Combat

DragonMineZ replaces vanilla fighting with its own combat system: weapon movesets with real windups, stamina, blocking and parrying, poise and guard breaks, a layered defense, damage-scaled knockback, dashes and passive dodges, ki charging with the Ki Surge, a dedicated combat flight mode and weapons made of ki. This page explains what you experience in a fight; the numbers are the server defaults.

Configured in: Combat Config

Melee attacks

Every weapon is bound to a moveset: a combo chain of attacks you cycle through as you keep swinging, each with its own reach, sweep angle, windup and damage. Bare fists have a moveset too. See Special Weapons for the movesets and the signature weapons that use them.

Combos: consecutive attacks step through the moveset (attack 1, 2, 3…) and loop. Different weapon classes swing, sweep and reach very differently.
Dual-wielding: hold a weapon in each hand and your combo alternates hands automatically.
Reach: each moveset has its own range (a staff out-reaches a sword), on top of your normal reach.
Windup: a melee swing lands a moment after you press attack, between 3 and 7 ticks depending on the swing animation and the weapon. Other players see your swing as it starts. The server times the windup and checks every target against the real attack hitbox and line of sight before the hit counts.
Blocking cancels swings: you can't deal melee damage while blocking, and starting to block cancels a swing in progress.
Attack speed: however high your attack speed is, there are always at least 2 ticks between attacks. You can't attack while riding a mount by default.
Giant enemies: hitting a giant enemy (Hirudegarn, Slug, Janemba…) counts once per swing, no matter how many of its body parts you touch.

Melee damage comes from Strength (and strike damage from Strike Power); critical hits are explained on Stats and Attributes. Weapons from other mods get a DMZ moveset too: see Weapon Attributes.

Stamina

Swinging, blocking, dashing, sprinting and combat flight all cost Stamina. A melee attack costs stamina in proportion to its damage, and extra gravity makes each attack cost more. Your stamina pool and its regeneration come from Resistance and Vitality (see Stats and Attributes).

Blocking

Hold Right Mouse with empty hands to block. A block reduces the damage of incoming hits by 5% to 65%, scaled by your defense, but every blocked hit costs stamina (a quarter of the damage you blocked).

Poise and guard breaks

While you block, part of the incoming damage (a quarter of it, or 1.5 times that share against non-player attackers) is dealt to your Poise as well. When your poise or your stamina runs out, your guard breaks:

you are stunned for 3 seconds (you can't move or act);
hits you take while guard-broken ignore 66% of your defense.

Poise starts regenerating again 5 seconds after it last took damage. Your max poise is 25 plus a value derived from your defense.

Parrying

Start a block within 150 ms of a hit and it becomes a parry:

you take no damage;
the attacker is knocked back and staggered for 3 seconds (−25% movement and attack speed), and a non-player attacker is also stunned;
ki blasts are deflected and strike attacks are countered;
a parried attacker's melee attacks cost twice as much stamina for 4 seconds.

Taking damage

Every hit you take goes through your defense: penetration, negation of tiny hits, flat absorption, percentage reduction (capped at 88%, or 93% with Protection enchantments) and adaptive mitigation, then blocking and Ki Protection. The full step-by-step is on Stats and Attributes. Because defense is multiplied by your Power Release, fighting uncharged leaves you far more exposed.

Knockback

Knockback scales with how much of a hit got through your defense and how big it was:

a hit your defense almost fully absorbed only pushes you 15% as far;
a hit that deals at least 15% of your max health counts as heavy and pushes you harder the bigger it is, up to 2.5× the normal knockback.

Knockdowns

In fights that don't allow kills, a hit that would have killed a player knocks them down for 30 seconds instead. This happens in party PvP, with Friendly Fist switched on (a Ki Action in the Utility Menu), when sparring a Shadow Dummy, and while a Namekian or Majin is preparing an absorption. World boss fights have their own knockout rules.

While you are down, the K.O. effect shows how long until you get back up (see Effects).

Logging out in combat

If you log out in the middle of a fight, you die the next time you log in.

Mobility

Dash and perfect evasion

Press R to dash, or dash twice for a double dash. A single dash has a 4-second cooldown and a double dash 12 seconds. Dashing at the right moment, within 200 ms of an attack, is a perfect evasion; after one, the next perfect evasion can't trigger for 1.5 seconds (a dash during that time is a normal dash).

A tap of the Instant Transmission key shares the dash cooldown, and warping to a master or player through the Instant Transmission menu has a 30-second cooldown (see Skills). For evasion techniques such as Afterimage and Solar Flare, see Evasion Techniques.

Lock-on

Press Z to lock on to a target. Homing ki attacks follow your locked-on target (your lock-on range comes from the Ki Sense skill), a tap of Instant Transmission takes you to it, and strike attacks rush straight at it from up to 64 blocks away. In third person, the crosshair glides to where your attacks will land and softly locks onto hostile targets in reach.

Speed and passive dodge

Resistance raises your Speed (see Stats and Attributes). If you know the Meditation skill, Speed also lets you automatically dodge basic melee attacks:

against players, you need to be faster than the attacker: 2.5× their Speed at Meditation level 1, down to 1.4× at level 10;
against other enemies, you need a higher Battle Power: 2× theirs at Meditation level 1, down to 1× at level 10.

Once you just meet the requirement your dodge chance is 10%, and it grows the further you exceed it, up to 35% against players and 50% against other enemies at Meditation level 10 (at level 1 the maximum is 60% of those values). Each dodge costs 3% of your max stamina, there are at least 0.5 seconds between two dodges, and every consecutive dodge makes the next one less likely (×0.75) until you go 3 seconds without dodging. Glinds get a higher dodge chance from their Celestial Body racial skill.

Ki charging and Ki Surge

Hold C to charge ki and raise your Power Release up to your limit; double-tap it to jump straight to your maximum. Power Release multiplies your damage, defense, speed and Battle Power (see Stats and Attributes).

Taking a hit while charging stops the charge (and any surge progress), and you can't start charging again for half a second.
While you charge, arrows and other non-ki projectiles are deflected.
Hold Alt + C to lower your release, or cap it with Limit Release in the Utility Menu (see Menus).

Ki Burst

The moment you reach full Ki while charging, you release a Ki Burst that pushes back enemies within 8 blocks whose Battle Power is lower than yours.

Ki Surge

Keep charging at full Ki and the Ki Surge bar fills (4 seconds by default; letting go of C empties it). When the bar is full you enter a Ki Surge:

a big burst damages and blows back everyone within 10 blocks, for up to a quarter of your max Ki (less with distance). It can never kill;
for 12 seconds your ki attacks deal 15% more damage and fly 25% faster, you charge techniques 20% faster, move and fly 25% faster and attack 40% faster, and your aura grows;
but spending Ki costs 25% more and drains the bar (spending X% of your max Ki removes 1.5 × X% of the bar);
being stunned ends the surge. After a surge ends or is lost, you wait 15 seconds before the next one.

An Android's Absorption Barrier, which you can keep up while moving, can also force a Ki Surge when it overflows (see Racial Skills).

Ki Transfer

Hold Ctrl + Alt + Right Mouse while looking at another player to give them your Ki. Every giver also raises the receiver's STR, SKP, DEF and PWR by 5%, while the giver slows down, can't fight and is left weaker for a while afterwards. Ki that doesn't fit in the receiver's bar goes into the ki attack they are charging. See Ki Transfer.

Ki Protection and Ki Infusion

These two skills, bought from masters, only work while switched on (in the Skills menu, or under Ki Actions in the Utility Menu):

Ki Protection reduces incoming damage by 2.5% per level (up to 25%), spending Ki equal to 15% of the incoming damage. With too little Ki, the reduction is scaled down to what you can pay.
Ki Infusion adds bonus melee damage equal to 2.5% of your max Ki per level (up to +25%), spending 2.5% (level 1) to 7.5% (level 10) of your max Ki per hit. It only triggers if you have enough Ki.

See Skills for the masters who teach them.

Ki weapons

The Ki Manipulation skill lets you form weapons out of ki from the Ki Weapons entry of the Utility Menu while your main hand is empty. Each one uses a weapon moveset, deals bonus damage from your Ki Damage (×10% per Ki Manipulation level) and costs Ki on every attack:

Ki weapon	Moveset	Bonus damage	Ki per attack
Ki Blade	Sword	Ki Damage × 0.25 × (level × 10%)	6
Ki Scythe	Scythe	Ki Damage × 0.45 × (level × 10%)	8
Ki Claw Lance	Trident	Ki Damage × 0.65 × (level × 10%)	14

Ki Manipulation also raises the damage of basic ki blasts (Alt + Right Mouse) by 5% of your Ki Damage per level.

Ki blasts and Ki Volley

Hold the Second Function key (Alt) and right-click to fire ki from your hands:

Ki blast: release quickly to fire a single ki blast; your shots alternate between your hands. A blast costs 2% of your max Ki + 8 and deals your Ki Damage × (0.5 + 0.05 × your Ki Manipulation level), with a 1.6-second cooldown.
Ki Volley: hold for 0.3 seconds to fire 6 ki blasts, one every 3 ticks, each dealing 60% of a single blast's damage (360% in total). A volley costs 3 times the Ki of a blast and has a 30-second cooldown, and you can't fire single blasts for about 2 seconds after it. While the volley is on cooldown, holding fires a single blast.
Small ki blasts don't slow down story enemies.

Combat flight

The Fly skill has two modes, switched with Alt + F: Search Fly, a fast, free-steering 360° flight for travel, and Combat Fly, a momentum-based hover tuned for fighting.

Taking or dealing damage while in Search Fly switches you to Combat Fly, and you stay locked in it for 8 seconds.
With Mode Lock on (Utility Menu, Movement → Fly), you go back to the flight mode you chose once that lock ends.
Combat Fly is faster while you sprint or hold the movement key, drains Ki at half the normal flight rate, and lets you boost with a flight impulse that costs a little Ki and has a short cooldown.
The Flight Speed option in the same menu caps your flight speed between 5% and 100%.

See Skills and Controls.

Techniques in combat

Ki attacks, strike attacks and evasion techniques are fired from your technique slots (Alt + 1–4 and Ctrl + 1–4); they need the Ki Control skill, at least 5% Power Release and an empty main hand. Every strike attack starts a short shared cooldown (3 seconds, halved when it misses), so owning several strikes doesn't let you chain them. With no enemy in reach, a strike attack rushes forward for up to 2 seconds, and missing completely refunds part of its Ki. Two beams that meet head-on start a beam clash, and two fighters rushing at each other with strike attacks start a strike clash. Everything about techniques is on Techniques.

When you hit a target with a strike attack, a cinematic camera films the technique from a third-person angle, and a player you hit sees it too. You can't look around with the mouse or toggle lock-on until it ends. Boss combos and grabs against you are filmed the same way. See Strike Attacks.

Who you can hit

Party members are always friendly unless your party has PvP switched on, players fighting the same world boss with you are friendly even then (see World Bosses), and tournament rivals are always hostile. By default DMZ's combat targeting treats other players and every mob as hostile, except villagers, iron golems and the guards of the Guard Villagers mod, which are neutral.

Masters can't be pushed or moved (they only fall). They are immune to potions, fire, explosions and drowning, and they can't be leashed, ridden or pulled by ki attacks.