I’ve always felt that husks are a really boring and poorly executed zombie variant. They’re zombies, but they don’t burn in sunlight and make you eat food later on when you get hit. Essentially, just more annoying zombies that you fight in the exact same way.

To make the fight more interesting, I suggest that a husk’s speed and damage change as it loses health. At full health, it’ll move much more slowly than a zombie but deal high damage. But as it loses HP, its damage decreases and speed increases. At low health, it can easily outrun a sprinting player but deals slightly less damage than a normal zombie.

There are also a few extra ideas I have:

• Husks have 32 or 40 HP.
• Husks could change their walking animation to more of a frenzy when at low HP.
• Husks could also gain slightly more knockback resistance as they lose HP to go with the increased speed.

These tweaks would improve husks in many ways:

• Because husks move so slowly when you haven’t hit them, they’re easier to avoid than normal zombies. This counteracts how open the desert is compared to other biomes.
• Fighting a husk is much more different from fighting a zombie. Instead of just a zombie that inflicts a debuff, you deal with an evolving enemy that has you on the run or frantically trying to stop it when it’s at low HP.
• Instead of husks being objectively worse to deal with (in a biome that really doesn’t need more challenging mobs), it has some strengths and weakness when compared to the zombie.

Oh, and husks should also burn in sunlight. Please.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts. What did you like? What needs improvement? Does pineapple belong on pizza? I’d love to know!