Patch Notes: Blows with Weight, Revenants with Memory

Telegraphed attacks have weight

(with the Enhanced AI switch on - always on online)

• An enemy winding up a telegraphed attack no longer drops it at the first scratch. Hits landed during the wind-up fill a poise meter (shown under its health bar on the Enhanced HUD); heavy weapons, hits to its back and hits to its weakness fill it faster. Fill it and the wind-up shatters: the enemy is staggered for about a second, helpless and taking 25% more damage.
• Iron attacks (red and hatched - a giant's slam, an elite's heaviest, a revenant's signature) cannot be interrupted. Get out of the way.
• Missing costs the enemy. An attack that hits nobody leaves its enemy open for about a second, taking 30% more - and your first hit staggers it. Step out of the attack in its last moment for a perfect dodge and a longer opening.
• You can read it coming: the body glints as the wind-up begins and again just before it lands, with a sound for each, and the mark on the ground is easier to see.
• Wind-ups vary in length, lunges track you for their first half, skilled blade-fighters sometimes feint (a feint never glints - the glint is the honest tell), and brutes chain two blows.
• New attacks: the ring (safe at its feet), the charge from range, the leap onto where you stand, and an archer's aimed shot you can step off. Landings now do something: a lunge pushes you back, a sweep makes you bleed, a slam rattles you, and an iron slam knocks you down.
• Champions and revenants telegraph at any level; elites and revenants more often, and with their kind's whole set of attacks.
• Online, everyone sees an enemy's wind-up, and enemies wind up at other players too - each player dodging on their own screen.

Revenants remember

(with Loot rarity on)

• A revenant learns from how you beat it and comes back adapted - mail against your blades, warded against your fire, arrow-wise against your bow, patient against your dodging. At most three adaptations, never immunity.
• Every revenant has a hidden weakness - an element, a metal, a weapon or the daylight. Strike it to reveal it: it takes 50% more and staggers twice as easily. Its own flinches, and the townsfolk, hint at it.
• From rank 3 its will must be broken before it will kneel: strike its weakness, stagger it, or perfectly dodge its attack. If you don't, it escapes at the killing blow - stronger, and adapted again.
• The last stand: from rank 3, the first killing blow brings it roaring back instead (at 30%, 35% or 40% of its health by rank) - faster, harder, ember-lit, with a burst around it. Once a stand.
• From rank 2 it has a signature attack named for it ("Grushnak's Skullsplitter"), iron from rank 3, and a band of one to three of its kin, who scatter when it falls.
• The hunt: each revenant has a lair, a named dungeon near where it was made. Ask around ("Any news?") and townsfolk may tell you where - and sometimes its weakness. Once heard of, the lair is marked on your maps and in your journal; walk in and you will find it resting there.
• It takes something: online, a revenant that kills you takes one of your unlocked items. Kill it or spare it to get it back.
• It festers: left alone past its due day it grows stronger, and three times over it ranks up on its own.
• New ways to make one: a special enemy that knocks out your companion, or one you run from, becomes a revenant too.
• Sworn companions have loyalty: kept well they are devoted (and warn you of an attack from behind); neglected, they desert; and a disloyal Unhinged, Craven or Brutal one may turn on you once your health falls under a quarter.
• The Revenants page (Holdings tab) and the revenant's card show everything you know - its habits, weakness, will, signature, band, lair, what it took and how long it has festered - and it speaks every new moment in its own voice.

What's Changed

• FEUD: blows with weight, revenants with memory (TELL1-TELL9, RVN1-RVN13, the audits) - merged up to main, relay world170 by @Lattymoy in #629

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.6368...app-v0.1.6410