Combat

Pick a monster, and every rep you perform becomes one attack. Whether that attack lands, and how hard, is decided by your two skills doing two different jobs.

Strength: how hard you hit

Strength sets your max hit: the ceiling on the damage a single rep can deal. Every landed rep rolls between 1 and your max hit. Your Strength level raises the ceiling, and your weapon's strength bonus raises it further: the same level 30 hits noticeably harder holding a mithril sword than a bronze one. This is why weapon upgrades feel immediate: they move the top end of every single rep.

Agility: how often you hit

Agility is your accuracy. Each rep, your attack roll (Agility level plus your weapon's attack bonus) goes up against the monster's defence. Win the roll, the rep deals damage; lose it, the rep whiffs: a 0 across the screen and a boss that didn't feel it. Low-level monsters barely defend themselves. A Night Elf or a dragon will make a low-Agility character miss constantly, no matter how strong they are.

Hearts: your fight timer

You don't have HP: you have hearts, and each heart is worth 10 seconds in the fight. Run out of hearts before the boss runs out of HP and the fight ends. Each monster sets a base number of hearts for the encounter (nastier monster, fewer hearts, and the end-game horrors start you negative), and your armor gives them back: total defence across your ten gear slots converts into bonus hearts.

Killing something

Each monster has an HP pool. Your reps chip it down; the kill triggers the loot roll. Drop tables are per-monster, rolled per line: one kill can drop several things or nothing but the satisfaction. Rarities in the fight intro run Common, Uncommon, Rare, and Extremely Rare: the exact odds you learn the hard way.

Reading a monster