High-Priority Issues That Hurt the Game Right Now

Wicked Feedback
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These are some points that, if addressed soon, could make No Rest for the Wicked a lot better.
They’re focused on immediate pain points—things the game is in dire need of fixing—not large-scale design overhauls or wishlist features like I’ve suggested in other posts.

Combat

Player:

[Revised and Edited]

  • Animation cancelling is desperately needed. Combat currently feels punishing in a way that kills fluidity and meaningful reaction. Once you commit to an attack, you’re locked in, which leads to frustrating situations where enemies can punish you for simply pressing a button — especially when their attack patterns are unpredictable and fast. This creates a passive playstyle of wait → hit → retreat.
    Charged attacks should be cancellable during the charging phase and regular attacks should have a small cancellable window mid-animation, maybe only specific frames (e.g. frames 3–5 of a 10-frame animation), and at a stamina cost. This would reward awareness and fast reactions without allowing spam or mindless canceling. You’re still paying stamina, which enemies don’t have to worry about, so the risk remains.

Done right, animation cancelling wouldn’t remove difficulty — it would just shift the challenge toward smart decision-making and timing instead of rigid commitment.

  • Knockdowns feel terrible. Getting knocked down in a boss fight can easily mean death. Worse, recovery animations feel inconsistent. At the very least, players should have an option to react—like dodging out of knockdown at the cost of all stamina—so they’re not completely helpless.

  • Poise clarity is missing. We need a clear indicator of our poise level (similar to equip load tiers). Poise should have clear thresholds:

    • Light poise = interrupted by all attacks
    • Medium poise = interrupted only by heavy attacks
    • Heavy poise = only interrupted by super heavy attacks
      This would make poise an intentional part of your build instead of a vague stat.

  • Weapon animation tuning is needed. Some weapons have excessive startup or end lag, which makes combat feel sluggish and clunky. Combined with aggressive enemies and especially no animation cancelling, it puts players at a big disadvantage and discourages experimentation./

Action Queues Are Inconsistent and Confusing
The game has a very inconsistent action queuing system. Sometimes when you press an input right after another, it gets “queued” and plays out after the first animation finishes — even if that animation is long and you’ve already pressed something else. Other times, it doesn’t queue anything at all, or it randomly skips the second input. For example, you can press two attacks and spam dodge, and sometimes the game only registers the first attack and then dodges — other times it does both attacks and ignores the dodge. This lack of consistency makes combat feel unpredictable and unreliable.
To be totally fair, I’m not exactly sure what precisely is going on about the action queues, I just know that it doesn’t feel right for me and I’ve heard other people having the same complaint.

Enemy:

  • AI tracking is too overzealous. Enemies track the player with robotic precision. This is most noticeable with ranged or charge attacks—like javelins—that feel nearly impossible to dodge unless you react after they’re already in the air. A more natural tracking system (e.g., losing tracking during certain moves) would reward clever positioning. This issue is particularly problematic, when the player has to face 3-4 enemies at once. They’ve all got pinpoint positional tracking on you so there’s no out-maneuvering them, you simply have to dodge. For older players like me with lower reaction skills it can be quite frustrating. Let me outsmart my enemies sometimes rather than out-skill them.

  • Enemy aggression is overtuned. Enemies attack back-to-back with barely any gaps, forcing hit-and-run tactics. Combined with the punishing nature of knockdowns and no animation cancelling, this makes combat feel overly rigid. Scaling back the frequency of high-aggression moves would allow for more strategic engagement.

  • Enemy poise needs better balance. Some enemies can be stun-locked too easily with fast weapons, making fights trivial. Others ignore all stagger entirely. Poise values should vary and scale intuitively, and enemies should sometimes disengage or resist being spam-hit by the same move repeatedly.

  • Enemy damage is too high? Especially for cloth/leather users, many attacks—especially from bosses—can easily one-shot you. This wouldn’t be as much of a problem if other combat systems (like animation cancelling or poise tuning) were better. But in the current state, it feels overly punishing which further reinforces my point about combat being very hit-and-run centered.

Economy

  • Vendor food is a tad overpriced. Healing items sold by vendors are a bit expensive, especially early game. A minor price adjustment would make healing less frustrating.

  • Consumables are not worth the investment. Bombs, potions, and other crafted items require too many resources and only produce one item. This discourages use significantly, there’s no way im going to play the fishing mini-game and spend my valuable ingots to craft 1 bomb. No thanks.
    Suggestion:
    Increase yield (e.g., 3–5 bombs per craft) and reduce crafting costs. This would not only encourage use, but enable consumable-based builds to flourish.

  • Fallen Embers feel valuable but get wasted. The drop rate is fine, but the current enchantment system forces players to burn through Embers for mediocre results. Since gear has a kind of linear progression even if you’re simply wearing cloth running out of embers makes it difficult to find upgrades without spending a lot of embers.
    Possible Solution:
    Improve enchantment usefulness, so each use feels impactful. This is better than simply increasing Ember drops. This is a kind of difficult point because it’s very much co-dependant on the enchantments, but i’d figure i’d talk about it because a lot of people seem to have problems with it.

  • Gems are too scarce. Right now, gems feel way too limited considering how important they are for build crafting. Since they’re the main way to activate certain gear effects, it would help if they dropped more often or were more accessible through vendors or salvaging. This would encourage players to experiment more freely with different gear setups.

I want to emphasize that all of these points come from a place of genuine care for the game. I’ve had a great time with it, and I just want to see it reach its full potential. These aren’t meant as harsh criticisms but as constructive feedback based on my own experience and conversations with others who share similar concerns. I believe addressing these issues would go a long way in making the game feel more polished, fair, and enjoyable for everyone.

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Hello my friend,

I’m very interested in discussing this with you. I believe that if every one of the proposed points were implemented, combat would end up punishing the player’s risks too little. Even so, I think it deserves attention. Let me comment on a few points where I have some suggestions, and if you think my input makes any sense, let’s revise the topic to better refine what we want to ask the developers. Let’s begin:

Animation Canceling: I don’t think every weapon should be able to cancel any animation at 50% of its execution. The most basic thing, in my opinion, is that every charged attack should be cancelable while it’s in its charging animation. That seems unquestionable. However, if there’s one type of weapon that particularly suffers from the inability to cancel its attacks, it’s heavy weapons, and for these, the possibility of canceling normal attacks (not sprinting ones) with an extra stamina cost should be considered.

Knockdowns feel terrible: True, a knockdown can mean death. However, there are only a handful of attacks that cause knockdown, and learning which enemy attack causes it is part of the combat experience. While the recovery is a bit slow, I think just trimming a few frames would be enough.

Poise clarity is missing: Any clarity on how a mechanic works is always welcome. I’ve never understood how Souls fans are so forgiving of the number of unspecified features that require third-party wiki work and an amount of research time only dedicated tryhards are willing to invest.

Weapon animation tuning is needed: Once again, I think it’s heavy weapons combat where this issue is really felt. I’m playing my new run with heavy weapons and I admit that the recovery between attacks makes it very risky to land two hits in a row against bosses.

AI tracking is too overzealous, Enemy aggression is overtuned and Enemy damage is too high: If knockdown duration is reduced, charged attacks can be canceled, and the recovery animation for certain attacks is shortened, this problem is alleviated and it becomes unnecessary to make the AI more easy.

Economy:

Healing herbs are too scarce and Vendor food is overpriced: You already know — I completely agree :wink:

Consumables aren’t worth it: True. I don’t think the current system is catastrophic (not really), but it could definitely be better tuned.

Fallen embers feel valuable, but go to waste: Same as above. I don’t think the current system is catastrophic (not really), but it could definitely be better tuned.

Gems are too scarce: True, and I think the solution is very simple: increase gem drops in the Crucible (which would also encourage engaging with this challenge).

I hope my feedback is useful!

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Hey, thanks a lot for your thoughtful response! I really appreciate the time you took to go over each point. I think we’re mostly on the same page, and I wanted to clarify a few things that might’ve gotten lost in how I originally phrased them:

Animation Cancelling:
I didn’t mean that all animations should be cancellable at 50%—that was just an example. What I’m suggesting is a more nuanced system: for instance, maybe only certain frames within an animation are cancellable (say, frames 3–5 of a 10-frame move), and outside of that window, you’re committed. Charged attacks, though, should 100% be cancellable while charging—no question. I agree with your stamina penalty suggestion too; that’s a good balancing lever.

Knockdowns:
Yes, there are only a few knockdown moves in the game, but those few feel extremely punishing—especially in boss fights like Huntress or Darek. The issue is that they’re not well telegraphed and happen quickly, so by the time you get hit, you’re likely dead. I’d even be open to more knockdowns in the game if the player had an option to react—maybe using a stamina chunk to roll out on wake-up, and if you’re out of stamina, you stay down. Just something to make knockdowns feel like part of the combat rather than a harsh cutscene.

Weapon Animations:
It’s not just heavy weapons that need tuning—some light weapons attack very quickly and deal a lot of stagger, which lets you lock down enemies without much risk. I think both ends of the weapon spectrum need a bit of tweaking to hit a better balance.

AI Tracking:
This isn’t about making AI easier, it’s about making it more natural. The current AI feels robotic and omniscient—it tracks you with laser precision, leaving no room for clever positioning or dynamic movement. Adding short delays, giving enemies more realistic re-targeting behaviors, and making them commit to certain actions would go a long way in making fights feel less like you’re playing against a computer with zero latency. You can still make it challenging in other ways.

Again, thanks for your input—refining these ideas is exactly what makes feedback like this more useful for the devs. Let me know what you think!

I you can give this post a Vote it could help the developers see it.

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I understand! It would be great if you could give the main post a quick revision to include what you mentioned:

  1. Canceling charged attacks while still in the charging animation. Possibility of canceling regular attacks at an additional stamina cost.
  2. Using stamina to speed up knockdown recovery.
  3. I like your clarification about the AI better now — it’s great.

I trust you’ll make those few adjustments at some point. You have my vote!

P.S: I’d add one more point to help heavy weapons (they feel like a poor choice): Super armor on their charged attacks. They really need it.

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Blockquote Animation Cancelling:
I didn’t mean that all animations should be cancellable at 50%—that was just an example. What I’m suggesting is a more nuanced system: for instance, maybe only certain frames within an animation are cancellable (say, frames 3–5 of a 10-frame move), and outside of that window, you’re committed. Charged attacks, though, should 100% be cancellable while charging—no question. I agree with your stamina penalty suggestion too; that’s a good balancing lever.

I’d have to disagree with this point. Every weapon has ‘somewhat’ unique animations, and learning when and how to use each one of them is one of the great parts of this game. Animation cancelling of charged attacks would mean there is no thought as to when you should or should not use charged attacks. – if you see that it will be punished, simply dodge out.

If you’re not having fun with your current set of animations, I believe trying out other weapons is a way better way to fix it, than dumbing down the game even further (most content has already been made ‘in my opinion’ thoughtless), as staggering of the most aggressive enemies is already possible, without putting much thought into when to attack.

As a final thought to this, one of the truly great design choices in this game, is the developers’ emphasis on ‘patience’. Every fight can be done hitless, without it even being slow, when combat is approached with mindfulness and patience.

Blockquote Knockdowns:
Yes, there are only a few knockdown moves in the game, but those few feel extremely punishing—especially in boss fights like Huntress or Darek. The issue is that they’re not well telegraphed and happen quickly, so by the time you get hit, you’re likely dead. I’d even be open to more knockdowns in the game if the player had an option to react—maybe using a stamina chunk to roll out on wake-up, and if you’re out of stamina, you stay down. Just something to make knockdowns feel like part of the combat rather than a harsh cutscene.

Again, i disagree with your sentiment here. Every single attack in this game has been telegraphed really well, both with animations and sounds, and I believe it has been done so well that it is even intuitive from the first look at the animations. And furthermore, the mechanic is used so scarcely, and never in a way that leads to more than 1 extra guaranteed hit, that the impact of it, and what it is trying to teach the player is, in my opinion, super great.

What I’m reading here, and do correct me if I’m wrong, is that you are trying to fit the game into your preferences, instead of allowing the game to teach you how to play it. I’m not trying to “git gud” you, but if you interact with the game the way it is trying to ‘force’ (for lack of a better word) you, it feels super rewarding and fluent.

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@SantaDrugen

I get your points, however there’s a few counterpoints.
Yea part of the combat is learning the unique animations but as I mentioned before cancel animations should only be allowed within certain frames. And you know, that causes the player to learn the move sets even deeper than before; because now you know some moves are cancellable at certain points, meaning you have even more control. Imagine you can cancel an light attack into a charge attack because you see a bigger opening. That’d be dope. Even Thomas has acknowledge the potential for PvP.

About charge attacks:
I understand that suddenly charge attacks become a lot safer, but you still pay for it with stamina. It’s not free, you can’t just freely charge attack-cancel all you want. In fact if you add a penalty in stamina for animation-cancelling; it could potentially even put you in a worse position than before. [ As a side note, I think they should implement a mechanic that slows down your movement when your stamina reaches the red]

I totally disagree with the viewpoint that my concerns would dumb down the game, quite the opposite in fact. It could make it a lot deeper. I don’t know about you but I find the current combat pretty dumbed down to hit-run.

About the Knockdown issue:
I do agree that the game has very good telegraphed attacks with both animations and sounds, however not all of them and unfortunately I think Darek’s little kick that knocks you down is very fast and not telegraphed enough for the punishment it delivers. The pseudo strategy for Darek’s fight is that you have to remain behind him as much as possible because his moves don’t hit behind him very well with a few exceptions. The little kick he does only when you’re in front of him and this makes it so the strategy of staying behind him is even more powerful. If this is done on purpose, and the idea is to punish you extremely hard if you’re in front of him makes sense but it’s a bit unnecessary. I also think the fight could be more interesting if you could fight him a bit more head on as well.

In a way I am trying to fir the game to my preferences, because my preference is to have a bit more interesting and dynamic combat. If you narrow the combat down it comes down to hit and run strategies with the exception of Parry. I don’t think that’s very interesting. The enemies attacks are generally pretty relentless so there’s no space for the player to do anything other than avoid the attack and punish the opening rinse & repeat.
I think the game could also use more states like movement slows, dazes and stuns (CC essentially) to make the combat more dynamic as well. Knockdowns are a potential part of it, but there needs to be counterplay and decision trees.
Basically I’m saying that the challenge of being “patient”, avoiding enemy attacks and punishing for the allowed response, is not a challenge that’s the most interesting to me. I think there could be more than just that. Give us some strategy, some control (I think CC is sorely needed), some Combos, set-ups, clever maneuvering, traps. I dunno something more.

I don’t just post things without giving them a little bit of deeper thought, I don’t think my posts can be narrowed down to “this is too hard make it easier” in fact, some of my points could make the game more challenging and I think a lot of people miss that.

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I don’t understand how anyone could say herbs are too scarce. They are abundant everywhere.

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It could make combat a lot more interesting, sure. But the problem with expanding on combat on that level is, they have to match it in enemies, making the learning curve a lot steeper. With how enemies work right now, any of the proposed changes would only result in combat becoming less punishing to thoughtless play. If enemies get updated accordingly, I would be all for it.

With regards to ‘hit and run’, you might be leaning too much into patience, as my own experience is that only about 3/10 of combat is spent dodging and running, and the rest is spent on positioning (in melee) and attacking, weaving into each opening.

Stamina cost being punishment is also, in my mind, a bad idea. If a player is already having stamina issues, they could probably fix it by playing more thoughtfully, or by investing more. And if you give more options, at the cost of stamina, it would simply steer the ‘meta’ into more stamina investment.

Finally, you say that Darek’s kick isn’t telegraphed well, but you are also saying you know exactly when he is using it, no?

Blockquote The little kick he does only when you’re in front of him

Isn’t that telegraphed? And with AI already being forced/heavily weighted into never using the same attack twice, this gives you even more information to work with.

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Yeah in this case im glasscanon, I’m a cloth user with magic, but in this game you can’t just be a glass canon you see. you have to get in and get hits in first because of the Focus mechanic. So you take risks that are meant for a non-glasscanon yet only have a little bit of advantages. The damage you do as magic is good but it’s not good enough to be considered glass canon. Focus generation is very expensive, even with the right gear.
In short, glass canons suck in this game, it’s much more favorable to go as tanky as you can and get health back; in fact it’s such a good strategy that it got nerfed so hard by redesign and removal of enchantments from previous patches. The strategy still exists as you mentioned (greatsword + poise + healback) but it’s much weaker compared to before. Glasscanons (aka low armor users) simply cannot afford to do such strategy and have very little options. Sure you can roll and dodge things, but my god you have to dodge 50 things to get 1 hit in to generate 20% of the focus you need for your actual attack.
No, I don’t think that’s something you can blame on the person holding the controller too much.

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It’s weird that you think it would make combat less ‘thoughtful’ by giving the player more options. Options that aren’t free either, you still get punished with animation cancelling both in execution and on resources. Kinda weird to me that you’re so against giving the player even a little bit of optionality.

Im curious about your take about me leaning too much into patience when you say you spend most of your time spent on positioning. That to me is the patience part, which btw I think the game is very eager to try to punish seeing that the AI tracks your movement perfectly and the enemy move sets have a high level of mobility and active time. In fact a lot of moves punish you from simply moving and force you to dodge.

I do agree with your argument about stamina meta, but there can be balancing done around that. You can make stamina investments give diminishing returns exponentially and all kind of other clever solutions like in the knockdown reactive option punishment be % based rather than a flat value. What you say could be true, but there’s ways to fix that and work around it. I think the pro’s outweigh the cons.

About Darek, no that move is not telegraphed at all. It’s about 1 second animation and the reaction time for a human is 0.3 seconds if you’re pretty on point. Add in input delay, screen delay, human error, dodge input is on release rather than on press, and dodge animation i-frames activation and you’re basically screwed. Also I just remembered that Darek can also turn around and kick you so you’re not really safe. The Darek fight is very very very much the issue I have with this game, you have to WAIT until the enemy does a specific move that leaves it vulnerable for X amount of time and punish with the appropriate move. If you miss your opening you have to WAIT again. The game doesnt allow you to Create your openings other than stagger and freeze (which are subject to the same rules in order to pull off) and ranged attacks which totally ignore this.

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I mean if trying to create interesting builds and try to push the boundaries of what the game has to offer make me a filthy casual then I rather be a filthy casual :rofl:
I mean I find your logic pretty narrow, you say the game is specifically designed to prevent glasscannons yet, cloth armor exists… that simple fact alone totally destroys your argument. The game is literally offering you ways to play that are supposedly glass canon, they’re just not very feasible/balanced at the moment even you agree with that.

You’re perhaps too stuck on a specific way to play the game and hey, perhaps you really enjoy that and that’s great! But I’m curious about the other aspects of the game that are clearly IN THE GAME, but still need reworks, redesigns, rebalancing, polishing, etc.. It’s Early Access and don’t be surprised if the game changes a lot.

I think there’s a branch of people that like to gatekeep the game to feel like they know better or something.
The game needs cooking, that’s a fact that even the developers know, the whole idea of Early Access and this Forum is to get player input and ideas. This game is not just made for you or me.

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I simply don’t agree with you; you’re making statements as if you’ve seen me play the game. You assume im bashing my head against a wall or something but deep down you just want to feel like you’re better because you play a certain way. I’m not interested.
You don’t have to agree with my points, that’s fine by me; I’ve beat the game, I’m not stuck and I believe my points could make the game better and I welcome arguments and critiques about my points but you’re leading the conversation to a place that I will avoid.
So just agree to disagree.

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But he has a very consistent recovery time. Fair enough if you don’t like the fight. But he is a clear example of varied encounter design. He does lack when it comes to animation-wind-up, but makes up for it by always having the same recovery speed, so you can react even before he attacks.

I’d personally like to see more of this creative design.

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Yes he is well designed for that hit-and-run strategy yes. he has the same recovery speed, giving you the exact allowed time to punish him. Sure, but his kick is very punishing tho; it’s random and its quick. It makes the fight a tedium and a bit of a gamble. Just because you have a clear window to punish him it doesn’t make his knockdown move less of an annoyance.

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Comes down to preferences, I guess.

With regards to the knockdown argument, I still believe that some things in games need to be bad experiences. Knockdowns suck, and that is the point. Giving players options to avoid the major drawbacks from the very few knockdowns, with a much smaller drawback, is in my mind not a way to make combat more expressive, but less so.

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I get what you’re saying — that it’s a bold way to teach the player something — but I don’t think it actually teaches anything meaningful. Especially in Darek’s case, the knockdown just feels like a bad move. Sure, it’s rare in the game overall, but that makes it even more jarring when it does happen and ends your run.

You could argue “well, he’s a boss, so if he knocks you down you should probably die,” but what’s the lesson there? It just feels like, “here’s a cheap move that kills you, good luck next time.” That’s not engaging or insightful — it’s frustrating. And if the point was to teach me something, then clearly that message isn’t landing, because multiple people I’ve spoken with dislike that fight for the same reason.

The move doesn’t add anything of value. It’s too fast, the punishment is too severe (instant death), and the takeaway — whatever it’s supposed to be — is unclear. If Darek only ever used that move in close range, then sure, the player could anticipate it and it would feel fair. But it’s mixed in randomly with his other attacks, so unless you’ve already seen it once, there’s no real way to prepare. You either get lucky or you don’t.

It’s not that you can’t learn over time — it’s that the lesson is built on randomness. That’s like trying to learn strategy from a slot machine. Sometimes you win, but you didn’t actually learn anything meaningful. So yeah… knockdowns suck. Now what?

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But if it is insta-death, isn’t it clear that the message is “invest in some defense” or “learn the patterns”?

Might be reason to improve the animation, since people are complaining it is too hard to react to, though I do not see that problem myself.

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“invest in some defense”
Nope because I was in full plate with good gear from the levels where you’re supposed to be fighting Derek and I was still getting 1 shot.

“learn the patterns”
My point is that it’s near un-reactable, how is that learn the patterns? I know the patterns, i know his moves, the knockdown killed me so often that I’ve done the fight dozens of times.

Yknow what maybe that’s the reason of the kick yknow. Maybe the reason is, here let me frustratingly tattoo this fight into your brain. :rofl:

I would love to see you do the fight. Can you upload a video of you doing the fight? But don’t just upload the successful one, upload all of the tries.

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Would the Breach-version be fine? I’ll look into it.

Though I did do the boss in 3 tries, down 4 levels, before the general nerfs. And I agree that he is the most annoying boss, but that doesn’t mean his design is wrong.

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Yeah that’d be really cool of you.

And no I’m not saying his design is wrong, his design is fine. It’s the Knock down mechanic, it needs to allow the player to do something about it. Heck I think through my replies with you the main issue gets totally muddied.

Look I’m even okay with Darek having a nearly un-reactable kick that knocks you down. Like fuck it, make it faster if you want. But for the love of god, if you’re going to have a move like that, let the player be able to react to it. The problem is that if you’re knocked down you simply die, that’s that. No matter your gear. Maybe if you invest Heavily into HP and Equip load. But let’s be real you gonna invest into those 2 things just for that stupid ass move? You’re going to punish all the other builds just because the knock down mechanic is broken? nah fam it’s just bad design or oversight imo.