Battle Tactics

Skill
Class	Warrior
Level	15
Prerequisites
Defensive Fighting

Usage

tactics - Display known tactics

As warriors advance through their training, they may begin to notice certain moves and combinations of attacks that work better than others. These skills allow formal training in how to develop and use those combinations, to make individual fighting styles more specialized and refined.

After learning the 'battle tactics' skill, warriors will begin to develop their attack combinations. New combinations are usually discovered once a fighter leaves a battle, when he has time to think and analyze what just happened.

Mechanics

After learning the skill try to use different skills during battle and after the fight is over you may get a notification that you learned a combo. Executing tactics low will show you a screen like this:

Low level attack combinations
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Length 4 | (missing)     | leap attack   | kick          | (missing)

Showing you that you know the two middle skills in the 4 part combo. Note that for players with blind mode enabled the display uses the letter x for (missing) skills in the combo to make it easier to read with a screen reader.

Details

• The minimum combo length is 3
• The maximum combo length is 8
• You won't get the same skill twice in a row
• You won't get the same skill twice separated by another skill
• Some skills, such as charge and backstab, start combat and can only be used at the start of a combination
• Some skills, such as disarm and berserk, will only appear once in a combination
• As your tactics skills improve, you will unlock longer combinations
• Skills must be successfully performed to learn new moves in a combination
• Not all skills need to be successfully performed to complete a combination - for example, a failed leap may still trigger the combination
• The maximum combo length for low tactics is 7
• The maximum combo length for advanced tactics is 8
• The maximum combo length for cross-class tactics is 8
• The initial number of low tactics is 9
• The initial number of discoverable advanced tactics is 18
• The initial number of discoverable cross-class tactics is 15
• You can get one length 8 combo consisting of advanced tactics and two in cross-class tactics for a maximum total of three 8 length combos.
• There is an achievement for discovering 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 patterns respectively.
• There is an achievement for successfully executing 6, 7 and 8 length pattern respectively.

Eligible Skills

Battle Tactics

These skills can appear in 'tactics low' combos:

• Bash
• Charge (start of combo only)
• Cleave
• Jab
• Kick
• Knockback (cannot appear twice in the same combo)
• Lunge
• Pommel Strike
• Riposte
• Stomp
• Taunt
• Thrust

Advanced Tactics

These skills can appear in 'tactics advanced' combos, along with the above skills:

• Berserk (only appears once)
• Disarm (only appears once)
• Ground strike
• Intimidate (Note: you must specifically target a mob. intimidating a room does not trigger or help to complete the combo, even if mobs are intimidated by it.)
• Shield Slam
• Whirlwind

Cross-Class Tactics

These skills can appear in 'tactics cross' combos, along with the above skills:

• Backstab (start of combo only)
• Bloodletting Stab
• Crippling strike
• Dirt Throwing
• Feint
• Flourish
• Knife Throwing
• Shadow Bind
• Shadow Strike
• Trip

Bonuses

When executing combos you get bonuses for executing long chains which temporarily boost the following stats. The bonuses can stack:

• Armor
• Attacks
• Damroll
• Dexterity
• Dodge
• Hitroll
• Parry
• Strength
• Warrior Skill Level
• Normsave

Extra Bonuses

When you receive an extra bonus, you get the extra bonus in addition to one of the bonuses above. Any movement or hitpoints received boost your current stats only. You can receive more than one extra bonus at a time.

• Movement
• Hit points
• Morale

In addition to the stat bonuses you also receive some experience, making executing combos worthwhile most of the time.

Hints

You pretty much only learn new parts of combinations by doing them in groups of three. For example, if you have a piece of a combination that uses kick then riposte, you'll want to try patterns like "bash kick rip bash". This will check for two groups of three at the same time - The first part of the pattern will check for "bash kick rip", and the second part will check for "kick rip bash". Obviously this would only be useful if you're trying to work out a pattern that has unknown (missing) skills both before and after the known skills.

Changes

During Advent 2015, some changes were made to battle tactics:- knockback and ground strike were added to the eligible pattern skills, and two new skills improvise tactic and create tactic were created, as part of the level 37 expansion.

In Febuary 2017 battle tactics were changed to allow combo attacks to have both ground strike and jab in them and to prevent combo attacks with ground strike from having various thief skills in them.

In May 2017 shield slam was added as a skill, and became eligible for advanced tactics.

In January 2018 shield slam was excluded from combos with ground strike.

In May 2019 there was a large reorganization of skill levels and dependencies, causing cleave and leap attack to swap places to battle tactics and advanced tactics, respectively.

Pattern creation skills

Improvise tactic

Improvise tactic allows the creation of temporary battle tactics. Depending on how well the skill is known and the length of the pattern, a number of skills can be choosen, with the rest the skills been randomized e.g. when the skill is learnt to 84%: length 3-5 allows for 1 specified skill, length 6-7 allows for up to 2 specified skills, and length 8 allows for up to 3 specified skills.

Syntax: tactic improvise <length> <skillnames> [-force]

Each creation attempt use 200 movement. Omitting the force flag simulates the output without actually creating anything. The newly created patterns can be viewed by typing tactic all

example: tactic impro 8 leap charge lunge -f

Improvising new tactic of length 8.
  Using skill - leap attack
  Using skill - charge
  Using skill - lunge
You quickly run through a number of possible combinations and pick the
most promising one to use as an improvised tactic.
The new tactic is:
Length 8 

Create tactic

Create tactic allows the creation of a new permanent battle tactic, by spending one practice.