Combat is a vital part of illagus and it is important that it is satisfying. To achieve this goal a number of changes have been made with more coming in future updates.

• The attack speed of the player's characters has been increased across the board, mainly for the "heavy attack" and the "heavy attack" hits a bit sooner in the animation. This way there's more of an incentive to use the "heavy attack" and it doesn't feel as bad to use for players that prefer the basic light attack.

• A large number of enemies that are currently in illagus are not reactive. By this I mean that they have a set behaviour and they won't change it regardless of what the player does. While I think this isn't inherently a bad thing, there are currently too many enemies for which this is the case. As such, a number of enemies have been changed to be more reactive. Bees will now speed up if they spot you nearby, bats will try to predict your movement and fly all around you, crabs try to snap you if you get too close and more.

  Also all the new enemies coming in the update are reactive in one way or another which makes that combat that much more exciting. You will have to actually be aware of the enemy instead of treating it a like a walking target dummy.

• Critical strikes is something that may not seem all that interesting, and maybe it is not, but that feeling that you get when you land a critical strike to save your life is great and I think it adds to the combat experience.

• Charge attacks are something quite different. By holding down either the light or heavy attack button you can charge up your attack. If you charge it up for long enough, your attack will deal bonus damage and hit in a larger area than normal. This gives players the choice to stand still and take a risk to deal a stronger blow or to just keep smacking away

  Both the critical strikes and charge attacks can be improved via new artifacts (that can of course be upgraded as well)

I believe that the combat in illagus is currently one of the weaker aspects of the game and I wouldn't be suprised to see many of you agree. While I generally like the more tactically and strategic combat style that illagus has, it currently has some flaws/is missing some features. Because the game is very combat focussed it is important that the combat is satisfying and doesn't get in the way of the rest of the game.

Improving the combat is not an easy thing to do. There are many aspects that come in to play once you start to change things around here. Since basically every mechanic and almost all content is tied to combat in the game, changing it can break the entire game if done wrong.

With this in mind I decided to update the combat system over multiple updates. This allows me to better manage the changes and get some actual feedback and potential change/rollback changes made without too much of a hassle.

I hope everyone is ready and excited for the update tomorrow. I'm trying my best to get the game in the best possible state and I hope you'll enjoy it.

~Snowleaps