Combat

Combat in Vanilla Bagel: The Roguelike uses a tick-based, rather than a turn-based system. Understanding how this system works is vital in progressing through the game. This system encourages high movement and attack speeds in order to completely evade incoming attacks.

However, it is also a very complex system making it very difficult to get a clear overview on combat actions. This is further complicated by the unpredictability of enemy actions. Enemies don't automatically attack you when they are within range. Instead, they may opt to move to a different tile entirely (possibly causing you to miss your attack).

Ticks
Every action you perform has a tick cost associated with it. The action will be resolved through a time management que, where each action is listed in order of tick cost. Actions, such as attacks, therefore target a monster's location rather than the monster itself.

The time management queue has ordered these actions in ascending order by their tick costs and executes the top action first. Once executed, the tick-cost value of that action is subtracted from the remaining actions in the queue to ensure that slow actions don't get stuck at the bottom of the list. Example: You're in combat with a goblin and a kobold both standing adjacent to you. The Goblin gets to act first and attacks the player. You attempt to dodge and if unsuccessful it will hit you. This concludes the action and subtracts 6 from the remaining actions in the queue. He immediately selects a new action (in this case, attack) which gets placed in the queue. It now looks like: Now it is the player's turn, who will move away from both the Goblin and the Kobold. This concludes the action and subtracts 4 from the remaining actions in the queue, so both the Goblin and Kobold are now at 2. Your next action is to wait, which will allow the execution of one action (or several actions if they share the top position) at which point you get to act again. Both the Kobold and the Goblin have an attack queued, but you are no longer in reach. This means the attack will automatically miss.

Movement and Attack Speed (and Delay)
Your Movement Speed score will influence your inherent Movement Delay. Your Attack Speed score will influence your inherent Attack Delay. Equipped weapons can further influence your movement and attack delays.

In the bottom right of the screen you can see how many ticks it costs to move one tile or execute a standard attack. For Old Soldier on Hard Mode, the starting Movement Delay is 6, and Attack Delay is 2. Therefore, if an enemy is adjacent to you with an Attack Speed less than 6, you cannot move away before the attack lands.

The Swift Tactic will increase your movement speed. Accurate Attacks will decrease your attack speed.

The tooltip of your opponents shows their respective Movement and Attack delays, allowing you to carefully plan your approach in defeating them.

Fatigue
When you attack an enemy, your fatigue increases. As your fatigue increases, so does your movement delay. Fatigue decreases over time when you are not attacking. This system ensures that once you start an engagement, it is more difficult to break it off. However, by using hit & run tactics, you can interchange movement with attacks in order to keep your fatigue low.

Basic Attack Strategy
In order to be successful in combat against enemies that matter (i.e., unique 'boss' enemies), you must be fully aware of their flaws and advantages. The most important stats here are their own attack and movement delay values. For most enemies, the golden rule is: Be very mindful of your own stats. If you feel like you are too slow to completely avoid damage from an opponent, don't hesitate to take off your armor and shield, and even your weapon, and adjust your tactics. It may take a while to take them down (and you cannot risk making mistakes), but eventually they will die.
 * If their movement delay is higher than yours (they move slower), you can keep them at a distance and use ranged attacks, such as from a bow or throwing weapons.
 * If their attack delay is larger than your movement and attack delay combined, they will attack slower than you can attack and move out of the way. Use 'tab' to wait until they are adjacent to you, and then attack them and move out of the way. This works fairly decently if just your movement delay is lower than their attack delay as well, provided your own attack delay is not terribly high.

Tactics and Attack Types
There are 4 different tactics. Activating a tactic costs 1 tick. You can directly see the effects of your tactic in the tooltip to the bottom right of the screen. You can only have one tactic and one attack type active at a time. You cannot turn off tactics, but you can turn off attack types. It is recommended to use Swift Tactic by default, as it has no penalties.

Tactic: Master
Only used by the Old Soldier and the Immortal Lich. Using this tactic, your attacks will not miss but every attack will reduce your current XP by 10. This tactic (likely) still works if you have 0 XP.

Tactic: Berserk
This tactic (roughly) doubles your Attack Damage, but lowers your dodge to 1. The tooltip mentions that it increases your attack speed as well, but for the Old Soldier the attack delay did not go down from 2.

Tactic: Swift
This tactic increases your movement speed.

Tactic: Cautious
This tactic lowers your Attack Speed and Attack Damage, but increases your Dodge change.

Accurate Attacks
This increases your attack delay by 6, but makes your attacks more accurate by an unspecified amount.

Power Attacks
This increases your Attack Power (as seen by the Attack Damage stat), but has a chance to irreversibly break your weapon every time you attack.

Dodging and Defense
When you do not move out of the way of an attack, there is a chance you will be hit. The chance to dodge such an incoming attack is equal to your dodge chance. You can increase your dodge chance with the Cautious Tactic, or by leveling dodge. It is unclear whether enemies possess the ability to lower your dodge chance.

If you are hit by a physical attack, the resulting damage is reduced by your armor value. There are two types of values: "Percent of damage blocked", and "Points of Damage Blocked". In what order these values are applied is unclear. Most normal monsters have very low damage, which means that "Points of Damage Blocked" helps negate their damage to (almost) insignificant levels. Unique monsters can have very high attack ranges. For those, "percent of damage blocked" is more effective.

If you are hit by a non-physical attack, the damage is reduced by a percentage equal to the resistance value you have for that type of damage.

For enemies this works in a similar manner, except they do not seem to have physical damage reduction (or it is not listed in their tooltip). However, your weapons have a "Reduces Enemy Dodge Chance" value, which does exactly as the name implies.

Meditations
There are, at least in the early game, two meditations: Accuracy Meditation, and Defense Meditation. The former makes certain your next attack will have a 100% hit chance (if we are to believe the tooltip). The latter claims to make the next two incoming attacks miss. However, it does not necessarily increase your dodge chance to 100, so take that tooltip message with a grain of salt.

Activating a meditation is dangerous. It costs a large number of ticks, during which you are entirely open for (multiple) attacks. Therefore, applying them when inside of a dungeon is dangerous.

Meditations do not activate (and are removed) when you activate or are in Berserk Tactic. Be careful however, because if you press the meditation hotkey while in berserk stance you will still spend a number of ticks meditating, and thus (very) vulnerable.

Special Attacks
There are a number of special attacks tied to the weapons you are using.
 * Spin Attack: Attack all the enemies adjacent to you. This action costs a large amount of fatigue.
 * Become Enraged: This attack type decreases your movement delay, increases your attack damage, and increases your dodge chance. However, your character falls under an influence similar to confusion, where you cannot control all of your actions until the battle rage fades.