Candy Coated Chaos

Hehayo

I will do my best to keep this short and relatively simple, however, I feel that I'll fail miserably. This is intended more for a beginner-intermediate audience, though maybe higher ranked players may take an idea.

Swordfighting is a fine art. It's not the easiest puzzle to learn, and certainly one of the hardests to master. It's different from navigating, sailing, etc. in that you're competiting against another player, making no two swordfighting matches alike. However, I'm providing three general tips for becoming a better swordfighter.

I'll touch on three essential things for now: Speed, Combos, and General Strategy.

Note that these ideas are mainly for 1vs1 duels, and not necessarily for sea battle or brawls.

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Speed is generally more important against higher ranked/experienced players. Sometimes a fight turns into a race for a [insert color here] breaker, and if you happen to get that breaker first, and smoosh your opponent, then more power to you.

You should by laying on your space bar for the greater part of the match. As soon as you have control of the next piece, you should have a pretty good idea of where it's going. I think this skill, like most, comes with experience.

If you're not laying on your space bar, you should be stalling. The only two times that I'll recommend stalling (in a duel, remember) are (1) When both you and your opponent send instakills at the same time, and are patiently waiting for that sword to come down and kill you; and (2) When both you and your opponent are near the very top of the screen and you have no real hope of digging out.

In my 158 days+ experience of swordfighting, that first bullet only applied to me once, and I didn't stall (and lost). However, the second bullet has helped me on countless occasions. Let your opponent kill himself before you do.

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An entire thread/book/encyclopedia/wiki entry could be made on "How to make combos." To save a lot of confusion and pain, I'll skip a lot of the details, and just tell you to look at some good luck screenshots. (1, 2, 3; though those first two are amazingly complex and risky, and sincerely wouldn't recommend striving for something like that)

The main idea is just to stack different colors, and place the right breaker on the color *above* the matching color. Or something. Again, the encyclopedia.

A big trick is to get the combo to be the right size. An attack that's too small will do too little damage, while an attack too big could be mostly wasted into the void (see SF posts on the ypp forum for more on this). The "ideal combo" would be something like doubles/triples on solid blocks, and sprinkle-blocks on anything higher than that. I don't think sprinkles get wasted, though I'm not an expert in that whole field. Even I don't like the really long posts (ah, the irony). Of course, making "ideal combos" is much easier said than done. Just do whatever you can, really. That's all I have to say on that.

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Okay. So that just leaves everything else, or as I called it earlier, "General Strategy." First things first. Know yourself; know your opponent. I've never been a fan of making a big deal on different types of swords, but historically, scimitars are good for big sword strikes, and skull daggers are good for sprinkles. You don't necessarily need one of those, but get a sword to match your playing style.

This next bit is more important in tournaments, but know who you're fighting. If you never heard of the person, type /who [name] and look at his stats. An ultimate will understandibly fight differently from an able, and you should adjust accordingly. I typically play a bit more conservatively against higher ranked players, but I doubt this would be the best strategy for everyone.

And one last thing. If you have lots of space, and if your opponent is floating near the very top, you should *not* be building a huge combo. Send whatever you can as fast as you can. At that high up, a single sprinkle could be the difference between him dying and him having a big break. You want to win, not to smoosh him into a fine paste. Use the red mini-box in the upper right to judge this, along with assumptions based on what you're sending, and what he's sending back.

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May justice be served!!! May the poe be wth ye!!! Avast!!!

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Me hearties!!! and behold the great hehayo has a crush Razz

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That's about all I've got for you.
And also, I've still working on the another SF teaching thing. Razz

So after a time, It'll be finish and I'll be sure to post it for ye mates. Very Happy

Good luck!
Your Pal,
Hehayo A.K.A. The Great One Cool