Abilities & Skills

Abilities

Abilities are the actions characters use in combat — attacks, spells, buffs, and special moves.

Ability Properties

AoE Shapes

Abilities can hit multiple targets using 9 area-of-effect shapes. The column that decides how a shape behaves is Centred on — whether the area sits on the caster or on the point the ability lands.

Making a blast centred on yourself

Use nova. It is the shape that means "everything around me".

The trap is that circle looks like it should do this if you set the range low enough. It does not: a circle is centred on the aim point, so with a range of 0 or 1 it still lands on whatever you are aimed at or locked to, and it catches only what is near them — which reads as the spell doing nothing to the enemies packed around you.

To author one:

1. AoE Shape → nova. 2. AoE Radius → how far the burst reaches, in tiles. This is the number that matters; the ability's Range does not size a nova. 3. Aiming → Free aim if the spell should fire whenever it is pressed. On Locked, a nova still demands a selected target and is refused with "This ability requires a target" when there is none.

The shape diagram in the editor shows which anchor is in force, and warns you when you have picked an aim-point shape at a range short enough that you probably meant a nova.

To hit several targets one after another instead of all at once — chain lightning, a ricocheting arrow, a cascading heal — see Chaining Abilities.

Where an ability lands: Aiming

Abilities → (pick one) → Targeting & AoE → Aiming.

Abilities authored before this dropdown existed keep the behaviour of their old Requires Target checkbox until you pick a mode: checked behaves as Auto, unchecked as Free aim. Nothing changes until you choose.

Gotchas:

• Free aim really does ignore your target. If your fireball keeps flying

past the enemy you have selected, this is why — pick Auto to make a selection win over the cursor.

• Locked can never be ground-cast. A ground-target AoE authored Locked

refuses without a unit, so its area can only ever be centred on a target. For "drop it wherever I aim, but snap to my target when I have one", that is Auto.

Channelled abilities

An ability whose Type is Channel runs while the key is held: pressing starts the channel immediately, and its Cast Time is the maximum channel duration. With a Channel Tick Interval authored, the effect lands over and over for as long as the key stays down — letting go stops the ticks, and you keep everything already delivered. Without a tick interval, the effect fires once when the channel completes; releasing early interrupts it (and refunds the mana, since nothing was delivered).

Mana, cooldown and the GCD are paid once, when the channel starts — ticks are free, and stopping a channel that already landed ticks does not refund.

Knockback and pull

Abilities → (pick one) → Effects → Knockback / pull.

Gotchas:

• The Knockback status effect moves nobody. It is a crowd-control tag

(it participates in diminishing returns); the actual shove or pull is this effect. Use both together for a knockback that also counts as hard CC — that is what Also apply CC tag is for.

• Roll the server after editing — ability definitions load at boot.

When actions run: before or after the damage

Abilities → (pick one) → Costs & Effects → Actions run. Appears once the ability has at least one world action.

Before the damage is the order for gap-closers: blink to the enemy, then strike. After the damage is the order for finishers: hit them, then yank them in.

A blink that also deals damage will not pick fights for you

If an ability carries a Teleport / blink, Summon, or Raise dead action, its damage half is optional:

• Nothing selected — the ability skips its damage entirely and just does

the action. It will not auto-acquire a nearby enemy to swing at; pressing blink next to a mob teleports you, it does not start a fight.

• A protected unit selected — a player in a PvP-safe zone, a protected

NPC — the cast is not refused with "PvP is not allowed in this zone." The damage is skipped and the action still runs, so blink works as travel even with a friend selected.

• A live enemy you may attack selected — both halves run: the damage

lands on them and the action fires, in the order set above.

This only applies to actions that work without a victim. Knockback / pull acts on the target, so an ability whose only action is a pull keeps the full targeting rules — it still refuses when the selected unit cannot be attacked.

Status Effects on Hit

Abilities can apply status effects with a configurable chance. For example, a fire spell might have a 25% chance to apply "Burn" (damage over time).

Visual Effects & Telegraphs

Every ability can point at authorable VFX definitions for each moment of the cast:

• Telegraph VFX — a ground indicator drawn while the ability winds up, sized to its AoE shape, so players can dodge. Unset = the editable engine default (default.telegraph).
• Cast / Projectile / Impact / Channel VFX — the wind-up flare, the traveling projectile, the on-hit burst, and any sustained channel beam.

All of these reference the canonical VFX library, so changing a shared effect updates every ability that uses it.

Ability Slots

Characters have a mixed action bar:

• equipment-driven slots for primary attack and gear-specific abilities
• 4 configurable hotbar slots for player-chosen abilities or supported consumables

Those hotbar slots can be reassigned during play and saved into named loadouts for different combat setups.

Skills

Skills represent long-term progression — Mining, Woodcutting, Cooking, Swordsmanship, Fishing, etc. Each one levels independently, and a character's player level is the average of all skill levels (skills they haven't trained count as level 1), so broad progress raises your level rather than one grinded skill. You can also author your own skill categories (name, color, sort order) — the in-game Skills panel tabs follow them.

Skill Properties

How the level cap is decided

Two settings decide how far a skill can be trained, and they're designed to layer:

1. Combat → Skill & XP → Max Skill Level is the world-wide cap. Raise it to 200 and every skill still on the default Max Level goes to 200 — you don't have to edit each skill. 2. A skill's own Max Level overrides that world cap, up or down. Set a skill to 250 and it beats a world cap of 200; set it to 5 and it stops at 5 no matter how high the world cap goes.

A skill left at the default 100 is treated as "follow the world" rather than "stop at 100" — so the one number you'd expect to raise everything does. The engine clamps any resolved cap to 1000.

Guests train less far

Combat → Skill & XP → Guest Max Skill Level caps guest accounts (default 10) so a trial player is nudged toward registering. Set it to 0 to let guests train as far as anyone else. Admin, GM and superadmin sessions are never capped, even when signed in as a guest.

When a player reaches any cap, they're told once per skill — "Mining has reached its maximum level (200)", or the guest version that points at registering. If a skill has quietly stopped gaining XP, that message is the first thing to look for; the second is which of the two caps above is actually in force.

Skill Discovery

Skills are hidden until the player performs a specific action for the first time:

• Chop a tree → discover Woodcutting
• Mine ore → discover Mining
• Cook food → discover Cooking
• Catch a fish → discover Fishing

This creates a natural discovery experience instead of showing everything upfront.

Per-Level Bonuses

Each skill level can grant:

• Increased gathering yield
• Faster crafting speed
• Higher critical chance
• New recipe or ability unlocks

Absorb — life, mana and stamina drain

Abilities → Costs & Effects → Absorb.

An absorbing ability takes a resource off whoever it hits and hands it to the caster. Drain Life, Mana Burn, a stamina-sapping poison.

One dropdown decides both ends, because you drain what you restore: a life drain takes health and gives health, a mana drain takes mana and gives mana.

Health drains are not the same as mana drains

• Health — the hit lands as normal damage, and you are healed for a

share of it. This is lifesteal: the damage still happens, you just keep some.

• Mana / Stamina — the ability's damage comes out of **that pool instead of

health**. A mana burn does not also stab you. Armour, damage reduction and absorb shields do not stop it, because none of them are protecting mana.

Want an ability that does both — real damage and a mana burn? Author the burn as its own ability and attach it to the damaging one as an On-hit ability.

Setting one up

1. Open Database → Abilities and edit (or create) an ability. 2. Go to the Costs & Effects tab and find Absorb. 3. Set Drains to Health, Mana or Stamina. 4. Set Restores (%) — start at 100 for a drain, 20–30 for lifesteal on a weapon skill. 5. Leave Max Drain per Hit at 0 unless the ability crits for a lot. 6. Save. The field beneath the cap previews what one average hit returns.

You only ever drain what was there

A 400-damage drain on a mob with 5 health left heals you for 5, not 400. Draining 200 mana from someone holding 30 takes 30 and gives you 30. The number on the ability is what it tries to take; what you get is what the victim had.

The same applies at your end — a drain never overfills you, and the overflow is not banked.

Things that have no mana

Mobs carry health and nothing else. No mana, no stamina. So a mana drain aimed at a wolf would do nothing at all, which is why **Take health when the target has no mana** is on by default: the drain comes out of the wolf's health instead, and still restores your mana.

Turn it off for a strictly anti-caster utility ability that should be a no-op against beasts — the editor warns you when you do, because it is easy to author that by accident and then wonder why nothing happens in a playtest.

Gotchas

• Damage-over-time never feeds you. Only direct hits drain. A drain that

also applies a burn keeps giving damage, not resource — otherwise one cast would feed the caster for the whole minute afterwards.

• A pure burn still needs damage. The drain is sized from the ability's

damage, so an ability with Base Damage 0 drains nothing however it is configured.

• Area drains are strong. A drain with an AoE shape restores from every

victim it catches. Only the main target feeds you is the fix.

• In-game the numbers are colour-coded: mana moves in blue, stamina in

amber, health in the usual red and green. A blue -30 MP over an enemy whose health bar never moved is the ability working, not a bug.

Piercing

Abilities → Targeting & AoE → Pierces through targets.

Normally a shot stops at the first thing it touches. A piercing ability cuts a line instead, and everything standing in that line is hit — beams, rail shots, a spinning blade thrown through a crowd.

Piercing and areas together

Pierce governs the journey; the AoE shape still governs the landing. With no AoE shape set, the ability is a pure beam: everything in the line, once each. Add a shape and you get the same beam plus a burst where it lands.

Nobody is hit twice. The landing burst only catches whoever the beam missed — otherwise a target standing exactly where you aimed would take the beam and the explosion, doubling its damage in a way no number on the page would show you.

Indicators

Abilities → Targeting & AoE → Indicator.

Every ability draws an aim preview: a reach ring around the caster, and a footprint showing what will be hit. This is where you style this ability's.

Custom artwork

Pick a ground decal to draw inside the footprint. It is laid flat on the floor, so it skews with the isometric view automatically — author it flat, not pre-skewed.

Keep artwork around 256–512px. It is redrawn while the player aims, and a 4K image scaled down to a three-tile circle costs the same as one drawn at size.

The one thing you cannot change

Size and shape are not style options. They come from the ability's range and AoE fields — the same values the server hits with — so the preview can never promise something the ability will not do.

That is also why the real boundary is still drawn over your artwork by default. Nothing stops a narrow cone image being attached to a circular ability, and when that happens the outline makes it look wrong rather than letting players trust it. Art only turns the outline off for art drawn to the exact geometry; from then on, accuracy is yours to guarantee.