This page is meant to be an introduction to combat mechanics in Project: Gorgon.
Contents
Armor, Health, and Power
All can be replenished by Combat Refresh, Potions, and Abilities.
Armor
Incoming damage will affect both health and armor while each are available. Some enemies and many player skills can bypass armor entirely. Many sources of Acid damage deal ONLY armor damage.
Armor mitigates 1 point of damage for every 25 points of armor remaining.
Thick Armor instead mitigates 1 point of damage for every 20 points of armor remaining. Found on enemies, as a Shield Treasure Effect, by drinking a Thick Armor Potion, or even as a special attribute on a pet Graz.
See Armor for more on armor types found in the game.
Health
Health is your lifeline for continued existence. Reaching 0 results in turning into a corpse, with respawn options.
Power
Power is consumed to use most abilities, flying, and running in combat. Most basic attacks have no Power requirement, intended to provide a default attack, however, the cost can be augmented by Treasure Effects, enemy debuffs (most notably Broken Bones), and buffs. Power is used for ALL abilities, martial, magical, mental, or otherwise.
Damage
Damage is split into many subtypes.
Direct Damage
Direct Damage is the upfront, "I bonk enemy," type of damage.
Direct Damage Calculation
(((Base Damage + Skill|Generic Added Damage) * (Sum of all Skill|Generic Damage Modifier)) + (Base Damage * Base Damage Multiplier))
This results in the Base Damage Multiplier being outclassed by Added Damage Modifiers for most scenarios, as the base damage of most abilities are quite weak. Effectiveness changes the higher the base damage is (Crossbow and Epic Attacks receive the most benefit) as well as the more damage types the skill uses; skills such as Battle Chemistry with four base damage types will find more value in Base Damage than a skill like Hammer which will generally be specialized in either Crushing or Lightning damage.
Triggered Abilities such as
- Bard's Song of Discord
- Archery's Treasure Effect for Acid Burst on Crit
- Vampirism's Treasure Effects that make Blood Mist deal AoE bursts
- Mentalism's Mindworm Treasure Effect that attacks a secondary target
- Priest's Treasure Effects for retaliatory Flamestrike
generally deal Direct Damage unless it is a Damage-over-Time effect (like Archery's Treasure Effect for Poison on Crit).
Indirect Damage
Indirect Damage is everything else, Damage-over-Time effects, Delayed Damage, Reflect, etc.
Damage-over-Time Calculation
((Damage per Tick + Added Damage per Tick) * (Sum of all Skill|Generic Damage per Tick Modifiers + Sum of all Skill|Generic Indirect Damage Modifiers))
Non-DoT Calculation
((Indirect Damage + Added Indirect Damage) * (Sum of all Skill|Generic Indirect Damage Modifiers))
For almost all abilities, the Tick Rate is every 2 seconds. Battle Chemistry breaks this mold by dealing damage every second as well as Spirit Fox's Cinderstorm.
Delayed Damage, most notably from Hammer's Latent Charge and Rabbit Abilities, it is not the same as Damage-over-Time and is handled differently in the back end. It is still affected by increases/decreases to Indirect Damage.
Reflect abilities such as Shield's Fire Shield, Fire Magic's Molten Veins, Druid's Brambleskin, Warden's Privacy Field, and Survival Instincts' Poison Flesh all deal Indirect Damage. Passives (such as the Scorpion armor set), Unarmed's Treasure Effects that mitigate, accumulate, and add that damage to the next Punch/Kick, Shield Wax that makes enemies take acid damage, the Fire Shield Potion and Acid Shield Potion, all deal Indirect Damage. Reflect damage will not be increased by the modifiers that increase Tick damage.
Targeted Damage
Direct and Indirect damage can also be Targeted toward specific stats.
Armor damage will directly attack Armor; Acid and Nature damage are the most common sources of this, however, skills like Unarmed and Shield have abilities or can be modded to deal additional armor damage with attacks. Stripping an enemy of their armor will reduce the mitigation they have, however, once armor is depleted, armor damage does nothing.
Health damage will bypass armor entirely; Psychic damage is the most common source of this, however, many other damage types have the opportunity to deal Health only damage.
Currently, there are no known attacks that are able to deal damage to Power, however, there are numerous debuffs that enemies can inflict that accomplish the same function.
Damage Types
Damage is split into five Categories, Physical, Elemental, Body, Esoteric, and Other
- Physical: Slashing, Piercing, and Crushing
- Elemental: Fire, Cold, and Electricity
- Body: Trauma, Psychic, and Poison
- Esoteric: Acid, Nature, and Darkness
- Other: Demonic and Nothingness
Nothingness is equivalent to "True" damage, as it should not be mitigated by anything, simply adds or subtracts health. Generally not seen by the player except for those cruel masters that torture undead servants or perform animal cruelty.
For further information, a list of damage conversions, and a skill breakdown of damage types used, see Damage Types
Attacking
Many mechanics go into hitting your enemy and sometimes, more importantly, how you hit them.
Accuracy and Chance to Miss
By default, players have 100 Accuracy and an attack will always hit. However, players, monsters, and many pets can have the ability to evade attacks, at which point the attacker's Accuracy and the defender's Evasion are pitted against each other. Different Attack Types can have different Evasion ratings. The stunned condition completely removes chance to evade. Do Note: Mesmerized is not a stun.
Chance to Miss is rolled separately from Accuracy and cannot be mitigated. Most notable sources are from Dark Chapel's Darkness (which affects enemies as well) and Alcohol Buffs.
Critical Hit
Some abilities have a chance to critically hit the enemy, by either exploiting a targets mind, knowing where to hit for maximum damage, or just by being the best pet around.
Phrenology Based Crit
Psychology and Mentalism use Phrenology to understand how sentient creatures think and feel, and then exploit their insecurities or vulnerabilities to deal more damage. This limits Phrenology Based Crits to only thinking and feeling beings, and requires the corresponding Phrenology sub-skill to be leveled to at least level 6 to have a 1% chance and an 8% chance when fully leveled.
By default, Phrenology Based Crits only have a damage multiplier of 1.25, however, when using both Psychology and Mentalism together and fully modded for Crits with L100 gear, that damage multiplier becomes 5.05, which can still be further boosted by higher gear and potions.
Anatomy Based Crit
Archery, Crossbow, and Knife Fighting (modded) utilize Anatomy to identify the best place to strike and deal maximum damage. All creatures fall under some sub-skill of Anatomy, thereby letting Anatomy Based Crits to be used on anything. Requires a minimum of level 8 in the corresponding Anatomy sub-skill to have a 1% chance and a 6% chance when fully leveled. Archery can get crit chance through mods, allowing it to score critical hits with no Anatomy levels needed.
By default, Anatomy Based Crits have a damage multiplier of 1.5. Archery can boost this to ~2 at L100 and can be further boosted by higher gear, potions, and weapon honing. Knife can only boost itself with potions and weapon honing, although using Knife/Archery will allow Knife to get the Archery boost, at the cost of losing the ability to critically strike with melee (Duelist's Slash requires dual wielding knives). Crossbow can only be boosted by potions.
Pet Crits
Needs review Your pet, as well as Elite Enemies, can critically strike.
Attack Type
Attacks can be categorized into tags, with multiple tags being valid for a single attack: Melee, Ranged, Burst, and Projectile.
For example, Fire Magic's Fire Ball is both a Ranged and Projectile attack, while Psychology's Mock is, at base, only a Ranged attack, but can be modded to be both a Ranged and Burst attack.
Melee
The most common attack type for enemies.
Melee attacks are single target, and generally limited to 5m and below, with most of the exceptions going towards enemies of larger size and the only player exception being Weather Witching's Shocking Grasp modded with "Shocking Grasp Damage +X%. Range is increased +7 meters (but is still a Melee attack)."
Ranged
Ranged attacks are... ranged! From the shortest ranged attack of 10m belonging to Battle Chemistry's basic attack, Toxic Irritant, to the furthest ranged attack of 48m belonging to Bard's Horn abilities (fully modded for +15 range and a Destiny Horn for an additional +3), Ranged attacks allow you to hit most melee enemies from further away than they can hit you. Despite this, kiting is not generally recommended as the power cost of running while in combat will rapidly deplete your reserves.
Burst
Burst attacks are almost anything that hit multiple enemies, exceptions to this are the Treasure Effects that cause you to trigger an internal ability that hits a separate enemy like Mentalism's Mindworm and Archery's Extra Fire Arrow/Extra Mangling Arrow. Damage that is dealt with Burst attacks (both direct and indirect) will deal full damage to up to three targets. If there are more than three enemies, damage is reduced for every enemy beyond the third, down to a cap of ten enemies. Any enemy beyond the tenth will receive damage as if there were only ten. This applies to both players and enemies! Players and any summons count toward the cap, so when fighting a boss that has a nasty AoE rage attack it is sometimes better to have everyone get hit rather than just the tank.
Projectile
Projectile attacks are any attack that throw, shoot, or otherwise fling something at an enemy. To the best of our knowledge, projectile attacks are always ranged attacks as well. Projectile attacks have the unfortunate (or fortunate) attribute of travel time to the target. This can result in the player firing the killing shot at an enemy, dying to the enemy, and then the attack hitting. On the flip side, this also allows the player to see a projectile, heal before it hits them, and potentially saving themself from dying.
Mitigation and Resistances
The ability to reduce or resist incoming damage through various means. Reading the verbiage of the ability/mod/buff must be done to understand whether it is increasing damage (modifying mitigation) or reducing resistance/increasing vulnerability (modifying resistance). It is unknown which calculation happens first, but modifying enemy resistance is generally more powerful as it can make a previously immune enemy begin to take damage.
Mitigation
Most of the mitigation found in the game is in the form of flat damage reduction, typically from Armor, Treasure Effects, Abilities, and/or Buffs. Mitigation can be as specific as "take 1 less damage from each tick of poison damage" (Poison, Indirect, DoT) to as general as Universal Damage Mitigation, as the name implies, reduces the damage of anything (except Nothingness damage). Flat damage reduction is most effective on smaller, faster hits, and if enough is stacked, can completely mitigate the hit to "No Damage."
Unarmed receives the most percentage based mitigation through mods. Percentage damage reduction is most effective when paired with flat damage reduction, as it will allow the latter to operate on even larger hits.
Mitigation can be negative or act as a multiplier! Abilities like Druid's Rotskin, Weather Witching's Treasure Effects such as "Dampen deals Cold damage and debuffs the target so that it takes +15% damage from future Cold attacks for 10 seconds," and Rabbit's "Play Dead Area of Effect +5 meters, and victims suffer -174 direct mitigation for 30 seconds" all act against the targets mitigation. However, mitigation cannot overcome resistances. Using any of the above while using Cold Damage against a Cold Elemental immune to cold damage will still deal "No Damage."
Resistances
Resistances, and conversely, Vulnerabilities when greater than 100%, are damage multipliers for a particular Damage Type or even Attack Type. More testing is needed to determine if Damage Type and Attack Type resistance/vulnerability is additive or multiplicative. (The Fog for instance, is resistant to all physical damage types, but vulnerable to burst attacks).
When viewing an enemy, if your anatomy is high enough, you'll be able to see what roughly what damage types the enemy has Resistance/Vulnerability to:
- Very Effective: 150% and above
- Effective: 101%-149%
- Ineffective: 99%-51%
- Very Ineffective: 50% and below
- Immune: 0%
Many Treasure Effects can increase the vulnerability of enemies, though none so notably as Archery modded for poison damage being able to take a Poison Slug from Immune to Effective damage.
There is no known cap to how vulnerable an enemy can be to a damage type.
Player Resistance is most easily acquired through Treasure Effects and Meditation. Raksasha can also use a Racial Jewelry to get a permanent 10% resistance to Nature damage by wearing Rattail-Ring of Screeching.
Currently, the only damage Players can become immune to is Indirect Poison, utilizing Battle Chemistry's L30 Treasure Effect "Your Extra Heart mutation grants you -50% Indirect Poison Vulnerability and randomly repairs broken bones over time" paired with Druid's L125 Treasure Effect "Fill With Bile reduces target's Indirect Poison Vulnerability and Indirect Acid Vulnerability -50% for 3 minutes. (This effect does not stack with itself.)"
Players can nearly become immune to Darkness damage (7% damage taken) by utilizing Sword's Flashing Strike modded with "Flashing Strike deals +35% damage and gives you 50% resistance to Darkness damage for 7 seconds," Meditation #63 for 25% Resistance, and an Umrad Coat for 18% Resistance.
Elite Resistance reduces the damage you take from elite enemies. Further testing needs to be done to see if it is Additive or Multiplicative with normal resistances. If it is additive, players can theoretically become permanently Darkness immune against Mien of Quietus by utilizing Dwarven Plate armor and a Hobgoblin Peacemaster Sword for no downtime on the Flashing Strike buff.
Recovery
Sitting does not accelerate your out-of-combat regeneration unlike in some veteran MMOs. You'll want to find various foods, drinks and snacks to top up your Health and Power between fights.
Eating food and receiving a (by default) 1 hour food buff is the intended way to A meal and a snack can be consumed simultaneously, eating multiple meals or snacks will result in only the highest food buff of each type being active, although all others will still be active.
Combat Refresh
The simplest way to recover Armor, Health, and Power; it is most often found from Food buffs, Equipment, and Treasure Effects.
By default, Combat Refresh has a 15 second cooldown which can be modified by Treasure Effects or by wearing three or more pieces of Organic Armor which will set the default to an 8 second cooldown.
Restoration
Abilities, potions, and buffs can restore Armor, Health, and Power while in combat. Potions will require some amount of Metabolism to use. First Aid, Armor Patching, and Survival Instincts can restore Health and Armor.
In-Combat Regeneration
Out-of-Combat Regeneration
Regeneration appears to "tick" once every four seconds (so if a food says "+5 Health per update" it means +5 Health every 4 seconds).
Some combat skills such as Mentalism also provide Health, Power and Armor regeneration. Some of the abilities are group-oriented, other abilities are self-help (for example Positive Attitude will quickly restore a small amount of Armor, Health and Power).
In-combat regeneration from foods or drinks is a rarer commodity. There are in-combat Power or Health regeneration potions that can be bought from NPCs or crafted. They tend to be very pricey, and of course have a fairly limited duration.
If you "mezz" a creature for long enough (eg. Tell Me About Your Mother), the "In combat" indicator will disappear and one update of out of combat regeneration will happen, even though the creature is still aggressive.
Foods
Most types of regenerative foods and drinks are crafted or bought. Exceptions are the Mild Cheddar Cheese which drops from Giant Rat, and Milk which can be obtained from the Cows in Serbule with an empty bottle. These are non-negligible sources of Power regeneration which can be very helpful to new players.
Buffs
Typically one food or drink can stack with one snack and one flower. However this is still very much in development. It seems that foods provide Health and Power, while drinks provide only Power. Both can be stacked. Flowers provide a max power bonus (right-click them).
For people specialised in Sword combat, the Calligraphy skill offers a temporary effects that allows for special combinations. Similarly the Meditation skill offers temporary effects for people specialised in Unarmed combat.
Rage and special attacks
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Rage is the energy source that powers monsters’ special attacks. As you hit monsters or they hit you, they gather Rage, and when their meter is full (an orange looking hand), they user their super power.
Many player skills, like Sword and Psychology, have abilities that hamper monster Rage. For example Psychoanalyse will slow down the rate at which the enemy builds rage, while Sword Parry will reduce the enemy's rage by a flat amount.
An enemy's special attacks will be revealed to the player in the target window when the relevant Anatomy skill is of sufficient level (ie. by fighting this type of creature long enough).
You can tell when an enemy uses a special attack by the overhead icon.
“I’m leaving the Rage system alone for now, until we have more players grouping up. Looking at the stats for small group combat, it looks like groups use rage-depletion a little more often. So it may be that I can tailor Rage to be a more compelling group-combat mechanic, where one person in the group has the “rage-keeper” role. That could be interesting.
— Developer blog May 13, 2014
Movement and kiting
In a game like this, where you can find all kinds of clever ways to stack speed buffs, it’s possible to run extremely fast. This is a problem in a combat, where the players can be much more mobile than the monsters.
One way the game currently addresses this is that you can not “sprint” backwards, just walk backwards. So if you want to get away quickly, you have to turn around.
“But that change by itself doesn’t solve anything, because the game doesn’t force you to face your target to attack things right now. This means you can turn away from the monster, run down the hall at high speed, and keep shooting arrows — the arrows would go through your head and hit the monster behind you. This is silly and bizarre.— Developer blog May 13, 2014
Kiting is something the devs want to address eventually, although it is intended to allow some amount of kiting — "archers should be able to move and get a few extra attacks in".
Vulnerability
Monsters periodically go into this vulnerable state, and some attacks do extra damage against vulnerable monsters, so it’s sort of a whack-a-mole mechanic — you use your vuln-boost ability when you see the monster flashing vulnerable.
A big red glowing thing happens when the monster is vulnerable, plus it makes a sound.
An icon flashes over the monster’s head when they’re vulnerable, and Anagoge Island has an explanatory tip about this (when you get your first Sword ability that does extra vulnerable damage).
Looting enemies!
Loot appears at the top of the loot window and can be picked up via either double-clicking the icon, or by using the Loot All button. Not all creatures will have loot.
If you have the right equipment, you may also have the option to perform an autopsy, skin, butcher, extract a skull, and bury the creature. Some creatures can be skinned but not butchered, and vice versa. To have a chance (20%) of extracting an organ, you will need an Organ Knife.
Note that to skin or butcher an animal, you will need to have a free inventory space, even if the yielded item is stackable and already present in your inventory.
Also note that the butchering knife and skinning knife are distinct items, and do not overlap in features. You must have both in your inventory. There is a "multi-purpose" knife, but it has less bonuses than the highest quality butcher and skinning knives.
When an enemy is slain and it drops special loot (cyan, yellow, purple colour), there is a distinctive sound and a particle effect.
Ability Tags
Some abilities are classified as "Nice Attack", "Core Attack", "Epic Attack", or "Signature Debuff". These keywords determine when certain effects apply. For example there is a Sword Treasure Effect "For 6 seconds after using Precision Pierce, your Nice Attacks deal +64 damage". This will boost the damage of all abilities which are tagged as "Nice Attacks" (this will affect Nice Attacks from any skill, not only Sword's Nice Attacks).
Within each category there are some similarities. For example Epic Attacks tend to have high damage and long cooldowns. However, there is no gameplay effect for any category other than as keywords to determine when effects will proc. The only exception is the "Basic Attack" keyword, which will trigger a Combat Refresh.