I am a bit puzzled as to how to use combat styles ie can I allocate a key to a particular style? For instance, my hero has 'shining blade' and 'smash'...can I allocate keys 2 and 3 to these styles in any way so that when I press either of these they initiate that particular style? Sorry if this sounds really basic.

Yes, you can bind a combat style to pretty much any key you want.

When you begin the game, keys 1-10 are already set to activate the things you have on your quickbar (top left corner), so you simply need to drag combat styles to slot 2 and 3 (to use the example you mentioned).

If you press shift+2 you can place another 10 abilities here (qbar2). You have 10 qbars you can switch between, but keep in mind that keys 1-10 will activate the quickbar that is currently visible.

Two useful commands you will use a lot are /face and /stick
Type the following to put such a command on your quickbar: /macro face /face

Say you want to bind the /face command to your "f" key, first you need to make the macro above and place it somewhere on your quickbar. Let's say you put it in the first slot on qbar2. To bind this particular slot to the "f" key type: /qbind 2 1 <press the "f" key>

(Later on) You can also activate two additional qbars in the options menu. These work the same way as the first one, except you need to press ctrl+1-10 or alt+1-10 to activate abilities.

Lastly, I recommend to switch the following ability off: /cancelstyle (just type the command once). It toggles if you want to cancel a combat style when you click it twice, but there is not much use for that especially for a new player.

 

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What a great reply, thank you for your help.

Additionally, you can type /keyboard and set the keys for "stick" and "face" there so that they don't take up a quickbar slot.


To show the extra quickbars: type "/quickbar 2 1" and "/quickbar 3 1". To turn them off you would type "/quickbar 2 0", etc.


Also, if you make a mistake with a /qbind or want to change it, you can usually just re-type the "/qbind x x" command and press the key you want it to be. However, occasionally the game will get confused and not let you overwrite or change a /qbind (usually happens when trying to change a qbind to a completely different quickbar). In these cases you will need to unbind that key. To do so, type "/qunbind x x"


Here's a video that mentions this system as well as some other basic control techniques that may be helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG_k83Yiy1A

 

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