You can also collect herbs and, with enough alchemy skills, concoct potions for yourself. Combat is a very important part of Nethergate, and Nethergate's interface makes it especially easy. When you encounter wandering, monsters you are zoomed in to a combat square, representing the terrain you are fighting on, and then you do combat with the monsters. Each of your characters has a certain number of action points, based on the load they carry and their speed. You can move, attack, cast a spell, throw a missile, switch places with another character or simply parry.
Enemies can cast spells, throw missiles, and even use items like magic wands.
There is also a new auto-combat feature. I automated combat, essentially your characters will attack the enemy until either the enemy is dead or one of your characters is about to die. At then end of combat you can get all the items if you win, but the characters have weight limits based on their strength. I use the number pad for easy movement. When you select monsters to target or items to look at, there is a letter over each space, and you can type the letter to choose that space.