So first off, you must understand that combat is important in this game.

When you start off, you'll never know who are hostile and who aren't. You will also mess up your plan at least once and running isn't always the most optimal choice, as sometimes you've already been badly wounded before you realize what was happening, and by that time you can't run anymore. Of course killing innocents takes a toll on your team's morale, but that's another story.

And when you're a bit familiar with this game, you can grab your trusty axe and become Batman. While it's really dangerous to fight the bandits/soldiers, the reward far outweighs the risk. If you succeed, you can have a ton of loot and possibly even a morale boost, without losing anything. Again, there's another strategy in which you craft trade goods and sell them, which is way less risky, but it only works well when you have survivors like Katia or Bruno, otherwise you won't profit much, and you might not be able to make up for the cost.

Before actually fighting, you need to brandish your weapon.

While scavenging, there are 2 stances: the scavenge stance and the combat stance, visible under the ''Run to exit'' button. To engage in combat, you need to switch to the combat stance.

The combat stance has 2 types: ranged and melee. If you don't have a gun, the ranged stance will not appear. If you have no weapons at all, your default weapon is your fist. Keep in mind that if you're in ranged stance, but your opponent is in your melee range, you'll automatically switch to melee stance, and when your opponent gets out of your melee range, you'll switch back to ranged stance. If you take damage, you'll also switch to combat stance.

While in combat stance, you cannot loot piles or remove obstacles, but you can take cover behind doorways or some objects. This mechanic will be explained in depth later.

The survivors' combat skills determine their damage, hit chance and aiming speed.

There are a total of 5 levels of combat skills, and each survivor has a different level, as shown below.

Excellent: Roman
Good: Arica, Boris
Fair: Pavle, Marko, Emilia, Bruno, Marin, Christo, Henrik
Poor: Anton, Katia, Zlata, Irina
Terrible: Cveta

Remember, how good a survivor really is at combat doesn't just depend on combat skills. For example, some survivors have more hitpoints than others, making them better at open combat. Running speed also matters here. Pavle is the fastest runner, meaning he can hit his opponent with his melee weapon before they can aim their guns, while slower runners like Anton and Boris might have a few problems, and can be stunlocked more easily. Arica's special ability both helps and hinders her during combat, and she cannot reduce the sounds made by weapons. Another thing: Boris, Cveta and Zlata are much more susceptible to depression than others, so you should choose someone else for combat if possible.

Other NPCs also have different combat skills. Civilians < bandits < soldiers, that's all you have to remember.

When you're in melee stance, every other NPCs in the map will have a circle over them, with a knife/fist in the middle (in this guide, it is referred to as the attack circle). There's also a white overlay on the circle, telling you the damage and hit chance of your survivor. This overlay is determined by your survivor and opponent's combat skills, their melee weapons (if they have any), and their status. The melee weapons' power are as follow: Fists < Crowbar < Shovel < Knife < Hatchet.

If your opponent is climbing a ladder, running up/down the stairs, or never becomes hostile (e.g. the elderly couple at the Quiet House), the attack circle will be completely white, meaning you have a 100% chance to hit them. Beware though, that doesn't mean 100% damage!

Counterattacks are also present in the combat system. Even though you swing your weapon first, your opponent can still take no damage and strike back. Enemies with higher combat skills can do this more often, so be careful. Thankfully, your own survivor can counterattack, although only skilled ones like Roman can be regularly seen doing this.

If you're in ranged stance, the attack circle also appears with a white overlay, this time with a crosshair instead of a knife. This overlay shows your damage. If your survivor stands still or moves slowly for a small distance, it'll start to fill up. Your survivor's combat skills determines their aiming speed and max damage. Gunshots are very loud; their noise level is even bigger than the entire screen, although still smaller than the location itself.

Unlike melee weapons, each guns has its own strengths and weaknesses.

• The pistol is not so powerful, with a moderate fire rate and terrible damage. It should only be used to finish your enemy.
  
• The shotgun has a mediocre attack speed, and doesn't work too well at medium and long ranges, but it's extremely devastating at short range, especially if you've aimed. It can even kill enemies with only 1 hit, if everything is in your favor.
  
• The assault rifle is powerful at all ranges, and has a rapid fire rate. However, each burst uses up 3 bullets, so have lots of ammo handy.
  
• The sniper rifle is exclusive, and can only be found when you kill the snipers at the Construction Site in a unique scenario. It deals heavy damage at long range, but suffers at medium and close range due to its painfully slow fire rate.

As mentioned above, characters do have different health.

Out of all the survivors, Boris is the tankiest, able to survive 5 knife hits from a civilian. Roman is a bit less tanky, and everyone except the two above have the same lowest HP.

NPCs have different health too, and it's simple again, civilians < bandits < soldiers.

So now how do you increase your people's survivability? First off, there are 2 protection items for your survivors: the helmet and the military vest. The vest gives more protection than the helmet, but their effects stack, so grab them all if you expect lots of guns-blazing. Note that some enemies have these items too, making them take reduced damage, so you need a lot of firepower against them in open combat.

Second, while in combat stance, you can take cover, as said before. Taking cover reduces the damage you take, and prevents knockback from bullets, which can stunlock you. However, your survivor'll get out of cover if you swing your melee weapon, so don't bother hiding if you don't have a gun. This also stacks with protection items, but the shotgun can still badly damage you even when you are this protected.

Also, while in both stances, you can hide in alcoves, making you invisible to other NPCs. Be careful though, if you're in your opponents' line of sight while you're entering one, you'll remain visible, and the alcoves now act as cover for you, except that you'll get out when you attack with any weapons, both guns and blades.

This is the most important part of the combat system, so at least remember this.

There are ways for you to heavily damage or even instakill your opponents in 1 hit. When it's the time to strike, the attack circle will have a picture of a man about to be stabbed. These attacks are called backstabs in this guide. The outcomes of these are determined by your survivor's combat skills and their melee weapon. The opponent's stats and your guy's status don't matter here. Noise made by backstabbing is the same as that made by running.

There are 2 types of backstabs:

You can use the alcoves offensively. When an enemy passes by, it's time for you to strike. This is the most common type of backstabs, and almost always results in an instakill. Cveta is an exception; she can't instakill upon backstabs at all. Poor fighters won't pull this off successfully either, if they only have a crowbar as their weapon. Roman is the only one who can instakill upon this type of backstabs with his bare hands.

Or, you can sneak up to your opponent's back and attack. Unlike ambushing from hiding spots, only Arica, Boris and Roman can deliver an instakill by doing this, and even then Arica and Boris need something better than a crowbar for this to work. And in case you're wondering, Roman can't instakill by striking from behind with mere hands, unlike in the other backstab type.

When an opponent loses too much health, they'll usually stop fighting and beg for their life. Leaving them alive doesn't affect your people's morale, and you can't disarm them, so it's advised to kill the bad guys and spare the good. Be careful if you finish an enemy with a melee weapon though, they can still counterattack.

You can loot the NPCs' corpses, but it takes a much longer time than with normal loot piles, so make sure you're safe. Corpses will also disappear with their loot by the end of the night, so you need to loot them all.

• Normally, you should try to be stealthy instead of fighting head-on even with a combat-ready survivor, as you can kill your opponents easily via backstabs, while taking little to no damage, whereas melee combat is chance-based and ranged combat is about aiming and you might not aim fast enough.
  
  
• Enemies climbing ladders cannot attack and are completely vulnerable to damage. Since climbing ladders is a slow work, ladders make perfect chokepoints. You can attack your opponents while they are climbing up and they won't be able to harm you. This is one of the few times when attacking openly is better than being sneaky.
  
  
• As NPCs respond to noises made by your survivor, you can use noises tactically. For example, if you're next to an alcove and there's an enemy right above/below you, you can run in your place to make noise, then immediately hide. They'll come to investigate, and they'll be in your backstab range by the time they've reached the noise source. This won't work so well with Arica, since she's so quiet.
  
  
• Doors can work in a similar fashion, as NPCs will come to investigate when they see an opened door, and close that door. If your enemies are alerted to your presence however, they won't be attracted by opened doors anymore.
  
  
• Finally, if you read this, you can forget this entire guide, but it's a cheat, and of course cheating sucks. When something goes wrong and your survivor dies, immediately hit Alt-F4 before the new day loads. This will prevent the game from saving the progress and allow you to play through that fateful day again.

Note: Some of them are fixed, some not. I don't keep track of past updates, so if any of these are patched, please tell me in the comments section.

• Right after instakilling someone from an alcove, you can't enter that alcove again unless you click somewhere else and then click to hide.
  
  
• Sometimes an NPC can look visually glitchy, they won't move and won't respond to almost everything. The only way to make them move again is to aggro them.
  
  
• If you're shot while taking cover, your survivor will become uncontrollable. This only ends if they die, run out of time, or if you quit the game.

So now I've told you everything I know about this game's combat system and I only have 1 more thing to tell you. It could've been put into the Tips & Tricks section, but I decided to save it for this moment.

NEVER GETS COCKY.

You can know every nook and cranny of this game, but one mistake, and you're dead. Forever. Unless you use that spoiler-tagged cheat, but then you won't be reading this.

That's all. Thanks for reading this guide, and I hope it will be helpful for you. If you're an expert, please tell me how I can improve this guide further.

Reference: http://this-war-of-mine.wikia.com/wiki/Combat