The training dummy never fights back. It gets back up when it goes down, and times every kill. The tutorial is a short guided fight through the basics.

Anyone who opens this page shows up here with their class. Challenge them and the fight starts when they accept.

1. Four bars of six chunks, no health. Your moves knock chunks off the opponent's bars. Light hits take 1, heavy hits 2 or more.
2. Breaks. A bar at zero breaks for 6s and applies its effect. Then it refills one chunk shorter, down to 2.
3. Shatter. All four broken at the same moment and you lose. Each class also has its own kill route.
4. One balance. Every move costs balance. Heavy moves wind up first, so they can be dodged on reaction.
5. Dodge. Avoids a move entirely, costs no balance, and has a long cooldown both players can see. If it avoids something, it recharges twice as fast. A wind-up move that gets dodged leaves the attacker off balance 1s longer. A Doublestab is two strikes: a dodge or a Ranger's stance only slips the first.
6. Shield. Raise it (F) and nothing gets through until you act: no damage, no kill. It costs 2.5s of balance and has no cooldown. A move that hits it is wasted and the attacker recoils for 1s. Each class has one move that strips it: Flay, Jab, Ember, Quick Shot. Burns keep ticking through it.
7. No regen. Restoring a bar is a move like any other, and it also clears the burns on that bar.

• Pillars are the four bars, left to right in key order 1–4, six chunks each. A black slot with a crack through it has broken off for good: the bar can't refill past it. Against a Serpent, a slim magenta column stands after the four: the darkshade on that fighter, one cell per stack. The top cell flickers when that stack is about to fade. The Serpent picks it with 5, the same way it picks a bar.
• Rubble means broken. The number inside is the time left, and the word under it is what the break does.
• The ring on the ground under each fighter fills as their balance returns. A thicker outer ring is a wind-up.
• Beams across the middle are heavy moves on their way. Magenta ones kill. A beam aimed at the fighter is a Serpent's coil: you can't see which strike it is until it lands. With five darkshade on you, any coil might be the killing Garrote, so it shows magenta too.
• A gold ring under a Ranger means it is watching: the next move into it misses, feeds its Focus (the gold diamonds) and hands it its balance back. Waiting out an Overwatch still gives it 1 if it has none.
• A blue barrier over a fighter, with blue frames on their bars, is a raised shield. Flames are burns, a crosshair is exposed. A bright frame is your pick, and the arrow marks the latest one.

Keys go by position on the keyboard, so they work on any layout.