Is there a way to fully avoid being attacked by players?

Hello, the AOC hype has recently swept my Youtube page so I started looking and reading up and a lot of stuff sounds really cool (except that PVE raids aren't as big a focus, those are my faves, but that's okay!).

One thing I read about was the Combatant/Corruption system. It sounds cool but I'm wondering if you essentially have to ALWAYS deal with being attackable? Like, once I pass Level 5, there is nothing I can really do from protecting myself against random people starting up combat with me? At least that's what I got from the wiki page, but I just wanna confirm if I'm understanding it correctly or if there's nuance to it that went unnoticed.