MORDHAU – Fundamentals of Dueling

I. Dueling Etiquette

Preamble  
I suspect the reader has played the tutorial to a degree prior to reading the guide, but I will speak about the basics to a degree before proceeding into any major topic. To practice I heavily suggest you go into a custom game, go into console, use slomo 0.5, activate one bot, toggledamage, togglestamina, and slowly turn up the speed until you have improved at what you wish to succeed at whether it be blocking, chambering, clashing, footwork or matrixing.  
 
A. Joining a server 
To begin learning you will first need to join a server, go to the server browser and click on a high population duel server. Choosing to begin in a low pop server may result in joining one without a moderation team which entails RDM (Random Murder). To best practice you should hope to find a server which is less chaotic and mindful to new players. 
 
B. Being Mindful of those around you 
After joining the server be mindful of other duels, although other players will notice you and will usually not target you, if you happen to be in their way while fighting they may continue fighting even while hitting through your character, killing you. You must be aware of those around you and expect they are not being aware of you, in this way all players can duel in a small or large map without disturbing each others duels. 
 
C. Dueling Etiquette 101 
To enter a duel, look at a player infront of you and flourish your weapon: press x then 1. If the other person flourishes, you have technically initiated a duel. After the other person flourishes it is normal for players to give each other a slight backstep and a nod, although this doesnt always happen. For instance, some players will flourish in your face hoping for you to flourish or will feint spam you, attempting to scare you into fighting them prior to accepting the duel. When a duel is finishes, both players will usually type gf (good fight) and sometimes vgf (very good fight). 
 
D. Side Note  
If by chance someone is rdming (random murdering), open console by pressing ` (sometimes it will be set to L by default, go into key binds and set this to ` as the L keybind will cause you issues) and type: votekick “player name”. If a person happens to kill you by mistake, be forgiving but if it happens regularly enter a votekick and type rdm into chat. 
 
 
 

II. Basic Fighting Mechanics

A. Attacking  
 
1. Types of attacks 
– Attacks can be performed fundamentally 9 ways. Horizontal swings, Pokes, Overhead swings, underhand swings, and kicks. 
 
2. Initiative 
– When a person has initiative they have the ability to attack, think of it like having “the right away” while driving. The right away can be taken from you if you allow it to happen. You can accelerate your weapon to try and take initiative from your opponent rather than simply trading hits or you could drag to give your opponent initiative. 
 
3. Gambling 
– Gambling take place when you attempt to “guess” what your opponent will do and respond based on it, this can be by guessing their attack, their attack manipulation or their movement. For instance, chambering a feint would technically be a gamble because you aren’t reading whether they are feinting or not, you are simply chambering to skip the analysis. 
 
4. Attack Phases 
– Attacks have 3 phases, windup, release (or attack phase), and recovery. Different weapons have different phase times and defines who has initiative or gambles. A person who has a shorter windup will attack faster than another person, longer release phases allow you to swing for longer, and longer recovery phases cause you to return your weapon to its neutral phase after missing an attack. If a person has a long recovery phase, you can punish them for missing. 
 
B. Weapon Manipulation 
– Weapon Manipulation has several primary units, Positioning, Footwork, body rotation,Where you begin your swing, how you drag it and how you “rotate” the swing. 
 
– Imagine this, you start you swing looking at your opponent and you don’t move your camera: it will hit once it reaches the halfway point during the release phase, do this again but looking to the side of your opponent or just out of view. It takes much longer or quicker for your swing to reach the point of impact. Now move your body around, by moving while swinging it changes how quickly your attack reaches your opponent, also rotate your body and finally notice you can pull your sword in either direction to speed it up or slow it down! Finally you can even rotate your swords flight to hit lower or higher, this can be useful for advanced attacks which will not be discussed in this guide. 
 
C Chambers and Ripostes 
(This section is opinionated, take what it has to say and implement it into fighting and decide whether it is effective to you.) 
1. Chambers and Ripostes are very similar in achieving a specific result. Trading hits in an efficient manner. Chambering is talked about in the defense section but for the sake of speaking about the benefits of chambering over ripostes i will be giving my own opinion. Chambering is best used to combat feint spamming, dealing with multiple enemies by chambering off of a enemy and into another, flexing on an enemy by chambering them a bunch of times, chambering weapons which will lose stamina before your weapon, and it also funny. 
 
– Ripostes on the other hand are more simplistic, it uses less stamina to perform and allows you to choose between attacking an enemy or simply blocking their attack. Chambering forces you to either hit your opponent in a predictable manner or waste more stamina feinting. Overall I believe Riposting or Parrying is more reliable, simpler and efficient for these reasons and numerous others. Chambering should be thought of as a form of defense or attack to combat a specific scenario while parrying and having the choice to riposte or reset (as in back away from you opponent and decide on what you will do next) is more reliable and useful. I do still recommend you learn to chamber well, as it will improve your ability to read enemies and reduce gambling but it shouldn’t be used constantly simply because it feels nice. Try not to be a one trick pony, use both chambers and Ripostes when you feel it is best suited for the situation. 
 
D. Kicking 
1. Kicking is an underrated mechanic by most players from level 1 to 40. There are two types of kicks, a slow kick and a fast kick. A fast kick is rather, well.. fast. It can usually hit faster than most large weapons by a degree. A slow kick is well, as the name suggests really slow. You will do a slow kick if you have been hit and immediately kick afterwards, morph into a kick in the late phase of a weapons windup, and if you combo into a kick. kicks can not combo but can be used in a combo. For instance, stab combo kick works whilst kick combo stab does not. 
 
– kicks can be me dragged and acceled with body rotation (up to 90 degrees) and can be increased or decreased in length or height. Also, if you have a slightly higher elevation than your opponent you can sometimes kick over the opponents kick. Essentially matrixing their kick with your own 
 
 
 

III. Defense

D. Defense  
 
1. Survival 
– Your main goal is survival and survival goes in this order. Defend the objective, yourself and your team in that order. The reason this is important is most games run by a form of “ticket” system, in which the team which loses most tickets lose the game. These tickets are lost by your team dying or the other team holding an objective. By defending yourself, you are therefore defending the objective and by defending the team you are defending your teams tickets. Also dying is stinky, so don’t do that. 
 
2. Tactics 
– How can we defend ourselves? Well there are a few options, you can either parry an attack, block an attack, chamber an attack, clash an attack, dodge an attack, or matrix an attack, and a combination of each. 
 
3. Parrying and blocking. 
– The foremost defense tactic is parrying, by right clicking you parry (quick block) an attack prior to it hitting you. It is important to parry when the attack actually enters the attack phase rather than the windup phase, as doing so will most likely end in an unsuccessful parry. How does parrying differ from blocking? Well the difference is timing, a block is held constantly until turned off. Some shields can block while other only parry. 
 
4. Chambers 
– This form of defense is also offensive such that you attack your opponent after “parrying” their weapon, but not parrying in the literal sense, you are swinging your sword such that it connects with your opponents weapon during your windup phase (Phases will be discussed in the weapon manipulation section). How is this useful? Well lets say someone is feinting in your face repetitively (faking a swing) and you don’t quite know when to block, it will allow you to challenge their feint. If they feint, you will hit them and if they continue with the hit you will either chamber them or clash. Clashes will be discussed further. 
 
5. Clashes 
– Clashes are a form of defense which allows you to cancel an enemies attack by essentially attacking an enemies weapon in the same fashion as a chamber, but during the attack phase. Don’t worry just yet about phases, it will be discussed in the weapon manipulation section. 
 
6. Dodge 
– Dodge is a perk which uses heavy stamina consumption to move quickly in one direction by pressing space. Whilst this is useful, stamina consumption makes this perk unfavorable and by learning proper footwork, placement, and matrix’s you can achieve the same results in a more concise and favorable fashion. 
 
7. Placement and Footwork 
– The key to not being hit, is placement and footwork. Think of boxers rythem, by constantly moving you can much more quickly responds to an incoming attacking. Secondly you should be understanding of your distance from your opponent, staying just close enough to your opponent so you can back away or matrix their attack without hesitation is most rewarding to you. Also, notice that weapons swing in a circular motion, standing directly infront of a swing will place you at the longest point. By moving at the same distance 45 degrees from the opponent you will exit their swords tracers. Turn on tracers and analyze how the weapons swing reduces range over time and how this can be used to your advantage. If nothing else is gotten from this, always move, don’t stand still. 
 
– Side Note: Don’t be scared to simply walk away from a swing, if someone is gonna hit you and its easier to just walk away than to block, matrix, chamber, or clash, turn your camera the opposite direction and run backwards. If the opponent follows u, followup with a swing to punish them whilst turning towards them. 
 
8. Matrix’s 
– A matrix is slang for moving outside a weapons tracers in a unique fashion rather than simply backing away from an attack. There are fundamentally 6 matrix’s which can be used to avoid blocking an opponents weapon and allowing you to take initiative without it being your turn to attack an opponent. 
 
– horizontal matrix is done by crouching and looking either back or forward so that you avoid your opponents release phase. An advanced method of doing this, is by beginning a chamber so that if by chance you don’t successfully matrix their swing, you are still safe from their attack and if you do matrix correctly you will steal initiative by smacking them during their attack phase. This is called a “backscratch”. 
 
– Poke Matrix is the easiest to perform, as it include sidestepping an opponents poke. Do this by stepping to the open most side. The more complicated form of this is prepping a poke chamber directly beside your opponents so that if you don’t manage to properly matrix your opponent you will still be okay because you will chamber their poke. If you have time, morph into a swing if it will do more damage. 
 
– Overhead Matrix is risky but satisifying, when you notice your opponent is doing an overhead run into your opponents weapon whichever side is winding up, and crouch whilst looking down. If done correctly, you will have successfully sat under their attack and proceed to initiate your own. You are now ready to steal initiative for yourself and punishing them for letting you matrix them in this fashion. Do not gamble this, you must read this or you will be punished, analyzing whether an opponent is swinging horizontally or overhead is in my opinion most difficult and requires the second most effort to perform. 
 
– Underhand Matrix is an interesting one, as it doesnt always work for all weapons and is rather unforgiving. When a person proceeds to swing underhand you can essentially jump over their swing. This can also be done in response to a very low poke, or horrizontal swing. 
 
– A kick matrix is primary used to avoid being hit by a poke, by kicking downward, and looking bottom left. This form of matrix is rather niche and rarely used 
 
 
 

IV. Armor

A. Armor Types 
 
1. Speed Reduction 
– Armor reduces your movement speed and in technically not your swing speed, but may have an effect on your accels if you do not position correctly. For instance, how much quicker could a person move into position for an accel over a fat sack of potatoes? 
 
2. Your head 
– Your game can be ended with a single bonk to the head, but that doesnt mean you should spend so much effort protecting it with armor. Chest armor and legs are the largest parts of my body. You may be asking, what do i do if someone does try to hit me in the head and I can’t block it? Well, you see that chest armor? Jump! let them hit your chest rather than you head. Its rather protected aint it? Also, you can simply lean back and crouch to avoid being stabbed or move out of the way. 
 
– You will 9 times out of 10 be hit in the chest constantly, but your head is rather easy to protect by simply being cautious and having good game sense. How many nak*d people with head armor do you see surviving? not many.. that’s because its much easier to hit someone in the chest than it is to hit them in the head. Now i’m not saying, don’t use head armor but my main point is to not make it the primary armor piece. Make your head armor a level 2 or a level 1 if your feeling spicy, and pick your fights. 
 
 
 
 

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