Combat
Combat is a mechanic in Brighter Shores in which one or multiple player characters fight against monsters or each other. Currently two styles of combat exist, melee and ranged, with melee being the predominant combat style used. Players can equip weapons and armor to make themselves stronger, and potions to heal or buff themselves. Gaining combat levels will increase their max health, damage and deflect rating, allowing them to use stronger equipment and unlocking stronger monster variants with increased rewards.
The current combat professions available to the player, one per episode, are as follows.
| Episode | Profession | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  |
Hopeport |  |
Guard |
| 2 |  |
Hopeforest |  |
Scout |
| 3 |  |
Mine of Mantuban |  |
Minefighter |
| 4 |  |
Crenopolis |  |
Watchperson |
| 5 |  |
Stonemaw Hill |  |
Shieldbearer |
Combat Mechanics
Players may choose any of their currently equipped weapons to initiate combat with a monster, and may swap to any of their equipped weapons between attacks during combat. However, they may not change any part of their loadout, including transmogs, nor organize their inventory, once combat has begun. The player is also unable to any spell other than Sense and Immunity.
On the weapon interface, there will be indicators displaying how effective your current gear will be against your selected target, indicated by one to three red or green arrows, or a blue equals sign.
Melee weapons have an attack range of one tile, whilst ranged weapons have a range of five tiles. Upon initiating combat, if necessary, the player will automatically move to within attacking range for the weapon they have chosen.
When a ranged weapon runs out of ammo, its card shrinks and its image is dimmed, becoming unselectable for the rest of the fight.
There is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that shields are only effective when visibly equipped (i.e. when using one-handed weapons). However, the game is currently unable to display dynamic stat changes in combat to fully verify this claim.
Auto-retaliate
Once combat has been initiated, the player will automatically retaliate the monster after every hit. If a ranged weapon was chosen to begin combat, the player will automatically swap to a melee weapon upon running out of ammo. The game will select what it deems to be the most effective weapon from the player's current loadout based on the monster they are currently fighting.
Players may click on the ground during combat to move, which manually overrides auto-retaliation.
Movement
Movement is allowed during combat, albeit with a reduced movement speed. However, players may not interact with other objects, scenery, dropped items, or reorganize their backpack in any way. Once combat has been initiated, they must end the encounter either by winning, dying, or escaping with the Immunity spell.
If initiating combat with a ranged weapon, a player may retreat to keep their distance from mobs, kiting it to some degree to take full advantage of their ranged weapon until it runs out of ammo.
Attack Speed
After every weapon hit, a white indicator will appear on its card indicating the duration of its attack animation, after which all weapons will be darkened and placed on a global cooldown. The duration of this global cooldown is dependent on the weapon that was used to perform the previous hit. Switching weapons during the global cooldown will ensure the next hit is performed with the new weapon without delay. Since a hit occurs at the end of the attack animation, a weapon's attack speed is the sum of both its animation and global cooldown durations.
Death
Reaching zero hitpoints in combat will cause the player to die and respawn in the Hopeport infirmary. Other than inconvenience, there currently appear to be no other consequences.
Easy Battle Penalty
If the player is significantly higher levelled than the monster they are fighting, they will incur an easy battle penalty on their earned experience, ranging from 1.378% to 99.888% with increasing level difference.
Monsters
Monsters are classed into two main categories, active and passive. Killing a monster rewards experience, coins, and a chance to drop equipment of variable rarity and randomized stats. The level of equipment dropped range between the level of the monster killed and the level of the monster immediately preceding it in the same episode. Certain mobs throughout the game may also occasionally drop items used for other professions.
As the player progresses through combat professions, higher level monster variants will be unlocked, and knowledge points may be spent to unlock passive monsters as offline training methods.
Active monsters
Active monsters may be further subdivided into neutral and aggressive monsters. The names of neutral monsters are displayed in orange, while aggressive monsters are indicated by a red name. An exclamation mark (!) will appear over the head of an aggressive monster if it has targeted you, usually with an aggression radius of five tiles in any direction.
Active monsters may have vulnerabilities and/or immunities to certain elemental attack styles, as displayed on their card, and are immune to its own elemental attack style. It is generally inadvisable to fight an active monster with a weapon matching its elemental immunity.
Certain active monsters are stationary and do not move from the tile they spawn on. If these monsters do not possess a ranged attack, it is possible to either retreat out of their attack range or step underneath them safely without disengaging combat, allowing the player to heal or otherwise regenerate their health. If a player so desires, they may kill these monsters at a much lower combat level at the cost of reduced kills/hr.
Passive monsters
Passive monsters may be fought as an offline activity and combat is initiated in a similar way to that of active monsters. Passive monsters cannot physically harm the player, but require weapons with a minimum strength rating of the monster's to fight. Players may not select any weapons below this strength rating. The combat level of passive mobs is always equal to its unlock level. Presently, no passive monsters have any elemental vulnerabilities, although some will have an elemental immunity. As such it is recommended to use 
Impact weapons to maximise damage output against these monsters.
Bosses
Bosses, as indicated on their card, boast increased HP compared to normal monsters of the same level, as well as mechanics the player will be required to perform correctly to avoid taking significant damage.The only mechanic currently implemented in-game are area of effect attacks, indicated by orange highlighted tiles and a blue cast bar above their combat panel. Presently, bosses are only found as part of quests and thus may only be killed once. Most named bosses currently in-game do not have any elemental vulnerabilities or immunities.
Trivia
- Special attacks are intended to be a feature of the combat system, and are scheduled to be released some time during Early Access.
- PvP is an upcoming combat feature that will allow player characters to fight each other. Currently it is scheduled to be released some time during Early Access.
- There is a planned combat rework in development which will aim to unite the different combat professions currently in-game, but not much is currently known about this.
Update history
| Core mechanics | |
|---|---|
| In-game objects | |