Our weekly Steemit exclusive article for Hash Rush is back and we are continuing with our look at the early Ernacks and the various phases of resistance.

If you’re only joining us now, then we recommend that you have a quick look through our first article where we introduced the article series and took our first look at the history of the Ernacks and the first phase of the Crystal resistance.

The Origins of the Traveller

The background and lore of the Traveller has undergone many iterations, the first version, in particular, is so different that we wanted to share the original idea with you.

To start things off here is the original sketch sheet for the Traveller. As you can see, our initial inspiration came from an Ancient Egyptian Sarcophagus. Other sources of inspiration were an Iron Maiden and a Monolith.

The story that went with the Traveller for this design was as follows.

The Traveller is the leader of the Ernacks, a race of aliens that wear cloaks and cover their faces. The Traveller became the leader of the Ernacks because he was the first and only Ernack to travel to the Sun. When he returned he had a mysterious glow coming out of its hood, and from that day, the rest of the Ernacks worship him as a god.

This is very different from the final story that we’ve given to the Traveller, and to the Ernacks as a whole. If you’ve played the game, you’ll know that we explain the story in the opening cinematic.

For those of you that are new to Hash Rush, here is the cinematic that we mentioned, check it out to see the final story of how the Traveler came to be.

#The Ernacks in the Pre-Alpha version - Early Models
Continuing with our look at the Pre-Alpha version of Hash Rush, we’ve got another older in-game model to share with you.

Here you can see a (now long unused) Ernack Engineer. In the Pre-Alpha, the workers operated in a very different way to how they do now. The player would first have to train a regular Ernack unit, however, these units would then have to be given specialized tools to take up new roles. For example, give an Ernack unit a sword and it would become a warrior, give it a hammer, and it would become the Engineer; the Engineers would then be needed to construct all of your buildings.

Ultimately, this was mostly changed for the live version. Workers are no longer needed to construct buildings and are used to gather resources. However, if you want a combat unit, you will need to send a worker into the barracks (or other military buildings) to be trained in the arts of war.

#Game Development Progress - The Crystal Scourge
In last week’s edition, we introduced the Crystal Scourge, the name of the AI forces that resist the player’s efforts in cleansing the planet. This resistance is broken down into five main phases of resistance and two background phases.

Phase 1: The Crystal Fog that surrounds the planet
Phase 2: Harassment - single attackers are sent against the players.
Phase 3: Attack Waves - in addition to ‘Harassment’ several units (forming an attack group) are sent against the player.
We’ll reveal phases 4 and 5 in next week’s entry, so be sure to come back.

You may notice that these waves are slightly different to what was originally written in our Crystal Scourge dev blog, that is because (as we are in the alpha) a lot of work is going into the core features to properly balance them and make them fun.

Now, with that short explanation out of the way, we’re going to look at the second and third phases of resistance. We’re adding these two together as they’re so similar that it wouldn’t really make much sense to split them apart.

What does it look like? Well, it’s quite hard to show in a screenshot, so here is a video of an unfortunate base being attacked.

As you can see, two Fishers are sent as scouts to attack the player’s base. Each of the unit types has a different AI given to them, from hunt (prioritize units) to wreck (prioritize buildings).

For the third phase, instead of single attackers, multiple units will be sent. This means that the ‘Guard Tower’ building will become vital to the player, as the extra firepower will be needed in order to successfully defend the player’s base.

That’s it for this week, be sure to join us next week where we will reveal the fourth and fifth stage of resistance.