By the love of god, I am just performing terribly in the arena mode. I practiced quite a bit and played for a good amount of time but at the start of the arena mode I just get destroyed. The gear is just so awful.

Don't get me started on that quarterstaff.

Thanks!

It's just hilarious because I have beaten the novice and almost the expert arena, but in the guild mode I'm just getting destroyed. Even when I try to change up the fighters.

Also I noticed that I can even enter fights when I have no money, I'm not sure if that is a bug.

Furthermore I read there is a thrust move, how can I execute it?

The default key for performing a thrust is ALT. As long as you're holding down ALT before attacking it'll do a thrust. This modifier key can be changed under the in-game controls section.

As far as being able to join fights without having sufficient funds this is intentional since the arena is still a work in progress. It's a temporary solution that allows you to join fights if you're broke until things are fleshed out more.

What determines when characters die in arena mode? Does each one of them have a set number of times that they can be defeated or is it something else? I've mostly been winning with only the occasional overconfident loss and I try to pick recruits with full health as much as possible, but they still keep dying. It makes reaching higher tiers a bit frustrating as levelling skills takes so long, though it could be that I overlooked something as I haven't read all the instructions.

If you look at the health bar there are two colors on it: yellow and red. Yellow is your stamina and red is your permanent health. Stamina will slowly increase on it's own if you aren't engaged in combat. Red health will increase a slight amount (~10% or so) after each match ends. If you lose all of your stamina then you're knocked out. If you lose all of your permanent red health your character is killed permanently.

If a recruit or hireling dies in the arena you keep all of their gear (it'll show up in the arsenal screen). If your main character (the manager) dies then it's game over in the arena. Cycling between different characters is a good way to gain health for all of your fighters since everyone gains a slight amount of health after each match. Eventually there will be a healer NPC added to the arena hub which you can pay to speed up the healing process.

Wearing armor greatly reduces the risk of taking permanent red damage. Usually if a body part is armored you'll only take stamina damage unless you receive a very hard blow to that area. Stacking armor on top of each other is also good practice to further reduce the chance of permanent damage (for example: wearing a padded cloth gambeson underneath chain).

I see, it's the exact meaning of the yellow that I didn't know. I tend to keep a small roster so their stamina was recovering sufficiently but not their health. It might be helpful to put a reminder of this in the tutorial screens of the arena, as it´s pretty important information to keep in mind when deciding on whether or not to recruit more characters.

A tutorial isn't in the game yet due to it not being feature complete. Once the game is feature complete the devs will add an in-depth tutorial that explains things such as this.

Backswing quarterstaff swings are the best :D har har! That sound the skull makes when comming into contact with the staff :D

For every two skills/techniques trained = an increase in rank. If your recruits/hirelings are not gaining rank then it means you need to train additional skills. When they have finished training a skill you'll see an icon next to their name in the match list. When this happens you should open the management screen (the one with the arsenal in it) and next to the arsenal section there is a button that allows you to choose which skills to train.

In the same management screen is where you equip gear for each and every rank using the rank slider. You will show up to matches wearing the gear equipped in this screen, not wearing the gear you have equipped in the arena hub. For example. if you move the slider to aspirant rank, equip gear, then join an aspirant ranked match... this is the gear you'll be wearing for that match. If you then join a novice ranked match you'll show up wearing nothing if you didn't also equip gear for novice rank in the management screen.

Well, I had a more advanced loadout for my aspirant fighter but it never showed up during fights despite me doing what you said. It always starts me with inept equipment even on more advanced ranks.

Are you sure you're looking at the rank and not the tier in the match select board? Rank is what determines the gear worn in matches, not tier. You could join a master tier fight that is inept ranked for example and you'd only get to use inept gear for said match.

If something else fishy is going on it may help to record a video since I've not seen any bugs reported yet about the ranking system.

I meant as a little tip in the help screens you get when you start Arena mode.