Every weapon gets a move
Melee weapons got stances, charged swings and a signature move. Guns got firing modes and a special of their own. Ranged characters can now carry two guns, each with its own meter. A special that worked perfectly still felt broken until the game said something.
Written up later from the repo's history and dated to the days it describes.
Until the second week of October, a weapon in Earfh was a number and a shape. You picked it, you swung it or fired it, and it did the same thing every time. Between October 8 and 10 every melee weapon and every gun picked up a set of choices to make mid-fight.
Melee: stances, charge and a signature move
Holding the melee button now charges a heavy swing. Fast weapons keep press-to-swing, since a charge on a chainsaw would make no sense. The d-pad, or keys 1 to 4, picks a stance: Heavy, Quick, Guarded, or the weapon's own Signature stance. The bat's is Slugger. A perfect guard fires the weapon's counter, and the bat's counter is a deflect.
Each weapon also has a signature move on X (R on the keyboard), and it costs 35 from the blood meter. The bat's is Grand Slam. The roster grew by six weapons in the same stretch, with real art for each and three upgrade tracks apiece. The katana makes every third swing within 0.7 seconds a draw cut, with double damage and more reach. The Zweihander is huge and slow, and you walk at 45% speed for a moment after each swing. The chainsaw makes 12.5 small cuts a second that keep the melee streak alive, with a pull start after a rest and a short stall every 60 swings. The other three are a surprise and stay out of this post.
Two small rules came out of the final fix pass. A swing released during its cooldown still lands if the cooldown ends within 0.3 seconds, and counters never shove a boss.
Guns: modes and an overcharge meter
With a gun as the primary weapon, the d-pad picks a firing mode live. Precision is harder, slower and tighter. Rapid is faster and weaker. Burst fires three shots per pull at the same damage per second, and it cancels the follow-up shots if you change mode or raise your guard. Each gun also has a Signature mode of its own, among them Fan the Hammer, Overwatch, Slug, Pinball, Sticky and Laser Guided.
Gun signature moves sit on Y (T on the keyboard) and spend from a new Overcharge meter. Landed shots and gun kills fill it. It never drains, it carries between stages, and it resets with a new run. The six moves are Quickdraw Volley, Through and Through, Door Breacher, Bounce House, Carpet Bomb and Diversified Portfolio.
Two guns
Then came dual-wield. The four ranged specialists (the Whistleblower, the Influencer, Doom Scroller and Grease Goblin) can give up their melee slot for a second gun. One gun fires from each trigger, each with its own firing mode, and the same gun twice is allowed. The trade is real. The build loses the guard, the charge swing and every melee move, so the blood bar disappears and only the charge bar remains.
The first version shared one overcharge meter between both guns, and on October 10 each gun got its own. CHARGE 1 fills from the first gun's landed shots and kills, CHARGE 2 from the second's, and each move spends 35 from its own gun's bar. The second gun's move moved from B to X, which a dual-wielder had no other use for. The ready cue names its button, so the HUD reads "Y READY" or "X NEED 35".
The special that "didn't work"
In a smoke test the owner could not tell whether the signature moves did anything. They did. A press below 35 was refused in silence, the blood meter drains within seconds so it often sat just under the threshold, and nothing said when 35 arrived. The fix was all feedback. Each meter now shows READY with a chime, a refused press flashes red and says NEED 35, and a move that starts flashes the player. The move itself did not change.
What is next
The numbers here are first-pass and still being tuned, balance for the second-gun builds included. The next post covers what happens when you chain kills with these weapons.