The homins of Atys have the technology to make a variety of guns, and as such players can engage in ranged combat. Ranged combat is the other side of the combat tree, opposite to melee combat. Being both fighting skills, ranged and melee share many similarities (in fact, a lot more similarities than the trees of magic share amongst eachother). But there are also some important differences.

Ranged techniques

Just like in melee, by default a ranged fighter fights with their default attack. The default attack does some basic damage and costs no stamina. However, better attacks can be made by adding various techniques to the default attack. This creates special attacks that cost stamina and possible health to execute, but are more powerful than the default attack. Ranged shares some of the techniques that can also be used in melee.

Accurate Attack

The accurate attack stanza available to fighters is a skill that increases the chance their attack will not be parried or dodged by the opponent. This stanza increases the level of the attacking player by up to 20 points.

Increase Firing Rate

The only technique that's exclusive to ranged combat and can't be used with a melee weapon. It increases the attack speed of your ranged weapon by up to double. This doubles your overall damage outputs, but also doubles how fast you use up your ammo and how fast you burn up stamina.

Aim

The aim stanza can be used to increase the chance a particular body part is hit. This allows the fighter to direct attacks at unprotected body parts, and also gives the player some control over the critical hit effect. By aiming at the head, for example a skilled fighter is able to increase the chances of stunning his opponent with a critical hit.

See the next section on critical hits.

Critical Hits

Critical hits are a normal part of combat. The base critical hit rate for combat is 5%, certain weapon boosts can increase these but are very rare. The effect of a critical hit depends on the body part that was hit. The critical hit effects are listed below:

Body Part	Effect
Head	Stun
Arms	Slow Attack
Chest	Loose Stamina equal to 50% of Damage
Hands	Decrease combat skill by 20
Legs	Slow movement
Feet	Decrease Dodge by 20

Portal of Fighting