Fissure Divers: Maleena’s Corruption [v0.0.4.3] By Corrupt Cinnamon

v0.0.4.3 Pre-Alpha

Systems & Mechanics

• Added New Mechanic: Momentum Finishers. Any skill that spends Momentum now deals +20% damage, never misses, and ignores Defend. Skill cards flag them.
• Added New Mechanic: Parry / Dodge Reaction.When an enemy aims a finisher at your party, time slows and you get one keypress to read it. Pressing during the red band — or not pressing at all — takes the full hit; yellow dodges it for no damage; the tight green band parries.
• A parry gives your team +20 Momentum, strips 25% of the enemy’s pool, and lands a guaranteed-crit riposte at ~1.35× a basic attack.
• Multi-hit finishers are read one strike at a time. A dodge slips a single strike; only a parry cancels the rest of the sequence.
• Added five enemy finishers: Savage Flurry (Goblin Grunt), Wild Volley (Skirmisher, 3 arrows), Executioner’s Swing (Mercenary), Savage Lunge (Raider), and the Training Dummy’s Practice Swing — the move that teaches you the read.
• Added New Mechanic: Enemy AI Personalities. Enemies now act by type — Balanced, Reckless, Brawler, Skirmisher, Tactician — which sets which row they hold, whether they charge in or kite, when they turtle behind Defend, and how they weight skill and target choice. Grunts are Reckless, Raiders Brawlers, Skirmishers kite, the Hobgoblin is a Tactician.
• Reworked: Defense is percentage mitigation now, not flat damage subtraction. Defense 40 halves incoming damage, and the reduction caps at 80%. (Dev Note: under the old rule a well-perked Maleena’s defense simply exceeded most enemies’ attack, so they landed the 1-damage minimum and nothing else. Enemy attack values are unchanged — the new curve does the work.)
• Rebalanced: stat growth halved. Every per-point gain from Strength, Agility and Wisdom is now half what it was — HP, MP, Attack, Defense, Speed, Accuracy, Crit and Dodge. Base values are untouched, so a fresh character fights the same; a heavily-perked one no longer outruns the encounters. (Dev Note: existing saves keep their stats — what those stats produce in a fight changes on load.)
• Reworked Combat Resource: Stamina Points (SP) removed.Skills no longer cost SP.
• World stamina cuts Maleena’s per-turn budget instead: below 80 stamina costs −1 action point, below 55 −2 AP and −1 movement, below 30 −3 AP. It never drops her under 2 AP and 1 movement.
• She now walks into every fight at full HP — stamina no longer scales the health she starts with.
• Rest recovers HP instead of SP: 25% of max HP plus 4 per unspent action point, alongside the usual MP. Enemies rest the same way.
• Stamina Tonic now restores 1 action point (the cheap rung below the Adrenaline Shot’s +2); Quickstep Elixir just grants +20% Dodge for 3 rounds — no more SP-cost halving.
• Added: Wild swings. Skills can now trade accuracy for crit. Retreating Slash reworked into a reckless swing — 0.9 power, 35% less accurate, +30% crit chance.
• Crits swing Momentum harder. Landing one now gives the attacker +18 (up from +8) and strips 15 from the victim’s pool.
• Added: Guard Break sound cue. Smashing through a defending enemy’s shield plays a shatter sound on the same beat as the hit.
• Enemy tuning: Goblin Grunt to 10 attack / 60% accuracy, Goblin Skirmisher to 65% accuracy, Mercenary to 19 attack.

Bug Fixes

• Enemies no longer spend their last action point walking somewhere they can’t attack from.
• Enemies with a personality no longer shuffle between rows without attacking. A Raider that had pulled back to its station read as “healthy, advance” and marched to the front again, wasting the whole turn — it now holds its station and swings, giving ground only once its combo is spent.