Combat

Darkfall offers countless possibilities and options to the enterprising adventurer. You are not hindered in any path you choose, be it merchant, healer, builder or something else. However, your enemies may have different ideas. Agon is a land of war, combat and strife. Enemy raiders may be around every corner. Any shadow can hide a deadly blade or ambush. We'll provide you a little guidance in the art of slaughter. 

Melee

Before you can get up close and personal with your enemy you need a MELEE weapon equipped. Double-click it in your bag or drag it to your weapon slot on your character window. Once done you can use to unsheathe it. This takes you into a third person view, giving you a bit more of a chance to react to enemies and allies in your immediate area. To attack an enemy, run up to him and try to keep him in your crosshair while you press the left mouse button to swing against him.

The heavier the armor you wear, however, the harder it is to damage someone effectively.  Although, in the same vein, the more you fight in heavy armor, the more you will raise your Armor Proficiency skill and negate that penalty.

Finally, try to maneuver yourself behind an enemy. Back-stabbing may be sneaky, but it’s where you will cause the most damage.  Of course, it’s also where you will take the most so watch your back.

Magic

Magic or melee? A question that has plagued gamers since the dawn of, well, games. Is drowning your foe in a torrent of acid before incinerating what's left of his carcass-to-be in a screaming fireball more effective than stabbing him through the face with two feet of cold steel? We have no answer; it sure is fun though!

Before you can start chucking fireballs around though, you must acquire a good staff, no mage leaves home without one. Once that is done you can drag your available spells from you spell-book into the hot-bar. Activate them by clicking the spell's slot or corresponding number, point at your victims face, and begin the carnage. Your currently active spell will show at the bottom of your hot-bar.

As with all skills armor, and especially heavy armor, will incur a penalty to your damage. In the case of magic it will also raise the chance for your magic to miss-fire. However, this is off-set by increasing your Armored Casting skill.

Your magic skill itself will rise the more you cast. As you grow in power so too shall new and interesting ways to melt your enemy's faces become available. You can access and learn new schools of magic from NPC mages around the towns.

Magic isn't limited to simple damage of course a dedicated mage can truly influence the tide of battle. Healing allies, cursing enemies and bringing huge elemental forces to play and wreak havoc on the field.

Ranged Combat

Melee and magic can both be great fun and devastating but sometimes there is no greater satisfaction than peppering your enemy full of arrows before they can even stagger within spitting distance.

Equip your bow, drag your arrows to the ammunition slot on your character window and shoot your enemy in the face until it stops being funny.

As with all combat skills, wearing heavy armor will handicap your damage output. The more you fight while wearing that armor the more you will raise your Armored Archery skill to negate this.

While a challenging skill to master, Archery can truly be devastating if you get the hang of it. A well placed arrow in the back will also deal significantly more pain to an unwary victim.

Alignment

One final aspect of combat in Darkfall is that of Alignment. Your alignment is dictated by your actions, and specifically who you attack and it determines how other players and NPC's will see and react to you. You can view your current alignment right under your health bar; mouse over it to view its current status.

Alignment is represented by colors. Red characters are of an opposing alignment to you and blue ones are allies. Your racial allies will not necessarily be your allies in action as well however.

Player's who attack players of their own racial alliance will move towards an evil alignment. An evil character can be killed freely by other players with no danger to their alignment. And indeed killing an evil character will gain you positive alignment.

The first minutes after you attack a blue player or "ally" you are considered to have gone rogue. During these moments anyone attacking you will receive no penalties when they attack you.

Hitting players in your party or your clan will not carry any alignment penalties, or turn you rogue. Similarly if your clan has declared war on another clan, you won't take an alignment hit for killing these players, nor will you turn rogue.