Your character has three defence ratings - one for your left hand, one for your right hand, and one for your feet - and these are calculated in the same seven steps as your Attack rating (see ‘help attack’). Whenever you are struck in combat, the mud will use your best available location to try and prevent the blow from landing.
Each location takes a period of time (see ‘help cooldown’) to recover before it can be used for another defence. While it is recovering, your second best defence will be used - and then your third best. If all of your locations are still recovering then you will have a Defence of 1.
In your score your current best available defensive location is marked between ‘>’ and ‘<’. No markers means you have no defence. Each location is also colour coded to indicate its defence strength, as follows:
| Default colour | Attacks which can be defended against |
|---|---|
| Cyan | all attacks |
| Blue | paired melee attacks |
| Pink | normal melee attacks |
| Red | unarmed attacks |
Non-defensive techniques are indicated by a ‘-‘. In addition, etheral defences are only able to stop ethereal attacks.
Please note that any defensive technique bonuses from your feet combat table are applied to all locations, but are doubled for your feet location. Your total encumbrance is also subtracted from your feet Defence.
See also: assist attack combat critical encumbrance kill cooldown