This article is about the mechanics and behaviour of Damage. For the 6 different Damage Types, see Damage Types. |
Damage is a basic mechanic in Outward which results in a loss of Health. It can be inflicted by Weapons, Skills, Traps and some Effects, as well as falling and some Diseases.
Burnt Health[]
Taking damage results in a small amount of health being burnt. By default, 10% of damage taken is lost as burnt health. This can change with status effects such as Needs: Hungry.
Typeless Damage[]
Certain sources of damage such as Diseases and falling from great heights can inflict direct damage to characters. This type of damage cannot be resisted in any way.
For falling, the formula that the game uses to determine your damage is: (velocity - 10) * 10
, where "velocity" is the character's current vertical speed. Knowing this value would be impossible without debugging tools, but generally players can expect to take between 10 and 150 damage from falling, excluding extremely high falls.
Damage Types[]
All weapons, skills and traps in Outward will use one or more of the six primary Damage Types, and in rare cases Raw damage. It can be viewed by hovering over individual weapons, or by the descriptions on the 'Effects' menu. It cannot be viewed directly for skills or traps, however.
The 6 types of damage the player can deal are: Physical, Ethereal, Decay, Lightning, Frost and Fire. There is also Raw damage such as Perfect Strike or Poltergeist.
Bonuses[]
Damage Bonus, as an attribute, can be acquired from Equipment, Effects and Passive Skills.
- Damage Bonus increases base damage by a percent, for example having 10 Fire damage bonus will increase all Fire damage you deal by 10%. If you are not dealing any base damage for a damage type, damage bonus attributes for that type will have no effect.
- Damage Bonus stacking is additive - different sources do not multiply together, nor does the attribute have diminishing returns.
- Damage Bonus can be negative - this will reduce your damage dealt, and usually occurs if you receive a Hex
There are also other kinds of "bonus damage" players may encounter in Outward:
- Imbues can add bonus damage to weapons or pistols
- Melee Weapon Combos have damage multipliers. See the associated Weapon page for more information, or view any individual weapon page to see the scaled combo damages.
- Weapon Skills can also have damage multipliers which work in a similar way to weapon combo damages.
Resistances[]
Damage Resistance is similar to Damage Bonus, but works in the opposite way.
- Resistance is a percentage modifier which reduces incoming damage. For example, if the player was to receive 50 Lightning damage, and they have 20 Lightning resistance, the damage would be mitigated by 20% - or, in other words, multiplied by 0.8. This would result in receiving 40 total damage.
- Resistances also reduce relevant damage over time effects such as Burning (Fire) and Poisoned (Decay), and can nullify those effects with high resistance.
- Like Damage Bonus, all Damage Resistance attributes are additive, they do not multiply or have diminishing returns.
- Resistances can be negative, which will amplify damage received! This can occur from receiving Hex effects.
Protection[]
Protection is a resistance stat which only affects Physical-type damage and Impact damage. It is not a multiplier, but instead reduces the damage by a flat amount.
Protection is applied before other resistances.
On certain enemies such as Animated Skeleton, protection can also be non-physical.
Barrier[]
Barrier is the counterpart to Protection, exclusive to The Three Brothers DLC. It is a resistance stat which only affects Elemental-type damage ( ).
Barrier does not work against DoTs.
Damage Override[]
Certain Skills can override all damage to a specific damage type, most notably Pistol Skills.
- For example, with Blood Bullet Imbue, the base damage would be multiplied by 0.8 then converted to Decay.
- Lightning Bullet converts all base damage to Lightning and increases it to (1.6x) of that value.
- Perfect Strike overrides the damage type to Raw.
Formula[]
Apart from Melee Imbue damage, all combat damage in Outward is calculated with the following formula:
((((Base Damage * Special/Skill Multiplier) + Skill Flat Damage) * (1 + Damage Bonus)) - Enemy Protection) * (1 - Enemy Resistance)
Notes:
- The Special/Skill Multiplier is either the multiplier from the weapon special attack, or the multiplier from the weapon skill, if applicable.
- Damage Bonus refers to the total of your Equipment, Effects (not including imbues) and Passive damage bonuses for the damage type, and "any type" bonuses.
- For the few cases of Damage Override, this occurs as the first step - directly to the Base Damage.
Melee Imbues[]
Melee Imbues which add damage are a slightly unique case. They use the same general formula as above, however they are not affected by skill multipliers. They are affected by weapon combo multipliers, Equipment bonuses, Passives, and Status Effects (for the element type of the imbue).
All melee imbues which add damage will also override the base damage to the element of the imbue, and this occurs as the first step.
((((Total Base Damage * Weapon Combo Multiplier) * (Multiplier - 1)) + Imbue Flat) * (1 + Damage Bonus)) * (1 - Enemy Resistance)
Enchantments[]
Enchantments which add damage to a weapon will add to the base damage of the weapon. The damage you see displayed on the enchanted weapon is now the active base damage. All bonuses from skills, effects and Imbues will use this new base damage to calculate their effects.
This does not apply to the "AoE Blast" enchants. The damage values on these enchants do not affect skills or imbues.
However, there is one exception to this, and that is Weapon combo multipliers (not skills, only weapon combos). The multipliers from using special or combo attacks with weapons do not apply to the bonus damage from an Enchantment. The multiplier is applied only to the weapon's base damage before the Enchantment was added, and then the Enchantment damage is added on after this.