by El
Drijver, Developer for The Chronicles of Spellborn



Aiming, clicking: check. But the rest? This document should give quick
insight in all things related to Spellborn combat. Please note that
this is just an example on how to set-up one’s skilldeck.
Players are advised to adapt it at their own discretion.



Organizing Skilldeck

There’s nearly an unlimited amount of possibilities to
arrange your skilldeck. There is no ‘best’
arrangement, however, there is a ‘worst’
arrangement. This will be discussed later in the combo section. The
arrangement of your skilldeck is not something you’ll have
sorted in 1 minute, especially at high level. It’s a process
of finding what works best for your own style. I’ll try to
explain some basic strategies in building your deck. For these
strategies I’ll assume that all tiers and slots are
available. (6 tiers, 5 slots/tier)



Type-arrangement

I think this will be the most used arrangement to start with, since
it’s fairly basic to pickup and doesn’t require
specific knowledge of every skill. The skilldeck is only viewed in
columns, so on any tier, the same can be expected from each slot. In
the example below, the player will at all time know that he can go from
using slot 1 and 2 to slot 4 when ranged attacks are needed.



A setup could be:

Column 1: Melee

Column 2: Melee, with specialized buffs/debuffs

Column 3: Magic attacks

Column 4: Ranged attacks

Column 5: Healing / Panic



Sequence-arrangement

This arrangement assumes more knowledge of individual skill and also
requires more thought. A player can set up to use 1 column for a
certain string of attacks, not necessarily combos, for a complete or
partial sequence. For example, the first column could contain a melee
buff followed by a couple of melee attacks and melee related heals so a
player would only have to stick to column 1 for a
‘complete’ package of melee combat.



Of course there are numerous variations, ordering by damage type or
maybe even damage amount. It’s up to the player.



Working with combos

Adding combo’s to the skilldeck is also completely up to the
player. However, combo openers are the only thing that can really
destroy your skilldeck setup. This is because it’s not
possible to use a combo opener when you’re already in a combo
string. If a single tier consists entirely of combo openers, this will
complete block you from doing any skills while the combo is active,
since all skills of that tier can’t be executed.



A tip is to put a combo finisher on a diagonal in your skilldeck, that
way you always have an optional finisher at your disposal, this is
called the “Hesselian diagonal’.



Numbers
and factors



States

States are 3 factors, which allow players to add another dimension to
their tactics. Correctly manipulating your own as well as your
targets’ states will result in a more favorable outcome. The
three states are Physique, Morale and Concentration, affecting movement
speed, damage output and resistance respectively.



The states start at a default 0 and can be raised as well as lowered,
resulting in bonus or penalty for the associated effect.



Affinities

Your magic affinity determines your damage reduction for specific magic
types. It’s split up three ways in Rune, Soul and Spirit.
Affinity is increased by the attribute associated with it, these are
Body, Focus and Mind respectively.



Resistances

Resistance makes up the second part damage reduction players can
achieve. It reduces all damage from a certain attack type. These attack
types are distinguished as Melee, Ranged and Magic.



Resistance is 0 by default, players receive about 2% resistance for
every type for drawing their weapon and thus being ‘combat
ready’. Resistance can be influenced by skills, sigils,
consumables and by the Concentration State, like mentioned above.



Basic
Skill Characteristics



src="/image/view/78292"
width="400">



Above is part of a screenshot from the skillbook. It displays
information about the skill ‘Dance of Blades’.



Associated Attribute
(1 in the screenshot):

In the above case it’s Focus (text is shown on mouse over),
this means that the skill benefits from having a high amount of Focus
attribute points. The higher the amount, the more damage the skill will
do. This is the only effect of the associated attribute on a skill.



Attack Types
(2 in the screenshot):

The attack type basically defines what kind of weapon is needed for the
attack, Melee, Ranged, or Magic. In case of Magic, no weapon is
required. When Disarmed, Melee attacks won’t work, Blind
disables Ranged and Silenced disables Magic attacks.

The above attack is a Melee attack, this also means it is reduced by
the Melee Resistance of the target.



Magic Type
(3 in the screenshot):

This is the Damage type of the skill. It can be Rune, Spirit, Soul or
None. In the above screenshot, the magic type is Rune. This means the
damage inflicted with this attack is counted as Rune damage. This means
it’s reduced by the Rune Affinity of the target (as well as
the Melee Resistance.)



Cooldown (4
in the screenshot):

This is the cooldown time (in seconds) of the skill before it can be
re-used.



Choosing attribute points

Choosing which attribute points to increase when leveling up is fairly
free as well. Much can be said for different strategies. The most basic
one is to choose the attribute which most of your attacks are related
to. Simply open your skillbook and check what the majority of your
skills are associated with.



If you check the screenshot below, you can clearly see that
‘Focus’ is the main attribute for this class to
pick at this moment, with Body coming in as secondary.



src="/image/view/78292"
width="400">



That’s it for this “Combat for
Beginners” Article !



See you next time !