Introduction to low level PvP

What PvP is
PvP is basically fighting "player versus player". In Estiah there are several ways to encounter PvP combat - randomly while gathering, when you attack a player and when another player attacks you. Coliseum and GvG (guild versus guild) combat also exists. GvG combat (surprisingly) requires you to be in a guild and theres several different game modes and other effects (seals) which is probably worthy of a guide of its own, while Coliseum combat only becomes available at level 15.

Why bother?
The first reason is because it's fun.

Also, when you win you get a Soul item (Soul Dust, Soul Fragment, etc.). These Soul items can be crafted into charms at many (read: those which are safe) of the cities around the world. The first PvP charms are usable at level 7, and made from Soul Dust. The next level of PvP charms is level 12 and made from Soul Fragments. New charms are available every 5 levels (17, 22 etc.). Generally these PvP items are better than store bought ones and they don't cost any gold! However Soul items are less likely to drop the lower your opponents level is relative to yours - so if your level 20 and beat a level 10, you'll have to be pretty lucky to get a Soul drop.

The final reason is that doing well in PvP increases your rating - and your bragging rights. At low levels a victory will give you +1 rating and a loss -0, but as you level up higher you will gain more rating from wins and lose more from defeats. It should be noted that with changes in the "Treat or Trick" patch, a cap of 2000 rating is in place for standard PvP battles. To get your rating higher than this, you will need to battle in the Coliseum.

Setting Default Gears
As you should be able to see, you have slots for a total of three gears. You might also notice that there you are able to select a gear as a "default" for [Attack], [Defense] and [Guild]. Important for low levels is [Attack] and [Defense].

[Attack] is basically the gear that is auto selected when you initiate any combat by yourself (i.e. not in party/guild combat). It is important to note that you can still manually change from the default gear in the pre-combat screen, making the attacking default more convenient rather than important for strategy in standard PvP.

[Defense]: this setting is actually very important for PvP combat. The default [Defense] gear is the gear which you will use should you be attacked by another player.

Ways of Winning
In low level combat, there are two ways to win - either "deck" your opponent, or to reduce their HP to 0.
"Decking" - 0 spirit: This is the strategy of reducing Spirit to 0 - if a player reaches 0 spirit, they "collapse of exhaustion" aka lose. In combat, you might notice when the charms are played there are numbers at the middle of the bottom of the charm. This is the current spirit of that player. Each charm you uses takes spirit - so at low levels the only way for you to win via decking is to simply not die and have more spirit than your opponent. At higher levels, it is possible to reduce the spirit of the opponent using charms, however these charms don't emerge until level 15 at the earliest.

"Killing" - reducing HP to 0: The more common strategy of winning via use of attacking charms to reduce the HP of the opponent. It is important to note: if you are fighting an opponent with the same number gears (generally this means they have the same spirit as you), the attacking player will lose if they are unable to reduce HP to 0, and do not use a spirit damaging charm.
e.g. At the start of the fight Attacker has 10 Spirit, as does Defender. This will produce an endgame of equal Spirit: 1 - 1 - however Attacker will lose since he goes first and thus reaches 0 spirit before defender - this is the disadvantage of attacking. Of course, attacking gives you the advantage of always being one turn ahead.

Basic Strategies
Although I've divided these into two categories, the key things to consider at this level is the ratio of attack:defence charms. A gear with no defensive charms will usually be at a disadvantage to a gear with attacking charms and some defensive charms – since (very roughly) one armour can absorb two attacks, so in four turns (each player takes 2 actions each) the player with the armour will come out a one attack advantage. However, putting too much armour/ward will hamper your attacking power too much and could mean you can't finish off your opponent. Regardless of what is said in this section the most important thing is to modify your own gear based on your personal combat experience.

Aggressive: If fighting a opponent with equal or higher spirit, the best bet is to go for an offensive-oriented strategy, as you will get decked if you don't defeat them first. You may want to consider focusing on one type of damage type (physical or magic) as if an opponent has a mixture of wards and armours (as is usually the case) using only one type of attack will often halve the amount of defensive charms you have to go through. At low levels though, it is hard to afford (or obtain) a whole set of new set of charms, so this isn't always viable.

Defensive: If you are using a strategy of this type, you should be aiming to fight opponents with less spirit than you or as defending against opponents of equal spirit. Using a defensive strategy means that you should be aiming to win through decking. The important thing to remember when defending is that this strategy will almost always win at this level... but only if they have equal or less spirit than you - if you use this as a defending gear against an opponent with higher spirit, you are guaranteed of a loss. Offensively, large amounts of armour and ward charms should make you pretty much sure of a win if you have chosen your opponent properly (ie. you have more spirit than them).

Skirmishing
You might notice when you are in the PvP opponent selection screen, you have the ability to choose a “skirmish” fight. When you do this, whether you win or lose it won't count towards your rating or win/loss percentage, and you (or your opponent) won't gain any skill points. As well, this doesn't cost you any action points and you can do this 40 times per day. This mode is a very very very very good way of testing out and refining your gear. If you find you haven't been winning so much, try replaying your fights, tweaking your gear, skirmishing and seeing how the changes affect your performance. You should keep in mind these fights don't go into your "fights" section (under Name -> View your fights).

Choosing your Opponent
When you're first starting out in our first few battles, it might be wise to pick someone rated lower than yourself. In the PvP screen, you can see the rating of your opponents. 1500 is the starting point for everyone, so if you can see people in the 1400s or even 1300s, they are probably good first opponents. Before you initiate a fight, you can see how much HP, collected charms and Spirit they have by clicking on their name into a new window or tab. If you plan to win through Spirit advantage, knowing your opponents Spirit will let you know in advance whether or not you have a chance.

Penetration and Cumulative
These are the two charm mechanics you are most likely to run into at low levels.

Penetration This shows up as (X % P) in your charm. Penetration % means, the percentage of damage which goes through armour/ward. Penetrating damage still removes armour.
e.g. I have 2 armour. My opponent Bunny God uses Rabbit's Wrath: 2 Melee (50% P). I take one damage and now have 0 armour. I'm doomed!
A thing to note is that charms with higher penetration usually have slightly lower base damage than those less or no penetration. Things become more complicated when your damage exceeds the amount of defense they have.
eg. My opponent has 4 ward, and I use an charm which deals 12 magic (50% P)
What will happen is the penetration will count for the part that is blocked by the defense (in this case 4 ward). So 50% penetration will be apply making it: 4 magic (50% P) vs 4 ward = 2 absorbed 2 penetrated for the defended component and then 8 damage which is unblocked. Making it 2 (50% P versus 4 ward) + 8 (unblocked) = 10 total magic damage.

Cumulative This shows up as (cumul). It only applies to armour and ward (and later willpower). When you use an armour without cumulative, it “replaces” your current armour if it will give you a higher total.
e.g. My current ward is 5, I use Small Glyph (8 ward) – so my ward now becomes 8.
However, if you have a cumulative ward or armour, it adds on instead.
e.g. My current ward is 5, I use Bunny Hood (12 cumul), so my total becomes ward becomes 17.
Remember that if you use a cumulative ward, it doesn't add on to those which come after it. So if I use Bunny Hood, to make my total ward 12, and then I use Greater Glyph (14 ward) my total will be 14 ward. Whereas if I had used Greater Glyph first and then Bunny Hood, I would have 12+14 ward – a total of 26 ward.

General Tips
Only unsafe towns have PvP. Safe towns don't. The only safe towns are Lumina, Zeal and Inachis (the starting town), in all others you can attack and be attacked. You can be attacked in a safe town if there is a bounty on you (this is unlikely to happen to you at low levels).

It is possible to gain a bonus point of spirit at low levels by levelling up the Spirituality skill. You get points in Spirituality whenever you have a victory with 1 spirit remaining. Fighting players with an all ward, all armour deck who have one spirit less than you will help you level this up very quickly and it is probably easiest to level it up at low levels where there's fewer charms that affect spirit. Other skills which improve HP can also give you a slight edge over your opponent. Some players also like to focus on HP boosting skills such as extreme gathering to give them a slight edge.

Though you should know this... it is also possible to run dungeons more than once you just have to wait for them to reset, and the rewards from running dungeons can often be combined or upgraded (crafted) into stronger charms. It's a good idea to check market shops to see what charms you might be able to craft – crafted charms are usually better than charms you can get from a basic charm seller.

Other reading
The unoffical wiki - http://estiah.aswt.net/index.php?title=Main_Page - has some good stuff, and so do the FAQ pages - http://www.estiah.com/faq - which are hidden away in the help section. There's both a PvP section and mechanics glossary there, among other things.