The first thing to understand Immortal Combat is strictly gated by your Battle Rating. You will not be able to rise ever over a certain point. There are a few reasons for this.

1) Stronger players will naturally beat you as you fight them
2) Once you get to Master 6 ranks and higher you will start facing a lot of buffed bot players, which are AI that have much increased stats from the player which they are a clone of.
3) Mage bots are harder to kill than Warrior bots, because you can run away from the Warrior bots.

What to do in Immortal Combat your first time:
- Fight Immortal Combat fights as much as you can, you can do as many as you want per day.
-- The reason to do more Immortal Combat fights is to increase your Score which does not reset, but it can decrease when you lose a fight. You want to get as high a rank as possible for the most rewards possible.
- On subsequent days only do the minimum Immortal Combat fights to keep the high rank rewards you already have. i.e. if you are Legend 1 or higher and you are most likely to lose at this point, then you should only do 5 fights per day.
- Following this simple idea you will maximize your potential Immortal Combat rewards by minimizing your losses.

Immortal Combat is a negative sum game, that means you lose more points than you gain when you win. This means you are far more likely to be pushed down ranks than to gain ranks.

Here is how the immortal combat match making works loosely
- Attempt to match +/-3 ranks (Raider, Veteran, etc..) within 7 seconds who is also in the queue.
- If match found then pair players in match
- If no match found query database for random player profile for an AI match
- based on your rank the AI is either scaled up or down. (After Raider 10, all are scaled up).
- The AI scaling increases quite a bit at Legend ranks and higher

FAQ?
Q: Why do I keep getting matched against the same person?
A: It can happen if you are the only 2 similar people in the queue. If you are Veteran 1, you could be matched up to a Veteran 4, and this person could be substantially stronger than you. Don't worry leave queue for a short time and they will quickly be out of your range.

Q: How to tell if I am fighting AI?
A: Does the level and gear on the player you just fought make sense? If not then it is an AI. Also the AI is very likely to stand still if it is a mage no matter what. Most players will move. Also Warriors will always follow the same pattern for AI so once you learn it, you will know how they move and be able to quickly tell.

I hope this help people understand how to use Immortal Combat and understand how the system works.