Combat Basics

This Page covers the basics of Combat, how to deal damage to enemies, and what their Status Bars mean.

## Guard Damage

Guard damage is one of the ways to deal Health Damage to an enemy. Guard damage can be easily dealt by either Dashing into an enemy, blocking with your weapon, or striking your foe with your weapons.

Although there are other ways to deal Health Damage without breaking an enemy's Guard, depleting their Guard is the most common way to defeat an enemy.

An enemy's guard is indicated by the bar above its head, protecting its Health Crystals. Once broken, you can begin dealing Health damage directly for as many hits as your combo limit allows

When enemies are recovering from a finished combo, or recover
from being guard broken, their guard bar turns blue and begins to fill back up, and you cannot damage enemies Guard during this period of time, so be sure to use this information to maximize your efforts!

Note: During this recovery time, before they stand up and regain their guard, you can hit with an attack that deals health damage through guard. Once the guard gauge begins filling, no hits will make contact until they have fully recovered their guard.

## Dealing Guard Damage

The main way of dealing Guard Damage is by striking your enemies. If your weapon does not have any Trait modifying its damage, then a single Strike will *typically* deal your weapon's base damage.

Blocking is another way of dealing Guard Damage: parrying a single blow will also *typically* deal your base amount of damage.

However, enemies also block sometimes, and will greatly reduce the amount of guard damage you deal, this can typically be broken by a dash, or by backing off your attack for a moment.

You can also Dash to deal guard damage, and briefly stun the opponent.

However, some enemies resist your strikes more or less. Here are a few examples:

* Empowered Knights don't take as much damage from your parries when entering their enraged mode
* Rokari Captains take a little more Guard Damage when hit.
* Most Bosses take significantly less Guard Damage when entering their final stage.
* Most of the enemies will take less Guard Damage when entering a lengthy Combo, in order to not become too easy to defeat.

Please note that resistance over Guard Damage don't change as you
progress in difficulties, they only get more and more max Guard.

## Health Damage

Health damage is accessible to the player once an enemy's guard has been broken, they will stand still with a shattered shield icon over their model, as a circular timer ticks away how long they are vulnerable for. This is the opportunity to initiate a Critical Strike Combo, and deal damage directly to the enemy!

Some enemy attack combinations leave openings for you to get in a quick critical strike, dealing Health damage!

Each Player Health Crystal currently = 1 point of Damage.

Each Enemy Health Crystal/Pip = 5 Points of Damage.

There are a few Supers that can bypass the Guard Meter, such as Soul Burn, Empowered Strike, Shardstorm, Concussive Blast, and Void Traps.

## Critical Strike

Breaking an enemy's guard will allow you to Critical Strike your opponent, dealing Health damage.

Also known as a Combo, Critical Strikes allow you to deal Health Damage to your target's Health Crystals. You will be able to strike the enemy as many times as your current Critical Combo (Indicated in your Player HUD) allows. The first strike can initiate the combo from any direction, but then the player must follow the slash patterns to continue to deal damage. Big Swings deal the most damage.

Some enemy attack combinations leave openings for you to get in a quick critical strike.