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11. Your first fight

Make an enemy, meet it on the road, and win (or lose) the fight.

Make an enemy

Open Atlas → Enemies (or Build mode → Enemy) and choose Create Enemy. Describe it ("a frost-bitten zombie that haunts the tundra") and choose Generate. The AI fills in its stats, danger level, the effects its attacks can inflict, its weaknesses and resistances, and what it drops.

Review it, then save. Saving paints its portrait (costs image credits). See Creating enemies.

Where you'll meet it

Enemies find you while you travel:

• In the wilderness, enemies roam the biomes you set for them. An enemy with no biomes or areas roams everywhere outside towns.
• In towns, only enemies you've placed there appear. Add a settlement, district or region under the enemy's Areas. Towns with no enemies placed in them are safe.
• Day or night. An enemy can be set to appear only by day or only at night.

How often fights happen is up to you: Atlas → Settings → Random encounters (Off, Low, Normal, High). At Normal, crossing a wilderness hex usually means a fight. See Encounters.

Bounties from a settlement's Bounty Board place red markers outside town. Walk up to one to start the fight. See Quests.

The battle screen

Whoever is faster acts first. On your turn:

• Strike — attack with your weapon. Each hit builds Focus.
• Brace — spend Focus to halve the next hit you take and shrug off its effect.
• Items — use a healing item (this uses your turn).
• Flee — try to escape. Faster characters get away more easily.

When you attack, a dot sweeps across a bar. Stop it inside the marked zone to hit, and in the small center zone to land a critical. If you'd rather leave it to chance, turn on Classic combat (random rolls) in Atlas → Settings.

The enemy's card shows what it's about to do, its weaknesses and resistances, and any effects on it. Hover (or tap) an effect to see what it does. See Combat and Status effects.

Characters in your party fight alongside you.

After the fight

• Win: you earn XP and the enemy's loot, and enough XP raises your level. See Levels and XP.
• Lose: you lose a little XP (never a level) and some of your money, then wake up fully healed.

Fights that start in conversation

If a conversation turns violent, the character may take it to the battle screen. There's no fleeing these. Win and you choose to Spare or Kill them. Anyone who witnesses a killing will remember it. To keep confrontations in the conversation, turn on Disable NPC combat in Atlas → Settings.