Combat/Legacy

is one of, though not the only, gameplay survival aspects in Creatures of Sonaria. This page goes through various tips and tricks to aid and inform players in the ways of combat.
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== Preparation ==
For larger scale fights with coordinated packs, players may want to consider ways of preparing for a fight to strengthen their chances of victory by recruiting certain creatures, applying special status effects, growing creatures for special stat differences or considering the best surroundings for your victory.
=== Stat Boosts and Effects ===
Healers are creatures with the ability to gradually grant boosts to health, status effect healing or health regeneration of grouped members and play the support role with abilities like Healing Breath, Mud Placer, Pack Healer, Passive Heal or Restoration Beam. For long, drawn-out battles, it may be beneficial to keep Healers nearby to gradually overwhelm opponents that may lack that particular piece to keep up the fight.
Wallowing in mud can apply similar effects as a replacement for support creatures, however, it may significantly limit maneuverability during a fight as players will need to navigate to specific areas and wallow in mud. On the other hand, it also makes you unscentable for a little while, so it can be advantageous for staying hidden and ambushing other creatures.
After reaching age 100, players will also have the option to become an , which significantly decreases stamina, run speed and turn, but improves food and thirst duration, damage, regen(health and stamina), and max health.
Always know your opponents stats, and abilities. If a were to go up against a , with time, patience and skill, it could win. On the other hand, if it were to go up against, let's say, a Qurugosk, it could use its breath to slow you and easily kill you. If you know your creature, and your opponent, you will be able to identify what fights you should participate in.
== Weight and Damage ==
At the moment, damage in the game is calculated automatically. 
Weight acts as a creature's defense. The greater the weight, the more damage a creature will apply when fighting, and the less damage they will receive. Creatures with low weight will have trouble applying damage to larger creatures and larger creatures can inflict more damage on smaller creatures.
(Note: This information is available on the Creatures of Sonaria Discord status-discussion pinned messages shared by Erythia on September 18th, 2020.)
Below features the current method of calculating damage:
percent = yourWeight/enemyWeight
percent = math.clamp(percent, 0, 3) -- cannot be less than 0x, cannot be more than 3x
damage = lerp(baseDamage * percent, baseDamage, 0.5) -- Relative to the new damage, go half way to the base damage
Provided by EtiTheSpirit
* Damage will always cap at a creature's base damage times two (2), regardless of weight differences. For example, a Gramoss' damage is 300 so it will never exceed 600 damage. This, however, is not always true due to some unique abilities that boost a creature's damage which in turn increase the creature's damage output.
* Originally bigger creatures could shield smaller creatures from harm since one bite would only harm 1 creature at a time. However, now and since sometime mid-2022, melee attacks can hit multiple nearby creatures at once - that is, if two creatures are too close to each other and a third one bites, it will deal damage to both creatures.
* NPCs are an exception, they'll always receive the base damage, and depending on which type of NPC, they'll deal fixed absolute damage, or fixed percentage damage.
=== Damage Indicator ===
A damage indicator appears whenever attacking another creature, which displays damage dealt. The damage indicator from a creature that attacks is only visible to the player of that creature, while on the other side, and in green (healing or 0 normal damage) or red (normal damage) will indicate from which direction.
* NPCs are again an exception - this arc indicator of which direction you are being bitten from will never show.
=== Blood Screens ===
As a creature's health decreases, a bloody effect around the edges of a player's screen will appear to further indicate the creature's health status. The lower the creature's health, the more visible and detailed the bloody edges of the screen become.
=== Poison Screens ===
When you get poison status, a similar screen appears, but with green tints instead of red ones, and gets denser the most poison you get, and to an extent, the longer time you stay poisoned.
=== Cold Screens ===
During winter and famine, a similar screen appears, but with snowy tints instead. This works as a clue that some stats may have been debuffed, important to know during combat. Creatures with abilities that block those debuffs, such as Winter Tag, may or may not have this screen.
== Scarring ==
Scars appear after healing near-fatal wounds and may remain on a creature within a play session until the player chooses to leave by going to the Main Menu or exiting the game.
* Scarring is only an indication that a creature has survived a significant or near-fatal injury, so creatures with full health may have scars.
ArsonosScarring.png|Arsonos Scars (legacy)
== Attacks ==
There are a variety of attacks in terms of execution, which are primarily bites, headbutts, and swipes. For example, a will bite, a will headbutt, and a will swipe.
On Legacy, every single creature shares a global cooldown facter, and all bite at the same speed except under the effect of some special abilities
=== Alternate Attacks ===
Alternate attacks refers to the ability to use more than one melee attack, not including abilities listed on the Creature Abilities page. The only creatures in the game that have more than one attack are the and , which can choose to use a tail whip or a stomp.
=== Breaths ===
Each Elemental Breath has its own special characteristics from status effects and damage that encourage different strategies in combat. Some inflict damage quickly but do not apply long-lasting status effects while others do little damage with long-lasting status effects that gradually drain a target's health.
* For breaths that affect mainly movement, such as Ice or Lightning, spare energy in the player's Breath Bar may be handy in case a quick escape is necessary. By reserving some breath, a creature can take the opportunity to escape.
* For breaths in general, players can bite with LMB and hold C to inflict as much damage as possible for creatures with Elemental Breath.
* Poison breaths, and even Virus breaths (to a lesser degree), are effective against tanky creatures such as the Gramoss. A player can slow down their target's health regeneration (or stop it for a very brief period, respectively) with repeated blasts of breath while inflicting damage to steadily drain a target's health.
* For HP-sapping/healing beams, use them in short-medium bursts, since the status effect or healing are only given at set intervals, do not use it again against the same target until the healing or status effect can be reapplied. This is more efficient, keeping your breath bar filled for longer. and allowing you deal against higher odds (like a 2vs1).
Countering Elemental Breaths is difficult, but dodging the breath until it wears out is a useful way to neutralize this advantage. Players can also choose to retreat to caves, dense forests, or underwater to avoid most creatures with breath, not including All-Terrain creatures with Elemental Breath such as the , or .
* NPCs for the most part are also unaffected by breaths.
== Hitbox ==
Many creatures, especially , , and just to name a few, have huge hitboxes that are easy to hit because they stick out outside the attack range of the creature that possesses them. They (along those which have their attack range outside their hitbox) are easy targets to hit for damage. These include things like large wings, crests, and long necks. These structures or extensions of the creature's body can be used in PvP, especially if a player is a flier who can access other points on the creatures. During sky fights (flier vs flier) aim for a player opponents wings, because there is not much they can do to defend them. 
* The and may be exceptions to this point due to the fact that they fly without wings.
⚠️ Note: Since the Head Rotation Replication function to see creatures rotate their heads has been temporarily removed until the rewrite as a measure to mitigate LAG, creatures can apparently hit and grab you from a weird position they shouldn't while in fact on their side they are actually moving their head into a perfect position to bite you, so as a precaution, stay as far from their heads as possible.
=== Grabs ===
Grabs only work on creatures with a lower weight stat. This means only one player in an exchange can pick up the other. When a player gets close to a creature they can grab, players will sometimes get the prompt, "Press G to grab." However, a player doesn't need this prompt to grab someone. When grabbing a creature, attack as many times as possible before the grabbed creature can escape. If a player gets grabbed, they can escape by pressing G, and can try maneuvering behind their attacker to put them in a tricky situation. There's a cooldown to how fast you can grab-ungrab, so don't spam it too often.
* Note: On PCs, Controls for grabbing and eating/drinking were the same and may cause players to eat or drink mid-fight if attempting to carry a player next to food. This granted a target or opponent the opportunity to escape or deal significant damage while suspended in the eating animation.
Another thing to remember would be to grab outside of attack range, like the tail unless it's a . If a player grabs within attack range, it can easily result in killing their own creature as both players can inflict damage head-on. Avoid grabbing recklessly, as they are very risky. Wait for an opening if planning to use grabs and avoid grabbing in a way that may result in both players in each other's attack range.
Keep in mind that herbivores and photovores can't grab carnivores and photocarnivores. If you try to do so, a little message at the bottom right corner will say "Herbivores can't grab carnivores". This happens for both picking up and for grabbing on to the carnivore. It's always this way no matter what. Before the year 2021, herbivores could grab carnivores, but this is no longer the case. No one can grab NPCs, either, or be grabbed by them.
=== Tail Biting ===
Tail biting is a useful way to wear down large creatures, consisting on attacking (and sometimes grabbing) a heavier creature on a vulnerable area where it cannot inflict damage - in general, avoid the snout area, where a creature can inflict melee damage upon the grabber, and instead aim for places like wings, tails or ankles - And start biting. Never give your opponent time to heal any damage you caused them, nor special status effects such as bleed and poison, specially since this tactic tends to be popular among small fast status-dealers with not a great damage output so without those status it would be difficult or outright impossible to wear down bigger heavier creatures.
It is recommended you use this strategy if you have the species of the creature, and are able to respawn quickly. 
* Against NPCs this may vary too, some of them have a full-body attack hitbox, so regardless from where you are biting you'll get hurt anyway; while others have a very tiny attack hitbox and their damage hitbox is so big you don't need to worry much about getting bitten as long as you don't let the NPC approach to be just over you. Definitely the grab part will fail on newer NPCs, which cannot be picked up or grabbed.
== Weaknesses ==
Weaknesses to keep in mind:
* Low stamina: If a target has less stamina, players can lure targets around until their stamina is low or there is none left. Also less stamina means fliers and (most) terrestrial targets will start drowning faster and beached aquatics will be far less able to escape to water. Militrua-type semiaquatics and currently all all-terrain creatures suffer a (more or less severe) stamina drop every few seconds they stay underwater, so if you are one of those creatures which doesn't suffer this debuff you'll be at an advantage in mobility and stamina endurance underwater.
* Low stamina regeneration: having low stamina regeneration means the target (or yourself) will be easier to tire out and will take longer to recover.
* Large hitboxes: See Hitbox section above.
* Fast-depleting/low hunger/water bars: this means that they may attack out of desperation (either to end the combat quickly and drink or feed on herbs, or to kill you as fast as possible to eat your corpse), and desperation usually makes people more prone to easy-to-exploit mistakes.
* Strange attack ranges: some creatures like Sar'Hingaro, and have a somewhat different bite area, making biting with them far more difficult (Sar'Hingaro is far from its body (so close-enough attacks will allow you to bite without getting bitten), Kavouradis' is practically below its bigger pincer without being capable of attack upwards; while Kohikii's is not-exactly-forward, more-ventral-oriented and is very mobile).
* Slow speed: Easy to dodge attacks and outrun. Specially horrible when combined with a low stamina regeneration.
* Ambush turn-speed debuff: depending on the carnivore or omnivore (or rarely, herbivore) you are playing as, ambushing reduces turn speed slightly (or not at all) or completely makes the creature unable to steer while ambushing (like ), meaning that depending on the type you can easily dodge their ambush.
* General PvP skill: Depending on player's skill in PvP, player tactics may vary from situations where players can defend themselves to being forced to consider escape early on.
* Long Animations and LAG: While this is not really an intended part of the game, it's so common and used it should be noted. LAG in COS actually slows down a lot of things clientside, including actions such as laying nests, food storages... but for this combat part what matters is that drinking and eating (and on a lesser degree, ordered from major-to-minor lag impact, doing animations such as sleeping, sitting, hiding scent, cower and aggressive display) times increase considerably, meaning that if the player is laggy enough (aggravated if the animation was already long, such as 's drinking animation) they'll get stuck with the drinking/eating (and sleeping) animation significantly longer (up to 30 seconds for an action that usually takes a fraction of a second), leaving the targets immobile and unable to bite, essentially defenceless for far longer than intended. On the other hand, this LAG also allows those players to ignore Earthquake for a very little bit while attempting to run by spamming the run button.
== Strengths ==
Strengths to keep in mind:
* High HP regeneration: higher HP regeneration means it's easier for a creature to recover fully from a normal attack, even from non-player damage such as NPCs, lava, drowning, cold or getting beached. When combined with high-enough weight and HP it makes impossible for a creature to die from a single barrage of normal-powered no-statused attacks; that's why status that mess up with health regeneration such as Acid covering, poison, burn and bleed are so useful.
* High stamina regeneration: a faster stamina regeneration will allow the user to recover faster, specially from random skirmishes meant to wear the creature down.
* Creature Abilities: some abilities can aid you (or your target) immensely, such as high bleed defense, confusion/sleep-inducing abilities, among others. F.ex. some abilities are useful because they don't trigger a defense mechanism, like an attacking a with Escape Area or a breath won't trigger Warden's Rage.
* Small hitboxes: a small hitbox makes you harder to hit (while easier to attack blind spots where the attack area cannot reach), as well as making impossible (if not extremely difficult) for big-enough targets to grab you, regardless of diet or weight. Also notice this may be a double-edged sword, since too-small of a hitbox may make you unable to reach high enough to eat or bite certain areas.
* Special peculiarities about creature / type of creature: depending on one reason or another, some creatures may have some subtle/obscure, yet desirable capabilities for survival and PvP (as situational as they may be), such as ambush for most carnivores, a few omnivores and few herbivores; being able to fit almost anywhere as a flier, all-terrain or glider; not suffering stamina loss for being underwater (this regards, among some, but not all, aquatics ), the ability to stay still in lava without getting hurt, being immune to weather effects, etc. Normally, those who know about this are on par with experienced players which have had enough time to check most creatures, but it's also known to happen with those who only play with a select number of creatures for a few months.
* Numbers: no matter if it's an elephant against an ant, 1 million ants can eventually kill the elephant. While this metaphor may be a bit exaggerated, it's true. Never forget that while attacking or being attacked someone may join (or may have already joined beforehand) you or your opponent (or make it an all-out brawl), specially dangerous (to the victim) if they act as a team and/or they are skilled. Still, be wary, while normal attacks cannot harm packmates nor deal status effects to them, elemental breaths can still deal status effects, and damage-dealing abilities will work the same regardless of being friend or foe. Extremely game-breaking when combined with abilities which can stack. Being capable to use your environment actively in your favour can also become deadly for the victim (for example, using the NPCs or PvE (like drowning/beached damage, meteors, cold...) effects around you to weaken or outright kill a foe without risking getting hurt).
* Knowledge of the game physics: knowing a lot of the game physics (either experimentally, or by peeking at the devs streams while coding) regardless of having experience at PvP can let you push your creature to its limits knowing the inner logic of the game, and thus make it far easier for your creature to survive (or to calculate how difficult would be to defeat a specific target and know when it should be best to retreat), making yourself harder to kill.
* Opponent skill: in a fight, try to figure out the enemies' skill, if a person is inexperienced, you may not need to spin the enemy once you get behind them, but versus more experienced enemies, you will need to keep adjusting your maneuvers and actions to get into vulnerable spots and not become too predictable, as moving in one direction will quickly lead to the enemy knowing when to strike. Also sprint only the necessary during a fight, as it needs and uses stamina which may be valuable later for when you need to chase/run/maneuver and it indirectly expands your turning radius, making it easier for the enemy to get behind you. The latter usually requires some tuning from the player's part since this time sprinting also varies greatly between creatures due to their different models, turn speeds, stamina and stamina regeneration and as such depends greatly on the other points on this bullet list.
== Leading The Opponent Away ==
You can herd your opponent towards other areas, to get rid of their advantages, give them a disadvantage, or give you an advantage.
* If fighting a semi-aquatic creature as a creature that isn't semi-aquatic, keep them away from water, eg you as and them as .
* Generally, if fighting a grounded as a terrestrial semi-aquatic, keep the fight close to water, so you can use said water for a quick getaway or a sneak attack (feigned retreat). For glider semiaquatics and All-Terrain it's not as important, but forcing them to swim will eventaully negate any advantage the non-semi creature has, potentially drowning it.
* As a full aquatic against any semi-aquatic, try to find a way to force the opponent to never leave water, since most semis are handicapped due to the stamina drain, plus you cannot survive for long without living in water.
* As a semi creature against an aquatic, lure them to narrow, shallow areas where they may get stuck (and being unable to escape or chase you anymore) or in the best (worst for the aquatic) case beached and othen they'll quickly weaken and die. Heavier creatures can use this to pick up the aquatic and drop it on an unsuitable environment as well, thus making the kill even easier.
* Being a creature capable of flying or at least gliding can be useful too, specially if they try to find a place to bite you properly (and fail), they may expose themselves and leave vulnerable spots easier to bite. This can be quite useful if your purpose is to deter people from entering an area advantageous to you.
* For a flier to fight another flier, usually the best is to find a way to tire the other so they cannot fly as high or as fast so they desist or cannot escape from a counter strike. For example, if the opponent has less total stamina or stamina regeneration, it may be possible to enrage such opponent to lock on you and then fly upwards for the opponent to be incapable of following you without spending stamina.
* Before grab got reworked, keeping away from food, so you wouldn't eat it whilst trying to grab was quite common. The only exception was if you had fruit or meat grabbed already.
** If you are fighting, say, a herbivore as a carnivore, lead them to berries so they'll eat them whilst trying to grab. This applied if you are a herbivore against a carnivore too... but most creatures with normal hitboxes and eat-ranges can just counter this by grabbing a piece of meat/berry while still being able to grab you.
** However while this is no longer true and you can grab with a different button now, this has been happening for so long many veteran players will subsconciously act as if it was still present for a long time, use that to your advantage.
* For non-fliers against fliers, find a way to lure them into an enclosed space... or even better, water (specially against those which aren't all-terrain). Lots of new players, or arrogant ones who have had a very long kill streak and feel very powerful, don't consider it twice before trying to pursue a target underwater.
* As an offensive status dealer, bite them then lead them into chasing you so their status effect don't heal (f.ex. bleed will get worse from movement). However you'll need to keep in mind that it's required to stack a certain level of a status effect before it starts being dangerous to the opponent, with some levels being easily cured without something slowing down the opponent's status healing rate.
** Something similar can be done with Toxin/Poison and Necropoison, specially since Necropoison will rise at any moment when they are not resting.
** For defensive status dealers something similar can be done by letting them bite you, but always remain careful of how much damage and how many status are you going to suffer - it doesn't make sense to do a hit-and-run tactic to let the opponent bite you if that leaves you with broken bones and unable to escape.
Category:Legacy Gameplay