The reason for this was that every obvious quest accessible in the beginning of the game led my character to a horrendous fight, and a premature death. You can assault a fortified mining outpost, assault the camp of a group of raiders, or assault a guarded merchant caravan (1st quest with the imperial guards).

I realised later that there are a few easier fights you can do prior to attempting those quests. Early on I missed the easier fights because it seemed that all locations of interest were accessible from the local map. Actually, if you move through the city only by clicking locations on the local map, you're going to miss some important content and fights. You have to make your character walk through the various streets to trigger this content.

Another thing I realised was that the 'Block' skill is better than the 'Dodge' skill if you want to take advantage of heavy armour. So I made another character, this time specialising in Swords, and Block. And this character had a good time. It seemed like he would master every encounter, crushing all his enemies under his blade.

Which brings me to another thought: when playing Age of Decadence, you have to leave all moral concerns aside. In this game, fighters must take every opportunity to kill a character, in order to gain skill points and treasure. It doesn't matter if the victims are completely innocent.

So how far did my Sword character go? Very far. He became a friend of the imperial guard commander and overthrew the city's king. But then he was captured and caged. Then he was given a chance to escape. But before he could escape he had to kill two guards, while being completely naked except for a dagger. Since the character had put all his skill points into Block and not Dodge, he had approximately zero chance to survive. You need a shield in order to block attacks.

So I made a new character, this time specialised in Axes and Dodge. His weapon was the two-handed axe. Again, this character was very successful. He even managed to defeat the group of seven raiders. But he completely failed to defeat the mining outpost, even after poisoning the food of its occupants. Next, he joined the imperial guards. But then he completely failed in the mission to overthrow the king. At first I thought that he failed because 'Dodge' is inferior to 'Block' but that was not the real reason.

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