In your quest to not die in a game that features you dying, a lot, it can be difficult to achieve your goal. Here's some quick tips that have helped me survive.

1. Use a shield. USE A SHIELD. USE. A. SHIELD.

I do not care if you have the 2-handed weapon bonus. I do not care if you want to use a big stick with a huge axe on the end. Use a shield. Half the time you don't even need to be actively blocking, and it will absorb damage for you. And any time you swing from the right-hand side, your character will automatically use the shield to cover the front of your body.

Get the biggest, fattest shield you possible can, regardless of fame penalty, and make sure it stays in front of you as much as you can.

2. Use your feet.

If you enemy can't hit you, then you don't have to worry about armor or shield durability, and you definitely don't have to worry about being hurt. High movement skill will save you frequently, and learning to predict the AI's aggression and when to dash can set you up for an excellent chance to not only avoid damage, but also counter attack.

3. Armor up.

It's pretty simple - get as much armor as you possibly can (your focus should be chest -> head -> right arm -> right leg -> left leg -> left arm, provided you are using a shield.) On occasion, your shield will not help you, and someone will bonk you regardless of earlier preparations. Armor helps prevent your sudden, but otherwise easily foreseen demise. Once again, I recommend (mostly) ignoring fame debuffs and just equipping the most protective armor you can. The amount of fame you have will not save you from being stabbed, but a piece of armor with 75% protection just might keep you alive long enough to accrue more fame.

You've mastered to art of not dying. Unfortunately, this is only half the battle. Because now you have seven dudes running at you with large, pointy objects doing their best to make you look like your grandma's pincushion. Ideally, they will die before you do.

1. Damage types and bonuses:

I will, truthfully, admit that I'm not 100% certain on this. I'm using information from what I've seen and from another guide https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2947915830

Specifically:
Blunt damage is good against armor and knocks enemies back further.

Piercing is good against armor.

Cleaving is good against shields and for dismemberment.

Slashing is good against unarmored areas and for dismemberment.

A quick note about this:
I believe these stack on top of additional bonuses in the description. So, if you have a blunt weapon that also has in its description that it ignores 25% of armor, I think it stacks with the hidden bonus already granted by the weapon being blunt. Whether this bonus is additive or multiplicative, I am unsure.

2. Which damage type is best?

I, personally, am of the opinion that cleaving and blunt are the best damage types. Cleaving removes pesky enemy shields much more quickly, allowing you to freely smash them into bits, and is useful from the very start of the game up through the very end. Blunt lets you ignore the heavy armor of your enemies later in the game and keeps them back enough that you can more easily dodge or block their attacks.

Slashing, while very good at the beginning of the game, ultimately falls off the later you get and the more heavily armored your opponents become. Piercing is good, but you rarely get additional bonuses with piercing weapons (other than the obvious advantage of their reach - which shouldn't be as much of an issue, since you can move in easily because YOU ARE USING A SHIELD, RIGHT?)

3. My Preferred Weapon Categories:

This is, of course, something that everyone will have their own preferences with. If you are brand new and struggling, hopefully this will give you a few ideas to try out.

First and foremost, claw weapons. Claw weapons deal an absurd amount of damage, use the 1-handed sword skill, and are either of the slashing or cleaving damage types. They are very short range and require thought into when you swing them, but if you land a hit, it's absolutely devastating. Claw weapons come with an (almost) unique trait, too - by swinging from the right side, and with good positioning, you can curl your weapon around the outside edge of some shields, bypassing the defenses of your enemies entirely. Additionally, the short range of claws is frequently a positive element instead of a detriment. Because you need to get so close to your enemies, many of the weapons they wield are far outside of their effective range. You'll likely get smacked a couple times, but usually only for a couple points of damage each time.

Second, flails. Likely, the first flail you find will drive you insane as you get disarmed over and over again (especially with the Unlucky trait). However, these weapons are absolute beasts once you get to impressive (blue) quality and above. One-handed mace type weapons that are either cleaving or blunt, they boast excellent mid-range power and what I believe to be the best damage types in the game. On top of that, they also tend to have really good traits that stack on additional damage to shields or ignoring armor. If you learn how to reliably aim for the head with the sweet spot of a flail, you'll start absolutely destroying your enemies. Note that despite the descriptions on flails, I've often found them to be quite bad against shields - the chain does not wrap around like you'd think, so you usually just bounce off. Aim for the head or the unshielded arm and you'll do much better.

Update: I've played around with flails a fair bit more, and while I still mostly agree with my previous statements, they are slightly better against shields than I'd previously thought. For a flail to curl around a shield and hit the arm, chest, or head behind, it requires standing at a fairly specific distance. I've found that this distance is usually about one step closer than the optimal distance for if you were solely focusing on sweet spot strikes to the head.

Third, and finally, polearms.

I know, I know. I didn't rate piercing very well. But polearms have two incredible advantages: The obvious being their reach. If you can just poke everyone away from you until they die, their lack of bonus traits doesn't matter terribly much. And second, they are the only other weapon type in the game, when used with a shield, that you can attack around an enemy's shield like you can with claw weapons. Once again, by attacking from the right side, your character will curve their attack. Timing and aiming this correctly will bypass the enemy's shield entirely, hitting their arm, chest, or head behind it. I've found this easiest to do with tridents, but your mileage may vary.

Bonus shout out:
Axes. Axes use cleaving damage and also frequently have a trait where they deal bonus damage to shields. You can destroy shields incredibly quickly with axes when used correctly, leaving your enemy open to your attacks.

4. Sweet Spots

This comes in two parts: weapon sweet spots, and (I believe) armor sweet spots. We'll start with weapons.

Every single weapon has a sweet spot where it will deal more damage. Most of these should be pretty obvious. Polearms deal the most damage when stabbing someone with the tip. Swords deal more damage with you hit the enemy with the tip. Axes deal more damage when hitting with the blade instead of the handle. Flails and maces do more damage when hitting enemies with the head of the weapon.

Armor sweet spots are much trickier, for two reasons. First and foremost: I have seen no actual confirmation that they exist, so this may well be a product of my mind and biases. Unless and until this is confirmed or denied, though, I think they exist. By and large, these spots seem to be dependent on the type of armor a character is wearing. Essentially, if you can hit a spot where there is a gap in the armor and you can see flesh, you will bypass that armor entirely, dealing full damage. This becomes much less frequent the further into the game you are and does not appear to function the same way with head armor. However, I have at various times managed to slip a claw strike between an enemy's bracers and their chest armor to deal much more damage than when I've hit their armor in the same location.

So, you are now familiar with keeping yourself alive and with making your enemies dead. What else is left? Plenty!

1. Bets

Bets can be very powerful gold bonuses, especially early in the game. You'll want to keep your eyes out for enemy kills, enemy decapitations, and winning within a set amount of time in particular. Racking up an additional couple hundred gold each week can offset a lot of your maintenance and training costs at the very least, and some bets will give you over a thousand gold.

Worth noting: As of right now, bets do not work with Draft battles. You're just wasting money any time you make a bet and go into a draft fight. (Bonus note: all draft fights give favor with Joridus and lose favor with every other patron.)

2. Decapitation

Eventually, every weapon will decapitate your enemies. Decapitation appears to be based on how much damage you do to a character, and as your skills and base damage (from better weapons) grow, you'll do enough damage to split a man in half with a mace.

3. Stats and Training

Training is very important in the early weeks of a challenge attempt. Even beyond the raw stats it gives, the additional experience boost will drastically improve your character even over the course of just a couple battles.

In terms of importance, I rank stats as Health -> Stamina -> Stamina Regeneration - > Movement - > Dashing - > Shields -> Weapon skills - > Throwing.

Since you cannot train health, your main focus should be on training stamina and movement on the highest setting for the first 6-8 weeks. The goal is to get a minimum of 80 stamina, which will keep you topped off. The additional movement you gain will keep your speed up, even as you acquire heavier, more protective armor. From there, I'd start training Shields / Movement on a lower intensity. This is primarily for the experience bonus and to try to have your shield skill keep up with your weapon skill.

I've never had to train my weapon skill - even just by using it in my matches, I'll frequently end a run with 80-90+ weapon skill before any bonuses are applied.

Increased shield skill makes your usage of shields more effective, increasing your blocking speed and how far you knock people back when shield bashing. And since you are DEFINITELY USING A SHIELD, it's clear that any bonus you can get will help.

Throwing, while more useful than you'd likely think, is ultimately not a primary skill or way to fight (unless you're some masochist doing a challenge run, anyway.) And enemy shields basically negate its usefulness entirely. I don't bother investing in this at pretty much any point - I'd rather take gold or fame for a subsequent character over improving throwing skill.

4. Arena items, traps, exploitation, and sweet, sweet cash

Every arena comes with its own unique design and way to manage it. The further you ascend in the ranks, the less exploitable most of the arenas become.

The first thing to note is that almost every arena comes with a barrel or rack of throwing weapons to use. While not game changing, they are great panic weapons when you're on 1hp and trying not to die. Drop your main weapon, sprint over to them, and start hurling them at the enemy in hopes for a lucky victory.

Second, many arenas come with traps. These are activated by stepping on the large blue buttons on the ground. Luring an enemy into a trap can save you a ton of grief by dealing substantial amounts of damage before you ever have to engage them. However, be aware that your enemies can trigger traps, too. As of this update, they do not appear to be smart enough to trigger them on their own. But while fighting an ally, for example, or attempting to reach you, they can trigger it accidentally. And nobody wants iron spears tickling their taint.

Third, exploitation. Also known as cheese, or that thing YouTube commenters get VERY upset about as if they don't also exploit games.

One of the easier forms of cheesing your enemies comes from good old fashioned height differences: Unlike Star Wars, the high ground is an absolute ♥♥♥♥ place to be. Lure your enemy onto a ramp or staircase, then stand beneath them. A solid chunk of the attacks they try to do won't even get close to hitting you, and you can slash at their ankles until they turn into the Black Knight from Monty Python. This comes with the minor caveat where the attacks that would hit you are pretty much all going to hit your head. Fortunately, you aren't an idiot, and you are USING A SHIELD which will block the vast majority of those attacks for you.

Pillars are a gladiator's best friend. And by gladiator, I mean you, specifically. You can lure enemies to the opposite side of a fallen pillar and bait out attacks so you can close in and take pot shots. This is easiest to do with a mid-range weapon, since short range weapons make it difficult to reach over the pillar, and long range weapons can keep you far enough back that the enemy will path around the pillar to get to you. Also, you can use standing pillars by hiding around the side of them, and while your enemy continuously smashes their weapon into the pillar, you can peek around the side for a good hit or five. I will note that on rare occasions, the enemy will manage to slash me through a pillar anyway, which is something to be careful of.

Mud puddles are terrifying - for your enemies. Only found in the early game, mud puddles will be avoided almost entirely by your enemies because they're trying to avoid the movement debuff. While they will come in if you're standing in the center of one, you can work around the edges of a mud puddle to poke and prod at them until they die. Easy money.

Fourth, bonus cash:

There's money hidden in the arenas! And I mean this in two ways.

First, money will occasionally explode out of a crate, vase, jar, or other destructible environment and allow you to gain a cool bonus of 50-100 gold. Over the course of a run, this can add up. It appears to be a low percentage chance of happening, and sometimes I am not gifted with an explosion of cash. Similarly, the higher ranked you get, the less clutter is in the arenas, further reducing your chance at some bonus gold.

Second, especially early on, Spoils matches are basically free money. While this does have to be balanced against how much you would earn from another match (like Survival or 1 vs. Many) you can take some new gear, sell it, and make a quick 1-2k turn around that you might not otherwise get. Finish a match with Spoils, and then DO NOT EXIT THE ARENA. You now have all the time in the world to compare items with each other to make sure you're making the best profit - or finding yourself a shiny new weapon to use. So long as you look down and hover over an item, a tooltip will pop up and show you a full description. Keep in mind that, when selling items, you're going to receive 25-50% of the value shown in this description, and the value will be much lower for more damaged items. As you get into the mid-game, though, you can start acquiring and selling items that are thrown into the arena with full durability, like bardiches, for 3k+ gold.

Also worth picking up are items that have "fancy" in their name - these items are absolute garbage as weapons, but they sell for the exact value they list, as opposed to every other item in the game. If you've got nothing better to grab, pick up a fancy jug and sell it off for an easy 2500.

I typically enter Spoils matches while keeping my primary weapon and shield in my auxiliary items, repairing them if needed, to keep my hands open and make sure I'm making maximum profit. So long as you run in and grab a decent weapon as soon as you enter the arena, you'll be as safe as you can get while participating in a gruesome bloodsport.

Choosing your matches and favor

Choosing your matches can be a bit tricky. I highly value matches with the Insurance modifier, but it's often more worthwhile to go for a Survival or 1 vs. Many match with Rabble to get the biggest payout for a relatively easy fight. Learning how to balance risk vs. reward is always difficult, and making sure to take time to repair your weapons/armor during a Uniformed fight (or a Draft) is always important, even if you otherwise wouldn't receive great rewards.

Typically, I rank matches as Tournament -> Survival -> 1 vs. Many - > Many vs. Many - > Draft -> 1 vs. 1 -> Many vs 1. This can change depending on what modifiers there are and who I need to curry favor with.

I never take fights where I don't know what kind of match I'm getting into if I have the option.

Favor is a bit tricky, but it's very much worth learning what bonuses - or detriments - will happen with positive or negative favor when an event triggers. Generally speaking: Alluora will either grant or take away favor, Mazza with fame, and Valerius with gold. Joridus is a bit special, in that he can grant auxiliary equipment slots, an additional battle slot, or three shop re-rolls. And his detriment is that he'll beat the snot out of you.

Typically, I rank patrons as Alluora -> Joridus -> Mazza/Valerius.

Hopefully, these tips will help you complete a few runs and get used to the game, or have taught you something you didn't know.

Be safe out there, gladiators, and try not to die too much.

And remember, the most important thing you can do is USE A SHIELD.