Combat
Parrying
Parrying is your only active defence: a chance to block an incoming hit outright rather than absorb it with armour. It only works when you have something to block WITH — a shield most of all, a two-hander at a much lower rate, a bow barely at all. A one-handed weapon and an empty off-hand parry nothing.
What you can block with
- Shield
- The best block chance in the game
- Two-handed weapon
- A much lower chance
- Bow
- Barely any
- One-hander, empty off-hand
- Nothing at all
The skill only trains when it is given a chance to fire. Carrying no shield and no two-hander means it never gains, however long you fight.
What a parry costs
- Stamina per parry
- 10
- Your Stamina bar
- As large as your Dexterity
- Regeneration in a fight
- 0.5 a second at 100 Dexterity, 0.25 at 50, 0.125 at 25
- Regeneration out of one
- 2 times as fast
A parry is paid for in Stamina, and with too little left you do not parry at all — the blow lands, and the journal says you were too winded. Nothing else spends it. Dexterity is what keeps it up: at 100 a shield holds its full block rate against most monsters and slowly runs dry against the hardest, and lower Dexterity, or stacking several sources of block chance, runs the bar down sooner. A Refresh Potion puts 30 back and a Total Refresh fills it; either can be armed to drink itself in a Potion slot.