Combat

Man to Man Combat
When you very first arrive to Port Royal after escaping Jolly Roger, you should see Wil Smith. He will give you a cutlass and a couple of free lessons. He is straight ahead of you on the beach, run up to the building with the sword icon on the door and press Control to enter. 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. 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 noteriety 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!

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 stragegic 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.

Dieing
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.