Recovery is the post-action interval before a boss may choose or start another action. Kern's lane stops dealing damage at 1.74 seconds, but Kern stays locked until 4.58 seconds. Tavi spends part of that window approaching and lands one ordinary sword strike before the ready flash.
From 0.48–1.28 s Kern previews a fixed lane, then makes it dangerous through 1.74 s. Tavi clears the full rectangle before activation; collision ends exactly when the green recovery ring appears.
Autoplay is disabled by reduced motion. Scrub across 1.74, 3.48, and 4.58 seconds to inspect the opening, punish, and return to ready.
Define the recovery start, action lock, vulnerability policy, approach budget, useful response, and exact return-to-ready event from one state record.
Start recovery from an explicit state transition after the attack's last active instant, not from a guessed animation frame. Kern enters recovery at 1.74 s and exits at 4.58 s. During that interval the action selector, movement request, facing update, queued follow-up, and attack start remain blocked unless the move declares a specific cancel rule.
Budget from the player's post-avoidance position. Measure the time to recognize the cutoff, travel into the 118-unit sword range, start the established sword action, and produce contact. Tavi reaches the boss and connects at 3.48 s, leaving visible margin before the 4.58 s ready event. Test the slowest supported movement and attack startup.
Emit one return-to-ready event that restores legal decisions and removes the recovery signal. Decide separately whether Kern can take damage, be staggered, rotate, or be interrupted during the lock. The illustrated variant accepts one normal sword hit; recovery itself means inability to begin another action, not universal vulnerability.
A three-second lock is not useful if the successful escape leaves Tavi four seconds away. Measure from real response endpoints, include camera and input recognition, and validate contact rather than counting idle frames beside the boss.
If Kern can select or buffer the next attack before the slumped pose and recovery rune end, the visual promise is false. Drive pose, lock, countdown, hit acceptance, audio, and AI availability from the same deterministic timestamps.
Store canAct, canMove, canTurn, canBeDamaged, and canBeInterrupted as explicit policies. A boss may recover without being vulnerable, or expose a weak point while still rotating; one overloaded recovering flag hides those distinctions.
Useful time is recovery duration minus recognition, approach, and response startup. Log each term in playtests. When arena scale or knockback changes, recompute the route instead of preserving a familiar duration that no longer supports the promised response.
Use a stable material, pose, sound, or rune that disappears at the ready event. The player should know when to stop extending a punish without memorizing an invisible timer. Do not let a blend finish early or late relative to AI availability.
Assert behavior immediately before, at, and after both boundaries. Cover hit-stop, stagger, phase change, death, target loss, pause, slow motion, rollback, and a follow-up queued during recovery so no path silently shortens or extends the lock.
Kern's heavy sweep fractures the energy in its arm. A green ring opens when the dangerous seam goes dark, and the core rune contracts while the stone body remains planted. The red ready pulse returns only after the cracks seal, making the lock feel like a physical consequence rather than an arbitrary stun.
Tavi uses only ordinary movement and the established sword. The route from the safe position to contact consumes most of the window, so a faster build may earn extra attacks while the baseline build still gets one clear result. If no standard action can connect, the recovery is downtime rather than counterplay.
The active phase is when collision can apply the attack's effect. Follow-through is visible motion after that collision may already be gone. Recovery is the rules-level delay before the boss may act again. Stagger is a separate externally caused state, even when it uses a similar pose or creates a similar opening.
After a charge or heavy landing, Horn Beetle holds a brief stunned pose. The side view makes it easy to compare the safe endpoint, the distance back to its vulnerable rear, and how much of the opening remains after that approach.
False Knight's planted finishes and longer knockdown openings show that recovery can have several action policies. The designer must distinguish an ordinary post-swing lock from a separately triggered vulnerable stagger while keeping both endpoints readable.
Margit's hammer landing ends at a position that depends on the player's escape route. In a 3D arena, camera angle, roll displacement, turn time, and weapon startup all consume the apparent post-impact opening before a punish can connect.
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