Question about game mechanics.

[V Knives]

I know this is early access so there are several things that I want to clarify.

What does crouching do? Is there going to be a stealth system? Right now it definitely does not exist.

What does sliding do? I really hope it's not a pointless animation that does nothing, like in starfield, but at least it didn't cost anything to "learn" anyway.

Will there be any dual weapons? I played craftopia specifically because I could use my own VRM avatar and dual wield weapons, so I know those features are within the developers capability.

I've only been playing hard mode, and the boss fights are seemingly impossible. I only got lucky that the AI got stuck facing the object I put between us while my Pal attacked her from behind.

The first tower boss killed me in one hit, and I don't really understand the intended strategy for boss fights. The Pals don't dodge anything so they also die in a few hits. Even if I run around and dodge everything, they won't last long enough to kill them. This was at level 14. Is the game balance just impossible for hard mode right now? I regularly get killed in 2 hits and almost all my stats are in HP. Increasing attack seemed completely useless, I can't even see their health bar move when I hit them.

Do we lose our food meter faster in dungeons? It seems like I keep starving but only in dungeons.

Again, I know things are not finished, but I want to know how these things are meant to work.

[Excalium]

In my experience, crouching does work for pals in the wild - if you approach them walking normally, most will get a question mark and search for you, while others will straight up notice your presence and react. However, when crouching, they don't.

Sliding has gravity, so if you slide downhill for a bit and jump+glide, you'll get a pretty good speed boost.

Dunno about dual weapons.

For boss fights, you should heavily invest in HP for your character and possibly buff your pals using souls/breeding/foods/whatever other methods you find.
Also, even though pals don't really dodge - you can recall them and immediately throw them out again to 'dodge' heavy boss attacks, if you see them coming. This is what I do, but I'm not playing on hard mode, so it might not work as well for you.

[Ladybug]

I'll only answer the boss question, I am also playing on hard. If we are talking about the same boss, I got destroyed the first time but the second time I came ready with 3 earth type pals, I think level 15-17 if I remember correctly. Those helped a lot. The element matchup chart is in the survival guide tab.

I let my pals do all the attacking while I hid behind a pillar shooting arrows, for the most part the boss did not try to attack me if I was far enough. Don't forget you can dodge/roll.

Now that I have a little better armor I don't get two shot usually but for a while I had to be very careful otherwise I would just die. Luckily in solo play dying doesn't mean all that much.

Hope this helps.

[verarticus]

Crouching makes it easier to get close to wild pals that would normally run from you, but that's about it.

Probably won't be dual weapons, this doesn't really seem like the theme or setting for it but who knows.

Hard very much forces you to rely on your PALs, (if you didn't look Hard halves your damage and gives the enemies x4 to you by default) it gets more bearable at higher levels when you actually start getting some armor as apposed to cloth. Some PALs do actually try to dodge, but you can manually recall them and swap around to others to try and help out.

You lose hunger faster then you're doing stuff, so "yes" in the sense of you're probably in combat more and doing a lot more stuff in dungeons.

[V Knives]

Thank you, everyone!!

I do know to dodge, but I also can't tell if my timing is off or there are no i frames in the game. The tower boss is so strong I didn't understand how it could be done, because there's no way people are playing this like Elden Ring. The controls aren't tight enough for that and you have no manual control over the pals. Maybe hard really is just bad. I was just playing that mode because I assumed there was a benefit or achievement, but I guess not.