At long last, From Rust is getting its 5th character. In our upcoming alpha, Delilah will be available to unlock in the store, and she's starting off with several gear and ability cards to find in the game as well. 

From the start, we knew we wanted Delilah to be our tank. But what does a tank mean for From Rust, when max health is at a premium and players split up all the time? We identified some core tenants for Delilah fairly early in her design:

• Reliable Access to Taunt - if Delilah is supposed to be able to take hits, she needed a way to force that against monsters that targeted random characters in the party

• More Max Injuries - an injury for Delilah should not matter as much as one for any other character

• Ease of Healing - like above, Delilah should be able to erase injuries as fast as she gets them

Because this character was not a starting character, we knew we could make her more complicated to play with some assumed game knowledge. Lastly, and similar to Lucky Jack, we wanted Delilah to be focused on combat-time decisions. 

With all that in mind, we've given Delilah a passive that enables a combat-focused stance dance. In most cases Delilah chooses a stance at the start of every combat. In fact, instead of her attack card, Delilah always starts with two cards - Hunker Down, and Grapple. Both taunt an enemy, to make sure that Taunt is the easiest thing for Delilah. And both give you a new ability card for that combat - either Guard, or Bear Hug.

• ​Guard - Gain Retaliate[5] and Dodge[1]

• Bear Hug - attack a target monster, rolling dice as usual

Which one you want to use for the duration of combat is up to you. Retaliate and Dodge are great against a single taunted monster, but less helpful in multimonster combat or when dealing with statuses like Acid. Bear Hug is great if you can find some improvements to your dice - remember, without an attack card, Delilah can't use bits!

Let us know your favorite Delilah cards next week in the alpha!