I first tried my hand at sword work when I was very young (no live steel as a child of course) and have spent many years interested in and/or praticing sword based combat, and the game play in KC: D is the best I've encountered so far for providing a play exprience that rewards thinking/acting like you're in a swordfight rather than an archade.

I want to offer a big Thank you! to the Warhorse for providing such a rich and rewarding exprience, I truly hope this is only the first of many games using this type of more authentic combat system.

Good for you pal!
Sadly I have to admit that i s.u.c.k. in this kind of fighting system.
Maybe I can give you somehow my save game from a fight and you can just win it for me :P
I can't end the mission as every time I have to sword fight it's just a dissaster for me.
For oldies like me there should be a special settings in the menu for combat - e.g.: Are you a sword lame: Yes | No.
Dissaster :/

Some questions related to things which might help you enjoy the system more.

Have you leveled up your STR and weapon of choice (sword, mace, etc) skills yet?
- Related to this stronger weapons will also add damage making take downs even faster.

Have you leveled your Defense and War skills? (Both of these will give you a bit more slack during combat to react and counter)

Did you spend time praticing in the combat ring to get the feel for the system and advance your skills (player not character)? If you can trigger a perfect block over 50% of the time it'll help greatly. Also if you're able to take advantage of the dodge mechanics (move out of the way of a strike causing the combat to slow for a moment giving you a chance to strike) that helps as well. Also feints - hold attack to show a strike then shift to another point on the combat star and release - are quite useful.

Also have you been able to use the terrain to your advantage? Cover vs archers, choak points vs groups, and most of all manuvering around the battle area so you're not flanked by enemies within striking distance.


The combat system can take some getting used to no question but once you get the flow of it (and some in game skill for poor Hal) it really opens up.

If there's a way I can help you out in reaching that point of fun with the system I'd be happy to :)
Feel free to toss questions my way and I'll see what I can do.

Cheers

Thanks for a quick respond.

Yes I was trying the combat rings and stuff like that, but I don't know, maybe my hand vs eye is not that fast anymore :P
I'm trying to do the combos, but I'm dealing with problem how to sync my strikes. e.g. I'm trying the first combo (Have already 3 of them but let's focus on the first one.) and after strike from the top I'm changing my hand to strike from right but I'm always striking from left first, It's just like clicking my mouse to fast maybe, or my mouse have to much dpi and first showing from left... I'm to dump for this system or to fast for it, I recon it will be the first one as I can't learn it. With my bow I don't have any problems, all the bow contest are easy for me on all levels, shooting bad guys too. Even when I ride on my horse I like to shoot baddies, but sword fights... horror for me. The first huge fight in the Pribyslavitz I can take alright up to the duel, and there my troubles starts... I had to give up on this one and use the nexus mode for immortality (not proud of it). Otherwise I was unable to win this duel. The same with fist fight with that old drunk Straw. He was just to fast for me with all the combos and kicking my face with his knee... damn.
I know how to block swords strikes during fight, or use the evade systems but luck in making the combos myself make my totaly uselles in duels. Unless I can shoot them with my bow in the face ;)

Agreed. Only thing that irks me so far is how woefully overpowered swords are compared to maces and axes, the latter two of which I now use exclusively. I'd heard if you leveled swords you would be an unstoppable murdertank, so I tried it and managed to kill a knight challenging me to a duel by slashing at his breastplate (over which he had a brigandine). That's when I swore them off for good. Hollywood has already managed to convince half the population that swords = lightsabers that cut through everything like butter, so I was hoping for better here.

I was having trouble too, but I have found if the hand eye coordination thing with a two hand weapon is an issue a shield helps overcome that. Instead of timing blocks, I simply raise my shield at all times by pressing the block button and wait for my opponent to bash away multiple times in a row thus reducing his stamina. Then I strike once or twice and go back to a raised shield. You can't damage an opponent until his stamina is depleted (same goes for you so never lower shield if your stamina is low), so let him hit you several times and reduce his stamina before you try an attack.

Multiple enemies are still tough, but I now find duels more interesting with the sword and board approach. I don't think you need to even move the shield to his attack zone, it appears to block everything every time. My strength was level 8 when I tried this approach, so perhaps you need some reasonable strength for the shield to block successfully, not sure.

This does work with multiple enemies as long as you can continually back up to prevent them surrounding you. But I think I will simply need to get much better with the two hand high damage weapons if I ever hope to deal with groups of enemies and not get torn to bits as sword and board is a slow to kill method and I've had some duels last 5 minutes or perhaps longer.

First, sorry for the late response, for some reason I didn't get a notification that you'd replied here.

There's a slow down effect at certain times during combat (you may have seen it during a perfect block) which scales up as you level. I can't speak to whether or not it will be enough to resolve all the timing for you but it should help (it helped me). The thing which may have helped even more was going to the Capitan asking to train with practice weapons (so little chance of taking any actual damage) and then just spending the (in game) day getting a feel for things. Rather than trying to manage all of combat at once I focused on getting comfortable with one aspect at a time for example not worrying about blocking or counter striking and just trying to learn the timing on a dodge.
Or exclusively focusing on triggering block when the green shield shows up so I can get a perfect block.
Another trick if you're using sword alone in melee is to back up until your foe starts jogging toward you then stab a them, it's only one hit but it usually lands and it has some chance to cause bleed so it's a slower but more sure way to win a fight (especially later game once you have a higher damage sword, more STR and a higher sword skill all stacking your damage output).

I'd also say try to keep some distance between you and your opponent, if you get too close they can grapple/combo you and (at least for me) they seem to win those exchanges well over half of the time so staying near the edge of your weapon range is really valuable.

So far in the game I've been able to win 1v2 consistently, 1v3 a little more than half the time, and 1v4 very rarely (maybe 20% of the time) and I haven't mastered the use of combos at all, in fact I only know one (lower left slash - stab - stab) and I've never remembered to use it outside of practice bouts. So I'm still somewhat 'brute force' in my melee fights. It's mostly about landing perfect blocks, dodges, managing my stamina so it doesn't deplete while I'm in striking range, and *never* letting myself get flanked (because then I almost always end up looking at a load screen). Using a sword while mounted is very hack and slash, I just ride past and strike 1-3 times hoping something lands, turn and ride past again. Far less accurate, but it's also a lower risk to my health bar.

As a side note I envy your archer skill, I've burned through in excess of 300 arrows now (not counting the ones I recovered and shot more than once) and I'm still pretty bad with a bow. My character skills are leveling up but my personal skills just aren't up to snuff. I'm hitting maybe 60-80% of my shots vs targets while standing still in the archery contest, it gest worse when trying to hit anything moving (even playing chumps on the river) and worse still when I'm mounted (I feel lucky if I land 1/10th of my shots then).

Anyway if the two hand sword approach isn't working sword and board is a good option (stronger defence for sure) or mace and shield (stronger defence and better damage vs armoured targets). I haven't done much with axes yet, they seemed totally viable from the little I did use them but I found a shiny end game two hand sword in a chest in the woods so I've been using that since.

I hope some of that proves to be useful to you.

The presumption is that your stirking at joints in the armor, I know that's not reflected in the animation but that's a tech limit rather than disregard. There's a bit of a disconnect between the five striking zones and how the strike looks when it lands since the zones are fluid and the trikes landing are (unsurprisingly in a game) pretty stock/repeated for each zone. Damage types do matter (mace is better than sword vs armored targets, all things being equal).

"Late game" (whenever you have high STR, weapon skill, a high quality weapon) it starts to matter a lot less which weapon type you have vs what, or if you can chain hits etc. because your raw damage is quite high once you've stacked skills on your character.

I plan to try a playthrough focused on each weapon at some point (rather than my mix and match first playthrough) so maybe my view will change as I do that, but right now at least dabbeling in all of them they each seem viable. If anything I've found mace to be the eaiseist to use so far, it takes longer to finish a fight (I don't have a mace with the stats of my sword) but mace+shield is safer and more consistant in my exprience.

As noted in my other post I haven't really gotten into using combos yet so including those may also alter my perceptions in the end.

Anyway the sword combat in KC:D feels quite real to me (based on my time doing mock battles in various martial arts classes and the occasional SCA event, I've never been in an actual war/win or die fight with a sword, thankfully) not lightsaberish at all (unlike some games I've played with a "spam X button to win" mode of combat).

Sure, but as of yet I don't think I've seen any knight not also wearing mail, which swords also could not cut through. Some could certainly pierce it, yes, so I have no complaints on thrusting attacks there. I have just spent a surprising amount of time in my life arguing against the belief that swords were a be-all-end-all weapon against which nothing would protect, so when a game that flaunts realism so high still has swords as the best weapons in the game I get a bit... cranky. Then again, polearms - the most used weapons in human history - aren't even (currently) in the game as fully functional weapons (you can pick them up from some enemies and use them, but you cannot buy, sell or store them, or use any skills with them.), so maybe I shouldn't get too upset about it. :P The mace is great against armoured foes as you mentioned earlier, and is as it should be. Main disadvantage is the amount of damage you do to the enemy's armour, so if you want to claim that pimpin' breastplate after your duel to the death, better aim for the head! That's generally a better move anyway, especially if you have the Headcracker skill.

The master stroke attacks seem to be broken for mace and axe at the moment though, so swords are going to be the overall best weapon no matter what you do, at least for the moment.

Ugh, the forum ate my post right before I hit send (this is what I get for not typing it up in a word processor first). So I hope you'll bear with me if this second version is a bit more Spartan than detailed.

I totally hear you about the pop culture portrayal of swords vs the tangible tool, and while there were certainly some compromises made for the sake of game play the combat in KC:D comes far closer to the experiences I've had on the field myself (once again granting that those were of course not real battle and that no doubt has a significant impact), worlds more authentic than various other games I've played (such as Devil May Cry, Heretic Shadow of the Serpent Riders, Mass Effect, Doom, Skyrim, Duke Nukem) which while fun in their own right didn't provide anything in their game play that made me think 'authentic combat'.

Side note on polearms; I know they were planned and I hear (second hand from buzz online) that they were (temporarily?) disabled due to balance issues (seems they were quite OP when it came time to launch).
So, much like combos for other weapons that are currently in game I'm crossing my fingers that their absence is temporary, or at the very least that we'll see them included in a more expanded combat system in the sequel to KC:D. It would add a lot of replay value for me to be able to focus on many different weapons each one at a time in separate plays of the game.

While I really hope to see all of that I do have to admit that the master attacks may end up being a case of "win more" for me, because so far I'm doing well in combat without using them at all so they may turn out to be a fun feature but more of a fun novelty for their own sake than a tool I actually need, so much as I hope to see every weapon fully fleshed out I may not feel a specific lack if that doesn't happen.

You're spot on about the mace and gathering loot though, it's a tough situation to work with all that gear damage. It makes sense logically that pounding a helm (or breast plate et al) in with your mace would do a lot of damage to it, but I have to admit I've avoided taking some perks in game - that would help me win fights - just so I can have better loot after the fight lol

ok, After some time in game practice area with the captine, i still su.ck in male combat :P
but, i did get my stats up!

Wonder if any of you know about any good clothes for quiet stealth kills that will make you less visible and not add much to your visibility. Please do share if you know, as I always have to run naked in the woods and the visibility is still 50points.
I have not found anything that will reduce it.

Thanks

I have to say I'm somewhat indifferent to the combat system.

Part of it is the seeming reliance of unlocking parts of it through main quest progression (I'm enjoying my FreeHenry too much to bother seeing Radzik yet).

Part of it is that I find the directional control pretty messy to use with a mouse. I'm pretty sure a controller would be much better at hitting the exact angles needed to trigger specific directions reliably (or just get into neutral), but with mouse it's a chore for me.

I do like what they were trying to do, but this system is far inferior to the implementation of Mount & Blade: Warband. It's more robust, but definitely not as fun, or mechanically accessible. Mind, getting to the point where you manual parry (much less chamber) in Warband isn't exactly an immediate achievement, either.

I don't know if these are the best in the game or not but they've been working better for me than running in just an undershirt ;)

Black hood, Long dark waffenrock, huntsmen boots, huntsmen gloves...
Honestly most things with "dark" or "black" in the name are usually worth checking for their values, I haven't actually made a point to buy anything just started using what I found along the way and I've shaved my visibility down to around the mid 20s.

Hope that's somewhat helpful.

I haven't tried a controller, you may be right that it would be more robust there but all my experiences are using KBM.

I am curious which aspects of the combat system seem locked behind story quests to you?
I've gotten most of my combat skills into the teens at least and I've done hardly any of the story quests (been free roaming and doing side quests).
I did use the captain for training - once I figured out I could just repeatedly talk to him - but that was after a fair bit of free roam leveling as I wandered around (if you want to advance the story not at all past the prologue but safely level your combat skills you can pick on game in the forests or farm animals in remote locations - this method is not as fast as training with the captain but it gets you meat to sell so there's a pay off beyond the levels).

While the combat in KC:D is pretty intuitive to me you have made me curious about taking another look at Mount & Blade, I'll have to see if I still have it installed (or maybe reinstall it) one of these days when I get a bit more time. It would be interesting to directly compare the two.

I actually saw my visibility/conspicuousness/noise raise when using black hood as opposed to nothing.

I'm just using Quilted Brown Jacket (I think tarred gambeson or whatnot had better stats, but also 10 pounds more), Fashionable Dark Hose (Patched Dark Hose before that), and Quiet Dark Shoes. Haven't found anything better so far.

You do not get the "parry shield" indicator displayed before you practice with Barnard, for starters.

I was not able to do side-step dodges (despite having a lot of perks that should improve the chance of them), but maybe that's just my timing. Also could not trigger master parry - again, could be timing, but I suspect that the ability to trigger it is actually locked behind a training session requirement.

*Gasp* You have Mount & Blade and not played thousands of hours of it?

"How barbaric!"

By the way, that game has so many quality mods (well, more like complete overhauls) that I'd strongly recommend trying at least some of them, regardless of what you think about "native" experience.

My favorite is Prophesy of Pendor (yes, the title is misspelled), with Sword of Damocles second favorite (mostly because both expand somewhat on management/strategic level of the base game). Admittedly, I haven't really been paying much attention to other mods after finding these two early on. Too much time spent on those alone anyway.

Most of them can be found on Taleworld forums, so easy to browse around if you are so inclined: https://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?board=165.0