-Monsters Come in all Forms
There are friendly monsters that will try to help you.  Any monster with a red bar under it will join your quest.  The red bar represents the life force of the monster.  Always try to put one of your friendly monsters between you and an opponent - or at least surround your opponent and hit him from all sides.

-Combat
Each weapon has two values, the percent hit chance and the damage modifier.  

The percent hit is the chance that on any given swing you will hit the monster with that weapon.  A larger percent means you have a greater chance to hit. 

The damage modifier is the additional damage that you will do with the weapon.  On any hit you do between 1 and 10 points of damage plus the weapon damage modifier.

Armor has a defense rating.  This is the number of damage points that the armor will absorb with any hit you take from a monster.

If you make a hit, and do 13 points of damage and the monster has an armor rating of 5 the monster's life force will subtract a total of 8  (13-5) points.