Warriors

The role of the 'warriors' is to hold the front line in combat. Warriors are typically heavily armored though it is possible to develop a character's skills to dodge attacks rather than to block them. Armor penalizes dodging skills meaning that there is a real sense in developing a 'Conan the Barbarian' like profile (a character wearing almost nothing who holds the attention of adversaries in melee combat)

The gameplay in melee combat is straight forward. With a weapon in hand, players select an adversary that they want to attack. Their character performs a basic cyclic attack action which the player can override with special attack moves depending on the situation. Some basic special attacks such as 'rapid blow' and 'powerful blow' improve the player's damage rate a little at the cost of 'stamina' energy. More impressive special moves can only be used in given situations such as after a successful parry, after a critical hit and so on.

The type of adversary determines the types of weapon that will be effective, some adversaries being impervious to slashing weapons, others to blunt weapons, and so on. For each weapon type players can prepare a separate set of special moves, depending on their skills. As the players progress through the game the advanced special moves that they learn are limited to a smaller and smaller set of weapons to which they can be applied. As a result, a serious warrior must develop skills in a number of different weapons in order to be effective.

Damage in Ryzom is localized. The damage inflicted by a strike to the legs will depend on the armor worn on the legs, and so on. What's more, an exceptionally successful attack (known as a 'critical') provokes an additional effect, depending on the location that is hit. A 'critical' strike to the legs slows the adversary's movement for a short while, a 'critical' strike to the arms slows the attack rate, and so on. Some of the special moves that the players can learn (or invent) incorporate an 'aiming' component, altering the chance of hitting a given location on the adversary.

Warriors can also make use of the 'defense' interface. This interface allows the player to select a defense method (parry or dodge) and decide whether to favor protection against attacks to a given location (legs, arms, etc). In the low level game creatures of the same type tend to use attacks to the same body locations meaning that it suffices to select the best defense strategy for the given opponent. As the game progresses the player may come across opponents with a more subtle behavior, requiring them to switch their defense strategy reactively.