The Shield system has finally been completed and released!~
The free shield that everyone voted for is being given away for free at the stall east of the Emerald Saloon.


"So what does a shield even do?" you might be asking. Two things.
A shield is a fancy melee weapon, but with the functionality you'd expect of a shield- blocking.

"... Alright, so what does blocking do?"
That depends what you're doing with your shield at the moment you would be taking damage!
Each shield has two blocking amounts:
Passive mitigation, which reduces damage taken just for having a shield item equipped
Active mitigation, for when you're actively using your shield to block.

"How do I block?"
When you equip a shield, a small hotkey specific to shields will show up above your shooting control.
By default, when equipped the blocking action will be off.

Tapping the hotkey will toggle the block function, making your next melee attack in to a block instead.

Using your block will freeze you in place for a very short time, but reduce the damage you take by a significant amount!

TL;DR? Here's a quick recording displaying how a shield works.
( Apologies for whack quality. The GIF is skipping a few visible game frames :[ )


People more interested can open the spoiler for a tiny number breakdown of the Iron Heart shield's stats, and how much it's reducing damage taken in the video.

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On behalf of the Ol' West Team, I'd like to thank everyone who was patient enough to wait for this to finally get released.
We ran in to quite a few technical issues along the way, and this certainly isn't the original design we had in mind when we started work.
That said, we're far more than happy with the final product and glad to finally get it in to the hands of players!

We hope you all enjoy smashing your enemies and leading the charge with your friends at your back!