Guard and Health.

Your Health represents your ability to take injuries and keep on fighting. It is indicated by the red orb in your healthbar (in the upper left corner of your UI, by default). As you take damage to your Health, this orb will empty. When your Health reaches zero, you are defeated, and will have to be revived with smelling salts to continue. Health does not regenerate on its own; you'll have to use First Aid to recover lost Health.

Your Guard represents your ability to avoid injuries. It is indicated by the blue arc to the left of your Health. As long as you have some Guard remaining, damage inflicted on you will be subtracted from Guard instead of Health. When your Guard reaches zero, you'll start taking damage directly to your Health. Guard regenerates slowly during fights, and regenerates very quickly when you're not in combat.

Both Guard and Health will increase as you rise in level. Some outfitting may also increase Guard or Health, and you may be able to use skills that increase them as well.

Initiative.

Initiative represents your ability to take actions in combat. It is indicated by the yellow bar extending from your Health and Guard displays. Almost all skills require that you spend Initiative to use them. If you lack the required amount of Initiative, the skill will be unusable. Initiative recovers quickly while in combat, and very quickly while out of combat. However, it is possible to use skills so rapidly that your Initiative doesn't have time to recover. Equipment that increases your maximum Initiative or your Initiative recovery rate is, therefore, extremely valuable. You may also have access to skills that restore Initiative.

Fighting School.

Every character is specialized in one of three Fighting Schools: Dirty Fighting, focused on the cutlass; Fencing, focused on the rapier; and Florentine, focused on the smallsword and dagger. You can see your current fighting school by looking at your Skills and Recipes interface ('Y') and selecting the Swashbuckling tab. Under the heading 'Avatar Combat School' you'll see one of the three available Fighting Schools.

You can change your Fighting School by visiting a Swashbuckling Trainer, found in all towns. There are three such trainers, one for each Fighting School, and they each wield the weapon appropriate to their school. Trainers sell a variety of supplies, including an item called a 'Swashbuckling Skill Respec', which, when used, will refund all your skill points, remove all your swashbuckling skills, and allow you to select a new fighting school.

PLEASE NOTE: After a respec, until you select a fighting school, you will be unable to use any swashbuckling skills beyond the initial skills you had when you first created your character, and will have a difficult time winning battles! Also, once you've chosen a new fighting school, you must also purchase and equip a new weapon that matches that school. You cannot use Fencing skills with a Cutlass, nor can you use Florentine skills with a Rapier.

Weapons.

By looking at your character sheet ('C') you can inspect your character's currently equipped weapons. In your main hand, you will have a cutlass, a rapier, or a smallsword. By looking at the tooltip for these weapons, you can see their damage, as well as any additional bonuses they may provide. You may also have a pistol equipped. Pistols are used with their own special set of skills; all characters have the 'Shoot' skill, but you may also learn other pistol skills as you level up.

The Combat Mechanics (Simplified).

You attack a target, and the game 'rolls dice' behind the scenes, generating a random number from 1 to your Offense value, plus your Accuracy value. If this total is greater than the sum of your target's Parry and Dodge, you hit the target, and inflict damage. The amount of damage is also 'rolled', generating a random number between your minimum and maximum damage. This value is then subtracted from your opponent's Guard, and possibly his Health.

Your Statistics.

On your character sheet, you'll see a number of statistics. Health, Guard and Initiative have already been explained above.

Offense is your overall chance to hit your target. Increasing your Offense will increase the chance that you hit, rather than being dodged or parried.

Accuracy is a bonus that is added to your chance to hit each time it is rolled. Thus, if your Offense is 100, your chance to hit is a random number between 1 and 100; if you also have 10 Accuracy, your chance to hit is a random number between 10 and 110. Accuracy is thus more effective at increasing your chance to hit; it is therefore less commonly found on outfitting, and in smaller amounts.

Damage is the amount of Guard and/or Health that an opponent loses when you successfully hit. This number is also a random range; for instance, if your Sword Damage is 20-40, you will inflict a random amount of damage between 20 and 40, with the average amount being 30.

Dodge is the chance that you avoid an opponent's attack by dodging away from it. Dodge is a defense of last resort; when you dodge an incoming attack, you lose 10 points of Initiative.

Parry is the chance that you avoid an opponent's attack by interposing your sword between you and the attack. Parry is the preferred defense, as it carries no penalty with it. Together, your Parry and Dodge scores are your Defense. In order to hit you with an attack, an opponent's Offense roll must be higher than your Parry and Defense combined.

Damage Resistance is a reduction in any damage that you take. If you have 10% Damage Resistance, and you take 50 points of damage, that amount will be reduced to 45 points of damage before it's subtracted from your Guard and/or Health.

Your Skills.

A new character begins with a handful of useful skills.

Thrust is your basic attack, which you will use for some time until you learn a new skill that you like better. Thrust is always a reasonable option to fall back on, as it has no Initiative cost, and thus can always be used. It inflicts damage on a single target. You can select that target by clicking on them, or using the Tab key to cycle through all nearby enemy targets.

Sweep is a more powerful and more expensive attack, which you can use to fight multiple enemies at once. It has three distinguishing features, all of which are described in its tooltip. First, it costs 40 Initiative to use Sweep. If you don't have at least 40 Initiative, you'll need to use Thrust instead. Second, it has a damage bonus of +20%. This means that when you determine how much damage you inflict on an enemy, whatever amount is rolled will be increased by 20%; for instance, a 50 point hit will become a 60 point hit. Third, and most important, Sweep has a 90 degree arc area of effect (AOE). This means it will hit all targets within the 90 degree arc directly in front of your character. This usually means 2 or 3 targets, but you could hit any number of enemies as long as they're all in front of you and in melee range. Most attack skills in the game have some amount of AOE, so that you'll always be able to fight multiple enemies at once.

Both Thrust and Sweep have a red icon, which indicates that these are attack skills that will cause you to swing your sword at a target. You also have two skills with blue icons; blue icons indicate 'buffs,' or skills that will put a beneficial effect on you.

Stance: Sprint is a skill to allow you to move around more quickly and conveniently in town. While it is active, it will increase your running speed significantly. However, it cannot be used in combat, and if you enter combat while sprinting, this skill will automatically turn itself off.

Stance: Defense is a skill that will make you harder to damage in combat, at the expense of some of your Initiative recovery. In a hard fight, you may be willing to sacrifice some Initiative for better defenses. You'll have to experiment with this skill to decide if that's a trade-off you're willing to make.

Both of these skills are distinct in another way; they're Stances. When a Stance is clicked, it remains active until it is clicked again, another Stance is selected, or some other condition ends the skill (for instance, Sprint ends when you enter combat). Stances are 'fire-and-forget'; you can turn them on and they'll keep working behind the scenes for you. Not all buff skills are Stances, so when you learn a new buff skill, read its tooltip to find out whether it's a Stance or not.

You also have one skill with a green icon; green icons indicate 'recovery'. These skills will allow you to heal or remove negative effects. Your skill, First Aid, will allow you to recover some lost Health. However, it has two drawbacks. First, you can't do anything else while recovering Health; moving or taking damage will interrupt the recovery process. Second, it requires a Bandage to use. You may receive bandages as treasure from defeating enemies; bandages can also be crafted by players, so check the Auction House for them.

There is one other color of icon, purple, which indicates 'debuff' skills. You don't start with any skills of this type. Debuff skills can be used on an enemy target without making an attack, and will apply some negative effect to the target. If you learn a debuff skill, read its tooltip carefully to determine how to use it. Also note that some of your red attack skills can apply negative effects, as well; the purple icon just indicates that there's no actual sword-swing involved.

Enemies.

There are many types of enemies you'll face, each with distinct skills and combat abilities. However, all enemies can be roughly broken down into three types: Grunts, Lieutenants and Bosses.

Next to each enemy's name, you'll see a shield emblem with that enemy's national flag displayed on it. This same emblem is displayed on the enemy's healthbar in the upper right corner of your screen. Some enemies will, in addition to this emblem, have a sword stuck through the shield. That indicates that the enemy is a Lieutenant. A few enemies will have two swords crossed behind the shield. That indicates that the enemy is a Boss.

Grunts are the easiest enemies to fight. They will die with only a few sword-strokes, and their Offense is low, so they will not be able to hit you very often. One grunt will not really be a challenge for you; two and three grunts should also be relatively easy. Once you're fighting four grunts, you'll need to stay on your toes; they'll quickly start to knock down your Guard, and before long you'll be taking Health damage. Five or more grunts are certainly beatable, but it will not be an easy fight, especially when you're just starting out.

Lieutenants are a challenging fight. Fighting against a lieutenant one-on-one will be a tough proposition for a new player. As you gain more experience with the system, more familiarity with your skills, and more powerful equipment, you'll find lieutenants to be less and less of a problem, but at first you may be taking quite a beating against these enemies. Particularly deadly is the combination of lieutenants and their grunt allies; while the lieutenant keeps you busy, the grunts busily whittle away your Guard.

Bosses are the most challenging type of enemies in the game. You're not intended to be able to face these terrors on your own; you'll want a group of friends to back you up. They're difficult to hit, have enormous amounts of Health and Guard, and will put a serious hurting on you with every swing. To fight a boss, you may want to consider using some of the skills in your school's Defense line to reduce the damage you take.

Basic Strategy.

Other articles will discuss strategy and specific skill selections in more detail. These general tips should be sufficient to get you started.

Movement is important. Most of your skills are able to hit multiple targets in front of you; to get the most out of these skills you should try stepping away from your enemies, to encourage them to bunch up in front of you. This is particularly true when some enemies circle behind you. Your enemies receive no particular bonus for attacking you from behind, but when they're behind you, you can't hit them, and you want to hit as many targets as you can.

Look at your skills carefully. Many of your skills can be used to apply negative effects to your targets. Enemies who are afflicted with Off-Balance are much easier to hit; enemies that are Weakened will do significantly less damage to you. By keeping these types of effects active on your enemies at all times, you'll greatly increase your chances of winning, even against four or more opponents.

Similarly, you may have buffs available to you that will enhance your odds. Intensity will make you deal more damage; Precision will improve your chances of hitting an enemy. The highest-level skill in each Defense chain will greatly reduce the damage you take from attacks. Nearly all these skills last a long time, and can be kept up indefinitely; make sure that you're always using any available buffs you have.

You should also look for 'chains' of skills that complement each other. You may have a skill that applies the Off-Balance effect, and another skill that will do increased damage to a target who is Off-Balance. Using those two skills together will increase your damage substantially.

Even the odds. It's always easier to fight a small number of enemies at once. When you first engage a group of enemies, keep your eyes open for additional opponents who might join your fight. Watch for patrolling enemies who may wander through your battle. If you can, slowly back off, drawing the enemies with you, until you're fighting in a safer spot. Gun skills are an excellent way to bring enemies to your location; use them to 'pull' enemies away from their starting location.

You can also use your skills to even the odds. Knockdowns, stuns, and the Crippled and Staggered effects can all be used to keep enemies from attacking you for a short while. The gun skill Knockback Shot will allow you to 'pull' enemies while leaving one of them behind for a few seconds. Stunning one or more enemies and then backing away from them (so as not to wake them up with additional damage!) can substantially reduce the number of incoming attacks you have to deal with. Crippled and Staggered cause an enemy to move more slowly; you can use these abilities to quickly move away from some of your opponents, spreading them out so you fight fewer at a time.

There's no better odds-evener than killing an opponent. When fighting multiple targets, look for the ones that are the closest to death, and focus on those. If you're in a tough fight against a Lieutenant and two Grunts, consider killing the grunts first, as they'll go down faster than the Lieutenant. You might also try Stunning the lieutenant and pulling the Grunts away to deal with them before he wakes up.

Get a group! Allies on your side can make hard fights trivial, especially if your skills are complementary. If you're focused on defense, and your ally is focused on offense, use your defensive Taunt skills to encourage enemies to attack you, while your ally cuts them down from behind. Split up groups between the two of you to maximize your total damage; work together to cut down tougher enemies before they can kill one of you. Also be sure to check for 'chains' that you can do together. If your ally can apply the Off-Balance effect, and you can do additional damage to an Off-Balance target, the two of you can inflict substantially more damage together.

Pay attention to your enemies. Many enemies have unique attacks that you'll come to recognize as particular to that type of enemy. Many of these unique attacks have specific counters that you can use to mitigate their impact. For instance, some enemies will 'wind up' to deliver a large attack. If you can strike while they're still 'winding up', you'll interrupt their attack, and you'll avoid the damage from it entirely.

Practice! There are many more possible strategies and approaches than a brief guide can cover; the only way to learn the system is to try it out for yourself! There are 'Sandbox' missions available where you can test your skills against a variety of opponents at a variety of difficulty levels. Take advantage of them to learn your capabilities and weaknesses.