Hello Ghoul Hunters,

Thank you all for helping me testing the melee control beta! A lot of valuable feedback was received and I made additional improvements accordingly.

So here's the summary of melee fixes included in this build (1.97-3):

• With Hybrid control scheme, when you pull out melee weapon, you can click/hold LMB for the sweep/roundhouse swing. The yellow arrow shows which direction your swing will be. In this state, you are able to rotate the camera by simply moving the mouse left/right.

• Hold RMB to enter "aim mode", and click/hold LMB for the downward swing. In this state, you can rotate camera the same way you do while aiming a gun.

• The spirit of this new control style is to match melee with gunplay for the Hybrid control scheme, so that in both situations, you can walk around/look around with the mouse and hold RMB to enter a "precision mode".

• Tutorials have been updated accordingly

• Fixed an issue where the character's facing doesn't follow camera's facing "quickly" enough, causing shield-wielding less effective

• While holding melee weapon (for Hybrid, Auto-Aim, and Controller control schemes), you cannot click LMB to interact with objects, and must use F key to do so. This is to avoid any accidental interaction with objects when your intention was to attack.

• Also, while holding melee and locked unto a friendly NPC, you cannot do a LMB swing, that way you don't accidentally hurt him. If you really want to hurt him, you can hold RMB and then attack.

Here are some other QoL fixes added:

• Increased seed production for farmed plants, especially for potatoes, garlic, and ghost barley who don't have separate seed items.

• Fixed an exploit where if you equip both silencer and sniper silencer, the silencing effects will stack. Now, only the first silencer you equip will matter.

• Revamped the field of view for the guards and patrols, to avoid certain situations where they see you with eyes on their back when you are sneaking.

• Landmines deployed by players will only stay on the map for 24 hours. This is to avoid the situation where friendly NPCs respawn there later and accidentally trigger the mine, and counts as friendly fire.

• Superior/premium quality plant products won't show up until player's foraging skill is 20, and and superior/premium ghoul body parts won't show up until foraging level 40. This is to reduce the amount of clutter in the inventory until player is more ready for it. Since skills will carry over to NG+, once player starts NG+ they'll see high quality ingredients right away if their foraging skill are high enough from the previous run.

• Low grade ingredients will no longer show up if player's foraging skill reaches 100 (for plants) and 120 (for ghouls)

Hello Ghoul Hunters,

Great to see you again! First of all, thank you all for your warm, kind words of encouragement! I'm dedicated to making this game as good as I can, and as accessible as I can. Therefore I have decided to address another one of the elephants in the room: melee controls.

Ever since the day the game was released, "the melee doesn't feel good" was one of the most common complaints. I used to take walks around the neighborhood, thinking long and hard about how to address this, but could never figure out a scheme that would preserve the 4 strike styles AND easy camera rotation. That is until now - when one of the fans gave me an idea on how to make it work! And I have just implemented it in the game :) So, much thanks to you my friend :)

However, this new scheme does change the melee controls for Hybrid mode, and those who are already used to the old ways (like myself) will have to make some adjustment to old habits. Unfortunately the implementation is pretty complex, so I can't just put an in-game option setting to toggle between old and new ways, so I decided to release a beta build for anyone who's interested in trying it out.

If you are interested, please make sure the game updates, and then open Properties, go to Game Versions & Betas, in the "Private Versions" enter code "newmeleetest". It should then load the beta build "melee control testing".

Once you are in-game, switch to Hybrid control scheme. Pull out any melee weapon. You'll now see a yellow arrow - this indicates the direction of your horizontal swings, by pressing or holding LMB.

Now, if you hold down RMB (just like when you aim when holding a gun), you'll see the sword cursor, and your character will face where the cursor is. Now with RMB held down, you can press LMB for a quick downward strike, or hold LMB for a power down strike. Everything else should work just like before.

Please let me know if you notice anything wrong :)

Also, I would like to ask for your input on two items:

1. Have you ever experienced being detected by enemies unexpectedly while sneaking around?
   If so, could you please tell me where it happened, how it took place, and what you were doing at the moment?

2. This is regarding another complaint that "there are too many items, too much work to sort them out in the inventory, especially when there are 3 quality grades of each ingredient".
   
   I have thought of a solution for this, which is to not spawn any high quality ingredients in the beginning of the game, until the player is more familiar with the game. More specifically, there's a skill perk for Foraging called "Harvester", which is the first perk for that skill. High quality ingredients won't show up until you gain this perk, which for most players won't happen for some time unless you are a farmer class.
   
   What do you think about this idea?

Thank you so much for your time and attention :)

Rotorist