When a fight starts in MUD, it continues until either party is dead or has fled, or both parties withdraw. Every few seconds, an exchange of blows takes place. The higher your dexterity, the greater your chance of hitting your opponent. The higher your strength, the more damage you will do when you hit. The higher your stamina, the more damage you can take. When your stamina drops to 0 or less, you die. If you flee from a fight you will lose points, but obviously not as many as if you had died! More points are gained for killing an opponent than for having one flee from you, too. In both cases, however, everything they were carrying will be left behind on the ground. For mutual withdrawals, the fight stops with honour equally satisfied on both sides.

A weapon increases the damage you deliver, but some weapons require that you have a certain strength before you can wield them. Useful weapons include:

• lit sticks
• daggers
• the staff
• axes
• picks
• swords

Your strength and dexterity are modified depending on how many objects you are carrying, how much they weigh, whether you can see your opponent or not, and how injured you are. Thus, if someone attacks you, the first thing to do is to USE a weapon, but almost as important is to drop anything big and heavy that you don't need for the fight!

• command
  example
  what the example does

• Kill <creature>
  k banshee
  Initiate a fight with the banshee.

• USE <weapon>
  use staff
  Use the staff as a weapon in this fight.

• Kill <creature> WIth <weapon>
  k banshee wi staff
  Previous two combined.

• Flee
  f
  Leave the fight and move in a random direction.

• Flee <direction>
  f o
  Leave the fight and move in the out direction.

• SuperFlee
  SF
  Leave the fight and quit immediately.

• HIT <creature>
  hit rat
  Hurt the rat without starting a fight.

• HIT <creature> WIth <weapon>
  hit rat wi stick
  As above, use the stick.

• WithDraw
  WD
  Accept/offer a mutual withdrawal, with no resulting points loss if your opponent also withdraws.