Duelcraft 0.6.0

The biggest update yet: enemies that fight back with real movesets, posture and executions, four new weapon styles, weapon arts and mastery, a boss, combat trials, and a tutorial book that teaches all of it.

New: the Duelcraft Guide

• Every player gets the Duelcraft Guide the first time they join a world. Hold it and press use to open it.
• 52 pages in 10 chapters cover everything: the screen, stamina, attacking, guarding and parries, rolls and perfect dodges, lock-on, posture and executions, reading enemies, style and mastery, every weapon, and the training content.
• Most pages open with a short clip filmed in the game, with captions and the keys being pressed. Click a clip to pause it, or slow it to a quarter speed. Other pages show a picture with labels.
• Keys are shown as you have them bound. Unread pages carry a gold dot, and the book opens where you left off.
• Lost it? Craft another from a book and a stick, type /fightguide, or press Guide in the move list (J).

New: break your enemies

• Posture: every hit fills a bar under the enemy's health. When it's full, the enemy kneels, open to an execution.
• Backstabs: a heavy attack from behind on an enemy that hasn't noticed you.
• Reactions: launchers throw enemies into the air for juggles, spikes slam them down, and heavy blows knock them down. Big enemies only reel, and the largest shrug it off.
• Hit freeze: a landed hit holds both fighters for a moment, so every blow lands with weight. Inputs pressed during the freeze are kept.
• Combos flow more smoothly: moves blend out of each other's motion instead of snapping, and input buffers are longer.

New: enemies that fight back

• Zombies, husks, zombie villagers, zombified piglins, skeletons, strays, bogged, wither skeletons, drowned, spiders, cave spiders, endermen, vindicators, iron golems and ravagers have movesets of their own: strings, feints, chained attacks, and answers to your swings.
• Enemies take turns: only a few attack you at once, and the rest circle and wait.
• Glints: a white glint is a strong blow your guard can take. A red glint is a perilous attack: jump a sweep, dodge a grab, or roll into a thrust for a counter-step.
• Guards: wither skeletons raise their guard and can parry you. A kick breaks it.
• Elites: rare tougher enemies with an affix (Brutal, Swift, Juggernaut, Duelist, Shieldbearer, Berserker) and better loot.
• Difficulty presets: Story, Warrior (the default), Souls and Nightmare.

New: style, arts and mastery

• Style meter: a rank from D to SSS for fighting with variety. Repeating the same move earns less, getting hit drops two ranks, and the best rank of a fight pays experience on a results card.
• Perfect dodges now slow nearby enemies for a moment. Deflect chains reward parrying blow after blow, and Second Wind wins back stamina after a finisher.
• Weapon arts: a three-segment gauge under the stamina bar fills as you fight. Spend it with sneak + use (or the Weapon Art key) for a big signature move: Tempest, Earthsplitter, Hundred Fists and more.
• Weapon mastery: each weapon class levels from 1 to 10. Levels unlock bonus combo branches and new trail colours.

New: four weapon styles

• Spear (the trident in combat mode): the longest thrusts, a piercing lunge, a pole vault. Right click guards instead of throwing while in combat mode.
• Hammer (the mace): crushing blows and a charged ground pound. Slams from a fall keep the mace's fall smash.
• Dual blades (a sword in each hand): alternating cuts, scissor crosses and spins with both blades.
• Sword and shield (a sword with a shield in the off hand): the shield's own wider guard, Shield Bash, Shield Counter and the Bulwark Charge.

New: trials and a boss

• Trial Altar (a gold ingot over crying obsidian and polished blackstone bricks): fight the Proving Grounds, waves of enemies graded by your style.
• The Hollow Warlord: the first boss, an empty suit of plate with a greatsword and two phases. Unlocked by clearing the Proving Grounds.
• Dojo book (a book and an iron ingot): 22 combo trials across the weapon classes that teach each weapon's routes and pay mastery experience.

Config

• New server settings: difficulty, elite_chance, attack_tokens, the mastery mode (mastery or none, unlock_all, xp_rate), hit freeze lengths, and give_on_join for the guide.
• New client settings to show or hide the style meter, the art gauge and the target bar.

For mod makers

• New API events: FightEvent.HitFreeze, FightEvent.Execution and FightEvent.Reaction.
• Mob movesets are data-pack JSON (data/<namespace>/fight_mob_movesets/<mob>.json), like weapon movesets.

Updating

• Install 0.6.0 on both the client and the server: the network protocol changed, so 0.5.0 and 0.6.0 can't connect to each other.
• Existing worlds and configs carry over. New config options start at their defaults.