Shards of the Realm: battle mechanics

Short tutorial about core game mechanics for tactical battles in Shards of Realm. Learn how to effectively command your squad and utilize the varied combat system to achieve victory. Discover the importance of positioning, class abilities, and environmental interactions in your strategy.

Basics

There are four main parameters for each character in battle: Health (red bar), Action Points (green bar), Mind Points (blue bar), and Shield (light blue bar near the health).

Health
Health indicates how much damage a character can take before death.
There are three types of health: Current, Maximum, and Lowest. Lowest health indicates the minimum health of the character during the battle; even if the current health at the end of the battle is more than the lowest, the lowest value will be used. For example, if a character has 100 HP and takes 10 damage, then is healed back to 100, after the battle their health will be 90, and they will need time to restore their HP. Can be increased by Constitution attribute.

Wounds
Usually, a character can regenerate health over time on the global map, even while traveling, but only if their health is above the wounds threshold. If their health falls below this threshold, it can only be restored by resting in the player's fortress. Characters may be assigned to work, and the player can rest the whole party in the fortress, but if a character has wounds, it is important to keep them in the fortress until their health is above the wounds threshold.

Action Points
Action points indicate how many actions a character can perform during their turn or how far they can move. The base action points equal 10. Different actions require different amounts of AP. The distance a character can move per 1 AP may be increased by passive abilities, the Dexterity attribute, or skills. Players can spend AP as they desire; there is no limit to the number of attacks, no requirements to move, and no necessity to spend all AP in the current turn. Action points are restored to their maximum at the beginning of a new turn.

Mind Points
Some skills require Mind Points (MP) to be used. MP is not restored during battle but is restored to its maximum at the end of the battle. The maximum MP can be increased by the Intelligence attribute.

Mechanics of Hide and Sight Radius
At the start of the battle, characters of different parties are hidden from each other. For the player's party, a white hood icon indicates that nobody can see the character yet. This means the player does not know the positions of enemies and has to find them first. Each character in the game has their own sight radius, which is decreased during the night. Night vision can mitigate this effect. Once a character is revealed by an enemy character, all allies can see and know the revealed character's location.

Watching and Opportunity Attacks
A red eye icon indicates that a character may perform an opportunity attack if an enemy character moves across their sight cone and there is at least one skill that can reach them. For more information, refer to the section related to watch attacks.

Attacks, Armor, Covers

There are several types of attacks: directional projectile, ballistic projectile, and instant damage (usually AoE).

Directional projectile and ballistic projectile attacks are similar except for their projectile trajectories.

Most attacking skills in the game are directional projectiles. This means when an attack is performed, the projectile is fired within a cone. The angles of this cone are based on the skill and can be decreased by the Accuracy attribute. Most projectile attacks can harm both enemies and allies, so keep this in mind when positioning.

Directional single-target attacks always do critical damage when hitting an enemy's critical part (usually the head). AoE or DoT damage cannot trigger critical hits by default, as they cannot hit specific parts of the body.

Aiming
All projectile-based skills aim at the center of the enemy's body. However, some skills allow you to choose a specific body part to aim at. Aiming at a critical part can be harder to hit, so keep this in mind.

Armor

Armor is separated into Magic Armor and Physical Armor. Each attack skill has its damage type, which is reduced by the corresponding armor type.

Additionally, armor is categorized by front, side, back, and indirect. Indirect armor is used for AoE and DoT calculations, while the other types are used when a directional projectile skill hits the target. Typically, front armor is much higher than side and back armor, meaning attacking an enemy from the front is usually not a good idea.
Positioning for attack

Damage Mitigation Through Weapons

Weapons in the game are not just decorative elements with numbers. They can block part of the damage and prevent skill effects from affecting the character when a projectile hits the weapon. For example, a Protector's shield reduces the damage taken when it absorbs the hit and also negates any secondary effects like bleeding, poison, etc.

Covers

Each object in the game, including other characters, can be used as cover from directional attacks. There are no precalculated values that reduce the chance to hit; instead, these objects act as obstacles for projectile trajectories. There is also a crouch button that allows characters to use small environmental obstacles as cover.

However, crouching itself does not provide any additional protection.

Watching and Opportunity Attacks

Characters can act outside their turn under specific conditions. If, at the end of their turn, a character has enough action points (as well as mind points, ammo, etc.) but hasn't spent them, they may execute one opportunity attack if an enemy moves within their sight range. Performing any other actions, except for movement, does not provoke opportunity attacks.

A character may perform only one opportunity attack during the enemy's turn. The number of opportunity attacks does not accumulate. So, even if a character has action points left and a passive ability, only one attack may be triggered.

Some characters have a passive ability to perform a watching attack even if they don't have enough action points left.

Sight range is a 120-degree cone, with distance based on character attributes, day/night cycles, night vision, etc.

Tip: Some skills, such as the Protector's Taunt and the Priest's Fright, can turn enemies to a specific direction. This can help avoid enemy opportunity attacks when you need to break distance from the enemy.

Grayed Out Skills

Skills have requirements that must be met in order to be used. If a skill cannot currently be used, it will appear semi-transparent. The skill icon will also contain additional informational icons indicating why it cannot be used at the moment.

Common issues include being too close to the enemy, not having enough action points, mind points, or ammo.

You can see full information by hovering over the skill button and checking the tooltip.