As you can probably tell from the title, the main focus of this update was on improving the feel of combat. The two big changes for this were the addition of item enhancements, and the ability for enemies to hold/use weapons.

Enhancements are upgrades that can be applied to inventory items to improve how they function. Right now the max is set to 2 enhancements per item, and they do not stack, so you can only have one of an enhancement type per item--i.e. you can't have 2 Swing Speed Increase enhancements on a single item. They are also contextual, meaning some enhancements only work with certain types of items. You will find there is a new Enhancements category in the Crafter UI. You can earn enhancement points to craft with by defeating enemies, or, as always, you can simply spend graps to purchase them directly.

As for enemies using items, the system is set up such that I can specify what types of enemies are allowed to use items, and what items they can have based on their enemy type. So it's very customizable! Right now only the red, yellow, green, and blue blomster enemy types are allowed to have items. There is a percentage chance when they spawn that dictates whether they have an item or not, and there is even a percentage chance that allows for them to have 2 items. This not only gives the enemies more combat variety, but it's also a good chance for the player to get higher level items for free upon defeating enemies.

I'm very curious to see what you think of these changes. There are some fun enhancements that can dramatically change the feel of combat. And if you have any suggestions for new enhancement types to add, feel free to let me know.

As usual, be sure to delete your save files before playing this new version. You can delete them via the Settings menu.

If you run into any bugs, please don't hesitate to reach out on Discord.

Changes

• Added new enhancements system.
• Made it so enemies can now hold items and use them. Items can have buffs and enhancements on them and will retain those stats. Enemies will save/load their items so they are consistent between sessions.
• Added wood shield item that will absorb all damage dealt until it is broken.
• Made it so spawned loot can have enhancements assigned to them. This isn't used yet in game, but means we can have lifeforms drop weapons/tools with enhancements if we want.
• Experimenting with pitch-shifting the voice sound for NPCs.
• Fixed a bug where the mig xp capsule would show a health-bar for a split second when it is destroyed.
• Made it so smelter/dirt processor progress meter doesn't draw on top of pause menu.
• Added particle effect for when player transforms to and from mig form.
• Added particle effect for warping enemies so they now spawn particles at their start and end warp positions.
• Added the CCC Warp Key to the crafter so the user can purchase it again if they happen to lose the one they have.
• Made it so player can't move once they initiate leaving a room--this is to fix an issue where it would cause the player to warp across the map if they turned into mig form after exiting a room and before entering the new one. 
• Made it so the player can't mine with the warp keys.
• Fixed crash that would occur if player's tool broke while mining non-mineral dirt tiles.
• Decreased the length of item health bars to they don't go outside of the item box.
• Made it so the item hp bar now goes from green to red as the health of the item decreases.
• Made it so the user can't apply a buff to an item if the item already has that same buff (no wasted buff stones!).
• Added lock symbol on Crafter UI to make it clear what items haven't been unlocked yet.
• Added new bomb effect when they blow-up. Changed bomb aoe radius to be white so it's visible on all ground colors.
• Updated prices for Smelters/Dirt Processors to be 300, 500, 1000 for low, medium, high quality respectively.
• Reduced enemy spawn time for easy mines to 3 seconds (down from 5), and medium difficulty mines to 2 seconds (down from 3).
• Reduced enemy loot drop max for Enhancement Points, Armor Points, and Level Points to 2 (down from 4) so it takes more effort to get a ton.
• HP for mine mob spawners is now calculated based on the difficulty of the mine--the harder the mine, the higher the HP for the spawners.
• Updated base item swing speed to 5 (down from 10) since we no longer user a swing timer to determine how fast to swing items, making them swing faster by default now.
• Made it so items degrade faster if not being used for their ideal purpose - i.e. using a sword to mine minerals, or using a pickaxe to fight enemies.
• Fixed a bug that was causing projectiles to not calculate the right damage amount when hitting the player.
• Gave the player character a blink animation!