Combat

A player engaged in combat.

Another player engaged in combat.

The combat actions interface.

Choose your first attack!

Combat is a mechanic in Brighter Shores in which several player characters fight monsters (PvE or PvM) or each other (PvP, to be released). 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		Name
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 their equipped armor, weapons or potions once combat has begun.

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.

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 (GCD). The duration of this GCD is dependent on the weapon that was used to perform the previous hit. Switching weapons during the GCD 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 GCD durations.

Reaching 0 hitpoints in combat will cause the player to die and respawn in the Hopeport infirmary. Other than inconvenience, there appear to be no other consequences.

Monsters

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 preceeding 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 variants of mobs will be unlocked, and knowledge points may be spent to unlock passive monsters as AFK training methods.

Most monsters are neutral and their names are displayed in orange, but some monsters are aggressive, indicated by a red name. An exclamation mark (!) will appear over the head of an aggressive monster if it has aggroed onto you.

Normal monsters have vulnerabilities and/or immunities to certain elemental attack styles, as displayed on their card. Monsters are immune to its own elemental attack style, and it is generally inadvisable to fight a monster with a weapon matching its elemental immunity.

Passive monsters may be fought as an AFK activity and combat is initiated in a similar way to that of active monsters. However, passive monsters require weapons above a certain strength rating to fight, and players may not select any weapons below this strength rating.

Certain monsters are one-time bosses fought as part of quests, which are of greater difficulty, boasting increased HP when compared to normal monsters of the same level. Bosses also have access to AoE attacks as indicated by orange highlighted tiles and a blue cast bar above their combat panel. Currently, quest bosses do not have any elemental vulnerabilities or immunities.

Trivia

• Special attacks were intended to be a feature of the combat system, but have not yet been released with Early Access launch.
• 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.

Update history

This information has been manually compiled. Some updates may not be included yet.

• update 6 November 2024 (Update):
  • Combat was included in the first public early-access release of the game.