Damage and Skill Mechanics

Surety

There has been a lot of confusion around Surety and what exactly it does. Surety is simply the chance to deal a sure hit. When you increase your surety value, you increase your chance to land a sure hit.

By default, a sure hit acts as a 80% damage increase to the final damage you deal.

Note

Increasing your surety value does NOT increase the sure hit damage.

The only skill that currently exists to increase your sure hit damage is Way of the Thief. At skill level 1, this increases the sure hit damage multiplier from 1.8 to 2. It is possible to increase the level of this skill, however this can currently only be done through the Codex of Learning items that add skill experience to any skill. We'll update this when we know the multipliers for subsequent skill levels.

Note

Despite what was previously assumed, spells can deal Sure Hits. Most spells seem to have a very large innate negative surety value, which makes this hard to achieve. We're currently assuming it's something like -100 surety, however some spells like TZALIK and True Words of Fire appear to have a higher (possibly 0 or positive) innate surety value. We have been able to confirm that an MC Mage casting CONES is still able to land a sure hit, though, so spell surety is NOT specific to just TZALIK and True Words.

Buffs and Debuffs

Buffs and Debuffs are extremely powerful ways to turn a fight in your favor. Some of the most common and impactful buffs and debuffs are:

• Warrior's Battle Cry - boosts your Attack Power
• (MA)CALDIA - boosts your Surety and Accuracy
• PORTO - boosts your Action Speed
• MORLIS - reduces enemy Defense
• BATILGREF - reduces enemy Evasion and Action Speed

Note that these are not comprehensive lists, and other buffs and debuffs are situationally useful to apply.

One important thing to note is that there is a limit of 3 buffs and a limit of 3 debuffs that can be applied to a target. Applying more buffs/debuffs will cause earlier-applied ones to drop off. This means that you can accidentally remove an important buff or debuff if you're not paying too much attention to what you're applying. Afflictions (sleep, confuse, taunt, etc) do not count towards the debuff limit.

Openings

What Are Openings?

In combat, openings are critical opportunities to deal massive damage to enemies. Here’s how they work and when to use them effectively.

• Openings occur when an enemy is forced into a vulnerable state, marked by a gold circle icon above their head.
• During this state, they take increased damage from the next non-spell attack they receive.

How to Trigger Openings:

• When a character successfully blocks or evades an attack while using Defend, or receives reduced damage through a passive skill like Sanctuary's Blessing or Way of the Knight, an opening is created. Magic attacks cannot create openings, but both single-target and multi-target physical attacks can. There is still a bit of uncertainty around when Openings become available with multi-target attacks, but generally it takes 2 or 3 in a row Defending to enable it. For example, some enemies seem to get put in Opening state if two people Defend, even if the third takes full, unprotected damage from an attack.
• The Opening is available to hit any time between when it pops up and the enemy's next turn. If you do not hit the Opening before the enemy moves next, the Opening disappears.
• Note that the Knight class skills Cover and Cover All do not create openings.

Openings work on all types of enemies, from basic mobs to bosses, although bosses that regularly use multi-target attacks are harder to create openings against, particularly when they mostly cast spells or multi-target attacks that hit both of your rows.

Note

Opening can only be triggered on every other turn. You cannot get two consecutive turns of Opening being triggered.

Opening Damage

We're still in the process of figuring out exactly what this is, but our current data collection seems to indicate that Opening damage can be calculated as OpeningDamage = AttackDamage + HP%Damage where AttackDamage is the damage an adventurer would normally deal with a basic attack or skill, and HP%Damage is an additional amount that is based on the enemy's maximum HP. This HP%Damage appears to ignore any offensive or defensive modifiers, however there is a chance that it can be a sure hit. This is something that we're currently trying to test out.

Assuming this formula is correct, it explains some interesting behavior we've seen in the past, such as an attack missing but still dealing some amount of Opening damage. In addition, assuming the HP%Damage portion can be a sure hit, it also explains why sometimes an Opening attack just seems to deal a larger than normal amount of damage against an enemy. More to come here as we test it and determine the actual behavior.

Way of the Thief Modifier

Skill Level	Damage Modifier
1	2
2
3
4
5
6
7

Passive Damage Modifiers

There are multiple passive damage multipliers that can increase the damage you deal to enemies.

The most common of these are personality-oriented damage modifiers such Lanavaille's Stirring Righteousness, Wandering Princess Lanavaille's Valiant Righteousness, Alice's Agent of Heresy, Elise's Impartial Collaborator, and Milana's Mutual Interests. Each of these increase damage by 10%, stacking multiplicatively. For example, if you have a neutral MC that deals 200 damage against an enemy, adding Lana to your MC's row and Elise behind your MC will result in that MC dealing 200 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 242 damage.

Skills like Air Formation and Fire Formation will also fall into this category. I suspect they're similar 10% increases, but I haven't tested them out personally.

The final current skill that falls into this category is Way of the Warrior. Like Way of the Thief, this skill can be leveled up and appears to have an initial increase of 8%. One unique component of this skill is that it appears to only care about the enemy row, and will activate the multiplier if you're hitting something with a close or mid-range weapon regardless of the position the adventurer is in your party. For example, my Elise was hitting the enemy front row with a spear for the same damage when she was in my front row as when she was in my back row. One key thing to note is that Way of the Warrior does not increase damage done by spells, but Way of the Thief does increase the sure hit damage from spells.

Way of the Warrior Modifier

Skill Level	Damage Modifier
1	1.08
2
3
4
5
6
7

Type Advantage Modifiers

When you hit a type advantage on an enemy, you deal roughly 30% more damage (a modifier of 1.3). If you happen to be hitting a type advantage with an adventurer that shares its type with the weapon or spell, that advantage increases by an additional 25% (a modifier of ~1.6).

For example, if you deal 200 damage against a neutral enemy with an Earth weapon, if that same enemy were Water type, you would be dealing 200 * 1.3 = 260 damage instead. If the adventurer that was hitting the weakness happened to also be an Earth type, you would instead be dealing 200 * 1.3 * 1.25 = 325 damage.

Element Type Chart

Status Affliction Modifiers

There are two status afflictions that currently allow you to deal increased damage.

• KATINO causes the first hit to deal 100% more damage (a modifier of 2).
• Opening is even more unique. It causes you to deal over 100% damage, but we're not entirely sure what the number is yet, as there are some nuances to it. For example, if you miss while attacking an enemy with the Opening affliction, the enemy will still take a large amount of damage. It's possible that a component of this damage is tied to the enemy's maximum or current HP.

Active Skill and Spell Damage

Active skills and spells are a very unique bunch. It's hard to figure out the exact formula for them, but latest testing shows some interesting behavior. It currently seems that rather than being perfectly linear or on a damage curve, the damage is linear up until a certain inflection point of attack or magic power, then there is a shift and the skill or spell remains linear but the slope of that line changes. This behavior is very bizarre, but it ultimately means that at a certain point, a skill or spell at a particular level stops increasing at the rate it used to increase at and tapers off to increase at a significantly slower rate.

For active skills, this has a very unique side effect. After that skill level's inflection point (or soft cap if you want to think of it that way), a basic attack starts to deal more damage than the skill at that level.

Calculating Damage

Warning: Contains math

Partial Damage Formula

FinalDamage = BaseDamageFromPowerDefenseAndActiveSkills * PassiveDamageModifiersMultiplicatively * TypeAdvantageModifier * SameTypeAdvantageModifier * SureHitModifier * StatusAfflicitionModifier * OffHandDamageReduction

Damage Formula Explanation

This looks like a relatively simple formula, but there are some nuances that make it surprisingly complex and hard to fully figure out. We'll start with the easy things that we know.

• PassiveDamageModifiersMultiplicatively is the combination of your passive damage modifiers multiplied together
• TypeAdvantageModifier is factored in if you are hitting a type weakness, such as using an Earth weapon against a Water enemy
• SameTypeAdvantageModifier is factored in if you are hitting a type weakness with an adventurer that shares type with the attack
• SureHitModifier is factored in if you land a sure hit
• StatusAfflicitionModifier is factored in if you're hitting a sleeping enemy or an Opening
• OffHandDamageReduction appears to start out at a 0.5 multiplier when hitting with the off-hand weapon while Dual Wielding. This multiplier increases as the Dual Wield skill level increases
• BaseDamageFromPowerDefenseAndActiveSkills is currently the big unknown. We're not entirely sure how the power listed on the stats page translates to the damage that you deal. We also don't entirely know how the active skills fit into the equation. We're still trying to determine if they're a damage multiplier, a multiplier on attack power, or something else. We do know that some component of this is involves taking your attack power, adding attack power boosts from Warrior's Battle Cry, subtracting half of your enemy's defense, subtracting (or adding) any additional defense values from spells and skills like MORLIS, Armor Break, MAKALTU, and factoring in the defense penetration on axes, Precision Strike, and Sneak Attack. This is the black box that we hope to decipher as we gather more data.

Example Damage Calculation

As an example, suppose you meet the following criteria:

• You deal 200 damage on a regular attack without factoring in Way of the Warrior
• You have Way of the Warrior and Way of the Thief at level 1 each
• You have a party that consists of a Neutral MC, Lanavaille in the same row as your MC, Elise behind your MC
• You have an Earth elemental weapon
• You have changed your MC's type to Earth
• You are attacking a Water enemy

In this scenario, your 200 damage would become 200 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.3 * 1.25 ~= 436. If you went on to land a sure hit, that damage would instead become 872. Lastly, if you happened to land that sure hit on a sleeping enemy, you would be looking at 1744 damage with a simple basic attack.

This will increase even further as you factor in the damage from skills, attack power buffs, defense debuffs, and defense penetration/ignore.

Warrior's Battle Cry

Warrior's Battle Cry is an incredibly powerful damage buff. Due to the way damage mechanics work in this game, optimal damage comes from maximizing your attack power, minimizing enemy defense, subtracting the latter from the former, then multiplying the resulting value by your damage modifiers. Warrior's Battle Cry helps us achieve the first part of that by increasing your attack power before damage multipliers take effect.

We've done some data collection and testing around this, and we've settled on a best fit formula that seems to be mostly accurate (tested with WBC levels 1-4). This is not 100% guaranteed to be correct, but it should be a close approximation:

BuffedAttackPower = (AttackPower + 20 + SkillLevel) * (1.2 + (SkillLevel / 50))

Defense Reduction and Penetration

There are two different types of modifiers that reduce defense. These are Defense Reduction and Defense Penetration. One key thing to note is that two sources of Defense Penetration do not stack (for example, Axes and Precision Strike do not stack together) but multiple sources of Defense Reduction do stack. This means it is possible to apply MORLIS, Armor Break, and Corrosion Dagger simultaneously.

MORLIS

MORLIS is an extremely handy spell that reduces an enemy's defense. This defense reduction is applied before subtracting the defense component in the damage formula. We don't have a great sense of the scale yet, but MORLIS at skill level 1 is roughly a 20% reduction in an enemy's defense.

Defense Penetration

Defense Penetration properties, such as the innate properties of axes seems to be pretty steady at 30%. Essentially, attacking with an axe effectively reduces an enemy's defense by 30% in the calculation. One key thing to note here is that this seems to stack multiplicatively with a defense reduction spell or ability.

Example Defense Calculation

Warning: Contains math

Suppose you have 300 attack power and are fighting an enemy with 200 defense. You have two damage modifiers of 1.1 each. In this scenario, your normal final basic attack damage would be roughly (300 - 200 / 2) * 1.1 * 1.1 = 242. If you cast MORLIS first, your final basic attack damage would be roughly (300 - 200 / 2 * 0.8) * 1.1 * 1.1 = 266. If you also happened to be using an axe, your final basic attack damage would be (300 - 200 / 2 * 0.8 * 0.7) * 1.1 * 1.1 = 295. For comparision, if you didn't have any form of defense reduction or penetration but instead added two more 1.1 modifiers, you would only be looking at (300 - 200 / 2) * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 293, which is lower than if you were able to take advantage of both defense reduction and defense penetration.

Follow-Up Attack

Follow-Up Attack is a powerful passive skill when invested in. When it triggers with a multi-hit weapon, it adds a single basic attack hit, effectively acting as +50% damage for 2-hit weapons and +33% damage for 3-hit weapons. With single-hit weapons, however, this effectively gives you +100% more basic attack damage. The higher the difference between your attack and an enemy's defense, the more valuable this is.

The formula for Follow-Up Attack appears to be:

FollowUpChance = (SkillLevel + 1) / 1000 * Luck

Note that this is our best guess as of now and appears accurate, but due to the nature of percentage activation rates, your mileage may vary.

Example Follow-Up Attack Calculation

Warning: Contains math

Here are a few expected follow-up rates at different skill and luck levels.

SkillLevel	Luck	Expected
1	37	.074
1	41	.082
2	42	.126
3	43	.172
4	43	.215
5	44	.264
7	44	.352

What this means is that if you have 43 Luck and Follow-Up Attack 4, you can expect to see roughly a 22% chance to trigger Follow-Up Attack on any basic attack. If you have 44 Luck and Follow-Up Attack 7, you can expect that to jump up to roughly a 35% chance. This is very significant since as our level caps increase, so will our Luck values, thus our Follow-Up Attack rates will coninue to climb.

Practical Applications of Follow-Up Attack

The absolute best application of Follow-Up Attack is with 2-handed weapons. If you have a 25% chance to trigger Follow-Up Attack with a single hit, 2-handed weapon (which will give you the biggest gap between your attack and an enemy's defense), you will on average be dealing AverageDamage = ProbabilityNormalDamage + ProbabilityDoubleDamage = (100 * 0.75) + (200 * 0.25) = 75% + 50% = 125%. In other words, you would on average be dealing 25% more basic attack damage across the board with a 2h weapon. This is pretty significant.

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