Zelda-like ABS system for RPG Maker XP

I am trying to make a Zelda style game for RPG Maker XP, and so far I have been able to make it so that when I touch an enemy, I lose health, I have a working HP bar, and I have a working sword swinging animation, but I cannot figure out for the life of me how to do several things:

1.) Make it so that I can swing my sword from anywhere at all without needing to cover the entire map with the event to make the sword swinging animation appear (common event maybe?).
2.) Make it so that when I hit an enemy with my sword (I swing the sword and there is an enemy standing in front of my character when I swing) and causing him to take damage, using X and Y coordinates.

If anyone knows any links to tutorials for this, or has any ideas or anything like that at all, that would be awesome, I've been trying to get this to work for a while now.