Training and Fighting

Training and Fighting are the core loop of Masked City — get stronger at the Gym, then test that strength against other players.

Training

The Gym is where you train Speed, Power, Strength, and Intel. Each train costs 10 Energy and 50 Cash, and gives a small permanent boost to the stat you pick.

Momentum

Training the same stat back-to-back builds Momentum — a stacking bonus to how much you gain per train. Switching to a different stat resets the streak back to zero.

• Each consecutive train on the same stat adds +5% to your gains.
• The bonus caps out at 6 stacks (+30% total) — going past that doesn't add more.

In practice: if you want to maximize a specific stat, stick with it for at least 6-7 trains in a row rather than bouncing between stats each time.

Fighting

Combat costs 5 Energy per attack. You can only attack players within a certain level range of you (see below), and a fight lasts up to 200 turns — if neither side is knocked out by then, it ends in a draw. Losing drops your health to 0, sending you to the Hospital until you recover; you can't fight or be fought while there.

What Your Stats Actually Do

Three stats decide the outcome of a fight:

• Strength — your defense. Reduces incoming damage, and also factors into your own damage output alongside Power.
• Power — your offense. The bigger factor in how hard you hit.
• Speed — who acts first each turn. Higher Speed means more of your hits land before the opponent's.

Equipped Weapons add a flat bonus to your damage roll. Equipped Armor adds a flat bonus to your defense roll. Relics add to attack, defense, or speed depending on your alignment (see Equipment).

Your Rank Bonus — the flat stat bonus your Reputation rank earns you, shown on your Lair character sheet — only reaches combat through an equipped Relic. No Relic equipped means no Rank Bonus applied, full stop, no matter what your character sheet shows. Equip any Relic to actually receive it.

Effective Stats

Raw stat numbers aren't used directly in combat — they're converted to "effective" stats first, and the conversion gets worse the higher you go:

• The first 500 points of any stat count in full.
• Every point beyond 500 only counts for 80% of its value.

Formula: effective = 500 + (raw − 500) × 0.8 once raw is over 500 (otherwise effective = raw).

Combat Formulas

Each turn, both sides roll a random value inside a range built from their effective stats:

"Applicable" means: you have a Relic equipped, AND that Relic's bonus targets that particular roll. A single Relic never boosts both Damage and Defense at once — Speed always gets it, plus either Damage or Defense depending on your Reputation alignment (positive Reputation → Defense, negative → Damage). With no Relic equipped, none of these three rolls get a bonus at all.

Whoever rolls the higher Speed value acts first that turn. Their Damage roll minus the opponent's Defense roll is the damage dealt — if Defense comes out ahead, the hit does nothing that turn.

Worked example — a fighter with 4,000 Strength, 5,000 Power, 2,000 Speed, and no gear:

• Effective Strength: 3,300 · Effective Power: 4,100 · Effective Speed: 1,700
• Damage range: 2,600–3,900
• Defense range: 1,100–1,650
• Speed range: 425–1,700

Because Strength feeds both your damage and your defense, and armor is otherwise capped by what's available in the shop, raising Strength tends to go further than stacking Power alone once you're past the early game.

Who You Can Attack

Your attack range is normally your level ± 200, but the lower bound is tightened at low levels so newer players aren't exposed to the full 200-level spread right away:

On top of that, no one can ever attack more than 200 levels above themselves, and no one can attack below half their own level even if the table above would technically allow it — whichever floor is higher wins. The one exception is levels 1–15: that tier ignores the half-level floor entirely, so a fresh level 15 character can still reach all the way down to Level 1 instead of being capped at half their level.

Cash & Experience

• Cash: winning steals half of the loser's on-hand cash — bank balances are never at risk. Keep the bulk of your money banked.
• Base EXP: scales with the loser's level, and gets a bonus for punching up (attacking someone higher level than you) or a penalty for punching down.
• Target win rate matters: attacking someone with a very low win rate cuts your EXP (down to -60% below a 10% win rate); attacking someone with a high win rate boosts it (up to +60% above 90%).
• Repeat-target tax: hitting the same player over and over in one reset period pays less each time — full EXP for the first 3 hits, then -20%, -40%, -60%, and -80% from the 7th hit onward.
• Intel bonus: your Intel stat adds a percentage bonus to combat EXP on top of everything else — another reason Intel is worth training early (see Intel).
• Alliance EXP: beating someone in a different Alliance also earns your Alliance a small amount of EXP, more if they outlevel you.
• Reputation: winning shifts your Reputation toward Hero or Villain based on your current alignment — bigger shifts against high-Reputation targets, diminishing as their Reputation climbs (see Reputation).
• District Control: whichever side wins the fight gets a bonus if their alignment currently controls the relevant district — Downtown adds +20% to the cash taken, and the Heights adds +10% to the EXP gained (see The Watch Tower).

Trading Points for Stats

Combat also lets you convert Points directly into permanent stat gains, no Energy or Cash involved. Each exchange spends 1 Point for +2 to Speed, Power, or Strength — your choice each time. You're capped at 50 exchanges a month, resetting on the 1st.

Before You Fight

• Keep most of your cash in the bank — losing a fight only risks what you're carrying on hand.
• Check a target's win rate before attacking — it swings your EXP more than most people expect.
• Don't lean on the same target too many times in one reset — the repeat-target tax adds up fast.
• Training consistently is the main long-term way to get stronger in combat — see Momentum above.

See the Game Rules for what counts as fair play around combat and account interactions.