Kingdom Come Deliverance Combat Guide - How to Parry and Block, How to Master Combat

Combat plays a huge role in Kingdom Come Deliverance, and there's going to multiple times where you find yourself facing off against more than one opponent. In this full Kingdom Come Deliverance combat guide, we'll be walking you through not only how to parry in Kingdom Come Deliverance, but also the essentials of sword and shield combat.

Should you instead need anything else on Kingdom Come Deliverance, including how to earn money quickly, as well as how to understand the basics of Alchemy, head over to our Kingdom Come Deliverance guides walkthrough hub.

Kingdom Come Deliverance Combat Guide

Your first instance of combat in Kingdom Come Deliverance will occur when you speak to Sir Bernard in Rattay, where he’ll escort you to the dueling arena, and roughly outline the combat system to you. Firstly, you’ll need to understand the HUD near the bottom of the screen: the long yellow bar represents your stamina, the red bar represents your health, and the purple bar on the left indicates how much health your opponent has.

If you become injured at any point in combat, an icon will show up to the left of the HUD near the bottom of the screen, indicating that you’re either wounded, bleeding, or both. Injuries like this won’t just go away, and you’ll have to use a Bandage from your inventory to stop the bleeding and heal yourself, preventing the bleeding from chipping away at your health.

Then there’s the actual combat of Kingdom Come Deliverance to consider. You’re only able to target a single enemy with attacks at one time, so there’s no devastating attacks you can pull off that will injure entire groups of soldiers in one go. There are two types of attacks: strong, slashing attacks, which take up more of your stamina, or quicker, stabbing attacks, which take up less stamina and are much quicker to execute.

On top of choosing which attack to execute, you’ve also got to choose the direction in which to attack your opponent. Directly in the center of the screen during combat in Kingdom Come Deliverance, you’ll see a dot with five directional spikes pointing away from the dot. While executing an attack, you can point the analog stick or move the mouse in any direction, and you’ll attack in the corresponding direction, indicated by one of the spikes turning red.

While this might seem like an irrelevant detail, it’s important because of the blocking system in Kingdom Come Deliverance. You’ll also have to choose a direction to block during combat, meaning that you and your opponent are basically locked in a battle of the attacker striking from one angle, and the defender trying to block in the same direction that the attack is coming from.

Although you’ll at first be limited to a sword with which to block in the early hours of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, you’ll be able to purchase a shield for yourself once you’ve saved up enough money. As you can imagine, blocking with a shield is easier than with a weapon, but it also takes up less stamina. Try and seek out a shield as soon as possible, to see if you’re better suited at blocking with a shield than a sword.

But attacking isn’t the only way of getting around blocks. Another option for the attacking player in Kingdom Come: Deliverance is to kick your opponent which, although requires a lot of stamina and takes around three seconds to execute, can temporarily stagger your opponent if the kick connects. You can basically use this to get around the block of your enemy, although it should be noted that you’re incredibly open to attack while executing a kick, since you can’t suddenly stop and block halfway through.

Finally, there’s locking on to consider. You can either free roam in the heat of battle, going wherever you want and landing hits on any opponent on the battlefield, or you can manually lock on to a single opponent at a time. Locking on to someone means all your attacks are guaranteed to hit them, as there’s no chance you could face in the wrong direction and miss your attack. On top of this, locking on also lets you strafe round an opponent in battle, never letting them out of your sight, and also keeping you on the move, which is paramount in battle.

Kingdom Come Deliverance Combat Skills

There’s actually an entirely different category of Skills in Kingdom Come Deliverance, separate from the standard set of Skills in the game. While these combat skills are all increased through using a specific weapon, or blocking in a specific manner, they all govern how well you can fight in Kingdom Come.

We’ve outlined every Kingdom Come Deliverance combat skill just below, as well as highlighting what each Skill governs in the game:

• Defence - Increases the time for which you can hold a perfect block or dodge.
• Warfare - Controlling your overall ability to fight, this Skill controls how quick and effective your attacks are.
• Axe - Makes you more proficient with Axes.
• Bows - Makes you more proficient with Bows, increasing your shot range.
• Mace - Increases your proficiency with Maces, and your attack power.
• Sword - Increases your attack power with Swords.
• Unarmed - Increases your attack power when using your fists.

So, how should you go about increasing these Skills? Simply put, if you want to increase a certain Skill, you should be performing the action associated with that Skill. So if you want to increase Defence, then you should practice blocking no matter the outcome, and if you want to increase your Sword Combat Skill, then you should use a Sword as often as possible in combat.

We have a variety of additional guides on Kingdom Come Deliverance on USgamer, including how to pick any lock in the game, as well as how to earn money quickly through gambling.