Shielding

Shielding has been reworked in Ashen Legacy to reward proactive defense and stronger late-game layering.

Shields now take 0.25 seconds to raise, meaning effective blocking is about reading attacks and timing your guard before the hit lands. After a successful block, there is a 0.25 second recovery cooldown, preventing you from chaining blocks indefinitely when you are being overwhelmed.

Blocking is no longer all-or-nothing. When raised, shields reduce a percentage of incoming damage, and they now also provide a passive damage reduction even when you are not actively blocking. For example, the starting shield grants 65% damage reduction while blocking and 15% passive damage reduction at all times. This also affects shield‑bearing monsters.

Overall, this ensures shields are not an early-game crutch when you are under-geared, while still remaining a meaningful part of your defensive toolkit later through their passive benefit.

Abilities

Some shields have additional abilities, such as:

• Corrupted Shield
  • teleports enemies a short distance away when you successfully block
• Phantom Shield
  • provides a dash ability on right-click, allowing you quickly get into the fray and do damage to creatures on the way in, or quickly dash out of trouble

Enchantments

• Blocking (I-II): Provides a 5% increased damage reduction on block per level.
• Last Resort: Grants a chance to gain absorption hearts when blocking at low health.
• Blindness: Chance to blind attackers on a successful block.
• Knockback: Chance to knock back attackers on block.
• Slowness: Chance to slow attackers on block.