Revision 3

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.

What Stamina Is For

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.

Dodging and Parrying

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.

Changes Since Launch

Which Button Dodges

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.

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.

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.

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.