Guides
Combat Basics
How fights actually work — swings, stamina, and staying alive.
Starting a fight
Arm an action, then click your target
Combat has a two-step rhythm: first arm an action, then click a target. Left-click the Attack button to bind it to your left mouse button — it lights up amber. Right-click a button to bind it to your right mouse button instead, and that one lights up blue. The border colour always shows which mouse button an action is sitting on, so you can keep Attack on one button and, say, a heal on the other.
With Attack armed, click a monster in the People / Objects list to strike it. Each click is a single swing — there is no auto-attack, so keep clicking the target to keep fighting. Click the armed button again to unbind it.
Prefer the keyboard? /a <target> (or /attack <target>) does it in one step — you only need enough of the name to be unambiguous, so /a orc finds the Orc Warrior.
Landing the blow
Whether you hit is a roll driven mainly by your DEX — the higher it is, the more blows you land — and it improves as you gain levels. Damage itself comes from your equipped weapon, scaled by your STR and level, so a better weapon and a higher STR both hit harder. Monsters are not ranked by level; you tell a dangerous one apart by its HP, damage, and resistances.
Stamina
Every action in combat spends stamina. A normal attack costs 1, and so does casting most spells. Special abilities — Berserk, Smite, Rapid Fire, Assassinate — spend even more, sometimes your entire pool at once for a single huge hit.
Stamina does not trickle back between swings. It only begins to refill about 10 seconds after your last action, and then returns in large chunks — roughly half your bar at a time. So there is no reward for pacing yourself: you may as well spend your whole stamina bar in a burst, then pause to let it recover before the next flurry. Your maximum stamina grows as you level up.
Why dump your whole bar
Full-stamina attacks spend your whole bar at once. A Berserker's Berserk hits a little harder than ordinary swings across a whole frenzy and can land critical hits; a Ranger's Rapid Fire hits notably harder per arrow than a normal shot and lands more often than Dual Shot. They can still miss, but that edge, spent all at once, is the payoff for the HP or stamina they cost. The Berserker's Smite spends everything on a single massive blow instead — the more stamina you pour in the harder it lands, enough to drop a weak target outright; land it (better with higher Dexterity), miss and it barely scratches (Berserk costs 25 HP, Smite 10).
When the monster fights back
Retaliation
Once you engage an aggressive or defensive monster it strikes back on its own timer, every few seconds, until one of you falls. Passive creatures never retaliate — they just stand there, which makes them safe practice. Aggressive monsters will also attack you on sight the moment you walk into their room.
Blocked paths & pursuit
Some monsters block a doorway — you cannot pass until you defeat them. And when you flee, an aggressive monster may start tracking you and follow you room to room, so running does not always mean you are safe.
Breaking off
If your HP drops dangerously low, moving to another room is usually your best escape — most monsters drop their target the moment you leave. Be warned, though: an aggressive monster may give chase, following you into the next room and picking the fight straight back up, so you may need to keep moving. Either way, it is far cheaper to break off and heal than to die.
Experience & levelling
You earn experience for every point of damage you deal — a monster's XP value sets how much each hit is worth — plus a bonus chunk when the killing blow lands, which is shared with any party members in the room.
Your stored XP is capped a little above what you need for your next level, so once you are close there is nothing more to gain by fighting on — it is time to train. You do not level up automatically: below level 3 you train at a Training Arena, and from level 3 onward at your class Guild. See the Classes & Builds guide for what each level brings.
Death & recovery
If you fall, the monster that killed you strips every gold coin you were carrying and you lose a small slice of your current experience. You then awaken at your home tavern fully restored — full HP, MP, and stamina — so death costs you gold and a little XP, not your strength.
A note on player-versus-player
Most of Nightmist is peaceful — try to attack another player in a normal room and the guards step in. Only specially designated PvP zones permit players to turn on one another. Venture into them only when you are ready for a real fight.
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