Melee

Melee combat in *Life is Feudal* is one of its unique features and is aimed to be as realistic and immersive as possible.

## Physics based damage

Melee damage system takes 2 important physics measurements: **mass** and **velocity**. While mass is simply an item attribute, speed is a whole another story.

Every weapon has its own unique set of damaging nodes and each group deals a certain type of damage. Players can perform 4 types of directional attacks:

* Left to right swing
* Right to left swing
* Overhead attack
* Thrust

Depending on attack direction a certain group of damaging nodes become active and will deal damage. During an attack animation damaging nodes track their positions every 32 ms and connect their current position with their position 32 ms ago resulting in a damaging vector. The longer that vector - the faster that node was traveling. If that vector crosses a body part of a victim, then a hit will be detected and further damage calculations will occur. These damage calculation will measure the length of a vector that triggered a hit and will convert it into a speed relative to the victim. This allows for precise measurement of weapon attack speed in *Life is Feudal*.

* **Example**

On the following screenshots you can see a sword's damaging nodes. Take note that the edge of the sword is marked with red (slashing damage) nodes and its tip with a blue (piercing damage) node.

After making a full swing we can see the trajectory that the nodes were following. There is no trace of a blue (piercing) node, because it was not working in that horizontal directional attack. Take note of length of the damaging vectors (speed of nodes): these vectors are short at the start of the attack and even shorter still closer to the player. Thus striking your enemy near the end of a swing with the farthest part of the weapon will deal more damage!

## Combos

When unlocked, effects including increases in DPS and can cause a knockdown or inflict a wound.

More info about combos to follow at a later time.

## Wounds

More about wounds, bleeding and fractures: Wound.

## Parry and block

Parry effectiveness depends on how well you have turned your body into the attacking weapon movement direction. Parry as a way to interrupt combos, rather then to simply lower the amount of incoming damage. A successful parry might give you an increased speed for a follow up attack (riposte).
Blocking only works with a shield. While in a blocking stance, potential damage from a hit to a shield will not deal any damage to the character. Damage that was dealt in the frontal part of the character will be mitigated, and damage from tea back will NOT be mitigated. Shields also work passively: When not in an active blocking stance or even when carrying a shield on the back. Melee weapon hits in the shield will deal only a portion of the potential damage to the character, while projectiles will deal no damage at all.

## Special abilities

Pounce
Shield bash

## Equipment management

For more about equipment management: Combat.

## Mounted Combat

Horses will be capable of inflicting knockdown damage of the blunt variety (non-lethal), and will be based upon animal size and speed.

## Tips and tricks

* Keep your enemy in your weapon effective range. If you have a polearm, you will deal less or no damage at all if your enemy is close enough to use a short sword against you.
* Watch out for your Soft Stamina! Spamming attacks might result in dropping your stamina to 0. In this case your character will stop performing any actions to catch his breath and will be extremely vulnerable.
* Constant movement is not always a key to victory. Attacks that are performed by your character while standing solidly on both legs (e.g. not moving) will deal more damage.