How to Duel with Enemy ?

[Eternie]

During the tutorial getting to the Duel with enemy. The game says
"When guards attack you in melee combat
you're locked in and must repel their attacks
Parry their attacks with proper timing and
Kill them when they are off balance."

What's proper timing ? I've died 5 or 6 times trying to work out how to time it correctly.
I've tried button mashing .. waiting for him to be almost hitting me and parry at the last moment .. nothing seems to break his rhythm.
All help appreciated, as I'd like to be able to play the game.

[Eternie]

This is during the Tutorial Where we get forced to face a soldier and attempt to parry his blows.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2828124640

After getting killed about 5 times, I had a lucky parry attempt and managed to keep playing. However dying regularly whilst attempting to parry ruins the whole feel of the game.

[MASTAN]

Just hit the button every time enemy starts attack movement.

If you play at max difficulty then you won't need that at all, except for that first introductory fight. Because anyone further will instantly kill you.

[Eternie]

I've attempted to avoid combat totally I do prefer to play as a sneaker.
However as the camera gets turned and locked onto an enemy as soon as they are aggroed and close, it's incredibly hard to avoid the fight.

I'll attempt to follow your advice and attempt to time a parry as they start an attack.

I've been trying for all sorts of times during an attack and 95% of the time just lose 30 - 40% of health with each hit, playing on Easiest level. So with each enemy I lose at least 60 % health or die.

[Eternie]

How SILLY is it when I get into the secret room with the pry bar the message appears to use 4 invisibility and there's 2 guards posted just outside of the room who can see me in the room. Invisibility only last 3 seconds .. no way that's long enough to slip past the guards.

That virtually kills the game, parries that don't work 90% of the time and enemies spawning in to cover a hiding spot.

No wonder the game is being given away for almost nothing ... the devs need to go back to the drawing board and fix this game.

[Eternie]

For me being an older player I'm more use to a parry being activated just as I'm about to be struck Like in Game the Kingdoms of Amalur which has in game demo of all moves in game. Showing how they should look to work. As shown in the following video at time stamp 7:39 showing how to Riposte Doing an attack after successfully Parrying an attack.
https://youtu.be/at-SuqWHMlA

Whereas in Styx it's a matter of guessing when that point is, and any clicking we do does not initiate any form of blocking unless a parry is miraculously activated.

[Seflame]

Dude i know 8x years passed since you wrote this, but i would say, it depends on the dificulty. I would suggest try to avoid combat first, until you can level up the parry ability, it´s like... the second skill on a skill set, agility i think.
Every enemy has their own timing, human guards are comparatively easier, 3 parrys and you kill them, human crossbowmen, 1 parry, and you kill them, civilians, 1 parry, and you kill them, Inquisitors, 4 parries ( 3 attacks, 1 dodge, 1 attack) and you kill them. Elves... NOPE, get out of there, goblins, 3 parries in quick sucession, and you kill them, armored knights... NOPE.
As a general rule, only duel when you are in 1v1. Remember you can use clones for distracting enemies , that facilitates sneaking a lot. You can cast a clone, and then with the X key, they can growl making noise, atracting enemies.
I suggest you make a save in a 1vs1 situation, only for getting the timing, in general humans use the same timing, civilians and crossbowmen are different. Goblins are quicker movements in quick sucetion.
With the F Key you can roll for making distance, and run for it.

[Eternie]

Well it's only 4 months ago, but I appreciate any and all helpful suggestions.

As I would love to get better at the game. I do tend to move between different games then forget what the controls are need to replay tutorials to relearn controls and timing.

The tutorial parry lesson has killed me at least 40 to 50 times .. just trying to learn the timing required. I think it eventually worked due to absolute luck, or perhaps the 39+ other times that it didn't work must have been bad luck .. when even playing on easiest difficulty.

I even tried to find you tube videos on how to parry .. found 4 of them where they mentioned Parrying in the title ... but didn't even do a parry during the whole vid.

I'll try ... again so thanks

[molby86]

I'm in the same boat, started getting very frustrating. Hence reading posts like this to try and work out how to fight the enemy and win! Spoils the game constantly dying. 🥴

[Pormisya]

Originally posted by Eternie:

During the tutorial getting to the Duel with enemy. The game says
"When guards attack you in melee combat
you're locked in and must repel their attacks
Parry their attacks with proper timing and
Kill them when they are off balance."

What's proper timing ? I've died 5 or 6 times trying to work out how to time it correctly.
I've tried button mashing .. waiting for him to be almost hitting me and parry at the last moment .. nothing seems to break his rhythm.
All help appreciated, as I'd like to be able to play the game.

Here, I agree with you. Let me explain my situation to you as follows: I started with the game in goblin (the most hard) difficulty. I liked the atmosphere of the game, the fantastic universe set up, the system, the story flow and side missions, collecting relics, etc.

I unlock many achievements with the story, including the achievements of very few of the players have gotten so far, such as the achievement of neutralizing 3 or more guards with my clone in the game, and this makes me happy. I'm playing the third episode. Then I looked at my achievements. And I saw a secret achievement called "Outstanding duelist". The achievements with the knife and stealth killing were also hidden and I opened them while I was playing, and then I guessed from the other two achievements that I needed to kill a certain number of people with parry to get it. This is where the problem starts.

If a worker sees me he kicks me and I fall and he kills me. If a guard sees me, he grabs me from my head and kills me. And when I dodge their attacks from afar, they shoot me with knives and arrows and kill me. In short, I try every way to kill them with parry but in vain. It does not work. In no way can you kill them with parry. I hope in the future we will face a mission that few people and I need to attack them with parry as mission wants us. And I hope I get this achievement then. Otherwise, the only person I've been able to kill with parry so far was a worker on the entry mission.

If I face with this situation because of the difficulty they need to fix it. If it doesn't work at all generally then why they made such an achievement. Best regards.

[MASTAN]

Originally posted by Pormisya:

If I face with this situation because of the difficulty they need to fix it. If it doesn't work at all generally then why they made such an achievement. Best regards.

"Fixing" it would mean changing the balance of high difficulty setting and most surely won't be done. Besides that game is quite old and such old games very rarely receive any updates at all.
Just switch to Normal difficulty if you want that achievement.

[d3adf1sh]

the game is a stealth game above all, they made the combat next to impossible so you avoid it at all costs. it's by design.

the sooner you realize that, the sooner you'll have fun with the game. you can still kill guards, you just got to be sneaky about it.

[Eternie]

Originally posted by Pormisya:

<snip>

I unlock many achievements with the story, including the achievements of very few of the players have gotten so far, such as the achievement of neutralizing 3 or more guards with my clone in the game, and this makes me happy. I'm playing the third episode. Then I looked at my achievements. And I saw a secret achievement called "Outstanding duelist".
<snip>

The achievement "Outstanding duelist" I unlocked just by attempting to learn how to Parry in the tutorial intro where WE have to parry the guard the first time. Once you die to him a couple of times it's like the game makes it easier.
Also you can get perks that make you move more easily and play on easy all of which help. You only have to beat 20 guards with Parry to get achievement.

The silly thing is the Parry timing changes for different types of enemies so it still comes down to luck and guess work .. and as an older player my slower responses make for a hard game even on casual difficulty setting.

[KEEPER]

probably the only thing i hate about this game is the stupid combat, but the stealth is pretty good for a indy dev game.

i usually have my quick load mapped on my controller when any fight breaks that i can't get out of for this game, because fighting is not a storng point for Styx.

[Demonsouls1993]

If you have problems with this parry system don't play dark souls 🤣