead to combat lasting many rounds, which can be tedious and increases the damage a player takes from fumbles and monster criticals. Boosting damage done, boosting Damage Absorption, and perming a skill such as Eye of the Stoat can alleviate some of these problems, although plinking is still possible without any of these measures.

Common ways to boost moxie

• Hair spray is available to all classes for the inexpensive cost of 24 meat (8 meat/adventure)
• Wearing equipment that boosts moxie
• The Moxious Madrigal boosts moxie by 10 and is the most important skill to help with plinking
• Disco Aerobics or Moxie of the Mariachi, the moxie class trivial skills
• Turning off the monster aggravation device and removing other sources of +ML does not raise moxie, but has a similar effect in that it gives the player a higher moxie relative to the monster's defense

Melee

This is the combat style that comes most easily to low-skilled muscle classes, but can be employed by other classes as well. Combat is simple--you equip the strongest melee weapon you can, and you kill stuff with it before it kills you. Players can use generic attack or some other melee-based attack skills to fight this way.

Strengths of Melee

• Does not need any permed skills to use
• Does more damage per round than plinking
• Is the simplest combat style for new players to understand

Weaknesses of Melee

• Muscle is not a defensive stat, so without Hero of the Half-Shell, players can take a lot of damage
• Using normal attack is not effective against higher ML monsters
• It can be hard for non-muscle classes to boost their muscle enough to hit reliably

Basic Theory

First, the player must ensure that they can hit the monster they are fighting. To land hits consistently with normal attack, their muscle must be higher than the monster's defense stat. This will not always be the case for players questing in level-appropriate zones, but choosing gear which boosts muscle will make it easier. Other useful boosts are listed below.

Some combat skills offer a bonus to the player's chance to hit. Kneebutt, Thrust-Smack, and Lunging Thrust-Smack have to-hit bonuses, and the skill Eye of the Stoat further boosts the to-hit of Thrust-Smack, and Lunging Thrust-Smack. Shieldbutt and Seal Clubbers wielding 2-handed clubs using either Thrust-Smack or Lunging Thrust-Smack will always hit, regardless of the player's muscle or the monster's defense stat. Fighting with these skills is more effective than using normal attack, especially when fighting tougher monsters, but comes at the cost of MP (and necessitates having the skill). Turtle Tamers are uniquely able to combine the -butt skills into more powerful attacks, for a higher MP cost.

Melee without Hero of the Half-Shell

Players who do not have the skill Hero of the Half-Shell, or those who choose to melee without a shield equipped, will tend to have to consider their survivability more than players making use of the skill. For these players, it is particularly important to end combats as quickly as possible, and boosts to HP and damage are critical. These players can also make very good use of Damage Absorption by using higher powered armor and skills such as Tao of the Terrapin, Ghostly Shell, Astral Shell, Hide of the Walrus and Hide of the Otter.

Melee with Hero of the Half-Shell

This skill allows players to use muscle as both their defensive and offensive stat, assuming of course that their muscle is higher than their moxie. This allows players to take advantage of some of plinking's strengths (such as boosting just one stat, and taking little damage) while keeping the advantages of melee (easy for muscle classes to do, and does more damage than plinking). The main drawbacks are needing the skill and needing to equip a shield, which forces the player to use a one-handed weapon.

Other helpful buffs and skills for Melee

• Ben-Gal™ Balm is cheaply available to all players
• The Power Ballad of the Arrowsmith boosts muscle and HP
• Rage of the Reindeer boosts muscle and damage
• Seal Clubbing Frenzy and Patience of the Tortoise, the muscle class trivials

Advanced Combat Strategy

There are also several advanced strategies to choose from.

Shieldbutt

Shieldbutting, sometimes known as "noodlebutting" because it is really a combination of entangling noodles and shieldbutt, is a melee-based combat style designed to fight monsters at a higher monster level than the player's attack and defense stats.

Strengths of Shieldbutting

• Can be used against monsters that the player cannot otherwise hit
• Does not require a large MP pool and is often the most MP-efficient combat style when boosting ML
• Requires a minimal set of perms to get started

Weaknesses of Shieldbutting

• Requires the player to use a shield
• Shieldbutt by itself does not do a lot of damage
• Cannot be done using a ranged weapon

Skills which are critical to this combat style:

• Entangling Noodles
• Shieldbutt

In its simplest form, the player casts entangling noodles on a monster so that they will not die while taking down the monster's life, and then shieldbutts the monster until dies. Shieldbutt is a skill which always hits, but does not do as much damage as some other skills. The noodles will allow the player to survive the multiple rounds of combat needed to kill this way.

Skills which are complementary to this combat style:

• Ur-Kel's Aria of Annoyance lets the player boost their +ML to take advantage of this combat style's ability to handle stronger monsters, which earns them better stat gains
• Springy Fusilli helps the player win initiative, which allows them to cast noodles without taking a hit
• Overdeveloped Sense of Self Preservation is another initiative skill, but less powerful than Springy Fusilli. However, it is passive, which is an advantage.
• Slimy Shoulders is identical to Overdeveloped Sense of Self Preservation once at full strength, but requires the player to use 10 slime-soaked sweat glands in addition to completing an ascension to perm the skill.
• Armorcraftiness allows the player to craft shields when they may not readily find any during a run. It also allows players to craft a Hipposkin poncho which is a good source of +ML, provided the player also has Torso Awaregness
• Rage of the Reindeer adds to the player's HP and damage.
• Snarl of the Timberwolf adds spooky damage
• Claws of the Walrus adds damage passively
• Claws of the Otter also adds passive damage, but less
• Tenacity of the Snapper adds damage, but requires a Turtle totem type to cast
• Hero of the Half-Shell is not really a skill in this combat suite, but since the player will be using a shield anyway, it is a useful defensive passive. It is especially helpful when playing muscle classes

Shieldbutting with a Frumious Bandersnatch familiar allows the player to get longer-lasting noodles combined with the smust (stun) from shieldbutt and added damage. This is a powerful combat combination that is often employed by low-level players wanting to gain stats in a challenging high-level area such as the Hobopolis sewer. As long as the player gains initiative and has enough damage skills or damage-adding Stickers, even low-level Hardcore players can make use of sewer leveling.

Pasta-Slinging

Cast Flavour of Magic as appropriate for the zone in question, hit with Cannelloni Cannon until it dies.

Disco Combos

de-leveling, stealth mistletoe (seriously), combo effects

V-Crisis

spam normal attack and chew HP away until a crit (gonna need a softcore speedster to write this one)

Sauce-Slinging

This strategy gets complicated due to it being extremely powerful for Saucerors. See Sauce Synergy for details on this style of combat.