Guide to Combat
As a wastelander, you can use many objects as weapons including ranged weapons, melee weapons and even your own fists.
When to use Combat
Whilst combat is frowned on in most situations and murder of your fellow wastelanders should be a last resort, there are exceptions.
Combat Mode
A wastelander can enter combat mode via the Actions menu on the left-hand side. It is otherwise known as Harm Mode.
When in this mode, most normal interactions no longer work. For example if you try to pick up an object by left clicking on it, you will instead attack it. If you try to open a door by left clicking on it, you will instead attack the door. Right clicking will no longer open the item menu. What your clicks do depends on what you have in your hand.
When you left click somewhere, you will attack with the item you are holding in your active hand, if any. If this item is not a weapon (e.g. a piece of paper), you will not do anything. If you are holding nothing, you will attack with your fist. If the weapon requires ammo, you will not do anything if there is no available ammo and you may need to first load or press your use in hand interaction (Z by default) on the weapon. Ammo can be found around the wastelands.
When you right click someone with an empty hand, you will "shove" them, attempting to knock them down. If they are holding a weapon, you will attempt to disarm them. Both these things are good for when you need to get away from a dangerous person, or for when you're cornered.
When you right click while holding a melee weapon, you will do a wide attack with it, in the direction of your cursor. The shape of a wide attack varies from weapon to weapon - for example, a spear will thrust forward, hitting a narrow area that reaches a fair distance away from your body, and a baseball bat will unleash a wide swing to hit anything in about a 90 degree arc in front of you. Whatever your weapon collides with will be hit. Ranged weapons (like guns) don't have wide attacks; you just shoot them.
Wide attacks are good for when your target is running around, either to fight back or to run away; it's hard to click on a runner, but you don't need to click directly on your target with wide attacks. Wide attacks can even hit multiple targets; that collateral damage can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how evil you are. If you want to minimize collateral damage, or make sure your attack definitely hits a specific object (or person), left clicking is the way to go.
Weapons
A weapon can range from a glass shard, a screwdriver, a shotgun, a knife, a club or even your fists. Damage is dependent on the weapon which you can see if you click on the lightning bolt icon after examining it.
Some weapons can be interacted with using the interact in hand button (default Z) to equip them to both hands. For melee weapons that can do this (such as mops, spears, and baseball bats) it will increase their damage considerably. For ranged weapons that can do this (such as bows and some larger guns) two-handing them is necessary to fire them at all.
Ranged Weapon Usage
There are several ranged weapons which can be acquired. Most require some sort of ammo either lethal or non-lethal. If ammo is required, you will first need to ensure the weapon is loaded and if not, load it with ammo. After loading the weapon, you can then put it in your active hand and left click at a target to fire a shot. Note that you cannot shoot diagonally past if a wall is adjacent to you. After firing, some weapons will cycle automatically, others won't. If your gun clicks, this means you need to cycle to the next round in the ammo clip. More ammo can be acquired from around the wasteland.
To summarise:
- Put an empty weapon in your active hand
- Cycle the weapon to prime it
- Load ammo into an empty weapon
- Left click a target to fire at it (refer to Server Rules)
- Cycle the weapon by pressing Z (if it's not automatic)
- Left click a target to fire at it
- Cycle the weapon again by pressing Z again (if necessary)
Troubleshooting: If you attempt to reload the weapon with a new ammo clip and there is unused ammo in the current clip, such will fall to the ground. If you put ammo into an unprimed weapon and attempt to shoot, the ammo may fall onto the ground unused. Cycle an empty weapon before loading.