Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-180.214.233.65-20141121100326/@comment-6697950-20150507200340

Volume 3, chapter 2 (real books don't have CTRL + F nor copy-paste, so I can't give you the Yen Press version page number) She didn't know Nagata would start playing ALO with her. However, due to his exhaustive and exhausting lecture, Suguha had adapted to the game with amazing speed, and she found she was very good at the game. There were two reasons for this: The first reason is that Suguha had been doing Kendo for many years and the skills learned there were very effective for fights in ALO.

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In addition, ALO is not a level-based game. So despite logging far less time than the most experienced players, she was able to match up with some of the best fighters in ALO. In fact, Leafa's numerical parameters were average and lower than most old players but because it ran off a purely skill-based system, she was considered one of the top Sylph players.

And another quote from the same chapter but at an earlier time:

ALO's attack formula is not complicated. It depends on four things: Power of the weapon itself, where on the opponent's body the attack hits, attack speed, and the armor worn by the opponent. On this occasion, the attack power of his weapon was almost the lowest, while the Salamander's armor was really quite high level. The strength of his attacks came from the boy's accuracy and overwhelming speed.