Documentation / Features

PvP

PvP attacks the one player you name, and nobody else. Every balance that is free on a prompt sends what the mode calls for, and every choice is made from what the game has confirmed about the target: what they have, what they can still cure with, and how close they are to a lock.

t sarapis                    # target them and hold, ready; F1 attacks
emset pvp mode offence       # F1 attack, F2 defence, F3 hinder, F4 finish; offence has no key
emset pvp                    # the target as Emunah sees them
emset pvp off                # stop attacking (F12 does this too)
emset pvp target off         # clear the target

Only the player you name

The game's list of who is in a room leaves out anyone shrouded, hidden or phased. A fight built on that list would lose an opponent the moment they concealed, or pick the wrong person outright. So a target is a name you typed, and nothing else ever sets one, except a call from a partner you trust (see allies). An ally, or you, is never accepted as a target, however it is named.

Nothing offensive is sent while PvP is off, even with a target set. F1 to F4 turn it on in a mode, and another of them switches mode. F1 pressed again stops attack mode, and F12 turns any mode off on the way to the safe room. t <name> sets the target and turns PvP on in defence, holding the attack while curing and keep-up run as they do in a fight; F1 then starts the attack. Typed mid-fight, it changes the target and keeps the mode. A key acts the moment it is pressed, on the balances the last prompt left, without waiting for the game to send another prompt. Killing your target clears it and ends the session, and so does your own death.

Every balance, every prompt

A fight against a person is won by sending more than they can cure. So each balance is a lane that chooses for itself on every prompt it is free: a Zeal verse on prayer, a mace blow carrying a chasten on balance, and an affliction or a finisher on equilibrium. What each lane sends is the mode's, and F1 to F4 choose one and turn PvP on. Offence is the mode a fresh emset pvp on starts in, and it has no key.

Each prompt sends a verse and one more move: a mace blow or an equilibrium move, never both. A smite needs equilibrium and the angel needs balance, so the second of the two would only be refused. A verse needs both balances and spends neither, so it waits until both are up and goes first. Hinder takes turns between the mace and equilibrium. Attack, finish and offence send the equilibrium move whenever one is due.

PvP shares nothing with hunting: no attack command, no setting, no move. Angel Sear goes at a person only once inquisition is likely on them, the one time fire is worth it there. Ahead of every mode's equilibrium moves is purity, the blow that finishes them, sent only when the game has given their health and it is at or under pvp.purityBelow (20%).

The kelp trail first, mentals only when they pay. Anzerloi, after a spar where every exchange paired an affliction they ate away with one they focused away: "See the problem? Matching mentals with eatables. I get rid of them before your next attack." So every mode chastens the kelp trail first, clumsiness, then healthleech, and asthma last ("I like saving asthma for the end"): a kelp eaten cures one of them, and the rest stay. No mode's chasten order names a mental, and recklessness is never given ("Take that recklessness out"). A mental affliction, anything focus cures, goes only when their focus is shut by impatience or inquisition, as the one beside fasting in the slickness sequence below, or once guilt is held on a lobelia trail and the kelp trail is full ("Mentals are for when you get a good lobelia trail to hold the guilt, and you don't have a more worthy affliction to contribute to the kelp trail"). Ahead of another mental, hellsight: "I'll go hellsight any day."

A chasten is named while the target is clean, with fewer than three afflictions confirmed: the first in the mode's order they do not have. After that it chastens body or mind, whichever pool has more missing, and the game gives one they lack. A pool they have all of comes first, because chastening it gives the capstone, addiction for body and impatience for mind, and impatience comes no other way. When the capstone lands, its whole pool is confirmed on them with it. A lock's missing piece is still named ahead of all of this.

Rebounding is not kept up while you attack. Your own blow drops it, and the skullcap takes 8.5 seconds to raise it, so between smites it never lands and only spends the puff and the smoke balance your cures need. The defence mode raises it, and so does turning PvP off.

Offence and finish read mana. When there is no fresh reading, contemplate goes on the same line as the mace blow, so equilibrium stays free for the moves.

Every attacking mode shares its first equilibrium moves: purity on their health, a shield stripped, absolve and the sap that brings it in reach (see finishing), and heresy the moment a blow rebounds. Each lane takes the first move in its list that applies. An affliction the game has confirmed on the target is not given again, and one it has not confirmed is not resent blind: the lane moves on to the next and comes back to it later. A verse goes once per prayer, and hinder ends a prayer on a rebuke when it is long enough to pay. Every attacking mode strips a shield it has seen the target raise before its mace meets it. Every ability is checked against what you actually know at the moment it is chosen, so a change to your skills needs no setting.

Offence: Anzerloi's route

Offence follows the way Anzerloi fought in three spars against a Depthswalker. Each exchange is a verse, plus either a mace blow or an equilibrium move, as above.

• The first prayer is Burn, Burn, Condemnation, each with sloth or dazzle beside it, so two herbs are hit every exchange. It closes on guilt rebuke evil, with the mace chastening the kelp trail. It used to chasten recklessness there, for three lobelia afflictions at once; Anzerloi: "Take that recklessness out."
• Once a closed prayer has paid conviction, the prayers alternate between hellsight and heresy. The hellsight prayer is Burn, Burn, Reflection, then Revelations, but Revelations goes only once asthma and another kelp affliction are confirmed on the target; until then guilt rebuke evil takes its place. Revelations is recited without a rebuke, and the angel's panic takes the mace's place beside it: on a target with hellsight, panic gives slickness instead of fear. The prayer then closes on guilt rebuke evil, with sloth.
• Hellsight needs asthma kept on. It gives a random affliction about once a second until it is smoked away, so for a while after Revelations the chasten keeps asthma on whenever it is not confirmed.
• Once they are slick, they cannot salve, so every mental affliction has to be focused. The chasten gives one mental, epilepsy, dizziness or confusion, and goes back to the kelp trail once one is on them ("Still too many mentals"). With that mental confirmed, perform fasting goes once for anorexia, which they must focus too. Their slickness is confirmed by their fangbarrier sloughing off, because the caster's own line is the same either way. If it is seen eaten away while hellsight is held, the panic goes again.
• The heresy prayer closes on rebuke heresy, which gives inquisition when guilt and spiritburn are both on the target.
• The mace works both legs evenly, by the figures our own blows report.
• At 20 conviction the prayer is Burn, Ash, Wrath. Equilibrium reads the target's mana, saps, and absolves only on a reading under half.

The prayer is a fixed cadence. Nothing in it assumes a verse landed, since a verse never tells the caster that it did. emset pvp shows which prayer the route is on, and how hard each leg has been hit.

Building a lock

A lock is enough of the target's cure routes shut at once that they cannot cure their way out: slickness stops them salving, asthma stops them smoking, anorexia stops them eating, impatience stops them focusing, and paralysis stops them touching the tree. Emunah reads the target's afflictions against the same lock definitions it uses for you.

Once at least two of those five are on the target, the next chasten carries whatever of the rest it can give, paralysis or asthma, whatever the mode. With an ally giving the others, that is often the piece still missing.

emset pvp shows it all: the target's class, their confirmed afflictions, which routes they cannot cure with and why, the locks they are in, what the lock still needs, the defences you have seen them raise, and when they last ate, sipped or salved.

Following their curing

GMCP reports only your own afflictions, so the target's are read from the game text, and only from lines that say so outright:

• Landing lines, such as a chasten taking hold.
• Symptoms anyone in the room can see, such as someone shuffling their feet in boredom.
• Cures. An herb they eat takes off the affliction it cures, recognised by the rift's own description or by the herb's name in the line, so an herb you hold none of still counts. A few cures say so in their own words, such as writhing free of ropes.
• Defences. Tattoos they touch, herbs that raise a defence, insomnia, and a quicksilver shell forming, so you know what they have up.
• Their cure balances. When they last ate, sipped or applied a salve.
• Their breathing. Someone holding their breath who exhales loudly has just been given asthma, by you or anyone else. Someone who starts holding their breath has just cured it, since nobody can hold their breath with asthma; when that follows a kelp eaten a moment before, the kelp took the asthma, and any other kelp affliction stays on them.

Emunah never guesses an affliction from the move that might have caused it. A tracked affliction stays until a cure line or an eaten herb takes it off, or you disconnect.

Their defences

When your mace rebounds off their aura of weapons rebounding, the next equilibrium raises heresy and the mace waits for it: with heresy up, a smite burns rebounding away. When their aura is seen going down, the mace goes again.

An Alchemist's reflective barrier turns part of your first blow back at you and breaks on the next, which is turned back too. Emunah notes the barrier when it first reflects and clears it when it shatters, so emset pvp shows it while it stands.

Finishing with absolve

A Priest kills with absolve, which needs the target under half their mana when it lands. As Anzerloi puts it, you win by having their mana low enough, and when that does not present itself you create the conditions to attack their mana with saps. So every attacking mode takes the kill the moment it is there:

• Absolve on a fresh reading under half.
• The sap that brings it in reach. When a fresh reading and one sap would take them under half, the sap goes at once, in any prayer, ahead of every other equilibrium move. What a sap takes is worked out from the afflictions confirmed on them: guilt, spiritburn and tenderskin count most, then limb breaks, mental afflictions and being prone, and inquisition makes the whole sap half as much again. Only confirmed afflictions count, so the figure never overestimates.
• The reading again straight after that sap, since a sap reports no figure, and absolve on it.

F1 takes a fight there by itself. It does not contemplate on every blow: a contemplate is a second of equilibrium. It estimates their mana instead, from the last reading (or full, with none), less what our saps and wraths took and about 13% for every focus they are seen to make, and only reads when the estimate is at or under 60%, when it says they are under half, or straight after the sap meant to take them there. Absolve itself always waits for a real reading. The blows work their legs, which adds to what a sap drains and holds them in place for the kill. Once the estimate is at or under 70%, wrath on the prayer and the angel's sap on equilibrium (when a sap is worth at least 5%) step them down toward half; then the sap that takes them under, a fresh reading, and absolve. The offence's drain prayer and finish mode also sap whenever absolve is not yet in reach. A reading is only trusted for a few seconds, because mana moves as the target acts. A shield is stripped before a sap or an absolve meets it.

The kill window

A window over the game text says when a kill is open: LOCKED with the locks they are in; ABSOLVE now on a real reading under half, in range or a sap away by the estimate; and JUDGE, about 6 seconds with justice on them or about 12 while they are locked (Anzerloi's estimates; Emunah does not send judge). It rises when what is open changes, updates in place otherwise, and closes when the window passes or PvP stops. A click dismisses it until something new opens.

emset pvp also shows the mana estimate, how much of the target's maximum mana a sap would take, worked out from the afflictions tracked on them, and their mana from your last contemplate, marked stale once you have sapped since.

Safety

PvP stops below pvp.stopBelowHealth, 25% by default. That floor replaces the shared critical one, and a fast drop in health does not stop PvP the way it stops a hunt, because stopping does not stop the person hitting you.

While you are locked, the lock is named on your prompt and the balance and equilibrium lanes are held, so your cures get them. Verses carry on whenever both balances are up, since a verse spends neither. When the lock breaks, the attack resumes. Any instant kill you are open to is named on the prompt too; see dangers.

While PvP holds in defence, after t <name> and before F1, the first free equilibrium goes to metabolise impatience when that focus is not already set, so a second player cannot reapply it inside about two seconds. It costs three seconds of equilibrium, so it never goes ahead of the attack; once you attack, it waits for a lock that holds the attack anyway. The focus counts as set only once the game reports the equilibrium used, so a refused one is tried again. See situational rules.

No time is lost between moves. When the game reports a balance or equilibrium back, the attack goes on that prompt, rather than waiting out Emunah's own timer for it, which runs from when the cost line arrives and so ends a moment late. And when one of Emunah's timers ends with no prompt behind it, the attack goes then, without waiting for the game to send one.

Starting PvP stops a hunt, the walking as well as the fighting, and starting a hunt stops PvP: a player and a denizen cannot share one balance.