Lesson One: Introduction

January 6, 2008

One of the first things you need to understand is how the Battledome works. Each pet or opponent has a certain number of hit points. Each battledomer chooses an attack (more than one, actually), which does a certain amount of damage – ie. takes away a certain number of hit points. When a pet gets down to zero hit points, it is defeated. If both pets get down to zero hit points on the same turn, the battle is a draw.

So, how many hit points of damage can you do? That depends on a number of factors. First of all, it depends on how many ‘icons’ of damage your weapon does. For example, a Scarab Ring does 6 icons of damage. But icons are not the same thing as hit points. Your pet will do a certain number of hit points of damage per icon of the weapon you are using. How many hit points depends on your pets strength.

As you might expect, the higher your pets strength score, the more hit points of damage it will do per icon … sort of. Damage per icon actually increases only when you reach a specific strength ‘boost’. A what now? I said a BOOST … pay attention.

The boosts occur at the following strength levels - 8, 13, 20, 35, 55, 85, 125, 200, 250, 300, etc. These boosts continue every 50 strength points up to 700. There are no more strength boosts after 700.

If your pet has a strength of under 8, it will do half a hit point of damage per icon. Therefore, a pet with a strength of six will do 3 hit points of damage with a Scarab Ring (6 icon weapon) and 5 hit points of damage with a Ramtor’s Spellbook (10 icon weapon). When a pet reaches a strength of 8, it will do .75 hit points of damage per icon, etc.

Here are the strength boosts:

Less than 8 str. = .5 damage per icon
8 str. = .75 damage
13 str. = 1.0 damage
20 str. = 1.25 damage
35 str. = 1.5 damage
55 str. = 2.0 damage
85 str. = 2.5 damage
125 str. = 3.0 damage
200 str. = 4.5 damage
250 str. = 5.5 damage
300 str. = 6.5 damage
350 str. = 7.5 damage
400 str. = 8.5 damage
450 str. = 9.75 damage
500 str. = 11 damage
550 str. = 12 damage
600 str. = 13 damage
650 str. = 14 damage
700 str. = 15 damage

So, while a pet with 13 strength will do 6 hit points of damage with a Scarab Ring, a pet with 125 strength will do 18 hit points of damage. Just remember, the damage your pet does will NOT increase until you hit the next boost, so the pet with 125 strength will still only do 18 hit points of damage if it trains and increases its strength to 140 or 170 or even 199. It will not do any more damage until it hits the 200 strength boost, when the damage it does will increase from 18 hit points to 27.

Simple enough, right? Right! … Not! There are a few other factors … sorry.

One factor is the stance that you choose for your pet. If you don’t choose a specific stance or choose the Cautious stance, then the calculations above are true. However, different stances will affect how much damage your pet will do. If you choose to Defend, you only do 80% of the normal damage. If you choose a normal stance, you do 120% of the damage above. If you choose to Jump & Attack, you do 130% of the damage. If you choose a Fierce attack, you do 140% of the damage. And if you choose a Berserk attack (which only pets at level 50+ can do), you do 150% of the damage.

So, a pet with 58 strength and a Ramtor’s Spellbook (10 icons) will do the following damage:

No stance or Cautious stance: 20 hp damage
(10 icons x 2.0 boost x 100%)
Defend: 16 hp damage
Normal: 24 hp damage
Jump & Attack: 26 hp damage
Fierce: 28 hp damage
Berserk: 30 hp damage

So you always want to do the biggest attack you can, right? Uh … whoa there, Jack, you’re getting ahead of yourself. Something to remember – if you choose a Fierce attack, you do 140% damage, BUT your opponent also does 140% damage. And these things are multiplied together. If you do a Berserk and so does your opponent, it is 150% of 150% damage to BOTH of you. If the same pet above (58 str, Ramtor’s Spellbook) and its opponent both do a Berserk attack, it will do 45 hp of damage, not 30, but the damage it takes will be multiplied the same way.Gotta be careful with those Berserk attacks, you see?

The other thing is you have to choose between a certain attack stance OR a faerie ability OR a species ability. For example, I can do a Fierce attack or Sink (a faerie ability) or use my Lupe Breath (which also does damage - no ‘breath mint’ jokes, please), but not all at once on the same turn.

Now, there are two more factors to consider. The first is simply random - a ‘luck’ factor for each attack of +/- 10%. So, the pet above that would do 30 hit points of damage (theoretically) would actually do 27-33 hit points of damage depending on the luck factor.

The other factor is a defensive one. Different species of pets have different resistance to different attacks. For example, a Pteri has 40% resistance to air attacks and a Grarrl has 20% resistance to physical attacks. In the case of my guild friend, Love 45, the blue Usul, she’s doing pretty good because usuls have a lot of resistance – 20% resistance to dark attacks & 10% resistance to water attacks, but, I hate to tell ya, 10% weakness to fire attacks. Sorry, Love 45.

Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute … air attacks? water attacks? Ok, I was hoping you weren’t going to ask about that *sigh*

You see, weapons do a certain number of icons of damage – a Scarab Ring does six icons, right? – but they also do a certain KIND of damage. A Scarab Ring does 2 icons of water damage, two icons of dark damage, and two icons of physical damage. So, it will do a little less damage to a pet like a Grarrl that has a resistance to physical attacks and a little more damage to a pet like a Jubjub that has a weakness to fire attacks.

What kinds of icons/attacks are there? Again, thanks for asking *sigh* Here are the different kinds of icons – air, earth, water, fire, light, dark, physical. A Ramtor’s Spellbook and a Scuzzy’s Comb both do 10 icons of damage, but they do different KINDS of icons of damage. Ramtor’s spellbook does 5 icons of light and 5 icons of dark. Scuzzy’s Comb does 5 icons of light and 5 icons of physical.

The kind of icons of damage done matters in terms of defense. As you will see, some weapons attack, some weapons defend, and others – dual duty weapons – do BOTH. Dual duty weapons are great … IF you train defence as well as strength. Some people just train to increase strength. Personally, I don’t think that’s a good idea, so I train both strength and defence. One good dual duty weapon is … TADA – the Scarab Ring. In addition to doing 6 icons of damage it defends six icons as well !

Defence works like strength, just … er … backwards. Using a Scarab Ring, a pet with 58 strength will do 12 hp of damage. It will also defend against certain types of attacks, specifically, 3 icons of fire defence and 3 icons of physical defence. This is pretty good since both of these are pretty common kinds of attacks.

So, if the same pet also has a defence of 58, using the Scarab Ring, it can also defend up to 6 hp of fire AND 6 hp of physical damage. If your opponent only does, say … air damage, the Scarab Ring won’t help you, but if it does fire and/or physical damage, it will help.

Let’s say your opponent has 60 strength and uses a Scuzzy’s Comb against you. This will do 20 hit points of damage against you (10 icons x 2.0 boost). 10 of these hit points will be light damage and 10 will be physical damage. If you use your Scarab Ring on the same turn your opponent uses their Scuzzy’s Comb, you will block 6 hp of the 10 hp of physical damage, so they will do 14 hp damage instead of 20. If you use two Scarab Rings (remember, you can use one ability and two weapons each turn), you will block all of the 10 hp of physical damage and they will only do 10 hp total, the 10 hp of light damage that you didn’t block.

Anyway, that’s a very basic overview of how the Battledome works. Next we can talk about training, weapons, and faerie abilities.

Posted in Battledome Tutorial