Combat

Melee Combat
When you very first arrive to Port Royal after escaping Jolly Roger, you should first go visit Will Turner. He will give you a cutlass and a couple of free lessons. Run up to the blacksmith building with the sword icon on the door straight ahead of you from the beach, and press the Control key to enter. Once inside, he will walk you through the basics reviewed here:

First, press F1-F4 to draw your weapon. You can use the weapon screen to select which weapon you draw for each function key. [Note: This screen often gets bugged, and shows up blank. The only 'fix' seems to be to delete that toon and start over.]

Next, use the movement keys W, A, S, D to face your opponent, you don't want to be too close or too far. If you are properly aligned, there will be a red circle under them, keep moving until you see it flash on. Click the left mouse button to launch your initial attack. As your weapon skill progresses, you can learn attacks that chain to each other. That is, if at the end of your sword stroke for your Hack attack, if you click the left mouse button again at the correct time, you will chain your Slash attack for even more damage. At the end of Slash, you can chain into your Cleave attack. Just remember, you don't start with these abilities, you will learn them over time. With each weapon skill up (not your toon's notoriety level) you get a new point to spend. At various levels the new chain attacks become available to you, however, you can't use them unless you spend at least one point in them! Press the TAB key or click the sea chest on the screen to bring up the menu bar, and click the Skills icon.

You also get special attacks as you progress. Again, you have to spend a point in them to activate them, so be careful when clicking the skill icons as once you've spent a point, you can't get it back! To activate special attacks in combat, press AND hold the right mouse button. All special attacks you can possibly use appear on your screen. Move your mouse over the one you want to use and then release the right mouse button. If a special attack icon is dimmed out, it means its not ready to be used again, each special attack has a cooldown and can only be used so often.

Now just keep beating away at your enemy until it's dead, or you are afraid you might die. In which case, you should beat a hasty strategic retreat aka RUN! Some enemies you fight have ranged attacks and they might shoot you in the back, so don't wait until you're too close to death before turning tail!

Some enemies seem to attack on sight and others (like crabs, wasps, etc) won't attack you unless you attack them first. When first starting out, you may want to find the latter to work you way up on. Also some areas have fewer spawns in a given area, so you can avoid getting in over your head. Don't try to fight monsters that are too high of a level for you, or you will die too often. Don't just fight level 1 monsters either, or you will skill up very slowly.

Dying
Life as a pirate is rough and you will die! Thankfully, it's not the end of the world. You will appear in your jail cell. Run to the door and press Control to kick the door open. Run up the stairs and press Control by the next door to make your escape. Warning! The guards are typically Lvl 5 to Lvl 10, so they are tough! And there are lots of them milling about! Run run run to make your escape, do not bother trying to beat these guys unless you're really skilled up! To escape, run through the door on your left, down the stairs, then follow the path leading still to the left until you make it down the docks, where you can stop and rest. If you are really having a tough time getting past the guards, you can 'cheat' by bringing up the map, and clicking on Port Royale, at which point you will be teleported. You have to have run outside both doors before this trick works.

Ship to Ship Combat
After you get tired of being a land lubber, it's time to sail the high seas! You will want at least 100-200 coins saved up to buy your first ship. There are more expensive ships, but you need to work on your sailing skill before you can captain these beauties.

Buying your ship
Find the ship merchant in Port Royale, he's on the beach right in front of the bow of a ship buried in the sand. He's at the opposite end of the beach from where the jail and guards live. Buy one of the first three ships from him and this step is complete.

Assemble your crew
While you can be the captain of a ship by yourself, it's going to be much more fun and effective if you have a crew to set sail with you! Invite others to join your crew! Be sure to tell them you already own a ship and you'll help them get your sea legs. If they haven't read this, they will be lost without your guidance on the high seas.

Deploy and board
First, you'll need to be out in the water. Have your crew follow you, either just swim out from the beach, or run out the docks and hop in the water, just make sure you're out deep enough before deploying your ship. Bring up the menu bar and click the ship icon. There will be a page where you can view each of your ships, if you own more than one. When you see the ship you want to sail, click the deploy button. The ship will magically appear in the water next to you. Press Control to board your ship, you might have to swim a bit closer to the ship for this to work. Your pirate should swing up a handy rope and plop down on the deck. Help the others in your crew get on board before you set sail, you don't want to leave a man behind!

Assign positions and set sail
As the captain, it's your job to tell these scallywags what to do! Tell each crew member which cannon to man. Your strategy should either be to have everyone manning the guns on one side and leaving the other empty, or spread them out to both sides. As the captain, you'll be sailing her, so you'll need to keep in mind how many cannons you have manned on each side when attempting to sink a ship! Make your way up to the wheel on the poop deck. Everyone presses Control to take command of a cannon or wheel. Now you're sailing!!!

Sail for plunder!
You're going to sail around the seas looking for Navy ships to sink. Use the W, A, S, D keys to sail your ship until you spot one, either on the screen or one your compass. Approach the enemy ship keeping in mind where your cannons are firing from. Do you want to broadside her, or "cross the T" ? you decide! Make sure you keep your crew informed what the target is, you don't want everyone always shooting everything or you might end up fighting more ships at once than you can handle!

Firing your cannons
If you are manning a cannon, it's your job to sink those pesky Navy ships! Aim your cannon and fire away! After three shots, you'll have to reload. As you sink more and more, you'll gain cannon skill and get to upgrade your shots, with either shooting faster or doing more damage. Like man to man combat, you can use the right mouse button to bring up special shots, however there is no chaining of attacks. One of the special moves is the grappling hook. This is used when very close to an enemy vessel for when you want to entangle the ships for some boarding action. You shouldn't just use these unless your captain tells you to "prepare to board me Hearties!" There is some special ammo you can buy in port for cannons, but I haven't gotten this to work yet, so I can't say how to activate it.

Firing broadsides
As the captain, you can press the right mouse button to bring up a special menu to fire your broadsides. This means all cannons on either the left or right side of your ship will fire. These will fire whether you have a crew member manning those cannons or not. The cannons will all fire straight out, so its quite tricky to aim and hit another ship unless you are very close. This seems to be the only way to increase your sailing skill.

Solo sailing
Can't find any crew? Well you can actually do everything yourself, it's just not going to be as fun or effective. Pressing ESC while at the wheel of your ship will disengage you from the wheel and then you can run over to a cannon to shoot. Pressing ESC at the cannon will disengage you from that so you can go back to sailing. However, there is a 'bug' where sometimes pressing ESC will just close down the game, so that's really a pain.

Plunder
Each time you sink a ship you can get a piece of plunder. Different ships can hold different amounts of plunder, when you get full you should head back to a port to sell and divide the plunder. (Or if the game is really lagging/crashing, you might want to head back more often!)  Sail back close to the beach at a port and a Docking icon will appear in the lower right corner. Press this button and you will pop off your ship. The game will tally up all the killing and plundering you did and divy the treasure up amongst the crew, after all, that's why we all became pirates!!! Arrrrr!!!