When you finish talking to tenants of the Atheneum and and wish to venture to the lands unknown, you can go to combat areas via the ranked or unranked dive.
To start combat every player in the party must enter the combat arena and interact with symbol in its center. Upon combat start certain amount of enemies will spawn. When the majority of first waves' enemies are dealt with, the second wave of enemies will spawn on the next turn denoted by small pulsing pinkish circles. As players progress trough the turns, the arena will gradually shrink, limiting the available safe space. Upon defeating the last enemy (or defeating the Boss, in the boss battles) the combat phase will conclude in victory, rewarding the group with kwillings and loot.
Inkbound combat features seamless turn based system where all players take their turn simultaneously. The amount of actions player can do per turn is limited by Will cost and cooldown of their Bindings. Movement does require the Will as well. Will is replenished at the start of each turn and unused will does not carry over to the next turn. At the beginning of each turn one energy orb spawns somewhere on the arena, to use it player must approach and click on its center. After using the Energy Orb player will gain 1 Will, and cooldown timers of all currently unavailable Bindings will tick down by 1.
The first Binding of each Class has no cooldown and can be used repeatedly when other Bindings are on the cooldown. Second and third Bindings have moderate cooldowns of 2 and 3 turns (which can be lowered by items, traits or picking up the Energy Orbs). Two additional Bindings can be gain during a dive for its duration. These usually have rather high cooldowns of 4, 5 and 6 turns.
Certain enemies can act during player turn denoted by crossed sword symbol with a number, beneath enemy or boss health bar. These attacks will be executed once specified amount of Bindings is cast. When playing in a group, other players can dodge these attacks by stepping out of the marked area and then returning to their starting spot once the attack have been triggered by another player.