Kardmi Combat Guide: Stamina Management, Dodges, and Stagger

To survive and win combat encounters in Kardmi, treat your stamina bar as a defensive resource, wait out enemy wind-ups before dodging, and save your strongest burst attacks for broken poise windows. Overcommitting to offensive attacks leaves your character vulnerable to lethal counterattacks.

Manage the Stamina Economy

Every attack, dodge, and sprint drains stamina. When your stamina drops to zero, your character triggers a temporary recovery penalty that disables evasion, leaving you completely exposed.

Disengage from offensive combos when your stamina bar reaches roughly 25% capacity. Keeping this reserve guarantees you have enough energy for an emergency evasive roll or step-back.

Stamina regeneration starts only after an action's recovery animation completely ends. To speed up stamina recovery, back away from the enemy's hitbox and lower your guard. Circling at a distance refills the bar significantly faster than lingering directly in melee range.

Dodge Direction and Timing

Relying entirely on blocking will fail against heavy elite attacks and boss strikes, which pierce standard guards and shatter your posture. Defend yourself by timing invulnerability frames (i-frames) and reading directional telegraphs.

Directional Dodging

• Horizontal Swings: Dodge forward and through the attack arc toward the enemy's off-hand side. This minimizes the frames your hitbox overlaps with their weapon.
• Overhead Slams and Thrusts: Sidestep laterally. Moving sideways clears the narrow damage path and places you beside the target's flank.

Avoiding Panic Rolls

Bosses and elite enemies frequently use delayed wind-ups designed to catch players who roll immediately. Do not dodge on the initial wind-up tell. Wait until the enemy's weapon shifts from its backswing pose into forward striking momentum before pressing your dodge input.

Shatter Poise and Exploit Vulnerability

Armored and elite targets take reduced damage and ignore hitstun through hyper-armor while their poise remains intact. Breaking this posture threshold creates an extended opening for your high-damage skills.

1. Watch the Posture Threshold: Elite targets feature a stagger gauge beneath their health bar that builds as you land heavy attacks, parries, and elemental skills.
2. Punish Attack Recovery Lag: Let the enemy finish their attack string. Strike with fully charged heavy attacks or poise-damaging abilities while they are locked in recovery animations.
3. Trigger the Vulnerability State: When the gauge fills, the enemy staggers and becomes helpless for several seconds.
4. Unload Burst Damage: Swap immediately to your highest-damage cooldowns and burst rotations. Avoid standard light attacks or repositioning while the target is incapacitated.

Maintain steady pressure to prevent the poise meter from decaying. Back off only when necessary to preserve your defensive stamina reserve.

Skill Rotations and Multi-Target Positioning

Maximize offensive output by priming targets with elemental statuses before committing high-cost skills.

• Apply Priming Statuses First: Inflict statuses such as cold, shock, or fire to weaken target defenses. Pairing a slowing effect with a high-impact heavy blow increases damage output beyond using either skill independently.
• Hold Burst Cooldowns: Save long-animation skills for staggered states. Activating major damage skills during neutral combat risks missing or getting interrupted by enemy counter-swings.
• Funnel Enemy Groups: When facing packs, back up through narrow corridors, doorways, or terrain choke points so enemies cannot surround you.
• Eliminate Ranged Foes Early: Target archers, spellcasters, and high-mobility flankers first to eliminate off-screen projectile threats.
• Kite in Outer Arcs: Move along the perimeter of the arena to gather melee enemies into a tight cluster. This allows sweeping cleave attacks to hit multiple targets simultaneously while keeping all threats visible.