This is a basic guide on effective Sword combat. For simplicity, combos and enemy breakpoints will be measured in "LA" which is Light Attack damage. At 0STR, 1 LA is 1 damage, but at 4STR, 1 LA is 1.8 damage.

Attacks

The Sword has 4 attacks:

• Light - 1 damage in a small area in front of you.

• Heavy - 2 damage in a larger area in front of you.

• Charged Heavy - 3 damage in a very large area in front of you. Must be fully charged in order to do 3 damage. Note: If you hit multiple enemies with this attack, only one will take 3 damage. The others will take 2.

• Rollslash - 2 damage in a small straight line from where your roll lands.

Scaling

Strength Each STR upgrade increases your damage by 0.2, additively. For example, 2 STR upgrades gives you a 1.4 multiplier to each attack, resulting in 1.4, 2.8, 4.2, and 2.8 damage from base attacks. It also increases your range by 0.1 per upgrade. We will focus our upgrades in STR, as that is where they will be the most impactful.

Dexterity Each DEX upgrade increases your attack speed by <>. We do not bother with Dex as it is not very effective in normal combat, only against bosses. We do get 1 point in DEX after Frog King, and another before Lord of Doors, as we have extra souls at those points.

Combos

• Heavy, Light, Light (HLL) -- This is the go-to sword combo for bosses and other large enemies. It does 4 LA per cycle, and with proper positioning can be spammed in most boss fights.

• Rollslash, Light, Heavy -- This combo lets you open up a fight with 5 LA, which can quickly kill just about any small/medium enemy. It also chains well into the HLL combo as more enemies move toward you.

• Light, Light, Light, Arrow -- This combo falls off the more STR you get, but early game it is basically on par with the HLL combo. You want to min-charge the Arrow, so you get one damage out while you are waiting for your sword cooldown to refresh.

At all times, make sure you are keeping track of how many light attacks you have used since your last heavy attack. If you use all 3 light attacks after a heavy, or 2 after a rollslash, you will have to wait a bit before your next combo. In some cases, like the end of a wave, or finishing a boss fight, this isn't a big deal. In others, it can lead to you taking unnecessary damage, or just losing time that could easily be avoided.

Resources

HP Breakpoints A good starting point is to learn the breakpoints of each enemy, at each point in the run. For example, when you are on your way to Guardian, Mages take 5 hits to kill - usually a Heavy, Light, Light, Light. By Watchtowers, we can kill them with a simple Heavy, Light combo. There is a full spreadsheet of enemy HP and how many LA it will take to kill them at each STR upgrade here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M6eTt-pjlAI0EBkmN1x8XVoDMsvNa2nTjhVx3_o9sTM/edit#gid=1652322851

Savestates Because of how much combat we have in the NMG routes, most of your timesave will come from improving combat efficiency. After learning breakpoints using the above spreadsheet, you can work out your own "script" to arenas, using the savestates available at: https://www.speedrun.com/resourceasset/e12id

DebugMod Kein made a DebugMod for Death's Door that allows you to unlock all weapons, get infinite HP, refund upgrades, teleport around, and more. You can find the code here: https://github.com/Kein/DDoorDebugMod or download the zip file here: https://discord.com/channels/867378517519106080/868071248259846165/869339321012977735