Husk

**Husks** are the most common and numerous form of snowbreed in *After the Fall*.

## Characteristics

Husks are ordinary people turned feral and undead due to extreme juice withdrawl. They have lost all sense of humanity and act on survival impulses, travelling and attacking in packs. They are as fragile as the average people they used to be, succumbing to a final death with only a few shots to their body by most weapons. Their weakness is easily made up for with their strength in sheer numbers. Husks that have spent a long time in the cold have developed armor plating made of ice, which serves to protect them from gunfire, but the armor plating is full of holes and exploitable by a skilled marksman.

When unthreatened and left to their own devices, husks wander aimlessly. When one dies, others cannibalize the corpse, often forming relatively large herds. When a living person gets too close or otherwise alerts the husks to their presence, they will all move to attack, battering their victims and attempting to extract juice from them.

Husks are a desperate bunch, not letting anything get in the way of them and the juice they crave. Many have adapted to their surroundings and hardships. Some of husks sprint long distances without tiring, while others climb walls and crawl across ceilings with ease.

Hordes often lay in wait, literally crawling out of the woodwork en masse when they sense prey nearby. Holes in walls, baseboards, and ceilings - especially those coated with strange fleshy material - are all viable points on ingress for husks to crawl or jump out of, so runners should be aware of their surroundings at all times.

## Game Mechanics

Husks are the primary enemy of the game, and are essentially trash mobs. They have low health but swarm in large numbers, and in higher difficulties require more precision to dispatch. Their limbs can be shot off, usually taking one or two shots to destroy them. Husks take 8 times the base damage of a weapon on a headshot which will kill them outright with most weapons on most difficulties. Husks will die instantly if caught in the blast radius of an Explosive Barrel, Pipe Bomb, Sprawl Pod, or an exploding Eater.

As the game difficulty increases, so does the amount of ice armor on each husk, as does the number of husks capable of sprinting. Ice armor will absorb all damage until it's destroyed, and it can take multiple shots before this happens - always aim for the fleshy bits. Sprinting husks can keep pace with a player sprinting in sliding locomotion mode, but players using teleport locomotion can outpace sprinters if there is enough space.

When a husk gets within punching range of a player or bot, they will begin an attack animation whose speed is dependent on the game's difficulty. If the husk is allowed to complete this animation, the player will be hit regardless of how close or far away they are. Shooting an attacking husk will interrupt the animation and save the player from taking any damage. On Nightmare difficulty, there is no delay and players will be instantly hit.

## Strategies

* Runner characters will call out whenever a horde spawns in. If a character vocalizes that there's more snowbreed, look around if you can to see where the next wave is coming from.
* Destroying a husk's leg will temporarily immobilize it and force it to crawl. Use this to slow down sprinting husks.
* Husks can be kited around if there is enough space to do so, such as the large arena-like areas in the finales of most maps.
	+ When kiting, be wary of long narrow passages, dead ends, and obstacles that may block movement even if it seems like they won't.
	+ Players are unable to teleport through husks.