Combat

## Picking Your Battles

Most games reward players with XP after defeating a monster and so there is an incentive to fight every creature. **Unexplored does not have a leveling system and does not directly reward fighting creatures.** This means every time you face a creature, you should ask yourself the following:

*What do I gain if I fight and what will it cost me?*

Good reasons to fight are:

* They have an item you want
* They pose a risk to you while exploring and you want to remove them from the field

Bad reasons to fight are:

* **You have been trapped or ambushed**
Fighting in this situation is one of the biggest causes of death in the game. If you find yourself trapped or ambushed, the first thing you should is PAUSE THE GAME.

* **They are blocking your way**
Look for alternative pathways around them or lure them away

* **They looked at you funny**
Everything in Unexplored only has one eye. No-one has good depth perception, even you. How do you know they were looking at you? They could have been looking at something else.

## Alternatives to Fighting

* Walking around threats. This provides the benefit of not having to fight at all but risks the threat of them later coming from behind right when you're in a difficult section. Of course enemies could be carrying useful items too
* Potions, magic, scrolls and other ranged attacks. Ranged is generally a safe way of dealing with enemies but ranged weaponry like potions and arrows are often rare and not as effective. Note that some enemies are immune to arrows.
* Sneaking, standing out of vision enemies for long enough puts you in stealth mode. This way you could carefully slip past any enemies that you are able to. Or you could get up close and sneak crit them for extra damage otherwise.
	+ Invisibillity potions also work great for this, just don't bonk enemies while its active or it will remove the invisibillity.
* Envornimental damage. This is fire most of the time but could also be poisonous gas or other minor things. Fire is generally a great way of dealing with a group of enemies because fire spreads to touching characters and because enemies in packs generally move against each other they keep refreshing the burn duration until enough enemies die off. Enemies can be set alight by all kinds of things ranging from burning gas to burning weapons or potions or maybe even lava. Just don't catch fire yourself because you are just as vurnerable as most enemies.

## Blocking

* Creature attacks can be partially or fully blocked using Shields
* Shields will block an attack even if you are not holding down the 'block' button
	+ This even works while swinging a weapon. So facing your character around at the right angle can result in blocking a hit and immediately hitting the enemy afterwards.
	+ A useful strategy with this is to walk sideways like a crab with your shield facing where you walk to block hits coming from the front.
* Different weapons have different attack vectors (e.g. dagger is directly at you, mace starts from behind and comes at your side) so holding your shield straight towards a creature won't always intercept the strike
* Point your shield to the left or the right depending on which hand the enemies are holding their weapons with
	+ This can easily be done by swapping your shield with your other hand. note how enemies are holding their weapons and adapt your shield location to that.
* A viable strategy is to don't use the shield button to block enemies and just rotate your character to hold the shield in the correct direction which negates the movement speed penalty and unabillity to attack from blocking normally.

## Weapon Range

* A Spears, Trident or Whip have longer ranges than standard weapons