Val will face many hostile spirits during her travels, all of which aim to render her unable of having energy and thus easy to rend her soul from her body. Due to their incorporeal nature, spirits cannot be harmed by physical attacks. However, by learning how to wield Virtue, one can fight against the spirits and let them move on.
Your character has thirteen attributes, each representing one of the thirteen Virtues, all starting at zero but can increasing to a baseline capacity determined by your WIS or higher depending on actions you take both inside and outside of battle. Your enemies, on the other hand, have the opposite of these- Vices. Depending on the amount of certain Virtues you have, Val will either be well-prepared or weak when facing certain enemies, forcing players to be well-balanced.
Combat begins with Val taking initiative, given the choice of either Attack, Meditate, Item, or Flee. Attack allows you to use an offensive skill against the enemy, Meditate lets you heal or change Virtue amounts, Item lets you use an item from your inventory, and Flee lets you escape an encounter. Following your choice of action, enemies have a similar choice of Attack or Meditate.
There are certain status effects present in battle that can affect you or the enemy. These end after a certain number of turns though they can be healed via a skill or item.
Fatigued greatly lower ACT
Vulnerable greatly lower RES
Frazzled greatly lower FOC
(?) greatly lower AGI
Zealous greatly increase ACT
Resolute greatly increase RES
(?) greatly increase FOC
Haste greatly increase AGI
(stun equivalent) unable to move
(poison equivalent) slowly drain MES each turn
(regen equivalent) slowly heal MES each turn
Your goal as the player is to reduce your enemies’ MES down to zero. In a similar vein, you want to make sure that your own MES does not drop to zero or below; if it does then the battle is lost since you are too tired to fight the spirit. Healing and meditating is encouraged. On occasion you may have to fight two or three enemies at a time.
At the end of battle, you gain EXP, item drops if any, and gold. When your EXP bar is full, you gain a level which boosts your stats and gives you skill points to be used in the Skill Tree.