Smart Moves

I have heard that at least 75% of people that fight in the arena have smart moves. Who wouldn't want to be smart? Shock and awe give you a 3% chance against smart moves. You may change your stance in "Edit" character.

Hope this helps you!
'RoYALe

The 3% gain form Shock & Awe can be offset by training the following skills:

Trained Eye from The Warrior, and Frob's Parry, Duncan's Thrust from The Duelist
Each of these give you +1% Win Probability with Attitude: Smart Moves, for a total of +3% against ANY opponent, which is why so many people choose that stance to begin with. In reality, If your opponent has trained these, changing your stance to Shock & Awe only offsets it back to Neutral.

Make sure you check under your opponents Trophies, under Character. If they have Virtuoso Training: [Trainer Drunk] and Virtuoso Training: [Trainer Warrior], then they also have +2 Health Points, which can hurt you a LOT.

To give you an idea how valuable Health Points are, think of it this way:

A standard level 5 character, that chose anything BUT Frobozz Magic Spell Book Company as their division and trained for random training skills, will have a grand total of 6 health points.

A level 5 character that chose Frobozz Magic Spell Book Company, and spent their Training Skills on Thick Skin, Brogmoid Hide, Blood Sponge, and Pin Cushion will have a grand total of 11 Health Points.

Even if you are matched at an even 50%, you have almost 100% MORE ROLLS than the other guy. This is an incredible advantage. By the time you get to level 8, and start earning Zorkmids from your battles, you can buy training for 2 MORE Health Points - one from The Drunk, and one from The Warrior for about 100K Zorkmids total, giving you 13 Health Points.

If you ever wonder why there's just some guys out there that you can't beat, even though you've got the +AP or +DR bonuses....this is it!

Each single HP is equal to a 15% chance to win......against ANY Offense or Defense (at least at lower levels - at higher levels it drops to about 7 or 8%, but even then, that will be a HUGE difference to overcome in battle)

Oh, and by the way, the 1 HP bonus that you get for choosing Frobozz Magic Spell Book Company is embedded in your "Lucky Escape" defense spell. It only has a +4 DR, but if you un-equip this, you loose your +1 HP!!

Each 10 defense and each 10 AP gives you approx 1% chance to win. Keeping this in mind, at level 5-10 you would have to replace this spell with one rated at +150 DR to make up the difference that you loose from the +1 HP

Even at levels 20-30 and up, where your bonus drops to 10% or so, you would still need a +100 DR spell to replace it.

Hope this isn't too overwhelming

ShockTart