HANDS ON GUIDE

3 – Combat

What is best in life? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women.

Combat in Age of Conan is different to the standard MMO model; it's more involved than the click-to-attack model World of Warcraft and its ilk utilise. In Conan, you can manually target (which sometimes confers a damage bonus), and you have a wide variety of moves at your disposal. The default controls are pressing ‘1’for a left swing, ‘2’ for an overhead attack and ‘3’ for a right swing. When you start using melee combo moves, you have to enter these basic attacks in the order shown on screen. None of these basic attacks use stamina, so you can keep chopping away, unlike the main combos, which do a lot more damage. This means you should try and avoid entering combat unless you have a full bar of stamina. Activities such as running drain your stamina, so take a rest and recharge before taking on mobs.

Age of Conan also takes account of your position when you're fighting, and it can make a big difference to how much damage you can deal to enemy critters. If you're fighting two or more mobs in melee combat, your strikes could hit them simultaneously. Keep going and you can kill multiple enemies in much less time than it would take if you were fighting them one after the other.

Finally, bear in mind that your character will never auto-attack, so if you're disconnected in an area with mobs, you may log back in and see a dead body.

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