Heyo thanks for checking out the game!
I'll have a tutorial up on the page as soon as possible to better the experience. We unfortunately ran outta time to explain a lot of these mechanics in game, so yep a tutorial should work.
As for the problem you ran into, you should be able to access the storage at the start of a run where you'll find a bunch of gold ingots. These can be used to craft a weapon of choice which will significantly increase your damage output :)
Viewing post in Arma Lucis: Luxmalleum (GBJam Edition) jam comments
Ah, I see what you've run into. I'll elaborate on this on the tutorial page, but the way combat in the game works is that each weapon has a certain attack pattern. Hammers have the slowest pattern but deal the most damage per hit.
And for the second part, missing an attack or a parry will break all the notes currently on your attack screen, essentially rendering you unable to attack for a bit.
There's a lotta visual cues and flavor text we wanted to add to explain these, but unfortunately we ran outta time.</3
Again tysm for the feedback, it helps a lot!