FightStartingEvent

The first fight message of a fight. It tells you which fight you are in and how it started. It arrives once per fight, while the fight is still in its placement phase.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU RECEIVE IT

1. Start a new fight record. Forget the previous fight's state: fighters, turn order, placement cells. Key the record by FightStartingEvent.fight_id. 2. Store FightStartingEvent.fight_type (FightType). It decides what the rest of the fight looks like (PvM, arena, challenge, ...). 3. Store FightStartingEvent.attacker_id. When you attacked a monster group it is your own character id. 4. Read FightStartingEvent.monsters if you need to know what you are fighting: it lists the monster template ids taking part, before any fighter is shown. 5. SEND NOTHING BACK. No handler of this message builds a request. 6. Wait for FightJoinEvent, which comes right behind it and says whether you are placing, ready-checking or already fighting.

WHAT THE CLIENT DOES. Its fight-state object takes the fight type (through the client's own fight-type conversion), the attacker id and, on builds from 3.5 on, the fight id. It sets a boss flag from FightStartingEvent.contain_boss and walks FightStartingEvent.monsters, checking each id against one monster race of the game data to set a second flag.

THE DEFENDER. The canonical message also carries the defender id - the attacked entity, the monster group id when you attack monsters (the same negative id you put in AttackMonsterRequest.monster_group_id). The client never reads it, so it is named here only on builds where it is the one int64 left besides the attacker; a build that pads the message with another int64 leaves it unnamed.

OBSERVED (one capture, PvM): attacker = own character id, defender = the attacked monster group's id (-20002), fight_type = PvM, monsters = the two monster template ids of the group, fight_id = 3089, the id the fight team updates (FightTeamUpdateEvent) for the same fight had carried a few milliseconds earlier. It arrived about 30 ms after ContextReadyRequest for the fight map, then FightJoinEvent and one FightFighterShowEvent per fighter followed in the same burst.

IT IS NOT ONLY AN ANSWER TO YOUR ATTACK. It follows AttackMonsterRequest when you attack a monster group, but it also opens the fight when another player attacks you or when you join a fight on the map (FightJoinRequest).

PADDING. Builds add decoys: a repeated string (3.7), a nested message (3.4), a third int64 (3.6.12.16). Unnamed members are padding; leave them unset.