Patch Notes: Weapon Techniques

A second attack for your weapon

Magic, Rare and Legendary weapons can now drop with a technique: a special attack with its own key. By default that is the mouse's back side button, and you can rebind it under Controls → Combat. Unarmed fighters find their techniques on Gauntlets. Phones get a "Tech" button you can add to a touch corner, and controllers can put it on the d-pad.

Twelve techniques

• Bows: Volley: aim a circle and six arrows rain down on it. Piercing Shot: one fast arrow that passes through up to five foes. The Dwarven Thunderlock can carry Piercing Shot.
• Long blades: Leap Strike: leap onto a foe up to 9 m away and hit everything around where you land. Whirlwind: hit everything around you.
• Short blades: Shadowstep: dash behind a foe and strike. Lunge: dash forward and hit everything you pass.
• Axes: Cleave: a wide sweep. Headsman's Chop: hits harder the more wounded the foe is.
• Blunt weapons: Ground Slam: hit everything around you. Skull Crack: one heavy, accurate blow.
• Bare hands: Flying Kick: leap and strike. Haymaker: one heavy, accurate punch.

How it plays

• Hold the key to aim. A blue marker on the ground shows where a Volley will land or where a leap will end, and it turns red when the spot is out of reach. Let go to fire. A quick tap fires at once where you are looking. Techniques that don't need aiming go off as soon as you press.
• Under a low ceiling a leap flies a lower arc. If no arc fits, you get "No room to leap."
• The key does nothing while a window is open (a conversation, the pack, a menu).
• An unidentified piece's technique works, but it is called "Your technique" until you identify it.
• Every technique costs fatigue and has a cooldown. The Enhanced HUD shows a chip with the seconds left, and the message line tells you when it is ready again.
• Damage still comes from Daggerfall's own formula. A technique multiplies a normal hit, so a miss is still a miss. The +N% on the item raises that multiplier.
• Techniques are disabled in duels and player-vs-player bouts, and they never hit another player. A technique that hits all around you only hits an ally or a peaceful creature where a normal swing would have.
• Techniques need the loot ladder. With the ladder off, none drop and the key tells you why.
• The Reforge shows what a technique does under its line, so you can see it before you reforge or hone it.

On the item card

• A technique now has its own section on the Enhanced item card, the way set pieces and sigils do. Its header shows its own glyph (three blue strike marks), the technique's name and your roll (+23% [15-30]). Under that is what it does, then a footer with your key, whether you hold to aim or just press, the fatigue cost and the cooldown. The shop's hover card shows the same section.
• The key shown is the one that actually works: your primary or secondary binding, or the controller button's name (A, Square, RB…) while you're playing on a controller.
• The section is compact, so item cards still fit without scrolling. On a crowded card it drops the "hold to aim" hint first, then the footer. The Info box always shows everything.
• The Info box shows the same section in full, with the word Technique over the name, and adds two lines: how your roll raises the technique's own blow (+23% rolled (15-30) on its 140% blow: 172% of a plain blow.), and how to use the key. If no key is bound, it tells you to bind Weapon technique in Controls.
• In a duel the section greys out and says why.
• The HUD chip uses the same glyph, so the chip and the card are clearly the same thing. It says "unbound" if no key is bound, and it hides during a duel, like set-power chips.
• The classic tooltip, the Reforge and the player-to-player trade window still show a technique as two lines.

How each one feels

Every technique now has its own feel on top of the weapon's normal animation: the view moves, the screen shakes, your hands dip with the blow, sparks and rings appear in the world, and a sound plays.

• Leap Strike / Flying Kick: the view widens as you leave the ground. You land with a hard dip and a thud, and a shock ring with thrown stone spreads to the technique's reach.
• Ground Slam: the weapon rises, then the view slams down for the heaviest shake of all. Two shock rings race out across the floor with the most stone and sparks.
• Whirlwind: the view leans into the spin, and sparks are flung round a ring at its 3 m, carried the way the blade goes.
• Cleave: the view winds up leaning one way and lands leaning the other, and a fan of sparks follows the arc.
• Skull Crack / Headsman's Chop / Haymaker: a star of light and a spray of sparks where the blow lands. The Chop adds a ring under it, the Haymaker a ring standing in the air.
• Shadowstep: a quick high whisk and a ring of rising light where you vanish, and a star where you strike.
• Lunge: a trail of sparks down the lane you ran.
• Piercing Shot: the bow kicks the view up, flares, and lays a tracer of sparks down your aim, stopping at the first thing in its way.
• Volley: each of the six arrows lands with a puff of stone exactly where and when it hits the ground (on slopes too), and a ring closes over the circle with the last one.
• Technique camera motion (Settings → Accessibility → Motion): Full, 75%, Half, Low or Off. It scales the view's movement, the shake and the hands' dip. At Off the screen doesn't move; the sparks and sounds stay. Better Ambience's own shake switch and limit still apply. The sounds follow Sound Enhancements.
• The game also does less work every frame than before: polling a bound key no longer builds a list for every binding each time it's asked.

What's Changed

• TECH1: weapon techniques - a line a weapon rolls, one key that does it, in all four hosts, each with its own feel by @Lattymoy in #746

Full Changelog: app-v0.1.7672...app-v0.1.7693