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11 Stamina in The Relic: First Guardian works the opposite way round from most action RPGs. It is never spent on attacking. The gauge exists strictly for high-stakes defence, which the developers summarise as freedom in attack, intensity in survival.
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33 What Stamina Is For
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55 ActionStamina CostLight and heavy attacksNone. Attacks cost zero resourcesSkillsNone. Skills run on cooldownsHigh-power magicNone. Uses cooldowns and a dedicated meterDodgingSpends staminaBlockingSpends stamina
66 The practical consequence is that you can strike continuously with relentless creativity and consistency, and the only real resource decision is defensive. Emptying the gauge on a mistimed dodge leaves nothing for the attack that follows, which is where the tension in a fight comes from.
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88 Dodging and Parrying
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1010 Dodging is the primary evasive option, and parrying sits alongside it as a timed defensive answer. Encounters are designed around dodge, parry, and weapon mastery rather than around statistics, so learning a brutal's timing matters more than raising a number. Since no two brutals fight alike, the defensive rhythm has to be relearned per encounter.
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1212 Changes Since Launch
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1414 Which Button Dodges
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16-Patch 14 moved the dodge on a gamepad. It sat on the bottom face button from launch until 21 August 2026 and now sits on the right face button. That is a bigger change than a keybind note usually is, because dodging is the action stamina exists for, and every guide, video and screenshot recorded before that date shows the old placement.
16+Patch 14 moved the dodge on a gamepad. It had sat on the bottom face button since launch, and on 21 August 2026 it moved to the right face button, while the internal input handling behind attack, guard, dodge, movement and skills was reworked. The change did not last. Patch 15, released six days later on 27 August 2026, reverted the gamepad and keyboard input settings to their previous stable state to resolve input issues.
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18-ControlLaunch to Patch 13Patch 14 onwardDodge, gamepadBottom face buttonRight face button
19-The same patch reworked the internal input handling behind attack, guard, dodge, movement and skills, so inputs pressed around a dodge should register more consistently than they did at launch. The developers did not publish a keyboard equivalent or say whether the binding can be changed in the options.
18+The Patch 15 note does not list the individual bindings it restored, so guides, videos and screenshots recorded in that six-day window may show a layout that no longer applies. The in-game control guide is the reliable reference; Patch 16 redrew its images for Xbox, PC and PlayStation and made its text easier to read.
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20+BuildGamepad dodge and input handlingLaunch to Patch 13Dodge on the bottom face buttonPatch 14 (21 August 2026)Dodge moved to the right face button; input handling for attack, guard, dodge, movement and skills reworkedPatch 15 (27 August 2026) onwardGamepad and keyboard input settings reverted to their previous stable state; individual bindings not listed
2121 Two adjustments made defence more forgiving than at release. The player character's parry timing window was extended for smoother combat, and base defence was increased by 30. Player targeting was also fixed, having previously caused in-place movement glitches that could interfere with evasive movement. The most consequential change came in Patch 7: while locked on, a dodge now moves relative to the camera view rather than the direction the character happens to be facing. Rolling away from a boss no longer depends on where your character has been turned, which makes the defensive half of the game read correctly under pressure. Details are on the Updates and Patches page.
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23+Later patches fixed defensive bugs in specific places. Patch 15 stopped players reviving in a guard stance after dying while guarding, and Patch 16 fixed the guard animation persisting after a respawn. In the Harlan encounter, hits two to five of Volgar's Skill04 were wrongly set as unblockable until Patch 16. Patch 17 fixed Igwis attacks that could not be parried properly and made some previously unparryable Stenor attacks parryable.
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2325 Exact stamina values, recovery rates, and invulnerability windows have not been published, so this page covers the confirmed design rules. The wider ruleset is on the Combat System page.