Hello, survivors!

We are releasing the heavily requested combat update today! The whole mechanic has received a massive overhaul and we can't wait to see your feedback on it. To celebrate, we are launching a 15% discount for a week.

Combat Overhaul: Posture, Parry & Shields

Combat is no longer just about trading blows; it now requires timing, positioning, and stamina management.

• Both the player and enemies now have Posture. Weapons and tools deal specific posture damage;

  • When an enemy's posture is broken, they will be stunned and drop their guard, leaving them open to attack. They receive a brief invincibility window to recover their balance afterward;

  • Added "Endurance" to NPCs so they no longer stagger infinitely with every single light hit;

• You can now parry incoming attacks (including enemy kicks!);

  • A successful parry blocks full damage, triggers a brief slow-motion effect, resets the enemy's endurance, and plays a distinct sound;

  • After successive parries, surrounding unengaged enemies may decide to jump into the fight;

• Shield Mechanics: Shields are now fully functional for both players and enemies.

  • Defending suppresses take-hit animations and stops stamina regeneration. Added material-specific block sounds (wood vs. metal);

  • Enemies (like Rogue Soldiers) can now carry and actively use shields to reduce incoming damage. They will drop their guard if unengaged or if their posture is broken.

Mobility & Combat Flow

We've removed several restrictions to make moving during combat feel much more fluid.

• You can now sprint freely with melee weapons or a drawn bow without being forced into a slow walk or automatically sheathing your weapon. Aiming is smoothly cancelled if you begin to sprint;

• Side dodges have been enabled and the animation frames decreased (from 40 to 20) for a much snappier, responsive evasion;

• Stamina regeneration is now reduced while actively in combat. Attack cooldowns have been slightly increased to perfectly complement the new input buffering system;

• Added fully synchronized stealth-kill for multiplayer.

Enemy AI & The "Mercy" System

Enemy encounters have been made more dynamic, with varied weapons and lifelike reactions.

• Certain types of enemies now have a chance to drop their weapons, fall to their knees, and beg for mercy when their health drops below 35%;

• Enemy attack range is now dynamically based on the weapon they are using;

• Implemented new Greatsword-wielding enemies with custom animations and heavy attacks;

• Unengaged enemies circling the fight now have a chance to taunt the player.

Multiplayer & Stability

• Combat feels much heavier in multiplayer now. Take-hit visual effects (VFX) and spatialized audio (hurt voices, block sounds) are fully replicated to all peers;

• We have completely overhauled how the game handles disconnects, timeouts, and lobby transitions to ensure you never get "stuck" when a network error occurs;

• We've ironed out edge cases in the new disconnect Recovery Funnel;

  • Fixed infinite loading screens when a host returns to the main menu or loses cloud connection;

  • Implemented a centralized system to gracefully handle network drops;

  • Added strict stall timers for joining rooms, starting matches, and loading scenes. If a connection stalls, the game will now safely fall back to the Session Lobby or Main Menu rather than freezing;

  • Added dedicated popups for "Disconnecting," "Host Disconnected," and "Connection Timeouts" so you always know what happened to the session;

• Fixed an issue where clients would fail to properly unstick and despawn on the host's end when returning to the main menu.

Village, World & UI

• Harvesting AI: Revamped how harvestables are detected inside the village area. Fixed bugs preventing villagers from gathering reed fiber near the village lake, and resolved an issue where they ignored specific items in high-level villages;

Immersive Multiplayer Audio

You can now hear exactly what your friends are doing around you.

• Consumable audio (eating, drinking, bandaging) and resource gathering (chopping wood, mining) are now fully replicated to peers with precise 3D positioning;

• Synchronized ground layer data across the network. You will now hear the correct footstep material (dirt, wood, stone) when other players walk nearby;

• Synchronized swimming strokes and jump splash audio to peers, with boosted volume and range for better feedback;

• Synchronized bow drawing, arrow releases, and attack vocal cues to peers;

• Broadcasted "take-hit" visual effects (VFX) and spatialized audio so clients correctly see and hear when other players take damage.

Visuals & Player Mechanics

• Fixed a bug where blood overlays and the "injured" state animations would not clear properly when a player respawned;

• Ensure offhand items correctly hide for other players when someone equips a two-handed weapon;

  • Fixed a bug where weapons would incorrectly parent to the "spear" grip position if the equipped item wasn't actually a spear;

• Fixed an issue where feminine body customizations would occasionally fail to preserve during multiplayer status syncs.

World & Technical Foundations

• Aligned the interaction source range with the items source range to make consuming and harvesting feel more consistent;

We are extremely excited to see everyone try the new update. We've put a lot of work in the new combat system to make it feel more fluid, complex and rewarding. Please don't hesitate to leave us a review or a message to tell us how you like it!

There are many more things coming to Nested Lands in the coming months. We are working on the skills system and we will share more info about it as soon as we can.

Stay safe and enjoy playing!