Unregistered wrote: Does Ryzom have special attacks? and do they make a difference, do i interact with combat? If i dodge do i get special moves?
There are special attacks, yes. The primary special attacks are based on the type of weapon you use: Slow for blunt weapons (sort of a mini-stun), Bleed for slashing weapons, and Ignore Armor for piercing weapons. There are also specials for increasing accuracy, area attacks (circle attack), aimed shots (you can target specific body parts- aiming for a creature's hind leg reduces its dodge, for example), and quite a few others that I'm forgetting.
The thing that makes Ryzom so utterly unique, however, is the fact that each of those abilities are little "bricks" that come with an associated cost. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but let's say something like Bleed-1 has a +15 cost. To use Bleed-1 you'd then pair it with something that gives you at least -15 in credit. This could be a Stamina credit stanza (as in it takes X amount of stamina to use the skill), it could be a HP credit stanza (the skill is powered by your HP instead of stamina), it could be a combination of both, or you could even use a credit stanza like Attack After Dodge in which the skill costs no stamina or hp but only goes off after you've successfully dodged an attack.
That said, it's possible to create a single action that uses Bleed, Accurate Attack and Increased Damage as long as you balance those skills out with credits. And that's just melee combat. Magic has a whole different batch of toys to play with (bomb effects, casting time, range modifiers, riccochet, etc).
Now as far as interacting with combat, there's really not much need to in the very beginning. Your tactics get more and more important the farther you go, though. As a newbie, you can pretty much just hit Increased Damage 1 all day long. After you leave the starting island and begin to face increasingly difficult creatures, you'll have to balance your actions carefully with the weapon you use and the armor you wear. You don't want to run out of HP, and you don't want to run out of stamina. Heavy weapons and heavy armor increase the stamina required to use all combat skills (in exchange for doing more damage/preventing more damage), so you can see how stamina could be a problem in long battles. Most people past a certain level have
at least 6 tailored actions designed for whatever equipment they're using at the time.
Different creatures have different resistances, so perhaps you carry several weapon types. Perhaps you use a pike and Ignore Armor for that angry Kipee, but your stamina is going down much more quickly than your health- time to switch to the Ignore Armor powered by hp. Then again, it just so happens that you're dodging an awful lot, so it might be more efficient to use that Ignore Armor + Accurate Attack powered by Attack After Dodge. Or maybe you'd rather just cast Fear on it, hit your Speed Up action and get the heck out of there.
The whole system is incredibly detailed. There's an awful lot to learn, but that learning really is an awful lot of fun. There are just so many skills to choose from (you can choose them all if you have the time) and so many ways to alter and edit those skills that there probably aren't two identical characters in the game.